We All Fall Down by Michael Harvey

cameras.
    “This way.” Brazile used a card to swipe her way through a final door and into a large lab. In the center of the room was a constellation of pods. Each held a workstation, complete with all sorts of instruments; the only one I recognized was a microscope. Flat-screen monitors attached to computers sat silently nearby, and a lumpy-looking cot was stuffed away in a corner.
    “Shouldn’t we have protective suits on?” I said.
    “The level-four facility is in another building,” Brazile said. “We’re fine here. Molly?”
    “I’m heading down now to check on the gear.” Brazile’s associate spoke in the easy style of a person who knew her duties and knew the routine. “Do you want me to call Danielson?”
    “I sent him the results,” Brazile said. “Why don’t you follow up? Tell him I’ll call in a bit.”
    Molly plugged in the last of three laptops from the field and left. Brazile sat down at one of the pods and powered up a computer. An overhead AC vent ran an icy hand down my back.
    “Do you mind if we talk as I work?” Brazile’s question was less a question and more a statement of fact. I took a seat and watched her long fingers type and click. She didn’t wear a wedding ring. In her line of work, why would she? And why should I care?
    “I appreciate your help this morning,” Brazile said. “Didn’t need it, but you went down with us, and that took a certain amount of nerve.”
    “Thank you.”
    She stopped typing and posed for a polite smile. “Thing is, I’m not sure that what we do here will be accessible for you.”
    “Is that a nice way of telling me I’m dumb?”
    “Hardly.”
    “Treat me like a first responder.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “A first responder. Cop, fireman, security at O’Hare. What do they need to know? Or are they all just dead men in your eyes?”
    The typing stopped a second time. So did the clicking.
    “There are no tricks when it comes to dealing with a bioweapon, Mr. Kelly. No Jack Bauer heroics. Your best bet is to leave the device alone and wait until someone qualified shows up.”
    “You assume Chicago cops even know what a ‘device’ looks like. They don’t.”
    “And if I teach you a couple of things, maybe you’ll pass it along?”
    “Can’t hurt.”
    “Fair enough.” Brazile pushed back from her workstation. “I can give you ten minutes. Where would you like to start?”
    “How about the term ‘black biology’?”
    “It refers to, among other things, rogue labs that use recombinant DNA technology to enhance existing pathogens or create new ones. It might mean modifying an existing strain of anthrax or grafting a filovirus such as ebola onto a common flu virus. It might be a creation that is entirely synthetic.”
    “Synthetic?”
    “Scientists work with something called BioBricks—very specific strings of DNA with defined functions. An example might be a BioBrick that represents the molecular expression of the lethal properties of bubonic plague. Using genetic engineering techniques, we’re now able to isolate these BioBrick parts and sequence them together. Theoretically, anyway, making it possible to create new organisms. Even fully synthetic ones.
    “There are roughly twenty thousand unlicensed labs in the world capable of such work. All it takes is three or four scientists with the right tools and maybe ten, fifteen million dollars. You can create what we call a superbug. No known cure. No vaccine. No stopping it.” A shrug. “That’s black biology, in a nutshell.”
    “And what do we have on our side?”
    Brazile ran a finger down the side of her flat screen. “We work in an emerging field of study called bioinformatics—essentially, the application of statistics and high-powered computers to the field of molecular biology. We’re constantly loading DNA sequences into our databanks, crunching base pairs and generating computer models of new pathogens that might be created in a rogue lab. Then we try to replicate