“The scientific board reached the same conclusion,” Kane said. “We were in a quandary. So we compiled a report, which we transmitted to the government. Then fate intervened. An epidemic broke out in China, an influenza-type virus with the potential to set off a worldwide pandemic that would kill millions. And guess what? Our crazy little lab held the key to the cure.”

“Blue medusa?”

“Yup.”

“Is that what you meant when you said your research could impact everyone on the planet?”

Kane nodded.

“Turns out our research held the only hope to fight this thing,” he continued. “The government took over the lab, locked the doors, and worked with the Chinese government to keep the research under wraps until we could come up with a synthesized form of the chemical. They put out a cover story suggesting that the new virus was simply an outbreak of SARS and thus controllable. Which it isn’t. It’s a mutated strain that’s even more virulent than the virus that caused the 1918 flu pandemic. In one year, that virus killed millions.”

Austin let out a low whistle.

“With the ability people have to globe-hop now,” he said, “that 1918 figure would be a drop in the bucket.”

“This time, it’s the whole bucket, Kurt. The feds classified our findings and made all the lab people government employees, so that anyone talking out of turn could be prosecuted for treason. They also added White House and military people to the board. Then they moved most of the research to a secret undersea lab.”

“Why not stay at Bonefish Key?” Austin asked.

“Too public, for one thing. But there were practical reasons too. We wanted to be near the resource. The blue medusa once covered a wide area, but now it is found primarily in and around a specific deepwater canyon. And we wanted to quarantine our work. We were developing an enhanced version of the medusa, a sort of superjellyfish, a dangerous predator, not the kind of thing you’d want to find in your swimming pool.”

“Are you saying you were working with malignant mutant life-forms, Doc?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“What would happen if they got in the wild?”

“Don’t worry, there’s no danger of them wiping out the ocean’s biomass. They can’t reproduce and would eventually die out in the open. We took great care during the genetic engineering to prevent the possibility of proliferation.”

“That’s still playing with dynamite, Doc. Mother Nature doesn’t like to be upstaged.”

“I know, I know,” Kane said, his voice tightening. “But we were under intense pressure from the government. We had to have greater quantities of the toxin to conduct our synthesis experiments, so we simply grew bigger medusae. The enhanced creatures proved to be more aggressive than the original, and the toxin they produced went off the charts.”