Instinct: A Chess Team Adventure - By Jeremy Robinson Page 0,73
King wanted to say something about how it looked painful. How it needed antibiotics. Maybe some aloe. Something to . . . make it better. Turned out Sara knew exactly what to say.
“Looks pretty badass.”
Queen reached up and touched it. She winced as her fingers brushed against the singed flesh. “Hurts like a bastard.” Then she was done. “What’s the game plan?”
King looked at Sara. They both looked at Sara.
“I’ll test the blood sample.”
“And then?” King asked.
“If it’s good . . . If it’s good we’ll get out of Dodge.”
Queen picked up one of the AK-47s stolen from the VPLA soldiers she’d killed. She inspected it as she spoke. “And if it’s not?”
“We stay. Until we find a solution.” Sara looked at them. “Or we die.”
Queen laughed. “Watch out, Pawn. You hang around us too much longer; you might just grow a set of balls. Then King won’t want anything to do with you.” She chuckled and walked away. “I’ll keep watch.”
After a quick, uncomfortable shared glance with King, Sara set to work. She opened her backpack and removed her equipment. The vial of blood. Her laptop. And a small battery-powered VFT, or virus field test. Just one of the handy devices the CDC utilized in the field that most hospitals didn’t yet know existed.
Sara powered up the laptop. When the screen blinked to life, the Linux penguin appeared, and a digital chime rang out. A surreal quiet descended in the jungle. Birds stopped calling and insects ceased humming. The foreign noise of the laptop cycling to life sounded more unusual in the jungle than the explosions or gunshots routinely ignored by the wildlife. Sara disregarded the sudden silence and continued working. After plugging the analyzer into the USB port, Sara turned it on. Using a small dropper, Sara took a drop of blood from the vial and squirted it into the analyzer’s cylindrical sample tube. After resealing the vial of blood, she closed the VFT top and flipped a switch. A gentle hum filled the air as the VFT went to work.
“So what does that do?” King asked. “Look for viruses?”
“It looks for the antibodies created by the human body when it defends itself from a virus. This one has been updated to find the antibodies for our new bird flu, but it will still find anything else this woman might have been exposed to.”
“How long will it take?”
“Just a few minutes.”
Results began coming in. Sara looked at the scrolling text, which listed every antibody in the woman’s system, giving a comprehensive breakdown of the bugs she’d been exposed to before her death. The list was extensive, and refreshing quickly. Sara would have to go through them one by one, looking for the new flu. The results from the test came fast, but analyzing them might take some time. The last remnants of sleep faded as her eyes opened wide. She thought she’d seen the something and fought to scroll up the screen as the list refreshed again and again. But she couldn’t find it.
Not before all hell broke loose.
Queen barreled back into camp, her AK-47 missing and her eyes wide. The jungle shook behind her.
Sara stood. What the hell could have disarmed Queen and sent her running?
The answer came from above. All at once, bodies fell from the trees. They moved so fast, Sara couldn’t make them out. Blurs of motion, like a net of bodies, fell over King and Queen, driving them to the forest floor. She saw tan skin. Orange hair. And then nothing. Still conscious, Sara realized something had been placed over her head. The attack, for the most part, had been nonviolent. She wasn’t hurt. Just subdued.
Her mind spun with fear, but not for her life. She was becoming numb to the sensation of being near death. She felt afraid for the sample. The laptop had been so close to delivering an answer. The mission was almost over. And now she had no idea what would happen to the sample and her equipment. Would it be stolen? Destroyed? Taken with them? What she knew for sure was that time was running out. If they didn’t succeed, millions of people could die—or worse, everyone could die. And right now, with the sample gone and the three of them once again in bonds, the latter, more terrifying option seemed more likely.
King and Queen suffered the same humiliating fate: captured without a fight or a shot being fired. If word of this debacle ever got out at