Chapter Text
Baz
The sound of the helicopter’s rotors pounds out a metronome that matches the rhythm of the churning in my gut. We’re minutes away from my first sight of our destination. I hope I can keep from vomiting before we land.
I hadn’t known I was prone to motion sickness—I’ve only ever flown on commercial aircraft. But then, the way this copter bounces and rolls its way through the air, I’m more shocked that I’m the only member of my new team who’s turning green.
Of course, I’ve got a toxic brew of fear adding to the misery in my gut. Nobody else in the plane looks worried—I suppose this sort of mission is old hat to Snow and his team. Most of the team is leaning back with eyes closed, wisely getting some rest while they can. Penelope Bunce, the only other team member I’d previously met, is awake; she’s scanning the mission briefing. She offered to let me read it, but trying to read while on this nightmare ride would be a recipe for disaster.
Snow is also awake; he’s watching the rainforest flow past beneath us with a complicated expression on his face.
We’ve been following the Amazon river for the last two hours, and the chopper is too loud for much in the way of conversation. When we left this morning at seven a.m. we faced a twelve hour flight on the aeroplane from Britain. You’d think that’d be plenty of time to become well informed on what we face. You’d think that, but you’d be wrong.
We were all too bleary eyed and taciturn this morning to do more than hug our paper coffee cups close and fight to keep our eyes open. Then, our last minute booking on the commercial jet to Ecuador from the UK had us all in different parts of the plane. So my only briefing thus far has been a fifteen minute conversation with Penelope during our speedwalk from the terminal our plane landed at to the helipad where our copter waited.
“It’s an outbreak, unknown pathogenicity” she told me tersely, “and there’s a high likelihood that it’s a spillover event.”
I know all too well what that means. Spillover events happen where humans brush elbows with wildlife. A disease that is common in the animals jumps to humans, and the humans have no defence against it, since it hadn’t previously been a human disease.
The biggest killers in history have been the result of spillover events. The bubonic plague jumped from rats to humans through the fleas that parasitized both. And the 1918 flu, which killed more people than the World War it shared a timeline with, was a mongrel of swine and bird viruses.
Of even more concern is how little we know. We don’t even know if it’s a virus, for god’s sake.
That will be my task, among many others. I’ll need to isolate the germ and send a sample to UKHSA to get its genome sequenced. Only then can we know what kind of beast we’re dealing with.
Snow has been sitting next to me during this leg of our trip, and I’m trying not to focus on the feel of his thigh and shoulder brushing mine. I’m moderately successful until he leans into my space and speaks right into my ear. The feeling of his hot breath on my skin distracts me so much that it takes me a moment to understand what he’s saying.
“That right there is the source of our problem,” he’s saying.
I frown. “What is?” I shout back, not trusting my lips close enough to his skin to speak into his ear like he’s done to mine. I can’t be sure they won’t complete the connection and brush kisses against his skin.
He doesn’t try to answer over the rotor noises. Just points. I follow the direction of his arm to see a series of small homes and farms between the edge of the forest and the silver ribbon that is the Amazon river from here. My brows sink lower in my confusion.
“What do you mean?” I shout.
Snow doesn’t shout. Instead, he places one wide hand over my shoulder and pulls me back in range of his mouth. I shiver at the feeling of his lips brushing my ear. Apparently Snow has none of my compunctions about that kind of touch.
Probably because he’d never even think of kissing me.
“Each of those villages, they’re a hotspot waiting to happen. Humans encroaching into rain forests, coming in contact with animals and insects they never have before, that’s how zoonoses happen. How diseases jump from creatures, who have a built up resistance to their own diseases, to humans, who have none.”
He lets me pull away and I turn to look at him, one brow raised. His face has an un-Simon-Snow-like expression. Bitter and sad.
“Well, what should they do?” I shout back to him. “People will always need a place to live and a way to make a living.”
Now the bitterness drops away from his face, leaving only the sadness. He shakes his head. This time, he shouts his answer instead of practically kissing my ear to deliver it. “I don’t know. And I’ve interacted with people in these situations for half my life. Most of them have limited choices. But there’s got to be something that can be done.”
It’s my turn to shake my head. The problem of human poverty and hunger is far beyond the scope of my capabilities. “Maybe,” I tell him, “but I don’t know what.”
He sighs. I can’t hear it, but I see his broad chest inflate and deflate with the action. “Yeah, me neither,” he says, and his voice is softer, so that I’m more reading his lips than hearing him speak. Then he settles back into his seat and stares straight ahead again, his eyes hooded and his lips a thin line.
We don’t speak again until the copter lands.
Simon
Baz had been looking green for the last half-hour of our journey. These little field choppers will do that to you. They bounce almost more than they fly straight. That’s why I started a conversation with him, to distract him from his motion sickness. Still, I’m caught flat-footed when the helicopter sets down next to a nondescript white stucco building, the field hospital, and Baz is out of his seat before I can even reach for my seat belt buckle.
My breath freezes in my chest when I see him reaching for the door handle that separates us from the outer world. There’s no time to call him back. Instead, I fumble my own seat belt open and leap towards Baz, tackling and pinning him to the wall of the aircraft next to the door.
“Snow, what the fuck,” he says, his voice coming out as a wheeze because of the way I’ve got him squeezed under my own bulk.
“Shut up!” I snap. “You idiot! You nearly broke infection protocol!”
Baz stiffens under me when I call him an idiot, but when I accuse him, his muscles go slack, meaning I sink into him before I can stop myself. I swallow hard at how nice he feels against me, but then I tense up. This is beyond inappropriate. With care, I untangle myself from my newest team member.
“Shit,” he mutters, after a deep breath to fill the lungs I’m no longer crushing. He pushes himself away from the wall and turns to face me, though he won’t meet my eyes. “I’m sorry,” he tells my chest. “I’m…new. At this.”
“I know,” I tell him, my voice softer now. “Don’t worry. We’ll look out for you.” I ignore Penny’s raised eyebrow. She gave me a bollocking last night for choosing a greenie like Baz for this mission. I mean, he’s worked for UKHSA for as long as I have, but he’s stuck to his lab for all of that time. He processes the samples I send back, but touching a vial with his double gloved hands in a level four biosafety lab is the closest he’s gotten to this kind of danger before.
I was honestly shocked when I saw his name on the reserve list a few months ago. I’d figured Baz would be all about keeping his precious aristocratic hide safe from the kind of bugs we deal with. And Penny thinks that this mission is too dicey to risk an untried field operative on. For reasons like the way Baz almost just stepped out into a known hot zone with zero personal protective equipment.
I don’t bring it up again. I also don’t look at the rest of my crew for fear of seeing that same judgement in their faces. Instead, I pass out the field PPE packs and we each struggle into our own biohazard suits. Then we help each other duct tape all the potential areas a germ could enter, like the area between our gloved hands and the wrists of our suits. I help Baz with his duct tape to prevent any further breaches of protocol. Then, I douse everyone (now that we’re covered in plastic and attached to portable oxygen tanks) with an extremely powerful (and carcinogenic) insect repellent.
It may sound like overkill, but overkill on precautions is better than being killed without them.
Gareth
The UKHSA field hospitals in Ecuador are airtight, with their own circulation and water sources, and the best air filters on the planet. That hasn’t stopped Rhys and I from feeling like rats caught in a trap since Doctor Bakshi died last week.
I’m ashamed to say that all we did for our former supervisor was zip him into a body bag and heft his corpse onto the screened in back porch. Protocol says we can’t bury him—his body has to be transported back to England, to whatever family he has. And at least on the porch, animals won’t get to him.
Still feels like shit, though.
But I’ll take feeling like shit over drowning in my own blood from this nightmare of a disease. Since Dr. B died, Rhys and I have spent the time either writing down everything we remember of his and the townsfolk’s symptoms and sending that off to London, or just sitting on the rattan sofa in the front room, staring out the windows. We’ve got electricity, but no television—I assume the people who furnished this building figured we should do more important things with our time.
Stuck up gits.
We also have no wifi, but we have hard wired internet that allows us to communicate with headquarters, and with our families, so that’s something. There’s books, but have you ever tried focusing on a plot when you’re out of your fucking mind with fear?
TV would help. But without the great mind-number that is the full fourteen seasons of Bake-off, all we’ve got to do, really, is think about how we’re likely to die here, and probably soon.
Those sort of thoughts really fuck you up.
So when Rhys and I hear the UKSHA copter landing outside, it’s all I can do not to dash outside and into the hot zone to beg a ride back to jolly old England on that copter. I don’t—I haven’t lost myself quite that much yet—but it’s a near thing.
We wait. It’s all we can do.
The group of people that eventually make their way into the building (after going through the full decontamination protocols on the front porch) (which, this far out in the boonies, consists mainly of pouring full jugs of bleach over their heads), look like the crew of an alien spaceship at first, their stark white biohazard suits nearly glowing in the shade of the trees next to our building, but I was expecting that. Then they step through the front doorway and start to peel off the tape at their wrists and ankles, followed by the booties over their shoes and the gloves over their hands, and finally roll down their biohazard suits, careful not to touch the outside of the suit with their bare hands.
I nearly fall over from sheer astonishment.
It’s fucking Snow’s Angels! The most famous epidemiological field team in all of Britain, they’re called that colloquially around the institute because Snow’s always been the only male member of the team, and he’s the leader.
It’s also said that he’s slept with everyone on his team at one point or another. Looking into his heart-stopping blue eyes now, I can believe it.
Simon Snow looks just as confident and handsome as the photos I’ve seen of him in the papers. Maybe more so. If I weren’t straight, I’d probably beg to join Snow’s Angels myself.
At least, I think I’m straight.
All Rhys and I were told was that the next available field team would be sent post-haste. I never would have dreamed it would be Simon Snow and his team of badass female scientists. Or…mostly female. There’s a bloke at the back who’s new to me. A new team member? I honestly thought Snow must have a rider in his contract that says he’ll only work with women. I guess not, though.
Rhys manages to shake himself free from his hero worship before I do, and limps forward to offer his hand to Penelope Bunce. “We are so glad to see you folks,” he says, and I nod fervently. I move to join in with the round of handshakes.
Seconds later, the man himself is standing right in front of me, offering me his hand. “I thought you were still in Africa!” I blurt as I take it, and then blush fiercely. I hardly meant to let him know that I’ve followed his career like a fucking groupie. My mouth has always gone off before my brain thinks things through. I like to think it’s endearing, but my long string of exes would probably tell me it’s just irritating.
At least Simon Snow doesn’t look annoyed. He just gives my hand a firm shake and laughs at my comment. Then he steps back and scrubs one hand through his abundant bronze curls in a gesture that betrays his exhaustion. “I was,” he admits. “Until yesterday.”
“Fuck,” Rhys breathes next to me. “They sent you out again with no leave?” Several of Snow’s team look disgruntled, like they agree with the outrage in Rhy’s voice. Snow, however, just shrugs.
“No choice,” he says. “No other team was available at short notice. Speaking of, let me introduce you to my team.”
As his team crowds forwards to introduce themselves, I feel unusually shy. I’m usually a pretty stout fellow—good for a laugh and a pint at the nearest pub on any day. But I don’t know how to act around these people who are all justifiably famous for being the best in their fields.
But when the first woman approaches me, hand out, I let my nerves fall away and settle into my usual habit of assessing the newcomer as potential Gareth DuVry girlfriend material.
It helps that the women (at least some of them) aren’t so intimidating as Snow is, at least not physically. This woman is the glaring exception though. She’s not physically imposing, but she practically crackles with intensity. “Penelope Bunce, Infection Prevention and Control Specialist,” she says firmly as she’s pumping my hand with hers.
I’ve read about her: she’s the team manager, and apparently damn good at her job. A near-genius, if the reports don’t flatter her.
In person, she’s little, round and fierce. Even as she’s squeezing my hand, she’s already on to the next subject. “What do we know so far? Do you have a triage centre set up? Have you started testing the local fauna? What about a record of the sequence of events?” And then a non sequitur: “Do you have a whiteboard here?”
I’m grateful when Snow cuts her off. “Save it for the debrief, Pen,” he scolds, though his tone is affectionate. Ms. Bunce subsides, though she looks a little rebellious, and I notice she’s still peering intently around as if she’ll ferret out a white board from one of our dusty shelving units.
If I tried to ask her out, I’d be afraid she’d just look at me like a virus under a microscope and then ask me to identify said virus. Definitely not a girlfriend prospect.
“Hello, I’m Christy” says the next woman, in a musical Irish accent. Her red hair is tied back tightly against her skull. She’s pretty, for a forty-something woman, and I contemplate whether older women might do it for me.
“Hiya,” says Rhys, oblivious as always.
I shove my hand forward. Rhys never thinks through the potentialities, but I’m not one to let a chance pass me by. “Gareth DuVry,” I tell Snow’s team medical doctor, smiling widely to make my dimples pop out and then, when she takes my hand, giving her a cheeky wink.
Her mouth twitches down, and she releases my hand quickly. “Dr. McCoy,” she tells me, and her tone has cooled considerably. Fuck. Why does this always happen? What am I doing wrong?
“Agatha,” the next woman says. Her face is unreadable, and, in her way, she’s just as intimidating as Simon Snow—icily blond, and beautiful, with an accent that wouldn’t sound out of place at the Queen’s dinner table. Agatha Wellbelove is the team’s data scientist, and her demeanour is as passionless as the numbers she specialises in. I give her my best smile anyways—I’ve dated a few poshos in my time, and sometimes they’ve got an obsession with having something a little less refined.
She doesn’t even blink. Just turns away from me and moves to the back of her group.
Yeah, I’ve got no chance with her.
“Hi! I’m Phillipa!” I startle at that voice. I’ve seen pictures of Phillipa Stainton, the team veterinarian, but I’d never have guessed that she sounds like Minnie Mouse. Like literally. She’s got the voice of a cartoon character.
I wonder what it would be like to take this woman to bed and hear that voice in the throes of passion. I wince, and then hide my own reaction, badly. Fortunately, Phillipa seems about as observant as that same two dimensional cartoon, and chatters on. “Nice set-up you’ve got here! Will there be a room for each of us? Or are we sharing? Where should I put my bags? Is it lunch time in this time zone yet?”
I do my best to tune out her voice as Rhys answers her questions. At least, on the rare times her mouth is closed, she’s worth looking at. She’s small (though taller than Bunce) with her long brown hair in a braid down her back. She’s the most approachable of the lot of them so far: full of bounce and eager as a puppy.
I wonder if she’d be interested in passing time with a simple health tech? Maybe I could invest in some discreet ear plugs…
The missing team member, the one Pitch replaced, is apparently Elspeth Canidae. Before I can even think to be curious, Phillipa says, “Oh, and have you met Baz? He’s our microbiologist right now. Elspeth is on her honeymoon, so Simon called him in…” She keeps talking, but I’ve tuned her out again. That explains the man’s presence at least. A last minute replacement?
“Baz Pitch.” His dark, smoky voice cuts across Phillipa’s babble and I feel a shiver at the sound of it. I offer the youngish man my hand, numbly.
I’ve never been on hand-shaking terms with a member of the nobility before.
Because, as It turns out, I have heard of the strange bloke. Basilton Grimm-Pitch, the son of a lord who surprisingly decided to work for a living. He’s pretty well known around the institute too, even if I’ve never seen a photo of him. He’s UKHSA’s top microbiologist. I’ve even gotten emails from him before, informing me of the results on various samples I’ve sent to London.
Because of his adversity to publicity, I didn’t realise how extraordinarily handsome he was. I’ve seen models in the pages of magazines who aren’t half as pretty as this man is. I’m very much feeling like the grubby country cousin next to him and Snow and Wellbelove.
Pitch gives my hand a brief shake (his hand is chilled through—does he have circulation problems?) before letting go and immediately turning his attention back to his team leader.
Introductions over, Simon Snow is examining the room we’re in with sharp, assessing eyes. I know what he sees. A bare-bones field clinic. We’re standing in the main living area. Through a doorway to our right, a large plastic folding table is visible—our kitchen/meeting area. And behind me is the corridor that leads, first to the exam rooms, and, beyond that, to the bedrooms.
“Where can I set up my equipment?” That’s Grimm-Pitch again. He’s tilting a cool eye-brow up and lifting the enormous plastic case he’s been holding at his side. He’s a microbiologist, so it’s probably some sort of microscope? Rhys directs him to the make-shift lab room where we have our sorry excuse for a microscope. Hopefully Pitch has a better set-up.
Then I step up and offer to show the team the bedroom options. Dr. Bakshi’s room is off limits until we can get it decontaminated (hard to do when you don’t even know what kind of microbe you’re dealing with). Rhys and I went over it with bleach after he died, but I wouldn’t trust our work enough to sleep in there, especially since you can’t bleach a mattress (the mattress, like all the mattresses used in the field, is sealed in plastic, but still. Wear and tear happens).
That leaves four rooms. Rhys and I used to have separate rooms, but when we found out we’d be hosting an entire epidemiological team, I moved my stuff into his room. Shit for privacy, but he’s a good bloke, so if, for example, Phillipa was up for some bedroom games, he’d sleep on the sofa, and I’d do the same for him if he had a chance to hook up with one of the Angels.
So there’s three rooms available.
Agatha Wellbelove chooses the first one on the left immediately, and then looks disgruntled when Phillipa Stainton happily offers to be her roommate. They are kind of a personality mismatch, but maybe that’s good, with roommates? Heaven knows, Rhys and I are nothing alike, and we’ve been best friends since we got here.
Penelope Bunce and Christy McCoy take the second room on the left without comment. That means, since Rhys and I are sharing the first room on the right, that Simon Snow and Baz Pitch are left to share my old room, the second on the right.
I don’t know if the two men expected to have rooms to themselves, but there’s definitely some odd subtext to their interaction when I offer them the final room with a silly flourish. They don’t laugh at my clowning. They don’t even look at me. Instead, they’re eyeing each other intensely. Snow looks uncertain for the first time, and Pitch looks…if I didn’t know better, I’d say he looks scared.
What’s there to be scared about in a bedroom?
Whatever it was I saw, moments later, it’s gone as if it never was. Basilton Grimm-Pitch’s face is smooth and emotionless. “After you,” he tells Snow, in his deep voice with that posh accent. Snow nods, his face similarly expressionless, and steps into the room first.
I kind of want to hang around and learn more about our visitors by eavesdropping on their conversations, but Rhys grabs my elbow and glares at me reprovingly. I sigh and let him drag me back to the front room.
Baz
Fucking hell. Roommates again.