'You did what?' I demanded.

'We just sort of took it,' he replied. 'It's some kind of mutant. It bit Tom, he's really sick!'

'Where is he now?' I pulled my phone out my pocket, I had Nick on speed dial but in all honestly his lab wasn't all that far away from here and I knew it wouldn't take too much longer to reach him in person. So I set off and Duncan followed after me.

'I don't know. You're not calling the police, are you?'

'Honestly, the police would be better.' I threw open the medical block doors, storming out to cross the pond and head towards the palaeontology building. The sound of the line connecting beeped through my phone, 'Nick?'

'Yep, hello,' he returned, 'I was just about to set off to your lab, but I realised you probably aren't in the physics block, are you in medical?'

'I'm coming to find you,' I said, 'we've got a huge problem.'

'I'm really sorry,' Duncan moaned. I side-eyed him.

'Duncan, call Connor.' Then back into the phone I directed, 'I'll meet you at the car Nick.'

It was chorus of doors slamming up and down the street as we all jumped out the vehicles and crossed the road towards Tom and Duncan's flat.

'How infectious is this?' Ryan yelled from the doorway as we walked down the pavement.

'This thing isn't a virus,' I called back, 'it's a parasite and Tom's the host. We have to isolate him before he can pass it onto anyone else. Whatever you do when you go in there don't let him come anywhere near you.'

Ryan nodded back at me, sending his men into the house first then following them in.

'And this is the last place anyone saw him?' Nick questioned as he stepped over the threshold into the hallway of the house.

'Yeah,' I responded, 'but that was an hour ago, the chances of him still being here are slim.'

'How long has he got?' When I didn't respond, Nick turned back to look at me and read the expression on my face. 'Oh, Anna...'

I shrugged. 'If he's here...'

'Tom? Tom? Where are you mate?'

I held Nicks gaze a little longer before I tore my eyes away and forced myself to perk up.

The lounge was just as messy as the last time we'd been here. It must have been a few months since Connor and I had been here last. We used to hang out all the time. The five of us. The brotherhood, we'd called it and then Connor started referring to us as the Justice League. He gave us all nicknames.

Soldiers came turning back from the rooms, shaking their heads, looking hopefully at one another like each one of them was hoping someone else had found him.

My stomach twisted again. 'Where is he?' I asked. I looked to Ryan. With a final shake of his head in denial, I swore under my breath.

'Which one is his bedroom?' Nick asked.

'This way.' I lead him down the hallway to the bedrooms, where, as we pushed the door open, we found Stephen crouched there on the ground in front of the bed.

'You know those movies when you think the killers finally dead and then all of a sudden they just jump up again.'

'Yeah,' Ryan agreed, appearing behind us and startling me, 'I hate those films.'

'Me too,' Stephen said. I crouched down beside him and saw his head turn towards me through my peripherals. 'After you.'

I slowly turned my own head to meet his gaze. Then, looking back to the dodo, I dropped my knees to the carpet and crawled slowly towards it. I lifted my hand above its head.

Then I hit it.

There was nothing.

'It's dead,' I said.

'Are you sure?' Nick asked.

'Pretty sure. Trust me, I'm a doctor. Don't tell anyone I hit it like that, that's not how you're supposed to check an anything's vitals.' Then, after hitting it a second time just to be safe, I sat back on my heels. 'Alright.' I stood up, lifting the bed from the floor and standing it on its side. 'Bag it up, but be careful!'

But something caught my eye in the piles of mess beneath Tom's bed. My face dropped of its own accord. I had never been expecting to find women's underwear under there. It wasn't like it was hidden either, it was a small pile on top of a couple of pairs of boxer shorts.

Connor must have read my expression because a moment later he stopped beside me and stared down at bra and matching pair of pants.

He blinked a few times in confusion, then suddenly lifted his head and looked at me wide eyed. His mouth fell open. 'Is that your underwear?' he said without really thinking. Suddenly, everyone was interesting in where I was pointing, and unabashedly Stephen took a step forward to peer down into the pile. 'Have– have you and Tom been...' He trailed off. But I knew where he was going.

'No of course I haven't been fucking Tom,' I returned. 'It's not mine.'

Duncan choked.

It was far too suspicious. I turned my head to where he was standing in the doorway. All it took was a look.

'I saw him steal it from your drawer!' he blurted.

'What?'

'It was like three summers ago when we all lived with you and–'

'Why didn't you stop him?'

'He... made some good points.'

It was my turn to be outraged. 'Excuse me?'

'It looked really soft.'

I turned to Connor. 'Did you know about this?'

'Of course I didn't. I'd have caved his bloody head in if I'd had any idea he was stealing your underwear.'

Nick cleared his throat, scratching his eyebrow to try and cover his amusement. I looked at him. The amusement disappeared from his expression.

'But, Anna, it's Tom,' Connor continued.

I knew what he meant by that. He hadn't meant anything by it. Tom was always awkward and never had much luck with the ladies. Girls had tended to walk all over him in sixth form. He was way too nice and way too gentle to stand up for himself. He was probably incredibly sexually frustrated.

I turned my attention quickly to Duncan, now seriously considering if this was why he'd never quite been able to look me in the eye. 'What happened?'

'Well,' he spluttered, blushing bright red and clearing his throat, 'I imagine Tom probably used your um... panties whilst he was–'

'With the dodo!'

He cleared his throat again. 'Well, um, one minute it was friendly and the next it just went crazy.'

'The parasite changes the Dodo's behaviour,' I explained to him, 'to suit its own purposes.'

'Which were?' Ryan asked. I'd almost forgotten about all the other men in the room and I was glad that I was cross because I didn't have the energy to feel any tinges of embarrassment too.

'To reproduce,' I finished. 'That's why it bit Tom. So, it can incubate its eggs in a new host. It's not safe to be around him.'

'That's why it bit Tom?' Duncan questioned.

'Where?'

'On his wrist.'

I looked at Nick and shook my head. The look in his eyes told me he understood. I stretched out a hand and took a hold of Connor's forearm.

'I'm sorry,' Nick said. He probably knew, I don't know how, but he knew I didn't want to be the one to say it to my cousin. 'Maybe if we'd got to him straight away then he'll have stood a chance.'

Connor frowned. 'What?' his head whipped down to me. 'A? What are you saying?'

I took a deep breath. 'We're not giving up on him,' I assured him. 'But you need to know the probability of the situation and it's likely that once we find him there wont be anything we can do to stop the parasite.'

'He's...'

'Connor,' I said. 'Lets find him before he hurts anyone.' I held his gaze for a moment. Then he nodded back at me. 'The parasite is light sensitive so wherever Tom is he's going to be trying to stay in the dark,' I elaborated, pointing back up to the light bulb above my head. I was met with several confused looks in return. I cocked my head, 'don't tell me no one else had noticed that.' The silence was an answer in itself. 'Right,' I concluded.

Stephen sighed, stepping forward to pick up the dead Dodo and put it into the bag one of Ryan's men was holding out for him.

'We'll send this back to the lab,' he said.

'No,' I interposed, 'I mean, not the one at the home office, anyway, I want to take it back to uni.'

'Any reason why?'

'Well, I'm halfway through some other stuff there.' I followed the man with the bag back through the house, the others following behind. 'Have you got a minute, Nick?'

Nick nodded his head. 'I have to go back to the home office to explain how we let Helen get away. I'll take Connor and the other one with me. Someone should probably be responsible for them in the meantime. He'll need to be questioned.' I nodded knowingly. 'What was the results on your blood?'

'I didn't have time to wait for it. It should be ready by the time I get back. I put it on a 45 cycle–' Then, realising he wouldn't know what that meant, I corrected myself and lowered my voice so that the others couldn't hear us, 'I'm separating it. Antibodies appear in white blood cells, B lymphocytes, so if it was a vaccine Helen put into me that's where I'll find it a trace of it.'

I stepped out the front door and onto the street, ready to follow the dead Dodo back to the car I would be driving back to uni in.

'Okay. Call me when you know something.'

I nodded, and started walking towards my vehicle, 'you know I will,' I responded.

I went to the medical building first, since I knew once I had the bagged Dodo with me I wouldn't want to carry it in to any sterile areas and contaminate them. I put the blood in my pocket, traced the line of stitches inside my cheek with my tongue, and headed back to the car to take the Dodo with me to Cutter's lab.

Ordinarily, I'd take something like this back to the room at the home office, with all of the equipment I needed to do a proper post-mortem or head down to the hospital and ask the home office to facilitate the use of a morgue where I wouldn't be worried about somebody stumbling in on classified information, but Cutter's lab was adequately equipped, and more than that, had the right sort of microscope for looking at my blood.

I set up the dodo first. Cleaned it, laid it out on the tray and set up my tools before I finally got around to taking the blood from my pocket.

Reaching for the microscope and settling on the nearest stool, I dropped a pipette into the blood mixture to squeeze some onto a slide. I put a cover slip over the top.

Just as I lowered my eye to the eyepiece, my phone started to ring.

'Hello?' I put one eye to the glass and shut the other.

'It's me,' Nick called out from the other end, 'I just thought I'd let you know Tom's bitten a surgeon, he's going to need to go in for surgery, but he should be okay.'

'So, you've found him, he's at the hospital?'

'No,' Nick denied, 'he was here, but he's not anymore. Look, Stephen's with Connor and the other guy now, we're trying to work out where Tom's next stop will be. He knew he was sick, so he went to the hospital, it shows there's still something in him that's thinking rationally.'

'That's hopeful.'

'There's something else you should know. According to the surgeon Tom tried to pull his trousers down.'

I sat back from the microscope. 'Oh,' I said. Then I sighed. 'Oh... No, it makes sense.'

'Huh?'

'So if Tom's been to the hospital we know the parasite doesn't completely take over it's host's mind right away. But we know it's effecting his behaviour, causing him to lash out.' I shut my eyes and rubbed my forehead. I was starting to get a headache. 'We also know this parasite's main objective is to reproduce. Combine that instinct with a sexually repressed testosterone filled guy in his 20's and he's becoming dangerous. We've got to find him; he's 6 foot 2 and that parasite is going to make him much stronger than usual, and now he's been fought off once the chances are next time he's going to go for a much easier target. A lot of women wouldn't stand a chance.'

I heard Nick sigh from the other end. 'We're trying our best to find him.'

'I know. And you will.'

There was a noise behind me and I turned to glance over my shoulder but I couldn't see anything through the translucent vinyl curtain. I must have left the door open. A breeze ruffled the plastic. I turned back. 'How are the others?'

'Lester's blaming Helen for releasing a pandemic on us. He thinks she did this deliberately.'

'Do you?'

'I don't know what to think,' he replied, 'but I know it's never a good thing to be agreeing with Lester.'

I hummed. 'Well, there's definitely something in this blood,' I explained. 'I don't know what yet, I'm gonna have to run some more tests to see if these are antibodies or pathogens.'

Nick said okay, but I immediately assumed he didn't really know what I was taking about again and so, with another glance back around at the dodo I sighed.

'You okay?' he asked.

'Yeah, I just-'I cut myself off.

'Hey, you've had a really hard day already, if you want to go home, get some rest...'

'No, I don't need to do that, it's just...'

'Tom?'

'Yeah.'

'I'm so sorry.'

'I know. Me too. I just feel bad for Connor, you know. They've been best friends since they were sixteen and... its not fair. This could... this could be it for him. This could be the tragedy he doesn't come back from.'

'He'll be okay.'

I sighed. 'We don't know that.'

'We do,' he returned. 'Because he's got us.'

I nodded. 'Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Listen I'm gonna... I should cut up the dodo, um- I'll call. If there's any developments or something–'

The noise sounded again behind me and this time I whipped my head around, slightly more paranoid about it. I got up off the stool.

'Yeah, okay, see you soon, Anna.'

'Yeah, see you soon...' I responded slowly, 'bye...' I hung up the phone, leaning all the while further round towards the edge of the curtain to the gap.

Just before my eyes reached it the lights went off. I jumped, momentarily turning my attention up as my heartrate spiked before I lowered my eyes to the gap in the curtain. Except now there was someone on the other side.

'Put the phone down,' he said.

It was Tom's voice, or at least it sounded almost like Tom's voice. I took a hold of the edge of one of the sheets of plastic and pulled it aside. I felt my breath catch in my throat.