chapter
SEVENTY-NINE

The mayor’s eyebrows tilted viciously. “Still no sign of the last batch of the virus?”

“No. The fridge hasn’t been found.” The cop’s jaw hung open out of laziness. There were ten of them around the table.

“And how long until we can be ready to release another?”

“Three weeks. A month. It takes time,” said the scientist. “The process is very—”

“Yeah, yeah. This is bad, you understand? This assignment lost and the one before contaminated. It became an irony virus. Is that any help to me?”

There was a general shuffling.

“What good is it having people acting ironically? Just makes the city look stupid. What’s the point of that? And why haven’t you found that fridge? Give me a good reason why I should accept your flimsy explanations.”

Maddox tried to sort his feelings into words, but it didn’t happen immediately, so his mouth made a variety of shapes and then closed again.

“You find that fridge all right,” the mayor said, looking around the table, “and you do whatever needs to be done. Bring in anyone who might have seen it and head hack them here. This has gone too far.”

“Yes, it has,” said Maddox.

“I would hate for any of you to go the way of Lieberwitz,” said the mayor. “He started having second thoughts. So I made sure he didn’t have any thoughts at all after that.”

There was silence.