Rob very carefully lifted the sample vial from the lab desk. A single slip of his gloved hand would spill highly infectious Lassa virus all across the floor of his lab. His hazmat suit would protect him, but the ensuing cleanup would be a bitch, so he tended to try and avoid any spillage. His research partner, a rather tall, skinny, and very religious man by the name of Edward watched attentively through the Plexiglas from the other room. In the two months Rob had been there he quickly discovered that he had steady hands when it came to this kind of thing. He carried the vial over to a large boxed in lab bench that had rubber gloves that extended to the inside of the glass. Grey eyes staring unblinkingly at the vial, he cautiously settled it onto the test tube rack and the sealed the airlock on the side of the bench. He gave Edward the thumbs up and proceeded to the airlock on the other side of the room. As he waited while his suit got hosed down with disinfectant, he speculated on his new job.
Rob had always wanted to work in the lab where he had to wear a space suit to do every day research tasks.  Disinfectant showers upon exiting and leaving, self contained air and water circulation and treatment, he wanted anything to make being a lab rat more exciting. Now he finally had that job, shortly after getting his PhD in microbial genetics from Weill Cornell. The recruitment was strange; it was one of those ‘we’ll find you’ kind of things. He had to undergo a pretty serious background check and had to answer for one specific incident in his second year of his doctorate studies. It involved a rather arrogant tenured chem professor, a computer mouse, a small amount of methamphetamine (which was surprisingly easy to make with some swiped chemistry department stock), and just a few milliliters of DMSO, an organic solvent sometimes used in genetics research. DMSO also has the fun ability to pass directly across human skin into the blood stream, taking with it whatever you decide to dissolve in it.
He never got caught by the administration, but he would’ve gladly faced the criminal charges just for the thirty minutes of watching that stuck up prick tweaking out of his mind until the ambulance arrived. Other than a bad case of withdrawal the next day the professor was fine and even if they wouldn’t admit it everyone else in the Microbiology department thought it was hilarious. Apparently the suits at Stevenson Research didn’t find it as funny as Rob did.
He began the laborious task of extracting himself from the wet safety suit after exiting through the second airlock into the changing room.  Edward entered through a third and final airlock; safety was kind of a big thing here. Rob looked up as he sat down and began pulling off the leggings of the suit.
“Hey, that should be the last transfer we have to do for a while, unless for some reason the culture decides to die again without warning.”
“Thank the Lord,” Edward replied in all seriousness.
“Ha, the flying spaghetti monster protects me in there. Keep your false god away from me,” Rob chided as he pulled off another boot. The two of them had a bit of a running repartee on the subject of religion. Despite that one difference, they got along very well. For Rob at least, Edward was one of the only devout Catholics he’d met that could stand to have a discussion with him for more than five minutes.
“Listen, management wants to see us in the conference room in ten.  Sounds like we’ve got something big coming.”
Rob looked up in shock and brushed aside a strand of his medium length blond hair. Aside from a little bit of oversight they rarely saw the management here in the labs. There were surveillance cameras placed all around so their presence was always implied, but rarely realized. For the most part they just had to deal directly with their supervisor, and overly friendly man by the name of Burns. They never asked for his first name.  From what Rob could tell, Edward and himself gave their proposals to Burns, who then got approval from…someone, and they got the green light. Because of the sensitive nature of what they were expected to be working with and probably due to a lack of funding, it was just Rob and Edward in their particular lab. They both remarked on occasion how much they would’ve loved to have some assistants to do some of the more menial tasks, but Burns unequivocally shot the suggestions down.  Hell, they didn’t even really see any of the other scientists working there. Sure, he’d see them in the hallways near the entrance occasionally, but there wasn’t really much interactions between labs.
“This come from Burns?”
“No, some other guy. Burns signed off on the memo though. Seems pretty important, maybe we’ve got something new to play with,” Edward smiled and leaned on the wall with his shoulder. Physically the two of them looked like some sort of comedy duo. The only characteristic they had in common was their almost emaciated frames. Edward was tall with short brown hair, Rob was on the shorter side with medium length blond hair. Edward was tan with dark brown eyes, Rob was pale as a ghost with grey eyes. Edward was a devout religious man who believed his body was a temple, Rob chain smoked and delighted in attempting to shatter people’s faith. Strangely enough, Rob was the one who had been married and had a son, whereas Edward was single. Suspiciously so, as Rob would joke. Although now he only got to see his son once a month, or when the ‘cheating bitch’, as Rob called her, decided to use him as a babysitter.
“Well, we better head on over then. Wouldn’t want to upset management,” Rob said sarcastically as he grabbed his dress shirt and started doing up the buttons.  His shirt was wrinkled as usual, and he never wore a tie. He always said they only got in the way, despite Edwards repeated attempts to get him to wear one. He followed Edward out of the changing room airlock and into the sterile looking white hallways of the facility. From the inside it hardly looked like a place like this could be smack dab in the middle of the city. At times Rob wondered if it was even allowed to be here. Still, he was just a scientist and such things didn’t really concern him much. What he cared about is that there was a lab, not where it was. He entered a large conference room filled with who he assumed were other researchers. Some of their faces looked somewhat familiar, and he thought he might even have remembered one of their names. They all wore ties.
He took a seat in the back next to Edward and they both looked expectantly at the man standing at the front of the room next to a projector screen. Burns was seated in the far corner of the room, looking at the man with nervous apprehension.
“Gentlemen, colleagues, esteemed doctors, good afternoon,” the man spoke with a broad smile. “I know you are not familiar with me, but I represent the government relations arm of our great company. There is a very serious matter that bring me here today,” he clicked a button on the controller in his hand and a slide popped up. It was a picture of some kind of mold.
“This was discovered 48 hours ago on a farm in central Wyoming. It looks harmless enough but, as you all know, there is always more than meets the eye when it comes to such thing,” he clicked again and a picture of a person’s lips with large blisters and lesions covering them popped up. “This mold has heretofore not been encountered by modern science and was discovered while drilling a well for the farm. Designated ST-28, acute symptoms resulting from exposure to spores result in lesions on the mouth and lips,” he clicked again. A picture of a group of men in hazmat suits attempting to hold a woman down on a hospital bed popped up. She appeared to be fighting furiously, her face contorted in agonizing pain. Blood was pouring down her face, her eyes were almost black looking.
“An estimated twelve hours after exposure the spores appear to get into the ocular cavity. We don’t know if they’re carried internally or just penetrate externally. We do know the side effects are ocular hemorrhaging and extreme pain.” The muttering in the room had completely ceased. All eyes were on the woman on the screen. The man clicked again. An image of the same woman appeared, blood oozing out of her, but this time she was dead. The pain still lingered on her face.
“An estimated twenty hours after exposure results in death from internal bleeding.  One hundred percent fatality rate. This thing acts fast. As far as we’ve been able to tell only the sporulating cells develop whatever it is that does this,” he pointed at the screen. “We need to know if it’s a communication protein, if it’s an endotoxin or an exotoxin. We need to know everything you can find out about this. Most of all we need to find out if we can stop the poison, whatever it may be.  All other projects are suspended until we get this stuff figured out.  When you return to your labs you will find each of your separate tasks regarding this research. Samples are being shipped here as we speak, I suggest you get started.” Hushed whispering filled the room. A mold that killed that fast? Was it a mutation or just something that people hadn’t run into yet? Did you see the picture of that woman?
Rob and Edward got up and started walking back to their lab. Rob turned to Edward excitedly.
“Did you see that shit?” Edward just shook his head.
“That poor woman, God rest her soul.”
“This is big man. Real big. The government commissioned us directly only two days after it got discovered. We play this right and we could be huge. We could make our bones on this one.”
“I just hope no one else has to go through what she did.”
“Yeah, sure. Right. Exactly.”
~~~
Two months later and the enthusiasm Rob had experienced was wearing off. It took them two weeks to even get the mold to grow in vitro. Even after that, there were no promising leads on developing some sort of treatment for the poison it excreted when it sporulated. Sure it was easy enough to kill, especially because it was so hard to grow. All in all it was the most interesting, and frustrating thing Rob had ever worked on. Apparently one of the other labs had isolated and purified the protein that made up the poison, a memo had been sent out to that effect. Meanwhile Rob and Edward had done….jack squat. It was frustrating, especially because of the way the company operated with its researchers.
Now he was waiting in his rundown apartment for his ex to show up with their son. He nervously checked his watch as he stashed overflowing ashtrays in the higher cupboards of his kitchen. She was supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago.  He walked over into the living room and brushed off his already cleaned couch. He’d done his best to straighten up, got all of his dirty clothes thrown in the closet, hidden all the ashtrays, sprayed air freshener to try and cover the smell of smoke. The sound of cars honking came in through his window that overlooked one of the crowded streets that ran across the city. Still, his mind kept wandering back to the mold…
There was a knocking at the door. Finally. He walked back through the kitchen to the front door. What greeted him on the other side was an all too familiar sight. His ex wife was dolled up. Looks like she planned on taking full advantage of her weekend without John.  She wore a tight black dress that hugged her all too alluring frame like a glove. Her face was framed by brown ringlets that drew him to her in the first place. It was her cold grey eyes that reminded him of why he left in her in the first place. Alexandra, or ‘the cheating bitch’ as he liked to call her, looked at him with obvious scorn.
“Here, I gotta go,” she ushered John in to the apartment.
“You’re late”
She just waved her hands backwards as she was walking away “Yeah, right. Whatever.”
Rob reached down and rubbed his sons blond hair and pulled him into a hug.
“How’s it going champ?” He asked, as he looked into his sons young eyes. Every time he looked into them he was reminded of her.
“Fine, I got a lot of homework to do.”
“Well come on in and let’s see if I can’t give you a hand with that. You wanna go to the zoo with me tomorrow?”
John’s face lit up. “Yeah!”
“Ha, ok then. Let’s get this work done so we can have some fun.”
Two hours later, Rob sat on his couch watching the evening news on mute with subtitles. John was passed out with his head resting in his dad’s lap. Poor kid had a long day, the drive over here was a bit of a long one, but the trooper got right to work when he got there. He usually tried to finish his homework early so he could spend the rest of the weekend doing fun stuff with his dad. Unusual for a fifth grader, but he was also in an unusual situation. He wanted to be a scientist like his dad when he grew up. Rob had tried explaining what he did to him, but he wasn’t sure he quite gasped it. Something on the news caught Rob’s eye. He turned the sound up.
“…oday. A mysterious illness spread throughout the village.” Images flashed on the screen. Women weeping, men with blood flowing out of their eyes. God, it was ST-28.
“About half the village has been contaminated, a total of 100 reported fatalities.” There was an aerial shot of the small town. It was somewhere in the middle east. No way it covered that much of the town naturally in so short a time, assuming that it somehow managed to find an appropriate place to grow. No, this much must’ve been deliberate.
John stirred at the sound of the television. Rob quickly shut it off and rested a hand on his son’s sleeping head. His mind wandered though, back to the lab and the work he had been doing. He never thought to ask what it was for. Never before had he thought that what he was doing may be used as a weapon. He just cared about the research and trusted the company to do…what exactly? Now he didn’t even know. He looked down at his sleeping son and thought about the dead children in the village that had been exposed. What had they done to deserve that? Rob had helped make it happen too. Not directly, but he was part of the team. The whole revolver fires a shot even if there are still chambers that haven’t been fired. He might as well have dumped the poison on them himself.
~~~
On monday Rob and Edward went out to eat at Gino’s their favorite pizza spot around the corner from the lab for lunch. They sat outside on a bench facing the sidewalk. Edward seemed engrossed in his large slice of supreme, but Rob wasn’t even touching his food. He just looked nervously at the people as they passed by on the side walk as he puffed away on his cigarette.
“So what was it you were all secretive about back at the lab?” Edward asked through mouthfuls of pizza.
Rob leaned forward on the bench, speaking close to Edwards ear, “Did you see the news last night?”
“No…why?”
Rob leaned in closer and whispered lower. “There was an outbreak in Sudan or something. A whole village practically killed by ST-28. Remember,” He stopped talking and looked closely at a man in a business suit that passed too close for his liking. “Remember, what his name? In the memo? He purified the toxin…”
“Williams?”
“Yeah, Williams, whatever. The type of exposure this town had, the amount needed and where it happened. There’s no way that just happened naturally over night. No way.”
“Rob man, what’re you trying to say?”
“I’m saying there have been a lot of suits hanging around since we started this project, apparently for the government. I’m saying we helped them do this.”
“Listen I’m sad for those people, I really am. They’ll be in my prayers tonight. But don’t you think you’re jumping to conclusions a bit?”
“We’ve been neck deep in this stuff for the past two months, you think I wouldn’t recognize it when I saw it?”
“I’m just saying you’ve been stressed out a lot lately. You’ve been focused pretty hard on this stuff,” he rested a hand on Rob’s shoulder. “You know, you should finally accept my invitation to come to our church this coming Sunday. I know what happened was a tragedy, and at times it’s hard to understand the will of God…”
“God didn’t do this Edward. We did.”
“Rob. Listen to me. As a friend. Take some time off. You don’t have to come to church with me, but find something to relax. Take some sick days, go see if you can take John on a trip to Disney World or something. Get out and unwind, this stuff has got you jumping at every shadow, seeing things where there is nothing to see.”
Rob looked down at the ground in what he thought looked like his best pensive pose.
“Yeah, maybe you’re right.”
Edward smiled, “’I am my brothers keeper’, and I care about you too much to see you break down like this man. Enjoy it, come back and we’ll probably be done with this whole mess anyhow.”
“Yeah.” Rob got up and started to head back down the street to the lab. “Listen, I’m gonna go start the paperwork to ask for time off. I’ll see you back in the lab.”
Edward just waved and smiled. Rob knew better. Edward was pretty keen on getting him to take time off from the project. Too keen. He was obviously in on it all. Rob hadn’t thought that maybe the company had people on the inside. To keep an eye on the scientists, make sure they didn’t start thinking things about what they were doing. They’d have to, right? Especially given the work they were doing. It was bound to be a matter of time before someone got some big ideas about morality in their head…someone like Rob. But he was too smart for them. He was going to take his time off, oh yes. Rather than use it to relax, he was going to make a plan. He was going to figure out what to do to expose this whole thing. It couldn’t continue like this. His eyes had been opened.
~~~
A few days later Rob sat by his phone, completely at a loss as what to do. Apparently no one really knew about Stevenson Research. He knew they weren’t supposed to even tell people where they worked. It was a security risk. He didn’t know that no one knew that the place even existed. Call a reporter and tell them you’re a researcher in a P4 security level lab that exists mysteriously in the middle of a city, and then tell them that said lab is aiding in the killing of innocents in ‘conflict zones’ in the middle east, and see what they tell you. The Times, the Post, they all just laughed. For a second he thought that the guys from channel 7 local news would hear him out. Turns out they just put him on speaker phone so he could repeat himself for the amusement of the whole office. Bastards.
Rob stood up and started pacing his apartment. Chinese food boxes and pizza boxes littered the floor. The shades were drawn, but let in a few shafts on sunlight because is his frustration he had yanked down on the curtains. The tilted curtain rod did little for the décor. Smoke hung thick in the room, he’d been on about a pack a day before hand, but now since this he started smoking a lot more. Full ashtrays were on his desk, counter, and coffee table. Letters littered his floor, responses that had the same effect as the laughing news room employees. At least they had the decency not to respond to his emails. He looked at the calendar. Sunday.  His built up vacation of two weeks was over, and tomorrow it was back to work. He hadn’t been able to do anything. If only he could prove… He suddenly sat up. That was it! He’d get some sample from the lab! They’d have to believe him them! But how was he going to get it out of there?
He stood up and started pacing yet again, lighting another cigarette. Suddenly there was a sharp pain in his foot.
“Fuck!” He leaned down and picked up one of John’s toys. A tiny handheld squirt gun. Staring at the gun for a little bit, he began to think of a plan. He quickly tucked the phone and picked it up, dialing the number for an old college roommate he hadn’t talked to for years.
“Yeah, hey Brad? It’s me Rob. I was wondering if you still had a hook up for some stuff…”
“Yeah. ‘Stuff’. With quotations.”

~~~
A week later and Rob was seeing bodies in every shadow. His ex had called him, talking to him about men that she thought were following her and John anytime she left the house. She wanted to know what the hell he had done. He still went to work, not knowing what else to do. This time he noted the other faces he saw as he walked in and out of the main lobby of the building. Every now and again he would see faces that mirrored his own. Pale, sweaty, disheveled, with a slightly panicked look. Like an animal trapped in a cage.
His hands shook as he titrated a vile of the purified ST-28 toxin inside of the isolated lab bench. It was hard enough through those thick gloves that fed into the box, now he was spilling solution on the table.  His nerves were getting to him. Today was the day. He finally convinced them that he needed some toxin samples to work with.
“You gonna be ok Rob?” Edward asked. Ever since that day at lunch, things had been different. Stiffer. Rob couldn’t reconcile what he knew was going on with who he thought Edward was.
“I’ll be fine I just…I’ll be fine.”
“Maybe you should take a break or something.”
“Listen, think you could do me a favor? I left some of my data over in my locker. I need to compare some things but I also need to monitor this reflux,” he gestured to the test tubes he was working with inside the enclosed bench space. “think you can get them for me?”
“Yeah, sure. Anything you need buddy.”
As Edward exited the room, Rob steeled himself for what he finally knew had to be done. It was the only way out of this. The only right way out of this. He would show them. They thought they could coerce him into shutting up. Well, after what he had planned, no one would be able to keep this quiet. It would show them some respect. Rob filled a syringe of sedative full of the ketamine the kept in stock for sedating rats during in vivo studies. With a cautious eye to the camera positioned in the top corner of the room he tried to make it look like he was preparing to enter it into the contained bench. He was really stashing it up the sleeve of his lab coat. Hopefully it was mundane enough an action that no one looked too closely.
“Here you go,” Edward reentered through the airlock and slapped down a pile of notes on the bench in the middle of the room.
“Thanks man,” Rob reached out and patted him on the shoulder, depressing the plunger on the syringe in one smooth motion.
“What was…” Edward looked back up at him.
“I’m sorry, friend.”
There was a confused look on his face as Edward collapsed to the ground, heavily sedated. Rob quickly popped open the airlocks on the isolation bench and grabbed the two vials of purified toxin that he had sealed earlier. As he ran through the airlocks he hit pulled the fire alarm lever. He had hoped that the alarm would cause enough confusion for him to escape undetected in. He rushed past his startled colleagues as they filled in the main hallway in response to the alarm. He rounded a bend in the hallway and almost ran face first into two suits running in the direction of his lab. They stopped in the middle of the hallway and spread their arms out to try and block him.
“Give us the vials. We don’t want anyone to die here today.”
Rob reached in his coat and pulled out a small squirt gun he had filled with DMSO and DMT he had bought off Brad, his old roommate. He sprayed them both in the face. The two suits looked startled at first.
“What the hell was tha…”
Suddenly the both started looking woozy. Rob rushed past them, fending off their feeble grabs as he made a break for the main entrance. As he pulled out towards the last airlock and the guard station that manned it, he sprayed the guard there in the face and hit the emergency override to throw open the final doors to freedom. He ran out into the street amongst the startled onlookers as they stared at the normally inconspicuous building that had suddenly started blaring alarms and sprouting sweaty scared looking men in lab coats. Rob elbowed through the crowd as he headed towards the park that was just a block west of the building. More suits flowed outwards in pursuit.
He ran around traffic and through the main gated entrance. There were couples sitting together and picnicking on the grass, fathers playing football with their sons, and street vendors selling ice cream. He ran through the crowds, and tried to cut through some brush to lose the suits. They were gaining. When he finally felt like he could run no further, he spun around and turned to face the three suits chasing him. They had guns this time, and they were all pointed at him. As he spun he pulled the two vials out with his hands on the stoppers and held the at arms length to either side. There was no way he’d get away from them now. If he tried to keep on running they’d just shoot him.
“You know what happens if I open these.”
“Don’t do anything dumb Rob,” the middle man said as he reached out with his hands. Do anything dumb? Like poison a whole village? It would’ve been so easy if they had just let him go. They wanted to do things the hard way. He’d gotten too far! He’d almost made it! These bastards were just going to take him back. They’d probably kill him once they got him inside, or at least lock him away. They’d call it a ‘laboratory accident’ or something. Then this whole thing would disappear. No one would know. He had to tell people. It was the only way.
“Watch me.” Without ceremony he popped both stoppers and dumped the white powder out on to the air. The purified toxin dissipated on the wind and seemed to disappear into the air. The men went white faced and started running in the other direction.
Rob dropped both vials into the grass and sat down in the sun. For the first time he really looked around at where he was. There wasn’t really anyone around. The sun was high in the sky, it must’ve been almost lunch time. The scent of honeysuckle floated on the air as the trees swayed in the slight breeze. He sat there for a few hours absorbing the sun, until his face started to itch, and then burn. He reached up and felt the blisters forming on his lips. He heard the sounds of an ambulance cutting through the normal din of midday traffic. He looked over and saw a man sitting on a bench facing one of the paths that cut through the park. He wasn’t sure, but he thought the same guy had been there earlier, when the suits were still here. The man must not have heard the disturbance. Rob thought he’d go over and say hello. Maybe the man needed a friend.