Alik Vosky looked up and down the hall one final time before opening the door to Southeastern State Hospital’s environmental services department. He walked down a faintly lit corridor unit he reached a lengthy row of double lockers. Trying each of the lockers in turn, he found himself somewhere between pleased and surprised to find so many of them open. Well before he reached the final locker, he found a standard-issue powder blue golf shirt with the hospital’s logo on it and a tool belt. It further delighted him to find Max Shudderman’s identification badge clipped to the pocket. After a quick look around, Vosky changed his shirt and left the locker room.
It was no secret that every hospital involved in the care of GNS patients had a designated crisis center. By asking an unassuming elderly volunteer, it didn’t take him long to find out where Southeastern State’s was located.
Under the guise of fixing a faulty thermostat, he opened the door and walked in. As he assumed before leaving his hotel, the late hour would increase the likelihood of being left undisturbed while he gained access to the National Patient Data Record. With his computer skills, he had no concerns that in short order he’d be able to penetrate the Data Record’s security system.
He chose the computer closest to the thermostat in case someone saw him. He wasn’t at work on the keyboard for more than a minute or two when he heard voices outside the room. After an annoyed half sigh, he stood up and took the few steps over to the wall. He reached for a small Phillips-head screwdriver from the tool belt and removed the outer case of the thermostat.
While Vosky pretended to be working, Marc and several of the residents and medical students sat down around the table. He didn’t acknowledge any of the group, and they treated him as if he were invisible. He was, however in an excellent position to hear everything they were saying. He hoped they wouldn’t be there long, allowing him another opportunity to hack into the Data Record.
“I know it’s late,” Marc told the group, raising his hands in the air, “but Dr. Wyatt really needs the flu vaccine information as soon as possible. If we all work together on this thing we can be out of here in an hour.”
For the next forty minutes, Vosky listened to everything that was said. The information he gathered regarding Dr. Jack Wyatt and his flu vaccine theory was, in his mind, beyond fortuitous—it was fate. He decided against trying to wait out the research group any longer and reattached the outer case of the thermostat. Vosky made his way out of the crisis center.
The pain in the back of his head and neck, which he’d first noted before he left his hotel, reached a crescendo. He rubbed his neck slowly, refusing to allow something as subjective as pain to interfere with his thought processes. Everything was clear to him now. He had been completely wrong about Hollis Sinclair. He was an amateur and posed no risk, but Dr. Jack Wyatt was different. Vosky didn’t understand how, but Wyatt had somehow managed to stumble upon the key element of his work. Ultimately, the question was purely an academic one because the manner in which Wyatt had discovered the truth behind GNS was irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was to assure the spread of GNS would continue without interruption.
He thought about a professor he had idolized while obtaining his doctorate. The old man’s life’s lessons had a strange but logical way of intersecting with certain tenets of scientific research. One of Vosky’s favorites was that sometimes the best solution to a highly complex problem was so simple—it was a gift.
An easy grin came to his face. There was no question in his mind what he had to do. As much as he hated to admit it, he had been a fool. Hollis Sinclair was nothing more than a clever decoy. For all his showboating, he wasn’t larger than life; he was a buffoon. If given all the time in the world, he’d never figure out how to stop GNS.
Vosky’s task was simple. It was an easy matter of simply changing his focus from Hollis Sinclair to Dr. Jack Wyatt. The small variation in his plan would ensure GNS would continue to spread through the United States like a brush fire in a gusty wind.