The Black Market DNA Series: Books 1-3

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  Again, red Xs glowed across the screen. Robin clenched her fists.

  “Are you sure you’ve got the right chip?”

  Robin glowered. “Positive.” She shook her head. “Maybe this sample is clean. Maybe there were never any prions in here.”

  “Maybe.” But Ana looked sideways. “But I don’t know many journalists who spend their time investigating something that’s safe, and I’ve never heard of someone being murdered for stumbling across a nonexistent conspiracy.”

  Peering at the remainder of the blue supplement, Robin chewed her bottom lip. There must be something wrong with this pill, something providing hard evidence to explain why someone wanted to cover up any connection between it and a disease that ate away a person’s brain until they became a vegetative mess.

  She had first believed proving the prions came from these supplements claiming to support infant and neonate health would be easy. The experiment and subsequent analysis required only a few minutes.

  Even those results eluded them.

  How could she and Ana answer the more difficult, more dangerous questions they faced if they couldn’t even coax out an insentient molecule with nowhere to hide?

  Chapter 24

  Dressed in a flowing red traditional hanbok, a woman deposited thin strips of pork belly on the grill on the table. The sizzling meat sent up waves of aroma saturated with garlic and other strong spices. Jordan’s stomach growled, betraying his attempts at retaining a stolid appearance.

  “Hungry?” Vincent leaned across the table. He took a showy sniff of the cooking meat. “I love a good barbecue.”

  Sun waved their server back over and said something in Korean. The woman returned with a green bottle of soju and poured four small glasses. She handed them out to Sun, Vincent, Jordan, and Chris.

  Sniffing his glass, Jordan knew better than to take the first sip of a drink. He’d watched to ensure neither Sun nor the serving woman added anything to his and Chris’s soju.

  As if sensing his paranoia, Vincent laughed. “I have no intention of poisoning you. If I wanted you dead, you’d already be six feet under.” He peered at Chris. Jordan could sense his friend’s uneasiness as Chris slumped his shoulders and stared back at Vincent. “I’m sure we could spend all evening catching up since our last conversation in prison, but I’ll cut right to the chase, right to the reasons I suspect brought you here. You and I have similar enemies.”

  “We don’t have any enemies,” Chris said. “We want to be left alone.”

  Vincent’s lips curled again, and he placed a hand across his chest. “It seems odd that someone who wants to be left alone would travel halfway across the world looking for me. Wouldn’t you be better off running off to Manhattan with your old flame, Veronica Powell? She’s staying with her sister, isn’t she?”

  “Screw you.”

  The woman in the hanbok returned and moved the cooked meat to the side of the grill with a set of tongs. Jordan eyed the woman’s garb. In all the Korean barbecue joints he’d ever visited, he’d never seen one where servers flitted between tables wearing such an antiquated outfit. He guessed Vincent insisted on the costume in a misplaced sense of historical imperialism.

  When he’d distributed genetic enhancements with Chris, Jordan had come across men and women like Vincent. People who thought they were untouchable, people who refused for anyone to correct their perception of the way the world worked no matter how wrong or misconceived. Their hubris often proved to be their weakness, and he’d exploited that sense of entitlement by pretending to go along with them. Sucking up to them with false flattery made stabbing their backs much easier.

  Jordan recalled one of the first incidents that sent them on their quest to find Vincent. “Why don’t you tell us why you wanted Senator Sharp dead?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then you meant to abduct him, but your cronies went a little wild and ended up killing him.”

  “Also inaccurate.” Vincent picked up a piece of the pork belly with his chopsticks. “I never wanted him dead.”

  “But surely he would’ve been a liability to you and your operations.” Jordan already doubted the words as he spoke them. A sinking feeling manifested itself in him. He realized his and the rest of the group’s allegations that Vincent was responsible for everything going wrong in Baltimore felt more and more erroneous.

  “True.” Vincent stopped chewing. His eyes seemed to glow as though a fire burned behind them. “If he would’ve revealed his connections to my people at Tallicor, what would we lose? Tallicor’s gone now. Without a group to endanger in the States, Sharp isn’t—wasn’t—all that important to me.”

  Chris scowled. “Nobody to endanger in the United States? So you’re trying to tell us your group is out of Baltimore?”

  “We’ve pulled out of the entire United States.” Vincent turned away. “Anyone ever associated with me there is either gone or in custody.”

  Sun nodded. “Which is why you find yourselves in Korea. It’s our contingency plan.”

  “My contingency plan,” Vincent said, the venom in his voice sounding as though it could burn. “I foresaw this”—he pointed at Chris—“back before we shared a cell, back before I’d even been indicted. Look, you two were amateurs, small fish in a sea far bigger than you could ever realize.” He gestured to Jordan. “Didn’t you ever wonder why there were so many people disappearing? Why the police never found answers? Why, despite the laws, underground biotechnology continues to spread like a cancer?

  “You two escaped the real battles, the real war, because you were too small to worry about. If I wanted to, it wouldn’t have been hard to storm your labs, to kill you both, to sweep it all under the rug, and ensure the case never even materialized in Baltimore PD’s databases.” His grin unnerved Jordan. “But like the French giving up Haiti after the slave revolution, like the Americans giving up the Philippines or leaving Korea, there were always bigger threats to face.”

  Maybe Jordan had been the one full of hubris and false confidence. If half of what Vincent insinuated was true, Jordan’s conniving and success had happened only because Vincent and whatever other unidentified biotech superpowers let it go unchecked.

  “Although you two apparently haven’t figured this out on your own, there are much larger organizations at work. They have ties to the government.” He shared a look with Sun. “And these ties aren’t restricted to paying off a couple of cops. Back in the States, I never made many of these connections because someone else beat me to the chase.”

  “Which is why you came here,” Chris said. “Where you could forge your own relationships. Corrupt government employees and spread your poison.”

  Vincent laughed. “I didn’t corrupt anyone. If they weren’t already corrupt, they wouldn’t have accepted my money now, would they? But you’ve got most of it right. Korea is the wild west of biotechnology. There are hardly any restrictions or regulations to hamper our work. The same shit that’s illegal in the States is practically encouraged here. It’s capitalism at its finest. If a device or enhancement kills someone, then no one else buys it. The market regulates itself.”

  “Sounds fantastic for you,” Chris said, “but that does nothing to explain the senator’s assassination or why there are still goons after me and my friends.”

  Jordan saw the glimmer of worry in Chris’s eyes when he said “friends.” He knew Chris’s thoughts harked back to Robin, back to how they’d left her to take care of her patients despite his protests. Despite the danger she’d faced outside the hospital, she still chose to return.

  With a nod, Vincent urged Sun to answer Chris’s concerns. “Bear in mind our connections to the States largely rely on our technical expertise over here.”

  “In other words, you don’t have men on the ground,” Jordan said. “You’re relying on hackers to keep tabs on things.”

  “More or less. We can record police chatter, a little correspondence between federal investigators, wherever else we’ve m
anaged to crack cybersecurity.” Sun puffed out her chest, her shoulders straight, and looked up at Vincent like a child awaiting praise from a parent. “It’s one of my many talents that forged our relationship. From what we’ve gathered, one of our old rivals may be responsible for the attack on the senator.”

  Chris raised an eyebrow. “What would they have gained by killing someone who was going to rat you out?”

  “While Sharp had been around long enough to know bits and pieces about our community of alternative biotechnologists—”

  “That’s a fancy way of saying criminal organizations,” Chris cut in.

  “I wouldn’t start throwing stones in a glass house.” Vincent gulped his soju and set the empty cup down. “In any case, Sharp did know of a couple other players in our industry. We weren’t the only group trying to court politicians. If you recall, Sharp authored a bill to make it more difficult for other organizations to steal biotechnology from legitimate companies.”

  Jordan nodded. He’d feared the passing of Sharp’s bill because of the added costs to his legal endeavors with Chris. If the bill became law, they would have been required to fund a position for a government employee to reside within their company and audit their stock of genetic therapies at any time the government wished. It was like prisoners paying for their guards.

  “We figured that law would at least hamper other organizations and help the senator’s public image by quashing any suspicions about him being paid off by interest groups flying under the legal radar.”

  “Sounds great,” Chris said, “but I’m still waiting for you to explain what the hell’s going on.”

  “Ah, I’m getting there. We’ve identified the group responsible for both the assassination attempts and—bet you didn’t expect us to know about this—Dr. Haynes’s mugging along with the fire in the Baltimore PD’s evidence room.”

  Sun grinned. “And in case you don’t believe us, while you’ve been over here, Dr. Haynes—or your little girlfriend Robin, however you prefer us to call her—has had all evidence of her recent prion infection cases deleted from hospital records by a saboteur—not us. Her lab samples were stolen, and someone broke into her house.”

  Jordan’s stomach knotted, and Chris’s face dropped.

  “Don’t worry,” Sun said. “She is alive and well. Escaped with Detective Ana Dellaporta. I believe Dellaporta has a vital piece of evidence our mutual enemies want back. If the communications we’ve intercepted are any indication, they will not stop until you two, Dellaporta, and Robin are all dead.”

  Swallowing the lump in his throat, Jordan forced himself to straighten.

  “Now there’s one thing I don’t know,” Vincent said. “What is this piece of evidence they want so badly? There’s no electronic record we’ve found documenting what these people want from Dellaporta.”

  Chris looked at Jordan and shrugged. “What can it hurt if we tell them?”

  At first, Jordan wanted to tell him to stop, to keep their cards breasted. Don’t let Vincent know this piece of information. Use it as leverage. But the discovery that the empire he’d thought he once reigned over was a lie convinced him he no longer possessed any advantages in whatever invisible war raged on back in Baltimore and the States. “Fine.”

  “She has one of the Blackbird Organics supplement pills,” Chris said.

  Vincent’s eyes went wide. “Of course. Let me guess: She took it from the scene of that journalist’s murder?”

  “Yes,” Chris said, his jaw slack. He closed his mouth, and his expression turned stolid again. “I suppose it makes sense you’ve been keeping tabs on that incident as well.”

  “Nothing gets past us,” Sun said.

  Vincent leaned back. “And this will make much more sense when I tell you why I think all these recent events are connected.”

  “So go on.” Jordan gestured for him to continue. “Don’t leave us in suspense.”

  Vincent laughed. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to wallow in the mystery for a little while longer.” He rubbed his hands together. “Once you’re back in Baltimore and out of my hair, I’ll be happy to let you know.”

  Chapter 25

  Ana sat on a stool, watching as Robin scoured images and text on her comm card. “What are you looking for?”

  “I’m checking to see if there are any types of prions these chips can’t detect.” Robin gestured to the pile of chips she’d gone through in the fruitless effort to find a positive match. “Maybe this is a new prion, something undiscovered.”

  “Which means there isn’t a test in the normal repertoire of screening devices.”

  “Right.”

  Ana paced around the lab bench as Robin hunched over the projections. She wished she could help, but her scientific knowledge had already been stretched in helping the doctor try to find the misfolded protein residing within the pill. She might skim science papers and journal articles and come away with a basic understanding, but she didn’t have the prowess Robin did.

  With only one comm card, one link to the Net between them, she figured it best the doctor be the one to perform the literature search.

  She picked up a clean glass flask and rotated it in her hands. She wondered what chemicals and materials it had once held. If she had discovered these labs two years ago, she would’ve thought she hit the jackpot. Shutting down any facility designated for the production of illegal wares brought with it a certain satisfaction she never replicated anywhere else in her life, whether it be pursuing a relationship with a man, enjoying a five-star, four-course meal, or taking a trip to the crystal-blue waters of Greece.

  Nothing else compared to the electricity that surged through her when her sleuthing ended with a criminal being led away in cuffs.

  She jolted straight, almost dropping the flask, as a sudden realization coursed through her mind. Of course!

  “You’re doing it all wrong!” A wide grin spreading across her face, she ran to Robin’s side. “You’re never going to find those damned prions. Not like this.”

  “What are you talking about?” Robin’s face contorted into an expression halfway between confusion and frustration.

  “This is something I can do, that I know how to do.” She dug through the pile of chips and pulled out an unused one. “You’ve been searching for prions, for the same things the FDA would search for if there was any reported incident of disease or contamination caused by this supplement.”

  “Yes.” Robin’s brow furrowed. “What are you suggesting?”

  “If someone wanted to protect the fact they were hiding prions in here, if someone didn’t want the FDA to find it, if they wanted most people to dismiss it, they’d camouflage the prions.”

  Robin’s eyes lit up. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. The delivery vector I discovered, the very reason we’re even looking into this, hid the prions from detection.”

  “Exactly. I bet those vectors shield the prions from any FDA assay.” Ana handed Robin the chip she had picked out. “This little guy tests for genetic mod vectors like the one you discovered in your patients.”

  “Do you think this will work?” Robin asked as she read the chip’s label. “This was made almost a year ago. The vectors I found could be a new design, something an old screening test for enhancements might not find.”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  “Fair enough.” Robin inserted the chip into the screening machine and pipetted a new drop of the solution made from the pill.

  Holding her breath, Ana watched the red Xs flow vertically across the holodisplay as the machine ruled out candidate after candidate. Robin’s eyes grew wider with each passing second.

  A sudden ping caused them both to jump as a single green O appeared. Robin hugged Ana and swung her around. “We did it. That’s it. The vector’s in the sample.”

  Ana nodded as Robin let go and held up a hand. “That’s step one. Do we know what’s in it?”

  “Not yet.” The elation in Robin’s face
drained as her victorious expression dissipated into straight lips and narrowed eyes. “But at least now we know what we’re looking for.”

  “And I might have another idea on how to coax it out.” With a grin, Ana rushed between the lab benches and flung open drawers and cabinets. She found what she was searching for under one of the lab benches and held up a silver canister with a network of tubes. Based on dialysis technology that filtered blood for patients with kidney failure, this machine possessed the ability to scour blood or other fluids for specific particles. Ana used a similar device in the Bio Unit to isolate delivery vectors for genetic enhancements. This would work.

  Ana set up the machine and used a pipette to deposit the remainder of Robin’s solution into the device. “This should do it.”

  ***

  The machine whirred and pumped for almost twenty minutes before a tiny droplet of water fell into a plastic vial attached to one of the clear tubes. After picking the container up, Ana held it up to the light. “All the delivery vectors should be in this solution now.”

  “Fantastic.” Robin peered into the vial in Ana’s fingers. “Glad to see the detective has a few useful tricks.”

  “That’s right. The detective isn’t as useless as she seems,” Ana said. “But I’m going to let you take it from here.” She handed the sample to Robin. “I assume you have an idea of how to see if the prions are inside these guys?”

  Robin nodded. She eyed the lab-on-a-chip devices. “I think the easiest way to see what’s inside while ensuring we don’t destroy the samples is to stimulate the delivery vectors to do what they were made to do.”

  “Replicate the environmental conditions that cause the vectors to deliver their cargo?”

  “Right,” Robin said.

  “So, if these things are delivering prions to brain tissue, we need a human brain.” Ana glanced around the lab. “I don’t see any test subjects around here, and I’m not volunteering.”

  Robin laughed for a moment, appreciating the detective’s humor. “Well, scratch that plan.” She picked out a chip from the stack. “Guess we’ll have to use one of these.”