The Key

*BAM* *BAM*

Even though he had expected the pounding on the door, it still made him jump with renewed fear. As his eyes desperately ran across the dim boiler room in search of anything that might help his situation, a small part of his mind was surprised it had taken only ten minutes for them to find him.

“Franklin! We know you are in there.” *BAM* “We need to talk.”

Those ten minutes were more than enough for Jonas Franklin to have mentally run back over the last couple months and found many of the clues he should have seen but had not. Ten minutes to curse himself soundly for birthing another type of curse entirely.

“Dr. Franklin, be reasonable. You know we can get in eventually. We’ve already sent someone for the key.”

The key. His work had been the key. His doctoral work in viral constructs had attracted headhunters from several biopharmaceuticals, but Jonas had eschewed them all to take a research position with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The project had sounded so promising. Develop a virus for gene therapy that could be deployed by air. The virus would have a flaw in its RNA that would cause it to gradually become unreplicable. In essence, the virus would not be able to reproduce after 50 generations or so. Exposure to oxygen, either while airborne or in the bloodstream would kickoff the RNA-encoded “self-destruct” so that the virus therapy would last only about 3 hours, after which it would leave no trace in the environment or the host. From Jonas’s perspective, it was a fantastic way to keep the virus from mutating to an uncontrollable strain.

“How could I have been so naïve?” he wondered, as he considered the possibility of sneaking out in the air ducts like some B-Grade movie hero. He should have realized that the virus was a perfect weapon. Able to deploy a virulent payload to a localized kill area and then disappear without a trace.

*BAM*

“Doctor, we know you have the field sample. It is imperative you hand it over.”

It wasn’t until the wrong field results were returned to him that he had any inkling how his work had been perverted. Instead of the expected results showing a reduction in udder mastitis in the test herd, he got horrifying results showing an almost 100% infection rate of Ebola in a test group of monkeys. And more terrifying was the field sample containing a pure strain of the anthrax-loaded virus that was included with the field results. It was that test tube the agents wanted so badly. Just looking at it in his hands made Jonas want to faint.

Suddenly, Jonas knew what he had to do and frantically began to search for the tools to do it, but none were to be found. Gathering his courage to do it by hand, Jonas knew he had to put an end to this plot, somehow expose this facility and it’s work.

As the dispatched agent arrived with the necessary key, the lead security agent called through the boiler room door, “Your last chance Doctor. Come out or we are coming in.” To his surprise the door opened and Dr. Franklin rushed out, fists swinging. Instinctively, the agents fired and hit the rushing man several times in the chest.

Quickly bending down, the security agent demanded, “Doctor, where is it?” At the dying biologist’s response, the agent straightened with a frown on his face. “He said, ‘Thank you. This will hurt less.’ “ As Jonas’s last breath escaped his body, his bloody hands slowly relaxed open and several gory objects rolled out. Upon inspection, they appeared to be several nuts from medium sized bolts and apparently Dr. Franklin had unscrewed them with his fingertips, scraping them down to almost the bone.

“Sir, you need to see this.”

Entering the room, the security agent strode over to where another agent was standng beside a blood-smeared panel. Apparently this was the source of the bloody nuts. Curiously, the panel was part of the air conditioning intake vent. Peering into the dark metal vent, the security agent felt a fear like none he had ever known.

Inside was a broken test tube.