Chapter 185: Infected (6)
Misha started walking toward him. She moved past one of the overturned chairs and stopped several paces away, close enough to see the pulse along the side of his neck but not close enough to touch him.
「 Mental focus sharpened. 」
His face looked frightened but his body did not.
Her gaze dropped to his hands. There was no tremor, or any restless movement. Nothing she could reasonably call proof of anything. A person did not need to shake simply because they were afraid, and Misha knew better than to diagnose guilt from a few convenient gestures.
She looked back at his face.
Fear sat clearly in his eyes, yet his breathing remained deep and evenly spaced.
Some people became unnaturally still under stress, others dissociated, and some simply had better control over their bodies than most. But the Anderson she knew had never been one of them.
When he got nervous, he talked faster. His fingers found something to pick at, and he had the irritating habit of glancing at whoever he thought might help him. Right now, none of that was there. He looked afraid, but his body said otherwise.
"What?" he asked, irritation creeping into the word. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"You were the one who said Pell was escaping."
Several nearby heads turned their way.
Anderson’s eyes narrowed slightly. "He was. Everyone saw him trying to get away."
"No." The denial came calmly, and Misha immediately followed it before it could sit alone between them. "Corren had him by the wrist. Pell moved away from someone threatening him."
He scoffed. "He was pulling away. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t trying to run."
"So would you if someone was holding you like that." She tilted her head slightly, studying him through the mask. "Tell me, Anderson. Where was he running?"
That stalled him for only a moment. "What?"
"Where was he escaping to?" Misha repeated, and this time she glanced briefly toward the corridor behind him.
Anderson followed her gaze and saw there was no exit there. Only the kitchen wall, a closed storage room, and the short corridor leaning toward the old infirmary.
"You shouted that he was trying to escape," she continued. "So tell me where he was escaping to."
His jaw tightened. "I don’t know. Away."
"Away isn’t a destination." She folded her arms loosely across her chest. "You made his movement sound deliberate, and everyone panicked because of it."
"You’re arguing over wording while he’s dead." His voice rose again, and several people near the back shifted uneasily. "I didn’t put the sword in him."
"No, you didn’t." Misha looked briefly toward Corren, who stood between two Blackthorn members with his head bowed and his face drained of color. "You just gave the person holding it a reason."
That changed the room, and the murmuring thinned.
Dorian did not interrupt but she could feel his attention settle on her. She kept looking at Anderson because now that she had started pulling at the thread, other details refused to sit properly.
"Yesterday, when people argued about splitting into separate rooms, you said staying in groups was safer." Misha watched his expression rather than waiting for the answer, and she caught the faint tightening around his mouth, and yet the rest of him remained almost unnaturally composed.
There was no shift in his stance, no change in his breathing, and not even the restless movement she had come to expect from Anderson whenever a conversation made him uncomfortable.
"So? Everyone was saying different things yesterday."
"This morning, you said Relva’s children should be questioned separately because one of them could be infected," Astrid inserted.
Misha glanced at her, then she returned her gaze to Anterson. "You wanted people grouped when being grouped gave you access to more people, then you wanted them separated when suspicion shifted somewhere else."
"Everyone has changed their mind since we got here." His voice rose once more.
"Yes." She agreed immediately, and the lack of resistance seemed to bother him more than an argument would have. "People change their minds when they get new information. What I’m interested in is what information changed yours?"
The hall had grown quiet enough that Misha could hear someone breathing behind her, quick and uneven in the way frightened people usually breathed when tension thickened.
She looked at Anderson again. His chest rose once, then lowered. It was slow and controlled, still too controlled.
Her attention sharpened.
"Give me your hand," she said, holding one bloody palm out toward him. "I want to check your pulse.
Anderson stepped backward immediately. "Why?"
That interested her more than refusal itself.
"Because I want your pulse."
"Now?" A bitter laugh escaped him. "You think I’m infected because I yelled?"
"No." Misha took another step forward while he remained where he was. "I think you should be more physiologically stressed than you are."
"What does that even mean?"
"It means you’ve been shouting, arguing, and watching someone bleed out less than five meters away." Misha gestured loosely toward his chest. "You respiratory rate barely changed."
His gaze flicked downward instinctively. "So what?" he demanded, looking back up. "Maybe I’m calm."
"You aren’t acting calm."
"That proves nothing."
"You’re right." The answer came easily, and several people shifted because they had clearly expected her to argue. "That’s why I’m not accusing you based on that. I want your pulse."
Anderson looked toward Dorian instead of giving her his wrist. "Didn’t you just say accusations need evidence?"
Dorian’s expression remained unreadable. "She’s gathering it."
Misha extended her hand again. "Wrist. That’s all."
He did not give it to her. The silence that followed became more oppressive than the shouting had been. People had started moving away from him, enough to create an empty ring around the suspected man without anyone consciously admitting they had done it. Fear was doing what fear always did, creating distance.
Anderson looked around, his irritation cracked, and fear came through beneath it. Real fear, or something that looked real enough.
"I’m not infected," he said, and the certainty in his voice had disappeared.
"Then let me check."
"You just one sign doesn’t prove anything."
"I said one sign means nothing by itself. I want more information."
Seeing him refuse, she lowered her hand. "Very well, let’s try another way. How about you run toward the farthest pillar and back?"
Anderson stared at her as though she had lost her mind. "What?"
"Run to the farthest pillar and come back."
"This is ridiculous!"
"Probably." She pointed toward the far support column. "Do it anyway, and do it twice."
One of the Exodus survivors frowned from the edge of the crowd. "What is that supposed to prove?"
"Just do it if you want to prove yourself innocent." Misha kept her attention on him, but from the corner of her eye she caught the slight change in Caius’ posture.
He understood, and that was enough.
Anderson looked like he was calculating what it might reveal. He did not look confused by what the test might mean at all.
Misha had watched patients misunderstand medical instructions for years. People argued over fasting requirements, collection methods, repeat blood draws, and tests that sounded pointless until someone bothered explaining what they were for. Anderson was not asking what she expected to see. He wanted to avoid letting her see it.
"This is absurd!" His mouth hardened.
"Anderson." Dorian spoke from behind her.
The man’s head snapped toward him.
Dorian nodded toward the pillar. "Indulge her."
In the end, Anderson did so. He ran toward the farthest pillar, touched it with one palm, then returned with visible irritation tightening his face. When he met Misha’s gaze, he glared at her before turning around and doing the same route a second time without being asked.
The second run was harder. His breathing had deepened by the time he returned, shoulders rising and falling beneath his shirt, and yet when Misha reached out and closed two fingers around the inside of his wrist, the pulse beneath her fingertips was almost exactly where it had been.
Misha did not move, she did not want to make it too obvious.
Anderson tried to pull away. "Finished?"
She tightened her grip just enough to keep his wrist in place, ignoring the impatience sharpening his voice. Thirty seconds, doubled automatically in her head, while his chest continued working as though he had sprinted far harder than he actually had.
His respiratory rate had climbed, his pulse had not. That was wrong, physiologically wrong.
Misha looked up at him again.
Anderson saw something in the blank white mask that made his mouth tighten. "What?"
She released his wrist and watched the skin where her fingers had pressed. Color returned normally enough, and his hand was warm, so peripheral circulation itself was not failing. That only made the discrepancy worse.
Exercise increased metabolic demand. Muscle required more oxygen, cardiac output rose, heart rate increased to compensate, and even someone in exceptional physical condition should have shown something after two hard runs across the hall.
Anderson was breathing like his body expected exertion, and yet his heart was behaving as though nothing had happened.
"What did you find?" Dorian asked.
Misha kept her attention on Anderson. "His respiratory rate increased, his pulse didn’t."
"So?" Irritation appeared on Anderson’s face.
"Meaning those responses are supposed to change together, but it didn’t."
The man scoffed. "Maybe I’m fit."
"Then you shouldn’t be panting like that."
He suddenly held his breath, and slowly it calmed down. His eyes moved toward Dorian. "You said we weren’t doing this anymore."
"Doing what?"
"Picking on somebody because one person decides they’re strange." Anderson knew exactly where to press. "You just watched what happened. Corren thought he had proof, everyone panicked, and Pell died. Now she decides my heartbeat is wrong and suddenly we’re doing the same thing again?"