Virals

This is an amazing story about a group of friends who stumble onto the decades old murder of Katherine Heaton. Katherine was a young student who was attempting to create a project that was based on endangered species. She discovers a colony of eagles living on Cole Island, but her discovery is not welcomed by all. The owners of Cole Island discovered her presence there and before she is able to tell anyone her great discovery, she is killed and her body buried on Loggerhead Island which is a research facility. As Tory Brennan figure out the mystery, she takes herself and her friends deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole.
It all begins when Tory and her friends Ben, Shelton and Hiram go to Loggerhead Island to see if they can find a pack of wolf-dogs. These animals have made the island their home. They had seen them before, and Tory had even saved the youngest pup from a shaft he had fell into, and named him Coop. The young pup had disappeared. Tory wants to find the pack, and Coop. Caught on the island by the head researcher, Dr. Karsten, they are warned away from the restricted areas after he makes it clear that he would rather they found somewhere else to amuse themselves. Knowing they have permission to be there takes some of the venom from Karsten's warning. They carry on, following a new trail that leads them right into a restricted region. Tory sits under a tree and suffers an attack from a particularly agitated primate. The tattoo on her chest indicates she is a research subject, and she is showing unusually crazy behavior. She throws something shiny at Tory, and Shelton recognizes it as a dog tag immediately. Tory decides to try to trace the owner, which is where everything begins. After trying to clean the tag at home without success, she talks the boys into breaking into Karsten's lab to use the sonicator to clean it. Shelton picks the locks successfully and they manage to get into the lab. The tag is cleaned and they are almost ready to leave when Ben returns and asks them to come upstairs with him. He leads them to a newly installed security door behind which they can clearly hear a dog barking. The keyless entry is one that Shelton can't pick, but by entering the default code, they are able to get in. To their surprise, they find the young wolf-dog pup who has been missing for over a week. He is in a plexiglass cage, hooked up to intravenous lines and wearing a collar to prevent him from removing them. Tory looks over the clipboard attached to the cage and sees that Coop has Parvovirus and is scheduled to be destroyed immediately. Tory won't let that happen. She makes a quick decision to save the young cub. They free him, taking along bags of  fluids and several vials of antibiotic, and then take him to an abandoned place that they use as a clubhouse. In the clubhouse, they aid the pup slowly back to health, but in the process become ill themselves. Parvovirus is species specific. This strain had been created by Dr. Karsten, and blended a human strain with a wolf strain. The results were a new and highly contagious virus that infects all four of them, mixing their DNA with that of the wolf pack and making them all relatives at the most basic level. Tory tracks the dog tag to Katherine Heaton, who had gone missing and never been found. They find her body; uncover the murderer; learn about the endangered eagle population; and tie the murder to one of the more citizens in their small town.They have new found abilities that are more wolf-like than human, and learn that they will never be the same. It is a secret they agree to keep between them.