father. Dr Kruger, Dr Tibbs and Dr Glover.’
Josh glanced at Archer, who nodded, making a mental note of the names.
‘This all happened earlier this year. And my father was obsessed at this point. He would stay late, long after we had all gone home, working with Dr Kruger. He began sleeping at the lab. And I started to worry about him. He was neglecting himself and his own health started to suffer.’
She shook her head, looking up with red-rimmed green eyes.
‘My mother’s death, haunting him every day.’
She paused and sniffed.
‘Anyway, four weeks ago they both called us all in on a Wednesday night. They were excited. Dr Kruger figured he’d made a huge breakthrough and struck gold. The radio-virus had cultured and was ready for testing. That evening he was preparing to test it on infected cells in mice. He wanted us all there to watch.’
‘What happened?’
‘It was devastating. We knew it the moment those poor mice began to react to the gas. I’ll never forget it. It turned out that he couldn’t have been more wrong.’
She swallowed.
‘Unstable atoms degrade and release energy. That’s what causes radiation. And the radiation from the virus had knocked out some of the genes that made Dr Kruger’s genetically-modified TB safe. It was intended to attack tumour cells, but instead it went after normal blood vessels in the lung. Once inhaled, infection spread at an obscene pace, bursting the pulmonary capillary bed.’
‘What does that mean?’ Josh asked.
‘Basically, you cough so hard that you hack up pieces of lung tissue. The spasms are so strong that you break your own back. The healthy vessels in your lungs rupture and you drown in your own blood.’
‘Jesus.’
‘It was horrifying. It condensed the infection period from weeks or months into thirty seconds. Dr Kruger and my father had made a terrible, terrible error.’
Her eyes were distant as she thought back.
‘Dr Kruger realised how badly they’d gone wrong. He was willing to throw in the towel there and then. But my father said no. He said if anyone on our team touched the virus they would be fired on the spot. And that’s when he became darker. He lost a lot of weight. He barely ate. He didn’t interact with the rest of us. He was so distracted. He started to obsess about the Atomic bomb. He thought that what he created would have the same devastating effect if it was ever unleashed.’
‘So why didn’t he just destroy it?’
‘I begged him to. Dr Kruger offered to dispose of it. But my father said no. This had been a year and a half of work. He refused to give up. He thought that his ideal medicinal version of the virus was only a few steps away. Maybe only one.’
She paused.
‘He told me he was so close to one of the greatest medical breakthroughs the world has ever seen and he wasn’t giving up now. But the rest of us were thinking clearly. We knew that if this virus got into the wrong hands it would be one of the most lethal biological weapons ever created. My father would be remembered not as a pioneer, but as a monster.’
‘That explains what he was saying,’ Josh asked. ‘Just before he jumped.’
‘Your friend should know. He was standing right there,’ she said, looking down at Archer.
He held her gaze.
‘Thousands of people are going to die,’ Josh said. ‘But why would he say that? The virus is devastating but it’s contained here, right?’
Archer saw the anger in her eyes fade. It was replaced by something else.
Fear.
She looked at Josh.
‘Upstairs, in our main lab, we have six separate vials of the virus. On my father’s orders.’
She paused.
‘And when we arrived this morning, five of them were missing.’
Thirty two blocks downtown, Paul Bleeker stepped into a changing room on the third floor of Macy’s Department Store and pulled the door shut behind him. He was holding a shirt, a random one he’d grabbed from a rail, as well as the plastic bag containing the box. He put the hanger holding the shirt onto a hook then placed the bag gently on the ground.
The changing room’s design meant that there was a wooden ledge at the opposite side from the door that customers could use as a seat. Kneeling, Bleeker pulled out a small screwdriver from the pocket of his thick red jacket and started working the screws off the corners of the panel. He worked quietly and methodically. Soft Christmas music played from speakers mounted on