Chapter 13: Contracts and Contracts

The first thing Cassie did after leaving the hospital was wave goodbye to the DHS agents as they scattered to find and pickup all the workers in the Nano-biological lab. The next was head to the Office of the Chancellor of the college. She had advised Clint to be there when she arrived.

Luckily he was in town already as her scan of the estate had shown him kissing Julie at the estate before her Dad had called him to come to the hospital. Cassie had redirected to meet her at the Chancellor's office and they met in the hallway leading into the Chancellor's office. He had Lt. Colonel Woods with him. He grabbed Cassie as they met in a hug.

"Cassie the last I heard before George called me, you were still unconscious in the hospital!"

"Well you know me, I recover quickly. We need to get this contract implemented. Stupidity on the part of those people in the lab caused the explosion I walked into. They not only violated security protocol, they violated fire codes and safety code out the ass!"

"Colonel, be sure there is a section giving Security the right to close a lab down if at any time it is felt that the safety of the workers, students or civilians are in anyway endangered by the lab."

"Clint while it will not be in the contract, I have to have a firewall between me and the labs I work in. Somebody has to be given the authority to shut me down. I want authority over all security and their functions except for one section which can step in and close me down and shut me out of the building until further evaluations."

"I can add that into the contract also Ma'am." Lt. Col. Woods stated.

"It's a normal section where owners of a business for one reason or the other have become security risks and need to be shut out of top secrets facilities they own."

"Good! We are very lucky. If the other Labs have been operating with the same lack of safety as that Nano-biological lab, this whole part of Virginia might have been destroyed."

"Any experiments that combine nano and biological combine elements will be treated as class IV biological hazards from this time onward!"

Cassie entered the Chancellor's office under a full head of steam. Clint and Colonel Woods followed in her slipstream.

The final contract had all her suggestion included. However, the Chancellor explained that they did not have the money or budget to build two new building for research. Cassie negotiated a 2^nd contract whereby CHH holding would buy the land and build the new research buildings and lease them to the College for a nominal amount.

Over the next weeks CHH Security swarmed over the Research Building. Two new building were being built. One would be for all non-biological and non-nanotech experiments. The other was built outside the town for all hazardous experiments. This building had a large underground component.

That had been the only way she could get the college to move the research they were doing on campus without a big uproar. DHS did not wish to alert anyone to the possibility that the USA had developed nano-dissolvers. It would start a new arms race. DHS finally notified her that all persons involved in the nano-lab were accounted for or presumed killed in the accident. It was an accident. Interviews with people not present at the time and who survived, gave a list a mile long of safety violations in the lab.

Security on the site was still intact. All information on exactly what they had been doing had been destroyed by the heat and the nano-dissolvers. None of the survivors had any detailed knowledge of the experiments: how, what, or any idea how to duplicate them.

Cassie even though in the middle of the semester had been slowly moved into new courses all of which were very advanced and fast paced. She was working at her top speed; her mind being stretched in a dozen different directions daily.