“Okay, what do you want to print out from that computer? I have the address of our scientist in case you just want to send it. You had better get everything you need, because if you screw this up and don’t make the antibiotic we need, you’re going to die, one tiny piece at a time. And I tell you, I’m going to love doing it. Understand? I said, do … you … understand?”

Burke raised his hand menacingly and seemed about to swing when he spotted a joystick near the computer and slid it over. Normally, Humphrey could maneuver the device with ease and some speed. This time however, he fumbled with it. The smell of Cassie’s clotting blood made it difficult to concentrate, and in addition he was having no luck at all processing who could possibly have sent for him this way. At that moment, he felt Burke’s hand on the back of his neck. A burning, electric pain shot across his shoulders and down his spine. His vision went white.

“I can press on this nerve even harder if you’d like,” Burke said. “You won’t ever pass out. Never ever. Trust me on that.”

Humphrey had been verbally abused for much of his life, but this was the first time anyone had purposely inflicted physical pain on him. He feared this man more than he had ever feared anything or anyone.

In truth, there was little in his electronic files that he did not know virtually by heart, but what little control he might have over whatever was in store for him depended on no one seeing what was in those files. He had a backup system, but the only hard copy at the moment he had given away to his new lab assistant.

Carefully, he wrapped his hand around the joystick and launched a special program he had designed to protect his work from being pirated—a program he called Kill Switch. His program would delete not only all the files from his computer, but from the backups for those files as well. If he ever had to use Kill Switch, he would rely on his memory.

It took just three seconds.

With Burke watching, Humphrey pressed a sequence of keys and the computer monitor flashed and flickered as though it had been powered off and quickly turned back on. Sensing trouble, Burke bent over and stared at the screen. Items he had noted on the electronic desktop had suddenly vanished.

“What did you just do?” he demanded.

Humphrey’s speech, rapid and legitimately frightened, was muddled beyond the killer’s ability to understand. Barely able to control his movements, Humphrey used his joystick to bring up a blank text document into which he typed:

kill application all data deleted forever gone from backup servers too GO FUCK YOURSELF!

“You stupid, crippled jerk!”