Silently but urgently Pia waved for him to follow her. George saw where they were heading and beat it out through an emergency exit in the far corner of the lab. The door complained when he pushed it open as it hadn’t been opened since it was installed back when the lab was last renovated. It had also been made airtight.

Pia followed close behind George. She might have stayed and faced the music had she been there by herself, but she was well aware of George’s utter fear of authority. Where that had come from, she had no idea.

The unit’s emergency door led to the lab storeroom where Pia and George pulled off their protective gear and stumbled out into the main part of the microbiology department that housed Rothman’s lab. Staff on the evening shift at the microbiology clinical lab were curious to see two young people running by, then stunned to see them followed a minute later by three figures in full hazmat gear.

Microbiology led into the anatomy department and George and Pia crashed through the connecting doors and into the familiar surroundings. As first-year students they had spent a good deal of time in the department. George was leading, but he didn’t know exactly where he was going. All he knew was that he wanted to avoid getting caught. He ducked into the darkened anatomy room, dimly illuminated by night-lights. For the benefit of the current first-year students who were taking anatomy at the time, the room was well stocked with cadavers, most covered with oilcloth shrouds. Several torsos sat upright on the head teaching table. They’d been cut across the upper chest and then halved in a sagittal section so that half the gullet and half the brain were visible. George was eye-level with the torsos, the exposed whites of their eyes seeming to glow in the half-light.

George and Pia ducked behind the long teaching table, but there was nowhere to hide. A moment after their arrival, the banks of ceiling lights flickered and came on. Three security guards in hazmat suits stormed into the room. Pia stood up and George, very reluctantly, followed suit.

The security men were angry, demanding Pia’s and George’s identification cards. They then made several calls on their radios before turning back to the students. George was cowering, Pia taking it all in stride. “You’re coming with us,” said the nearest figure to George, grasping his arm and marching him out of the room. Pia was escorted out behind him.