Code(2)

You may have heard of her. Dr. Temperance Brennan, World-Famous Forensic Anthropologist. Some just call her the Bone Lady. She’s my great-aunt, a wonderful fact I learned only after my mother’s accident, when I moved in with my dad, Kit.

She’s also my role model. My idol. Only everything I ever want to be. I might as well wear a What Would Tempe Do? necklace 24/7. My greatest ambition is to be as good a scientist as Tempe. To solve cases like she does. Leave my mark.

“Okay, pal.” Ben gripped our captive at both ends. “Count your blessings that my friend here is a total softy.”

He took one stride and tossed the mackerel back down to the sea. It hit the water and, with a flick of its tail fin, disappeared from sight.

“We caught him,” I said. “That’s the fun part.” For us, at least. I doubt that fish would agree.

“Whatever.” Ben began packing our gear. “Let’s go find the others. Hi must’ve given up by now.”

I secured hooks to poles, then scanned the ledge for trash. It’d been nice fishing alone with Ben. The two of us didn’t spend much one-on-one time together, and he often went mute when Hi and Shelton were around. Probably because those two never let anyone get a word in edgewise.

Ben was already sixteen, the oldest of the Virals. He even had a driver’s license. That should’ve made him our leader, but he preferred letting me make the decisions. Which was surprising, since I was fourteen and youngest, the only girl, and still learning about our home city of Charleston. But Ben usually let me have my way.

And he’s a cutie, I had to admit, even though I only thought of him as a brother. Ben fascinated me, but he could be maddening, too. It was often impossible to read what was going on behind that intense gaze. I sometimes felt I understood him the least of my packmates.

After securing our tackle, we descended to the forest below. I’d barely touched boot to soil when a gray blur rocketed from the foliage.

“Coop, heel!” I wasn’t anxious for a full-bodied lunge to my midsection. Mindful of his new training, the wolfdog checked his sprint and scampered to sit at my side.

“Good boy.” Ear scratch. “Where’s your family?”

Crackling leaves answered the question. I turned to see Whisper crouching by a large cedar at my back. The gray wolf regarded me quietly, then stepped aside for her mate, a German shepherd I’d named Polo. Beyond them, Coop’s brother, Buster, alternated between chomping and shaking a stick.

“Release,” I said.

Coop bounded back into the bushes, trailed by his fellow canines.

“Hanging around a wolf pack is nuts.” Ben wiped his sweaty brow with a forearm, despite the mild temperature. “Whether it includes your mutt’s mother or not.”

“Don’t be such a baby,” I teased. “They’re practically lapdogs.”

“Lapdogs won’t rip your face off. Or eat you.”

“Hey, we’re a wolf pack, too, remember?” I located the deer run we’d followed to Tern Point and started into the forest. “Why should we be scared of another one?”

Ben didn’t answer. He still wasn’t comfortable with the truth. Not like me.

Here’s the deal. Last spring, my friends and I got zapped by a nasty supervirus. Me. Hiram. Shelton. Ben. And my wolfdog, Coop, of course.

The culprit was a designer pathogen created by Dr. Marcus Karsten, my father’s former boss at the Loggerhead Island Research Institute. In a reckless attempt to strike it rich, Karsten combined DNA from two different types of parvovirus, accidentally creating a brand-new strain. A doozy.

Unfortunately for us, this vicious little germ was contagious to humans. We were infected while rescuing Coop, who’d been abducted by Karsten for use as a test subject.

First came the sickness. Headaches. Fevers. Blackouts. You name it.

The changes followed. We began to evolve. Or devolve.

Even now, I find it hard to describe. My mind twists and bends, sounding out new depths in my subconscious. My senses blast into hyperdrive, becoming more acute than humanly possible.

And sometimes I lose control, succumbing to primal instincts. Foreign impulses. Animal urges to hunt, or feed, or fight. It’s the same with the others. Mostly.

The illness eventually passed, but not the changes. Our bodies had been transformed. The tiny viral invader had rewritten our genetic code, inserting canine DNA into human double helixes.

Shifting us. Hiding the wolf inside our cellular blueprint.

Welding us together as a pack.

Now we’re Viral. To the core.

Scary thing is, we don’t know if the sickness is truly finished. Or if the alterations are permanent. Could the effects grow more intense? Will they fade over time? No idea. With Karsten gone, so was our only link to the virus.

That’s not to say we’ve given up. We don’t have the answers, but we intend to find them. How? Still working on that.

Ben and I continued along the trail to a small clearing.

Beep! Beep!

Ben threw me a knowing glance. My eyes rolled in response. Obviously, Hi was still at it.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

Entering the meadow, I heard agitated voices.

“How much longer?” Shelton Devers pushed black-framed glasses up the bridge of his nose. “This stopped being interesting before it started.”

Shelton is short and skinny, with dark chocolate skin and features common on the streets of Kyoto. Black father. Asian mother. You get the picture.