LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter One

      Acidic, silent tears scorched down Dr. Daphne Panetta’s cheeks even as her palm crashed down on the red emergency button that sealed the caged enclosure and, more important, the LZ virus, behind an impenetrable shield.

      With trembling fingers, Daphne programmed the cameras to zero in on her assistant so she could document the stages of infection and transformation for study. Bethany’s once warm brown eyes had quickly threaded with icy blue strands—the wriggling tentacles of infection. The gaping slash through her reinforced biohazard suit hung like an accusation, and that horrible, newly hungry gaze dragged slowly from the healed wounds back up to Daphne’s face.

      “I’m sorry,” Daphne mouthed at the glass with trembling lips.

      Sorry didn’t even begin to cover the riot of emotions surging through her. So many memories welled up in her, from the first time she had met Bethany to arguing with her recently about the ghastly orange she’d chosen for her bridesmaid dresses. The wedding that wouldn’t happen now. The people she wouldn’t be able to save with her research. The life left unlived.

      Pain, sorrow, guilt—these were all a physical weight that crashed against her and pulled her down into a suffocating undertow.

      Bethany nodded slowly, tears of her own streaking down her face even as she reassured Daphne. “It’s okay.” She kept nodding and repeating it like a mantra, as if that would actually make it so.

      The virus had to be contained at all costs. Another outbreak could be apocalyptic. The closest term she could use to describe the effects of the virus was that it turned people into a kind of lycanthropic zombie. Literally. The real world collided with the supernatural, and when that happened, everything changed. Governments were scrambling to create defensive strategies and new weapons, all while trying to keep their new knowledge secret. The U.S. Department of Defense had even brought in a private group called the Aeternali to consult after the first outbreak in Arizona. It had been the Aeternali who constructed the facility they used now, hidden in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

      The virus had to be stopped.

      Daphne wanted to look away, but instead, she crossed her fingers and held them over her heart—the symbol they used when things seemed bleak to remind them of their vow to find a cure.

      Bethany’s fingers crossed briefly before her spasming muscles made it impossible. Blood trickled from her ears, her nose and bubbled out of her mouth.

      But rather than the long, drawn-out agony of the change seen in most of the others victims—each bone breaking and reforming, muscle and fascia burning away only to regenerate—the transformation occurred much faster in Bethany. More like the videos of real werewolves Research and Development had shown her when she’d been brought in on the project. It was almost as if the virus had already been inside her, but dormant.

      She watched as an animal erupted out of Bethany’s skin now—bipedal, sleek and predatory. She watched her former assistant for what seemed like an eternity, then she saw Bethany move to all fours and bound away from the observatory bubble toward the small cluster of trees in the terrarium.

      The other infected creatures shied away from Bethany, cowering as they fled. It was unusual behavior. They’d introduced human test subjects before, prisoners on death row who’d chosen to donate themselves to science. They were attacked, the infected attempting to devour them even as they metamorphosed.

      Not so with Bethany.

      The best thing Daphne could do for her now was find a cure, and to do that, she needed to find out why Bethany had been infected. The bio suit blocked her heat signature, her pheromones, everything that seemed to entice the infected to see her as a food source.

      Her

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