You guys have my databank with all my research. So if you want the specifics of how and why I made the virus the way I did, it's all there. It's high level stuff, I can't really summarize or abstract it, but your bio people will probably have fun with it. I do want to emphasize that I didn't go out of my way to make it unpleasant, but I had to make some compromises for it to be able to work on everyone. Most of these people died in under a minute. The ones that were unconscious never woke up, but some of the people covering third shift spent their final moments in confused delirium. I will fully own up to that, one more atrocity on the pile.

The only catch was, I had to make it using the lab at the base. The macroversal constructors we use to assemble biologics are very large, expensive, and complicated machines. They require several dedicated teams just to maintain them. That's part of the reason they make them on these isolated bases, they need a lot of space and power and nobody wants to live with a biologics lab in their backyard.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

So when it came time for me to leave my apartment for the final time, I just encrypted the whole databank with a false front volume and put it inside my work tablet. We were allowed a small footlocker for personal items and all I took was my pink scrubs, my vaporizer, and as much as weed as I could fit; things were still pretty scarce in the legal trade, and I wasn't going to make it this far just to blow everything getting busted trying to score black market skunk oil like someone half my age.

It felt really good to not even want to look back when I walked out of my front door for the last time.

When I was riding the bus to the spaceport I wasn't nervous at all. I knew I had a lot of work ahead of me, and that things could come crashing down at any moment. But even if they did, I would still feel like I had won. Even if I never escaped, I got out.