"No tackling, please. I promise to be a good patient. I'll even let you carry me to bed later if you insist." She sighs.

"It's been a rough couple months at home, too. That's all it's been since the last time I saw you. Strange to think. Not even two months. A month and a half. We spent awhile in a mad scientist's secret lair, then Mahir and I went off looking for an identity forger so everyone from our team but me could go into hiding. The CDC cloned my dead boss in an effort to manipulate my living one. She escaped and found us before they could make a duplicate with behavioral modifications. And we just learned that the president's family have been hostages to force him into helping cover up the fact that our virus is incurable."

Maggie reaches up to rest her hand on Duke's over her shoulder. "It's all tangled up with my immune system. If it were cured, I'd die of the first germs to come along. Glad I wished for a big dog instead, when the Agents granted presents back in Teleios." It was probably a near thing. If she'd been coherent rather than making wishes in dreams, she very well might have wished herself dead without ever knowing what was about to happen.