Chapter 11

Hey guys, thanks for the reviews. Here's another one, i hope you enjoy it.

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"To become a patriot, one must become the enemy of the rest of human kind."

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The man walked into his office that morning, as usual. Time to resume normal operations, he had had a close call there, but it had been averted in the nick of time. He took the time to reflect at what he had stood to lose if it had gone another way. He stood to lose a lot. A lot of people had been involved in this but he stood to lose the most. However, the text he had got from his top guy on this operation made him breathe again. But he couldn't relax just yet, although everyone involved in this had been taken care of, including the Judge and the Mallory chick, someone had leaked the information. Someone had snitched on him and he had a few clues. They had to go too. It was only a matter of cleaning up.

…

Steve gave the FBI the assassin's phone after the text message, now they just had to wait for it to be traced to the owner. The whole situation was still a puzzle but Laura's attitude was the main jigsaw here. Most people in her situation could not wait to plead how innocent they were to anyone who was within hearing distance. Not Laura. She wouldn't talk, in fact, she insisted she was guilty and that was not the way normal guilty people would behave. But then again neither did the innocent. She looked even more scared now than before. He had taken her aside, sat her down, really looked deep into her eyes to communicate his genuine desire to hear her out. To know her story. Because there was one hell of a story here.

"You've got to tell us what's happening, Laura." Steve insisted.

They had come out of the jungle, crisis momentarily averted. According to Danny, the Governor of Hawaii had really done a solid for them and made sure they had real back up. The US Marshalls had come in full force, partly to avenge their fallen colleagues. A med-evac had whisked Hastings away to hospital, he was to be guarded since the crisis wasn't entirely over. His wife and kids had been taken from the sister's house in New York and put in protective custody. The Five-0 team had taken the first flight to Jersey to render their assistance as soon as Danny had made contact and told them of their ordeal. They would be landing in a few hours. They probably wouldn't be able to make the court hearing though.

"Come on, talk to me." Steve cajoled. "Who are these people? What does the CIA want with you?" Steve persisted earnestly. She looked at him with eyes almost brimming with tears she wouldn't allow to fall, hope almost making an appearance in those eyes but just as quickly dashed.

"I can't, I won't. It's for your own good." She said. It almost sounded patronizing but Steve could see that she really believed it. Just what the hell was she into?

"Well, you're going to have to say something in Court, might as well tell us now."

"I don't know what they want from me in this court hearing, but my statement is not going to change." She sighed and looked up at him with resignation and hopelessness renewed. "You don't want to know, trust me. It's really for your own good. I can't have your blood on my hand too, not if I can help it."

She was going to a trial, again, which was really hardly ever done. And Steve now knew that something huge was going on and she was most likely caught in the middle. He could almost stake his life on it. It was getting harder to see the coldblooded killer in Dr Laura Mallory. One puzzle was not fitting in though, she still insisted that she was guilty. Almost vehemently too. What was she so afraid of? Who was holding what over her head? Or, maybe that syndrome thing was working on him again, messing with his usually sharp detective instincts.

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The man made his way into Court for what he was hoping to be his last day in Court after three days of this grueling thing. He wasn't frazzled when he saw that Judge Mason was still presiding over this case, which was about to go away anyway. It would have been a bit over the top had they managed to kill the Judge in his sleep last night. He was still puzzled on how he wasn't informed that the Judge was still breathing but it didn't matter. They had nothing on him, whatever evidence they had would not hold any water without any witnesses and as far as he was aware, there were none. He would have literary peed himself when the last witness was called and the Mallory chick walked up the stand. Just how?! He had been told that she was dead. This was not good. He would worry, but he could see the recognition her eyes when she looked at him. She wouldn't dare!

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"Dr Mallory," Judge Mason addressed her as she sat at the stand. "Can you tell us if you recognize that substance in that container?"

A small transparent unique looking bottle with green liquid in it was brought forward.

Steve could see Laura start with recognition at the bottle.

"That's my virus!" She said with a bit more excitement than she had shown since.

The Court went quiet at that, more than a little shocked.

"Virus, Dr Mallory?"

She manged to compose herself back to her usual demure self.

"Yes, my lord. Although I'd have to lab test it to be sure, but with the unique color and the bottle, I'm almost certain that is my virus, Sir."

"How is it your virus? What virus is it? Please explain yourself."

She cleared her throat and got ready to tell her story for the first time in ten years. She had no choice now and she really had been hoping to get this off her chest. Se had recognized the man in a suit at the defense table and had frozen in fear. Why was he at the defense stand and why had she been brought in as a witness instead of the accused as she had thought? She had never been briefed on what this was about but somehow, the creation of this virus seemed to be vital to this case, hence she had been brought in as a witness. The court listened as she told her story, how she had been recruited, and how she had come about the virus. Steve and Danny listened as Laura sat at the witness stand and revealed what the government would have preferred to stay hidden.

...

She had never been happier that day, June the 5th, she could remember the date, the happy feeling, the whole atmosphere. It was one thing to be given a Doctorate degree at the age of 21, the youngest ever in her class and the youngest to have ever received a Doctorate in her field. But she had been getting these Honorary accolades since she was in grade school. She skipped a lot of grades because she had always been way ahead of her classes. She had skipped Junior High and was put straight to Senior at age 14. Graduated and went to College for Chemical Engineering although she could have chosen just about anything really, she was adept in every subject. She could have been a Medical Doctor, a Lawyer… whatever she had wanted to do. She loved Sciences, they seemed to be the only challenging of all her subjects and chemicals fascinated her. How they could combine and form something so unique, a poison or a cure. It was power, but she had wanted to use that power for good. Find the cure for this and that, whatever the world seemed to be battling with, bring the solution and see smiles and relief on people's faces. Be the one to cure cancer, study that thing until she found a way to beat it. The cure for Malaria started like that, and she wanted to be one of the people who brought solutions like that to a dying world. Science was challenging, and she loved a challenge. Nothing much was.

She had been diagnosed with low latent inhibition and a high IQ when she was very young. Her IQ score was between 250-300. The Doctor had said she would have been autistic had her IQ been a little lower. Maybe even a little crazy, a little schizophrenic if she hadn't had that rare balance of a very high IQ with her low latent inhibition. She had been declared a genius, in the truest scientific sense of the word. Given these facts, it was easy to believe her psychotic break story. Maybe she had zoned out and created that chaos in a psychotic break, woke up and everything was a mess. She wished she could believe that, maybe it would be easier.

June 5th ten years ago, she had felt so blessed and lucky to be her. She loved her life. An only child to two loving parents. Her mom and dad were also scientist so it must have run in the family. She had good parents, she had friends and she had just started a new relationship with a guy she had crushed on since she first entered that lab her first day at college. His name was Joe, tall and handsome, didn't look anything like a nerdy science student but he was. He had proposed to her the day of their graduation and she didn't think she could go any higher on top of that moon, but she was wrong. As soon as she got home from graduation, she was contacted for a job, to start immediately. Really, could she really be happier? She had been one of the few scientists selected for a top government project at a chemical plant in Alaska. Theirs was a separate, very important and top-secret mission. The best chemical scientists in the country and she was one of them. She, a new graduate, already selected for such important work for the country. She couldn't wrap it around her head, genius though she was. And the job could not be better, her dream job. Finding a cure for a virus that had broken out in North Asia which name they hadn't come up with yet. A few who had been affected died within hours, it was a lethal virus without a cure. The virus had been contained by full quarantine of the affected, they had been told. Now, as a country they had to be prepared for things like these, be proactive rather than reactive. They had to find a cure for the virus but first they had to create it. Create the virus to find its cure, that was the science after all. Find its agents, find how it works, what attracts it and what repels it. That way it would be easier to find a cure. As usual she was the youngest by far in group of twelve and one of the three women there. All, except her, were well respected scientists, a lot of years in the field, lots of experience. It wasn't so covert that they had to stay at the plant for months on end until the project was over like what they show on TV sometimes. No, this one was flexible enough, they could always knock off at 5PM sharp, go home and come back the next day to continue their efforts for this very important work. They just had to swear not to share the intricate details with anyone, but she had only shared with her family. Her parents were also scientists and they understood the importance of her new assignment, felt very proud of her, said she would go far. Her fiancé, Joe, was also a chemical scientist and he knew these things. He listened to her when she was battling ideas, running algorithms and even put his two cents in too.

Two months on the job, she cracked the code! She really was a genius. She had run to the Supervisor to report, one of the older guys in their tight little circle, his name was George. He had a wife and two teenage daughters. She knew every one of their group members, knew their families in the two month they had all spent together in close quarters working together. They had formed quite the small scientist family. She loved to go home at the end of the day and tell her own family about them, how their day had been and what progress they were making.

When she broke the code, she got a pat on the back for her huge find and George made sure she got the credit from the top officials in the government responsible for the project. They had all now been instructed to give her assistance creating the virus and cure using her algorithm, her chemical equation. Within a week, they had it all set, and she remembered that night she could not sleep for excitement of being named the founder of a cure for a rare and deadly virus. The cure was going to be named after her, like Penicillin or something. She didn't know if she was going to have it named the Malloryline or the Lauraline or something like that,, she couldn't come up with a name. She was too excited.

She woke up that morning, went to work as usual but she had a different, happier jump to her step. She was going to be officially recognized today!

A few hours later she was on the run, a fugitive, her face was all over the news. Headlines said 'young scientist opened fire on 11 of her colleagues, no surviving victims. Perpetrator is considered armed and dangerous.' She was now on America's most wanted for mass murder. Her life didn't look so great from that point on. Sympathetic reporters said, 'given her unique genius wiring, it was no wonder she had snapped', others were less forgiving.

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