The third floor conference room in Zukor hadn’t been touched when the building was refitted as a hospital. The table was a glossy black slab surrounded by overpriced, high-backed chairs. Stealth sat at the head of the table with a casually dressed St. George to her right, Gorgon to her left in his usual body armor and duster. A handful of civilians filled the other seats, residential leaders from across the Mount and their staffs. At the far end, Doctor Connolly stood by a large flatscreen TV, tapping her laptop while comparing last minute notes with Josh.
Stealth leaned closer to St. George. “Who did you send out?”
“Luke with three mechanics, plus twelve guards,” he said. “Cerberus is backing them up.”
“They left at sunrise,” added Gorgon. “The gate’s staying in constant contact. They reached Big Red twenty minutes ago. No sign of the SS, no other traps. They’d just gotten the first tire done when I walked in.”
Connolly nodded to Stealth and the room grew quiet. “I know you’ve gotten regular updates,” she said, “so some of this may seem like old news to you. I just want to go over everything, because we need to change a lot of preconceived notions we’ve had until now.
“We know it’s viral. A virus that mimics leukocytes-—white blood cells--in appearance, so a visual check of the blood will miss it most of the time. We know it’s highly infectious. It’s not airborne, only passed by contact with bodily fluids, but it can survive a very long time outside a host while still in an active state. So a dead ex, stained clothes, even a dried blood smear on the wall-—all of them can transmit the virus.”
Gorgon leaned back. “That would imply almost everyone’s been exposed to the virus at one time or another.”
“Precisely,” said Connolly with a nod. “This was the big discovery that made us look at everything again. The ex-virus is more aggressive and replicates faster than anything on record. We still haven’t even figured out how it can multiply and spread so quickly. It blows Marburg and Ebola out of the water, to the point it should be a complete failure as a disease.” She paused.
One of the civilians, a bitchy former LA city councilwoman named Christian Nguyen, clicked her fingernails on the table. The chattering sound made several people flinch. “Except...?”
“Except it isn’t lethal,” said Josh without looking up.
Beneath her mask, Stealth’s expression shifted. “I beg your pardon?”
“It’s not lethal,” repeated Connolly. “We’ve run hundreds of tests, infected our lab rats as fast as we can breed them. The ex-virus is not a fatal contagion.”
A frumpy man with a gray beard, Richard-something, coughed. “I think there’s about five million ex-people outside who’d disagree with you,” he said, looking proud of himself.
The doctor nodded. “That’s what’s why it’s taken so long to isolate this. During the outbreaks, everyone was operating under the misconception the virus was lethal and somehow reanimated people. But it isn’t. It’s two separate things.”
“Wait,” said Gorgon. “How isn’t it fatal? Everyone who gets bitten dies within two or three days.”
“Yes they do,” she nodded. “Here’s where it gets interesting. You’ve all heard of the Komodo dragon, yes?”
Most of the heads in the room nodded.
“Okay, for years people thought Komodos were poisonous because their bite was so lethal. Turns out their saliva is like the agar in a Petri dish. It’s a perfect growth medium, so it’s just brimming with every bacteria and virus present in the tropics. They bite you, break the skin, and all that stuff gets shot straight into your bloodstream. Suddenly your body’s dealing with thirty or forty major infections at once.”
Stealth steepled her fingers. “And this is what exes do?”
Connolly nodded. “When a person dies, lividity sets in, and all the fluids in their body start heading down. Since they’re still standing, exes have a lot of material build up in their jaws and cheeks. The brain gets heavy blood flow, so anything in the bloodstream ends up there. The salivary glands, sinuses, and tear ducts drain out, so anything in the lymph system is there, too. Plus you’ve got all the necrotic bacteria that manifest in a dead body. And, of course the ex-virus itself. And then the ex bites you, and dumps all of that into your bloodstream.”
“But people are dying so fast,” said Christian. She spoke with the tone of a person determined to trip someone up. Her dislike of all superhumans was no secret.