Min had pinned the tick down with her tweezers and held it under my microscope as I picked up a fine scalpel.

“Okay, so make an incision in its belly. A few drops of blood should come out, which will be yours, but we’ll have to examine it under the microscope as well to see if anything other than the virus is in it.”

I nodded. This whole thing was crazy, though. How could I possibly have the virus?

I made a small incision along the tick’s belly, and just as Min said, a few drops of dark red blood spilled onto the slide.

“Is it supposed to be that dark?” Min asked.

“The virus itself is black, and when it attacks blood cells, those turn black as well. The further the virus progresses, the darker the blood becomes.”

Min removed the insect so only the blood was left, and I placed a cover slip on top of it to spread the blood more thinly. I peered closely through the eyepiece to examine its contents.

“There it is.” I could see the virus attacking my blood cells, turning them black, and as I scanned for anything else, nothing was noticeable. I stepped aside and let Min take a look.

“Yeah, I don’t see anything except the virus attacking your blood cells.” Min stepped back and looked around, thinking. “Maybe we should open up one of my ticks to see what we should be looking for?”

“Sure.”

Min went over to her luggage and opened the case of ticks. She delicately removed one with the tweezers and placed it on the table before opening its belly with the scalpel. Taking a bit of its gut contents and smearing it onto a slide, she placed it under the microscope for me to examine.

As I viewed the specimen, I shot a confused look to Min. Why are the innards of the ticks carrying the vaccine the same color as the live virus?

My eyes widened. “Mierda…”

“What? What is it?” Min pushed me aside to look through the eyepiece and looked up at me in horror. “They lied to me; they’re the ones spreading the virus! And they conned me into helping them! I can’t fucking believe this.”

“Are they trying to make us into monsters, and then expose us as such to freak everyone out?”

“Or worse…Maybe they’re trying to wipe you out…”

She was right; in fact, her thoughts were probably more likely. Exposing our kind to the world would cause an uproar and panic. If the government simply wiped us all out instead, they could just pretend we never existed. Problem solved.

“So, that’s what happened to the rogue bear who killed Danielle Peterson. He was infected with the virus.”

“Did he die recently?” Min asked.

I couldn’t answer her right away. A sharp, intense pain shot through my temples and I was blinded for a moment. I screamed in pain and held my head; it felt like my skull was splitting in two.

“Ramon! Are you okay?” Min rushed over and pressed the back of her palm against my forehead once again. Her hand felt cold against my burning, sweat-drenched skin, and it was more than welcomed.

Just as quickly as it came, the pain had dissipated. I blinked repeatedly until my vision returned.

“Yeah, sorry about that. It must have been some kind of passing tension headache.” I smiled to reassure her, but I could tell she was not convinced. “What did you ask me before?”

“I asked if the rogue shifter had died recently.”

“Yes, actually. He died the morning of the night we met. I had just finished his autopsy hours before I came to the bar.”

“Then that’s when you were infected; the tick must have detached from the corpse during the autopsy and latched onto you.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I read in the file that if the tick administers the ‘vaccine’ successfully, it leaves the shifter in search of another host. So, I’m guessing once the virus kills the host, they move onto the next shifter.”

“Un-fucking-believable!” I slammed my fist on the table, trying to control my anger, but I could feel it bubbling inside me. I already felt like a furnace and the pounding in my head wasn’t helping.

“Do you guys spray for ticks?”

“No; it would be cost-prohibitive. Acadia is so large and would need to be sprayed several times per year to be effective. We just don’t have that kind of funding. Not only that, spraying could potentially impact the ecosystem in other ways.”

“I’m not even sure it would have worked on these ticks, anyway. Who knows what other mutations they have?” Min shrugged, trying to console me, but it was hard to think of anything else.

I had been infected, and certain death was just around the corner.

Beyond myself, I had to let Trent and Knox know. As the disease progressed, I’d become a serious threat to the clan and park visitors.

And Min.

In that moment, my fear turned to anger. And then, resolve.

“If those putas think they can take us down, they’ve got another thing coming. We’ve got all those ticks carrying live specimens of the virus; surely, if the two of us put our heads together, we can come up with an antidote and beat this.”

Min’s eyes lit up as she looked into the glass box and counted the ticks. “We only have fifteen ticks left, so we’ll need to be careful. That’s fifteen attempts at an antidote.”

“I’ll have to notify my boss immediately, so we can get started. You said the government put you up to this; do you remember the names of the people you are taking orders from?”

“Yeah, it was a man Eric Hanson, and a woman, I think her name was Cassidy Powers.”