A few hours before, the mice had been bustling—scurrying about, squeaking, sniffing, and standing on their hind legs as they tried to scale the plastic enclosures. Two hours after Kazimi injected their peritoneal cavities with the Janus bacteria, they grew listless. An hour after that, they were all dead.

Kazimi took one mouse from its cage and carried it respectfully to the table where he performed his autopsies.

Using a scalpel, he made a careful incision from belly to neck, and pried apart the skin and sternum with stainless-steel spreaders. The results were the same as those from his earlier trials. The mouse’s insides were gone, simply liquefied. Kazimi sliced open five more mice. Their organs had melted away in a similar fashion. In a few of the dead animals, he could actually see the liquefied rot through a portal the bacteria had eaten in the peritoneum.

He had expected a fast reaction time as he had innoculated the mice with an unusually heavy dose of the germ, but the speed of morbidity, then mortality, was truly chilling.

The lab, as promised, was perfectly equipped for Kazimi’s work. He might still want to collaborate with the developer of the Janus strain, as Bacon had offered, but for now his preference was to work alone. It had taken three days to grow this latest preparation of bacteria, which was designed to protect the mice against Janus. The approach was a form of competitive interference, using a genetically “neutered,” non-toxic bacteria derived from the Doomsday Germ.

The idea was to flood the mice’s bodies with the harmless, modified bacteria, which would compete with the virulent form for binding sites. At the same time, the competing bacteria would stimulate the immune system to make antibodies against both itself and Janus.

Only all the mice were dead.

Kazimi packed the tiny liquefied carcasses in airtight cartons, and shuffled off to the chemical shower. He was feeling more and more like a man trying to type with no hands. Once in street clothes, he went to the vast lounge and slumped onto a leather easy chair, cognizant that he was almost certainly on camera—probably more than one. He’d been working with little sleep, and exhaustion was taking a toll. The damp chill of Red Cliff was seeping into his bones and causing him to shiver. Someone had built a blaze in the massive fieldstone fireplace, but the warmth did not reach across to where he sat. He considered moving closer, but his legs were rubber, and his back ached. Instead, he grabbed a throw from a nearby sofa, wrapped it around himself, and closed his eyes, searching for sleep that just would not come.