Li Na stepped forward and sat down apologetically. “I’m sorry. I’ll eat.”
“No, what did you say before that?”
Li Na shrugged. “When I eat, I get sick.”
“Wait a minute.” Neely stepped forward and stared at her, almost transfixed. “Was yesterday the first meal you’d had since we were at the hospital in Trinidad?”
Li Na nodded.
“You didn’t eat anything on the plane?”
“No. I’m sorry.” She reached for a small bunch of grapes on the tray. “It’s just–”
“STOP!” Neely exclaimed. She caught herself and continued in a lower voice. “Stop. Just stop a minute.” She thought carefully. “Li Na, what did you eat yesterday?”
The girl shrugged. “I don’t know. Chicken, I think.”
“What else?”
“Lettuce and vegetables. And grapes.”
Neely continued staring at her. “Chicken, a salad, and grapes. Nothing else?”
“No.”
Neely blinked before turning to examine the room. “Where is your drawing?”
Li Na pointed. “In the trash.”
Neely put down the breakfast tray and crossed the room. She reached into the small white can and retrieved the crumpled piece of paper. She flattened out the drawing and flipped it around. “Li Na, are you seeing any of these lines again?”
The teenager spun around slowly and scanned the room, looking from wall to wall. “No.”
“Good,” she said. “Don’t eat anything!”
***
Neely burst back into the room, startling Talbot and her researchers, who all looked up from their screens in unison. Behind her, the guard looked to Talbot for instructions and was promptly waved back outside.
“I need access to the internet!” Neely demanded, moving quickly to her chair.
With a surprised smile, Talbot laughed. “I don’t think so.”
Neely twisted in her chair with a hardened glare. “I said I need access now!”
“Why?” Talbot questioned. “What did you find?”
Neely looked at the tall man with glasses. “Run your list of activated pairs through all ethnic groups in the database!”
“What?”
“I said run it!”
The man looked at Talbot. “I already have.”
“And what did you find?”
Talbot nodded, giving him permission to answer.
“No matches.”
Neely’s eyes intensified. “Now run it again…against the animals.”
115
It took several minutes before the job completed, but when it did, the man looked sideways at Neely with surprise.
“I’m getting a lot of hits on those base pairs.”
Talbot stepped in behind him. “For which animals?”
“Almost all vertebrate classes. Mammals, fish, birds, and amphibians. Lots of hits.”
Talbot faced Neely. “How did you know that?”
Neely stared at the woman for a long time, contemplating her options. The last thing she wanted to do was help them. But her first priority was to stay alive. And her second was to help Li Na. When she finally replied, it was in a reluctant and irritated tone. “I’ll tell you…as soon as you give me that access to the internet!”
Talbot looked at the others, who were all watching. She turned to one woman on the end and motioned her out of the way. The woman backed up, allowing Neely to roll her chair in front of the keyboard.
Opening a browser, she quickly typed a phrase into the search field in the upper corner. AVIAN MAGNETIC FIELD.
She scanned the results until she found one of the several articles she was looking for and opened it.
When she was sure she had the right one, Neely quickly scrolled down to the bottom of the article and found a picture. An artist’s rendering. And on it, lines similar to what Li Na had drawn.
“What is it?” asked Talbot. When Neely didn’t respond, she repeated herself louder. “What is it?!”
“Oh my God,” Neely finally said to herself before focusing her attention back to the man on the other side. “What fish are on that list of hits?”
“Uh,” he peered back and read from the screen. “Anchovy, Bass, Bluefish.” He scrolled through the names. “Almost all of them. Eel, Flounder, Grouper–”
Talbot cut him off by stepping between him and Neely. “WHAT is it?!”
Neely glared at the woman, her eyes fixed on Talbot’s, but asked the man another question. “Is salmon on that list?”
He stuttered nervously. “Yes.”
Almost defiantly, Neely thrust the drawing up at Talbot. “THIS is it!”
The woman looked at the wrinkled paper. “What. What is this? Her drawing?”
“Yes.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Neely turned in her chair and held the paper up next to the artist’s rendering on the screen. “See any similarities?”
Talbot compared the two. “Yes. Which means what?”
“That’s what’s happening to Li Na.”
“I’m not following.”
Neely addressed Talbot sarcastically, “Are you telling me you weren’t listening to us in there?”
“Of course, we were listening.”
“She said she gets sick when she eats!”
“So?”
“She gets sick when she eats!”
“So…what. She has an infection?”
“No. Yesterday she ate chicken. And got sick. And now she’s seeing things. This!” Neely held up the drawing again.
“Lines.”
“Yes. Lines!” She pointed to the computer monitor. “This article is about a recent discovery. Which I guess you haven’t read. Down here in your dungeon.”
Talbot’s eyes hardened. “What discovery?”
“Birds,” Neely said. “And our magnetic field.”
“You mean for navigation.”
“That’s right. Most birds are born with a small string of iron in their beaks. For years we thought that iron was how they detected the Earth’s magnetic field. And navigated by it. But it’s not. What was just discovered was that birds have a special genetic mutation in their eyes. A protein called Cry4. A part of a photoreceptor that is sensitive to blue light. Sensitive enough to allow the bird to actually see our magnetic field!”
Neely then pointed her finger directly at the rendered image on the screen. “And this is what the scientists believe birds are seeing.”
Talbot grew quiet and looked at the screen. She stepped in and studied it closer. “The lines.”
“The lines.”
“Wait a minute,” Talbot said, straightening. “You think she got this from the chicken?”
“I do.”
“How?”
“Because the last time she got sick, before yesterday, was in Trinidad. And it was right after she ate,” Neely said. “We thought it was a reaction from the coma. Trying to force her stomach back onto solid food.” Neely folded her arms across her chest. “Care to guess what she ate?”
Talbot turned and glanced at her man with the glasses. “Fish?”
“Salmon!”
Talbot looked dubious. “Is that so?”
“Yes. And now she has absorbed some of its DNA. Not just absorbed it but also activated it.”
The room fell silent.
“That’s why her skin was resembling scales. And why she had trouble breathing. Both from the salmon’s DNA. And then yesterday. The same reaction was triggered. This time from the chicken. Altering something in her eyes.”
“You think this Cry4 protein has been absorbed too? Allowing her to see, what, the magnetic field?”
“That’s exactly what I think. But we won’t know until we take a newer sample. If we find that she now has that protein…”
Talbot stared at her. “If she does have it, then we could be witnessing a live human absorption from another animal’s DNA.”
“Not ju
st absorption,” Neely said.
Talbot contemplated Neely’s remark and gasped when it finally hit her. “Mosaic!”
116
In her gut, Neely knew she was right. It fit. It all fit, perfectly. That nagging feeling that she was missing something the entire time now combined with the sudden disappearance of that same feeling confirmed it. As though two ends of a broken chain were finally reconnected. In her case, the two ends were Neely’s exceptional knowledge in the field of microbiology and her gut instinct telling her the answer was right in front of her.
She stood, motionless, facing Talbot. Confident of her revelation, Neely felt certain in her conviction of what was causing Li Na’s outbreaks.
But just as quickly as it had come, her certainty faded and was immediately replaced with fear. As it soon dawned on Neely that she had been hoping to find a cause that was actually treatable. With something like gene therapy or predictive medicine. But this…this was so far outside what could be addressed with modern medicine, Neely could not even fathom how to approach it clinically. There were many ways to absorb something into one’s body. Was it only through ingestion? What if trace elements made their way in through other means, setting into motion the same genetic chain reaction?
Her heart sank suddenly under the weight of reality. If she was right, if Li Na was, in fact, absorbing live DNA from other animals, there was very little she could do. At least not quickly. It would take years to understand what was actually happening inside the genomes. Let alone what could be done to stop it.
And that meant if Li Na’s outbreaks really were growing in severity, there might be nothing Neely could do in time to keep it from killing her. The changes were already in her system.
The sudden realization had left her face ashen, putting Neely in a trance and at a complete loss of what to do. It prevented her from noticing a very different look on Janice Talbot’s face. Instead of an overwhelming sense of helplessness, the woman’s dark eyes came ablaze with excitement. Not only had the Chinese girl given them the answer to rapid cell reparation, which they desperately needed, but the bacterium itself had also just revealed a leap in gene editing.
No, not gene editing. This was different. This was something far beyond that. Something not requiring exhaustive chemical analysis, or test tubes, or experimental processes like CRISPR. This was nature’s version of what she had been forcefully trying to achieve for decades––an organic, holistic solution that worked much faster.
Talbot turned, seeking her staff’s reaction. If Lawton were correct, if this was, in fact, Mother Nature’s hidden approach to gene editing, it would completely blow the doors off anything they had achieved to date. And on top of that, the discovery could ultimately prove to be the very key she needed to prevent the high death rate experienced by so many of her earlier test subjects.
Both women now stood transfixed, mulling over what the strange bacterium had done and what it could do. But while Talbot was envisioning a string of infinite possibilities, Neely Lawton was scrambling to figure out how she could use the knowledge to keep her and Li Na alive.
117
It was several hours before Neely was allowed back in to see Li Na. Long after a second sample of the girl’s DNA had been extracted and a new complete analysis of it begun.
She found the teenager sitting on the small chair again, knees pulled up to her chest. And now, a large bandage on her left thigh.
The teenager’s hair was disheveled, with a deeply wrinkled gown wrapped loosely around her still body.
Neely stepped just inside the door and took her in affectionately. “You okay?” She could see the girl was sinking deeper into depression.
Li Na shrugged. She merely watched with sullen eyes as Neely moved softly to the bed.
As Neely began to sit, Li Na spoke. “Did something happen?”
Neely nodded.
“Good or bad?”
She frowned. “It’s hard to say.”
“Was it about me?”
“Yes.”
“About what’s happening to me?”
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
Taking a deep breath, Neely rubbed her face, choosing her words carefully. “I think…what you are experiencing is caused by changes within your body. The bacteria is changing things that I don’t know how to stop.”
“Like the things I’m seeing and hearing.”
“Yes.”
“And it can’t be fixed?”
Neely sighed again and shook her head. “I don’t know. If it can, it will take time. Maybe a long time.”
“How long?”
“Months. Maybe years.”
To Neely’s surprise, the answer didn’t seem to faze Li Na, who simply looked down.
“Maybe if we could–”
Li Na cut her off. “You don’t think I’m going to live that long.”
Neely stopped and stared back. “I-I don’t know. It depends on a lot of things.”
The girl placed her chin gently on top of her knees and looked up at her. “I will do whatever you tell me.”
Neely grinned painfully. What she didn’t want to tell Li Na was that she had now just become more valuable to Talbot and the people for whom she was working.
Before, they simply wanted the bacterium and seemed to have little use for Li Na beyond that. Especially after the first outbreak. But now, with Neely’s apparent epiphany to what was really happening, Li Na had instantly become a much more valuable asset. Which also meant the longer Li Na was alive, the longer she would be a prisoner. She would never be released. Instead, she would probably be used by Talbot and her team as a specimen until her final breath.
“We might be here a while, Li Na.”
“How much longer?”
“Much longer.”
Again, the girl seemed strangely unfazed with little emotion in her eyes, as if already having accepted her fate. Instead of surprise or shock, she merely blinked and lowered her eyes back to the floor.
When she finally spoke, she did so in a whisper. “There is something else I need to tell you.”
Neely lowered her own voice. “What?”
The girl glanced around the room nervously. “Something…is happening.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure,” Li Na whispered.
“I don’t understand.”
“Something is coming.”
Neely stared at her curiously.
“Something is coming,” Li Na repeated. “I can feel it.”
118
At barely past 6:00 a.m., Matt Millican hastily placed his palm on the glass scanner and withdrew it the second he heard the doors in front of him unlock. He pushed them open with a forceful thrust and briskly entered the CIA’s Cybersecurity Lab, where two younger men stood waiting.
“How long ago?” Millican demanded.
“Just a few minutes.”
“What are they after this time?”
The two younger security analysts glanced at each other. “We’re not sure. It’s not a single connection.”
Millican continued past them. “What does that mean?!”
“This time it’s a larger breach.”
“How large?”
“Thousands.”
Millican’s eyes widened, and he came to an abrupt stop. “Thousands?”
“Yes.”
“Shit.” Millican continued past the men, winding through an empty hallway before the space finally widened into a large room. From one of the chairs, a young woman quickly rose to her feet to greet him. Behind her stretched a sea of computer monitors and human heads.
“How many attacks?” he asked the woman.
“Several thousand now,” she answered. “All coming from the same location.”
“Let me guess, Puerto Rico.”
“No,” She brushed a strand of hair from her face. “They’re…actually all coming from the Pentagon.”
“What?!”
“
The Pentagon,” she repeated. “More specifically, from the Defense Department.”
Millican couldn’t hide the surprise on his face. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. And these don’t look like scripts.”
Automated scripts were the preferred method used by hackers. Especially state-sponsored hackers. These sets of preprogrammed instructions automated the process of breaching secured networks with astonishing speed. The first task was to find vulnerabilities by probing every possible address on a computer network’s firewall, and then every possible port. With each probe, the script would record what system was being used, the vendor, and what version of software was running.
From there the attack would move to the second set of scripted instructions, and then the third. And so on, until the entire program had been executed and every scrap of information had been gleaned.
But what Millican’s team was seeing was different. Instead of a single script replicated thousands of times, each of these incoming connections appeared to have a person behind them.
Scripted attacks were blindingly fast, and because they were all the same instruction set repeated over and over, they were also easier to identify as a pattern. Almost as quickly as the attack could be mounted, a network’s intrusion detection system could identify repeating behavior and begin building a defense against it. But having a live person behind each attack made it significantly harder.
Individuals were more dynamic in their methods when attacking, making behavioral recognition and intent much more difficult for the systems to identify. The best Millican and his team could do immediately, was to identify where the incoming connections were originating from.
“Thousands of connections from the DoD,” Millican repeated. “That’s impossible. That would mean–”
“That their entire Cyber Team was involved,” the woman answered. “All using different port numbers and trying to infiltrate different systems inside. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Millican shook his head. “Jesus.”
***
Director Andrew Hayes had just stepped out from the back seat of his Town Car when Millican’s call came through. He withdrew a pair of reading glasses from the breast pocket of his navy-blue suit and held them up to read the incoming name on his phone.
Mosaic (Breakthrough Book 5) Page 34