"Oh, she's totally a sadist," Gyn said pushing a breaded zucchini fry into her mouth.

"No, she's definitely got a nougat center," Smooshy said.

"She's forking hot," added Allen.

Viral, Smooshy, Gyn, and Alan sat at a table in a hallway across from a pair of vending machines. It was a corridor least travelled on the basement floor of the Bethany Women's College Technical Building. Sodexo had been running the cafeteria during the school year but the serving staff had been cut down by more than half when the semester ended. Viral felt unease dragging his red, plastic tray down the rails, along the serving stations. The kitchen lights had been alternately shut off creating an eerie, abandoned feeling as if the employees had fled in the middle of their shifts.

Stoking a bin of mac and cheese like he was the last surviving refugee in a migrant camp was a man who wore a name tag that read Desiree. Viral had asked him if the hot bar offered any vegetables. The man's eyes were red as cherries. Viral followed the point of his finger toward a heat lamp sunning baskets of zucchini fries. Viral served himself. They were cold.

After orientation Monica had released the seven of them -- Aleph, Farooq, Gyn, Allen, Viral, Plank, and Smooshy -- for lunch. She had told them they were not allowed to leave the building, and that there was a cafeteria in the basement. Farooq told the group he had been fasting; Plank and Aleph joined him for meditation on the roof. There had been five others -- four if you minus the girl whom Highway Man karate'd -- but Viral hadn't seen them since Monica separated them into another faction. He reminded himself to look more deeply into why Monica sliced the group into unequal halves. He watched Smooshy sneak a zucchini stick from his basket.

"I heard that New York is thinking about shutting down JFK to make sure no one can come in with the virus," she said, licking a dab of ketchup that'd stuck to her thumb.

"What difference is that going to make? You heard that LeGrand lady, the thing's already here," Alan offered.

"It's called minimizing the propagating vectors, dummy," Smooshy said.

Alan slurped a wrapped fork of buttered spaghetti. "If yuh check muh IQ sco-ah you wudnt be ca-ing meh a dummeh," he said through a mouth-full.

Smooshy looked disgusted. "Anyone who knows their IQ score has a mosquito dick," she spat.

Alan shrugged, chewed his noodles..

"What do you mean by propagating vectors?" Gyn asked. She had a noticeable accent that clipped her English, arching its cadence like a stacatto waltz. She turned a paper cup between her fingers.

"Every one of us, everyone period, is a potential source of a flulike disease, like SARS or H1N1 or whatever. Wherever we travel we have the capacity to communicate our disease to whomever we come in contact. At places like airports, hubs of people from all over the world, the factor of spreading soars. During pandemics government's normally shut down the means to spread a disease," Smooshy said.

"Or to keep a disease from arriving," Viral added.

"Right."

"Unless it's already here," said Alan.

Smooshy looked like she was going to smack him, but Gyn took her attention. "What would the purpose of closing down airports be for infectious diseases?Governments don't close airports for HIV," she said.

Smooshy leaned back in her chair. Viral wondered if she was done with her tuna sub sandwich. He'd only eaten 2 zucchini fries; Gyn had taken half of one, while Smooshy had ganked the other six. It felt unfair to him that she would eat all his food and leave hers half untouched. Smooshy said, "Well, when you're dealing with an ARD then you're most definitely not limiting your models to fluids and blood."

"ARD?" Viral asked, still staring at her bucolic tuna on its bed of bread.

Smooshy opened her mouth to answer but Alan spoke first. "Acute respiratory disease," he said.

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Smooshy was surprised. Her mouth moved from a gape to a smile. "Check out the big brain on, OJ," she said.

"Looks like you might be wrong about mosquito dicks," Alan said.

Smooshy took a sip from her can of RC. Viral saw her eyes stay hooked on Alan. He asked her if she was going to finish her sandwich, but she ignored him.

Gyn raised her hand and closed her eyes. "I'm sorry," she said, "But how can we be sure this is ARD?"

"The news that I've been watching, since like Valentine's day, I think, was saying this thing broke out in China at some kind of seafood market in a place called Wuhan." Smooshy said.

"Seafood market my ass," said Alan.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Sure, a little city in China that just happens to be home to a lab doing top secret work on coronaviruses is also where a seafood market springs the disease? They don't even serve bats in seafood markets."

"Coronaviruses, plural?" Viral asked.

"Wait, what is this about bats that keeps coming up?" Gyn asked.

Smooshy steamrolled them both. Pounding her elbows on the table she stuck her chin toward Allen. "Pangolins were the intermediary," she said.

Viral was trying to stay caught up. "Penguins?"

"Pangolins!" Smooshy and Allen yelled at him. Sheepishly they looked at each other. They blushed at their timing.

"A pangolin is like an ant eater, no?" Gyn asked.

"Like an armadillo," Smooshy said.

"Who'd want to eat an armadillo?" Viral asked.

"Exactly," Alan answered. "Supposedly someone ate a thing that ate a pangolin that ate a bat, or something."

"How is that any less likely than your conspiracy theory about viruses breaking out of labs?" Smooshy countered.

Viral reached for the butt of her sub, but Smooshy's forearm blocked his way.

"Where's your family from?" Alan asked her. He crossed his arms, slouched and stuck his nose up.

"Long Island," Smooshy said.

"No, where are they FROM?" Alan pressed.

Smooshy stammered. Viral had never seen a non-white person ask an American this question. He was starting to like Alan.

"I d-d-dont -- what do you mean?" Smooshy said.

"You're probably Twenty-Three and Me'd from, like, Italy and Germany and, I don't know, probably some Irish judging by your temper --"

Smooshy looked toward the ceiling and considered. She wasn't arguing.

"But my family is from Hong Kong. We know the Chinese culture a bit different than you guys in the West. They might say a bug has come from a seafood market, but lying to them isn't immoral; it's deception. It's statecraft. It's art."

Tapping her finger on her chin, Gyn said, "That sounds remarkably close to stereotyping."

"That's cause it is," Smooshy said. Viral tried one last time to grab her hoagie. Smooshy raised her elbow. Without looking she kept it raised so Viral could pull the sandwich and its paper setting toward him. Success. Thanks, Smoosh.

"If you wanna put your money in a stock the Chinese are selling, be my guest. But don't piss on me and tell me it's porridge."

Smooshy, Viral, and Gyn looked at each other. They wondered if they'd heard Alan's aphorism correctly.

"How are you guys so certain this virus comes from bats?" Gyn asked.

Viral raised Smooshy's half-eaten Sammy to his mouth. Just then a bang came from the vending machine. Smooshy knocked over her can of RC, but it was empty. Viral and the others at his table jumped. The sandwich slipped from between his fingers. He heard a splat when it hit the floor.

Monica laughed into her palm. "Viral, you ready?" She asked.

She was wearing a baggy, green parka standing next to the machine that dispensed the cola, which still showed a reforming dent in its plastic hull where her fist had hit it. Her legs stuck out beneath the jacket like a pair of toothpicks from the bottom of an avacado.

Longingly poking the puddle of tuna that he dropped with the tip of his shoe, Viral asked Monica, "Where are we going?"

"I thought you wanted to see your roommate."

Forgetting about the soured sandwich, Viral looked up and caught Monica's eye. From the way she was pulling at her vape, he could tell she wasn't joking.

It'd been a day since Viral and Lron had been separated at the Providence precinct. Viral had slept in the back of a passenger van as a man and a woman in unmarked uniforms transported him to the facility where he reunited with Agent Treyna. Viral had assumed Lron, his college roommate, had come, too, but Viral had learned from Mr. Noogle Esquire, his father's attorney, that Lron wasn't of interest to the Feds; he was in local, Wilmington holding.

A flush of shame swept over Viral. For the past half hour, over lunch with his new cohorts, Lron hadn't crossed Viral's mind. Of course he wanted to see him; he wasn't that kind of friend -- the kind that only held on to relationships when they served him. What was that phrase Lron had used on the video chat with his choir mate? Right, ride or die. That's what Viral was. He was ride or die with Lron. Since he didn't want to die, to ride was the better option, he decided.

"Of course I want to see Lron," Viral told Monica. And for a brief moment, he convinced himself that he'd really meant it.