It struck her as comical how easily people were willing to assign her the role of office manager. It wasn’t as though female scientists were a rarity — nearly a third of those working in the lab were women, after all. But Gerald Lindstrom looked the part of head scientist. He also had the ambition and hubris to wish he actually held that exalted title. So that’s what she let everyone think. Only the two of them knew. Everyone thought Ruth was his “right-hand woman,” a highly competent researcher naturally but still only taken into Lindstrom’s confidence because of their relationship. They were assumed to be lovers. They were lovers, though that word seemed laughably inapplicable. They didn’t love; they needed and they used. Gerald Lindstrom needed to be seen as the most brilliant man on the planet. Ruth Baxter needed to get her work done in peace.

The testing was his idea. His alone, yet everyone in the lab went along with it, herself included. Nobody could claim to be innocent, and afterward nobody did make that claim. When some of the scientists were found later on, they were closed-mouthed about the details of what happened in the lab, but they never denied anything. In the absence of evidence they weren’t prosecuted, and while there were cries of “off with their heads” by some, the clamoring to know the longevity secret was louder by far. The more unscrupulous of the scientists sold what they knew for as much as they could get, which wasn’t much. Each person in that lab held only one or two pieces of the entire puzzle; Lindstrom alone, it was believed, knew what the whole thing looked like.

“He doesn’t know. Only I do. And he and I, and now you, are the only ones who know that.”

She looked impassively into our stunned faces. “I’m guessing you have a few questions for me, most of them starting with why.” We were still too stunned to speak, so with a slightly amused curl in her lips, she continued. “Why he and I agreed to this arrangement was like I said: he wanted glory, I wanted results. After a while he really started to believe he was head of the lab. When we had to abandon everything, we continued this illusion for his ego and my protection. Gerald wants the world to worship him; I want it to leave me alone.”

I almost laughed out loud when she said that, though it came out more like a sharp exhalation. She caught it, held my eyes with hers again. “You can understand that, can’t you, wanting the world to leave you alone?”

“Yes. I understand wanting something I can never have,” I said.

That made her look away with what surprisingly seemed like shame. Shame? In someone who knowingly changed the course of the entire world? I was having a hard time putting the many pieces of Ruth Baxter together.

“There’s another why question I want to know,” Harrigan interjected.

“Why am I telling you this now?” Ruth’s smile was back. Harrigan nodded. “Because Lindstrom needs to be stopped.”

“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?” Jimmy said.

“No, it is not. The virus he created is airborne but it has an extremely short lifespan outside the human body. It can be transmitted through exhalation by an infected individual, but that transmission method alone would take a very long time to affect large portions of the population, and it would be very easy to quarantine those who have it. Gerald Lindstrom intends to spread the virus in other ways.”

“What ‘other ways’?” Harrigan again. He was sounding as intrigued as he was wary.

“He’s a very charismatic and persuasive man; I imagine he can probably enlist large groups of those who yearn to perpetuate acts of mayhem, anarchy, and terrorism.” The wry smile again; it was easy to see the disdain Ruth Baxter felt for much of humanity. “New York is Gerald’s way of giving the world a glimpse of what’s to come. By the time doctors figure out how the virus works it will be too late to quarantine and there will be too many people to treat.”

“And then?” Harrigan prompted.

Ruth shrugged. “And then the world goes its way. People will stop focusing on the longevity gene and start focusing on a vaccine for the virus. If an altruistic source finds it first, the U.S. will be saved. If not, I imagine the country could very easily be invaded by whoever gets the vaccine first.

“It’s quite the morality test, isn’t it,” she mused. “The virus isn’t fatal. By itself it won’t kill anyone at all. Like most viruses it won’t affect everyone; there will be a small percentage of people who are immune, for whatever reason — and that includes the Lao Babies, in case you were wondering,” she said to me, though I hadn’t been wondering, as there was a bit too much else to be processing at the moment. “The survivors and those as of yet unaffected have a choice: they can try to help save as many of the stricken as they can; they can try to keep themselves safe; or they can take advantage of an entire nation left helpless.”

“Ruth,” I said. Immediately she stopped talking and turned her attention to me. “You haven’t answered the question. Why are you telling us this, now. What is it you want us to do? Are you putting us to this morality test? Yes, Lindstrom needs to be stopped. Can’t you stop him?”

She almost seemed not to have heard the question, so intent was she on looking into my eyes. Finally she spoke. “I’m the last person who could stop Lindstrom. I’m the reason he’s doing all of this in the first place. I remind him that he’s a failure and a fraud and largely useless in this world. What he’s doing now is all he has left.”

She said the words in a matter-of-fact manner, without rancor, though the failure / fraud / useless condemnation seemed like the personal venom of a past love. Something about this made me think there was still far more to this story, convoluted as it already was, that she wasn’t telling. I wasn’t going to ask about it just yet, though, because there was something more important I needed at the moment. “You need to help us, Ruth,” I said. “You know Lindstrom needs to be stopped. You’re the only one who can find him. You need to come with us.”

Jimmy and Harrigan seemed surprised at my asking this, though they knew I was right; they probably just figured it was a lost cause given Ruth’s apparent iron will, her seeming to have turned her back on the world.

All of us were even more surprised when she said to me, “Very well. I will.”

+

Nothing was going as planned. By the time he’d gotten the “right papers,” they’d stopped letting people across the border. He’d waited in a line of cars that seemed to stretch for miles and then had to join that same line turning around away from Canada. When he’d finally given up and pulled over to wait for the traffic to abate, he’d checked the news on his phone and learned about the virus. Now he couldn’t even return home. Aggravated, ineffectual, with nowhere to go, and worst of all, everything he had done, every risk he had taken, at that moment seemed for naught. There was not a single news item about him, wondering who he was, what his motives were — no one cared any more, because they had something new to focus their limited brains upon. So much for saving humanity from them. Humanity didn’t give a damn. He watched the cars creep along beside him, alternately hating and pitying the unseen occupants of each one.

A chirp from his phone broke him out of his dark revere — an email from his neighbor the gun nut, of all things. Ever since he’d had a conversation with this neighbor, feigning an avid interest in weaponry so he could find other suppliers for his grenades, the guy seemed to think they were best buds. “Dont know if your still in town if so you got to check this out,” followed by a description of some militant anti-government group the neighbor had joined. Apparently they were actively recruiting other, similarly weak-minded morons who needed a group and a gun to validate themselves. He kept reading if only to count the number of misspelled words. Halfway through the email, however, he sat up so sharply he hit his head on the roof of the car.

The group was taking responsibility for the spread of the virus in Manhattan. Whether that was true or not didn’t concern him; what had jolted him had been the name of the man the group listed as their leader.

Perhaps it was worth risking a return home after all.