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Perry drew in a huge breath, and screamed his final words.

“Thank you for saving my life!”

The giant bomb exploded. The mushroom cloud rose up far beneath her feet. It wouldn’t reach her. She wouldn’t feel the effects.

She was safe: it was only other people who died.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

•  •  •

Margaret Montoya opened her eyes. She’d failed Perry. She’d failed Dew Phillips. She’d failed Amos Braun.

She sat up in bed, trying to remember where she was. A bed, clean sheets that smelled faintly of bleach, heavy blankets … her room aboard the Carl Brashear.

A nap, a short nap that had done nothing to ease her exhaustion.

She wanted to watch the diver go into the Los Angeles, but she could barely move. Maybe it was time to take Tim up on his offer for Adderall. She’d had four hours of sleep in the last twenty — every hour of sleep was a lost hour of a.n.a.lysis and research.

Margaret pushed herself out of bed. She could watch the diver’s efforts while she waited for the initial results from Tim’s yeast modification. Saccharomyces feely. That was the answer, it had to be.

The hydras were a fascinating development, but largely unknown. What effect would they have on a living host? They might wind up being as bad as — or worse than — the crawlers that they killed. Tim had found his living hydras inside pustules on Walker; that was one way the crawlers spread. Would the hydras also puff out, microscopic bits floating on the air until they landed on a new host?

If so, the hydras could become an airborne contagion.

Tim’s yeast, on the other hand, carried no such threat. He’d ramped up the growth rate somehow, making it reproduce two to three times faster than most yeast. It wasn’t contagious — and even if it was, it was just yeast with a piece of the hydra’s coding: no threat of any kind. Still, she had sent Murray a message to look into the Spectrum Health HAC study. If one partic.i.p.ant in that study produced hydras, other partic.i.p.ants might as well. She couldn’t afford to overlook any possibility that could provide a potential weapon.

Margaret stood. She felt old, she felt creaky. She’d watch the diver, then maybe take one of Tim’s pills.

Tired or not, the work wouldn’t wait.

POSITIVE THOUGHTS

Tim Feely walked down the white corridor, toweling off his hair as he went. Amazing what a shower could do for the soul. His flip-flops flapped against the floor. He wore a thick, white, terrycloth robe, a gift from Captain Yasaka. That poor, poor woman; she commanded an entire s.h.i.+p’s worth of sailors, day in, day out, but sometimes a girl just needed someone else to take charge.