by Dan Alatorre
The old man wobbled and bounced on the treadmill, wheezing and moaning through the tube as the video of his wife’s meeting ended and the camera holder followed her into the parking lot.
The Greyhound viewed the heart rate monitor. It spiked to over 200. The doctor wheezed and gasped, leaning on the railings of the treadmill. His eyes widened. The hose fell out of his mouth. A long string of saliva dropped onto his shirt. “You—you’re . . . an animal.”
Gritting his teeth, The Greyhound scowled at the old man. “Would you have ever stopped if I didn’t do this? If that makes me an animal in your eyes, I wear the label proudly. This has to be done, and not to gain the respect of someone like you.” He jabbed his chest with a finger. “I didn’t decide my ambitions were more important than other peoples’ lives. Not like you. I’d never do that. Not for all the money in the world.”
Fishel leaned on the rail, his feet moving but his face gray. The readout jumped to over 200 again.
“Keep going.” The Greyhound picked up the streaming phone and gathered the rest of his things. “It’s almost over.”
The old man gagged and fell sideways into the railing, his arms flailing. He threw his head back and clutched his chest, sliding down onto the treadmill and collapsing. The tread pushed him backwards until his body came to a rest on the office floor, only his head remaining on the dark gray vinyl. His jaw hung open and his eyes stared outward at nothing, the tread churning against his cheek. Blood tricked from his nostrils, but otherwise he was still.
The monitor read zero.
Sagging into the wall, The Greyhound lifted the phone to his mouth and blinked tears from his eyes. His voice fell to a whisper. “It’s done.”
Chapter 9
Centennial Park brimmed with giant, twinkling Christmas trees and hordes of holiday revelers. Ice skaters glided over the temporary rink, and vendors plied everything from hot chocolate to snow globes. Holiday music filled the air. With Lanaya at his side, DeShear eyed the wide spans of grass beyond the paved pavilions. He raced toward the park, each breath throwing a puff of white in front of them.
“I can’t run anymore.” Lanaya gasped. “Where are we going?”
DeShear slowed to a walk. “I’m sorry. I’m a runner. I forget other people can’t keep up sometimes.”
She shivered and rubbed her arms, glancing over her shoulder. “I don’t see anyone.”
“Good. Let’s hope it stays that way.” DeShear slipped out of his suit jacket and put it around her shoulders. “We might be able to get a souvenir sweatshirt over there.” He pointed to the little vendor kiosks clustered near the ice rink. “But we can probably find a café that’s open down the street, and get you out of the cold. Either way, it’s best for us to be somewhere public right now.”
They walked past a police officer on horseback near the park entrance. Inside, several teenagers with hockey sticks sent an old sneaker back and forth over the ice. Several extra sticks rested against the wall.
A “hot coffee” sign flashed from the vendor on the other side of the rink.
“That sounds good,” Lanaya said. “Buy you a cup?”
“Sure.” DeShear tucked his hands under his arms and followed her to the kiosk.
She pulled the jacket close around her. “Why don’t we take a cab out to the suburbs? I’m not crazy about downtown Atlanta right now, and I’m sure we can find a Starbucks or coffee shop there.”
“I bet there’s a MARTA hub near here.” He glanced up and down the adjacent street. “Train stations have security cameras, so our friends from the hotel won’t try anything if they spot us. Plus, it’ll be warm.”
Lanaya ordered two coffees from the man in the wooden window and handed him a twenty-dollar bill.
“Can we grab the train around here?” DeShear asked the vendor.
“About two blocks that way.” The man pointed toward a big intersection, then handed Lanaya her change.
They stepped to the side to wait for their order. Two picnic tables and an overflowing trash can stood behind the kiosk, under some pine trees.
“Okay,” DeShear said. “Now we have to figure out our next move.”
“I have that already. Minnesota.”
“But our little chat got interrupted.” DeShear cupped his hands to his face and blew warm air through his fingers. “You know why these doctors and scientists are being murdered, and by who. You seem to know who’s next. What am I missing?”
She shivered. “Let’s talk about this at the train station.”
“No, let’s talk here. Things have gotten awful dicey since I met you. I might be able to help us both stay alive if I know what you know.”
“But it’s freezing out here.”
“Then talk fast.”
Lanaya rubbed her hands together, then shoved them into the suit coat pockets. Over the speakers, Silent Night played. She stared at one of the sparkling Christmas trees. “If I tell you everything—what I know and what I think—you’ll say I’m crazy. Where do I start?”
“Start with the dead bodies we already know about.”
“Well,” she said. “The first several murders happened over a few years. The next six took place over six months. Now he’s killed three in three weeks—that I know of. It could be more. I don’t have all the names.”
“Why’s the pace getting faster?”
“I believe he’s running out of time. He’s from the third group, the Gamma caste. He’s taken out a lot of the top players from Angelus Genetics and Onyx Research—partners, senior management, project leaders. It’s becoming more and more difficult to get information off the black screen site. People always posted rumors and speculation about their projects, but now threads are being deleted out of rampant paranoia, and new posts aren’t appearing anymore. I get bits and pieces at best. Innuendo. Guesses. But occasionally someone posts a legit tip for a while. Like the newspaper clippings I showed you.”
“Or the employee roster.”
“Correct.”
“And no one, no authorities are looking for a connection between so many prominent scientists dying in a short time period?”
“They were spread out. It’s hard for people to see beyond what’s in plain sight. An old man’s traffic accident this week in Tampa doesn’t tie neatly to a forty-five year old woman’s accidental drowning last month in Missouri, especially when her resume doesn’t mention she worked at Onyx Research a dozen years ago. These jobs were kept quiet. When people left, they were threatened with nondisclosure lawsuits. Most don’t put it on their resume at all.”
“Ma’am, your order’s up,” the vendor called out. “Two coffees.”
DeShear went to retrieve them. “Well, your guy’s not running out of time based on anything I’ve done. I just found out about him. And it looks like he’s got help now.”
At the painted wooden board that served as the coffee kiosk’s condiment table, Lanaya poured cream and sugar into her steaming coffee. DeShear left his black, cradling it with both hands to warm his fingers.
“If they’re all Gammas, then they all have the same problem.” Lanaya picked up a soda straw and stirred her coffee. “There’s no assurance of that, but they’d all be driven by the same motive. The top brass at Onyx may not even be aware of what’s happening, or they concluded they could wait them out. I suppose if you’re wealthy enough, when a problem comes to your attention but you know it will go away in a few years, you might try that option. And it worked until the problem tracked them down.” She blew on her coffee, sending a little steam cloud into the air.
“But why would the killer—or killers—be limited on time?” DeShear frowned. “What keeps them from tracking down folks from Angelus and Onyx over the ten years or however long it takes?”
“The subgroup I worked on had an eighty-percent fail rate at the peak median point, once the Gamma sequence had commenced. The corporate high-ups are playing the odds.”
“Okay, now say it in English.”
“I
worked in genetic sciences, Hamilton. DNA selection. People denigrate my field with phrases like designer babies, but this is more than pre-selecting a child to have blue eyes or an athletic build. We were developing ways to find and advance genes that were completely devoid of the most common-occurring natural fatalities in human life. And it was applied science. But . . . there are down sides.”
She shuffled to the picnic table and stared into the shadows of the trees. “For every successful group of embryos whose DNA we altered to grow up and never get cancer, we had groups that failed. Rumor had it that the vast majority were terminus pre-utero, but not all. That was okay, we told ourselves. We could terminate any errant viables.” She turned to look into his eyes. “It was a gray area, but most of us felt we could rationalize taking that step with an embryo that couldn’t function without a host. Those who didn’t agree, left. But I think once a decision like that gets made, it’s easier for the top brass to make the next one. We heard that a huge opportunity opened up with organ harvesting. We had viables that weren’t cancer resistant, but we could grow their stem cells into whatever was needed. Again, tricky choice, but you could see how some scientists . . . the results could help a lot of people. Then, we heard some new ideas came in.” She circled the table, waving her hand. “You see, you’d work on the middle of a project that didn’t seem to make sense, but as long as the results were there, it moved forward. You didn’t know what its goal was, but from your end it looked like testing. That’s where the people on the black screen site could connect the dots. We weren’t compartmentalized there. We thought we could figure out what was happening.”
“Which was what?” DeShear set down his coffee on the picnic table and leaned on the side of the wooden kiosk.
Lanaya looked down, lowering her voice. “We heard someone at the top of Angelus Genetics realized it was far cheaper to allow the errant viables to continue than it was to attempt to grow mass volumes of healthy organ tissue from stem cells. Makes sense, from a numbers standpoint. The stem cell curation process alone would cost billions. They already had the embryos, so it would be easy enough for someone to take the next step. What did it matter if a viable was terminus at stage nine or stage nineteen, or stage three hundred and fifty four, it was always going to be selected for terminus.”
She swallowed hard. These were difficult confessions.
“So, we think they did it.” She shrugged. “That’s the rumor. They allowed the errant viables to develop—to grow up. Many of the resulting children would have severe deformities, or nonfunctioning higher brain functions—it’s much easier to choose a good gene to move forward with than to find the dozens of bad genes you want to leave behind—but if the children’s organs worked perfectly fine, then . . . I mean, if that’s true—if they used my research to . . .” She wiped a tear from her cheek, staring at the sky. “The world can be a cruel place. There were black screen rumors that errant viables were being sold. Some went to black market orphanages. Others, to the drug trade to serve as slaves, or to human traffickers. Media in other countries isn’t like what we have here in the States. With the facility in Indonesia, the news was more controlled, so negative information couldn’t get out. The politicians were in on it. We heard Onyx connected with a Cambodian human trafficking ring. The money poured in, all washed through a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary, so the people at the top could claim they didn’t know—but they’d have to know.” She narrowed her eyes. “No executive makes that kind of revenue without knowing the source of every dollar.”
DeShear folded his arms. “You were involved in that?”
“I most certainly was not. They used information from employees like me to advance the programs, but we were kept in the dark. But if it’s true, it has to be stopped. Enough odd things have already happened to think this is possible. Double Omega’s death seemed far more nefarious based on what I’d learned, and I certainly didn’t think it was a mere suicide anymore. When I got the information about the other murders, I was scared. I decided to leave the company quietly, and not raise any eyebrows while I got my ducks in a row. Possibly, find others to help, or who knew more. If anyone caught wind of what was happening before we pieced it all together . . .”
“If you can stay alive long enough.” He nodded. “Yeah, that’s a little more than a missing persons case.”
“Dying became a real possibility, but if the rumors are true, Angelus Genetics must be stopped. I’m sorry I deceived you, but I have to be careful about what I divulge. Many have already gone underground, which makes it difficult to know who’s still alive. Some have changed their names, or acquired different identities.”
“Like Lanaya Kim? Her name wasn’t on your airplane ticket. Or the hotel bill. Akina Cho flew on Delta Airlines and Dara Han checked into the Peachtree Plaza hotel.”
She held her hands out. “Does it matter? Would you divulge your name to a stranger in this circumstance?”
DeShear took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No. And the killer we’re after, he got screwed by the company—so now he’s a psycho bent on revenge?”
“No, no. He didn’t get screwed by the company—he was born there. He’s an illegally produced, genetically altered human embryo. He’s part of a gene selection process that was made illegal decades ago in this country and in many others. And at the median age of fifty-five, over 80% of the viables that didn’t die post-vitro, die from overwhelming organ failure within ten months of detecting the start of the sequence. Just as we grow our organs in nine months as babies, the Gammas have a life curve that causes organ depletion. If normal humans lived to be two hundred years old, at some point the brain would naturally fall to dementia, the kidneys would suffer renal failure—all human organs wear out if the host lives long enough. With Gammas, that’s at a median age of fifty-five. If they’d have left his genes alone, he’d live to be a median age of eighty-five or older, like any normal person.”
“I can see how somebody might have a problem with that.”
“That and the other horrendous things the company may be engaged in. He obviously is taking measures to see that it stops. But he may have a limited time if the Gamma sequence has already commenced. Simply put, I believe the killer is dying, and he intends to kill the people responsible before he does.”
DeShear studied her face. “From what you’ve said about Angelus Genetics, I’m not sure he should be stopped.”
She set down her coffee and tucked her hands under her arms. “For the most part, he’s going right down the list I copied, with few deviations—probably people he can’t find. But the list doesn’t distinguish between people who were in a position to know what was going on, and people who weren’t. The executives and board members had to know about the horrendous activities, but the list has project managers on it—people who were compartmentalized, and who had no idea what the data was used for. People like me.” She lifted her head to bring her gaze to his. Her eyes brimmed with tears. “I don’t know how to contact them without potentially exposing myself, and what if some of them are working with him? It’s just—he doesn’t realize there are innocent people on that list.”
“Or he doesn’t care.”
She sniffled. “Oh, I think plenty of people would view him as highly righteous. He merely doesn’t have all the facts—and he doesn’t have the time left to get them.”
“Dara!” A man’s voice broke through the still, frosty air. “Dara Han!”
Lanaya glanced at the stranger. He stood next to a woman in a red leather jacket, just past the mounted police officer near the park entrance. The man waved a hand and ran toward them, putting his hands in his pockets.
DeShear bolted upright. “Does anyone know you’re here?”
“No, I—”
“Get down!”
The man pulled a gun from his pocket and fired. The bullet whizzed past DeShear’s head and piffed through the pine tree branches, sending a cascade of twigs down on him. He grabbed Lanaya and pulled
her behind the coffee kiosk. Screams went up from the tourists gathered around the park. People ran in all directions.
The assassin ran toward the kiosk, firing his gun repeatedly. A tree branch exploded behind DeShear. In front of him, a woman running with a shopping bag whipped her head backwards and dropped to the ground. The next shot pinged off the condiment table. The next hit a man who ran in front of DeShear.
The mounted police officer turned his horse and galloped after the crazed stranger. The woman in the red leather jacket grabbed a hockey stick and swung it at the officer as he came by. It broke over his chest, sending him backwards off the horse.
She chased it down and grabbed the pommel, flinging her leg over the saddle. Righting herself, she grabbed the reins. With a thrust from her heels, the horse drew up and raced forward toward Lanaya and DeShear.
The woman pulled a gun from her pocket, pointing it in Lanaya’s direction.
“We’re trapped!” Lanaya shouted.
“Stay behind me.” DeShear peeked out from behind the kiosk and took the gun from his belt. He held the gun with both hands, lifting it near his face. The wooden corner of the coffee hut burst into splinters as another shot went past. Flinching, DeShear ducked back behind the corner and dropped to one knee, taking a deep breath.
Bullets ricocheted around them. Tourists screamed as they ran from the gunman.
Sliding his finger onto the trigger, DeShear swung himself around the corner and scanned his field of view. He leveled the weapon at the coming stranger, waiting for a clean shot. Running shadows crossed before his eyes.
As the man waded through the scattering crowd, DeShear squeezed the trigger. The shot caught the man’s shoulder and pulled him backwards. He shook it off and raised his gun again.
DeShear stood and advanced. “Everyone, down, down, down!” The gun firmly between his hands, he stared down the barrel at the attacker and fired three quick shots. Three red puffs burst from the assassin’s torso. The man sagged and fell face first into the ground.