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And then there was Murray’s order to collect some crawlers and seal them up for s.h.i.+pment to Black Manitou. Tim had done that the day of the battle, grabbing a few samples from Petrovsky and sending them on. He knew he should have fought that order, but all he wanted to do was satisfy Murray’s request so he could get back to the wounded. Murray had sworn Tim to secrecy on that — Tim couldn’t tell anyone, and in truth, he was ashamed of caving in and didn’t want to tell anyone.

“I worked two days straight to save as many as I could. The only time I stopped was when Yasaka had two men drag me — literally drag me — down here to do some basic sample gathering on Walker and Petrovsky. And when I came down, I made sure not to touch the bodies, at all, just on the off chance I might bring contagion up with me when I returned to the wounded. I only used needles to gather samples, and I gathered those samples as quickly as I could. Know why? I had more important things to do than play with corpses. So no, Margaret, I didn’t pay that much attention to the motherf.u.c.king crawlers.”

Margaret sighed. She looked sad.

“I apologize,” she said. “I should know better. We have so little time to get this work done. I’m sure I’m missing things, and there are tests we should be running that just have to wait because we don’t have the resources. Everything is hurried, rushed, and you had it even worse with all the wounded. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

He could see she meant it. The sincerity of her response made his anger fade away as quickly as it had erupted.

Tim shrugged, feeling the bulk of his suit on his shoulders when he did.

“You’re really sorry?”

She nodded.

“Sorry enough for apology s.e.x?”

“Not that sorry, no.”

“Oh well, worth a try.”

Margaret shook her head, a sad dismissal of his feeble attempt. She focused on the images in her HUD.

“These new crawlers from Walker … where exactly were they inside her body?”

“The pustules,” Tim said. “That was the fastest and easiest place to get a sample, so I started there. I collected crawlers from other areas as well, but all of those were dead. And, come to think of it, all of the dead ones look the same as those I collected from Petrovsky.”

Margaret frowned. She reached out, turning the image of the living crawler, looking at it from multiple angles. “Sanchez had pustules, but what was in them didn’t look like these. So we know that Walker definitely had the old kind of crawlers, the ones we saw back in Detroit, the same that are in Petrovsky, but she also had this new kind.”

Tim studied the images on his own HUD. The new crawlers reminded him of a microorganism he’d seen way back in his undergrad days.