World-Mart by Leigh Lane Page B

was.
    Virginia nervously went up to Ray, and the bodyguards moved in front of her path, blocking her with their combined mass.
    “Anne sent her,” Mary said, pulling coils of copper wiring from her bag, entering them on a catalogue sheet, and then finding their place on the supply shelves.
    “I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Virginia said, surprised to see so much technology.  “Medical-Corp told my family that I was dead.”
    Ray turned to the others in the cavern, save his two guards.  “I need all of you in the work room.”  He handed the lunch box to Isaac.  “We have few new tests I need you to prepare to run .”  He shouted after the others, “and the builders need help wiring the new turbine.”
    The room emptied, save for Virginia and Ray.
    “You’re one of the humans infected with the Blue Dust?” he asked her.  “The HD-1 virus?” he amended.
    “How did you know?”
    “I just assumed.”  Ray downloaded information from the desk’s computer onto a smaller, hand-held computer, and then he began to manipulate the figures on the smaller screen with a thin, plastic pointer.  He set the hand-held computer back into its synch port and loaded his changes, turning to Virginia with his full attention.  He moved closer to her, studying her eyes.  “And you were at the hospital?” he asked.
    “The virus gave me a terrible fever . . . a lot of other people too, bad enough for over a dozen of us to be admitted within a week or two of one another.  When they saw what the virus did, they refused to let us go.”
    Ray ensured that his previous information had finished loading, and then grabbed his hand-held computer and began to input more figures.  “Good that you were able to get away.”
    “Anne helped me escape.”
    Ray nodded, looking pleased.  “I knew that girl would come in handy one of these days.”
    “Do you know who developed the virus?” Virginia asked.  She considered how she might react if Ray admitted that he was actually the one responsible for the destruction of her old life.  Was she ready to face the person who deliberately took so much away from her so soon after her loss?
    “Some of my scientists developed it, but I have no idea who deployed it,” Ray said, scratching his beard.  “It was not my intention for the virus to get people killed, or even to infect the random people it infected.”
    “The virus didn’t kill anyone.  They chose e uthanasia over living out the rest of their lives . . . like this.  The hospital was happy to kill them.”
    Ray made another note on his hand-held computer.  “I’m glad to know that.  Isaac was adamant that it wasn’t deadly.  I had my doubts.”  He chuckled.  “I guess that’s why I’m the philosopher and tactician, and not the biochemist.”
    Virginia found herself speechless.  Here she stood, stripped of her dignity, her family, a lifetime of earthly possessions, her very humanity, and Ray was b ragging about his tactical capabilities.  “Why?” she finally asked, unable to find any other suitable response.
    “Why did we develop the Blue Dust?”
    Virginia nodded.
    “Leverage.”
    Virginia remained silent, confused.
    “The people in power are always the ones given the privilege of writing history.  Corporate is in power, and it’s done one hell of a job trying to keep us under its heel.  They’ve said a lot of terrible things about us over the years.”  Ray punched a few commands into his hand-held computer, and then showed Virginia the screen.  A short video began to play.
    The video showed an f MRI and PET scan of a deviant brain compared side by side with a normal human’s.  Although the deviant brain was indeed smaller, it exhibited about twice as much activity level.
    “ The dark eyes claim superiority, citing brain size as their only proof,” Ray said.  “But we are very clearly their intellectual superiors.”
    “You’re insane!” Virginia exclaimed.  “If you’re so smart,