Chapter 36 The First Stone

• The plea agreement was a transaction, cold and clinical. Vivian Shaw’s testimony, her identity, her remaining life, traded for a bed in a federally funded medical research facility that specialized in rare neurological disorders. It was a gilded cage, but a cage nonetheless. Her stage was now a monitored room, her audience a rotation of doctors and FBI agents. The final performance of her life would be a endless run of depositions and medical tests.
• Back in the CDC mobile unit, the atmosphere was different. The immediate, pulse-pounding medical crisis had passed, replaced by the slow, arduous grind of recovery and the looming specter of legal reckoning. Alexander Sterling was awake, and the clarity in his eyes was a devastating thing to behold.
• He was propped up on pillows, his body still weak, his movements careful. The neural inflammation had receded, but it had left scars. A slight tremor remained in his left hand, a constant, quiet reminder of the poison that had nearly eaten him alive. His famous acuity was returning, but it was now turned inward, focused on the ruin he had authored.