Pandemic

Stepping out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, Noah met Anna in the hallway. "Morning." She offered him a cup of tea along with a coy smile.

"Hi." Noah accepted the cup, feeling an unexpected level of discomfort at what had once been a morning ritual for them. "Chloe at preschool?"

"Yeah." Anna smiled. "It was all I could do to stop her from waking you this morning."

"Thanks." He forced a smile, but his unease didn't let up.

She pointed at the deep abrasion that ran along the inside of his left thigh and down to his ankle. "I thought you said nothing happened to you on your African trip."

Haldane shrugged.

She folded her arms across her chest and frowned slightly. "Chloe is going to need her dad for a lot longer, you know?" she said with a trace of bitterness.

"I didn't choose any of this," Haldane snapped.

Anna shrugged and then said in a smaller voice, "You didn't choose a nine-to-five stay-at-home job either."

Haldane held up his palms. "But if I had, everything would be perfect between us, right?"

"I… I didn't mean that," she stammered. Her face flushed with anger. "I just want things to be right again for Chloe. For us! And you don't seem to want to help me much with that."

She turned to leave, but Noah stopped her by gently catching her wrist. "Anna, I know how hard you're trying to do what's right," he said. "But I don't believe you even know what you want."

She started to say something, but Noah cut her off. "And, Anna, truth is I don't know what I want anymore either," he said softly.

* * *

After spending much of the day in a teleconference with Jean Nantal at the WHO, Haldane and McLeod arrived at Gwen's office in the midaftemoon. Noah couldn't deny his disappointment to see that Alex Clayton already sat in the chair across from her, looking very much at home with his Armani sports jacket unbuttoned and hands folded behind his head.

In jeans and a sweater, Gwen sat behind her desk, her face creased with a look of concern. "Hi," she greeted them distractedly.

After they took their seats around the small conference table, McLeod nodded to her. "Gwen, what's the matter? You look like you're still carrying part of a building on your back." But Haldane noticed the genuine concern behind the Scotsman's quip.

"A couple of developments," Gwen said gloomily. "Alex, why don't you start?"

He pulled his hands off his head and shrugged. "We just got the preliminary report from the army pathologist who did the autopsy on Hazzir Kabaal."

"Let me guess," McLeod said. "He's not dead, after all?"

Clayton shook his head. "Oh, he's very dead. In fact, the pathologist thinks he was killed twice."

Haldane leaned forward in his chair. "What are you talking about?"

"The guy was riddled with bullets. All the same 5.56-mm caliber." Clayton shrugged. "But because of something about the lack of capillary leakage or whatever…" Clayton threw up his hands. "The pathologist could tell that several of the wounds happened posthumously."

"So what? Kabaal was lying out front in a firefight," Haldane argued. "Surely, he could have been shot in the crossfire after he had already died."

Clayton shook his head. "The pathologist says no. He thinks there were at least a couple hours between the two sets of wounds."

Noah leaned forward in his chair. "Is he sure?" he asked.

"No," Clayton said. "Not positive."

"But if he is right…

"Maybe one of his own people took care of Hazzir Kabaal," Clayton said.

"Ach," McLeod harrumphed. "Then why would they leave him out front of the complex?"

"To make us think he died in the firefight," Clayton said.

"Listen to me." McLeod tapped the table in front of him. "Why would it matter where he died?"

"What if someone was covering their tracks?" Haldane hypothesized aloud. "They dump Kabaal's body outside and then take off. Then later, after whoever is left inside detonates the complex, we have no way of doing a body count."

Clayton nodded slowly, picking up on Haldane's thought. "But we assume they're all in there because their leader is there!"

At the suggestion, the room lapsed into grim silence.

"There's something else," Gwen said, stone-faced. "I just heard from the CDC a half an hour ago."

Haldane felt the blood drain from him. His heart pounded in his ears. He rose from his chair. "Gwen, please don't tell me…"

She shook her head. "No. There are no new cases of the virus."

Haldane exhaled heavily. The pounding lessened. "But?"

"The monkey you dragged out of the lab," she said.

"What about him?" Haldane asked, still hovering above his seat.

"CDC ran tests on his serum." She brought her fingers to her temples, and began to rub.

"And?"

"He wasn't suffering from the same strain of Gansu Flu as the others."

"What fucking others?" McLeod jumped in.

Gwen stopped rubbing. She leaned forward in her chair. "The victims from Chicago, London, Vancouver, or China."

Haldane shook his head in confusion. "So it's not the Gansu Flu?"

"No, it is," Gwen said. "But it is a mutation. It's not H2N2. It's H3N2."