Chapter One
The snick of the ventilation system engaging woke Rebecca Roth from a deep sleep. She’d always been a sound sleeper but a light sleeper—meaning she was well rested, even if the slightest sound woke her too early. A glance at the clock told her it was barely 4:00 a.m., but there was no way she was going back to work on that vaccine before 6:00 a.m. and at least two cups of coffee.
She snuggled back into the pillows and tugged the blankets around her neck. Fall had arrived in North Dakota. While it hadn’t snowed yet, it was late October, and the temperatures dropped at night to nearly freezing. With her bedroom in a concrete bunker below ground, it made for a cold start to the day. She had started her tenure here in May and wasn’t looking forward to the winter temperatures, if the last few weeks were any indication.
When she got her PhD in cell, molecular, health and disease biology, she had no plans to make her home in the middle of nowhere North Dakota. Still, when the opportunity came up to work as the head scientist at the Research Center of The Advancement of Biogenics, she couldn’t turn it down. Not when it gave her invaluable experience creating vaccines for new viruses and was the feather in her cap that she’d need to get a faculty positionat a university. She planned to work here for a year, make some inroads on vaccines, and then apply for positions nationwide. Once she started publishing papers about her work at the research center, the possibility that someone would come looking for her was very real.
Currently, she worked with a limited number of people due to an incredibly deadly virus residing in her lab. Only the head of the research center, Dr. Walter Hoerman, and their lab tech, Zafar Zimmer, spent time in the center with her. Other than the people who made deliveries of food and supplies, she saw no one else during her days here. It was essential to keep their team small and protect themselves and the rest of the world from the deadly pathogens hidden within their walls. Her mind’s eye immediately zipped to Ignis Cerebri, the scientific name for the deadliest virus she’d ever encountered. The brain-burning virus, as she called it, went straight to the brain, where it slowly and painfully burned brain cells until the patient died.
Rebecca had finished the vaccine and was now moving into the testing phase of the process. It was imperative that she finish each step as quickly as possible so it could be tested on live subjects, since each failure would send them back to the starting line. Without a vaccine for this virus, the world would have a pandemic on their hands unlike anything they’d ever seen. A shudder went through her, and she flipped to her back to stare at the grating on the ceiling. At thirty-five, she had enough money and experience to be anywhere but here. She’d left home at sixteen and had only gotten this far in life because of the kindness of strangers, so she wanted herwork to matter to those who stepped up to help her when she needed it.
She supposed most people would say they were doing it for their family, but she was dead to them the moment she came out as gay at sixteen when herRumspringabegan. Being Amish and gay meant her options were limited in the community: she could remain in the closet, marry and raise kids while hating every second of her life forever, or break out duringRumspringaand accept that she could never go back. Neither were easy choices. Not when your formal education ended in the eighth grade. At fourteen, boys were taught vocational skills to learn a trade while the girls continued learning about running the home and farm. What little science she’d learned in school intrigued her and made her want to know more, so whenRumspringahit, she went straight to the public library and read all the books about science and how science impacts the world that she could find. That was the moment she’d made her decision, knowing full well it would be difficult. But she couldn’t live a lie forever. That’s not living, and she wanted to experience all the wonderful things the world offered, including love.
With a deep and heavy sigh, Rebecca—Bec as her friends called her—tossed back the covers and sat up. She wasn’t going back to sleep, so she might as well make that coffee and get started on her workday. Dr. Hoerman had a house outside the research center, so he wouldn’t be in until at least nine, and then he’d work until three or four and waltz back out to carry on his life elsewhere. She’d been the head scientist for five months, and it was easy to see why they couldn’t retain one for much longer than that. The scientists weren’t the problem. Management was the problem. She had contemplated leaving at month four but needed the win of a properly performing vaccine on her résumé. She hoped she’d have that by this time next year, at the latest. The isolation here could get to a person, and she hadn’t even experienced a winter in North Dakota. If things kept going as they were, she might have to leave sooner rather than later. Dr. Hoerman was nice but did nothing to help her with the research. It was hard to think about devoting years of your life to a cause no one else seemed interested in.
Even through her thick wool socks, the concrete floor was freezing, so she hurried to the adjoining bathroom to prepare for the day. Her biggest fear, and the only reason she stayed, was that if she left, no one would finish the vaccine, and the world would suffer because she couldn’t hack it. Guilt had no place in the life of a scientist, but this virus was unlike anything she’d ever seen, so for the good of humanity, she had to stay. A hot shower, hotter coffee and warm oatmeal was her plan, and then she’d get down to the business of the day—saving the world.
* * *
“JUST CHECKING IN, BEC,” Dr. Hoerman said when he entered the office and research space.
Rebecca gasped and turned to the doctor, dressed in khakis and a flannel shirt. There was no sense in dressing up when no one saw you anyway. They only wore business attire when they had conference calls with other labs. Today was not one of those days.
“Walter, you scared me,” she said, her hand to her chest.
“I’m early,” he said with a wink. He reminded her more of a lumberjack than a doctor but had been a brilliant mind in science for years before becoming the admin of this research center. “Couldn’t sleep, so thought I’d get some work done.”
It was nearly 7:00 a.m., and she was just getting started with work. Her earlier resolve to get up and work had been curbed by the hot shower that had relaxed her, and she’d fallen asleep for a few hours. She’d needed the extra rest, but now she felt great and hoped today would be the day she could concentrate on the next steps to bring the vaccine to the testing phase.
“I couldn’t sleep, either,” she said, lowering herself to her chair. “It must be in the water.”
Walter snorted. “More like the attitude of a teenager. My sister called and wanted me to talk to my nephew.”
“That doesn’t sound fun,” Bec agreed. “But family is everything, so you have to be there for them.” She said it as though she had any. That was the most challenging part of her decision to part ways with her community. Knowing she now had nieces and nephews that she would never meet and siblings she would never see again. Looking back over the last nineteen years of her life, she knew she’d made the right decision by leaving, though. There was no way she would have survived in that community living the life she was expected to live when it would all be a lie.
“You say that like you understand family on a different level,” Walter said, sitting at his desk.
“It’s an easy lesson to learn when you live more of your life without family than with it. That’s the breaks, though. All I can do is hope they’re doing well. I know that the people I’ve met along the way, those who helpedme succeed when they didn’t have to, are my family now.”
Walter nodded as he turned on his computer, so with a sigh, Bec did the same. It was a melancholy morning. Thinking or talking about her family always made her feel that way. What she said was the truth. She’d been gone from the Amish community for longer than she’d been in it, and those people were a memory now. She did hope they were all well, but she also understood she was only alive and well because she left them to be herself.
“Are you seeing this?” Walter asked, and his tone of voice told her there was a problem as her computer flickered to life.
All her attention was on the screen now, and she froze with her hands over the keyboard. The screen was black with a white ace of spades filling it. Quickly, she gave the computer several commands, and when that didn’t work, she tried to pull up recovery mode.
“Should I restart it?” Walter asked from his desk.
“No!” Bec exclaimed, her heart hammering in her chest as she turned to him. “I think we’ve been hit with malware. If you restart your computer, it could brick all the devices.”
“Brick them?” he asked, his head tipped in confusion.
“Render them useless. If we lose control of the systems that the main computers run, and somehow the containment system goes down, everyone is dead.”
Walter froze as the implications of this hit him. “This is bad.”
“This is catastrophic,” Bec whispered, her gaze drawn back to the computer where a message appeared as though someone was typing it one letter at a time.
Stay tuned… More to come! 4C3
