TIME Magazine - August 10, 2021 By Elena Martinez

  I've been writing about pharmaceutical corruption for eleven years. I covered the opioid crisis before it had a name. I broke the story on Meridian Therapeutics' suppressed trial data in 2016. I am not, by any reasonable measure, a defender of the industry that Felix Fleischer has spent two decades terrorizing.

  I need you to understand that before I tell you that sitting across from him was one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my career.

  The logistics of this interview took seven months. Encrypted channels, intermediaries, a verification process that involved me answering questions about my own published work that I had to look up. Fleischer - or his people, assuming he has people - were thorough. The location is a condition of the interview: I can tell you it's in Detroit, in a building that looks abandoned from the outside, and that's all.

  Someone has prepared for my arrival. Two chairs face each other in the center of the concrete floor, the cheap folding kind you'd find in a church basement, but they've been positioned with care - angled slightly toward the single overhead light in a way that feels considered. A small table between them holds two bottles of water, sealed, name brand. The gesture is oddly hospitable, and I find myself unsure whether Felix set this up himself an hour ago or whether someone else did it for him. The ambiguity feels deliberate.

  I wait for perhaps ten minutes, long enough to become aware of the building's sounds - the hum of ventilation somewhere below me, the occasional distant clang of what might be pipes or might be equipment. Then the hatch opens.

  He emerges from a steel door in the floor, which feels theatrical until I recognize it as practical - he's coming from a basement laboratory, and the hatch seals behind him with a hiss of positive pressure.

  The helmet is smaller in person than it looks in photographs. The red LEDs are off, which somehow makes the sculpted grin worse - without the glow, it just looks like exposed teeth, like something dead. He moves like a man who's been tall his whole life, slightly hunched, careful with the ceiling even when it's high enough. There's a visible taser clipped to his belt, consumer-grade, the kind you can buy at a sporting goods store. I find this oddly reassuring. A supervillain with a practical self-defense tool suggests a man who thinks in practical terms.

  He crosses to the chairs and pauses, adjusting the angle of one by a few degrees, a small fussy gesture that seems automatic. Then he lowers himself into the seat across from me, lab coat settling around him, and reaches up to unclasp the lower half of his helmet.

  "Mrs. Martinez." The voice is softer than I expected. The German accent is there but worn smooth, vowels flattened by years in the Midwest. Underneath the mask: a pale jaw, patchy stubble going gray, the face of a tired academic. Not monstrous. Just a person. "It is easier to speak like this. And I think you want to see that I am a person, yes? This is part of why you came."

  He's right. I hate that he's right.

  "Thank you for agreeing to this," I say, and I mean it, even though I'm not sure I should.

  "Thank you for the questions you sent in advance." He uncaps one of the water bottles, takes a sip - deliberately, I realize, showing me that it's safe. Another considered gesture. "They were better than most. You understand the science. This is rare. Most journalists, they want to ask me about my feelings. My childhood. Whether I feel remorse." The word comes out with a faint curl of distaste. "You wanted to know about aerosolization rates and protein coat stability. I appreciated this."

  "I wanted to understand what you're actually doing. Not just what it looks like."

  "Yes." He sets the bottle down, aligns it precisely with the edge of the table. "This is the question. What I am actually doing. Not so many people ask this."

  EM: Let's start with capability. You have the ability to engineer novel pathogens. In theory, you could create something catastrophic - a genuine pandemic. Why haven't you?

  FF: Because I am not interested in catastrophe. I am interested in pressure.

  You understand how immune responses work, yes? The body does not need to kill every pathogen. It needs to make the environment hostile enough that the infection cannot sustain itself. This is what I do. I make the environment hostile for certain behaviors. Certain business practices. I am not trying to burn the house down. I am trying to make it very uncomfortable to live in.

  EM: That's a very clean metaphor. But you have killed people.

  FF: I have. Yes.

  [He pauses here, and his cheeks drop for a second. I can see his eyes through the lenses. He looks tired.]

  Not as many as people think. The number is not zero, and I will not insult you by pretending it is. But it is specific. Targeted. There was a man who approved the suppression of trial data that led to seventeen thousand deaths over six years. Do you know what happened to him, legally?

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  EM: He retired with a settlement and an NDA.

  FF: So. [He spreads his hands.] The legal system has made its position clear. The regulatory system has made its position clear. What options remain?

  EM: Most people would say "not murder."

  FF: Most people are not in a position to do anything about it at all. I am. This is the reality I must deal with. Not the reality I would choose.

  EM: I want to talk about the Meridian outbreak in 2019. The one with the-

  FF: The stigmata symptoms. Yes, this is what everyone remembers. [A slight smile.] You know, this was not actually the most complex work I have done. But it was the most effective, in terms of coverage.

  EM: You designed a virus that caused bleeding from the eyes, palms, and scalp, in a pharmaceutical company's headquarters. During a shareholder meeting.

  FF: The bleeding was superficial. Capillary fragility in very specific locations - the periorbital region, the thenar eminence. Dramatic, but not dangerous. The virus itself was fragile, photosensitive, nonviable outside of climate-controlled conditions. It burned through the building in six hours and then it was gone. No one died. No one required hospitalization. Although I understand several people required therapy afterward.

  EM: You're describing this like a film production.

  FF: [He tilts his head, considering.] It is not so different. I am creating an experience. I am trying to make people feel something. The American public, they see an earnings report that says a company made twelve billion dollars while people died because they could not afford insulin, and they feel nothing. They are numb to this. But they see a room full of executives bleeding from their eyes like saints in a painting? This they remember. This they talk about.

  EM: You're invoking religious imagery deliberately.

  FF: Of course. America is a Christian nation, or it believes it is, which is the same thing for these purposes. The iconography of martyrdom, of holy suffering - this is in the cultural bloodstream. I am just... redirecting it. Reframing who the sufferers are. Who has been made to bleed so that others can profit.

  EM: That's extremely calculated.

  FF: You say this like it is a criticism. [For the first time, he sounds almost offended.] Every pathogen I have ever released has been designed with more care than most films. Incubation period, symptom presentation, transmission limitations, environmental vulnerability. I spend months on these. Sometimes years. The goal is maximum psychological impact with minimum actual harm. This is not easy. Anyone can make a virus that kills. Making one that terrifies without killing - this requires thought. Artistry, even, if you will permit the word.

  EM: You know, there's something almost German Expressionist about what you're describing. Using visual distortion to externalize psychological states. Like a Caligari for the pharmaceutical age.

  FF: [He pauses, blinks. For a moment he looks genuinely surprised - maybe the first unscripted reaction I've seen from him.] Hm. I had not thought about it in those terms before. I am more a fan of Herr Carpenter, myself.

  EM: John Carpenter?

  FF: You sound surprised. What, you expected me to say Murnau? Herzog? [A short laugh, self-deprecating.] I am a stereotype, I know, the German with opinions about expressionism. No, no. Give me Prince of Darkness any day.

  EM: Really? That one?

  FF: It is underrated! The liquid Satan, the dream transmissions, the idea that evil is just... matter, just physics that we do not understand yet. Very elegant. And the ending, with the mirror - you are never sure what came through. [He gestures with his hands, suddenly animated in a way he hasn't been.] This is good horror. Not the monster jumping out, but the uncertainty. The possibility of the monster.

  EM: I'll be honest, I had you pegged for The Thing.

  FF: The Thing is perfect, but everyone says The Thing. Prince of Darkness is the interesting choice. It tells you something about a person.

  EM: Let's talk about the "Second Wave of Supervillainy." You're credited - or blamed - for inspiring a generation of what some call "activist villains." People using superpowers for political ends.

  FF: [The animation fades. He settles back into something more guarded.] I am aware of the term.

  EM: How do you feel about that legacy?

  FF: Mixed. [A long pause.] I see them as... ideological descendants, perhaps. Some of them understand what I am doing. The precision of it. The restraint. Others, they see only the spectacle. They copy the aesthetics but miss the substance.

  EM: Can you give me an example?

  FF: [He considers for a moment, choosing his words carefully.] There is a difference between using fear as a tool and being a fearful thing. I use fear. I construct experiences designed to produce specific emotional and political responses. The fear serves the message. But some of these people who claim to follow my example - the fear is the message. There is nothing behind it. No thesis. Just... expression. Self-indulgence.

  EM: You're talking about people like Pink Mist, or the Miami Train Stalker, or Shrike.

  FF: I do not know of them personally. But I know the type. [His lip curls slightly.] The ones who use ideology as a costume. You can always tell because the work is sloppy. The message is confused. They escalate past the point of usefulness because they cannot stop themselves. They are not making an argument; they are having an experience. A public one. And they want you to watch.

  EM: That's a harsh distinction.

  FF: It is an important one. When I design a pathogen, I am constructing an argument. Here is a premise - [he holds up one hand] - here is the evidence—[the other hand] - here is the conclusion. The virus is a rhetorical device. It has a specific meaning, a specific target, a specific scope. It does what it needs to do and no more. This is discipline. This is craft. These other people, they are not making arguments. They are... [he searches for the word] ...leaking. Their damage, their needs, their psychology - it is all over everything they do. There is no separation between the work and the worker. No boundary.

  EM: No prophylaxis.

  FF: [A surprised look, then a nod of recognition.] Yes. Exactly. They are fucking without protection, if you will excuse the crudeness, and then they are surprised when something messy comes out.