"I don't know anything else!" Tess replied, hotly, "If anyone knew, they wouldn't be shooting infected people!"

She could only assume that the reason why tissue didn't get cut away and a skin graft slapped on in her world was that no one lived long enough for that to happen. But what the fuck did Tess know about treatment, anyway? Tess smuggled guns and drugs and supplies and all kinds of contraband for a living, she put bullets in thugs' heads for looking at her funny, and she surrounded herself with the scariest, most selfish people in the city because those were the kind of people who made the best allies. Tess could start a massive gunfight and crouch down behind a crate for cover like she'd done nothing at all. Tess was the queen of the fucking Boston underground.

All that, and she was panicking over an obviously nervous and edgy doctor in a private office. She could feel her heart hammering in her chest with every poke and prod and the gun cool against the clammy skin of her back, and god, was it ever a foreign feeling.

Like an animal backed into a corner, Tess asked defensively: "And what makes you think it won't spread?"