Germ

"Me," he said. "My blood. Years ago, I was exposed to an early strain. I survived." He raised his head. "My family did not, but I did and started producing antibodies. Isn't that a cruel joke? My body created the cure for the disease that killed my wife and children. I've developed the antidote, but I've shared it with no one. And never will."

He stood. Allen's eyelid dropped.

At the door, Litt looked back. In a fit of anger or insanity, the prisoner had murdered his caregiver.

Litt shook his head and closed the door.

eighty-nine

The trek through Paraguay's northeastern jungle

was as excruciating as Tate had warned. Branches ripped at their clothes, snagged their hair. Thorns jabbed at them and elephant grass whipped at their faces. The flickering shafts and dapples of sunlight piercing the foliage only added to the confusing array of leaves and darkness, solids and space. Tate led them in one direction, then another, sometimes hacking through layers of vegetation, sometimes following the serpentine meanders of small-game trails. They waded through narrow streams—Julia constantly anticipating the first sharp pinch of a piranha.

"Don't fret over one or two bites," Tate had said. "It's when you feel a quick half dozen that you have to get out fast."

At the next crossing, a nibble on her calf scared an audible gasp out of her, and she scrambled onto the bank a dozen feet ahead of the others. When she discovered that she had been attacked by a piece of duct tape that had come loose, she rubbed it and said nothing.

Tate dropped down beside her, taking the healthy deep breaths of an athlete in training. He checked his watch and said, "Three-minute break." He removed the knapsack from his back and withdrew a canteen, which he handed to Julia. She took a long pull of tepid water. quenching a thirst she had only vaguely acknowledged. Tate rummaged in the knapsack, then offered leathery strips of beef jerky, brightly wrapped energy bars, and the requisite oranges.

Julia squinted up at an impossibly yellow sun dancing on the tree-tops. For a moment, it was possible to believe she was back in Georgia, out in the Chattahoochee wilderness, her feet caressed by the waters of Holcomb Creek. Jodi would be getting on Goody for talking business, while he waved her off good-naturedly and slapped her behind. The boys would be laughing, splashing in the creek, asking, "When are we gonna eat?" The sun warmed her face, splashing red flowers against her closed eyelids. A thousand fragrances mixed on the breeze and—

"Time's up!" Tate bellowed like a football coach.

Julia gazed up at him, dazed and disappointed. He unsheathed the machete, exhaled loudly, and marched forward, leaving a smoldering cigar in the cup of a peeled orange.

After an hour, the treacheries of jungle travel became tedious, and her mind reached out to their destination: What will we find there? What opposition? What breaks? She wondered what Kendrick Reynolds was doing. Had he sent in a commando team? Was he, even now, negotiating for Litt's surrender? Two days had passed since she left the hard drive for him. He should have begun the operation to stop Litt immediately.

She slid down a muddy bank into yet another stream, following Tate and dimly aware of Stephen's presence behind her. She was moving mechanically now, using some primal surface consciousness to travel efficiently, grabbing a root to stabilize herself for a trick descent or mimicking Tate's jog around a nasty thicket.

She didn't realize Tate had stopped until she walked into him. He had his forefinger pressed to his lips. She held up her palm to Stephen. Around them, trees rose like scaffoldings, holding their heavy leaves sixty feet above the ground. Smaller trees and bushes, their spindly branches and dappled leaves exploding wildly from unseen stalks. crowded like children around their parents' legs. The three humans stood in shadowy darkness, but for a single shaft of intense light that defied the canopy's protection to splash the ground at their feet.

"We're here," Tate whispered.

Julia rotated her head, saw nothing that would distinguish this spot from any other place in the jungle. As it was, she felt disoriented by the jungle's lack of a horizon or of landmarks that remained visible for longer than a few minutes. It didn't help that she had lost track of time, sensing the distance they had hiked only through her fatigued muscles.

"We will be going under much of the compound's perimeter security," Tate reminded them, waving his hand vaguely in the air behind him, "but I cannot be sure how much sound carries from the mine into the compound. I am always quiet."