“Alright, let’s look at this information,” said Erin. “Whatever has been done so far, we want to be sure it never reaches the light of day.”
“As it relates to the assignment given to Marissa, she was my most promising student. Brilliant.”
“Thank you but I’m not sure I’m feeling good about that right now,” she smirked.
“No, of course not. Vasily is enamored with the idea of using something similar to the gas chambers that the Nazi’s used. He wanted it smaller, more compact. Something that he could use without being noticed, like a mist, or a balloon that drops the gas.
“I tried to explain to him that it would make the gas unpredictable and probably not have the effect he wanted.”
“Not exactly,” frowned Marissa. “The gas is light, which is why they used gas chambers. Confine the victims, keep the others out, and release the gas. It’s rudimentary but it worked.”
“What did you come up with?” asked Erin.
“A way to make the gas heavier so that it would fall with some precision. It would take a long time to get there but it can be done.”
“Okay, explain,” said Dana.
Over the next three hours Marissa wrote out the formula she’d come up with and the method of delivery suggested. It was at the point of designing the delivery that she realized she couldn’t go through with the assignment.
“Well, I have to say that I’m seriously impressed, honey,” said Erin. “But I also want to say I’m terrified of what could happen if this got into the wrong hands.”
“I know,” she nodded. “We can destroy this. The one good thing the professor did was not accepting anything digitally. It all had to be typed and printed.”
“But even printers have memories,” said Dana. Marissa shook her head.
“No. You don’t understand,” she said. Mills stepped into the conversation.
“The students had to type, on a typewriter. I took nothing off for errors but I wanted it typed and encouraged them to make a copy at a local copy store. Everyone most likely had paper copies of their work.”
“Unfortunately that doesn’t make me feel any better,” said Erin. “Where are those paper copies?”
“I’m not sure. We can ask them,” said Mills.
“Tanner? Do you read me?” asked Paige. Mills frowned at the woman, wondering who she was talking to.
“Professor, let’s go get some coffee and food,” smiled Marissa. They stepped out of the room and Tanner responded.
“Right here, Paige. I heard everything. The nearest copy store to the university would have been in the student union. I’ve already hacked in, deleted any copies in the last year. It can’t be retrieved. I don’t see any signs of anyone pulling the print jobs from the cloud.”
“Fantastic. What do we do about the copies?” asked Dana.
“You’re on your own for that. Get the guys to check with all the students and see if they kept paper copies. If I had to guess, they didn’t. I’ve wiped everything from Marissa’s drive and I have a suggestion for how we can draw Vasily in.”
“I knew you would,” smirked Erin. “Go ahead. We’re all ears.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“How are you feeling?” asked Bullett standing at the doorway of the young woman they’d found in the secret room. She was the only one who was a student of Mills’.
“Stupid. Tired, hungry, maybe every emotion I can name,” she said shaking her head. “I’m Dean’s List. A Rhodes Scholar. I was being recruited by every chemical company in the world. Now? I’ll be lucky if I get to teach chemistry at a middle school.”
“I don’t think it’s quite that bad,” smirked Bullett. “No one is going to know about all of this. No one. Did you keep a copy of your paper?”
“No. I typed it like he said and sent it to him but I didn’t keep a copy. It made me sick, to be honest with you.”
“What were you working on?”
“Mass sterilization without surgery,” she whispered. Bullett nodded, walking toward the bed and taking a seat on the edge.
