Must be a migraine, Serra looks like hell.
Hyeopil's blank eyes were back at her again, staring at her like some sort of detective that needed answers... or he knows something they didn't.
"What is it, Sungjoon?" Sicheng asked abruptly. "What's eating you? You know something you're not telling us?"
Sungjoon stared at them for a moment, then shook his head. "No, nothing like that. I just... I have a bad feeling. Or rather, a feeling that something bad is going to happen."
"Little late, don'tcha think?" Sicheng said, grinning. "Where were you when we got into the raft?"
Sungjoon half-smiled in response, rubbing the back of his neck. "Thank you, Sicheng, I'd almost forgotten. So, it's decided then. Let's solve our next puzzle, shall we? Oh, Sunoo, take a look at Serra's eye while we're at it, it's giving her some trouble."
They stood up and moved toward the back of the room, for the table in the northwest corner marked with a blue nine. Doyoung and Sunoo had already looked when they'd found the room, though there was no clue as to what the test was- a small, blank monitor screen with a ten-key hooked to it sat on the metal table, an enigma.
Sunoo caught a glimpse of Hyeopil who still in his spot and just staring at Serra. He frowned and motioned for Serra to sit on the chair in front of test ten, the purpose of which also escaped
her- it consisted of a circuit board wired to a plank and what looked like a pair of tweezers connected to it by a black wire.
Sunoo bent down to take a look, frowning. The woman's right eye was extremely irritated, the pale blue cornea floating in a sea of red.
Her eyelid had a bruised, swollen look.
He turned to ask for Sungjoon's flashlight and saw that as he sat down in front of the scheduled test, the screen flickered on, several lines of type appearing in the center of the monitor.
"Some kind of motion sensor- " Doyoung started to say, but Sungjoon held up his hand suddenly, reading aloud what had appeared on the screen in a rapid, anxious voice.
"As I was going to Saint Ives, I met a man with seven wives... the seven wives had seven sacks, the seven sacks held seven cats- the seven cats had seven kits; kits, cats, sacks, wives, how many were going to Saint Ives?"
There was a digital readout on the screen, showing 00:49 and counting down. In the time it had taken Sungjoon to read the question, eleven seconds had already ticked off the clock.
Sungjoon stared at the screen, his thoughts racing furiously as the team leaned in behind him.
Tension radiated from them, and Sungjoon felt a sudden prickle of sweat break out across his forehead.
Don't count, that was the clue. But what does it mean?
"Twenty-eight," Sicheng said quickly. "No, wait, twenty-nine, including the man- " Doyoung cut him off, talking just as fast. :But if they had seven kittens each, that would be forty-nine plus twenty-one, seventy, seventy-one with the man."
"But the message said don't count," Serra said. "If you're not supposed to count- does that mean don't add, or... wait, there's the man with the wives and the speaker, that's another one- "
Thirty-two seconds had elapsed. Sungjoon's hand hovered over the key pad.
Don't count, don't count, don't-
"One," Hyeopil said suddenly after his long silent and distant stare to Serra, voice calm and he doesn't sound like hurrying like them. "As I was going to Saint Ives- it doesn't say where the man with the wives was going. That's what it means, the clue- don't count anyone except the one who was going to Saint Ives,"
"Yes, it makes sense, a trick question- "
They had twenty seconds left.
"Anyone disagree?" Sungjoon asked sharply.
No answer.
Sungjoon hit the key, entered it and the countdown stopped, sixteen seconds to spare.
The screen turned itself off.
From somewhere overhead, the now familiar chime sounded. Sungjoon exhaled, leaning back in the chair.
"Thank you, Hyeopil! You are the damn puzzle master here,"
Sungjoon turned around to tell him as much, but he was already staring Serra again as Sunoo bending to examine Serra's eye, fixated on his patient.
"I need a flashlight," he said, barely glancing around as Sicheng handed his to him.
Sunoo turned it on, shining it into Serra's eye as the rest of them looked on silently, watching them.
Serra didn't look well; there were dark circles under her eyes, and her skin had gone from pale to almost sickly.
"It's pretty inflamed... look up. Down. Left and right? Does it feel like there's something rubbing it, or is it more like a burn?"
"Actually, more like an itch," Serra said. "Like a mosquito bite times ten. I've been scratching it, though, that might be why it's so red."
Sunoo turned off the torch, frowning. "I don't see anything. The other one looks irritated, too... did it just start itching all of a sudden, or did you touch it, first?"
Serra shook her head. "I don't remember. It just started itching, I guess."
A look of sharp, almost violent intensity flashed across Hyeopil's face. Finally moving close in front of Serra, leaning his face close- too close that the woman only do was avoid eye contact at him.
"Before or after you were in room 101?" He spoke by his own.
Sungjoon felt a cold hand clutch at his heart. Serra suddenly looked worried.
"After." He snap then continue, face still close. "You touch anything while you were in there. The gurney. There was a bloodstain on the gurney and you was thinking about and you touched it."
Serra's red eyes widened in sudden horror, and when she spoke, it was a breathless, quivering
whisper.
"Oh, Jesus, I didn't even think about it, it was dry and I, my hand wasn't cut and oh my God, I got a
headache right after my eye started itching- "
Sunoo put his hands on Serra's shoulders, squeezing them tightly.
"Serra, take a deep breath. Deep breath, okay? It may be that your eye just itches and you have a headache, so don't jump to conclusions here, we don't know anything for sure." Sunoo's voice was
low and soothing, his manner direct.
Serra blew out a shaky breath and nodded. "If her hand wasn't cut... " Sicheng started nervously.
Serra answered him, her pale features composed but her voice trembling slightly.
"Viruses can get into the body through mucous membranes. Nose, ears... eyes. I knew that. I knew that but I didn't think about it, I... wasn't thinking about it."
Hyeopil back away and examine her eyes. "Felt your anger... your mood. If you felt over moody and angry- there's a positive that you are infected. For now, I can't feel any X0-virus in this facility so you might get the A-virus."
She looked up at Hyeopil, and Sungjoon could see that she was struggling to maintain her composure.
"If I am infected, how long? How long before I become... incapacitated?"
Sunoo shook his head. "I don't know," he said softly.
Sungjoon felt as though a raging blackness had enveloped him, a cloud of fear and worry and guilt so vast that it threatened to overwhelm his ability to move, even to think.
His fault. His responsibility.

"There's a vaccine, right?" Sicheng asked, his dark gaze darting between Hyeopil and Sunoo. "That agent supposed to work on the vaccine! And how the hell he know that Serra touch anything?! How he can't feel the X0-virus?! How he can be so sure?!" he yelled, brushing his hair in frustration. "There's a cure, wouldn't they have a shot or something here if someone got it by accident? They'd have to, wouldn't they?"
Sungjoon felt a sudden surge of desperate hope.
"Is it possible?" he asked Hyeopil quickly.
The agent nodded, slowly at first and sigh. "Yeah, it's possible. It's probable, they created it... I can create some since that's why I'm here." He looked at Sungjoon seriously, urgently. "We have to find the main lab, where they synthesized the virus, and quickly. If I can developed a cure, that's where the information would be... " He trailed off, and Sungjoon could see what he'd left unspoken in his troubled gaze; if there was a
cure. If he can create a cure.
If Dr. Monika Chu hadn't taken the information there, too.
If they could find it in time.
"Amazon's message," Doyoung said. "In that note, he said we should destroy the lab- maybe he left us a map, or directions."
Sungjoon stood up, his hope building. "Serra, are you feeling well enough to- "
"Yes," she said, cutting him off, standing up. "Yes, let's go."
Her red eyes were bright with fervent intensity, a mix of despair and wild hope that made Sungjoon's heart ache to see.
"Double time," he said, already turning for the door. "Let's move."
They quickly jogged for the front of the building, Sicheng's jaw clenched, his thoughts a grimly determined loop of angry intention.
No way some damn bug is taking Serra down, no chance, and if he find the bastard who set this nightmare up she's Dead, capital D, Dead meat.
Not Serra, no way in hell.
They reached the front door and silently drew weapons, checking them, tensely impatient for Sungjoon to give the signal.
Serra, always so cool and collected in times of stress, had a shocked vagueness about her, like she'd just been kicked in the gut and hadn't yet managed to take a breath.
It was the same look that Sicheng had seen time and again on the faces of disaster survivors- the haunted disbelief in the eyes, the slack and terrible blankness of expression that spoke of a yawning emptiness deep inside.
It hurt him to see her like that, hurt him and made him even angrier. Serra wasn't supposed to look like that.
"I lead, Sicheng in back, straight line," Sungjoon said softly.
Sicheng saw that he looked almost as freaked as Serra, though in a different way.
It was guilt gnawing at their captain, he could see it in his reluctant gaze, the tight set of his mouth.
Sicheng wished he could tell him that blaming himself was wrong, but there wasn't time and he didn't have the right words for it. Sungjoon would have to take care of himself, just as they all would.
"Ready? Go."
Sungjoon pushed the door open and then they were slipping through, back into the gentle hiss of waves and the pale blue light of the moon.
Sungjoon, then Serra, Doyoung, Sunoo, Hyeopil and finally Sicheng, crouched and running across the packed dirt of the open compound.
There was darkness and the scent of pine, of salt, but Sicheng's soldier mind wasn't telling him anything he didn't already know as they pounded through the shadows.
There was only anger, and fear for Serra making the sudden blast of M-16 fire a total surprise.
"Shit!"
Sicheng dove for the ground as the thundering rattle opened up to their right, saw that they were just over halfway to block E as he rolled and started to fire.
Then the air was filled with the blast of nine-millimeter rounds, crashing over the steady pulse of automatic rifles.
He found the muzzle flashes at three o'clock and jerked the gun around, squeezing the trigger six, seven, eight times.
The stutter of orange-white light blocked the shooters from view but he saw one of the flashes disappear, heard the clatter decrease and a rage overtook him, not the 'soldier mind' but a blinding, screaming fury at the diseased attackers that far exceeded any he’d ever known.
They wanted Serra to die, those numb, brainless nightmares wanted to stop them from saving her.
A strange, feral howl beat at his ears as he pushed away from the dusty earth and then he was standing, running, firing.
Only when he heard the shouts of the others, the Berettas except for his holding fire, did he realize that the howl was coming from him. Sicheng ran forward, screaming as he fired again and again at the things that meant to slow them up, to kill them, to claim Serra as one of their own.
His thoughts were no longer words, just an endless, formless negative a denial of their existence and what had created them.
He charged ahead, not seeing that they had stopped firing, that they were falling, that the shadows had fallen silent except for the thunder of his semi and the scream that poured from his shaking body.
Then he was standing over them and the Beretta had stopped crashing and jumping, even though he still pulled the trigger.
Three of them, white where there was no red, eyes bursts covering their pitiful, wasted forms.
One of them had a face that was a mass of puckered scar tissue with eyes, twisting white risers of gnarled skin except for where a fresh, bloody hole had punched through its forehead.
Another, one eye spattered against its withered cheek, pooling viscous fluid in the rotting cup of its ear.

The third was still alive. Half of its throat was gone, tattered to pulp, and its mouth opened and closed soundlessly, opened and closed, its filmed dark eyes blinking slowly up at him.
He was dry-firing, the scream dying away in his ragged throat. It was the sound of the hammer falling uselessly against hot metal that finally released him from the rage that, and the slow, helpless blink of the wretched thing at his feet.
It didn't know what it was.
It didn't know who they were.
Once it had been a man, and now it was
rotting garbage with a gun and a mission it couldn't possibly understand.
They took his soul...
"Sicheng?"
A warm hand on his back, Serra's voice low and easy next to him. Doyoung and Sungjoon stepped into view, staring down at the gaping, blinking shell of humanity in the shaded moonlight, the last remnant of an experiment in madness.
"Yeah," he whispered. "Yeah, I'm here."
Sungjoon pointed his Beretta on the monster's skull where the big eye should be and spoke softly. "Stand back."
Sicheng turned away, started walking back for their last destination with Serra at his side, Sunoo's slight form in front of him, Hyeopil was nowhere to be found- probably already in the block E.
The shot was incredibly loud, a booming crack that seemed to shake the ground beneath their feet.
Then Sungjoon and Doyoung were with them and without speaking, they broke into a jog for block E, moving quickly through the emptiness that had claimed the night.
The SBHsquads were no more but the disease
that made them might even now be coursing through Serra's body, turning her into a eyed-creature with no mind, no soul, doomed to a fate worse than death.
Sicheng picked up speed, silently swearing to himself that if they found this Dr. Chu, she was going to be awfully damned sorry that they did.

The block E was no different than the first four they'd encountered, as bland and industrial and stale as the rest of them, a study in concrete efficiency.
They moved quickly through the stuffy halls, turning on lights as they went, searching for the room that held the final clue to Dr. Amazon's secret.
It didn't take long; almost half of the structure was taken up by an indoor shooting range, where Sungjoon had found boxes of loaded M-16 mags but no rifles to go with them.
Sicheng had asked if he should retrieve the SBHsquad's weapons, which Sunoo promptly vetoed. The rifles were hot, probably crawling with virus.
Like Sunoo's blood by now, streams of replicating virions bursting from cells, searching for new cells to attach to and use and destroy.
"Here!" Doyoung called from farther down the winding corridor, and Sunoo hurried toward him, Serra and Sicheng not far behind.
Sungjoon was already standing with Doyoung by the closed door, the red, green, and blue triangles a sign that they'd hit on the right room.
Doyoung's gaze seemed to seek him out, but was blank of all emotion except worry. Sunoo didn't mind, noted it only absently.
Serra's infection, Sicheng's insane run at the SBHsquad- there wasn't room in him for anything but the need to find the lab, to find help for Serra.
Hyeopil was still nowhere to be found. Sunoo wondered and worried of where he was at right now.
Doyoung opened the door and they filed inside, Sunko continuing to watch Serra closely for signs that the virus had progressed and wondering what he should do with the information she'd picked up so far about the amplification time.
So far, her mood was still fine.
He didn't really have any doubts that Serra had been exposed, and knew that no one else did, either but what should he say?
Do he tell her that it might only take hours? Do he pull Sungjoon aside? If there's a cure, he has to get it before the damage is too great, before it starts to fry her brain before it dumps so much dopamine into her that she stops being Serra and becomes something else.
His hope, their hope was on Hyeopil. It seems that he always know what to do next.
If Hyeopil can handle the situation but Sunoo didn't know how to handle it.
They were already doing all that they could, as fast as they could, and he didn't know enough about the A-Virus to assume anything.
He also didn't want to see Serra any more terrified than she was already. The woman was doing her best to control it, but it was obvious that she was on the edge of a breakdown, from the desperation in her bloodred eyes to the growing tremor of her hands. And the SBHsquads had almost certainly been injected with much larger amounts than Serra had been exposed to; maybe she had days, first symptoms in less than an hour?
Sunoo have to tell her, to warn her and everyone
else of what could happen. Soon.
He pushed the thought aside almost frantically, looking around at the room they'd entered. It was smaller than the test chambers they'd come across, and emptier.
There was a long meeting table pushed to the back, a half dozen chairs behind it. In the front of the room was a small shelf coming off the wall,
only a few feet long and a foot deep.
There were three large buttons on the flat surface, red, green, and blue.
The wall behind the shelf was tiled in large, smooth gray tiles made from some kind of industrial plastic.
"That's it," Doyoung said. "Blue to access."
With barely a second's hesitation, Sungjoon walked to the counter and pushed the blue button and a woman's voice spoke coolly from a hidden speaker above, startling them.
It was a recording, the bland tone eerily reminding Sunoo of the final moments at the Shin estate, the triggering system tape.
"Blue series completed. Access reward."
One of the tiles behind the shelf slid away, revealing a dark recess set into the concrete. As Sungjoon reached into the hidden space, Sunoo felt a surge of frustrated anger and disgust for G. Inc., for what he realized they had done.
It was despicable.
All those tests, all that work; set up to dole out treats to A-Virus victims. Get through the red series, good dog, here's their bone and what was their reward, for making it through the tests?
A piece of meat?
Drugs, to ease their hunger?
Maybe a brand new weapon for them to train with?
Did they even understand what they'd been doing?
He saw the same curled sneers of horror and disgust on the faces of the others and saw the same growing dismay as they watched Sungjoon pull a single tiny item from the recess, what looked like a credit card with a slip of paper stuck to one side.
They gathered around him as he held the item up, his dark gaze heavy with an almost manic disappointment.
It was a light green key card, the kind used to open electronic doors, blank except for a magnetic strip and the scrawled words on the small square of paper said only: LIGHTHOUSE-ACCESS 143-SOUTHWEST/EAST.