The Black Market DNA Series: Books 1-3

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  Her heart froze. “Chris, you with me?”

  There was no response.

  Worried, she leaned in to see his chest moving slowly. Robin clipped his finger with a wire leading to the EKG machine she had first used when their captors deposited him here. In a vessel on top of his left hand, she inserted an IV needle. Once she’d situated and taped it down, she attached the IV line.

  If any bits of the canine materials remained in the particles, Chris’s body was probably treating the millions of microscopic vectors circulating in his bloodstream as foreign, nonhuman objects. His immune system might be attempting to eliminate them, push them out, like any other viral infection.

  But his symptoms seemed to have progressed too fast, too vigorously for that to be the sole consideration. She wanted to pump him full of immunosuppressant drugs but didn’t have any.

  Frantic thoughts raced through her mind. What if his treatments were working too well? What if HDXT not only reduced the proliferation of the tumorigenic cells but was affecting the DNA of regular, noncancerous cells? Normal cells might be inducing apoptosis, or a type of a programmed cell death—cell suicide.

  She loped over to the refrigerator and scoured its contents. No matter how many times she looked, she found only the anticancer treatments and the myriad of therapies she’d tried on the other patients.

  “If you’re listening, we need immunosuppressants now.” She pointed to Chris as she shouted into the holodisplay. In her mind’s eye, she pictured the EKG machine she’d hooked up to him flatlining. Their captors hadn’t provided her with any of the vital drugs she’d need to prevent his body from destroying itself. Every passing minute meant more of his cells were dying and would eventually lead to organ failure. “He’s going to die, and if we don’t save him, if we don’t figure out why, then whoever you’re trying to save out there is going to die, too!”

  No response emanated from the holodisplay.

  Angered, she whirled back to the other therapeutics in the laboratory storage area. An odor stung her nostrils. A hint of rotting food mixed with the tang of morning breath. She paused, squinting.

  Then her eyes widened as she caught sight of the cell incubator. She pulled the door open, and the smell overwhelmed her, powerful enough to knock her back. Inside sat the plastic dishes with the experimental cell cultures they’d first tried HDXT on. Normally a pink liquid, the cell media nourished the cells within the dishes. Over time, as the cells depleted the nutrients and produced waste, the media would turn a pale orange, then yellow if they neglected to take care of the tissue cultures. Usually, a lab tech or researcher changed the media every two or three days to prevent nutrient depletion.

  They had changed the media that morning. The cells should be healthy, the liquid pink.

  But instead, the cultures were yellow. She covered her nose with her sleeve. The entire incubator stank with a putrid odor. Holding her breath, she took one of the cultures and examined it under a microscope.

  Skeletal muscle cells taken from one of the patients filled the display. They normally appeared long and thin in striated patterns. Now the cells were balled up and floated in the media like dead fish.

  And they weren’t alone. Thousands of tiny clumps of black spheres were suspended in the culture.

  Robin pulled back from the scope, her heart pounding. She knew what the black objects signified—she knew why Chris was dying.

  Chapter 34

  Jordan waited in the dark lab. The last crimson remnants of the setting sun had long since faded, and only the murky glow of distant streetlights provided any semblance of illumination.

  In his mind’s eye, he pictured his office, its light still on. He hoped it would be enough of a distraction for the intruders he expected to descend on the Equest Advantage complex. He’d drawn the blinds so they couldn’t tell the office suite remained empty. Maybe, with luck on his side, they would assume he had staked out there and wouldn’t expect him lurking in the laboratory, waiting to pounce.

  His ears were perked, but the only sounds he heard were the light scurries of a couple mice, their claws scratching. Sweat soaked the back of his shirt. He began to wish he’d turned the air conditioning back on to the main floor of the building.

  Whipping out his comm card, he read the time: 12:34 a.m.

  They still hadn’t come. He wondered if they’d seen through the ruse, if they’d been too skeptical to even bother risking the trip to the run-down building. His heart froze.

  He’d forgotten to take Hugh’s comm card from him.

  What if the tech was still communicating with these thugs? He might have warned them to stay away, or worse, told them Jordan had planned an ambush. They’d be prepared for him.

  You’re losing your finesse, Jordan. You’ve let yourself go.

  It was a wonder he’d ever considered himself any sort of criminal mastermind. He almost laughed aloud. He’d once ruled the illegal enhancement trade in Baltimore. He’d almost spread his network to neighboring DC and up north, through Philly and on to New York City.

  And now here he was, crouched in the shadows of his own laboratory, waiting for a couple of street rats to break in and praying they didn’t know he planned on knocking them out with the stunner.

  He cursed inwardly, fearing he might never help Chris.

  With the comm card between his fingers, he considered calling Dellaporta. He could tell her exactly what he planned. Maybe the extra backup would be nice. Maybe the police could handle the situation better.

  Crashing glass interrupted his thoughts.

  He heard the distinct sounds of boots slapping against the hard floor. Tucking away his comm card, he readied the stunner. He flipped the switch to increase its intensity. His heart thumped wildly as he drew himself up into a crouch.

  The footsteps sounded as if they originated from the chemical synthesis room adjacent to this portion of the laboratory. He peered around a lab bench. He could make out silhouettes moving in the darkness. Two of them.

  He expected to see swathes of flashlight beams light up the floor and counters but was awarded no such sight. The intruders flitted between lab benches and haphazardly placed stools and chair. Their fluid navigation of the murky room meant they used night-vision contact lenses or a similar technology. Hell, they might have had enhancements to increase the effectiveness and number of rod cells in their retinas to improve their sight in the dark.

  Again, he cursed at himself. He had opened the door to these criminals, and he was grossly unprepared, with no way to see through the darkness like either of them. Where he saw shadows and silhouettes, they’d see the room as clear as day.

  Willing himself to remain calm, he surveyed the laboratory and waited to see if anyone else would slip through the broken window. He snuck to the edge of the chemical synthesis room as the two intruders walked toward the freezer near the back of the lab. Their backs lay exposed to him as they opened its door.

  As the two picked through the contents, searching for the therapies Hugh had promised would be there, Jordan crept up behind them.

  He gave no warning to either as he squeezed the trigger. A jolt of electricity coursed through the first individual. The man seized up and slammed against the tiled floor.

  Jordan fired another burst at the man’s accomplice. As her body shook, her face turned toward him. She fell, her eyes glued open. He thought she was looking at him, but her eyes gazed somewhere beyond. Somewhere behind him. At first, he thought her vacant stare was an involuntary result of the electricity pulsing through her body. But soon the hairs on the back of his neck stood, and an uncanny feeling sent shivers down his spine.

  He spun.

  Another man, dressed in black, sneered. He aimed a pistol at Jordan’s head. “Put the stunner down.”

  Chapter 35

  The cell cultures were worthless now. A bacterial infection had compromised them. All Chris and Robin’s work to monitor the success of HDXT within those samples was thwarted by the microorga
nisms.

  But at least Robin had her answer. All the tension and anxiety pent up in her seemed to escape like the air from a punctured balloon. The problem was much simpler and easier to treat than a drug cocktail to suppress Chris’s immune system.

  She looked back over at his body. Despite being soaked in sweat, he shivered uncontrollably.

  “We need antibiotics,” she said.

  No one responded. The holodisplay didn’t light up. She waited several minutes, checking on Chris and the other patients.

  Robin went back to the lab area. She took the plastic dishes containing the cells and their infected media. Even without a microscope, the liquid appeared cloudy, filled with the remnants of dead cell fragments and clumps of destructive bacteria.

  Shaking her head, she pulled a hand through her hair. Chris had forgotten something. She recalled that look in his eyes. They’d both been too exhausted, too overwhelmed to notice. They’d been focused on constructing the best therapy they could cobble together on their compressed timeframe. They’d been too worried about Chris serving as the sacrificial first human subject.

  And they’d missed something so stupid, so elementary, even the greenest biology graduate student could’ve figured it out.

  She ran to the refrigerator and grabbed the bottle of saline solution they’d mixed the HDXT in. A tiny crack near the container’s lid caught her eye. While the label read the bottle’s contents were sterile and free of contagions, the imperfection must’ve allowed bacteria from the air and the refrigerator to contaminate the solution. And they’d never performed any tests to ensure the label was accurate and the solution was indeed sterile.

  It was as simple as that. She cursed, realizing how obvious the signs of bacterial infection should have been to her.

  She’d been too wrapped up in the idea that it was a side effect of HDXT. She had neglected to consider they’d injected the bacteria straight into Chris’s bloodstream along with the therapeutics. Now all she needed was something as rudimentary as penicillin or streptomycin.

  Tossing aside chemotherapeutic agents, bottles of nanoparticles, and the remnants of the CDXT, she perused the cooler and the freezer once more, but she found no human antibiotics. Their captors had evidently known antibiotics wouldn’t solve the cancer crisis, so they’d never stocked the lab with any such medicines.

  She stared at the plastic cell culture dishes she’d left on the lab benchtop. An idea struck her.

  Instead of searching through the supplies allocated for the patients, she opened the smaller freezer containing components used in their benchtop experiments. At least the prison-lab was stocked with the equipment and materials needed to run simple cell culture experiments to assess the suffering enhancers’ tissues and the therapies Chris and Robin developed.

  She pulled out a small frozen glass vial. Frost covered its label. She brushed aside the icy white powder: Pen/Strep.

  Warming the solution in a hot water bath, she prepared a needle, performing the math to gauge a proper dosage for Chris. The Pen/Strep solution was sometimes used in cell cultures to prevent infections. Without the natural protection of an immune system, cells in experimental culture were susceptible to bacterial, fungal, or viral infections.

  While the antibiotics intended for the cell media wouldn’t be optimal, they’d have to work. She inserted them into his IV line.

  In the meantime, she set up a sterile filtration system to remove the bacteria from the contaminated HDXT intended for the five patients still suffering from cancer. When the solutions passed through the filters and she froze them down again for storage, she could do no more.

  All she had left was to wait.

  ***

  The man stepped forward, brandishing the pistol in his right hand. “Give me the stunner.”

  Jordan swiveled, his finger hovering over the trigger.

  “I’m not playing games. You shoot me, I fire too.”

  “Fine,” Jordan said. He placed the stunner on the floor and raised his hands in the air. He took a step back.

  “Show me where the therapeutics are.”

  This was not the first time Jordan had been on the action end of a gun barrel, but it felt no better than before. He controlled his outward disposition, refraining from shivering like a frightened kitten. He didn’t know what this man might be capable of.

  The intruder took a step forward, the gun trained on Jordan. He walked closer, illuminated by a sliver of light from one of the windows, and scooped up the stunner. His deep-set, gray-blue eyes glinted. He clenched and unclenched his left hand. His muscles flexed, and the vessels in his arms bulged. Though he exhibited a robust physique, his skin appeared mottled with bruises, evident even in the meager light. An enhancer.

  “You’re dying, too,” Jordan said. “How long do you think you have?”

  “Shut the hell up and get me the therapeutics.”

  Jordan’s mind raced. He needed to stall the man until he could come up with a way to thwart him. The main lab was empty. The only chemicals and samples he could hand the guy that might pass as a newly discovered cure were downstairs. And he hated to bring this thug into the underground lab and let its location be known to the wrong circles.

  “Where the hell are they?” The man shook the gun at Jordan.

  “Patience, my man. Patience.” He turned and led the man to the end of the lab. Sighing inwardly, he realized the life of his illicit laboratory had already ended anyway—he’d already introduced it to Hugh. Besides, he and Chris now ran a legitimate enterprise; they didn’t need this place. With no other choice, he opened the door to the walk-in cooler and moved the shelves in the back to grant them access to his former gene-mod manufacturing facility.

  “Where the hell are you taking me?”

  Jordan turned, scowling. “You know this work is all illegal, right? You’re not so dense as to think I’d be doing any of this in broad daylight, are you?”

  “Just move.”

  Jordan held up his hands defensively and paced back into the laboratory. A PCR machine still glowed from its earlier use. The lights in the flow hood cast an evanescent glow over the black benchtops and equipment scattered around the lab. Again, he racked his brain, trying to come up with something to give this man.

  He sauntered over to the freezer. “May I ask what you plan on doing with me once you’ve got this cure?”

  The man said nothing.

  Jordan turned. His stomach knotted, but he willed his face to remain stolid. “If you’re going to kill me after I give you what you want, then why should I make this easy for you?”

  “I can make your death considerably less painful if you cooperate.”

  Jordan raised an eyebrow. “My man, is that the best you can do? You dangle that old cliché in front of me as if it’s a reward.”

  The man reached into a pocket with his left hand. He pulled out a knife and flicked it open. With the press of a button, the blade glowed red with heat. “Do you know how easy this cuts through flesh?”

  Willing himself to appear unimpressed, Jordan turned back to the freezer. He looked down and noticed it wasn’t lined up with the tiled floor. Before he had gone upstairs, he hadn’t been able to put it back in place but had at least straightened it out in front of the passage entrance.

  A loud crash made Jordan spin around. A gunshot exploded, deafening him. Shards of the glass cabinet beside the freezer fell and splintered as they hit the floor.

  He dove as another gunshot tore through the air. A heavy thud preceded the clunk of metal clattering against the floor tiles.

  “Help!” It was Hugh’s voice.

  Jordan sprang up.

  The lab tech wrapped one arm around the intruder’s neck. Blood seeped out of the thug’s head as he flailed. The man threw himself at an incubator, smashing Hugh between himself and the machine.

  Spying the glint of the handgun on the tile, Jordan dove for the pistol. The intruder rushed toward him despite Hugh still hanging around his nec
k. A kick caught Jordan under the chin, and he sprawled across the floor. Pain cracked up his jaw, and he blinked, his vision snowy.

  Still clinging to the hulking man, Hugh punched him in the side of the face. The man grunted and swung the tech over his head and against one of the lab benches. Glassware and pipettes shattered beneath Hugh’s body.

  Jordan scrambled around the side of the bench, putting it between himself and the man. The thug bent down to pick up the pistol as Hugh groaned.

  A red glow caught Jordan’s eyes. The knife. He sprinted toward it and grabbed its handle.

  The man straightened and leveled the gun at Hugh.

  Jordan lunged. He drove the blade into the side of the man’s neck.

  The man recoiled and fired. The gunshot was deafening, but Jordan stabbed again.

  The gunman crashed to the floor. Jordan hovered above him, knife in hand, as he watched the man’s breathing cease. Crimson liquid pooled around the man’s still form. Jordan pressed the small button on the end of the knife, shutting off the capacitor within the blade and letting it cool.

  “Hugh, are you all right?”

  He rushed to the man’s side and grabbed his shoulders. The heavy scent of copper hung in the air.

  “He shot me,” Hugh said, his voice weak. His hand shook as he drew it up toward his shoulder.

  Red in the light from the open freezer, torn flesh puckered from the wound. Jordan ran to the rack of lab coats and tore the sleeve off one. He pressed it to Hugh’s shoulder. While this was a biomedical research lab, he had no medical supplies sufficient to stem the bleeding.

  “You need to go to the hospital,” Jordan said.

  Hugh pinched his eyes closed and grabbed his shoulder, writhing in pain. The agony seemed to settle. Sweat dripped across his forehead. “Not yet. Not now,” he said, through gritted teeth. “I’m not going to die.”

  “You will if we don’t get you help.”

  “Were there others?” Hugh asked.

  “Yes, two. Stunned upstairs.”