Page 109 of Stars

A caption on the photo readWithout controlling intracranial pressure. Whoever had taken the images must have snapped them in rapid sequence, trying to capture every moment of the horror.

The man on the cot began seizing, violent spasms up and down, more than Jack had ever seen. At first, the onlookers seemed to try to help, but, in stop motion, he saw the unsuited man stop them.

The seizures seemed to happen in front of Jack, the man arching and collapsing, arching and collapsing, spine seemingly about to snap before he fell limp again. His eyes were bulging out, almost like a cartoon, red orbs protruding from his eyelids. His arms rose, and he gouged his fingers into his eye sockets.

The seizures changed, and now it seemed the man was possessed. He sat up straight and then slammed backward, his hands still buried in his eyes. His skull cracked against the metal cot in the next photo. Blood spray raced across the image, streaks of crimson splashing on the white isolation suits of the onlookers.

His body seemed to quiet, his arms and legs sliding out in shallow ellipses, heels kicking against the metal. But his head snapped forward and back, as if some hand had grabbed his hair and was slamming him down, over and over again.

Blood pooled beneath his scalp and spread. His skull began to flatten. Two of the suited observers appeared to have fled before the next photos.

The pool of blood beneath the seizing man grew to a river.

His hands ripped free of his eye sockets in the next photo. Jack nearly hurled. In each fist the man held an eyeball, the long optic nerve dangling from his bloody fingers.

Something was pushing out of his eye sockets. A fountain of blood… and what looked like brain. Was that even possible?

There were four more photos, and Jack didn’t want to look. He forced himself to turn each over.

Another head slam. Bone shards flew through the frame, and the skull was misshapen, flat on one side, the bone caved in.

The head arching forward, farther this time, enough to see the destroyed skin and bone on the back of his skull, the way his head and brain had turned into ground meat. One more swing back, and then the aftermath. His skull cracked like an egg, a mix of blood and liquefied gray matter spreading out around his body on the cot.

Jack dropped the photos. His hands shook as he scrubbed his face.

“That’s not the worst of it. Keep going.” Elizabeth watched him, her back to the Resolute desk.

The next series of photos was labeledAfter controlling intracranial pressure: acute neurological phase.

It was a woman this time, her head shaved in patches. Blood wept from holes punched through her skin and skull, streams oozing down her forehead and over her ears.

Her ankle was chained to a stake in the ground, and she snarled at the photographer, teeth bared. Soviet soldiers stood in a semicircle around her, their weapons raised and aiming at her head.

In the photos, Jack watched her snarl and lash out, try to run out her restraint. She screamed, her eyes wild, the picture capturing her frozen face contorted in a primal, animal rage.

One of the soldiers must have been startled, thrown off his concentration. In the next image she’d launched at him, tackled him to the ground. In the one that followed, she’d tucked her face against his neck, and he was screaming, thrashing.

In the final photo she was dead, shot by the other soldiers. The man she’d attacked had a bite mark on his neck, and his chest was soaked in blood. His friends were at his side, struggling to control the bleeding and save his life.

“There’s one more photo after that,” Elizabeth said softly.

It was beneath a handwritten note.Three days later.

Every soldier he’d seen in the previous photos lay dead, shot in the head. Their bodies showed evidence of the virus, bleeding from their mouths and ears and eyes. Some had bite marks. Some had blood around their mouths.

“Now you know,” Elizabeth said.

Jack held up one of the first photos with the masked man observing the seizing man. “Lazarus?”

Elizabeth nodded. “These were smuggled out of Soviet Russia. We ordered a kill mission on Lazarus, the scientist who created this virus. Whatever that is, whatever he cooked up and created, itcannotexist. The rate of infection is higher than the rates of infection for both measles and mumps combined. It spreads faster than the Spanish flu. For every person infected, it passes to another twenty-five.”

“Is there a cure? A vaccine?”

“No. There’s nothing. It’s death, Jack. It’s pure death.”

“How did we know about this back then? What was this, the late eighties? Early nineties? How did we have a source inside Uchami and close to General Sevastyanov? He was the Soviet’s black project manager. We shouldn't have even known his name.”

Elizabeth hesitated. Her eyes slid away as her breath hitched.