A plan formed as Eden headed for the bathroom. It was risky and relied on elements of pure luck, but she just might be able to pull it off if she was clever. Arik returned just as she'd had her epiphany, but she'd sent him out to track Mayhew down again, in the hopes he might be able to get a message through to the general.

But first, a shower.

Eden stripped her clothes off, turning on the water. Hot water poured out of the showerhead, gallons of it. She was used to a trickle, and this was more luxurious than she'd ever known.

Closing her eyes, she stood under the spray as long as she could. Hot water sluiced away the aches and pains of the last couple of days’ exertion. Tomorrow would be worse, she suspected. Unused muscles obliterated by sudden exertion. Leaning her forehead against the wall, she lost herself in the drum of the water on her skin, thinking about all she'd learned about the bacteria and the cure. They needed a way to get into the military base, and Mayhew could do it, but how to talk him into helping them? She had something General Bligh wanted, but what about Mayhew? Without him the entire plan fell apart.

It was only when the water ran cold that Eden hauled herself upright. She must have almost fallen asleep, or into some sort of semi-trance. The traces of yesterday's headache began to ache behind her right eye. She needed more sleep.

No time for that.

She turned the shower off and started drying herself. Beads of perspiration clung to the mirror, so she wiped her fingers across it.

She was just about to flip her head upside down and towel dry her hair when something caught her eye.

A chill ran down her spine as Eden used the towel to dry the mirror instead, her heart starting to beat a little faster.

She leaned closer.

There.

The beginning of a rash blossomed on the middle of her chest. It was so faint she almost mistook it for stubble rash from Johnny's jaw, except for the fact she'd been staring at tiny red dots exactly like these for the past two weeks.

All the heat drained from her face.

Headaches. Muscular aches. Thirst. She'd put it down to a strenuous couple of days, but the truth stared her straight in the eye.

She had the plague.

* * *

Eden walked out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her hair and her skin pink from the shower.

Johnny glanced up from the map he was poring over with Lincoln. He was about to look back down when something about Eden's expression set off alarm bells.

"What is it?" he demanded.

"Promise me you're not going to freak out," Eden said, in the sort of voice that made his stomach drop.

Johnny considered her. You don't say something like that unless you’re fairly certain someone is going to lose their shit.

"No promises," he growled. "Why? What's wrong?"

Swallowing hard, she began unbuttoning her shirt. "I've been a bit headachy in the past couple of days, but I assumed it had to do with everything that was going on." Her fingers fumbled on a button.

"Eden?" His voice sounded hollow. Outside of him. He had the sudden sensation the world was dropping out from under him.

He knew, before she told him.

"I'm in phase one," she whispered, holding her shirt open just enough for him to see the faint hints of rash on her chest.

Cold shivered through him.

Johnny's heart squeezed into a tight little fist in his chest, and it was all he could do to stop himself from swaying. No. This couldn't be happening.

Eden cleared her throat, still not quite meeting anyone's eyes. Her lashes fluttered toward Lincoln, then she glanced down again. "I'm so sorry. It's likely I was infected with the plague when I stayed at Shadow Rock. Anyone who came into close peripheral contact with me might have been infected, as it can be spread by airborne contamination as well as body fluids. Symptoms don't tend to show for around three to seven days after exposure. If I'd known...."

"It's all right, Eden," Lincoln said simply. "I've spent the past couple of days with you. You wouldn't have put them at risk if you'd suspected. You're not that type of person. And we’ll get our cure."

He couldn't believe how calmly she was taking it.

"So what do we do?" Johnny demanded, throwing his arms wide. "Hope and pray Bligh comes through?"

"We've got time."

"How much time?" he demanded, his voice rising. "We can't wait for Bligh and hope he gets your message. We can't rely on his good conscience. He might just lock us up and throw away the key."

Or worse.

He hadn't misunderstood what Mayhew was saying about burying any sign of this plague. If Blight discovered Eden was infected....

A hand clamped down on his shoulder. Lincoln. "Settle down," the other warg said.

The fucker was fusing him....

Johnny saw red. He broke the warg's hold on him, and Lincoln hit back, their arms locking. Johnny slammed him into the wall, and Lincoln's breath hissed out between his teeth.

"Calm the fuck down or I'll put you down." Lincoln snarled, capturing his wrist.

Rage enveloped him, his voice growing deeper as his vocal chords started shifting. "You think you can?"

"Johnny!" A voice. Eden's voice. He felt her hand on his shoulder then, and the breath snarled out of him. Her face loomed in front of him. "Stop it! He's right. You need to calm down."

He looked down at his hands, and realized he wasn't staring at human flesh anymore.

Another slither of ice through his veins. He hauled himself up short. Fuck. He'd almost gone warg. Lincoln stared at him like he didn't dare move, his cheekbone swelling.

Johnny reached deep, searching for that part of him that belonged to his father. It was harder to find than he'd expected. His heart beat a hundred miles an hour, and all he could see was that damned rash.

Eden wrapped her arms around him. "It's going to be okay."

Wasn't that a punch in the face? He was the one who should have been consoling her. Eden knew exactly what the plague could do. She had to be scared.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I wasn't expecting that. I just...." Lost it. "I can't lose you, angel."

"You're not going to," she reminded him.

Calmness washed over him like a sluice of cold water as his omega half rose. His skin itched with heat as he pulled back, forcing his body to shift. Hair vanished along his arms, and his fingernails ached as they transformed.

He'd never in his life come so close to flipping that switch before. A part of him had almost thought itself immune.

It's her, said the darker part of himself. She does this to you. You're too involved. Too twisted up emotionally in her.

Having no one might have been both a blessing and a curse. He breathed out a helpless laugh. All this time, and the warg had been sitting there beneath the surface of his skin, waiting.

"Are you okay?" he asked hoarsely, drawing back and looking down into her upturned face.

Eden swallowed. "No. But now I know how my patients feel. I can't afford to fall apart right now. And I've got plenty of time."

"Bullshit." She wasn't going to live with the threat of this over her head any longer than she needed to. "I'm done sitting around waiting on the Confederacy. We have to crack the military labs tonight."

* * *

"Arik tells me you have important information for me," Mayhew said, looking bored even through an eight-inch monitor.

"I do," Eden said, swallowing hard.

"I'm not interested in playing games, Miss McClain. I told you this morning I don't take risks for no gain. So what's changed?"

She let out a slow breath and started unbuttoning her shirt. "This."

Mayhew's eyebrow arched as she worked the first three buttons open. "Intriguing, to be sure, but a strip show isn't something I can't view any day of the week, for the right price."

She opened her shirt, revealing the rash across her chest. "I didn't notice it this morning. It was only after I got out of the shower that I saw it." And since then, it had only darkened and spread. "I have the plague, Mr. Mayhew."

He froze, and then his fingers continued rolling those ever-present dice over the backs of them. "I'm sorry to hear that, Miss McClain."

"You should be," she replied bluntly. "There's a chance you were exposed to it this morning. You won't know for another three to seven days, of course, and you might be lucky. But you did share your drink with me. Wanted to show me the finer aspects of Confederacy life."

The color rapidly drained out of his face.

"It's a virulent disease, passed along through body fluids," she continued, reeling off the facts. "Blood, semen, saliva. You drank out of the glass after I did. I'd recommend you start a course of antibiotics, just to make certain, but as you know, the plague's immune to them. It might help ease the fever, a little. It might prolong it. But within two weeks there's a chance you might be dead... unless you'd care to beg General Bligh to open up his laboratory to you. Maybe he will. You know him better than I do.

"And of course, there's the risk to your loved ones, the people around you. It didn't take much to set it off within the population of Absolution."

"Did you know?" he snapped, clenching his fist around his dice.

"Of course not," she replied tightly. "Regardless of how much I want that cure, I would never risk the lives of innocent people."

"Fuck." He pushed away from his monitor, pressing his fist to his mouth. A muscle in his jaw ticked.

"We're going after the labs tonight," she told him. "We need your help to get us in."

Dark eyes cut toward her. Mayhew laughed humorlessly. "And in return I get a booster shot of the hydrogel. This seems to have played out very well for you, Miss McClain. You've finally given me incentive."

The strain got to her then. "It hasn't bloody well played out in my favor at all! You think I want the plague?" The clock in her head was ticking down again. She had a day or two before the fever hit. If she didn't get a handle on this cure, she'd be out of action.

Then what?

Mayhew wiped the sneer off his face, looking pale. He nodded. "Fine. I'm in. What's the plan?"

"You tell me," she replied. "You're the one who knows the military base inside and out. You're the one who can hack the schematics."

Mayhew smiled. "First step: We need a distraction."

* * *

"Sure you got your shit under control?" Arik asked, his eyes roving over the military labs below them.

Lincoln must have told him about the earlier episode.

Johnny checked all his guns, his hands moving over them with unconscious ease as he mentally prepared. "Locked and loaded."

"Just don't want to be going in there with a ticking time bomb," Arik said coolly.

"I'm fine."

"You don't look fine."

"Can we just focus on the mission?" It was the only thing keeping his heart rate normal.

Arik returned to studying the military base below them. "I get it, you know. When they took Nnedi.... They all told me to mourn her as if she was dead. Nobody could get in and out of the city-states, they said. If I tried, I'd probably die.

"But they didn't know I was a dead man anyway. I never realized how I felt about her until that moment. She was mine. My woman. And I'd let her slip through my fingers. I'd never see her again, unless I got off my goddamned ass. I could feel the warg beneath my skin, all hot rage and blinding pain. I trashed my room and when I came out of it, I thanked my lucky stars nobody had been in there. So I headed for the city, knowing if I stayed they'd have to put me down in the end. I was dead either way; at least if I tried to get her back, we might have a shot."

Johnny glanced toward him. "What's it like in there?"

"Bad."

He scrubbed at his mouth. "It's my worst fear," he admitted softly. "My uncle was a bad man. Broke my will to his when I was barely a kid." He swallowed. "Made me do a lot of things I'm not proud of. You think it can't happen to you, but I know it can."

Arik's face remained implacable. "They test you to see if you're truly broken. Make you do things you don't want to do. Put a bullet in a friend's skull. Break your own arm. Any hesitation, any resistance, and they take you away and throw you back in the hole. Work you over again. It's relentless. You start reacting. Obeying." His voice softened. "It took me three years, but I could feel myself bending to them. It’s easy to pretend you're invulnerable when you're out here. The only thing that saved me was Nnedi. I knew she was in there. If I focused on her, then they couldn't break me. Lincoln doesn't get it—thinks nothing's strong enough to break his will down—but then he’s never faced the reality of it before."

Arik glanced at the watch Mayhew had given him. "We've got five minutes."

"How's that distraction coming along?" Johnny asked.

Arik put a hand to his ear, pressing the comm device Mayhew had given him. "We all sorted?"

Static echoed through both their earpieces. "You don't rush a maestro," Mayhew shot back. "Are you in place?"

"Almost."

"Then get your asses in place."