Chapter Nine

The scream that comes down the corridor doesn't sound human for the first half second, and then it does, and that's somehow worse.

Reyna's already moving, hauling me up by the arm, shoving me toward a stairwell door instead of back the way we came. "Not that way, not that way, go—"

Behind us, the containment bay door hangs open on one hinge, and the man who wasn't supposed to have that kind of strength an hour ago is on his feet in the corridor, swaying, head turning slow and wrong toward the sound of running footsteps, toward us, toward anything that moves.

"Stairs," Reyna says, breathless, shoving through the door ahead of me. "Ground floor, out the loading dock, go—"

I hear him behind us before I see him, a sound between a growl and a groan that doesn't belong to anything I've ever heard a person make, and then the stairwell door bangs open above us and Reyna screams my name and shoves me hard enough that I stumble down three steps at once, catching myself on the railing, and when I look back up he's at the top of the stairs, gray-yellow and sheened with sweat, one hand gripping the rail with a strength that's already denting the metal.

"Go," Reyna says again, and this time there's no argument left in her voice at all, just pure animal urgency, and we run.

We hit the ground floor at a dead sprint, past a nurses' station where two more people in scrubs are backing away from something I don't let myself turn around to look at, past a waiting room where a security guard is shouting into a radio that isn't answering fast enough, and out through a loading dock door that slams behind us into the gray morning light.

Damian's car is exactly where I left him, engine running, and he's already leaning across to shove the passenger door open before we've fully cleared the building.

"In," he says, no questions yet, and Reyna and I pile in together, and he's pulling away from the curb before either of our doors have finished closing.

"What the hell was that," Reyna gets out, once we're two blocks clear, hands shaking so hard she can't get them still even pressed flat against her knees. "Ivy, what the hell was that, that man should not have been able to move like that, he should not have been able to bend the restraint rail like that—"

"I know," I say, and my own voice comes out steadier than I have any right to expect, steadier than I feel. "I know, Reyna. I'm sorry. I should have gotten you out the second the alarm went off."

"You knew." She turns in the seat to look at me, and there's something in her face now that isn't just fear, it's the specific betrayal of a friend realizing you've been carrying something you didn't share. "You knew something was wrong before that alarm ever sounded. You told me to stockpile supplies before any of this happened."

"I'll explain everything. I promise. Not right now."

"When."

"Soon." I reach over and take her hand, and she lets me, even though I can feel how much she doesn't want to. "I need you safe first. I need both of you safe first."

Damian's phone buzzes in the cupholder between us, screen lighting up with a name I don't recognize, and he glances down at it without picking it up, jaw going tight.

"Who's that," I ask.

"Someone at Ashford Biotech's crisis communications office," he says, eyes back on the road. "Which means somebody already called this in as a company problem instead of a public health one."

"How would they even know yet, it's been twenty minutes—"

"Because," Damian says, and there's something grim settling into his voice now, something that tells me he already knows exactly what's coming next, "Ashford Biotech doesn't just make the antiviral candidate for whatever this turns out to be. They own the contract for infectious disease reporting protocols at three hospitals in this district, including the one we just ran out of. Any unusual case profile gets flagged straight to their crisis line before it ever reaches the health department."

The pieces click into place with a cold, sick clarity. "They're going to bury it."

"They're going to manage it," Damian says. "Which looks the same from the outside for exactly as long as it takes them to figure out whether burying it is more profitable than reporting it."

My phone buzzes in my lap. Julian's name lights up the screen, and for one disorienting second I almost don't answer, almost let it ring out the way I would have three days ago when his name on my screen meant nothing but obligation.

I answer it.

"Ivy." His voice is different than it was at dinner two nights ago, different than the easy warmth he wore across the table — clipped, fast, a man managing a crisis instead of a fiancé checking in. "I need you to stay away from Mercy General today. There's a situation my father's team is handling, and I don't want you anywhere near it."

"A situation."

"A contamination event. Nothing you need to worry about." The lie comes so smooth I almost admire it, the same easy charm he uses for everything, stretched now to cover something with a body count I already know is coming. "I'll explain everything tonight at dinner. I just need you to trust me on this."

I look over at Reyna, hands still shaking in her lap, and at Damian's tight jaw, and I think about a man upstairs in a hospital bed who tore a leather restraint apart like it was paper, and I think about how easily, how instantly, how practiced Julian's voice sounds lying to my face about something he clearly already knows is much worse than a contamination event.

"Of course," I say. "I trust you."

I hang up before he can hear whatever's in my voice that isn't quite steady enough to trust.

"He's already covering it," I say, mostly to myself, mostly to the windshield. "It hasn't even been an hour and Julian's already covering it."

"Then we're not the only ones racing a clock," Damian says quietly. "We're racing the people who built the thing that's about to go off."

Reyna's phone starts ringing before either of us can say anything else — her hospital's number, I can see it lit up on the screen even from where I'm sitting — and when she answers it, her face goes from pale to white in the space of about four seconds.

"How many," she says into the phone, voice gone very small. "How many more since I left."

She listens for a long moment, and I watch something break open behind her eyes, something that tells me whatever number just came back through that phone is worse than either of us thought possible for a single hour inside one hospital.

"Okay," she says. "Okay, I'm coming back in."

"Reyna, no—"

"Six," she says, hanging up, turning to look at both of us with an expression I've never seen on her face before, not once in eight years of friendship. "Six more patients in the last twenty minutes, all with the same presentation. Ivy. Whatever you know that you're not telling me yet. I need you to tell me right now, because I do not think we have the kind of time you seem to think we have left."