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“What did she replace their venom with?”

“The inland taipan’s.”

I remembered a nature show I’d watched when I was fourteen. The inland taipan snake, endemic to Australia, carries the most potent venom in the world. One bite’s worth is sufficient to kill a hundred grown men. It contains neurotoxins, hemotoxins, mycotoxins, nephrotoxins, and hemorrhagins.

The sound of a hornet at my right ear was getting louder.

The other one was drifting closer as well.

They had target-locked me.

Their stingers looked like they could punch through steel.

I saw Nadine’s plan—it was a good one. Once the hornets had stung me, she would pull the emergency brake, bringing the pod to a halt under one of the exit platforms. She would escape through the ceiling hatch, leaving me here to die.

I sidelined the fear, dividing my consciousness four ways: hornet one, hornet two, Nadine, and the lights of the Philadelphia suburbs that were racing toward us.

The hornets were moving in to attack, and I was decelerating my perception of time, seeing everything now.

Speed: 589 mph.

Time to destination: 15 minutes.

Racing across pastureland, an old farmhouse glowing in the distance.

Nadine, wide-eyed, in the throes of eight conflicting emotions, but mainly fear and guilt.

Thinking I had nothing to swat the hornets with, and if those stingers nailed me—just one of them, anywhere—I was done. They were a half-inch long, and would easily penetrate my clothing.

I became very still.

If you do not fasten your seatbelt, you will be fined five hundred dollars and barred from future travel on a Virgin hyperloop.

I slowly raised my arms now, the hornets two inches from my skin, their stingers arcing toward my face and neck.

I watched my thumbs and forefingers gently close around their abdomens.

They writhed, buzzing maniacally, straining to stab my hands, the tips of their stingers millimeters from my epidermis.

I watched the shock flood through Nadine’s face.

As her left hand reached up to release her shoulder harness, I bit the heads off the hornets, flicked the business ends of their bodies across the pod, and moved out of the way as Nadine launched herself at me.

She crashed into my seat and tried to right herself, but I was already on her, my right hand squeezing her throat, her eyes bulging, her hands clawing at my face.

“Be still,” I said.

She kept fighting.

“Be still!”

She calmed herself. I eased my pressure around her neck but didn’t let go. I glanced at my phone, praying Edwin had sent the new list. He had. Seventeen contenders.

“AJ Vaccines.” I studied her face more closely than I’d ever studied anything in my life. “Alexion. BioCryst. Ennogen.”

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“InGenX.”

She closed her eyes and looked away from me. I leaned in closer, pinning her to my seat. “Open your eyes, Nadine.” She wouldn’t. I squeezed. “Look at me!” She looked at me. I continued reciting the list of companies Edwin had sent. “Kora Healthcare.” No. “Leyden Delta.” No. “Merck. Omega. Phoenix Labs.”

Tears were running down her face.

“Ridge Pharma. Stirling-Anders. Teva Pharmaceuticals. Tor. Underell Solutions. Vifor. Zentiva.”

“I guess you’ll have to kill me.”

I sat on her lap, clutched her throat with one hand, her face with the other—a face I had laughed and cried with. A face that had—the last time I’d seen it before my life was upended—comforted me as I grieved in front of a memorial my actions had played a part in building.

“Open your eyes.” I said the names faster this time. “AJ Vaccines, Alexion, BioCryst, Ennogen, InGenX, Kora Healthcare, Leyden Delta, Merck, Omega, Phoenix Labs, Ridge Pharma, Stirling-Anders, Teva, Tor, Underell Solutions, Vifor, Zentiva.”

And again, faster…

“AJVaccinesAlexionBioCrystEnnogenInGenXKoraLeydenDeltaMerckOmega.”

I stopped.

Nadine stared up at me.

Trembling.

“It’s Omega.”

She said nothing.

I let go of her throat and threw myself back into her seat. I had been reasonably confident that Omega Laboratories had elicited a reaction—her racing pulse had increased 5 bpm, her systolic blood pressure spiking. But the look on her tear-stained face as she slumped back into my seat and stared out the window said everything.

I’ve failed.

I pulled out my phone and texted Edwin:

It’s Omega. Get me floor plans for the entire building.



I looked at Nadine, said, “If you’d gone through with helping Kara, it would’ve destroyed you.”

“You’re probably right.”

Our speed had slowed to 250 mph, and out the window, I could see the skyline of New York City—or what remained of it—glowing in the night.





NYPD WAS WAITING FOR us at the gate in Grand Central, and as they cuffed Nadine, Edwin stepped out of his pod, which had been a few minutes behind ours.

He walked over, looking Nadine up and down with a quiet fury that said more than his words ever could. As I watched them lead her away, I feared what would become of her. Would Edwin take her to a black site for study like he’d done with me? Subject her to virtual interrogation? She deserved better than what had happened to me. I couldn’t believe it had come to this with her, but I had to push that grief away for now.