The Black Market DNA Series: Books 1-3

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  He pointed to a text projection, and Dellaporta read it. She looked back up at Chris. “Well, go ahead, I guess.”

  The officer stepped forward. “Christopher Morgan?”

  He nodded.

  “You’re under arrest.”

  Chapter 9

  Manslaughter. The accusation rang in Chris’s head, and he shuddered. He hadn’t received the full charge yet, but they had brought him in with aiding and abetting. They apparently suspected him of being an accessory in someone’s death. Jordan had assured him he didn’t think Chris bore any responsibility for the deaths of Novak or the other enhancers.

  And Jordan had been the one to shoot the intruder.

  So what the hell was he doing in an interrogation room in Baltimore PD headquarters?

  He tapped his fingers on the table. A single row of LEDs glowed overhead, and he stared at his reflection in the one-way mirror. He wondered who watched from the other side and when they might tell him what they wanted from him.

  Combing his hand through his hair, he leaned back in the plastic chair.

  One moment he was panting and frightened, scared for his life, the victim of an attempted murder. The next he sat in a purgatory, apparently implicated in someone else’s death.

  The door cracked open. Dellaporta slid through and pulled out the seat across from him. She crossed her legs.

  “I told you,” she said.

  “Seriously? That’s what you’re going to say to me? ‘You told me so?’”

  Dellaporta folded her arms across her chest. “The Bio Unit found evidence of your old enhancements in Novak’s body along with similar traces in a couple other victims, too. You’re not an idiot. I know you’ve seen the news lately.”

  The springing confidence that Jordan might be right, maybe he hadn’t caused all this, evaporated like a puddle on hot asphalt in the middle of a Baltimore summer. “Do you...do you think my enhancements instigated this?”

  “Can’t say for certain. But if my unit proves that’s the case, you’d be implicated in these individuals’ deaths.”

  She didn’t need to belabor the list of charges that could potentially arise from any investigation finding his products had killed these people. He pressed his lips closed.

  “Look,” she said. “Commissioner wants someone to blame. He pressured Bio Unit into grabbing muscle biopsies from several of the bodies.” She lowered her voice. “Now, I’m not saying all had your vectors, but there’s a small number that did.”

  A small number? The brief dread threatening to suffocate him with guilt again dissipated slightly. He forced himself to put aside the emotional burden and consider the rational perspective of what she’d said. If only a few exhibited evidence they’d been his customers, then how could his wares be responsible for the others who’d never touched his enhancements? “Why are you telling me this?”

  “You remember what I told you before?”

  Chris nodded. He recalled her assurance that she didn’t suspect his involvement. For whatever reason, she actually seemed to trust him. Maybe it was because his work with her in the Kaufman case had led to her badge. Maybe she saw something in the evidence the other detectives didn’t. Even if she suspected another person bore the responsibility, she was only one voice in an entire department of badges clamoring to close a case.

  “How do they know these people had my enhancements?”

  Dellaporta cocked her head to the side, glancing away. She seemed to be mulling over whether or not she could tell him this information. She sighed. “Apparently, our lab techs identified a particular set of genes in each of the victims’ biopsied tissues. They matched these sequences up to our list of known enhancements and, sure enough, they came up with a positive hit. The sequences coincided with the ones they confiscated back when you were first arrested and convicted of distributing unapproved genetic products.”

  “But you said they didn’t find my wares in all the victims.”

  “Yes, but you’re still lucky they didn’t scrape together enough to charge you with manslaughter. You wouldn’t be able to post bail if that was the case.” She uncrossed her legs and leaned across the table. “You’d be stuck in jail, unable to figure out what might’ve gotten you there.”

  Chris nodded, understanding her implications. She really did seem to be going out on a limb, imploring him to clear his own name. Her confidence in him bolstered his own. Like a shipwrecked sailor holding on to the last sodden beam of a sunken frigate, he desperately clung to the hope that maybe she and Jordan were right. Maybe he wasn’t culpable of the crimes he’d already convicted himself of.

  But the lingering guilt would still remain until he proved it. To do so would mean he might need Dellaporta’s help as much as she needed his. “I really don’t know anything I haven’t told you.”

  “I understand. But I’m hoping you’ll tell us something worthwhile soon. There’s only so much I can do to protect you.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate your support.”

  “It’s a little early to be thanking me. I haven’t done anything for you yet. You need to help me help you.” She stood and motioned for him to follow. “Thompson already posted your bail, so you’re free to go. Just don’t try to leave the country.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Chris asked.

  Dellaporta paused in the doorway, one hand on her hip. “I’m the type of person that believes in treating the problem rather putting a bandage on it. And I don’t think throwing you in prison is going to treat anything.” She jabbed a finger at his chest. “So you better prove me right.”

  ***

  As they slid back into Jordan’s car, Chris rubbed his eyes. He checked his comm card. The sun would be rising in a couple hours, and he had no plans of going home to sleep. He needed to know who had tried to steal their genetic therapeutics. He wanted to figure out why people with tenuous connections to the enhancement culture, including a few who had used his enhancements, were dying. And he still hadn’t figured out if he was carrying whatever purportedly contagious cancer afflicted these people—and if he bore the responsibility of it all.

  Few other cars inhabited the empty streets. While he had been stuck in interrogation, rain had fallen. Streetlights reflected off the slick asphalt.

  “You sure it’s safe to return to the lab?” Chris asked.

  “No, of course, I could never be sure. But I did bring protection this time.” Jordan lifted his shirt to reveal a pistol grip protruding from the waistband of his pants.

  “You better hope the police don’t come back. Did they say anything else useful after they hauled me off?”

  “Besides a lengthy interrogation?” Jordan shook his head. “No, not really. They couldn’t tell me the identity of our friend. The best thing they did for us was make the crime scene investigation a quick affair. You should have seen all the 3D imaging and room-mapping technologies they used. They were in and out in a couple of hours. One of the CSI techs put me in touch with a cleanup unit that took care of most of the blood spatter already. They’ll be back again later this week.”

  “So we can get straight back to work?”

  Jordan nodded. “Except for the broken glass and missing divider between our lab and office space, we can go back to research as normal.”

  Chris leaned his head back. “Why can’t my life be normal?”

  “You gave that right up years ago.” Jordan let out a brief laugh and clapped him on the shoulder.

  He smiled back, trying to avoid the ominous reality he faced. He needed to take things as they came. One step at a time. Just like when he ran an experiment. Focus. “I still want to run Novak’s blood samples.”

  “I understand, my man.” Jordan patted his knee, like a father to a son.

  On another day, Chris might have found the gesture oddly patronizing, but the man deserved a little credit. “I don’t think I properly thanked you for saving my life back there.”

  “Don’t sweat it. I probably owe you one. But you
can start paying me back by finding out if you’ve got the same disease Novak had.”

  “Hopefully not...”

  “Better hope not, because I don’t want to have to save your butt twice.” Jordan winked as if the matter was nothing more than a comedy sketch playing on a holo show in his living room. But when his friend looked back out at the passing streets and couldn’t maintain eye contact, Chris realized the man was hiding a very real and deep concern and tried to obscure the emotions in his usual brand of humor.

  “I’ll do my best to stay alive,” he said. “Plus, I want to know if whatever might be in Novak’s blood could be used to trace back to whoever or whatever is responsible for this mess.”

  One thing at time, he reminded himself.

  “First priority needs to be checking if the doctors were wrong and you might be infected.” Jordan raised a single finger when Chris opened his mouth, ready to speak. “I don’t want your misguided guilt driving you mad. You’ve got your own life to worry about, and we also have clinical animal studies coming up. We need to push forward with the company’s research as well as preserve your health—both physical and mental.”

  “The veterinarians can wait.” Chris scowled. “Whatever’s killing these people with enhancements could be in who knows how many people’s cells, like a goddamned time bomb—I couldn’t care less about what happens to the company when it comes down to the fact that we might be the bomb makers.”

  “I understand.” Jordan exhaled. “And I want to restore your confidence in our work, my man. But you and I both know you need this job to come back to if everything turns out okay. And you need to remember you aren’t the only one depending on this company’s livelihood.”

  “But—”

  Jordan held up a hand. “You’ve got Mandy, Hugh, and Margot there, too. There are people who depend on you that don’t have a resume filled with stints in prison and internships as a street thug.”

  Desolate alleys and stoops flickered by, cloaked in the predawn shadows. Chris wondered how many others remained unfound, suffering this disease, and wouldn’t be discovered until their bodies, riddled with bruises and hemorrhaging, would be found in the unforgiving sunlight the next day.

  Sighing, Jordan patted his shoulder. “We’ll make things right. We’ll drive away these three ghosts of enhancement past, present, and future. I’ll show you it’s all in your head. A nightmare, my man, that’s all this is.”

  Once they arrived back at the lab, they surveyed the damage. Glass shards still littered the floor, and a couple drawers were askew. The chair Chris had thrown at the intruder lay broken in the mess, and bullet holes punctured a desk.

  “Maybe we should tell the others not to come in today,” Chris said.

  “I’ll shoot them a message.” Jordan cringed. “Wrong choice of words, huh?”

  Chris grabbed the bag they’d brought in earlier with his garments soaked in Novak’s blood and dragged it into the lab. He donned a pair of lab gloves and cut a piece of the stained fabric. He placed it in a solution. The blood dissolved off the sample and into the liquid. He spun down the solution in a centrifuge to isolate the cells and potential gene vectors within it.

  Tongues of sunlight crept over the horizon, breaking over the bay and illuminating the lab. Through a series of different filtering processes, Chris created samples containing red blood cells, white blood cells, and others potentially containing the gene vectors used to deliver enhancements, if they still existed in Novak’s blood.

  As Chris separated the DNA content from each sample, Jordan cleaned up the broken glass with a broom and dustpan. “Need my help?”

  Chris shook his head. “Easy enough so far. I’m going to sequence the samples and see what genes the DNA encodes for.” He pipetted tiny aliquots of each sample into smaller tubes. “And if I find any existing vectors, I’ll throw them in a cell culture just to see if they are actually functional. If they are and they do transfect the cells, then we’ll know I could be affected by those enhancements.”

  “Sounds like a solid plan.” Jordan dumped the swept-up shards into a waste container for broken glass.

  Chris’s eyes remained glued to his work on the lab bench. “Why do you think those people stole the CDXT?”

  “We suspected corporate espionage earlier. You think there’s something else?”

  Chris stopped and stared at Jordan. “Even if it was someone from Caninex or some other unscrupulous company, why they hell would they try to kill us?”

  “Beats me, my man.” Jordan’s shoulders slumped, and he leaned the broom against a table. “If I had to guess, I worry the world of black-market DNA hasn’t quite forgotten we were once a part of it. They’ll find out soon enough that whatever they thought they were getting out of all this isn’t what they’re looking for.”

  “True,” Chris said. “But what if someone injects it into themselves? It’ll screw with their immune system at the very least. Worse yet, CDXT is designed to cut out mutated DNA in a dog. Who knows what it will target in a human.” He set down a sample vial on the lab bench. “And that’s just what we need. More of our products out on the street killing people.”

  Stuck in thought, Jordan massaged his chin as Chris moved his samples to the NanoDrop to measure the DNA content. The results came back positive.

  “The guy definitely had recent enhancements,” Chris said. “They appear to still be viable in his bloodstream. There’s no other way to explain that much DNA content in such a small sample.”

  “Are you sure it’s because it was recent?” Jordan stepped toward the results displayed on the holoscreen. “Remember, the Kaufmans injected you with a viral vector that replicated within a person. What if this one did the same thing? What if those vectors were replicating like normal viruses and transfecting Novak’s cells at the same time?”

  “That could be. If that’s the case, it could be replicating in me.” It was a common method to take out the native DNA or RNA from viruses and replace the genetic material with that of the intended enhancement. That way, the virus—the viral vector—could then be used as a delivery vehicle to insert the new genes into an enhancer’s cells. However, if the virus retained some native or modified DNA or RNA, the same virus could keep spreading and replicating like normal, all the while delivering the genetic enhancements also packed into its tiny shell. Chris took a sterile syringe from a drawer and plunged the needle into his skin. With his jaw set, he withdrew a sample of his own blood. “If Dr. Haynes was wrong, if it’s in me too, I might not have long. And that would mean I don’t have much time to clean this mess up.”

  “We’ll figure this out.” Jordan placed a hand on Chris’s shoulder. “One thing a time.”

  Chapter 10

  Veronica tried to ignore the blinking comm card.

  She leapt across the springy wooden floor and spun, using muscle memory to guide her. With her arms spread, she landed on her toes.

  She opened her eyes. The comm card flashed red. She needed to continue the routine, to finish it, but her thoughts nagged at her. She miscalculated an entrechat, crossing her legs in front and behind, and landed on the side of her foot. After rolling to the ground, she held her ankle and grimaced.

  She ran to her bag at the corner of the dance studio and grabbed the comm card.

  “What do you want?” She spoke in a low voice, though she was alone in the studio.

  “Chris was arrested. I want to know why.”

  “For a supposedly connected organization, you do a piss-poor job of keeping an eye on him.”

  “You need to understand he isn’t a high-priority target. But that doesn’t mean you can afford to make him a low one.”

  “What the hell do you want to know?”

  “We want to know what’s going on, what he told the police, and what he’s doing now.”

  “Tall order,” Veronica said.

  “And I expect it to be served soon.”

  She pressed her palm to her forehead. “Fine.”
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  As usual, the line went dead without so much as a goodbye. She sat down next to her dance bag against the mirror lining the wall. Trevor had once threatened that if she did go to the police, they would know immediately. He implied they maintained connections within Baltimore PD. But now he was pressing her for information on Chris’s arrest. She wondered if Trevor’s insinuations about police contacts were a veiled threat meant to keep her in line and nothing more.

  Maybe she should go to the police.

  She probed the small spot under her arm where the tracking chip lay under her skin. The device must be monitoring her movements. That much rang clear every time Trevor called and relayed her exact coordinates. She suspected it was a biometric device keeping track of things like her heartbeat, which she supposed could be used as a crude lie-detection mechanism. But she didn’t know if the chip’s capabilities extended further. For all she knew, the device could sync remotely with her comm card, tracking her every call, her Net history, everything.

  She wondered if she’d let paranoia take the driver’s seat when she considered if the device itself might be able to record audio, too. Would such a thing, if embedded under her skin, be possible?

  Veronica stood at the barre and pulled a leg over her head, stretching. She couldn’t bear this much longer; she couldn’t keep playing along. She needed a way out, and she needed to tell Chris. Maybe he could help.

  But she might not have many opportunities to warn him without rousing Trevor’s suspicions—or those of whomever else monitored her. She turned the music back on with her comm card and restarted her routine. This time, she wouldn’t miss her entrechat. She vowed to land each jump, perfect each movement. She would not be distracted any longer.

  Trevor could wait a while. He needed her more than he let on.

  Chapter 11

  Chris transferred a sample of the virus isolated from Novak’s blood into a plastic dish containing muscle cells. He squinted, his focus intense, until the door to TheraComp flew open.