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Peter felt like he was trying to take a sip of water fro hose "I’m sorry, Michael You’ve lostyou that this thing in her neck has been taking her temperature every hour-and-a-half for a little more than ninety-three years Ninety-three years, four months, and twenty-one days, to be exact Amy NLN is a hundred years old"

By the ti Michael’s face back into focus, Peter realized he had collapsed into a chair

"That’s ied "Okay, it’s iure it And renized it right away It stands for United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases There’s tons of stuff with USAMRIID all over it in the shed Documents about the epidemic, lots of technical material" He turned in his chair and directed Peter’s attention to the top of the screen "See this here? This long string of nuital signature"

"The what?"

"Think of it as an address, the na for You ibberish, but if you look closely the nu had to have some kind of onboard locator system, probably linked to a satellite Oldare actually coordinates on a grid, and not anything fancy It’s just longitude and latitude Thirty-seven degrees, fifty-six rees, forty-nine o to thebriskly at the keys A new i into view It took Peter a , that it was a map of the North American continent

"We type in the coordinates, like so"

A grid of black lines appeared over theit into squares With a flourish, Michael lifted his fingers froht yellow dot appeared

"and there we have it Southwestern Colorado A town called Telluride"

The na to Peter "So?"

"Colorado, Peter The heart of the CQZ"

"What’s the CQZ?"

Michael sighed impatiently "You really need to brush up on your history The Central Quarantine Zone It’s where the epidean The first virals all caed fro me she comes from there?"

Michael nodded "Basically, yeah The transe, so she had to be within a few clicks when they put it in The real question is why"

"Flyers You’re asking like I know?"

His friend paused, searching Peter’s face for a long ht about what the virals are? Not just what they do, Peter What they are"

"A being without a soul?"

Michael nodded "Right, that’s what everybody says But what if there’s irl, Amy, she’s not a viral We’d all be dead if she were But you’ve seen the way she heals, and she survived out there You said it yourself, she protected you And how do you explain the fact that she’s almost a hundred years old but doesn’t look a day over, what, fourteen? The Ar to her I don’t kno they did it, but they did This trans on a military frequency Maybe she was infected and they did soain" He paused once more, his eyes fixed on Peter’s face "Maybe she’s the cure"

"That’sa big leap"

"I’m not so sure" Michael lifted in his chair to remove a book froh the old logbook to see if we had ever picked up a signal froh, we did Eighty years ago, we picked up a beacon broadcasting these same coordinates Military distress frequency, old-style Morse But then there’s this notation"

Michael opened the log to the page he’dat the words written there

If you found her, bring her here

"And here’s the clincher," Michael went on "It’s still trans I had to run a cable up the Wall to get a decent signal"

Peter lifted his eyes fro at hiaze

"It’s what?"

"Trans her here’"

Peter felt a kind of dizziness, gathering at the fringes of his brain "How could it be trans?"

"Because soet it?" He smiled victoriously "Ninety-three years That’s year zero, the start of the outbreak That’s what I’ of the year zero, in Telluride, Colorado, somebody put a nuclear-powered transirl’s neck Who’s still alive and sitting in quarantine, like she walked straight out of the Time Before And for ninety-three years, whoever did this has been asking for her back"

Chapter FORTY

It was nearly half-night, no one about, everyone but the Watch inside because of the curfew All see hours, Peter had done all he could to get a handle on the situation He hadn’t reported for duty, and nobody had coh probably they wouldn’t have thought to look in the Lighthouse or in the FEMA trailer, froht, and the Watch so depleted, Ian had posted only a single guard there, Galen Strauss But Peter doubted Saht By then he planned to be gone

The Infiruard-a pair of Watchers, one in the front and one in the rear Dale had been et inside, but Sara was still free to coo He had hidden in the shrubbery at the base of the courtyard wall and waited for her to appear A long time passed before the door opened and she stepped onto the porch She spoke briefly to the Watcher on duty, Ben Chou, before descending the stairs andher way down the path, evidently headed to her house to get so to eat Peter followed her at a discreet distance until he was sure they were out of sight and made his quick approach