“Dr. Haynes, right?”
“Yep, that’s her. She’s gone, too. Chris told me he saw her taken away and, sure enough, we found traces of her blood at the bombing but no other remains. We fear he’s probably right.” She said nothing for a moment, the line going silent. “And that’s not all. I’m not authorized to make a public announcement, but you’ll be hearing about it later on the news streams anyway. You know Arthur Sharp?”
“The senator assassinated by the bombing?”
“That’s him,” Dellaporta said. “Except now we don’t think he was assassinated.”
Jordan’s brow wrinkled as he stared out at the passing brick-faced houses. “What do you mean?”
“We found no evidence of his remains at the scene. Nothing. The bomb exploded in his room, but he was gone before it went off. We’re afraid that was just a diversion.”
“He’s been abducted, too?”
“That’s what we think,” Dellaporta said. “I don’t know if any of that helps you, but I’m swamped around here. If you know something I don’t about all this, please tell me. I’m at my wits’ end.”
“I’m as in the dark as you are,” Jordan said. “But I’ll let you know if I hear something.” He reached over to the holodisplay to end the call, but a thought sprang into his mind. “Wait. Why was the senator in the cancer ward?”
“I haven’t gotten my hands on his medical records, but I think you can answer that yourself, can’t you?”
Jordan glowered, shaking his head. “Obviously he was suffering from cancer—whatever kind it was. But why didn’t he make a public announcement? Why hide his treatment? Wouldn’t a politician use that to garner sympathy?”
“I don’t know,” Dellaporta said. “Maybe he was afraid he’d lose public confidence in his ability as a leader if it affected his brain or something.”
“Sure,” Jordan said. “Or maybe there was something else at stake. Maybe he suffered the same cancer afflicting the enhancer patients.”
“That would mean—”
“Senator Sharp is—or was—an enhancer.”
Chapter 25
The thought of Sharp’s hypocrisy infuriated Jordan. He wondered at politicians’ penchants for publicly decrying the very activities they partook in. A governor, lauded for his hardline stances against prostitution, caught purchasing services from a lady of the night. Congressmen opposing laws to decriminalize controlled substances abusing those same drugs. Now a senator lambasting genetic engineering companies for their purported role in the illegal enhancement trade buying those enhancements for himself.
Jordan’s desire to analyze the biopsied tissues for clues burned more intensely. He smiled at the thought of bringing down the organization responsible for Chris’s abduction, the intrusion into their company, and Hugh’s subversion. If his suspicions proved correct regarding Sharp’s use of enhancements and subsequent suffering from the cancer afflicting other enhancers, Jordan’s analysis would also yield the added benefit of identifying the group the senator purchased his enhancements from.
He reentered his destination in the car. He couldn’t risk going back to the TheraComp labs. And he couldn’t take the equipment to his home. If the people who coerced Hugh had broken into Jordan’s penthouse, then the police might be crawling over the place.
That meant he’d need to revisit his old stomping grounds. He’d need to go underground as Chris had suggested until he had a better idea of who might be responsible for this whole mess.
The car took him past the bay. Sunlight glinted off the waves, and colorful storefronts lined the brick streets near the shore. Chris had met Veronica near here earlier. Jordan wondered if she had seen something, if she might know anything to point him in the right direction. At the very least, she deserved to know what had happened to Chris.
***
Veronica sat on a bench near a restored lighthouse overlooking the Inner Harbor. She slipped off her shoes and saw the Deadly Barnacle sail out into the Chesapeake. The replica pirate ship trolled past the piers, kicking up a lazy wake in its slow path. Even from this distance, she could make out the children fighting with their plastic swords across the deck. Parents watched as tour guides adorned in full pirate regalia climbed up the netting and made a show of lowering the ship’s ornamental sails.
She wished she could be as careless as those children, as enthusiastic as those pirates, and as content as those parents. A cool breeze drifted over her, and she closed her eyes, digging her toes into the grass at her feet.
While biotechnology had prolonged people’s lives, these advancements didn’t mean they led better lives, and she was a prime example. The LyfeGen Sustain, with Chris’s assistance, had brought her back from the brink of death. But she didn’t feel any happier for it. Her life had turned into one of constant fear. She worried Trevor would make good on his threats to her family. Maybe soon they would no longer need her, either. Maybe they’d throw her out into the Chesapeake. The Deadly Barnacle would float over her sunken corpse as the children hooted and hollered on the ship’s advertised quest to search for treasure lost at sea.
Her comm card rang and scattered her dark thoughts to the wind. She glanced at the caller ID. It was a person she hadn’t talked to in almost two years.
“What do you want?” she said.
“Nice to speak with you after so long,” Jordan said. “But unfortunately, I didn’t call for chitchat.”
“I figured as much,” she said. An elderly man hobbled past her bench and nodded a greeting. She waved back, slipped her feet back into her flats, and stood.
“Chris has been taken, and I thought you should know.”
Her heart leapt into her throat. She froze on the sidewalk overlooking the water. Her attempt at sending him a message through her painting had failed. She cursed inwardly, thinking it was a stupid idea anyway, a silly thing to pin her hopes on. “What?”
“I’m afraid he’s been abducted, and it might have to do with the diseased enhancers cropping up all over Baltimore.”
Jordan was probably right. Veronica wished she could say more to clue him in on what she knew, but the call might be tapped. “What does that have to do with Chris? He told me he was out of the business.”
“He was and is,” Jordan said. “But that doesn’t mean the business is done with him. He was helping a detective identify the genetic enhancements responsible for the cancer these patients have. I think that led to his abduction.”
Brushing her hand through her short-cropped hair, Veronica pinched her eyes closed. “Damn it.” She wanted to ask what else Jordan knew, if he meant to go after Chris. But she didn’t want Trevor or his goons to know what Chris’s friend had planned. “I think I better go. I can’t deal with this.”
“Wait a second, please. I know this might be a long shot, but did you see anything odd? Maybe someone following Chris, someone that seemed out of place? He was taken shortly after he met with you.”
Veronica hung her head low. She wanted to tell him about Trevor, about Trevor’s boss. But she pictured her sister in Manhattan, her parents in Chicago. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t have anything to help you.”
She ended the call, afraid Jordan had said too much. Now Trevor knew the man was on their trail.
She pocketed her comm card and strolled back past the old lighthouse toward an outdoor amphitheater. Its huge white canopies covered rows of empty red chairs. She ambled under the pavilion and sat. The shade provided a brief respite against the unrelenting sun. If they’d taken Chris into their custody, they no longer needed her. She was of no use to them.
Once, she and Chris had listened to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra here. She leaned back in the chair, remembering how the music had swallowed them, making her feel as if everything outside of that pavilion no longer existed. In those moments, there had only been her and Chris and the haunting melody of string instruments floating through the air.
But music wouldn’t shield her from the world now. She expect
ed the men who had abducted Chris would soon take her, too. She was a liability, a risk they no longer needed to afford.
As she sat, she sensed another person behind her. “Veronica.”
She knew to whom the deep voice belonged. It was ingrained in her memory, in her nightmares. “Trevor.”
“I’d like you to come with me.”
She took a long breath and cradled the back of her head in her hands. “Is this all going to be over?”
“Soon enough,” he said. “Soon enough.”
She stood and faced him. “And what if I run? What if I scream?”
He lifted his white t-shirt to reveal a pistol.
“What difference does it make if I die here or die later?”
“I don’t want to have to kill you.” His lips parted, baring his gleaming white teeth. “Boss wants to keep you alive yet.”
She wondered if she wanted to live. She could run. She might make it. He might be too afraid to take a shot at her in public, especially so close to the tourists meandering about the waterfront. But if she died, there was no guarantee her family would live. How far would Trevor and his boss go to seek retribution for her lack of cooperation?
“Fine,” she said. “Where are we going?”
Chapter 26
Jordan flicked on the lights and surveyed the underground lab. The place was once alive with activity. Just years ago, he, Chris, and their compatriots had toiled at the humming PCR machines, light microscopes, and flow hoods. Now a layer of dust coated the equipment, and shadows danced between the bench tops and cabinets filled with unused beakers, flasks, and other assorted glassware.
After Chris’s first arrest and subsequent conviction, it would have been wiser to get rid of all the equipment, the DNA synthesis devices, and the nanoparticle fabrication machines. But Jordan figured trying to dispose of everything would prove more suspicious than keeping it and claiming he used the laboratory in conjunction with his livestock genetic modification research, which had been his front in those days.
He looked over at Hugh, who still stood at the doorway. “Start cleaning things up in here. We’re going to need to do a little work if we’re going to stand a chance of finding Chris.”
Hugh nodded. His normally buoyant demeanor had been replaced with one of defeat. “Sure.”
Jordan had considered telling Hugh to go home but couldn’t risk him being found again by the goons threatening the lab tech. He reminded himself the poor guy had been manipulated and frightened, though it didn’t allay his anger. But he couldn’t just kill Hugh; those days had passed. And as much as it pained him to admit it, he couldn’t run all the analyses he had in mind by himself. He still didn’t trust the lab tech, but he needed the extra hand. Besides, giving Hugh tasks in the lab would enable Jordan to keep an eye on the man. “You will behave yourself, won’t you?” Jordan asked.
Hugh turned on a boxy silver nuclear magnetic resonance machine in a secluded corner. “They won’t find us down here, will they?” His words came out in a diffident shadow of his usual exuberance.
“I don’t know what they know. You’re the one that’s been chatting with our friends.”
Hugh wiped away the dust and pressed a couple buttons on the holoscreen of the NMR machine.
“We should be able to nondestructively analyze any samples we find with that guy,” Jordan said, pointing to the NMR machine. “But do you have any other suggestions to identify any unknown delivery vectors?”
Hugh lifted his shoulders noncommittally. “Chromatography? We could attempt to dissolve the samples and run them through to help separate the compounds used in their manufacture. Do you have equipment for that?”
Jordan slapped Hugh’s back. “Do I have equipment for that?” He gestured to the other side of the lab, away from the magnetic field of the NMR machine. “Do I have equipment for that, he asks? I have everything we need.” He paused. “Before we begin, I want to make sure your head is in the game, and you realize what it is that’s at stake.”
Pointing at his chest, then Hugh’s, Jordan continued. “My life. Your life. Chris’s life. The police are too slow. They still think Chris is responsible for this whole mess. They aren’t going to lift a finger to help us. After all, I’m a suspected big-wig former enhancement ring leader, and you...well, I’m afraid you don’t mean a heck of a lot to them. They couldn’t care less if Chris dies, either.”
Hugh nodded.
“So I’m going to need you to act a bit more alive. Because if alive is what you want to be, we’ve got to find out who’s taken Chris and why and, just maybe, end this madness.”
Eyes closed, the lab tech exhaled slowly. “Okay. Okay. I understand.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” Jordan left Hugh’s side and flicked on a high-performance liquid chromatography system. The equipment buzzed to life, machines autocalibrated, and Hugh prepared the chemical reagents they’d taken from TheraComp. They had enough resources, but he wondered if they’d have enough time.
***
For days, they separated out the components of the biopsies. The search for the vectors was as bad as looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Jordan brushed his hand over his head. In fact, he figured their task was even worse. Hell, they didn’t know what the needle was that had delivered the malfunctioning enhancement—a metal nanoparticle, a silica nanoparticle, a viral vector, a DNA micelle? To make matters worse, their needle might be biodegradable. That meant it might have simply dissolved after delivering its genetic luggage to the right cells, and he and Hugh would never be the wiser.
Jordan called Dellaporta from a secured line daily to see if she had any updates. Likewise, she questioned him. She was kind enough to deliver food and basic supplies while Hugh and Jordan holed up in the underground laboratory. But what she couldn’t deliver was good news.
She still had no idea where Chris was. Her department believed he had fled, and his disappearance only cemented their suspicions that he somehow bore responsibility for the cancer epidemic.
“I found something!” Hugh said, his enthusiastic voice carrying through the lab.
Startled, Jordan ran to his station. Across a holodisplay, a projection of chemical structures glowed in bright greens and blues. “What is this?” he asked.
A grin spread across the lab tech’s face. “Bear with me for a second, okay?”
He hesitated, then nodded. “Go on.”
“It’s a vector without strength enhancements.”
Jordan raised an eyebrow.
“Remember what we discovered in Chris?”
“Right, the gene mod that produced the telomerase enzymes.” The enhancement was designed to extend the integrity of cells’ DNA. The telomerase enzymes were responsible for ensuring important genes weren’t lost from the DNA strands during cell division and had the ability to slow the aging process. After a brief pause, he said, “You saw those same enhancements in one of the patient’s samples?”
“I did. I know this is a long shot, but I haven’t seen anything else matching up between patients. At first, I thought this was a singular case, but I found three samples that all had trace elements of this same viral vector with the same genetic material.” Hugh wiped away the bead of sweat rolling across his forehead.
“So you think you’ve found sufficient data to identify this vector for certain?”
“I think,” Hugh said. “You know how we were worried if it was biodegradable?”
Jordan nodded.
“It was.” Hugh sighed. “And I think that’s why it appeared in only a few of the biopsy samples from the hospital. If I were to guess, more of these patients used it. I bet these vectors and the genes they delivered had something to do with the cancer.”
“Makes sense,” Jordan said. “Abnormal telomerase activity due to mutated genes could lead to uncontrolled growth of cancer cells. The cells will keep dividing and growing—which in turn causes tumors. But the problem is figuring out how this happened. And we don’t h
ave time to try and fudge our way through analyzing how these enhancements caused cancer.” Everything seemed to click in his mind, and he realized the information he and Hugh had uncovered might be able to unburden Chris of his guilt.
“Most important,” Jordan continued, “is determining whether these telomerase enhancements lead to the cancer. If we can prove they did, then I can tell Chris it’s not his fault. Whoever is behind these new genies is selling them on the premise they’ll extend a person’s life, and instead, people are ending up in the hospital with an unstoppable cancer.”
Jordan stared at Hugh incredulously. “We need to find and tell Chris.”
“Sounds good to me,” Hugh said. He made a couple of gestures on the holodisplay to transmit the data he’d found to Jordan’s comm card. They’d shut off all Net access to all other machinery in the lab, and Hugh had never gotten a replacement card for the one Jordan had cracked.
Jordan held their sole connection to the outside world and, most importantly, to the data he had compiled to track rival organizations making and selling enhancements. When he’d been in the black market business, keeping tabs on those other groups was invaluable to stay ahead of the competition.
But since he’d gotten out, he worried his information was out of date. He copied the chemical formulas Hugh provided into a database search function. A shred of optimism and hope fluttered in his mind as a small clock icon ticked away the seconds it took for the program to scan the data. When the icon disappeared and the results turned up, his heart sank. There was no exact match with any of his former rivals’ techniques for delivering illegal genetic enhancements.
“This is not ideal,” Jordan said. “I’m glad we might know what we’re looking for, but I found nothing matching any of the street products.”
The Black Market DNA Series: Books 1-3 Page 40