Only she glowed in the shadows.

A hushed amazement spread through the tribespeople.

Monk gaped at Susan himself. She glowed even brighter than when he had first seen her. Significantly brighter. Her skin shone with an inner moonlight, turning her skin almost translucent.

Ryder motioned to Monk, urging him from the sideline to continue.

Rattled, Monk collected himself. He stepped to Susan, dropped to his knees, and shouted the only word he knew in the cannibals’ language, taught to him by a toothless pirate.

A name.

“RANGDA!” Monk called out, naming the cannibals’ queen of the island, mistress of the lagoon’s glowing demons.

Glowing like Susan.

He bowed down.

“All hail the witch queen of the islands!”

Devesh entered Lisa’s room, tapping his cane.

Sprawled in bed, hooked to an IV, Lisa knew she could not stall any longer. Earlier, as she was hauled back onto the ship from the tender dock, she had swooned in her guard’s arms, catching him by surprise and collapsing with a bone-jarring thud to the deck.

Lisa had split her lip doing so, but she’d had to make it look convincing. It hadn’t been hard. With her calf sliced open by a sword, her body torn and lacerated in hundreds of places by the clawed grip of the predatory squids, and her lungs still coarse from the near drowning, only adrenaline had kept her on her feet.

So she had collapsed, even passing out for a few breaths.

The act had her rushed up to the scientific suite, where she was treated by the ship’s doctor and one of the WHO medical staff. Her leg had been cleaned and stitched, along with the worst of her lacerations. An IV catheter was established, streaming in fluids, antibiotics, and pain relievers. She now lay in her old room, an inside cabin with no balcony or window, under guard. Beneath the thin sheet, her body was a patchwork of bandages and taped gauze.

Such care was not administered out of mercy or compassion. It was done to serve one end: to make sure she completed her promise to Devesh atop the deck.

The Judas Strain. I know what the virus is doing.

For such a revelation, Devesh was not about to lose her, especially with Susan Tunis vanished somewhere on the storm-swept island. Devesh needed Lisa. So she stretched her advantage, stalling. She had tasked Devesh with some busywork, various assignments for the head of his clinical labs.

Her justification: to test and confirm her hypothesis.

But that could stretch for only so long.

“So,” Devesh said. “Results are being compiled right now. It’s time to have our little delayed chat. If I don’t like what I hear, we’ll begin slowly reversing all your medical care. I imagine reopening your wound with pliers will persuade you to cooperate.”

Devesh turned on a heel and waved to a waiting nurse.

Lisa’s IV catheter was quickly pulled and taped over.

Lisa sat up. The room swam a bit, then steadied.

Ever the gentleman, Devesh held out a thick cotton robe with the ship’s logo. Lisa stood up, draped in a thin hospital gown, but naked underneath. She tolerated his politeness to pull on the robe and cover herself. She cinched the belt snugly.

“This way, Dr. Cummings.” Devesh crossed back to the door.

Barefoot, Lisa was led out of her cabin. Devesh headed across to the infectious-disease suite.

The door stood open. Voices could be heard.

Following Devesh inside, Lisa immediately recognized two familiar faces: the bacteriologist, Benjamin Miller, and her confidant since arriving, the Dutch toxicologist Henri Barnhardt. The two clinicians were seated on one side of a narrow table.

Lisa glanced around. The back half of the suite had been emptied of all furniture and refilled with laboratory equipment, much of it stolen from Monk’s gear: fluorescence microscopes, scintillation and auto-gamma spectrometers, carbon dioxide incubators, refrigerated centrifuges, microtiter and ELISA readers, and along one wall, a small fraction collector.

Some universities weren’t so well equipped.

Dr. Eloise Chénier, the Guild’s virologist and chief administrator of the infectious-disease lab, stood on the other side of the table, dressed in an ankle-length lab coat. In her late fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair and a pair of reading glasses hung on a chain around her neck, she looked like some quaint schoolmarm.

The virologist had an arm raised to a pair of computer stations behind her. Data flowed across one monitor, the other displayed a jumble of overlapping files. She was just finishing some explanation with Henri and Miller, accented heavily in French.

“We gained an excellent viral load by washing a sample of the cerebral spinal fluid through a series of phosphate buffers, then fixed it with glutaraldehyde, and pelleted it by centrifugation.”

Chénier noted their arrival and waved them to the table.

Devesh joined his colleague while Lisa found an empty stool next to Henri. Her friend placed a reassuring hand on her knee. Henri glanced at her, his expression asking, Are you okay?

She nodded, glad to be seated.

Devesh turned to Lisa. “We’ve completed all the ancillary tests you requested, Dr. Cummings. Perhaps now you can explain why?”

His accusing gaze weighed heavily on her.

Lisa took a deep breath. She had delayed for as long as possible. Her only hope for further survival was to offer the truth and pray her ingenuity proved of great enough value to overcome her earlier betrayal.

She remembered Devesh’s first lesson: Be useful.

Lisa started slowly, relating her discovery of the strange retinal glow in Susan’s eyes. But as she spoke, she read the disbelief shining already in Devesh’s expression.

Lisa turned to Henri, seeking substantiation. “Were you able to perform the fluorescent assay on the spinal fluid sample?”

“Ja. The fluid sample did demonstrate a low fluorescence.”

Chénier agreed. “I spun the sample down. The bacterial pellet did glow. And was confirmed to be cyanobacteria.”

Miller, the bacteriologist, nodded his agreement.

Devesh’s skepticism shifted to interest. His eyes focused back to Lisa. “And from this, you determined the bacteria migrated from the brain, down the optic nerve, and colonized the fluids of the eye. So you ordered the second spinal tap.”

She nodded. “I see Dr. Pollum is not here. Was he able to finish the protein assay on the viral shell?”

Lisa had ordered this test, too. It wasn’t truly necessary, but it had promised a good couple hours of extra labor.

“One moment,” Chénier said. “I have the results here.” She turned to one of the monitors and began collapsing screens while narrating. “It might interest you to know that we were able to classify the virus from genetic assays into the Bunyavirus family.”

Henri noted the pinch to Lisa’s eyes and explained. “It was what we were discussing before you arrived. Bunyaviruses typically infect avian and mammalian species, causing hemorrhagic fevers, but the vector for transmission is usually arthropods. Biting flies, ticks, mosquitoes.”

He slid over a notepad.

Lisa glanced to the open pages. Henri had diagrammed the pathway of infection.

Henri tapped the center. “Insects are necessary to spread the disease. Bunyaviruses themselves are seldom transmissible directly from human to human.”

Lisa rubbed her temples. “Unlike the Judas Strain.” She picked up a pencil and altered the diagram. “Instead of an insect to spread the disease, it takes a bacterial cell to pass the virus from one person to another.”

Henri frowned. “Yes, but why did—?”