Chapter 21 · The Silver Spore Breathes

"Don't touch it."

Huo Yanzhan's hand froze halfway to the jar. I was already across the makeshift lab tent, shoulder-checking one of his men out of the way.

"I said don't."

He straightened. Didn't pull back. "You ordered me."

"Yeah, I did." I slid between him and the specimen table. "Because that thing in the jar? It's still alive."

The tent went quiet. Three of his officers, Jingchuan standing by the entrance with his arm still in a sling, all staring at the glass container like I'd just told them it was about to explode.

Which, in a way, it was.

The blood sample I'd drawn from the dying soldier two hours ago sat in murky suspension, but the silver fleck inside—the spore I'd found under the microscope I'd jury-rigged from polished lenses and sheer desperation—was moving. Slowly. A barely visible pulse, like a heartbeat.

"Alive," Yanzhan repeated. His voice was flat, but I caught the edge. "You said it was a pathogen."

"It is." I grabbed a pair of tongs from the instrument tray. Thoroughly boiled, because I wasn't about to add myself to the body count. "But it's not bacterial. It's not viral. It's something else."

"Then what?"