All this flashed through his brain in a few seconds. He knew they were all likely infected already; the disease was as catching as the common cold, and the amount of smallpox in the puck represented a staggering quantity of virus, enough to directly infect almost a hundred million people. With the shattering of the puck, it had been rendered airborne. They were already, all of them, breathing it in. He and the rest of them were dead men.

He saw all this with a horrific lucidity. And then he became aware of the shouts, the cries of the soldiers, the hollering of Dart.

“Don’t move,” he said in a commanding voice. “Don’t stir the air. Stop yelling. Shut up.”

They obeyed him. Instant silence.

“We need to get the building sealed,” he said, with a strange, sudden calm that surprised even himself. “Now. If we can keep everyone inside, we might just contain it.”

“But what about us?” Dart asked, his face white.

“We’re finished,” said Blaine. “Now we need to save our country.”

A long silence. A soldier suddenly screamed and bolted, leaping over the doorsill and tearing off down the hall. Without hesitation, Blaine drew his weapon, took careful aim, and pulled the trigger. The old Peacemaker kicked with a roar and the soldier went down, screaming and gargling.

“Fuck this, I’m putting a suit on,” Dart said, his voice breaking, scrabbling at the rack, pulling down suits. “We’ll be safe in the lab!” Several suits fell off the rack with a crash and now the soldiers rushed in, grabbing at suits, shoving one another, all semblance of discipline vanished.

Multiply that panic by a hundred million, Blaine thought. That’s what the country was facing.

His eye fell back on the faint, damp patches where the crystallized virus and its substrate had sprayed across the floor and walls. It was unspeakable. He couldn’t believe Gideon had actually done it. Blaine knew he was perfectly willing to give his life for his country—in fact he had expected to—but not like this. Not like this.

And then he noticed something.

He bent down. Looked closer. Got on his hands and knees. And then reached out and picked up the broken puck. A small serial number was stamped on the side, along with an identification label in tiny type:

INFLUENZA A/H9N2  KILLED

“My God!” he cried. “This isn’t smallpox! We’ve been tricked. Spread out, search the building, find him! This is a different puck. He switched pucks. He’s still got the smallpox! He’s still got the smallpox!”

Gideon sprinted down the hallway. As he ran, he decided to head for the rear of the building. There might be more soldiers waiting in the lobby. Besides, the back of the building would give him the added advantage of bringing him closer to where he’d parked the Jeep, in the rear lot.

Which meant he had to find a back exit.

He raced up a stairwell to the ground floor and headed toward the back of the building, running as fast as he could while still protecting the puck. It was a huge, virtually deserted complex, and he found himself wasting time with unexpected twists and turns, dead ends and locked doors that forced him to backtrack again and again. And all the while, the clock was ticking.

He had no idea how effectively his ruse would delay their response. He had seen his opportunity and had taken it, his old skills as a magician coming in handy as he’d palmed a random puck from the lab table and substituted it for the smallpox. It had been relatively easy, given that he had worked magic tricks with many objects of precisely that size and sometimes even that shape. What that other puck contained, if anything, he had no idea, but it couldn’t be all that dangerous or it wouldn’t have been stacked on the outside table, unguarded. Maybe it would give them all hives.

After yet more wrong turns he arrived finally at a long corridor that ended in a glassed-in waiting area with a large exit sign and a crash door at the far end, striped white and red with an Alarm Will Sound label. He ran for the door, only to see a man appear abruptly in the lobby from another approach. It was the captain, Gurulé.

So they’re on to me already. Shit.

The captain turned, saw Gideon, began to draw his weapon.

Gideon charged ahead, ramming into the captain and slamming him back against the crash door, which burst open with a piercing alarm, the pistol flying away. He scrambled for it, acutely aware of the smallpox container in his pocket, shielding it protectively with his body. The captain, sprawled across the threshold but recovering fast, pulled himself up and leapt on Gideon, trying to get a hammerlock around his neck. In doing so he left his face exposed and Gideon punched back fiercely with the palm of one hand; he felt the captain’s nose break under the strike, Gurulé’s grip loosening just enough for Gideon to wrench free, even as the captain landed a vicious punch to his side.

They faced off, the captain shaking his head, trying to recover his senses and fling away the blood spurting from his nose. The smallpox felt like it was burning a hole in Gideon’s pocket. Whatever happened, he couldn’t let that puck break.

Gurulé suddenly turned and unleashed a powerful kick to Gideon’s groin; Gideon twisted to protect the smallpox and the kick slammed into his hip, just missing the puck but knocking him back against the wall. Gideon went into a defensive hunch, still shielding the puck, and the captain took advantage of his defensive hesitation to advance on him, driving a punch straight into the side of his jaw that broke a couple of teeth and sent Gideon to the floor.

“The smallpox!” Gideon gasped through the blood welling into his mouth, “Don’t—!”

The captain was too enraged to hear. He punched him again in the chest, then slammed his foot into Gideon’s side, almost flipping him over, the jarring movement sending the puck flying out of his pocket and skittering into a corner. For a brief, terrible moment both men stopped dead, watching as it bounced against the wall—and then rolled back a few feet, unbroken and unharmed.

Instantly the captain dove for it while Gideon, now free of restraint, let loose a savage roundhouse to the man’s kidneys, laying him on his knees, and following with another kick to his jaw. But the captain, rising, pivoted with lightning speed almost like a breakdancer, lashing out with his legs, knocking Gideon back down just as he was staggering up. With an inarticulate gargle of rage, Gurulé fell on Gideon, sinking his teeth into Gideon’s ear with a crunch of cartilage. Yelling in pain, Gideon slammed his fist into the man’s neck, causing him to release his hold on Gideon’s ear; as he turned to throw a blind punch, which missed, Gideon seized his scalp with both hands and yanked his head back and forth, like a dog shaking a rat, while simultaneously bringing his knee up into the man’s face so hard it almost felt like he had caved it in. The man flipped over backward and Gideon fell on him, seizing his ears and, with them as handles, slamming the back of the captain’s head into the cement floor, once, twice.

Gideon rolled off the now unconscious man. Their struggle had brought them close to Gurulé’s gun, and Gideon grabbed it just as the side door to the lobby burst open and two soldiers rushed in. Gideon shot one immediately, throwing him back against the wall; the second dove for cover in a panic, firing wildly, the bullets raking the glass wall behind Gideon and shattering it.

Gideon dove through the broken glass, then staggered to his feet, bullets snicking past him and ricocheting off the asphalt of the rear parking lot. He reached the closest parked car and fell behind it as a swarm of rounds rammed through the metal. When he returned fire he could see, through the open door of the building, the white puck of smallpox lying against the wall. Even as he stared Blaine appeared, scooped up the puck, and disappeared again into the back hall, with a yell for his men to follow.