Double-clicking on one particular image, Livingston sat up straight in his chair. It was a picture of Julie Richardson, smiling in a two-piece bathing suit at the local branch’s company picnic. She was holding a volleyball under one arm and talking to someone off-camera.
He clicked on another. This time Julie was mid-serve, the volleyball inches above her right hand, and her body stretched out to its maximum length.
Livingston didn’t know who had taken the pictures, but when Laura had given everyone in the office Dropbox access to them, he’d made sure to save them locally to his hard drive.
Another picture opened — Julie and Benjamin Stephens sitting at a picnic table across from one another. Julie’s back was to the camera, and Livingston clicked the magnifying glass to zoom in slightly…
The phone rang.
He blinked and sat back in the leather office chair. His daughter. It rang a second and third time, and finally waited for it to go to voicemail. He hadn’t talked to Rebecca in almost a year, and he knew he’d regret not answering it later.
The answering machine picked up. He groaned as the sound of his own voice interrupted his thoughts. “This is the voicemail box of David Livingston, Director…”
At the beep, his daughter’s voice punched through the low-quality phone speaker and into his office. “Daddy? Hey, it’s me… Just wanted to say hi. I figured you’d be working late again, but I wasn’t sure.” The voice paused for a moment. “Listen, call me back sometime. It’s been awhile.”
Another pause, then the sound of a phone hanging up. Livingston swirled a sip of scotch in his mouth and stared at the conference phone on his desk. He swirled again, swallowed, then took another deep sip.
He pressed his eyes together tightly, holding them for a moment as the burn of the low-quality scotch ran down his esophagus. “I miss you too, honey,” he said to no one. “I do miss you. It’s been nine years since we were all together, and I miss you both.”
“But she left us, remember?” He took another drink. “She walked out. After she slept with that rat-bastard from the softball team…”
He looked around, suddenly aware that he was the only one around.
He sniffed, trying to shake off the feeling of delirium caused by the whiskey. Get it together, Livingston. You’re better than this. Livingston slammed the rest of the whiskey and set the glass on the far corner of his desk.
He needed a way to keep tabs on Julie without raising a flag in the data center. He thought for a moment, then sat back up and clicked away from the picture.
The image of Julie at the park bench disappeared, replaced by a browser window. It displayed the SecuNet homepage, an intranet server with a user interface for the company’s secure communications and file storage.
He almost laughed out loud. Though SecuNet was secure enough for the CDC’s standards, he knew all too well how unsecure Internet Explorer was. It had been thoroughly proven unsafe by just about every web development and tech blog on the net, but it was the mandatory browser installed on any government computer.
The page had a few options available, and he clicked on one toward the bottom in the first column. The site redirected him to a secure page, and he typed his username and password in the respective boxes and was soon faced with a new dialog box:
“Email Redirect: Choose Orginator”
Being considered “executive” at a government organization did have its perks, even if it didn’t pay well enough. Livingston entered Julie’s email address, then added a second Originator email address entry for Benjamin Stephens. In the “Enter Forwarding Address” box, he entered his own email account and pressed “submit.”
The dialog box disappeared, and Livingston closed the browser window. The redirect would be “silent,” meaning it would run invisibly in the background — neither of his employees would know they were being tracked via email — and it would be relatively untraceable. Only a seasoned IT veteran specifically looking for the redirect would be able to find it.
He stood, refilled his scotch, and sat back down at the computer. He smiled at the computer screen and once again opened the folder containing the pictures from the company picnic.
Chapter Nineteen
Dr. Diana Torres looked through the compound microscope once more. Whatever it was, she hadn’t seen it before. The structure was different than a normal virus. First, the integumentary system that protected the rest of the microscopic body from external elements and diseases was studded with odd bumps and scrapes, as if the virus itself was infected with something. Secondly, while she recognized the lipid and protein structures that made up the bulk of the body, she couldn’t quite place their configuration.
Finally, the entire inner cavity of each individual viral body was made up of the traditional nucleocapsid and capsomeres, but also other bodies she didn’t recognize that seemed to be crammed in as well. While the overall structure was standard for a type of herpesvirus, it didn’t fit any of the eight strains modern science was aware of.
She took another measurement and checked her notes.
“Varicella Zoster strain; assumption smaller form. Standard nucleocapsid and lipid envelopes; odd protein buildup differs from traditional strains.”
“Most spherical virions 80 to 90 nm in diameter; largest observed 93 nm, smallest observed 73 nm.”
The results were accurate; her measurements weren’t off. Her assistant, Charlie Furmann, had reserved the lab space at 8:30 that evening and she’d been inside until now. She checked her watch.
7:30 PM.
The act of checking her watch suddenly triggered her body to announce it was exhausted, and she yawned and stretched her arms. Standing, she shut the light from the microscope on the long lab table in order to prevent any unwanted reactions in the sample. She slipped on her lab coat — essentially her entry key to the myriad of rooms, labs, and closets spread around the building.
It would also get her into the cafeteria on the main level; her current destination. The nature of the work done at the research facility, as well as the personality types of those doing it, meant that the facility had 24/7 cafeteria access. The scientists and research assistants that populated these offices weren’t governed by traditional nine-to-five jobs, nor did they care for culturally accepted norms about when to sleep and when to work.
At any given point during the day, not just during posted breakfast, lunch, and dinner times, the cafeteria could be either completely empty or filled with talkative scientists discussing their latest research.
Dr. Torres stepped off the elevator on the main level. The halls were dimly lit with security lights, but the open doors of the cafeteria were filled with light that spilled into the corridor, beckoning. Another involuntary response in her brain was triggered by the light and the smell of food, and suddenly she felt pangs of hunger run up and down her insides.
Surprised to see that there was no one inside the cafeteria, she walked to an open-faced refrigerator unit and pulled out a small plastic bin of hummus and crackers and a 20-ounce bottle of Pepsi. She carried the Pepsi and hummus to a small point-of-sale system and cash register near the door and tapped her identification card on the credit card terminal. After the terminal beeped, she clipped the badge back to her lab coat pocket and walked back into the hallway. Just then, she felt her cell phone buzz in the pocket of her jeans. She shuffled the Pepsi around and reached in for her phone. It was a text from Charlie.