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A violent, wet retching sound cuts me off. I close my eyes, and The Compliance Department—unbidden—starts mapping the bathroom. The proximity of her toothbrush to the porcelain. The microscopic plume of aerosolized pathogens currently coating every surface.

I have never been so thankful that we both prefer to have our own spaces when we travel together.

“I’m fine,” she calls weakly. Her voice has the thin, reedy quality of someone whose electrolytes are currently cratering.

I shift my weight, staring at the thin line of light under the door. “You don’t sound fine. Do you need water? I can cancel. We don’t have to⁠—”

“I am not dying,” she rasps. A quiet, controlled exhale follows. “I’m just... purging. Go.”

I glance down at my hand on the doorknob. My skin is touching the brass. The brass that she touched likely a few minutes ago. The trajectory of contamination is a straight, terrifying line: Door handle. Epidermis. Mucous membrane. I yank my hand back and wipe it on my jeans. I immediately regret it. Now the virus is in the denim fibers. I’m essentially wearing the infection.

“You could be dehydrated,” I say instead. “Or febrile. Or⁠—”

“Oh my god, Serena,” she cuts me off.

I press my lips together.

“You’ll be gone, what, five hours?” she says. “Go. Do your thing. I will be fine until you’re back, and if not, I’ll call your mum. If I die, I’ll text you.” Her sense of humor remains stubbornly intact even as her dignity dissolves.

“That’s not how it works.”

“Then I’ll haunt you. Leave, Serena. Before I start describing the color of my breakfast.”

I step back. One step. Two. I force my feet to move toward the hallway, but my brain is screaming at me to go back, to bleach the room, to contain the variables. Everything in me resists leaving something unresolved.

“Lock the door,” I call out.

“I’m in the bathroom, Serena.”

“Still.”

A pause. Then, faintly: “Yes, mum.”

I exhale, sharp and reluctant. The carpet muffles my steps—heel, toe, heel, toe—but the silence only makes the intrusive thoughts louder.

Shared air. Light switches. Handrail. I stop halfway to the stairs. My body angles back toward the room. I should check on her again. Just one more time. Verify the stability of her condition. What if she’s fainted? Cracked her head on the corner of the sink on the way down? I would never forgive myself.

I stand there, the urge pulling at me like a physical tether. It’s disproportionate. It’s illogical. It’s entirely convincing.

I force myself to turn around. She said she’s fine. I don’t touch the railing as I descend.

In the parking lot, his car is already idling. A dark, sleek silhouette against the gravel. I pause before reaching for the handle, pulling my sleeve down over my palm as a makeshift barrier.

The interior smells of coffee and a high-end, expensive detergent. I slide into the passenger seat, resting my hands in my lap, then immediately move them.

Baryn—Slate, I remind myself—glances over. He’s halfway through typing a text.

“Simon is sick,” he says. Nonchalant. Like he’s announcing the weather.

He has no idea he’s just volunteered for four to six uninterrupted hours alone with me, that I am very likely incubating a gastrointestinal virus I’m currently distributing across his passenger seat, or that the emotional shit storm from this morning’s interview has left me with a powerful desire to abandon all higher cognitive function and use his body as a coping mechanism.

I blink. My throat goes dry. “Sick?”

“Yeah. Vomiting. Something’s going around, I guess.”

“Tamsin, too,” I manage. “I guess it’s just the two of us.”

I can almost see the viral load suspended in the climate-controlled oxygen between us. I don't know the last time he used hand sanitizer. Maybe this is a good thing, this sudden illness. Nothing can slake my desire for skin to skin contact with another human being like the threat of a good old fashioned stomach flu.