Artie closed up the second plastic, Ziploc bag. He couldn’t help but smile. For the last three weeks he had followed instructions by the letter. He didn’t mind. That’s what you did when you were an apprentice, a foot soldier, a student. You expected the sorcerer, the general, the teacher to call the shots and you were grateful to serve at the hand of a great one. But at some point Artie believed a great mentor would want him to show off what he’d learned.

Artie had caught on early what the “game” was even though he hadn’t been privy to the “game plan” or the “endgame.” He could see the pieces of the puzzle falling into place. The idea was brilliant, truly awe-inspiring and he wanted to be more than just a pawn. He needed to show that he could contribute.

Ever since he was thirteen he had dreamed of the perfect crime, plotting it out in his mind. He loved true-crime novels, devouring them in one sitting, committing the details to memory, highlighting and dog-earing the pages. His mom thought it was “so cool” that her son enjoyed reading, paying no attention to what it was he was reading.

He still carried around several of his favorite paperbacks in his backpack, what he believed to be an assortment of brilliant crimes and the masters behind them. They included the Unabomber, the Anthrax Killer, the Beltway Snipers and the Zodiac. The worn paperbacks had become handbooks, prized manuals. He figured he had learned more from studying them than he could learn from any one person.

He set the two plastic bags side by side before sliding them into their manila envelopes. The two looked like all the others. The only difference was that each of them contained five-hundred dollars instead of a thousand. The stacks of five hundred was just as thick as the thousand-dollar stack. A brilliant substitute. Only recently Artie realized he could use fifty ten-dollar bills instead of fifty twenty-dollar bills. The stack would be just as enticing. How could the recipient not be tempted to open the bag, if only to count all those bills?

By splitting the money Artie could send one of his own packages for every “official” one he sent for his mentor. He’d use the same rules of the game. And he had plenty of the virus. A tiny, almost invisible droplet inserted anywhere between the bills was all that was needed. It didn’t take much. Sealed in the airtight, dry plastic the virus remained dormant, waiting for moist, warm human contact. All it took was some point of entry—a cut, an eye, up the nose, at the lips, behind a raw cuticle. He wasn’t exactly sure how it worked. That hadn’t been part of his job. He did know that if it hit its bull’s-eye it was as good as a bullet. Better, actually, because it left no trace. The perfect weapon. Virtually invisible.

For his first package, his first “perfect” kill, Artie had followed in his mentor’s footsteps, choosing one of his favorite crimes and an address connected to it: Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Prince George’s County, Maryland. On Monday, October 7, the Beltway Snipers shot their youngest victim, a thirteen-year-old on his way to school, practically on the front steps. The boy survived, unlike ten of the other thirteen victims. Also unlike the others, Artie found it daring, bold and totally unpredictable to shoot a kid. So Artie wanted to do something just as daring. If you wanted to spread a deadly virus, where better to start than in a school?

Pleased with himself and satisfied with the two bags, Artie slipped them into their envelopes then began the cleanup process. He hated the smell of bleach but he used it to spray and wipe all surfaces. The smell lingered in his nostrils. Though he was diligent about giving himself a shot every time, he never failed to use a skin decontaminate. The military M291 resin kits had six individual decontamination pads. The dry, black resin powder was designed to show up any contamination spots. He was told it was the best universal liquid skin decon that the military had.

Yet, that wasn’t quite enough for Artie. After the resin, he still mixed fresh .05 percent hypochlorite solution with an alkaline pH and washed his hands again, up to the elbows. He had read in one of his paperbacks that the solution had been used by the military before the M291 resin kits, all the way back to WWII. Artie figured it was an extra safeguard, another one of those things his mentor would expect of him—to do his own research and take his own precautions.

In the small bathroom/supply closet he changed from his scrubs back to his street clothes, bagging all of it, including the paper face mask and shoe covers. He’d toss them in the parking lot’s Dumpster. No need to clean them. The closet was filled with an endless supply.

He left the lab, feeling excited and…What was the word? A few monkeys still screeched down the hall, but now Artie ignored them. His step was lighter, almost a strut. For the first time in his life he felt…And then the word came to him. He felt powerful.