For great justice, take off every zig.

So far, I have managed to address a couple glaring issues that had bogged me down in the original writing, and that was some of the plot holes that would inevitably help the reader lose their place in the story. After a good tidbit of brainstorming over the last week, and some very helpful input from friends - I feel as though I may have made a small breakthrough.

I am moderately satisfied with the way that these gaping wounds have been sewn shut, and may lift some the veil of my eyes to allow me a bit more relaxation, instead of stress, when writing.
The first plot hole that arrives is how quick the Soviets (even considering a new bad guy for them at present) manage to turn the Alpha project into a virus: A record setting twelve days. Even in the world of fiction, that is way too quick. So, keeping with Tony's idea of building a weapon on a mass scale, you probably needs multiple weeks, or even months.

• Now, I scarce have enough material to work with to help cover months of a storyline without delving more into the intelligence and inner workings side of the agency. Doable, but it would seriously drag the pace of the story down. Skipping weeks in the plot can be used to get around this, but then a quick summary is usually needed to keep the reader up to date on what happened during that downtime in the story.This could potentially fix that issue, but the idea of filler material never really appealed to me. 

(Author note: Thank God for auto save, stupid BSOD). Where was I? Oh yeah, filler material. While some I think is socially acceptable anymore due to the rate of which pages expand a book's covers these days, it's easy to lose your audience in a sea of black ink when you spend ten pages describing what a wall looks like. Detail is fine, but overdoing - in my opinion, is not.
-So, I have a couple options with this: Either put breaks in the book and allow it weeks between events, which could work except for I'd have to figure out what the characters are doing during that time, and that includes all of them.
-Or, I'm sure I can manage if it only takes a month or so for them (Soviets) to figure out how the project works. In this argument, it can be made that the structure is already there, and that factors to be considered is that the doctor that ends up turning the project to evil purposes was once a top researcher on the project.
-I'm not sure which option I like just yet, as both have merit and while we have to maintain some measure of realism - I have to remember this is fiction and that some leniency is granted as such. But perhaps it is with the project itself: Seeing as how it is programmable, it is almost an inert object in itself. Lending to a bit of sci-fi, mayhap it could be just a programmable nanotech? Something that can be programmed to be anything, a cure or virus by giving it the properties of what is needed to be cured, or afflicted.

Alright, so now I'm to a nanotech - a programmable nanotech that can be made into a virus or cure. At first a cure, then a virus. Given the programmable nature, once the material is figured out, and a researcher has this material, it wouldn't take long - perhaps a month or so.

More progress made, and more to come later.

Auf Wiedersehen.