Finally, his youth spent couched in fear paid dividends. Viral’s chronically taught nerves gave his step the spring it needed to secure a hiding spot behind the heavy curtains of the hotel room. From between the folds of the musky fabric he heard two voices, muffled, follow the shudder of the front door's closing.

"It's bull bleep," one voice, male, said. "That chiselled orangutan gives me a room key that just happens not to work? You heard him during our thought shower session this morning -- the way he huffed and puffed while we efficiently demonstrated our Indian-Korean, 22nd century decision-making model. He's clearly threatened by the reality of a rising global south, and -- ok, ok, wait --"

Viral leaned forward in Jaxon's work boots, careful not to disturb the curtains concealing him. The other voice was fainter; it belonged to a woman. "--- know that I don't like that you keep including Korea in the Global South," she said.

The boy continued: "North Korea, Helen. North Korea. For Preet's sake, I don't --"

"Again with this two Korea's business --"

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry."

Viral was getting the impression he was interloping on a lover's spat. The name Helen did sound familiar, and he felt he could place the male voice. If he'd only had a bit more information. Looking up, inside the column of shadow ensconced by the curtain’s cone, he ran his finger along an edge to where he felt the thinner gausse of the liner. He heard the boy's voice soften.

"I'm just upset that Officer Duncecap gave me a key that I had to go back down and re-register. It just feels like he was trying to employ a kind of passive-aggressive, low-intellect, neanderthal, American power move. It was real George W. Bush-league, and that upset me. I'm sorry to have misspoken about the one, unified Korea."

Using his thumb and forefinger Viral separated the thick curtain from the thin. The slice of light showing through the translucent fabric fell on his face like a broken Mardi Gras mask. He could almost make-out the figures of the two inside the room. The mattress creaked, and Viral saw the woman sit on the foot of the bed. Straight, black hair fell over her shoulder and hid the side of her face. Viral heard the boy sigh heavily.

"Don't apologize to me. Apologize to Kim Jong Un," the girl said.

Approaching her, the boy reached for her hands. Viral could finally see his face. "I'm sorry, Supreme Commander, for suggesting the division of the Korean spirit in your land," the boy said.

"And?" the girl said, giving him her palms...

"Fuck James Franco."

The girl giggled and the boy did, too. It was Ankur, from the Fear Mongers. When the girl lifted her face, Viral saw it was Helen, the other one who had led the group’s presentation. A cocktail of fear, jealousy, and anger stirred in Viral’s body. He felt cursed that his sight would return only in time to watch Ankur and Helen canoo --

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"What the hell, Ankur?" Helen yelled.

Viral couldn't believe his eyes. Had he really just...did he really just --

"What's the problem?" Ankur shouted back.

Helen was standing, backing away from Ankur and the bed. She was covering her mouth and pointing. Ankur had turned his back to Viral; he couldn't see what Helen was pointing at. But the general cosine formed by the tilt of her arm confirmed what Viral had thought -- yet hoped he hadn't -- seen. Ankur had just put Helen's hands on his chubby.

"I can't believe you would do that!" Helen yelled.

"You gave me all the signals!" Ankur shouted back.

"Uh, yeah, maybe to like kiss on the lips. Not to touch your pakora!"

From behind the hotel room's curtains, where he watched, Viral was both surprised and impressed that Helen was familiar with deep-fried Indian cheese.

"I'm hurt that you would choose this moment to go racial," Ankur said.

"I'm -- I'm sorry, but stereotypes are my defense mechanism."

Ankur hung his head. Helen looked, to Viral, like she felt genuinely guilty.

"It's just that after what Captain Ninkumpoop did, humiliating me with the wrong room key and all, the last person I expected to be attacked by was you," Ankur said.

Helen's lips turned downward. Viral heard her "aw." It took everything inside him not to march into the open and bop Ankur on the crown of his head like Bowser.

Helen shuffled toward Ankur and opened her arms. He stepped into her embrace, and they swayed there, together.

Viral couldn't contain himself. This kind of resolution would never happen for him. He felt cheated by not only Ankur's escape from consequence but also Helen's easy accept --

"What the heck, Ankur?!"

Viral couldn't believe it. Again?

"What?!" Ankur shouted.

Helen was reaching around toward her back. "Did you just try to undo my bra strap?"

"You were giving me all the sig --"

"Forget it," Helen said, raising her hand to stop him. Lifting her backpack from the floor she turned to leave. Ankur caught the door before it shut behind her.

"How would you feel if I called your private parts something ethnic?!" He called after her down the hall. "Huh?! Well, I hope your Samsung Galaxy vagina catches fire, you -- you -- efficient, Daewoo tease!"

He slammed the door and huffed. Behind the curtain, Viral held his breath. He hoped Ankur didn't look to soothe his wounded pride by taking in the view from the window.

Finally, Ankur roared, the last of his primal shame unleashed. Like a punctured fake breast, he deflated. A sense of calm returned to the room, Viral noticed. He had begun his calculus for how he'd stay hidden in the curtain until Ankur fell asleep, when Ankur leaned over his rolling backpack and excavated his bulky laptop. It was the same battered, IBM Thinkpad from that afternoon's presentation. The grail had come to Viral. The protein sequences of the Covid-19 spike protein, the assays that his group needed if they had any hope of miraculously Hail-Marying a vaccine, were less than twenty feet away from him. On the hard drive of that Thinkpad.

Ankur typed his password into the welcome screen. Viral couldn't make the keystrokes from his position. Logged in, Ankur cued up Rhapsody Music and hit the spacebar. Thin, treble-heavy measures of a Sade playlist began to leak through the speakers. A bad feeling crept into Viral’s bones. And just then, Ankur began to strip.