“No, it’s assassination. It’s not justified.” Zeke was firm.

“The hell it’s not. Those guys were trying to kill us at the lab. That’s war in my book, and that makes them targets. Enemy combatants.”

“Those were their shooters. These guys are just scientists.”

Skull insisted, “You don’t think all those enemy nuclear physicists that disappeared in the last twenty or thirty years just fell into random holes, do you? We killed a bunch of them ourselves, and the Israelis got the rest.”

“Well, maybe we shouldn’t have done that,” chimed in Elise, her eyes blazing. “Maybe that makes us just as bad as they are.”

Daniel put a restraining hand on her arm, knowing she wasn’t going to get anywhere with these guys that way. She had proved herself to him, but not to them. “Let’s not sink to their level, I think is what she means,” he said mildly.

“Perhaps they would be useful. It is not so much more trouble to take them with us, I think,” said Spooky softly.

Skull snorted. “Zeke, your A-team is turning into a bunch of wussies.”

Zeke locked eyes with him. “Yeah, my A-team. Not yours. You want out?”

Skull stared at Zeke a long moment. “Not yet,” he finally said.

“Well, you let me know when ‘yet’ comes. Until then I need to rely on you. Can I rely on you, Skull?” His eyes bored in.

Skull swallowed, nodded once, solemnly. “Yeah. Of course you can, Zeke. It’s your call.”

Zeke grinned and patted Skull’s cheek, breaking the tension. “I love you too, man. Okay, hasty operation, we snatch our mad scientists. Half an hour for planning, then we go.”

***

An hour later they were on the road with two more guests. Both had been very happy to come with them. Both had been glad to get rid of their ankle bracelets.

They traveled in a convoy of four SUVs. Vinny had wired the vehicles with secure commo for their tactical net. That way they could talk freely as they drove, and everyone could hear. Daniel was glad; he didn’t want to wait until the end of another road trip for answers, and he had no idea where they were going or how far.

They sweated some before they got off the peninsula; until they made it through the Virginia Beach – Norfolk area, they were bottlenecked. Fortunately they were ahead of the posse, it seemed, and soon they were wending their way up I-64 toward Richmond, Charlottesville and points west.

They gave the two scientists an abbreviated version of what was going on. Elise said neither of them was an Eden Plague carrier. They both expressed relief at being out of the situation, along with natural fear of the government reaction. Welcome to the club, Daniel thought. Welcome through the looking glass.

Then it was time for some explanations. After a little bit of discussion among the former INS, Inc. employees, Roger mumbled, “Elise should tell it. She’s been around the longest, she knows the most.”

So Elise started to speak, in a kind of detached remembering voice.

-14-

“I was the first to do real research on the Eden Plague, in this century anyway, I think.  Before me there was just an MD named Raphe Durgan. He said he was from the USDA, Department of Agriculture, but he didn’t act like it. He acted like an arrogant spymaster, always bragging about being ‘in the black world’ and ‘behind the green door’ and terms like those. Anyway, Durgan had figured out just from his initial analysis that the virus would have some interesting effects, maybe curative ones. He tried it out on animals but it didn’t do much; it seemed made for people. So he wanted a human test subject that would be grateful no matter what - someone dying, like I was.

   “With me he got more than he bargained for - a complete cure - so he got me hired for the team and swore me to secrecy with all those government confidentiality clauses. He was ecstatic, and sent me over to Plum Island research center to take a look at the biological materials. He said the things were captured in Iraq from some technology smugglers looting the crumbling Soviet Union. Samples sealed in some Soviet-style containers, nothing but bio-hazard symbols on them. He’d gotten the Eden Plague virus from those samples - though we hadn’t named it yet.

“I knew there was some sort of politics involved. That old ‘WMD in Iraq’ argument. That’s why they set it up under the CDC, I think – someone outside of the usual national security establishment. I got the impression there was a lot of infighting among the CIA, Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice about it. It was all very hush-hush; I kept my mouth shut and just did the work. It’s what you do when you have a security clearance and you work on secret projects. I just wanted to do the research.”

“What about the containers?” Daniel asked, impatient.

“All but one had human remains in them. One had a whole human head, a woman. The others held half-burned pieces of flesh. One of them had a smaller container inside, that had been opened but was still half-full of a purified virus-like organism in an inert matrix.”

“So that was the Eden Plague?” inquired Zeke.

“No, it was something else. But the human remains were contaminated with the Eden Plague.”

“What about the pure sample?” Daniel asked.

“Let me tell it in my own way, okay sweetie?”

Daniel sat back and twined his fingers in hers. She’d called him “sweetie.” He shut up, a stupid grin on his face. The grin faded as he thought further. He didn’t usually react this way to a woman, getting hyper-infatuated. Another side-effect of the Eden Plague? That plus the combat high? His mind worried at the question, like a dog with a bone.

Elise went on. “After a cursory analysis, it was obvious both plagues were never-before-seen stuff, something new. I reported everything to Durgan alone. Pretty soon the CDC informed me the project was being transferred to Durgan’s company under a privatization initiative. He offered me double what I was making, so I gave my notice right away. Actually I’d have done it for the same pay. I wanted to figure out what we had, and I was so grateful to just be alive I was ready to do almost anything he wanted.

“So pretty soon I started work at the brand-new lab on Watts Island, along with Roger and Arthur. The government seems to like islands, though technically it was the company’s facility. They can control islands better. We’ve been working there ever since. Almost five years.

“We started basic testing, deconstruction, gene sequencing on both viruses, plagues. We called them phages or plagues for want of a better term, since they were different from most other viruses. Durgan took our reports, helped a little in the lab, asked some smart questions, but we did all the work. He wouldn’t hire any technicians, so it went slower than it should have. I know now he was more concerned about secrecy than progress. I think he had some notion of cashing in on our discoveries, keeping them from his secret government masters.

“We got whatever gear we wanted. I hear they paid millions for the island, but the equipment cost ten times as much. More. Nothing but the best. DNA sequencers, electron microscopes, virus incubators, whatever we wanted. And they kept raising our pay, too. We worked like demons. That’s ironic; you’ll hear why soon.

“So you asked about the pure sample. It was a far simpler virus, or proto-virus, than the other. It acted like a phage, invading whatever cells we gave it and damaging them, but the effects were much more subtle than one would expect. In simple organisms it didn’t have much effect at all. In more complex organisms it degraded everything, every process, but it was very hit or miss, and didn’t seem like a big deal. I’m compressing years of study into minutes here, okay?