Lost Immunity

by Daniel Kalla

  “Top of the morning to you, Dr. D,” he chirps in his weird vernacular that’s a hybrid of Gen-Z speak and something straight out of the fifties.

  Austin is as close to a tech genius as Lisa has ever met, although technically she never has, since he lives in San Diego and they’ve only ever interacted via phone or electronically. She has no idea what he looks like, but she envisions him with a beard and a man-bun. This morning, she has no time for his chattiness. “What did you discover, Austin?”

  “Some sophisticated prodding, Dr. D.”

  “Prodding?” Lisa asks.

  “Yep, I was up until the wee hours tracing backward,” Austin says. “Got to say, I admire the dude’s work. We installed a tight firewall. The full Chuck Norris. But the dude kept prodding and finally weaseled his way up our backside using multiple VPNs to access the database.”

  Lisa understands enough of the description to appreciate the hacker hid his identity behind virtual private networks. “So you’re not going to be able track down an IP address for him or her?”

  “Not a hope, Dr. D. The dude was bouncing from VPN to VPN, going full chameleon. Last IP address I could trace him to was somewhere in Latvia. But who the heck knows? Dude might be my downstairs neighbor.”

  “Can you tell how many reports were removed from the database?”

  “Nope. This wasn’t some bored fourteen-year-old chilling on his mom’s Mac. Hell, maybe it was. Either way, it was some NSA-level shit. No idea how often he was mucking about inside our guts. Or what exactly he did. I was lucky to even find a couple of partial fingerprints. He went to Herculean efforts to conceal them.”

  “How about the email?” Lisa forwarded Austin the bogus email reply from “Seattle Public Health”—which included the official logo—that Jayden had sent her. It was, as Jayden described, a concise letter discounting Darius’s reaction as being unrelated to his vaccination. As brief as it was, clearly it had been written by someone with medical knowledge.

  “Sorry, Dr. D. That email address is one ginormous doo-doo,” he says. “Comes from a massively generic domain. You’d have better luck tracking down a specific grain of sand in the Sahara.”

  Lisa sighs. “Can we learn anything from the hack?”

  “Yep. Whoever did this wasn’t fucking around.”

  Frustrated, she thanks Austin for his efforts and disconnects.

  Lisa appreciates that even if she does report the breach to law enforcement, the chances of them identifying the hacker are remote. But the level of sophistication involved only convinces her even more that someone from Delaware Pharmaceuticals, with its endless resources and bottomless pockets, had to be behind it.

  “Who keeps these kind of idiotic hours?” Angela asks from the doorway of the office.

  Lisa grins to hide her surprise at the sight of her old boss. More than the deepening hollows of Angela’s cheeks, it’s the cane in her right hand that concerns her. “You used to be here by seven every day when you occupied this seat.”

  “I also used to smoke when I was in college,” Angela says. “Doesn’t mean I was right to.”

  Lisa can’t help but laugh. “Do you have a minute? I could use your advice.”

  “Got lots of minutes. Well, some anyway.” She hobbles into the office and eases herself into the chair across from Lisa.

  “It’s just been one disaster after another, Angela,” Lisa says, her voice thickening.

  “The vaccine?”

  “Everything. This outbreak is spiraling out of control. The only vaccine that can stop it is fatally flawed. The press and the anti-vaxxers are having a field day. And now we’re dealing with fraud and, possibly, a corporate conspiracy.”

  Angela holds up both hands. “Whoa, whoa. Slow down. Start from the top.”

  Lisa summarizes the developments of the past few days. When she gets to the part about the website tampering and her conversation with Austin, Angela grumbles, “Those greedy sons of bitches! You think they knew the whole time about this potentially deadly reaction?”

  “I don’t know. But why would Delaware hide a side effect if they knew it was eventually going to come out in an even more public way, like it did here?”

  “Maybe they were hoping they could get enough of a toehold in the community to make their vaccine invaluable before its downside was discovered.”

  Lisa rubs her forehead. “The chances of them pulling that off seem remote.”

  “What else, then?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Angela snaps her fingers. “What about corporate sabotage?”

  “Sabotage themselves?”

  “Sure. Say someone planned to make money selling the stock short. Keep the vaccine’s flaw a secret and prop up the share price until it has a spectacular fall?”

  “That sounds a bit farfetched.”

  “It does, doesn’t it? Maybe I saw it in a movie?” Angela shrugs. “So what are you going to do now?”

  Lisa leans on the desk, her chin in her hands. “I have no idea.”

  “You have to take it to the authorities. This is a crime. Potentially, a federal one.”

  “The FBI?”

  “That’d be my guess.”

  Lisa knew she’d have to do this sooner or later. “First I want to confront Nathan and Fiona. I want to hear it from them.”

  “What if you just end up tipping them off?”

  “My tech guy is a boy genius. He couldn’t find any link back to Delaware. I don’t think anyone else will. They’d be far too sophisticated to leave a trail.”

  Angela considers it for a moment. “Lisa, this is a lot to take on. Your ship is leaking from every angle right now. But you got to keep your eye on the prize.”

  “Meaning?”

  “This outbreak. It’s nearing a point of critical mass. Without the vaccine, you have to intensify all your other containment strategies.”

  “We’re pursuing our contact tracing religiously.”

  “Yeah, but between the antibiotic prophylaxis failures and the noncompliance with treatment, it’s not going to be enough.”

  Lisa throws up her hands. “What else can we do?”

  “Kids are going to be heading back to school in a couple weeks…”

  Lisa sees her point. The risk of accelerated spread will soar once the potential carriers of the pathogen mix in among the school population. “You’re thinking we should close the schools?”

  “They did in Iceland.”

  Lisa’s head spins, considering the implications, especially in the wake of the long school closures during the COVID pandemic. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “And what about quarantines?”

  “It might even come to that.”

  Angela stares at her for a long hard moment. And then she breaks into a small laugh. “I’m still waiting for my thank-you card for handing you this plum job!”

  CHAPTER 49

  Nathan feels more confused than ever. After Lisa bolted from his room, she didn’t answer any of his texts, leaving him worried and rather embarrassed. He thought they’d had a connection. Then she suddenly contacted him, demanding an urgent meeting and forcing him to postpone his flight home.

  He enters the coffee shop across from Pioneer Square and is surprised to spot Fiona sitting beside Lisa. With her hair up and glasses on, Lisa looks as attractive as ever in a pale taupe suit. But her smile is cold, and her eyes are all business.

  Nathan looks over to Fiona, whose perplexed expression reflects his own state of mind. He turns back to Lisa. “You didn’t mention a group meeting.”

  “Sorry,” Lisa says, without sounding at all apologetic. “More efficient this way.”

  “What’s going on, Lisa?” Fiona asks.

  “I was hoping to ask the same of you two.”

  Fiona’s forehead creases. “What are you talking about?”

  “Our reporting website. It’s been hacked.”

  “Hacked?”

  Lisa nods gravely. “Someone breached it. Got
into the database and erased at least one critical report.”

  “Which one?”

  “The death of Darius Washington.”

  Fiona’s jaw drops. “What?”

  “You’re sure?” Nathan asks.

  “Someone not only deleted the report on Darius, but they also sent a bogus reply to his roommate, who submitted it.”

  “Why?”

  “The only plausible explanation I can think of is that he or she”—Lisa glances from Nathan to Fiona—“wanted to protect the interests of Delaware Pharmaceuticals.”

  “Wait a minute…”

  “There are only a few people who would have the motive and the access to pull it off.”

  “That’s crazy!” Fiona’s voice cracks with indignation.

  “To protect Delaware how?” Nathan asks, although his mind is already turning over. “To wait for even more complications? And even bigger lawsuits?”

  Lisa hesitates. “There’s no other explanation.”

  “And you think we’re the ones responsible?”

  Lisa stares back at him. “You’ve got to be the prime suspects at this point.”

  “Come on,” Fiona mumbles, her face reddening.

  “Again, Lisa,” Nathan insists. “Why we would do this?”

  “Maybe to stall for time until Neissovax was so entrenched in the battle against this outbreak that we would have to overlook the one little worrisome side effect?”

  He scoffs. “That’s weak.”

  “OK.” Lisa jabs a finger at him. “Tell me who else would have any possible reason to do it. Or even the opportunity.”

  “This is a catch-twenty-two. How can we justify what we don’t know?”

  They lapse into a distressed silence.

  “I’m reporting this to the FBI,” Lisa finally says.

  Nathan can’t formulate a reasonable response, but Fiona leans forward and asks, “What will they do?”

  “Investigate,” Lisa snaps. “I understand they do that from time to time with unsolved crimes. Especially cybercrimes and interstate corporate conspiracies.”

  Fiona’s throat bobs, and she looks away.

  “I don’t mean to sound so harsh. But look at it from my perspective. I have no idea who to trust.”

  “You can trust us,” Nathan says.

  “No.” Lisa’s eyes meet his. “I can’t. Not unless you can convince me someone else is behind this cover-up.”

  “We just found out about it,” Fiona says.

  Lisa gets up from the table. “I have to go.”

  Nathan resists the urge to grab her wrist as she walks past him. “You want us to take a polygraph test?” he asks.

  “Better you explain it to the FBI,” Lisa says without slowing.

  Fiona and Nathan watch her stride away.

  “A couple days ago we were celebrating the successful launch of a lifesaving vaccine,” Nathan mutters, more to himself than Fiona. “Now? The drug is dead on arrival, and we’re being accused of a criminal conspiracy.”

  Fiona locks eyes with him. Never has she looked sadder, and yet there’s also a serene calm in her gaze. “Walt was an atheist. Not even the least superstitious. But right before they put him on the ventilator, he smiled and whispered to me, ‘Everything happens for a reason.’ ”

  CHAPTER 50

  Lisa looks down and sees her fingers trembling where they rest on top of the steering wheel. The confrontation with Nathan and Fiona has left her feeling rawer and more conflicted, without confirming anything. They both seemed so indignant and convincing, each in their own way, between Fiona’s quiet outrage and Nathan’s visible hurt.

  But what if it was just an act? Angela was right. She should never have tipped her hand. They could be furiously destroying the evidence of their complicity at this very moment. But what difference would it really make? Exposing the cover-up doesn’t help Lisa control the outbreak. Kids are still dying of the infection and, now, the potential prevention, too. Putting Nathan, Fiona, or anyone else who might be involved behind bars won’t stop the spread of the lethal meningitis.

  Still, Lisa realizes it’s time to involve the professionals. “Call Ingrid,” she tells her car’s voice recognition system. A moment later, her assistant answers. “Hey, it’s me,” Lisa says. “I need you to track down the number of whatever federal agency is responsible for cybercrimes. I’m assuming it’s the FBI, but I don’t really know.”

  “Cybercrimes?” Ingrid echoes.

  “Long story,” Lisa says. “It’s urgent.”

  “OK, sure,” Ingrid says. “Speaking of urgent, Dr. Merkley called twice this morning looking for you.”

  “Who’s Dr. Merkley?”

  “Says he’s from the toxicology lab.”

  A cool rush runs from Lisa’s scalp to her toes. “Text me his number!”

  As she impatiently waits for her phone to chime with Ingrid’s text, Lisa realizes she’s only a few blocks from the state toxicology lab on South Walker Street. She heads straight over and pulls into the parking lot, just as the text from Ingrid arrives.

  Instead of phoning, Lisa walks through the main entrance and up to the reception desk and identifies herself to the bored-looking middle-aged woman behind it, who doesn’t stop chewing on the end of her pen. After a quick call, the woman motions to the elevator behind her and says, “Third floor. Jimmy’s office is down the end of the hallway.”

  Lisa rides the elevator to the third floor and hurries past a series of doors, until she reaches one with a plaque that reads: “Dr. James Merkley, Director.”

  Before she can knock, the door swings open to reveal a bearded man in jeans and a frayed, short-sleeve polo shirt, who looks to be in his mid to late thirties. “You must be Lisa,” the toxicologist chirps, and then taps his chest. “I’m Jimmy.”

  “Thanks for seeing me, Jimmy,” she says, surprised by his age and relative informality.

  “No. Thank you for the fascinating challenge.”

  “Challenge?”

  “Of extracting all those toxins from a single drop of residual fluid inside the syringe.”

  She does a double take. “All those toxins?”

  “Come. Let me show you.”

  Before she can ask anything more, Jimmy marches past her and back down the hallway toward the staircase. Lisa’s heart is pounding as she follows him down one flight of stairs and into an open lab space.

  White-coated technicians work at stations separated by freestanding machinery of various shapes and sizes crowding the floor. Some have built-in screens, while others have enclosed hoods or tubes snaking in and out of them. The only consistent feature is that all the equipment is as white as the walls. For the all the gadgetry surrounding them, Lisa is surprised by how quiet the lab is aside from a steady low-grade hum and intermittent beeps and chirps. They walk past a gloved and goggled technician who sits at her bench, carefully pipetting drops of a bluish liquid out of a test tube and onto a test strip.

  Jimmy stops beside a series of tall machines that are the size of closets and together resemble appliances in an ultramodern, high-end kitchen. He pats the side of the nearest one affectionately, as if it were an old pal he hadn’t seen in a while. “This puppy is the most sensitive mass spectrometer on the market, bar none. We ran your sample through the LC-MS, and lo and behold—”

  “LC-MS?”

  “Liquid chromatography mass spectrometry,” Jimmy says. “It’s all the rage in toxicology these days. Basically, it’s totally replaced gas chromatography, because with GC, you need your compounds to be volatile or at least heat stable for them to—”

  Lisa cuts him off again with a raised hand. “I struggled in chemistry, Jimmy. It almost kept me out of med school. I totally believe you. I just want to hear what you found.”

  Flashing a gap-toothed grin, Jimmy reaches into the basket beside the machine, pulls out a few printed sheets, and holds them up for Lisa to see. The first page shows a densely colored graph with various spikes and waves of reds,
greens, purples, and blues.

  Lisa squints at it. “What am I looking at?”

  “A histogram of all the various components we found in your sample.” Jimmy flips through the next few pages, which show more bar charts, line graphs, and pie charts that mean nothing to Lisa, until he finally reaches a page with a list of medications that she does recognize.

  Her heart is already in her throat when Jimmy says, “So, aside from the active vaccine protein itself, we also found—ranked highest to lowest in terms of their relative concentrates—sulfonamides, lamotrigine, allopurinol, fluconazole, carbamezapine, and traces of oseltamivir.”

  “That can’t be right,” Lisa says as she gawks at the hodgepodge of medications listed on the printout. “You found all of those meds in the one syringe?”

  “Yup.” He shrugs. “This wasn’t a vaccine so much as a drugstore sampler of some of the more common antibiotics and antiseizure drugs.”

  “In other words, it was poisoned.”

  “Well, technically, none of these are toxins. They’re all pharmaceuticals. But it’s about the most contaminated sample I’ve seen in a hell of a long time.”

  The realization hits her with the shock of a hammer to her thumb. “There’s zero chance all these medications ended up in this syringe by accident.”

  “Nada. There’s not a pharmaceutical company in the world that would release such a dirty vaccine from their plant. They’re legally mandated to test every single batch for quality control. And this sample would’ve set off a five-star alarm in testing.”

  “So someone added these toxins to this particular syringe?”

  “Or tampered with the vial of vaccine itself, yeah.” Jimmy scratches his beard. “But why? All of these medications are relatively benign.”

  “Benign, maybe,” Lisa says as her stomach flips. “But each one of them is also strongly associated with Stevens-Johnson syndrome.”

  CHAPTER 51

  Lisa’s whole body feels numb as she drives away from the lab. She still can’t wrap her head around the implications of what the toxicologists found in a single drop of leftover vaccine.