He went silent and glanced toward the hallway, his jaw flexing. Her radar pinged. He was holding something back, debating whether to tell her something. Or maybe how.
“El, what aren’t you telling me?”
He set his mug down, rolling it between his palms. “Yesterday, when I searched the lab, I found something. I was going to tell you, but I found you in the shower…” He trailed off.
“Breaking down,” she finished for him. The reminder of that moment brought the grief roaring back, but she swallowed it down.
“You had every right to,” he said quickly. “But, yeah. I got distracted.”
She tried for a smile. “And then I reallydistractedyou.”
He coughed on the sip of coffee he’d just taken. The pink in his cheeks was back, and this time, it had nothing to do with the cold.
Adorable.
“Yeah, well…” He cleared his throat and seemed at a loss for words.
How could this man, who had whispered such filthy things in her ear as she came, now get flustered over the word “distracted”?
She decided to take pity on him. “What did you find?”
“Right. Hang on.” He disappeared down the hallway, returning a moment later with a box of files that he placed on the counter between them. He grabbed a folder, opened it, and held it out to her, pointing at a name.
Dr. Helena Moretti.
“Holy shit.” She grabbed the folder and scanned through it. “I knew Moretti—our Moretti—was lying. He wasn’t supposed to be at Thwaites. Is he trying to cover this up or?—”
A picture slipped out from the back of the folder, and they both looked down at it as it fluttered to the floor. It showed Helena Moretti with Maren and several of the others they’d found in the makeshift morgue, all smiling in front of the station, holding up their expedition flag. They looked happy, excited, like they had no idea what was waiting for them.
Rue bent to pick it up, a fresh wave of grief rolling through her. “Or he was looking for her, like I was looking for Maren.”
“Yeah,” Elliot said, his voice tight as he took the photo from her and studied the smiling faces. “At first, I thought he was in on it, but I searched her quarters while you were sleeping. She had pictures of him.”
He pulled another handful of photos from the box and passed them to her. All of them showed a couple very much in love.
“If Moretti knew what really happened to her, I have a feeling he’d be screaming it from the rooftops. Which means as soon as Praetorian realizes what he’s up to, they’ll want to silence him.”
Rue flipped through Helena’s notes. “Jesus,” she breathed, scanning a particularly detailed autopsy report. “It’s like something out of a horror movie.”
The pathogen functioned more like a fungus or a parasite than a virus, turning circulatory systems into networks for the black filaments. The infected became walking incubators, spreading the organism through contact with bodily fluids.
And Tyler was almost definitely infected.
She looked up into Elliot’s worried eyes. “We need to get back to Thwaites.”
Though she didn’t know what the two of them could do against a potentially multi-million-year-old pathogen and a private military bent on using it for world domination.
They desperately needed back-up.
No, not just back-up. They needed a full Level 4 containment unit.
“Any luck getting through to your family?” She knew without a doubt he’d been trying since he woke up this morning.
Elliot scowled. “No. I connected for a second, but I couldn’t see or hear anyone. And I doubt they could hear me.”
“So we’re on our own,” she said, stating the obvious because sometimes you had to say the terrible truths out loud. She finished off the awful coffee and straightened her shoulders. “Okay, then. We’d better get moving.”
twenty-eight