Chapter 1

Dr. Linda Hamilstein was toast of the town, world renown, complete with a Nobel Peace Prize for her achievements in micro biology, especially in manipulating the AD36 virus. Discovered in the early 2000's, the scientific world linked the virus with patients that produced excess body fat when consuming regular amounts of calories. While most scientist pushed the findings to the back of their minds as the said virus was extremely non virulent and had a mortality rate of zero, not Dr. Linda Hamelstein.

She saw the virus as a possible naturally occurring lifesaver in countries struggling to meet their population's caloric necessities. Within six months, she and her team had discovered a way to introduce the virus into patients suffering from malnutrition. A year later, fully deployed to the developing world, she and her team were estimated to have saved over 25 million lives and they were awarded the scientific and world communitie's greatest prizes.

While the whole team received praises, it was primarily Linda Hamelstein and her fellow associate Peggy Toth, that did the bulk of the work. Both were respected and both received acclaim, but it was Linda that everyone wanted to talk to interview and who donned the covers of various magazines worldwide.

At first Peggy didn't let it bother her too much as she knew that "this" was the way of the world. Yeah, she was equally responsible and should have received just as much attention as Linda, but there was one big difference between the two ladies. Peggy was your typical, overweight and geeky scientist, while Linda looked like a runway model, tall, thin, beautiful, and blessed with natural curves that attracted men and women from all walks of life. Peggy knew she would always be in the shadow of her colleague as long as Linda was thin and gorgeous.

But then Peggy's whole perspective changed on day when Linda disregarded her opinion on national TV. Peggy kept quiet as not to bring any embarrassment or negative pressures on the companies' stock prices, but was internally furious that Linda had treated her like a subordinate, and on National television of all places.

Embarrassed and pissed off, Peggy thought about quitting and going her own way, before deciding to go another route. She'd just developed a weaponized and airborne form of the virus for the US military unbeknownst to Linda. She was supposed to turn over her findings next week, but decided to run a test trial instead on her callous colleague.