The Last Handful of Clover - Book 3: The Stone in the Stream

3.48 The Relentless March of Science

June 16, 4:55 pm

Sutton hung up the phone and leaned back in his old, comfortable chair.

This is going better than I could have dreamed, he mused. Mattie was on her way, with the chubby boy and his big guard dog. That practically guaranteed that Pratt would be along shortly behind. They would all arrive before sunset. It's going to be delightful, he smiled, seeing the Disruptor's face as he realizes that he's lost, and that by dawn the city will be nothing but a smoking pile of wreckage and rotting corpses.

The man's defeat would be delicious, but it would be nothing compared to the despair that was to come. When he butchered Keith Woo, the broken soul that was Richard Pratt would be driven fully into madness.

Now that will be something to savor!

The two Dark Ghosts stood in front of his desk, silent and waiting; still dressed in the bodies of the two scientists, and still holding their black cases. His hand lingering on the phone, Sutton examined them critically. The body of the bigger one looked strong and capable, despite his bloody and battered face. But the skinny one concerned him. He couldn't help notice that the adrenalin and trauma of the little scientist's injury had left him looking weak and pale. His left arm now hung useless—the hand burned nearly to the bone. Even with his angel in complete control, the man's traumatized body was being flooded with pain and adrenalin. He knew it must be a struggle for his angel to make such a damaged tool respond to his will.

Hopefully, he thought, this is a husk that he can shed along the way for something better.

Sutton took a moment to look at the two black cases. He took one of them and opened it. It was the case that was not sealed with security tape, and it was labeled ANTX-170.

Anthrax. Weapons Grade.

There was nothing particularly special about it. Dried and powdered anthrax was a weapon that had been known and studied for years, and Dugway had been working on one strain or another since 1992. It was a descendant of the Ames strain, but what made ANTX-170 particularly deadly was that they had carefully milled the pathogen into particles just slightly larger that two microns in diameter. This made them especially deadly, since the powder was easier to disperse and would travel farther, suspended in the air. The case contained twenty vials, each in a clear glass grenade that had a small explosive charge in the center, to help begin the dispersal. The charge was no bigger than a large firecracker, but it would instantly shatter the glass and scatter the powder into a cloud several yards in diameter, which would then be picked up and spread by the wind.

Anthrax produced flu-like symptoms and was usually, although not always, fatal. It was unlikely that each of these twenty grenades would infect more than a few city blocks each, so they were not really the best choice for what he needed to do. They would serve as a backup. A little icing on the deadly cake.

For the cake itself, he would rely on the case labeled NVCK-9.

He had not been completely sure if the reports he had heard from his spies would be true. From their scattered and incomplete observations, Sutton had surmised that the Ditto had somehow obtained a strain of Novichok from the Soviets five years ago.

The Novichok series was a collection of the most deadly nerve agents the world had ever produced, and the West had long hoped that the Russians, who had developed them, had honored the chemical weapons reduction treaties from the 1990s, and destroyed the last remaining traces of it. But a string of assassinations from 2010 to 2021 which bore traces of Novichok had proved that it was still in circulation. And while publicly decrying its existence, Army Intelligence had been intent on getting the most recent strains for study and development.