“I’m sorry, who is this?”

Roger repeated his information and said, “Listen to me, dammit. Someone is in trouble in there. If you won’t call nine-one-one, then I will!”

“The proper authorities will be notified once we have ascertained the problem,” Mr. Ullman said as he rounded the corner down by the elevators, moving swiftly and silently on the thick carpet. “Many of our guests do not wish to involve any authorities unless it is absolutely necessary. It is our responsibility to respect their wishes.”

From inside the room, they both heard a final, crunching crash, then nothing.

As Mr. Ullman got closer, he produced an electronic key card. “Please step back and for God’s sake, get that dog out of here.”

He inserted the key card into the slot above the door handle. There was a click, and the light flashed green briefly. Mr. Ullman swung the door open, sweeping the broken glass aside. From the doorway, they could only see down the short hallway, past the bathroom, and the edge of the bed. A breeze stirred the rumpled sheet that hung off the bed.

There was no sign of the room’s occupant.

Mr. Ullman called into the room. “Hello? Hello? This is Mr. Ullman, general manager of the hotel. I hate to trouble you, but we have had a number of calls regarding the volume of activity in this room. I’m afraid I need to speak with you. Hello?”

Still nothing. Just the corner of the sheet fluttering.

Roger could feel warmth. He held out his hand. Warm air was definitely flowing from inside the room. Had the guest turned on the heat?

Mr. Ullman took one step inside, knocking one more time.

“Hello? Hello?”

Before Mr. Ullman stepped fully into the room, Roger realized why the room felt warm and why a breeze was moving the sheet when skyscraper windows do not open.

The room was demolished, as if the occupant had been given a shot glass of cocaine and a sledgehammer. The bed frame had been ripped away from the wall. The plasma television had been driven through the glass coffee table. Something had ripped great tufts of stuffing out of the chairs. And the desk chair had been used to shatter the floor-to-ceiling window.

A hot wind surged through the room, pushing aside the ripped curtains and making the sheet billow out a moment, before settling back against the corner of the bed. Roger stepped toward the window, saw blood on the edges of the glass. He got close enough to the edge to see the deep shadows on the building across the street when vertigo dropped into his gut like a bomb and he clapped a hand over his mouth, afraid he might vomit.

He screwed his eyes shut and tried to breathe through his nose. He kept imagining the fall, throwing yourself out over the abyss, feeling nothing but the humid summer air as the windows streaked past, faster and faster, the sidewalk rushing up in a brutal embrace. With his eyes closed, it was almost worse; he imagined he could feel the building swaying gently in the wind.

He popped his eyes back open and stumbled back to the couch, where he collapsed. He put his head between his knees and focused on his breathing. Daisy came up and licked his face. He scratched behind her ears and that calmed him.

“Don’t touch anything,” Mr. Ullman said, his voice strangely calm, almost placid. He was over his shock now, and a coolly efficient crisis mode had taken over. “The police will want a word. We will conduct the interviews in my office, not in here.” He called the front desk. “The police will be arriving shortly. Please send them up to room 1426. Thank you.”

Daisy sniffed around the bed and promptly sat down.

“Get that dog out of here. Now.” Mr. Ullman was on the phone with the CEO’s secretary. “Tell him that we have an emergency situation, and he needs to call me back immediately. I will be contacting Benny Weisman myself.”

The sound of sirens from the street reached them.

Roger went to snap Daisy’s leash onto her collar and froze.

A single, tiny bedbug trundled out from under the sheet and headed for the bottom of the mattress.

“Good girl, good girl.” He patted Daisy’s head and gave her a treat.

Mr. Ullman hadn’t noticed, phone still glued to his ear. “Benny? Benny! Drop everything and get here now. I need you ten minutes ago. What? No, no. Drop it. I don’t care. This is an emergency, I—” He broke off, those detail-oriented eyes zeroing in on the bug as it wound its way down the side of the mattress and disappeared underneath. “What? Benny, listen to me. Get here now.” Mr. Ullman hit END CALL.

Roger lifted the mattress and followed the bug with the beam of his flashlight.

The Mr. Ullman ran a shaking hand through his thinning hair. “Please tell me that is not what I think it is. Please.”

Roger shook his head. “I hate to make your day worse, but somehow, they got back inside.”

“I don’t understand. We spent thousands.... How is this possible?”

Roger knelt and flashed the beam at the carpet, then the molding, following it to the corner. He fished out his pocketknife and picked at the painted silicone strip. He pinched the end between his thumb and forefinger and pulled, ripping it away from the trim along the floor for about a foot or so.

Bedbugs spilled out like clotted, reddish-black oil. Hundreds of them.

“Oh dear me,” Mr. Ullman muttered.

Roger snapped his pocketknife shut and pulled a canister of bug spray from his bag. He hit the bugs with a short burst. The effect was almost instantaneous. The bugs shuddered to a stop, then slowly curled their legs around themselves and stopped moving forever. More bugs seeped from the crack, so Roger gave them another blast. If there were any more inside the wall, they got the message.

Mr. Ullman’s wingtip nudged the silicone strip back into place. He scattered the bugs under the bed, so they almost looked like flecks of pepper from a distance. He stared down at Roger. “This stays between us, do you understand?”

Roger shrugged, and got to his feet. “This is very unusual behavior for bedbugs, I have to say. But if this is what you want, then I—”

“This is absolutely what I want. This cannot get out. You do whatever you have to do, and I will deal with the police. Find out where these godforsaken bugs are coming from and kill them. Kill them all.”

“When he was first brought in, we thought he might be a suitable candidate for . . . testing.” It was clear to Dr. Reischtal that the tech was having trouble facing certain realities about the homeless and indigent people the soldiers had been rounding up to use as guinea pigs. The tech pulled off his glasses and cleaned them with his tie. His hands shook. “The . . . subject collapsed during intake.”

“Before the dosage was administered?” Dr. Reischtal asked.

“Yes, sir,” the tech said, hurrying to keep up as they barreled through the busy corridor. “The decision was made to quarantine the subject until tests results could confirm infection.”

“And what have these results revealed?”

The tech nodded, flustered. “That yes, he is indeed infected with the virus.”

“I still fail to see why I was summoned. The man is homeless. It is reasonable to assume that he was bitten by a rat.”

“Uh, that’s the thing, sir. We have been unable to locate any rat bites, any significant scratches of any kind.”

Dr. Reischtal stopped suddenly and the tech nearly collided with him. The doctor whirled, eyes laser sharp behind the tiny lenses. “If I understand this correctly, you are telling me that we now have an infected patient that does not bear any evidence of virus transmitted by a rodent?”

“Yes, sir. Uh.” The tech studied his shoes, unsure of how to phrase the next piece of information. “The attending found . . . something else.” He felt the cold glare from Dr. Reischtal and refused to look up. “It might be best, sir, if you were to see for yourself.”