MEANWHILE . . . .
A middle-aged man looked around his new offices with great satisfaction as he sipped at his coffee. It was good to be back in business. This place was better lit than the last, at least, if not quite so well equipped.
He took another sip of his coffee and strolled over to one of the computer terminals.
"How's it going?"
The man working on the computer jumped slightly, then cleared his throat and tapped a few keys. "Everything's going well. The lab is fine-tuning the process that will make the agent bond to the X-gene. They're attempting to combine it with knock-out gas of some sort."
"Do you know when it'll be ready?"
"Within a week, sir."
"What about the school?"
"Completely unaware, as yet. Just so I'm precisely clear, sir - do you intend this to be just the school, or would you rather have the gas disperse?"
"If it were to stay within a certain space, would it intensify the effects?"
"Probably. It wouldn't have a chance to disperse into the atmosphere at large. Why?"
The man grinned madly. "Oh, just a thought."
The technician smiled weakly and scooted subtly away.
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A/N: I've got several more chapters waiting for your reviews! Sorry if the formatting on some of this is a little wonky - I still don't understand how to load these so that they'll look as pretty as they do in WordPerfect... *pout*