Lost Immunity by Daniel Kalla (free reads TXT) 📕

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