The Immortalists by Kyle Mills

and knelt next to him. “Are you all right?”
    He wasn’t sure how to answer. The unwavering sense of purpose—the hope—that kept him going, was turning to smoke. And now he found himself wondering if that’s all it ever was. Smoke.
    “I’ve killed them. Susie. The others. They’re the ones who are going to pay for me being so stupid.”
    “It’s not over, Richard. Susie’s still with us, and so are the rest of the kids.”
    “Are you kidding? Look around you. There’s nothing left.”
    “So this is it? You have no problem fighting God, nature, and the laws of physics, but some Baltimore cop in a bad suit is completely insurmountable?”
    He laughed bitterly. “I have no equipment, barely any money, no employees… And by this time next week, I’ll probably be in jail. You make it sound like we just found a parking ticket on our windshield.”
    “For God’s sake, Richard. When one of your teachers kept you a half hour after school, you reprogrammed the entire town’s phones to forward to a sex chat line. This isn’t about having to clean a few chalkboards. The kids are relying on you. Your daughter is relying on you. Now take a deep breath and use that famous brain of yours to figure a way out of this.”
    He stood and began pacing around the ransacked lab, picking up speed as despondency turned to anger. She was right. He hadn’t let the cops get the better of him when he was fourteen, and he wasn’t going to start now. Screw Sands. And screw PharmaTan.
    “You told me the research you got from Troy was mostly theoretical,” Carly said. “Why would they even care about it?”
    “Because it’s theirs. The truth is, it’s probably already collecting dust in their basement.”
    “God forbid they let someone use it to help a man deal with his wife’s suicide. Or to cure a bunch of sick kids.”
    Richard stopped next to an overturned table.
    “What?” his wife said.
    “You’re right. That’s all I could do with Annette’s work. They know damn well that I could never legally profit from it. Everyone would know exactly where it came from.”
    “So why go through all this trouble? Why wouldn’t they just call you and keep the police out of it?”
    “That’s the problem—it’s not any trouble. They can make their point about intellectual property rights with a bunch of lawyers who are already on their payroll and a bunch of cops who are paid by the state. It’s easy, so why not hold me up as a warning to others?”
    “I’m not following.”
    “What if we made it so it wasn’t easy? What if we made it hurt?”
    “Sure, that’d be great. But how do you hurt a huge multinational corporation?”
    “Simple. Big companies hate bad publicity. Why can’t we go to the papers? It’s a great story: Annette tragically commits suicide after devoting her life to a theory that could help a bunch of kids survive a horrible childhood disease.”
    “But if it’s just a bunch of theories, can you really use it?”
    “I only got through about a quarter of it before Sands took it, so the answer is maybe. And maybe is plenty for a good headline.”
    “Sure…” Carly said. “Hell, what if the reason Troy gave it to you wasn’t some conspiracy theory? Who’s left to call you a liar if you say it was because Annette thought you could use the data to help the kids?”
    “It could be that it was her dying wish.”
    “Yes! That’s exactly what it was. Look at you—living in a tiny house, sacrificing everything to cure your daughter and children like her. And what’s your reward? Not only does PharmaTan withhold critical research, but they have the police vandalize your lab and run off your people. They might as well have put a gun to a bunch of kids’ heads. And over what? A thumb drive full of crap they’re not even interested in.”
    “PharmaTan Dooms Sick Children to Certain Death,” he said, imagining the headline.
    She nodded approvingly, a malevolent smile spreading across her face.