Placing her left hand on the small of Ayala’s back, Madeline pressed the needle gun’s tip hard against one of Ayala’s cheeks and fired. There was a pop and a hiss as Madeline depressed the trigger, and the thick grey liquid was forced into Ayala’s flesh in a moment. Madeline would not admit it, even to herself, but she was a little disappointed that the other woman hadn’t even flinched. Pulling her pants back up, Ayala turned and faced the other woman and gave her a smile.

“I’ve never been shot with a vet’s gun before.” said Ayala.

“Oh, right. Yes, sorry about that. Can’t rely on young chimpanzees staying still so it’s a little more … intense than the machine I’ll give you for use on everyone else.” said Madeline, stifling a smile.

Ayala nodded and said, “Hmm, well, I hope you’ll be able to recover,” Madeline looked at her confused and Ayala went on, “you know, from being so torn up about it.”

Madeline smiled innocently and went over to a couple of office chairs and sat down, Ayala careful to favor her good cheek as she lowered herself into the chair opposite.

They were silent for a moment while the seriousness of what they had just done settled in. Then Ayala said, “You know I’ll need a lot more of that to take with me, Madeline. We can start with a batch for me to go to DC and Hanscom with, and I’ll make a quick trip to Europe and Israel while I am at it. That should be as much as I can take in one go. After that I’ll come back and get some more so I can go to Asia and India. Then I’ll take one final long trip out to Australia, by way of Eastern Europe, Russia, and Africa.”

Madeline nodded, doing the mental calculations of the numbers of batches involved. They had said that they would try to get the panacea seeded to about five hundred people in the first month or so. That would knock about four months off the diffusion of the drug, the first part being the slowest. After that time, the margin of return of infecting people by hand would be so low that it would not be worth the risk anymore as the infection would be spreading so fast on its own.