“Take your temperature,” Ludmila pressed.

Jean Michael just looked at her blankly. The fever had descended on him like a tropical downpour, and she didn’t like the way the red veins in the whites of his eyes looked; a snow covered landscape with streaks of lava erupting from his pupils.

“Dr. Michael,” she tried again for his attention.

“Ou e Francais?”

“You’re in Kazakhstan.”

“Le ciel est bleu.”

“English, Jean Michael.” The international language of science was their only common tongue.

“Ouuuaaah . . . ” Jean Michael groaned slowly. “Blue skies.”

“What?”

“It is the color of your flag.”

Ludmila looked at the Frenchman, none the wiser about his ramblings. The Kazakh flag had a yellow sun against a blue sky, but what that had to do with anything . . .

“Is how the Americans describe our work,” he continued.

Ludmila shrugged, “Welcome to the world of biotech.” It had been a bumpy road transitioning him from the Ivory Tower.

“This is the world outside academia?” Sweat matted his grey un-styled academic hair, as he clutched his head

“Without conservative state restrictions,” she smiled at him.

“Soar like an eagle!” He was babbling. “Your flag, it has an eagle.”

Well that was true, but other birds were the really dangerous killers— ducks and geese. They shunned artificial man-made restrictions, freely crossing borders at will. “You made a quarantine?” her statement was a question.

His eyes traced the perimeter of the doors and windows, and he held up a roll of black duct tape.

“You taped the gap around the door?”

“Oui.” This was good, his mind was focusing with the details.

“Only filtered air in? Only filtered air out?”

“Oui,” he nodded, swaying in time with his nod. Then words joined his rhythm,“In. Out. In. Out. In-out. Dual purpose...I am...delirious.” His observation was but a brief moment of clarity.

+

Kretsky was Dr. Ludmila Serik’s company, and though others had vested interests——more than just financial stakes——safety protocols stopped with her. She had been watching the Frenchman for fifteen minutes now.

His head lolled about, “Tweene fiff degrees.”

His accent gave her trouble at the best of times, add a slur and the glass wall between them . . . she followed his eyes to the thermostat on the wall and ‘twenty five’ suddenly made sense.

“No. Your temperature. Put thermometer under your tongue.”

He looked at her quizzically, and then somewhere deep inside those blue eyes a lightbulb flickered. “The sun is up?”

“Sun?”

“Oui, like your flag. Sun is a killer.” More incomprehensible babble.

“Take your temperature,” she repeated.

Jean Michael met her eyes and wobbled to his feet, steadying himself on the lab bench. She could see dark patches below his armpits. He almost certainly smelt bad too. Thank god for his quarantine.

A glass beaker toppled, spilling a clear liquid. The Frenchman watched it dribble off the side of the counter and onto the floor.

“Biological laydown,” he mused “. . . her waterfall of worlds.”

“Jean Michael!”

He knelt down on the floor and sniffed the puddle. “Teeny adjustments. Such different outcomes.”

“This is true,” Ludmila agreed to herself, “In people and in petri dishes.” A single particle trapped in the lungs could cause a fatal infection, and a lone scientist could change the course of the world.

Jean Michael was sniffing god only knew what! The man was lost in a clouded world of his own; what to do?

Her phone rang. It was a welcome distraction summoning her to the front of the building, and she left her sick patient to his own devices again.

+

It was 6:30 in the morning and Ludmila walked Magjan Iglinsky back through the building. A one-time college hockey player, his presence was still intimidating, even if his skin held less tightly where muscles now waned.

“Tell me what’s happening.” Magjan pressed, “When did you put him in quarantine?”

“No. Actually, he put himself in quarantine.” Ludmila corrected herself. “He called me 4AM this morning. Was delirious. Staff will be showing up in next hour.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“No. He does not know too. He is somewhat incoherent.”

They reached the lab Jean Michael had appropriated. Magjan looked through the window at the sweating Frenchman. “He’s duct-taped the doors and windows, can he breathe?”

“There is plenty air coming in from laminar flow hood, and vents all have HEPA filters on them. Breathing is not problem.”

“Is that really necessary? The duct tape.”

“Maybe he has flu,” she conceded without actually agreeing.

“The French, huh, always melodrama.” Magjan smiled sardonically.

“I wasn’t sure I should call. He just——I’ve never had a scientist . . . ” she trailed off, unsure how to describe the situation.

“No. No, it is good.” Iglinsky nodded. “Good. Good.” Academics were all the same, excessively sincere, and they took care. He liked that they reverted to analysis, even when the fox was already walking through the henhouse. That certainly wasn’t his instinct, but he appreciated it in others. They could be relied on to play by the rules. It probably had to do with their ingrained practice of peer review, even in those who no longer shared their work freely.

He liked both Ludmila and Jean Michael. They were different, but he liked them, both of them. The Frenchman’s expertise was in GIs and ICEs (Genomic Islands and Integrative Conjugative Elements) both of which had long been critical to recent discoveries concerning conferring transmission and drug resistance of genes between different bacteria. They had moved well past bacteria now. ‘Horizontal transfers of GIs and ICEs’ was the buzz phrase, though Magjan hated high-falutin terms. Call it what it was: Cutting and splicing chunks of DNA. This technology had the potential to supercharge the stem-cell program and open the door to new frontiers in regenerative medicine.

Magjan gazed through the glass.

What had happened? In the lab, the erstwhile esteemed Professor of Paris’ Ecole Normale Superieure had not even noticed their arrival. Magjan rapped solidly on the window. “Professor Michael. How are you feeling?”

Vacant, glazed eyes met Magjan’s. Jean Michael struggled to his feet, “I want to go home,” he pleaded.

Magjan’s prized recruit was no longer playing god with human genes.

“Sit down and relax. We can’t send you anywhere. Obviously. Have something to eat.” Magjan suggested as he turned to Dr. Serik, “Does he have food in there?” and then back to Jean Michael, enunciating clearly through the glass. “Do you have food in there?”

The Frenchman coughed as he produced a packet of roasted chestnuts from his pocket—not completely incoherent Magjan noted happily.

“We are going to fix you.” Magjan assured him. They had to.

The power in today’s world was neither in gold, nor a rod of plutonium. Physical commodities were assets from another time. Today’s priceless objects were knowledge and expertise, and the expensive Frenchman was a reservoir of both. Even if, now slumped on a lab stool, he looked homeless, Jean Michael was not an expendable investment.

Magjan turned back to Ludmila. “Talk to me about safety protocols. Should you be in quarantine too? What about the rest of the staff? Is it safe for me to be here?”

“You will be fine. Unless I’m already infected——”

Magjan took a step backwards.

“We don’t know what he has or why is he quarantined himself. It is not a weaponized biological laydown.” she paused.

“What is it?”

Ludmila was lost in thought. She didn’t answer.

“What is——”

“What is it?” she repeated rhetorically, “We don’t know.”

“No, what are you thinking?”

Then realizing his question pertained to her pause, she answered “Jean Michael used the same term a few minutes ago——weaponized biological laydown.”

“So?”

“It is foolish thought. If people working here forty years ago knew then what we know today, the power dynamic in the world might be very different.” Ludmila relaxed, they were back on hypotheticals, “We will swab everyone. We will contain—it is probably not airborne contagious. It is very unlikely.”

“Professor Michael has taped the air outlets.”

“Better to be safe.” She really believed what she was saying. “Sun alone kills most airborne material.” Talking about the science calmed Ludmila Serik’s anxieties. If the devil was in the details, he was a soothsayer.

“Alright. What should I tell the brass in Astana?” But Magjan’s question was interrupted by Jean Michael who was now coughing violently.

Magjan and Ludmila turned to see his arms flinging wildly.

“He’s having a seizure!” Magjan panicked.

“No” she corrected him. “He is choking.”

Jean Michael dropped his crumpled paper bag of chestnuts.

“A chestnut,” Ludmila concluded. “He is choking on chestnut.”

So much for the soothsaying devil, the divine sociopath was toying with their emotions. And in an instant the devil’s roller coaster—led by Jean Michael’s awkward slapping at his own chest—was hurtling them down a new precipice.

Ludmila watched detachedly as clarity of purpose pierced through Jean Michael’s haze. The man needed to breathe!

In her mind the basal instinct to help save her asphyxiating colleague competed with the higher order necessity to maintain the quarantine. She could feel his panic infecting her as he beckoned their help with wordless gesticulations.

Damned if she did, damned if she didn’t.

Jean Michael approached the door.

“Help him.” Magjan instructed.

Ludmila shook. Her face was ashen, immobilized.

“He’s choking!”

Suddenly she was running, “Watch him! I will return.”

“Quick! That man cost half a million Euros!”

+

Ludmila returned with a barrel-chested scientist, masks, latex gloves and, ten paces behind them, a younger woman trailing in a billowing blotch-stained white lab-coat——a comical version of a hysterical bride, she was nonetheless pretty.

“Doctor Serik!” she cried, “What’s happening?”

Ludmila ignored the woman, focusing instead on Jean Michael who was now tearing at the duct tape around the doorframe. “He was suffering a fever. He quarantined himself.”

“He what?” the bigger man asked as they returned to——

“Magjan Iglinsky, Ivan” Ludmila introduced the men, even as she handed Ivan gloves.

The bride caught up to them and gasped at the sight of Jean Michael, “Oh my god!”

“Stand back.” Ludmila instructed Mica.

“Has someone called an ambulance?”

“He’s got a chestnut caught in his throat.” Magjan told Ivan, ignoring Mica.

“He looks terrible! I’m calling an ambulance,” Mica declared.

“No!” Iglinsky countermanded firmly.

“No?!”

It was a small mercy that Jean Michael, who had fallen to his knees, still didn’t understand much of the Kazakh language. Even so, given his incapacitation, and the glass wall between them, it probably didn’t matter much anyway. He looked up with plaintive panic in his eyes.

“No.” Iglinsky reiterated, elaborating, “It’ll take ten minutes, and unless we can dislodge the object——focus on the problem.”

Ivan pulled the mask over his chubby cheeks and gloves over his stubby fingers. He was kicking at the door, which barely opened an inch; the duct tape around its edge was putting up steep resistance. The large man put his whole shoulder into his work.

Finally the recalcitrant tape relented and the door swung open.

Mica held her breath in disbelief, and Ludmila addressed Ivan calmly, “I will close the door when you are inside.”

Once inside, the big scientist slapped Jean Michael’s back, politely at first, but with rapidly increasing vigor. The nut unfortunately was solidly lodged.

“It’s not working!” Magjan yelled unhelpfully.

Ivan turned the Frenchman over like a rag-doll and grabbed him from behind. Pulling hard in an attempted Heimlich maneuver, he flapped Jean Michael’s arms up, but the patient continued turning blue.

Wide-open-but-fading eyes pleaded with Ludmila. She stood placidly, unnervingly composed.

Fogginess clouded Jean Micheal’s vision and for a moment he gave up the fight, his eyes closing altogether.

“Somebody do something!” Mica insisted.

“Shut up!” Iglinsky snapped at her.

The pretty woman struck Iglinsky.

But before he could respond to her a thud came from inside the lab. Professor Jean Michael’s body landed on the floor as he drifted from consciousness.

“Give him mouth to mouth!” Magjan directed.

“It won’t help if we can’t dislodge the blockage.” Ludmila observed.

Mica reached into her pocket, “I’m calling the ambulance!”

“No!” Magjan was categorical.

“The man’s dying!” Dialing the phone, she stepped away.

Behind the glass Ivan stopped his jerking motion to feel Jean Michael’s wrist. “His pulse is weak.”

Outside the room Magjan advanced on Mica, snatching at her phone. She dodged, but the athleticism of his youth was not completely gone. He grabbed again, knocking the phone to the floor, “It’ll take twenty minutes to get here. If we don’t clear the blockage, you can’t keep him oxygenated.” There was a clinical cut through to what he said, “He’ll still be dead. And we’ll be left with nothing but a lot of explaining.”

“He’s not dead yet!”

Inside the lab, Ivan stood suddenly. He scattered equipment from the bench. He was searching. Violently, he pulled at the draws, hands crashing through their contents.

“Ivan?!”

The barrel-chested man tore a scalpel from its sterilized packaging, and brandishing the blade, he turned back to the glass, “I need some help in here!”

“Stop!” the young woman shrieked. She lunged for the door, but before her hand reached the handle Iglinsky grabbed her arm.

“Somebody get in here!” Ivan roared.

“What are you doing?” Ludmila screamed through the glass.

“Opening the airway.”

It was Magjan who connected the dots first. He turned to Ludmila, “Get in there. Help him.”

“There will be blood.” Ludmila protested.

“The man is dying!”

“Blood carries infections. It is ultimate carrier!”

“So put on gloves,” Magjan Iglinsky’s voice turned to ice, “and be extra careful.”

+

With giant paws, the man ripped Jean Michael’s shirt from his prostrate body, exposing his pale neck. He touched the tip of the knife to the valley just below the Frenchman’s Adam’s apple.

As Ludmila entered the room, Ivan glanced up at her. “Hold him,” he instructed.

Pulling a second pair of latex gloves over her first, Ludmila bent down and placed her knee firmly on Jean Michael’s unmoving chest. “I have him.”

The blade stretched the skin ineffectually.

“Push harder,” she encouraged.

And then, with a jerk, it pierced the surface.

“Fuck!”

Blood pooled out, not fast, but enough to gurgle as Ludmila’s knee sank on Jean Michael’s chest.

For five minutes they continued as a team, frantically working to keep the airway open. But the initial bubbles were the only evidence of oxygen reaching Jean Michael’s lungs. Nothing worked. Eventually, the blood flow slowed, already coagulating around the edges. Jean Michael’s skin was now had a visible blue hue.

The genuine attempt to save the Frenchman curiously eased the panic about a potential biological exposure, but that was all it achieved.

Iglinsky looked through the window at Ivan who was still working on Jean Michael. He rapped on the glass, “Give up. He’s gone.”

Ivan checked for a pulse one last time. Nothing. He nodded his head in agreement with Iglinsky, and everyone stared in disbelief.

“Oh shit!” was all Ludmila could say.

“Take a deep breath.”

“This is . . . ” panic was rising in her voice again, even as words failed her. She turned to Magjan, “This is——”

“This is unfortunate.” Iglinsky tried to calm her. “Accidents happen. It is unfortunate.”

Ivan nodded agreement. “You can cure cancer, but death finds a way.”

With all the exotic threats in the world, people habitually forget that simple accidents still did plenty of killing. People worried about Ebola, but the leading cause of traumatic death in men over fifty was a fall from a roof! Falling and choking each accounted for two of the five leading causes of all traumatic deaths.

“Get out of the room,” Magjan instructed them. The situation was still precarious for a multitude of reasons, and disposing of Jean Michael’s body required careful consideration.

+

Twelve hours later, under cover of darkness, puddles of rain spat off the asphalt as Iglinsky pulled through town. Soon the run-down city periphery gave way to quiet wooded roads. Thirty miles from Kretsky he hadn’t seen another vehicle for ten minutes when he pulled the car onto a small dirt road. “Discretion is important,” he thought to himself.

The sentiment had merit. So-called ‘dual-use’ technology——technology with both positive and untoward applications——invariably attracted an abundance of scrutiny that those bending rules preferred not to see.

Political ties helped. But if an outside investigator never found the body . . . they might even believe that Jean Michael had been out of town on vacation.

Magjan Iglinsky had felt it in his bones that day, but he could hardly have anticipated just how insignificant this death would later seem. Ten months into this job and nothing had become more apparent than that the study of science was unpredictable.

Unpredictable even in its unpredictability.