The honeymoon suite from that afternoon had been transformed into a bordello of dubious repute. The heavy, cotton-blended curtains the color of decaying lentil soup impeded the streetlights keeping watch over the Wilmington business district. Yet cracks between the curtains' edges allowed slivers of flourescene to leak through the windows Plank and Dr. Hackman had sealed to meet bio-safety level 3 protocol of the NIH.
The simmering argon of the outdoor lights fused with the blue emitted from the desk-bound worklights that illuminated the work stations arranged throughout the suite. The standing lamp near the room's love seat, the one on the table near the bathroom, and the one further near the room's rear had been covered with red and green t-shirts doing little to alleve Viral of the haunting big-top vibes that had been following him since the hotel's shutdown. But Viral had to admit, the Ramada honeymoon suite had transformed quickly into a convincing facsimile of laboratory research. Perhaps the team on to which Agent Treyna placed him actually knew some things about navigating scientific quagmires.
Several things still didn't compute in his ALU, Viral thought. As he stood in the foyer to the suite, shrouded in the darkness that clung to the wall-paper oblique to the room's lamps, he took the time to indulge the curious critters he had until now pacified with crumbs in the back of his RAM. Who were these people with whom he'd been quarantined, not-so-gently encouraged by Agent Treyna and Officer Avril to concoct a solution to a worldwide plague?
This, Viral realized, was the first moment of private reflection he had had since twiddling his thumbs in a detention center the morning prior. Had it really been less than forty-eight hours since Agent Treyna had revealed to him that she had reviewed a copy of his submission to the National Westinghouse Science Compeittion? How had time, the inelastic continuum on which all things including the Universe had been measured, become something so -- arbitrary?
And who were these people who had been so quickly evolving from strangers into -- dare he even imagine it -- friends? With shame Viral relived the parting glare from Lron as the corrections officer pulled him by the elbow out of the common room of the jail behind a reinforced door. Its thin, rectangular window reinforced with steel.
"Hey, Viral. What's up?"
Through the dim ambiance Viral made out the figure draped in white, face covered with a mask and plastic eyewear. "Gyn?" he asked. Slipping down her mask, she smiled. The corners of her eyes crinkled like wrapping paper on Christmas and Viral felt his heart open like a gift. Before his mind could catch up with his neurons, he found his feet carrying him toward Gyn's station. She'd refurbished the console table into a work bench fisinfected with an ultravoilet light. Before he got too close she put a hand up to his chest. Viral worried she would feel how quickly his heart was beating beneath his t-shirt.
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"Don't come any closer," she said, whispering. Moving behind him, she pulled Viral two steps away from the work station toward the entertainment center at the front of the suite. Gyn propped her safety specs on to her forhead and Viral watched with tender longing as the red spots where her skin had been pinched vanished between her eyes. "It's not safe for you to be so close to the specimen without the proper gear, Viral," she said.
Viral looked around the suite. He hadn't fully appreciated the safety measures Gyn had taken before doing her work. "I didn't know anyone was up here," Viral said.
Unzipping the whtie, polyeurathane jumpsuit, Gyn pulled her arms from the sleeves and rolled the top down to her waist. Beneath she wore a sports bra soaked through with sweat. Her bear arms shined through the shadows like beacons calling weary sailors to shore. Gyn pumped the spout of a plastic jug of sanitizer and wrung her hands. The squeaky sound of lubrication against skin sent waves of heat flushing through Viral's neck.
"Plank was able to talk Monica into bringing us a sample of Emir's serum," she said. "I couldn't sleep knowing we had an opportunity to find out more about what we're dealing with."
Viral looked over his shoulder, scanning the room for anybody else. "Plank?" he asked.
"Yes," Gyn said, "He's in the other room with his portion of the virus. Aleph is in the back beneath the hood."
That must have been the source of the smoke he saw from Dr. Hackman and Farooq's room, Viral thought. "How long have you guys been up here?" he asked.
"Since shortly after dinner," Gyn said.
"And Plank was here with you the whole time?"
Gyn put her finger to her chin. "I believe so...except for when he met with Monica to get Emir's serum."
"You heard him speak with Monica," Viral asked.
"No," Gyn said, "But that's the story he told me when he returned with the samples. Would you like to see?"
Viral wavered, but he knew he could not say no. Yes, one part of him, the rational, pragmatic part warned the other part of him not to stray too close to the virus that held millions around the world, including his father, in its talons. The other part, however, the curious, rash part that sought solutions to every known unknown incited every fiber in his muscles to follow Gyn to the table where she had been working. She walked, he followed, and the virus beckoned that he come.