It was strange thinking tha
t she’d only known Draden a few hours, when already she was fiercely protective of him and liked being in his company. She wasn’t that fond of men. She’d really only been exposed to Whitney, his guards and his supersoldiers, none of whom were very nice.
When any of the women left the compound, they were given an injection to make them sleep, so they weren’t aware where Whitney embedded the virus capsules in their bodies, but also so they wouldn’t know how to get in and out of his compound. She knew the last part was so the women couldn’t lead the authorities back to Whitney. They always had an appointed place where they met their handlers, so they could be given the necessary injection to counter the virus if they were late. Otherwise, Whitney removed the capsule once they were back.
She took in several deep breaths and forced herself to look around at the trees swaying in the wind. It wasn’t as if she could get blown away, but the gusts felt strong. She took another deep breath and automatically checked their surroundings. Stepping off the low porch she circled the small hut the virologists had been using, making certain they were safe.
Her partner was inside working, and she needed to do her part. She was a very good guard and scout. She needed a little space from Draden. Making certain they were still very much alone was a good way to give herself time to sort out her feelings.
She’d told Draden that he was feeling attraction toward her because they were in an extreme situation and she’d honestly believed that at first, mainly because she wasn’t prone to physical attraction toward any man. With Draden it was off the charts. More importantly, so was her emotional attachment to him. That had formed very fast. Too fast for her liking.
She was very self-sufficient. She didn’t depend on others, not even Bellisia and Zara. She was comfortable being alone. She didn’t like to be touched. There was a plethora of reasons why Draden and she didn’t work, yet she hated not being in his mind. She actually had to use discipline to keep from constantly touching his mind.
Shylah liked him. A lot. More than a lot, and she wondered why. What made him so different? She’d watched him single-handedly take out a large number of the enemy. He had handled himself admirably when he’d found out he’d been injected with the virus. He’d been matter-of-fact when he told her what his team had been doing and how he’d cut himself loose. He seemed more concerned with finding a way to fight the virus off for her than for him.
“Okay, fine. I’m crushing hard,” she admitted to the cicadas and frogs. “Very, very hard.” She had to go back into that horrible little cabin where the evidence of her fate was all around her. She could handle that as long as she didn’t have to look at the sorrow in Bellisia’s and Zara’s eyes.
Resolutely, she pushed open the cabin door. Draden was sitting on a stool, his eye to a microscope, and there was a frown on his face. He glanced up. “Come look at this, Shylah.” His eye went back to the scope.
She couldn’t help the smile welling up. She’d been outside thinking of him and daydreaming, acting like a lovesick idiot, and he was so far from her it wasn’t funny. She could tell his mind was consumed with whatever he was looking at.
“What is it?”
“Blood. There were samples in the freezer. All are clearly from the same donor. There’s no name on the vials, but there’s a number. P-001x1. The second is P-001x2. They’re numbered up to five.”
Shylah frowned at him. “Is there something special about the blood?”
“Each different species has different cell surface proteins in their red blood cells.”
She raised an eyebrow at him but came to stand beside him. He moved his head just enough to give her access to the microscope. She peered in. What she saw was cool, but she didn’t understand it. She looked up at him for a better explanation.
“Put simply, we can’t use animal blood on humans because our bodies would reject it. What you’re looking at is neither animal nor human, but some kind of combination of both. I’ve only seen this in GhostWalker blood.”
She went still. “One of us? Wait. They used us for some kind of base for a virus?”
“I can’t tell what they used to create the virus. It stands to reason, if they were creating viruses aimed specifically at each woman where you were, and I presume at Whitney’s other facilities, that they would start with specific blood. I’m hoping Trap or one of the other military virologists might figure it out.”
“That makes sense.” She really hated the idea, but it was a fact that Whitney paid the three scientists to construct viruses to kill them if they tried to escape.
“Have you ever seen what an actual filovirus looks like? Filo is thread. The virus presents in a few different ways. It can look like spaghetti or a snake, if you will. It can appear hooked, or spherical, even like the number six.” He frowned, clearly trying to describe it to her. “Like filigree. It’s distinctive.”
“Okay.” She got the picture but didn’t know how the blood he was looking at, which had none of what he described in it, was in any way related.
“Filoviruses cannot replicate themselves. They have to find another way, another cell in order to replicate and survive. They work by attaching themselves to the membrane of the cell. The cells have a receptor that allows the virus to attach itself. Once the virus attaches to the cell membrane it moves inside the cell to the cytoplasm and starts to replicate.”
Shylah shook her head but waved her hand to indicate he needed to keep going. She had no idea what he was talking about.
“Picture the receptor as a three-dimensional configuration that fits the virus perfectly. If the shape of that design is changed even slightly, the virus can’t attach itself to that cell.”
Shylah wasn’t certain she needed to know how the virus worked. She just needed to know it was out there, let loose on an unsuspecting mass of people. Those people had been innocently going about their daily lives and three men had decided they would, for money, unleash hell on the world. That was what she needed to know, and those three men needed to be hunted, found and exterminated.
Draden wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer. “Pay attention, sweetheart. I’m actually going somewhere with this. We can’t transfuse from one species to the other, which is a protection against the transfer of viruses. In other words, animals can get sick with illnesses specific to them, but they don’t pass those on to us. There are exceptions. You can give a pig a cold. There are some species of monkey that can transfer an illness to a human and vice versa. But generally, it doesn’t happen.”
Shylah looked at him and then at the smear of blood on the slide. She still didn’t see where he was going with it, but it was important to him and he was explaining it in a way she could understand and not want to pull her hair out.
“I’m listening, Draden, but you know, this isn’t my thing. I’m here for a very different reason than you are.”
He looked up at her, and her heart accelerated. His face was so perfectly masculine. A gorgeous man. Everything about him. Those eyes of his, darker blue than the deepest sea, his hair spilling across his forehead, that strong jaw and aristocratic nose. He was breathtaking. More, he looked at her as if he thought she was beautiful and someone to respect, even admire.
“That isn’t true, Shylah, not anymore. You’re here with me because you chose to save my life and in doing that, the virus got a foothold in you. I want to take your blood. I’ve already taken mine. They’ll be able to see how advanced the virus is in each of us. While I’m explaining this, I may as well take your blood and get started.”
“I thought you didn’t like needles.” She stepped back, rubbing her arm for no reason at all other than anticipation.
He flashed her a grin that made butterflies take flight in her stomach, and her sex actually fluttered. She ignored that and sent up a silent prayer he had stayed out of her mind. He didn’t need to know he sent her body into meltdown mode.
“I detest them, but we need this done.” He took her arm, his touch so gentle it turned h
er heart over.
“I’m okay with you taking my blood.” Shylah felt as if she had to reassure him. He was such a mixture, tough as nails and lethal, but with her, unfailingly a gentleman, tender and sweet, looking out for her so carefully. She knew he was more upset that she had the virus and was all but condemned to death than that he shared that same fate.
His gaze flicked from her arm to her face, his eyes smiling. His mouth curved, and that combination of eyes and lips set her heart pounding and her sex pulsing with need all over again. “The thing about that blood I was examining is that the virus didn’t attach to the surface of the protein cell as it should have. I checked it multiple times. I read their notes on it. I’ve only examined two of the samples and a different virus was used in each case. The virus wasn’t able to attach to the surface of the cell.”
He deftly pulled the needle from her arm. She hadn’t felt it go in.
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not certain, because I don’t know where the blood came from. Does the P stand for prisoner? X1 and X2 usually would mean times one or times two, but that doesn’t make any sense. In their notes, all three men refer to the blood they’re testing as belonging to P-001 and then indicating times one up to five. Each was studying the blood separately from the other, so this particular GhostWalker was important to them.”
“How would they get blood from one of you?”
“Shylah.”
The way he said her name made her heart pound. Her body went instantly still, as if he were a predator and every cell in her told her she needed to go into prey mode and find a way to hide. She refused. She lifted her chin and faced him, not willing to be a victim. This death was her choice and she’d made it because of this man. She wouldn’t hide anything from him because he refused to hide from her.