Katrina Stone: The Death Row Complex Part 30

"Who?" Gilman was confused. "This kid?" He gave Josh a half-hearted kick in his wounded leg, and Josh cried out in pain. "He couldn't do any of that if his life depended on it."

"Wong," McMullan said. "Wong is the Doctor. And if you don't believe us, ask the international press."

12:26 P.M. PST.

Katrina was grateful for Roger Gilman's sedan in lieu of Josh Attle's faded red Honda as she sat in the pa.s.senger seat. At the wheel, Gilman said nothing, his brow furrowed in concentration. Behind Katrina sat Josh, handcuffed with Gilman's cuffs and shackled with McMullan's. And next to him, McMullan was ready with his pistol in case there were any sudden moves.

"What exactly is your relations.h.i.+p with your students and postdocs, Stone?" Gilman finally asked. "I'm gathering that it's not all that proper."

Josh opened his mouth to protest and McMullan shoved his pistol into the boy's face. "We've heard enough out of you for now," he said. "You'll get your chance to speak in court."

"It's not like you think," Katrina said. "Josh has always had a crush on me. But there was never any inappropriate relations.h.i.+p between us."

"And what about Jason?" Gilman asked. "Why did Josh hate him so much?"

"Jason has been like a son to me," Katrina said. "I guess I've sort of emotionally replaced my son with my staff, and Jason was the first one. He was also the highest up on the ladder within the lab, so he always had a lot of freedom and trust from me.

"Josh is almost as competent as Jason, but he was always in too much of a hurry. He was jealous of Jason scientifically as well as personally. It's like he wanted to 'pa.s.s' him but he never could. Jason was too smart. And Jason was more like a colleague than a subordinate with me, which Josh couldn't stand."

"So you're telling me that there was never anything inappropriate between you and Jason either?"

"Of course not," Katrina said. "Neither Josh nor Jason is my type at all. I tend to go after jarheads-G.o.d help me." She briefly glanced over at McMullan but then looked down.

12:42 P.M. PST.

By the time they arrived, the mayhem from the convention center had descended upon the emergency room of Scripps Hospital. Outside the sliding double doors, ambulances and police cars with lights and sirens roaring converged with medical staff, cameramen, and reporters with microphones.

An armored car, surrounded by police vehicles with lights still circling, stood just next to the entrance. In it was the bulk supply of the antidote, couriered over from Katrina's SDSU laboratory.

Gilman's car crept forward into the density of traffic until a uniformed police officer on foot blocked it from coming closer. Gilman rolled down his window and showed his badge to the officer.

"Oh, Mr. Gilman," the officer said. "I can take that one." He pointed to Attle in the back seat.

Sean McMullan stepped out of the car and signed the necessary paperwork, and the officer escorted Josh away for treatment of the wound on his leg. Gilman left his car parked where it was and showed his badge again, this time to a guard at the hospital's entrance. And he, McMullan, and Katrina stepped inside.

There were hundreds of them, thousands. Agonized, nameless faces and ransacked bodies writhing in desperation on white mattresses. An IV dripped into one arm of each.

The beds were clean, the facilities immaculate. The glaring white lights upon the brilliant white beds only accented the appalling conditions of the patients. They were crammed together, side by side and end to end. Thousands of adjacent hospital beds.

Nurses in white uniforms wheeled more patients in and aligned them tightly with those already present. "We're running out of s.p.a.ce," one said quietly, removing an empty bag from the arm of a young man and then attaching a fresh bag of the antidote.

A phone was ringing. Katrina ignored it and walked like a zombie down the rows of beds; her eyes cast from one face to the next. Beside her, a feeble plea came forth from a teenaged voice.

"Please... "

Katrina stepped forward. She pulled a wheeled IV pole toward the bed and hung upon it a clear plastic bag, heavy with liquid. She tapped the child's vein and inserted a needle as gently as she could.

"I'm here, Lexi," she said. "And you will be OK now. All of you will." She gently squeezed the bag, and the solution inside it began to flow.

Four hours later, Alexis sat up in bed and smiled. Katrina was pleasantly surprised at the look of affection on her daughter's face, but even more pleasantly surprised at the look of health. Alexis was already recovering. The antidote was soaking up the poison as quickly as the bug, now dying from the antibiotics, could produce it.

As if reading her mother's thoughts, Lexi said, "I don't know what you gave me, but it rocked! I feel so much better already!"

From a chair next to the bed, Tom Stone rose and hugged his daughter. When he stepped away, Katrina took Alexis fiercely into her arms. Alexis, to Katrina's surprise, hugged back with as much intensity.

"You were going to take a bullet for me," Alexis whispered as she held her mother.

"In a heartbeat," Katrina whispered back. She lovingly brushed a stray hair from her daughter's forehead. Alexis pulled away from her mother's hand, but she was still smiling.

"There's something I should tell you," Lexi said then. "Some of my friends from the ALF went to your BSL-3 facility to break out some of the monkeys."

Katrina exchanged a look of shock with McMullan and Gilman. "Some of those monkeys were infected!" Katrina said.

"I know," said Lexi. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. I called them off. They never even went in. Considering that the entire San Diego chapter of the Animal Liberation Front is here right now for an antidote that came from your research on those monkeys, I think they might be a little nicer to you today than they otherwise would have been."

Katrina looked down for a moment. "Well that's good, I guess," she said. "But how are they going to reconcile this with their beliefs about that exact work? How are you?"

"I'm not going to lie to you," Alexis said. "I still hate what you do to animals. It's unfair and cruel. The animals don't know why they're being tortured and killed, and they didn't do anything to deserve it. They can't defend themselves. I still feel like someone needs to look out for them. And I'm serious about the fact that I would rather see your work done on criminals like the a.s.shole who killed my little brother."

Katrina looked defeated. "But honey, you know that will never happen. In our society, there will never be legislation to do research on humans, no matter who they are. So what do you suggest as an alternative?"

"I don't know," Lexi said. "I hate the animal work. But, I think my friends will still be happy to get the shot in the arm, just like I was. So... I just don't know."

For a moment, n.o.body spoke, but Katrina was smiling as she looked at her daughter. It appeared that maybe, just maybe, Alexis had just opened some fraction of a door.

The silence was broken by Tom. "Nice shot back there." He was addressing Sean McMullan.

McMullan nodded softly.

"You were in the Corps?"

Another wordless nod.

"Let me guess-sniper?"

A final nod. McMullan's brow was furrowed. "It's amazing," he mused. "He guided us toward ISIL, which made sense at first, but then 'the Doctor' ended up being an extremist at the other end of the belief spectrum. ISIL fights to preserve what they believe to be the right traditions. Wong was fighting for advancement, for change. But in the end, Wong was no different than a suicide bomber. And just like them, he believed he was doing the right thing."

"So did Hitler," Gilman observed.

"And Einstein," Katrina said, and shrugged at the looks of shock on the others' faces.

"Einstein was a devout pacifist," Katrina continued. "He pleaded to Roosevelt, warning him about the threat of nuclear weapons. But those pleas led to the Manhattan project, which Einstein himself partic.i.p.ated in only to spend the rest of his life trying to stamp out the very nuclear warfare he helped create. So was Einstein right? Wrong? Good? Evil? Who decides? I guess that's what conscience is for."

Conscience. Con science. With science.

Epilogue.

SEPTEMBER 9, 2016.

11:32 A.M. PDT.

The courtroom was silent when the verdict was read. Guilty on all counts. It had been no surprise. The formalities were tended to, and the crack of the judge's gavel declared the court in recess. Slowly, witnesses began standing from their pews and exiting the room, speaking to each other in hushed murmurs.

Katrina stood and turned sideways to hug Alexis. On her other side, McMullan wrapped a friendly arm around her. With his other hand, he reached forward and wiped the tear that had run down Katrina's cheek. Behind her, Gilman lightly tapped her and offered a sympathetic smile. It was over.

As they stepped out of the courtroom, the mid-September San Diego heat was stifling. Between the sun and the flashes of what seemed like a million cameras, Katrina felt dazed.

"Agent McMullan, how do you feel about the verdict?" a zealous reporter demanded.

"The incident was unfortunate, but I feel the verdict was just," McMullan offered, and began stepping down the courthouse steps.

The press turned on Katrina. "Dr. Stone! Were you truly uninvolved and unaware of your student's activities?" Katrina looked out at the sea of reporters. Surely, eventually, this would die down.

It was Gilman who came to her rescue, stepping forward and planting himself in the midst of the huddled microphones before her. "Dr. Katrina Stone has been neither charged with nor even accused of any crime," he a.s.serted. "If you were paying attention to this trial, you saw that she had nothing to do with the generation of the Death Row strain of anthrax or its release at either San Quentin or the biotechnology convention.

"On the other hand, Dr. Stone had everything to do with the containment of the weapon, the production of the antidote, and the solving of these crimes. She performed these duties at her own risk and was almost killed in the process. The federal government is deeply indebted to Dr. Stone for her courage, her efforts, and her ethics, and we will happily fund her future research for as long as she needs it. Thank you very much. We have no further comments."

A grateful Katrina offered Gilman a sincere smile, but she herself did not comment. She leaned more closely toward McMullan, who wrapped one protective arm around her and the other around Alexis, guiding both toward his car. The press followed, yelling questions and comments.

When they were settled into McMullan's car, Katrina turned to McMullan. "Do you think they believe I didn't do it?"

McMullan smiled, but behind the smile there was sadness. He shrugged. "You're exonerated, but I think you've just used your one get-out-of-jail-free card. I think you'd better stay out of trouble for the rest of your life. You can never, ever go to the authorities for help if you get yourself in a pickle. Not ever. Not for any reason. They won't believe you."

Six weeks later, the sentencing phase complete, Joshua Attle was escorted off a plane in San Francis...o...b.. an armed guard and then driven to the prison. It was a drive he had taken many times on his own. Today, there was no Muslim robe and hijab. There was no dark face makeup and gloves. There was no long skirt, chunky sweater, or black wig. Today, Josh was dressed in a blue prison uniform, and San Quentin looked much different.

Each step of the process felt like another b.l.o.o.d.y slice shaved neatly from his soul. The fingerprinting. The delousing. The new uniform. And finally, he was brought to his private cell in East Block.

Like so many before him, Josh had submitted his request for accommodations in North Seg, the very wing he had depopulated with a bioengineered strain of anthrax. Like so many before his, Josh's request was denied. North Seg was reserved for prisoners who had proven their model behavior. On the first day of his incarceration, he had a long way to go before he would be eligible for such a privilege. The cell door slammed behind him like the final closure of a metal coffin, and the guard who had led him to it disappeared.

In a cell across the hall, a man was leaning through the bars. The man caught Josh's eye and grinned, revealing a broken fence of rotting teeth. "Welcome to East Block, lover," the man said.

Josh turned away and surveyed the bleak cell that would be his home for the rest of his life. He sighed as he stepped forward and sat down on the bed, still avoiding the persistent gaze of the thick, heavily tattooed prisoner who had once been an identical twin.

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-Kristen Elise, Ph.D.

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