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Dr Abbey looked down at Joe thehis ears, and he looked utterly blissful "My husband," she said calineer I was still working for the provincial CDC back then, looking for solutions through ‘safe’ channels I followed protocol, I maintained h to think that "

The na to anything, and for once, George wasn’t helping "Soive lectures to software engineering classes They said it was good for the students to deal with soht it was partially to relanced my way "Simon Fraser was a closed school No student or faculty in and out during the semester You came in clean, you stayed clean, you left clean Pretty much the only risk of infection came from the outside speakers and the maintenance staff, and they were tested in every way possible Joe used to say he couldn’t sit down for a week after he did one of his lectures" She fell abruptly silent

"There was an outbreak," said Alaric, taking up the thread where Dr Abbey left off "The security footage was mostly destroyed, but e have indicates that it ym Maybe someone pushed themselves a little bit too far and had a coronary We’ll never know"

"Oh, fk," I said

"My thoughts exactly," said Dr Abbey

An outbreak is never good, but an outbreak on a sealed campus is close to a worst-case scenario The healthy would be locked in with the infected until someone could come and let them out, and the mop-up would probably take weeks, if not months, after which the school would almost certainly be decommissioned for several years while they waited for the hazard level to go down again "What was the student body size?"

"About eleven thousand," said Dr Abbey "It was a larger school before they closed it to nonresident students Add another three hundred or so for the faculty and staff"

"How ie

"None," whispered Kelly

"None," echoed Dr Abbey "See, the outbreak started near the school walls, and they were located on a hill that et to the cae that day--whatever genius was at the switch--decided that it was too dangerous to try for an evacuation That the infection was already too close to breaking out So they called down the wrath of fking God on that little school"

"I re faintly awed "We studied it when I was in training Al, even the stuff that should have been beaht into the Health Canada and CDC databases It was just gone"

"Except for the pieces that somehow ended up on private servers," said Alaric "I’ve seen soe It’s clearly an outbreak, but it doesn’t look…"

"It doesn’t look that bad," said Dr Abbey She seeained a bit of her coroup before she continued: "It looks like the sort of thing you handle with an insertion tea on Canadian soil My husband was in that school He called hing He said there was ‘a little ruckus’ near the track, and that he’d be hoet an ice pack ready for the bruises left by all those blood tests they insisted on running Everything was fine, and that was after the outbreak started But they treated it like the end of the goddaue?" I asked

"Is that what they’re calling it these days?" Dr Abbey shook her head "I tendered nation immediately They refused it Three times Said that I was a ‘valuable researcher,’ and that they’d be happy to give et ot s, I eratulating the in my time of need"

"You quit," said Kelly

"You never started," countered Dr Abbey "Don’t you look ato out theas soon as think you know best My husband died because a bomb was cheaper than a cleanup squad That’s the sis Joe died because somebody didn’t want to pay the bill His sister," she jabbed her finger at me, "died because you people won’t do the research into the reservoir conditions that needs to happen if we’re going to survive this damn virus As a species, and as a society You , and hell, you ht, but when you don’t let anyone watch over your shoulder, how the fk are the rest of us supposed to know?"

Kelly took a slow breath, visibly cal herself before she said, "I wouldn’t be here if I was still willing to play by their rules"

"And again bullshit" Dr Abbey slid off the desk, taking a quick step forward "You don’ttheh off the reservation to be sitting here, they’re not going to let you come back It’s cheaper to drop the bomb than it is to offer medical assistance, reainst Kelly’s, and said, voice suddenly soft, "I was you, once upon a tianization you still believe in made et smart in a hurry"