PILLSBURY or The White Spot Death

Chapter 2.- Take four and call me in the morning

Monday, August 30, 2027

Dr. Pillsbury had stored the deadly pathogen mixed with another low-risk samples in order to avoid any problems with the security surveillance. The real problem was to take the ampoules out of the laboratories compound, and it was clear he would need high level access for that. Dr. Stern, well aware of that, offered himself to help, but he asked him if there were more samples of the pathogen available in the lab. Pillsbury didn't like that question.

- Dieter, you assured me you'd only use this in the Fulton prison. hen I first talked to you, I talked about justice. Justice for my family. That's why I can only hand you over just one ampoule. Just one ampoule, that's all.

- Don't worry. I'll be looking around just in case.

Nehemiah Pillsbury returned to his job. The next day he was called from the human resources management. A clerk informed him he was granted with a special pass, so he can get in and out of the facilities without being search by the laboratories' security personnel. He could also enter any section, including domes where dangerous pathogen microorganisms were stored, but Pillsbury said he didn't need to enter those sections, said thanks and left.

At the end of working day, he entered a low security ambience called the "CAP section". Among other non dangerous samples, there were five ampoules with the virus in sight. Pillsbury grabbed one of them, catalogued under code #167789-LLD and placed it in an iced container. The other four were left alone in the same row, beginning with code #167790-LLD. All of them were labeled as innocuous capsides and supposedly were part of a gene therapy investigation for lipoprotein lipase deficiency, hence the LLD letters in the code. Pillsbury left the installations with no problem and talked to Stern in the parking lot.

- Ok, you got it. Now use it just as told.

- Your breakthrough job is in good hands, Nem, I tell you. We'll speak more about this tomorrow.

The next day, Dr. Pillsbury went to the laboratories as usual. He put on his apron, entered the CAP section to see if everything was in order to replace the missing ampoule with a really innocuous sample and gasped at the scene. His eyed opened widen than ever before in this life and his heart throbs accelerated. All the following four ampoules that were next to the one he gave to Stern were also missing. He instinctively began to check another ones around and rushed out of the section looking for Stern. He found him in aother part of the compound bending to a microscope lens as if nothing out of place was happening.

- Dieter, I need to talk to you.

- Sorry, I'm in a middle of something. We'll talk al leaving time, ok?

- No, now!

Calmly, Stern reply with a smug look:

- You better leave, Mem. We'll discuss this at five.

Once in the parking lot, Pillsbury confronted Stern but that was no help at all.

- What did you do, Dieter? Don't you know the consequences of your act and what the grupo can do with...?

- Actually, Nem, I only wanted to know if you had more of those beauties stored and when. As you can suppose, the director of the lab is also implied, but for seflish reasons. If there's a vaccine in the future, Loeffler Institute will be the first to develop it. Of course, you'll be a part of that. But, the better thing you can do now is to take the group's money and go on that long waited vacation trip you talked me about the other day. Now, I really have to depart, a sprecial meeting is waiting for me.

Dr. Pillsbury had no words. Silence accompanied him in most of that evening. His second family never saw him as silent, as self-thinking, as sour-faced before.