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own carelessness. As for Black Flag, it was a military contract funded by the Department of Defense, she said, and that made it bigger than all of them and their concerns. If they didn't do the job, somebody else would, and she needed the work . . . |
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Jack did not know where the science had gone wrong, but the virus attacked the rage centers of male brains. While the biologists squabbled over causes, Jack's role as lab assistant was to terminate and dispose of hundreds of test animals and test serums, cultures and viral wastes. In those days most organic disposables were dumped into plastic drums and buried at the edge of Magog Woods in nearby Carletona site owned by Julius Wick. When Jack questioned the safety of the dump, he was told to just do his job. Plastic lasted forever. |
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Two weeks later Jack found a memo on his desk informing him that his position had been eliminated. He had one week's notice. He knew the reasons. He also knew who was behind the firing. Claire Manning Wick. She did not work on the project, but she was the force behind Julius. He was a brilliant scientist, a man of scientific insights but dim visions. He was also weak. It was Claire whose sights turned upward, and she directed his career like the mother of a stage prodigy, pushing their way to the top. |
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Jack Perry had met her on a number of occasions and never much cared for her. She had an open-visitor's permit to enter the lab, even though the project was highly classified. The security guard looked the other way, and nobody inside dared raise protocol since she was the wife of the director and the money behind BiOmega. She once cornered Jack about his concerns, listening with chilled silence. Like Lady Macbeth from off-stage, she made sure that Jack was out before he subverted team solidarity. There was no room for ambivalence in the lab where her husband was establishing himself as a pioneer in biological warfare. |
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Two months later the project was closed down, and BiOmega disappeared and everybody with it. Nobody knew what the effects of the virus would be on humans. What Jack did know was that, at the end, the substance had mutated unpredictably, uncontrollably. And for over two decades it lay in containers five feet below the backyard of the Hazzard family home. |
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He had not thought about those containers until he noticed scat- |
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