“According to the paper, it’s raging out of control in San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver,” Ryland said. “Far as I’ve heard, Oraloxin is still the only hope for a cure.”

“We don’t even know if the drug works in real patients,” she snorted. “Maybe it’s only useful in petri dishes.”

Grimly, Ryland looked up at her. “Its effectiveness is the only thing that matters from here on.”

She shook her head, confused. “How so, Neil?”

“Don’t you get it, EI?” He sighed. “Viktor would have loved the irony of this. We were so worried about how quickly they would shut us down if they learned about the chimps. But if Oraloxin works against MRGAS, we could show the world a mountain of dead monkeys and they wouldn’t let us stop the Oraloxin project.”

“I never thought of it like that,” she said slowly. “Oraloxin’s future depends solely on how well it works against MRGAS.” As the words came out of her mouth, she was struck by a sinister thought that set her heart pounding.

No! It couldn’t be!

Ryland leaned forward and grabbed her gently by the wrist. “El?”

She hesitated, afraid to even put her wild hypothesis into words, and swallowed. “I’ve been thinking about the various bacteria we tested Oraloxin on, Neil. You know that multiresistant staph aureus we engineered for sensitivity testing with Oraloxin?”

He let go of her wrist. “What about it?”

“MRGAS came around pretty soon after we developed it.”

“Coincidences like that happen all the time in microbiology, El. Remember how vancomycin-resistant enterococcus emerged almost simultaneously in Japan and Europe?”

“I know. But what if the multiresistant bacterium we engineered is related to MRGAS?”

His brow furrowed and his eyes darkened with concern. “You mean, what if that bug somehow escaped into the community and cross-pollinated with group-A strep?”

“No.” She shook her head slowly. “I mean, what if someone deliberately released it?”

43 - Seattle, Washington

43

Seattle, Washington

Lopez awoke at 5:20 A.M., burning with determination. Since Detective Cohen had put a name to the man behind the spread of MRGAS, her last shred of doubt had vanished. Though her colleagues at the CDC refused to accept it, she knew that the world’s latest superbug was not another example of nature venting its fury. MRGAS was man-made. And spread by humans, not by chance.