James Turnbow

With a separate syringe, I extracted another solution containing the mystery virus that had killed Wade, which I put into the same petri dish.

My experiments from the morning gave me hope it would work, but I was far from sure.

Philo screamed over the radio.

I glanced at the security feed, watching as one of the windows in Philo's building fell out, frame and all.

Ants streamed through the gap.

Almost there!

Hang on!

I brought the dish over to a heat lamp and started to warm it up.

After a few moments, I used a dropper to pull some of the liquid out, placing a single drop between two slides to examine under a microscope.

Kaleidoscoping bacterial and fungal formation spread throughout the solution as the symbiosis took effect.

Sunlight streamed into the lab.

The door fell inward, its hinges having been chewed through.

Ants scurried in, tendrils of them reaching out for me.

I stepped back to the heat lamp, picked up the petri dish and hesitated.

If I was wrong about this, I would be releasing into the world one of the most virulent and deadly pathogens since the bubonic plague.

As the ants closed in, I heard Philo shout over the earpiece,

And suddenly, the problem I'd been working on at the back of my mind solved itself.

Of course, the answer had been there all the time.

The Wade I'd been talking to was just part of my imagination, and if he knew it, I knew it.

Only the dead are without fear, I muttered, repeating the last part of the quote from the 1960s, The Magnificent Seven.