“Don’t worry about it. I understand exactly what you’re feeling. I can’t even believe I’m looking at this. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and find out it was just a nightmare. I mean, even if you could build something like this, you’d have to think long and hard about whether you should. You’re messing with the forces of nature here. This is why guys like you spend your time figuring out how to cure diseases—not cause them. Once something like this gets out of control, you don’t get that control back.”

“Okay, Greg, let’s take a step back for a second. This didn’t just come out of thin air. Unless we want to start considering aliens, we can be confident that right now there are people working on this in a very well-equipped, well-funded, and well-secured lab. Who are they?”

“We should talk to Gunter and Sean. They—”

“No. No one else hears about this.”

“Come on, Jon. I know a fair amount about nanotech, but it’s not my field. I know both those guys and I can vouch for them.”

“It’s not just a matter of secrecy, Greg. Whoever did this knows I have those samples and they sure as hell have the resources to watch the obvious people in the field.”

Maple sagged a bit and stared blankly at the diagram he’d created. “I keep coming back to the same answer.”

“What’s that?”

“Think about it. Who has the money, will, and access to talent that you’d need to get this done?”

Smith knew where this was going and shook his head. “It’s not us, Greg.”

“So you say. Look, I know you’re a hell of a scientist and you’re pretty well connected, but it’s not hard to believe that something like this could go on way above your pay grade.”

It was completely understandable and logical that Maple would head down this road, but Smith didn’t have the luxury of letting his friend get trapped in a blind alley.

“I’m going to say this just once, Greg, and then we’re going to leave it alone: there’s no such thing as above my pay grade.”

Maple looked at him skeptically but then quickly realized that Smith meant what he’d said.

“What if we cast a wider net? Maybe someone doing brilliant work in a related field?”

The engineer shrugged and shook his head.

“Okay. What about someone who worked in nanotech and died?”

Another shrug.

“Someone who worked in the field in the past but then moved on to something else?”

That seemed to get a glimmer.

“What?”