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Chapter Text

Baz

The door to my lab crashes open and I nearly poke my eye out with the eyepiece of the microscope I’m looking through. My head shoots up, a scowl already forming for whatever interloper has just interrupted my research.

Haloed in the pale glow of the hallway lighting, stands none other than the bane of my existence: disease hunter extraordinaire, Simon Snow. He’s dressed like he’s just returned from safari, in khaki trousers, a short-sleeved beige button up and hiking boots, I’m surprised he’s not wearing a fucking pith helmet over his messy golden curls.

The tension flows out of my shoulders. I sigh and roll my eyes.

“Baz!” Snow shouts, as always at least three decibels above an indoor voice. I wince.

“Snow,” I drawl, keeping my face smooth and expressionless. “I see you’ve yet to grasp the concept of professional attire.”

Snow has the temerity to laugh at me. “Fuck off, Baz. I’ve just gotten back from Sierra Leone. It’s as hot as an arse crack there. I’d like to see even you survive that heat in a suit and tie. Besides, I’ve not even had time to unpack yet.”

I carefully hide my shiver at his analogy. No point thinking of Simon Snow and arse cracks in the same sentence. He’s hopelessly straight and also just plain hopeless.

Thankfully, he doesn’t notice my distraction. Instead, he bounds into the room like the golden-retriever-ball-of-energy that he is, and then he’s standing at my side, nudging me less than gently out of the way so that he can stoop over my microscope and place his eye to the slender black eyepiece.

I huff. He’s a brute and a trial. Also, so fucking beautiful he makes my teeth hurt. “I was using that!” I snap, and then fold my lips tightly together to keep that whiny tone from emerging from my mouth again.

He ignores my gripe. Instead, he glances up at me, looking ridiculous and adorable with his half-stooped posture, one eye squeezed shut to make it easier to look through the microscope with the other. “Trypanosoma brucei,’ he announces. Then he stands, looking at me (looking up at me) (I will never not glory in being three inches taller than Simon Snow) in interest. “You’ve got a case of African Sleeping Sickness in England?” he wonders.

I’m irritated that it only took him a fraction of a second to identify the genus and species of the microbe, when I’d been carefully observing and taking notes to confirm the same thing for ten minutes. But he’s right, and I’ll just look childish if I lash out about it. I nod, reluctantly. “A big game hunter, just back from mowing down innocent wildlife in sub-Saharan Africa. He fell sick in jail after he was arrested for possession of rhino horn.”

Snow’s face darkens in disgust. “Serves him right,” he growls. I agree, but I’m not going to tell him that. Instead, I pointedly sit down at my desk and start tapping away at my keyboard, writing up an email to inform the NHS of my findings.

I hear Snow breathing behind me for a minute or two, but finally, as always happens, he gives up. When I hear the door fall shut behind him (not gently) (Snow never does anything gently), I let my head drop to my chest and let out a forlorn sigh.

Snow and I have been employed at the UKHSA for the exact same amount of time: we were both hired almost immediately after achieving our Doctoral degrees at Watford University. Mine in microbiology, his in epidemiology.

We’d been roommates for our entire university career, but we’d mostly avoided each other; it helped, being in different programs. We’d seldom needed the room at the same time with our class schedule being so different. That and the fact that Snow had gone through an endless parade of girlfriends or fuckbuddies or whatever they were, and he was most often sleeping over with them somewhere and not in our room (at least, when I was lucky).

The avoiding each other thing was self-defence, at least on my part. Snow’s always been unfairly attractive and unfailingly heroic. And I’m a prickly introvert at the best of times, with a lethally sharp tongue. After I’d savaged him with said tongue for the hundredth time in our freshman year, he’d finally snapped.

“Look, Baz,” he snarled. “I get it. You don’t like me. I don’t like you. But I’ve got big plans for my life and future, and I’m not going to let you get in the way of that. So, I’m declaring a truce.”

“You’re declaring a truce?” I repeated mockingly, but I knew what he meant. Snow and I had not been discreet about our dislike for each other. We’d gotten into shouting matches in the courtyard of the dormitory building and shoving matches in the halls between classes. We’d already been warned by the Proctor’s office that one more scuffle and we’d both be sent to a disciplinary hearing. Which could mean expulsion and the loss of both his dream and mine.

He scowled at me. “Yes, Baz. A truce. For the next three years, I’ll pretend you don’t exist, and you’ll do the same for me. And then we’ll both graduate and never have to see each other again.”

I felt a pang in my chest at the idea of never seeing Snow again, but I pushed it aside. And I couldn’t deny that he had the right of it. “Fine,” I’d said shortly. “Truce. Until we’ve left this place.”

Of course, three years turned into six, when we both decided to continue on to advanced degrees at Watford. And somehow we settled into a routine of tolerance for each other. When we could have switched to graduate student housing and gotten private rooms, we just…didn’t.

I know why I didn’t. Somewhere during those long, lonely years of being dismissed and ignored by Simon Snow, I realised that I wanted us to be more than just disinterested roommates. I’d fallen for him: for his kindness, his strength of conviction, his determination, his bulging pectoral muscles…Ok, I was more than a bit sexually frustrated too, sue me.

Which, of course, only made me more prickly and acerbic when we did cross paths. I couldn’t help but resent him: for being straight, for being kind to everyone but me, for being the loveliest thing I’d ever seen. Still, in spite of the distress of living in such a state, I couldn’t give up the few minutes a day where I might run into him in our room, or the nights when he slept in his own bed and I got to fall asleep to the sound of his soft breathing.

I don’t know why he never requested to move away from me though.

So, our lives have been tied together for the last decade and a half, first in Uni, and after, at UKHSA. Our fields are separate, but also tied together. He disappears into the wilds of Asia or Africa or Central America chasing word of epidemic disease, and I examine and process the samples he sends back. He addresses the biohazard packages to me specifically, which I suppose should make me happy, that he trusts my professional opinion above anyone else’s in the agency. But I don’t. I’m not happy.

I’m in love with him. And it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.

Simon

“Ah, Simon!”

Director Cadwallader breaks his intense focus on his screen to smile at me in evident pleasure. I smile back, I can’t help it. I owe everything to this man. He was the only person who was willing to take me on in spite of my mediocre grades at Watford Uni. Before he took an interest in me, I was most likely doomed to spend my life passing out pamphlets on STI prevention at the nearest GUM clinic.

“Director,” I say, “It’s good to see you.”

“And it’s wonderful to see you, my boy. In fact, your return just at this time could not have been more fortuitous.”

My heart sinks into my shoes. I know all too well what that means. I just got back—I haven’t even unpacked yet…

“Sir?” I question, directing every fibre of my being towards hoping the director is not about to say what I think he’s about to say. Of course, I’m not that lucky.

“We have a situation, Simon,” he says, letting his face fall into graver lines.

Fuck.

There’s always a situation. I love my job, I truly do. But I just got back from two months in Africa, and I’d been looking forward to a few days of sleeping in something that wasn’t a cot in an unventilated hut, as well as catching up on my backlog of reports (and, of course, pestering Baz).

Of course fate wouldn’t be that kind.

Completely oblivious to my dismay, Director Cadwallader continues. “There’s an outbreak, of unknown pathogenicity, in a small village in Ecuador, deep in the rainforest. About twenty-five percent of the people infected have died,” Here he pauses to nod at my wince. A greater-than 25% death rate means we’re probably dealing with a spillover event. When animal germs cross over into human populations, it’s not good. Humans have little to no resistance to animal microbes, so spillover events are always precarious situations.

“And that’s a conservative estimate,” the director finishes heavily, “as all we have on the scene are two health techs and they’ve barricaded themselves in their quarters out of fear of infection.”

I frown, distracted from my sense of dread by this tidbit. “Why do we only have two health techs in the area?” Generally, our remote outposts have at least a doctor. If there’s only health techs, then the priority in the area must have been simply preventative care rather than medical treatment.

Cadwallader’s face is grim, though, when he contradicts my assumption. “We had a full team there; a doctor, the two techs, a veterinarian, lab assistants. It was an excellent location for examining forest fauna to track zoonoses. But the vet and the lab assistants had returned to England recently for R & R, and the doctor…well, he came down with the illness in question and passed last week.”

I take a sharp breath. My insides feel hollow—I probably never met that UKHSA doctor, but knowing that one of our own has died in the field is always sobering. It’s a stark reminder of my own potential fate one day, if I’m careless or unlucky.

Damnit. This is urgent. But…

“I’m down a team member,” I remind the director. “My microbiologist, Ms. Canidae has started her leave.”

“Call her back, then,” the director says irritably.

“I can’t, sir,” I say. “She took leave because she’s getting married tomorrow, and then leaving for her honeymoon in Quebec.” Not a normal honeymoon destination I know, but when I asked Elspeth about it, she heaved a sigh and said, “I don’t want to honeymoon anywhere we’ve had to deal with an outbreak.” She’s got a point, and that definitely rules out most of the tropics.

Davy sighs. “Then call up someone from the reserves. Timing is critical, Simon. I want your whole team on a plane to Ecuador first thing in the morning.”

“Yes sir,” I say, though my heart feels like lead in my chest. I’d really wanted to go to Elpeth’s wedding. My team’s going to be upset to lose their break as well. I don’t even know if I can track all of them down before tomorrow.

I suddenly have far too much to do and far too little time. I barely listen to Cadwallader passing on all the rest of the recent news of the agency and then I’m nodding absently to the director and taking my leave. I’m already enumerating in my head the tasks that have to be done tonight before I’ve passed through the door.

I’ve got to find and notify my team, answer their questions, book flights for all of us to Ecuador for early morning, figure out how we’ll get from the commercial airport to the outbreak site…

And I’ve got to recruit a microbiologist and convince them to ship out tomorrow morning with us.

Suddenly, something occurs to me, and I smile for the first time since I entered the director’s office.

I know a microbiologist who’s currently in this building and available to be recruited.

Penny

I thought I’d just be dropping by Wellington House to drop off my report to the head of my division. But just as I leave Pam’s office, Emily scuttles up to me and blurts, “Penelope, did you hear?”

“Hear what?” I say, warily. Emily is the biggest gossip in the building. Somehow she’s always in possession of the very latest news on everything going on at UKHSA. I often wonder how she manages to do her actual job of filing medical records when she spends so much time snooping after news.

I truly hope she’s just going to tell me that someone just quit or got engaged…something I can just listen to and nod along with because it’s got nothing to do with me.

I’m doomed to be disappointed. “A new hot spot just popped up in South America!” Emily is incongruously excited over an event that has likely already killed people. But it’s easy for the office staff here to feel a sense of separation from hazards that are an ocean away. It’s all just good gossip to them.

To me, it’s my life. I close my eyes and command myself not to make assumptions. Just because Simon Snow’s team is justifiably considered the best doesn’t mean that another team won’t be dispatched to this outbreak.

My team has been in the field for months, and we’re overdue for leave. Let someone else handle this one.

Emily’s still babbling about the situation in Ecuador, probably spilling classified information casually here in the hall, when I catch sight of Simon emerging from the Director’s office. We drove in together, but as team lead, he reports directly to Cadwallader. Better him than me, I suppose. I can’t stand the smarmy arsehole.

His head is down and his pace is rushed. My heart sinks.

Oh no.

“Simon,” I call out, as he’s about to pass by without seeing me. He jerks to a stop, wide-eyed when he sees it’s me. Then the corners of his mouth drop and I can see the apology in his eyes, in response to the question in mine.

Fuck.

I nod a distracted good-bye towards Emily and then I tug on his elbow, and soon he and I are striding down the hall (two strides of mine for every one of his). As soon as we’re far enough away from other people, I pull him to a stop. “He’s assigned us, hasn’t he?” I hiss.

Simon droops. I don’t even need his nod to confirm my suspicions. “Simon!” I yell, completely disregarding all the potential Emilys in the offices around us. “I’m Elspeth’s maid of honour. Please tell me this isn’t one of those ‘first thing in the morning’ situations!”

Simon won’t look at me, which is answer enough. “God Dammit!” I shout. Simon winces, at my volume or the sentiment, I can’t tell which. But I hate letting anyone down, much less one of my only friends here. Poor Elspeth. Half her wedding party is on our team.

“I’m sorry, Pen,” Simon says, unnecessarily. He looks wretched, and I soften towards him. I know he wouldn’t have signed us up for another stint in the field if Cadwallader had left him any other choice. That bastard. Still…

“What about Minos’s team?” I demand.

“In Australia. Potential Lyssavirus outbreak.”

Shit, that’s a bad one. Still…”What about Possibelf’s team?”

“Hong Kong,” Simon says shortly. “Tracking the new flu strain.” Well, that’s important work too. I don’t even bother asking about Bellamy’s team. They’ve been trying to find some remaining human cases of Polio in the Middle East for months, in hopes that they can fully eradicate the ancient scourge by vaccinating all close contacts to the victims.

Shit. We really are the only team available. “Will Elspeth have to cancel her wedding and honeymoon?” I ask softly, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice. I don’t want to actually make Simon feel worse. I can tell he feels miserable about this whole thing already.

At that, though, Simon brightens. “No, actually. The director gave me permission to recruit someone from the reserves as a temporary replacement.”

I frown. “Who could we get that could be ready on such short notice?”

Simon just grins at me.

Baz

I’m actually startled when Snow bulldozes back into my lab. Usually he’s content with pestering me just once per visit to headquarters.

He stops at my desk and smiles widely at me, and I’m immediately on my guard. I know all of Snow’s smiles; I’ve studied them from afar for the last fifteen years.

I don’t know this one.

“Baz,” he says, and I feel the faint urge to punch him for the cockiness in his voice. Or snog him for it. The urges are almost equal. I always feel that way; he’s horrendously attractive when he knows what he wants and goes after it. He’s also tremendously irritating. I restrain both of my dangerous urges, and gesture for him to go on.

Whatever he’s here for, he thinks he’s got me in a corner, or he wouldn’t sound so confident. We’ll see.

Instead of getting to the point, he says, “Do you still live like you might have to jump on a plane at a moment’s notice?”

I frown, not seeing the point of the question. He knows I do; I’ve always believed in being prepared for anything. I’ve got a carry-on bag under my bed at home with a week’s worth of clothing changes, toiletries, everything I might need for travel pretty much anywhere.

Snow would have no way of knowing about anything in my flat, of course. He’s never even seen it. But he knows that, back in uni, I always had a knapsack with a change of clothes, some granola and bottled water and a reading book packed and ready at all times.

(Back then, it was because my roommate was an arsehole who would bring girls back to the dorm without any kind of notice). (Usually he went to the girl’s dorm, but not every time.)

I hardly wanted to watch the love of my life get it on with his flavour of the week; hence the knapsack. I’d grab it and be out the door in half a second. I’d go find somewhere to read and sulk for the hour or so it took Snow to get his rocks off, then I’d slink back to our room, my tongue sharpened and ready to rip Snow a new arsehole for his presumption.

Thinking about my tongue and Snow’s arsehole is not the smartest thing I could have done right now. Fuck, I need to get laid.

“I’m a reservist,” I respond coldly. “It’s part of my job to be ready.”

“Fantastic!” Snow’s grin widens further. “Congratulations. You’re the new member of my team. We leave for Ecuador on the first flight tomorrow, I’ll text you the time.” Then, he spins on his heel and strides out the door as precipitously as he entered it.

Wait, what?

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.

Chapter Text

Baz

A hurried late luncheon later (where Snow appears intent on eating his weight in sandwiches) (and Bunce insists on cross-examining the two health techs to find out everything they know), we find ourselves back in the main room where we just had introductions an hour ago. Bunce has produced an impressive collection of coloured white board markers, and, after testing their visibility and erasability on the white plaster walls, pronounces herself satisfied with this as a substitute for her precious white board.

Using a bright pink marker, she draws three lines from floor to as close to the ceiling as her stubby arms can reach, dividing the wall into three columns. At the top of one, switching to black marker, she writes, “We Know”. The second one is then titled “We Need to Know,” and the third, “Next Steps.”

I watch Snow and his team as she rapidly fills up the first columns with the things that we learned over lunch and the gaps in our knowledge (haphazardly avoiding the crack in the wall that runs from floor to ceiling). I say ‘his team’ because I still feel fairly separate from the rest of them. After all, we’ve hardly even had a chance to speak to one another yet.

This is clearly standard practice for this team. All of them appear engaged, pointing out things they think ought to go up on the wall or arguing back and forth over small details. Wellbelove even looks interested, and I’ve seldom seen any expression other than ennui on her well-bred face.

I’m enthralled, however. This is why I applied to be in the reserves. Microbiology is generally a very solitary field, and I’m tired of being alone ninety-nine percent of the time. This, this team brainstorming session, it engages my brain like it hasn’t been since Watford Uni where the brightest minds in all of Britain were clustered in one place, and scenes like this were commonplace.

In the end, the board reads:

Snow nods when Bunce puts down her pen with an air of satisfaction. “As thorough as always, Pen.”

I nod too. That is a succinct description of what we know thus far. Bunce has even gone so far as to colour code the categories. Agents in red, environment in green, host in purple. The symptoms are frightening but, so long as this disease isn’t airborne, we should be able to avoid infection. UKHSA doctors have been working with Ebola, a hemorrhagic fever far deadlier than this, for decades without an infection amongst the epidemiological team members. With this kind of disease, it’s fairly simple to avoid blood contamination with the technologies and protective gear we have.

And while I don’t feel good about staying behind and waiting while the rest of the team flings themselves into danger, that makes sense too. I’d be fairly useless out there, and the two health techs have training far more appropriate to the situation.

That transmission rate though…every one person infects at least two others, if the current rate of spread holds? That’s…not good.

Wellbelove voices what I’m thinking aloud. “A 2:1 infectivity rate is similar to the flu,” she says softly. Everyone in the room looks a little green at her words.

The flu is airborne.

Penny

After our planning session, we all disperse to our various duties. There’s no point in going into the village today; we’re all jetlagged and we might make fatal mistakes.Plus, we’d only have light for a couple more hours. So that's first thing tomorrow. For today, each of us is getting set up for whatever the morning may bring.

Baz is carefully assembling his (extremely expensive) travel-sized electron microscope. Virions are too small for even the strongest light microscope, so, if this bug is viral in nature, Baz’s machine is our best chance of figuring that out without having to send a sample off to London and wait for their analysis (and given that Baz was previously the best of UKHSA’s microscopy analysts, I don’t have high hopes for London to be able to do better work without him).

Agatha is getting her laptop set up and mathematical models prepared for the data we’ll be collecting. The numbers we put on the board today were very rough estimates. Agatha will be refining and perfecting those numbers, plus gathering all sorts of population and environment data from the information we bring back to her.

Christy is suited up and doing decontam on the autopsy room that proved so deadly to the former doctor on site. She’s put the two health techs to work on it with her (they’ve borrowed Agatha and Baz’s biohazard suits–I don’t blame them for having left that task undone while they didn’t have the proper equipment to do it safely). Better her than me, I think, shuddering. I’m truly grateful that my job doesn’t involve interacting with the effluvia of illness and death. It’s hard enough, interacting with people that are currently healthy, but terrified and grieving.

Phillipa is unpacking and assembling a series of insect and rodent traps that she’ll set up in the field in the morning. We’ve got to collect a sampling of the local wildlife and start testing them for the disease as soon as we know what we’re looking for. It’s possible that larger mammals may carry the germ as well, so after she’s tested the things that are small and easy to catch, she’ll build the bat and primate traps that take longer and more intensive supervision. The smarter the animal, the more likely it is to evade a simple trap, after all.

Testing the mosquitos will tell us if we need to test the big mammals, though. If the mosquitoes test negative, it’s unlikely that the primates and fruit bats, being the main blood sources for the mosquito, will test positive.

Simon, as team lead, doesn’t have one specific thing to do. Earlier, he supervised the techs in setting up the decontamination tent outside the front doors of this station, but now he’s at loose ends. He’s buzzing anxiously around, inspecting everyone’s work and generally making a nuisance of himself, like he always does. Baz is about ready to pull his hair out if Simon asks him one more time, “How’s the progress?”

Or he might pull Simon’s hair out, and I wouldn’t blame him.

And that’s where I come in. I’ve already written out my agenda for tomorrow, based on the list on the wall. My first priority is to interview those who’ve recovered and those who’ve never been ill, gather data so Agatha can look for commonalities that might tell us how this bug is spreading and why some people catch it and others don’t.

Obviously, I can’t start that until tomorrow, so now it’s time for my secondary specialty: keeping Simon’s boundless energy in check until he’s got a place to use it.

“Simon,” I say, catching his elbow as he buzzes past on his way to pester Baz, again. “Can I get you to look over what I’ve got so far, give me your two cents?”

“My two Pennies?” he jibes with a grin and I roll my eyes. It’s an old joke between us, but it’s ours, so I also grin and shake my head. Then I lead him over to my laptop and let him take a seat in front of it while I hover behind him.

I run through what he’s seeing in my head, even as he reads it. Tomorrow first thing, the whole team (other than Baz and Agatha) will suit up and brave the village. Simon, as team lead, will introduce us to the village leaders, however the government here is organised, whether it’s a council of elders, a mayoral team or whatever. It’s his job to know that, so I don’t bother to think about it.

Once he’s established our bona fides and gotten us the freedom to move around, Christy will head for whatever building or buildings are currently housing the sick. She’s got the most dangerous job—she’s got to interact with the disease organism while it’s alive and raging through a human host. Often Simon helps, if he’s not needed to liaise with the village leaders. He’s not got a medical degree, but he’s fully certified in critical care, and is the second best person for her job on our team.

With the expertise born of long practice, I shove down my anxiety over their safety. They’ll come through all right. They always do. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

Christy’s work is the most immediately essential; not just for humanitarian reasons, but also because we can’t progress far without identifying the disease organism, and Baz can’t do that without a sample of the live germ.

It should have been the first priority of the onsite doctor, Dr. Bakshi, to get a sample and send it to UKHSA, but somehow he neglected that in favour of autopsying a deceased villager, cutting himself on a scalpel and swiftly dying.

Probably I’m being unfair to the deceased. Perhaps he did take samples, but with his swift decline and death, they were neglected and not sent in time to be of any use. I’ve already seen how remote this place is; he may have had to wait several days for an airlift for the blood sample.

But Baz immediately checked the lab refrigerator when he arrived, and found nothing. If the doctor took samples, where are they?

Probably what happened is that he planned to wait to collect samples until he knew the airlift was on the way, and in the meantime tried to help the villagers as best he could. And then he died before any of that could happen, and his two techs were too frightened to go near the sources of active disease. The initial report they sent out indicated that they doused the body of their superior in bleach before they even dared get close enough to bundle him into a body bag. I don’t know what happened to the corpse of the villager the doctor had been working on, but probably the doctor remained healthy long enough to return it to family members.

All of these are just my best guesses (though my guesses are often better than some peoples’ facts), so they’re not in the outline Simon’s reading through.

What is in the outline is a comprehensive list of survey questions I’ve got to get answers to. From the first case of disease anyone remembers, to how the disease seems to progress, to the living conditions of each victim, and the living conditions of anyone who’s not gotten ill, and then any specific events that took place in the period before the outbreak. The questions are broad, and wide ranging. And in Spanish, which is not my best foreign language (though I do speak it—I speak six different languages all told, with smatterings of a dozen more.)

That’s where I really can use Simon’s help—his Spanish is much better than mine, so he can let me know if I’ve done something as stupid as mixing up Papá (father) and papa (potato). (It only happened once! And they figured out what I meant…after they stopped laughing at me).

“Not that it matters, since you’ll be saying these aloud and not having the villagers read them,” he murmurs, “but you have some mistakes in punctuation. Your verb tenses are correct, though, good job.”

I scowl. Even though the villagers won’t hear missing commas and question marks, I’ll know they’re missing.

“Show me,” I demand. Simon smiles and shakes his head, though not in denial. Just in a ‘Penny being Penny’ sort of fond exasperation. Then he shows me.

So passes a rather typical evening in our admittedly atypical jobs. By dinner time, everyone is done with every possible preparation they can make ahead of time, and the tension of what we’re facing is getting the best of some of us. Baz, though, is as placidly calm as he always is back in London. You’d think that, as the newbie, he’d be more nervous than all of us. If he is, he’s hiding it well.

Baz

I know I should be worrying over tomorrow, and what my team will face out there. And I will be worrying over that—tomorrow. Tonight, I’m far more worried about the hours ahead. Hours of, once again, sharing a room with the only man I’ve ever loved. A man who’s never looked at me as anything other than a posh prick.

That’s my fault, of course. It could have been different, all those years ago, when we first met at Watford Uni. I was excited, back then, to meet my roommate. Excited, and nervous. I freely admit I’ve had a privileged upbringing, and this would be the first time I’d ever shared a room.

My childhood was mostly lonely, so I didn’t mind the idea. I’d thought it’d be nice to always have someone nearby to talk to.

Of course, everyone knows how that turned out.

On that first day, though, I had no concept of the forthcoming years of antagonism and apathy. I just hoped for a friend. And then I unlocked the door of my dorm room on my first day back to learn two things:

My roommate (must be, I doubt the woman with him was assigned to dorm with me, a male) was the most attractive man I’d ever seen to that point. And I had an excellent view of every attractive part of him because he was completely fucking nude.

He was clearly straight, since he was busy thrusting into some blonde woman who I’d never seen before, but who definitely wasn’t allowed in the men’s dorms.

I exited that room so fast that I’m not sure if Simon ever saw me. I know he must have heard the slam of the door behind me, though. Later (much later) (at least two hours after I watched the blonde depart from my perch at a study carrel in the common room), I officially entered and introduced myself to Simon Snow. He looked at me oddly, but I didn’t bring up what I’d seen, and he didn’t either. But I was stiffly formal, and cold, and I’m sure he found my attitude off-putting.

Things steadily got worse rather than better. Within days, I had enormous sympathy for the character of Felix in The Odd Couple. Snow could give Oscar stiff competition in the categories of cleanliness (or lack thereof) and carelessness. He left his things everywhere, including on my side of the room, and he was constantly spilling food and drinks and knocking things over.

I sniped at him, he snarked back at me. We argued. Constantly.

The last straw for me was arriving at my dorm one day with just enough time to pick up my essay for my Literature of Jane Austen class. I’d waited for nearly an hour the previous night for my turn on the available printers in the library, and I’d left my neatly printed essay sitting on my desk while I attended my morning class.

My essay was still neatly stacked, still on my desk…but now it was adorned with a perfectly round brown coffee stain, just over the introductory paragraph, and a yellow post-it note with a scrawled ‘sorry’.

I’m not proud of my reaction—what Snow had done was an accident, after all. He would never have done something like that on purpose. At least, he wouldn’t have, back then. Before he hated me.

I said nothing to Snow about it, and he seemed relieved, if anything. But I bided my time, my rage bubbling under my skin like hot poison. And then he made the mistake of leaving his differential equations homework out, the one I’d seen him sweat over for three hours the night before. And I happened to have access to a paper shredder…

He arrived back to our room to find a pile of paper shreds where his homework had been, and a singular post-it note with the (elegantly written) word ‘sorry’ on it.

That was the sortie that started the war between us. I hardly remember now the weeks or months of vicious insults we threw at each other in the hallway outside of our room, in the courtyard outside the dorms, in the halls where we happened to cross paths. And I barely remember the shoving matches and scuffles we got into when one or the other of us would say something that crossed a line (usually me, but Snow does have a talent for finding my weak spots, so he’s guilty as well).

I do remember the way it felt when the cartilage of my nose crunched under his fist.

And I’m certain he remembers how it felt when, a few days later, I got in a lucky punch and he went tumbling down the flight of six steps into the common room.

That was the final straw for the school administrators. We were called into the dean’s office to account for our behaviour. And, well, we couldn’t. It was all so petty. She wanted to split us up into separate dorm rooms, but told us with a scowl that there were none available, so we had to continue to room together. But she made sure we were aware that the consequences of any further incidents between us would be dire.

Which led to the truce. It was more of a cold war, really. We dealt with the hostility between us mostly by avoiding each other. I avoided the room in the afternoon, when Simon liked to do his homework at the desk under the window, and he avoided it in the morning, when I liked to sleep late and then take my time getting ready (Snow always took an 8 a.m. class. The man’s an animal).

We split the difference in the evenings. So the only time we could definitely be found in the same room was when we were both in bed for the night.

Things got easier and more relaxed as time passed (and we both grew up a little). But I still have so many bloody feelings associated with sharing a room with Simon Snow.

Not least of which is the despair of realising that I’d fallen for my hopelessly straight roomate, who hated me.

I sigh and retrieve my nightclothes from the chest of drawers next to my narrow single bed. I used some of my time this afternoon to unpack and neatly put away my personal belongings. Snow’s bags are still sitting on his bed, untouched. I can hear the shower running, so Snow’s here already.

That’s just perfect. If I manage to go to bed and fall asleep before he finishes his shower, he’s bound to wake me up by clattering around, putting away his shit. Then, I’ll have to endure his prominent pectorals. And he’ll probably chatter at me the whole time, while I’ll struggle to keep my eyes off of the droplets of water that slide down from his wet hair, dripping over his nipples and his treasure trail (the only hair he has on his chest, which I wish I didn’t know). It’s pure torture, and Snow is clueless about it.

My duties don’t start until hours after everyone else’s tomorrow. I decide it’s the perfect night to stay up late and finish the novel I’m reading. I grab my book and head back out to the main room.

Chapter Text

Simon

Baz never came to bed last night, at least not while I was awake. He’s there now, across from me, his single blanket wrapped tightly around his long form. Back in uni, before we formed our truce, this would have been my opportunity to irritate the hell out of him by flinging the curtains wide to let in the sun and clattering about as loudly as possible while getting ready.

And then later, during our truce, this would have been when I’d tiptoe about, doing my best to not be noticed, because being invisible to each other was the only way we could co-exist.

Now, I do neither of those things. I dress quietly enough, but then I squat by the head of his narrow bed and give his shoulder a gentle shake.

“Wha–?” he grumbles. I grin. Baz has never been a morning person.

“The team is setting out in a few minutes,” I tell him, keeping my voice low so he can choose to ignore me and go back to sleep if he wants. It’s early. The sun has barely breached the horizon, but it’s vital that we get out there before the heat of the day.

Baz squeezes his eyelids tightly together for a moment and then, with a sigh, he opens them and lifts himself into a sitting position. I stand up. “You don’t have to get up if you don’t want,” I tell him. “It’s no big deal.”

He shakes his head, and his tangled black hair follows his motion with a slight delay. “I’ll get dressed,” is all he says. I nod, and leave the room to give him privacy.

Baz

I’m aware that I don’t need to be out of bed right now. Simon Snow will be completely fine without me seeing him off. I could probably sleep for all the hours the team will be gone, as there won’t be much for me to do until they’re back.

Like I could actually sleep when Simon is out there. In the hot zone.

It’s a sensationalistic term, “hot zone,” but it captures how I feel about the area of highest risk of infection. Hot, as in getting in hot water or hot as in playing with fire.

Also hot as in Simon Snow is the hottest man I’ve ever known, even in a shapeless white positive-pressure suit, but that’s irrelevant right now.

Heat is also the second biggest problem the team faces right now. These biohazard suits don’t breathe, at all. They can’t. If air can get in, so can germs. But that means, unless they’re in an environment that’s kept in frigid temperatures, humans can only survive wearing them for a limited time.

The tropical rainforest is the opposite of a frigid environment.

With the tropical heat outside, even this early in the morning, Snow and his team will be lucky to be able to stay out for two hours. Before long, they’ll have sweated so much they’ll be at high risk of dehydration and heat stroke.

Snow knows all of this, of course. We all do. I’ve never even done a foray into the field and I know the dangers.

But it makes getting the samples we need and getting the villagers the care they need problematic. The moment the team steps outside these doors, the clock is ticking down. They need to get to the village, get what they need, do what they can to help, and get out.

I hope that the need for haste doesn’t make them careless. I suppose it hasn’t yet.

I try to stay as unobtrusive as I can while I watch the team prepare. I can feel the bite of worry in my gut. Snow’s done this dozens of times without the slightest problem, and I try to comfort myself with that, but my peripheral nervous system is not listening to me. My fingers feel cold and faint shivers pass over my skin in waves.

It’s minor enough that I can hide it, fortunately. I don’t need to put the burden of my fear on him.

Simon is wearing his full biohazard suit but he hasn’t put on the hood or hooked up the oxygen canister yet. He’s walking around making cheerful small talk with members of his team as they wrap duct tape around the wrist and ankle openings of the suit and their double gloved hands.

Gareth is pulling on my suit, and Rhys has already taped up the openings in Wellbelove’s. Neither she nor I are specifically needed in the field. The fact that we have field suits is mainly for entering and exiting the helicopter while we’re in the hot zone.

One of the tasks we accomplished yesterday was to set up a cold zone area on the screened in back porch of the clinic, as well as a decontamination tent just outside of it. It’s far from ideal; a cold zone (safe zone) should be airtight, but this clinic was set up for vaccinations and research, not for infection control.

When Simon and his team return, they’ll use the pressure pump sprayers we set up to completely coat their suits in diluted bleach, and then they’ll have to wait out the ten minutes it takes to be sure that any microorganisms have been killed. Then they’ll use sterile disposable hand towels to dry their suits off completely, before helping each other open their suits and strip off and dispose of the outer layers of mask and gloves. Then they’ll step out of their boots right into booties they’ll use to walk into the cold zone, where they’ll shuck off the inside, protected layers of their suits and their inner set of gloves and the booties.

It’s enormously complicated and draining. It’s also the only way to be relatively certain that, whatever this disease is, our team doesn’t bring it back into the clinic with them.

The nervous chatter that made up the background hum to my thoughts ceases, and I look up sharply. Simon is standing at the door, his fist clenched and raised above his head in a wordless demand for silence. Is it time for a rousing speech? It would be just like him, honestly. The heroic general about to lead his troops into battle, setting them afire with his words.

If I expect to be inspired by his oration, I’m doomed to disappointment. He says, simply. “Ok folks. You all know your jobs out there. Keep safe and get out fast. Let’s head out.”

I snort, very softly, at my own imagination. Simon Snow would never be a great orator. Back in school, he could hardly get a word out without stumbling, half the time. I’m ashamed to say I mocked his fumblings mercilessly at the time, which only made his floundering worse.

Several years after those days, I found out how much of an arsehole I’d truly been when I happened to find a Personal Learning Plan form of Simon’s mixed into a stack of our mixed paperwork, on the day we were packing to move out for good.

I shouldn’t have read it; it wasn’t my business. But the term ADHD leaped off the page at me, and, well, I was always hungry for more information about Simon Snow.

I wish I could unknow what I know. It’s not fair that I know it; he’d never have told me. But that form told me far more than I deserve to know. Along with the ADHD that I belatedly realised I’d been seeing the symptoms of for years, I learned of Simon’s stutter, one he’d been in therapy for since the age of six. I learned that he had attachment disorder, common in kids in care who’d not been held or touched enough. I learned he had PTSD, due to an abusive situation in an early foster home, and that he’d been diagnosed with anxiety and depression in his teens.

I felt sick. At the beginning of our cohabitation, I’d spent months mocking Snow for his speech, his trouble with focus, his short temper and exaggerated responses to my cutting remarks. And now, to find all this out…it was like I’d picked out all the barely healed wounds on his body and carefully stuck pins into each one.

I’ve never hated myself more than at that moment.

I never apologised for any of it. To do so would have required me to admit that I knew these extremely private things about him. Instead, I slipped the PLP form between some of his papers, knowing, with his chronic disorganisation, he’d just assume that he misfiled it himself. And then I left, assuming I’d never see him again.

The irony abounds.

Simon

The short trek from the medical station to the village is made in silence. I think we’re all straining every one of our senses, already looking for clues to what’s happening here. We don’t find anything of note—no smoking gun. No bodies of dead animals littering the path or toxic odours from pools of fluorescent green chemicals (not that we can smell anything through our suits anyways).

All we find is thick and luxuriant foliage enhanced by vivid bursts of colour from flowers and tiny, jewel-bright birds, along with the abundant calls of those birds and other small animals.

It’s lovely, really. The colour and soft sounds are almost soothing. It makes me want to relax, slow down. Take in the sights. But relaxation is dangerous. We need to be on high alert at all times while we’re out here, at least until we’ve figured out what we’re dealing with.

I shake off the pleasant lassitude that wants to take over, and speed my steps. The sooner we reach the village, the better.

One moment we’re in the middle of the jungle, and the next, we’re standing in front of the village. Though there’s not much separation between the two. Other than a slim tributary of the Amazon river snaking through the centre of the town, where houses built on stilts are lining the edge, most of the homes have been built right up against the forest. It’s an eclectic mix of huts, with wood walls, but thatched roofs, and bigger, more modern houses, with steeply sloping metal roofs.

We take in all of this in seconds. What takes us longer to notice is the nearly complete absence of noise from the town. We can hear the sounds of the rainforest behind us. And the lapping of the water against the shore, ahead of us. But all of the sounds that indicate human civilization—pots and pans clanging as people prepare their morning meal, footfalls crunching dry leaves and grass, the muted hum of conversation—all of that is missing.

I exchange glances with my team members. Their eyes are sombre. The newbies, Gareth and Rhys, look petrified. It’s them that I address now. “I take it this isn’t usual for the town at this time of day,” I observe quietly.

Rhys shakes his head. Gareth, clearly the more voluble one, says, “It’s usually bustling with people. But we haven’t been back since the first days of the outbreak.” I can see in his eyes that he knows this quiet isn’t a good sign.

I look back at Penny and see her expression mirroring mine: lips a flat line, eyebrows lowered and eyes dark and grim. I shake my head a little to clear it. “Let’s head in,” I say, and the quiet around us is so stark that my near-whisper feels like a shout.

To my puzzled relief, each house and hut we check is empty—the people didn’t die in their homes, at least. But what could have happened to them?

The mystery is abruptly solved when we reach the centre of the town. There’s a large building there, with a conical straw roof, and it, at least, is not silent. We can hear soft groans coming from inside.

I hold up my hand, and my team comes to a well-trained halt behind me, though the health techs react a fraction later than my more practised team members. “Christy,” is all I say, and she nods and steps up beside me. Then, together, she and I duck into the dimness of the structure.

It’s louder inside, but only just. As my eyes adjust to the gloom, I see neat rows of pallets laid out across the wide, empty floor of the room we’re in. Dozens. Maybe even hundreds of them. On each pallet is a groaning or passive patient. Moving purposefully between the patients is a much smaller group of healthy-appearing people. None of them notice us at first, and no wonder. They’re so few to have the charge of so many sick people.

Christy squats to examine the nearest patient. It’s a young woman, her light brown skin shiny with sweat. She’s asleep, or unconscious, but every few seconds a tremor runs through her and her limbs twitch weakly. Small, darker brown spots dot her skin: petechiae, evidence of subsurface bleeding. I suspect, if her eyes were open, they’d be red and inflamed.

“Definitely a hemorrhagic fever,” Christy murmurs. “It has all of the indicators.”

“No evidence of respiratory symptoms?” I say. It’s just for confirmation. I can see for myself that the patient seems to be breathing easily.

“Not yet,” she says, shaking her head, and I breathe out a faint sigh of relief. The infection is unlikely to be airborne if there aren’t respiratory symptoms. A germ that’s adapted to spread through the air usually causes a symptom that makes that spread more likely: sneezing, coughing, heavy breathing. The absence of those symptoms isn’t a guarantee, of course, but it makes airborne spread less likely.

“I need to check for hypertension,” Christy says, but her hands stay where they are, resting on her Tyvek-clad thighs. She knows better than to touch a patient in a strange place without checking in with the local officials for permission. International doctors have been murdered for less.

I take her comment as the request it was and look for the nearest ambulatory villager. There’s a middle-aged man a few steps away, kneeling beside a whimpering child. He’s stroking her sweat-damp hair out of her eyes and speaking to her in a soft, soothing voice.

I step closer to the man, and he looks up sharply. His iron-grey hair and wiry frame would put him at about fifty, but the deep lines carved in his face and the dark hollows of his eyes make him look much older. I wonder if he’s been marked by hard living or by recent suffering?

I hold up my hands to show my peaceful intentions and say in a mild tone, “Hola. Soy Simon Salisbury, de Bretaña. Venimos de la agencia de seguridad sanitaria del Reino Unido. Estamos aquí para ayudar, si nos permite.”

His gaze sharpens when I give the Spanish name of UKHSA. He knows of it. “You are from the field station,” he says, his English slow, but clear. I sigh in relief. My briefing paperwork had mentioned that English was taught here, but you never can tell how accurate that information is until you interact in person for the first time. I’m grateful to find that our information was correct.

“We are,” I nod. “We just arrived by helicopter yesterday. We’re here to help you figure out this disease, and treat the patients, if you’ll allow. Dr. McCoy here is a medical doctor and I have medical training as well. The rest of our team are outside. You know Gareth DuVry and Rhys Phillips, I assume?”

“I do,” he sighs. “They give vaccinations to our children at the station.”

I nod at this confirmation. “They can help with patients too. The rest of my team are here to figure out the cause of this infection. Are there any members of local leadership who can give permission for our work?”

The man’s head drops and his eyes close in evident exhaustion. “I’m Josue Salazar. The mayor of this town, for what it’s worth. You have my permission to do anything you need.”

My eyes widen. If the town mayor is on his knees administering to the sick…how few able-bodied people do they have left?

I don’t want to interrupt his work any further by asking. We’ll need to find people who can afford to spare the time to answer our questions. Maybe patients who are recovering, but not yet well enough to help?

I stand and return to Christy. “The Mayor says do what you need. I’ll send in Gareth and Rhys to help, and get the rest of the team going. Then I’ll be back.

As I step out into the deceptively innocent light of day, I’m thinking that, whatever we do, it may be too little, too late for these people. But we’ll do it anyway. We have to.

Chapter Text

Baz

Simon and the rest of the team have only been gone an hour, and I’m thinking about heading back to bed for at least the second hour that they’ll be gone. Wellbelove sat with me for a few minutes, sipping her coffee in sullen silence, which I was grateful for. There’s nothing more irritating to a morning-hater like myself than those early birds who sing incessantly at the first sight of the sun. I lost the thread of that metaphor somewhere. Fuck.

My point is, it’s comforting to sit in companionable sunrise-hating silence with someone of like mind. But maybe she doesn’t feel the same way (or maybe she’s smarter than I am and is sleeping while she can), because she disappeared into her room over half an hour ago.

So I’m alone when the first heavy thwack–thwack–thwack of helicopter rotors fills the air.

I scramble inelegantly to my feet and hurry over to the big window that looks out over the fields surrounding the station. The chopper is coming in low over the trees to the north—the opposite direction from where Snow disappeared into the trees this morning. I watch as it hovers over the same flattened patch of ground where we were dropped off yesterday, and slowly descends.

“Were we expecting anyone else?” Wellbelove’s at my elbow all of a sudden, sounding thoroughly awake. Maybe she didn’t go off to get more beauty rest then. Either that, or she’s one of those infuriating people that can shake off morning tiredness in an instant when needed. I still feel like my head is full of cotton batting.

“Not that I know of,” I answer.

She frowns and squints up at the hovering chopper. Then she raises one hand to shade her eyes from the morning glare. After a moment, she sighs and says, “It’s American. That’s all I can tell you.” At that point I’d already seen the red and white stripes on the door of the craft for myself, so I just roll my eyes and nod.

It seems an eternity before the chopper settles onto the grass in front of the station, and then another eternity where all Wellbelove or I can do is watch vague movement behind the windows of the aircraft. Probably the visitor suiting up, just like we did yesterday. But finally, a white-clad figure is traipsing towards us and we go to the door to meet our guest.

Was it only yesterday when I and the rest of Snow’s crew were going through the field decontamination protocols that I’m watching the stranger work through right now? So much has happened since then, and yet nothing at all has really happened.

I’m grateful for the inset glass window in the door, so I can watch; otherwise the ten minutes it takes would be intolerable. I wonder if the two health techs watched us yesterday in the same way.

The stranger is a black man with glasses, I can tell that much. That, and he’s awfully cheerful for a man entering a hot zone potentially seething with deadly infectious particles; he’s smiling widely at us as he pours bleach over his head.

Everytime his decontamination activities bring him around to face us, he smiles again and waves. He’s got a nice smile, full of perfectly straight white teeth (a product of American orthodontics, I’m sure), and it’s unfortunately contagious. I feel a faint tug at the corner of my lips. They want to turn up to match him, but it’s not in me to be openly friendly to a stranger.

Wellbelove has none of my compunctions. She grins and waves back at the fellow each time he extends those salutations to us.

“Do you know this man?” I mutter to her.

She nods. “It’s Dr. Love. Social scientist. He works for the CDC.”

Ah. The American counterpart to UKHSA. “So you’ve worked with him before?” I surmise.

This time she shakes her head. “No. I’ve just run into him at conferences. He’s one of those people you remember.”

“Because he’s friendly?” I suggest. Wellbelove laughs.

“He’s beyond friendly. He’s clinically insane.”

My brows shoot up. “Really?”

She chuckles and shakes her head. “Not really. He’s just got some weird ideas. But he’s so friendly he’s impossible to resist. And I’m very good at resisting, generally.”

“Really,” I say flatly. Then I turn to look at our visitor again. “Well, at least I hope he’s good at his job.”

Wellbelove shrugs. “Since his job primarily involves talking to people, I’m sure he is.”

When the stranger finally climbs up the stairs and taps at the front door, Wellbelove steps back and I turn the knob, allowing him in. His bulky suit is large enough to brush both sides of the door frame, but the moment the door is latched behind him, he reaches up to turn off his oxygen canister, and it deflates naturally. Then he wastes no time unsealing and removing his various pieces of PPE, talking nonstop all the while.

“Hello, Hi! How’s the Snow’s Angels team doing these days? Great to see you again, Agatha. Nice to meet you…”

Here he pauses long enough for Wellbelove, who’s barely holding back laughter, to fill in “Baz” and then he’s off again.

“Hi, nice to meet you, Baz. I’m guessing you’re the replacement for Elspeth? How is Elspeth by the way? Did she have a nice wedding? Where did she decide to go on her honeymoon?”

He finally has to pause to take a breath and I use the opportunity to get a word in edgewise. “Hello, Baz Pitch, microbiology. And you are?”

“Ope! Sorry,” he says, laughing at himself. “I always forget that part. I’m Dr. Shepard Love of the CDC, social scientist. Currently from Atlanta, originally from Omaha, Nebraska. It’s great to meet you, Baz.”

As if the interruption has restored his manners, he offers me his hand to shake. I do, and then he turns to Wellbelove and sweeps her up in a hug. She hugs him back cheerfully enough, which is bizarre for the ice princess I’ve come to think of her as.

I step back and fall into my accustomed role of ‘observer-from-the-outside’ while Wellbelove works to answer Dr. Love’s many questions. Up close, he’s even more engaging than he was while outside dousing himself in bleach. He’s tall and handsome, and his smile pulls you in, makes you feel like you’re part of some inside joke and you’re all laughing together.

Finally, he turns serious. (I wasn’t sure he had it in him). “So, Agatha, Baz, when the CDC got the call about the situation here, I was already in the area; I was at ICMSA.” At my raised brow, he elaborates. “The International Conference on Medical Sociology and Anthropology. The US had no free teams to send, but were able to arrange transport to get me here. So here I am, at your service. How can I help?”

I’ve truly got no idea how he can help. But Snow will know how to use him. And if Snow doesn’t have any ideas, Bunce will. So Wellbelove and I show him the makeshift whiteboard/wall of words. He’s not all talk, it appears—he’s actually got some useful ideas. He points out that, while this village may appear isolated, the river is, itself, a trade road. “It’s not enough to just check on nearby villages,” he says. “We need to find out what river traders are common visitors here, how recently they’ve been here, and where they came from. Also, we need to warn villages upstream about contact with traders that have been through her since the first signs of illness began.”

“There’s a communications centre in this room here.” Wellbelove points out the near-closet that holds the basic computer with hard-wired internet. I notice for the first time that there’s also a CB radio there, so I guess it meets the bare minimum requirements of a communications room. “Why don’t you get started on contacting nearby villages, sending them what we know about this disease, and finding out if they know anything?” She’s right, that’s a vital task and I should have thought of it too.

Shepard agrees with another of those face-splitting smiles of his. I unbend enough to let the corner of my lips twitch up and he laughs. “It’s great to meet you, man,” he says, slapping me on the shoulder. I startle. Other than Snow, nobody ever touches me in a comradely fashion. My smile widens a little, in spite of myself. I think I’m going to have no choice but to like Shepard Love.

Shepard

I’ve always wanted to be part of one of Snow’s famous ‘lunch meetings’. Penelope told me about them. Simon thinks better with food, so all information is shared and ideas are circulated over meals in Simon’s team. I used to wish to be British myself so I could join his team and take part in these comfortable meetings of minds. I love food and I love talk, especially talk about disease. What could be more enticing than spending time over sandwiches with the famous Snow’s angels?

Especially one particular angel.

Now my dream is finally coming true. I didn’t tell Baz and Agatha the full truth. I was on leave (attending sociology conferences is my idea of fun) when the news came in. My boss didn’t ask me to step up—I called her and begged to go. Margaret’s used to me at this point in our careers, so she just sighed and called Davy Cadwallader to make the arrangements.

We’re all seated around the living room eating tuna sandwiches and drinking cokes. Penelope is expounding on what she was able to glean from talking with the few healthy villagers this morning. Every once and a while, she’ll bounce up and add something to the list on the wall. She’s as cute as ever, though I’ve never seen her in field duds before. Still, her knees look as adorable in khaki shorts as they do under a short skirt.

(When she saw me after the crew returned from the village and went through decontam, she sighed and muttered, “Of course it’s you.”) (She likes me, she just doesn’t like to show it).

“So.” That’s Simon, and if he’s speaking up, it means all of his team have finished their reports. “Next steps, folks? What are our plans for this afternoon?”

“I’ll be examining the samples you brought me, obviously.” That’s the new guy, Baz. Handsome fellow, if a bit shy.

“I need Penny to help me fill in what data you’ve gathered into my models,” Agatha says.

“I’ll be prepping my exam and dissection tools and then I need to suit up again and go check my traps,” Phillippa sighs. I don’t envy her. Getting those suits on and off is enough of a trial. Having to do work in them, in this climate? After spending all morning working too? Miserable.

Speaking of suiting up…

Christy looks bleakly determined. “I’m going to rest for another hour or so, get my core temperature down, and then suit up and head back into the village to help where I can.”

Penelope looks torn. “You shouldn’t go alone…maybe I can—”

“Don’t worry, Penelope,” I interrupt. “You get your work done with Agatha. I’ll accompany Christy—I can do a lot of the same things you’d be doing.”

For a moment, she actually looks grateful. Then her face drops back into its usual frown and she just says, “Don’t fuck up, Shep.”

I won’t.

~~*~~

Since Baz is heading back to his room to change clothes, he offers to show me the room that’s available right now. (Right now, he’s dressed somewhat casually, in light chinos and a white button up.) (I gather that’s not his normal gear by Simon’s bug-eyed reaction on seeing Baz at the beginning of lunch.)

“You’ll be the only one with a room to yourself, actually,” he tells me. “Doctor McCoy and the lab techs finished decontaminating the autopsy room and the adjacent bedroom yesterday.”

“Decontaminating?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says tersely. “It used to belong to Dr. Bakshi, the onsite medical doctor. He died of the infection we’re here to investigate. Will that be a problem?”

I suppose for some people it might be. But I know this team and their work. If Christy’s satisfied that it’s safe, then it is. I tell him so.

Baz relaxes. It’s hard to read him, but there’s a shifting of his posture and a minute softening at the corners of his lips and eyes. I’m good at reading people and it looks like he was truly worried that I’d make trouble about the room. Was he worried that I’d want to force a third bunk into his room?

“So, everyone else is doubled up?” I say, to make conversation. Baz nods. I grin. “Which angel is Simon shacking up with this time?”

Baz’s eyes go wide and his mouth drops open a little. I’m not sure why—surely he knows Simon’s reputation if he’s subbing on Simon’s team? HIs voice is cold when he answers. “Snow and I are sharing a room.” Oh, ok. I guess if he’s not queer, he might think my insinuation was rude or unwelcome.

I nod. “I see, no worries, man.”

Now Baz’s brows lower over his eyes, and he actually lets loose enough to chew on his lip. He wants to say something, but he’s worried about what I’ll think, I bet. He doesn’t have to worry. I don’t judge. “You’ve got a question?” I ask. He nods, slowly. “Well, spit it out, man!” I tell him with a grin.

“Spit. it out,” he repeats disdainfully. “Very well. You know I’m new to this team, but clearly you know them pretty well. I’m wondering about the truth in…things I’ve heard. Like Snow's reputation for—” and here he pauses, looking torn. Probably doesn’t want to seem like he’s criticising his team lead.

“His reputation for sleeping with everyone on his team?” I prompt cheerfully. “That’s true enough. Don’t worry, he’s not shy about it, but he’s a respectful guy. He wouldn’t boot you out of your room so he could do the beast with two backs with someone else on the team.”

I see Baz mouthing ‘the beast with two backs,’ and I wonder if that’s another of those americanisms I’m always having to explain to Penelope. But he doesn’t ask. He just looks a little green. I wonder if he’s a bit of a prude? It’s hard to tell with these Brits, they’re generally so reserved. I start to ask if he’s ok, but he interrupts.

“Here’s your room,” he says abruptly. “I need to get on. I’ll see you at dinner.”

As Baz Pitch walks away, I stare after. Nice guy, but strange. I look forward to figuring him out.