Monica pointed at the woman, contorted her face to mimic a heavy metal singer, and brought her elbow down like she was hitting the jack on a slot. The woman laughed as she approached the front of the classroom, teetering beneath the misaligned wait of a shoulder bag pulling her back and to the right. Monica and the woman with the problematically curving spine embraced while hopping in a circle. The sound they made together with their voices reminded Viral of the song invisible bugs sang in the middle of Aurora summers.

Squeezing the shoulder of her boo, Monica introduced Agent LeGrande. "Portia's fine," Agent LeGrande said, but Monica dismissed her.

"No, it's not. We're agents; they're pond scum, and they will address us accordingly."

The manner in which Agent LeGrande acknowledged Monica -- with a simple nod as if everything she'd said wasn't bat-snit incrane -- told Viral that the two women knew each other well. LeGrande looked to be in her mid to late thirties. Maybe a mentor-mentee relationship, Viral thought.

"As Agent Treyna likely has already mentioned, you all have been chosen for a special project because of your unique set of skills," LeGrande said. She laid her black shoulder bag on the table top and unzipped a side compartment.

"I told them they're as good as Nazi pond scum in my book, and that they'd be lucky if I didn't Abu Graihb them," Monica added. She was sitting on a countertop near an aluminum sink. Her legs were dangling a foot and a half from the floor as she repacked her vaporizer.

LeGrande touched Monica's kneecap and smiled. She'd taken a thick piece of pink chalk from her briefcase and put a cellophane glove over her hand to protect her nails from chalk dust. She wrote a word on the board and asked the group assembled, "Who knows what this word means?"

Gyn raised her hand and Portia nodded. "It's from the Greek -- demos -- like democracy," she said.

"Or demon," Monica said into her shirt. Her head was buried in her chest as she fiddled with the vape mechanics.

"No, demon is Latin. I know that," Plank -- pronounced Plahnk -- said.

Aleph said something but no one could hear over the HVAC. "She said demon is Greek," Farooq offered.

"That's daemon -- dayMON, chips for brains," Smooshy said. Monica did her duck laugh.

"You are all on the right track," LeGrande said diplomatically. She had the nurturing warmth of a kindergarten teacher. She met eyes with Viral. "Are you familiar with the etymology of the word, son?" she asked.

Viral gripped his two favorite fingers with which to scratch and shook his leg beneath the table. "The first part means to flatten, no? Like pancakes?"

Aleph and Farooq laughed into their hands. "Oh, you poor thing," Smooshy said compassionately.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"It means across the spectrum. Like panoptically, or pansexual," Alan said.

"Why are you looking at me when you say that?" Farooq fired.

Alan was dumbstruck. "W-w-was I?"

"Yes, Asian Peyton Manning, here, is correct. That is the more literal root, but I like what Viral said, too." Agent LeGrande paced back and forth before the blackboard. Monica winked at Viral from her perch near the emergency eye wash station.

"Pancake. As in, to flatten. To flatten the people," LeGrande said as she underlined the syllables with her chalk. "And that's what we are dealing with."

Agent LeGrande removed the plastic glove from her hand and pushed her hair out of her face. "I'm Dr. Portia LeGrande, Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation specializing in infectious diseases. In a few moments the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta is going to make an announcement. The Wuhan virus is here; it has made landfall in Washington and New York, so far as we know. It has been determined to satisfy the criteria for a pandemic. This will be the gravest national health crisis we have faced in more than one hundred years. You'd have thought that would have been enough time to get prepared. It was, and yet, we are not."

Viral and the others shifted uncomfortably in their chairs and looked at each other as if for the first time. There wasn't any snark coming from Smooshy or Farooq now.

"What's that got to do with us?" Plank asked.

LeGrande zipped her chalk back into its pouch on her bag. "Thank you for your service," she said. She touched hands with Monica on her way out.

Monica mouthed the words, "I'll FaceTime you."

LeGrande mouthed back, "I have an Android."

To which Monica mimed, "You're dead to me."

LeGrande shot her the bird as she pushed the door open to the hallway with her hip.

Turning her attention back to her Disciples, or half of them at least, Monica asked Plank to repeat the question.

Checking his surroundings for the karate-chopping Highway Patrolman, Plank said, "What's the pandemic got to do with us?"

Monica pat her pockets looking for her vape. "Oh, that's simple," she said. "You guys are going to cure it."

Smooshy scoffed, but Monica stared hard at her. Smooshy learned quick that Agent Treyna did not equivocate.

"And how are we supposed to do that?" Alan asked.

"Didn't you hear anything I was saying about teamwork and fighting for the soldier next to you during my Teddy Atlas speech? Gotcha!" Monica found that her vape pen had slid through a pocket in her pants down into her mustard-yellow sock.

"Is that what you were trying to get at with that bit about McDonald's middle management?" Alan said.

"Is that what you meant by…" Monica mimicked Alan by making him sound like a horse. She grabbed the pack of papers she'd left by the sink and unfolded them. She flipped from the first page, to the second, and to the third. "That's right," she said, checking her watch. "You guys are the smarty mc-smart-smarts." She pulled the cap off a ballpoint with her teeth and made a circle on her paper.

Aleph said something.

"What's that, sugar plum?" Monica asked.

"She said, 'What if we can't'," Gyn repeated.

Monica's pen was out of ink. She spit its cap into the trash. She sighed; closed her eyes; took a moment; and inhaled. Then she exhaled. She said, "Well, lucky for you that won't matter. You're either stuck here 'till someone does devise a cure or you take your chances with the Wuhan bat bug back in the penitentiary."

Under his breath Alan mumbled, "That's racist."

"No shooty, Doug Flouty," Monica said. "It's called gallows humor." She placed her hip on the corner of the table next to Smooshy. Flipping back to the third page in her packet she tried to make out the marks she'd tallied with the dying pen. "Shoot."

Viral hadn't seen Monica fluster during their brief acquaintance. She didn't lose her cool as quickly as he imagined.

"Whelp," she said, standing. "We're going to have to do this the old fashioned way. Remind me again which one of you are terrified of needles?"

Aleph, Farooq, and Smooshy raised their hands. Viral did too, slowly, and Monica smiled like she'd just remembered a favorite line from a Jerky Boys mixtape duped by her brother.