THE WAY GONE

They had sent a pair of burly security guards to her office, where she had been hurriedly trying to pack her belongings.  These were cold, quiet men she had never seen before in the building.  Icy, anonymous and bulky, the type of man obviously not meant for any generic lobby reception desk.  They had each taken her by an arm, and lifted her bodily from her desk without a word.  As they raised her up, her feet clipped the box with her few personal things- a  picture of her son, one of her mother, a mug and a bowl- spilling to the ground in a crash of broken glass and crockery.  Though they were rough and it did hurt; she never made a sound of protest or pain.  Although some distant part of her was thinking shouldn't they have female guards doing the manhandling?  And as they roughly dragged her down the hall and to the elevator, she let herself smile a little bit.  They obviously knew that she had been the leak, but they hadn't checked to see what else she had set in motion.  If they had, perhaps they wouldn't have had the goon squad haul her from the elevator, and through the lobby, and then pitch her through the front doors.  They should have instead first had their thugs check her now vacant lab, where the automated centrifuges were now slowing to a close, her new compound nearly complete.  And when it was finished, the final reaction was going to be as if somebody drove a dump truck full of phosphorus into a small lake.  Or maybe a big pond.  They pitched her unceremoniously to the sidewalk and went back inside without another look with absolutely no idea that in about ten minutes the whole building was going to be a crater.  She unclipped her now useless security badge and let it drop, shed her lab coat and got herself gone.  She didn't look back either.