Chapter 11 - The Clue in the Creek
At 4:00 AM, the sterile specimen basin sat in the center of the St. Jude’s pathology research lab under heavy armed guard.
The CDC regional response team from Atlanta had already landed at the municipal airport and was en route via helicopter. But Dr. Reed had not waited. She had already sliced a thin cross-section of the frozen organism and placed it under the electron microscope.
I stood beside her, drinking my fourth cup of bitter black hospital coffee, wrapped in a fleece blanket the nurses had given me. Chloe was in the pediatric recovery unit, breathing on her own, the incision neatly closed with butterfly stitches beneath a clean white gauze dressing.
“Look at this cellular structure, Sarah,” Dr. Reed said, waving me over to the dual-eyepiece viewer.
I peered through the lenses.
The cellular walls of the creature were unlike anything natural. They were reinforced with synthetic, bio-engineered polymers—the kind used in experimental bioremediation agents designed to consume heavy industrial hydrocarbons.
“This isn't an ancient parasite,” Dr. Reed explained grimly. “It’s a genetically modified nematode. Cytec was developing synthetic biological cultures to clean up industrial oil spills in stagnant waterways. The organism was supposed to be sterile and die after forty-eight hours.”
“But it didn't die,” I realized, cold dread washing over me.
“It mutated,” Dr. Reed nodded. “The toxic runoff in Blackwood Creek provided a cocktail of agricultural fertilizers and industrial solvents that altered its reproductive cycle. It became aggressive. It adapted from feeding on petroleum hydrocarbons to feeding on mammalian blood proteins.”
“And Principal Vance let seventy children walk along that water,” I whispered.
“Not just walk,” Dr. Reed said, pulling up the district budget reports that Nurse Henderson had provided in the manila folder. “Cytec paid the school district a $500,000 ‘grant’ last year to test their experimental runoff filtration system on public school grounds without state oversight. Vance signed the authorization personally.”
The door to the lab swung open.
Standing there was Special Agent Marcus Cole of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, accompanied by two agents wearing hazardous materials badges.
“Dr. Reed? Sarah Miller?” Agent Cole showed his gold credentials. “We’ve reviewed the documentation you transmitted to the Department of Justice. We have a federal warrant for Principal Arthur Vance, Brenda Vance, and the executive board of Cytec Industrial.”
“What about Richard?” I asked, my voice steady.
May you like
Agent Cole gave a grim, tight smile. “Mr. Miller’s firm was the legal clearinghouse that drafted the fraudulent environmental waivers. He’s currently sitting in the back of a federal cruiser in the hospital parking lot.”
***
