“So this two-step process you developed involved a neural stimulant?” Browne asked.
Wallace remained stone faced.
“Come on, buddy, it’s a simple matter of telling the truth. You’re going to end up in prison. No question about it. But the more you help me to understand what’s going on, the better you’ll look when the judge sentences you.”
Ana knew no amount of cooperation would lessen any court’s opinion of Wallace, especially after he’d experimented on abducted homeless individuals, but Browne appeared earnest enough to make the tactic work.
“Yes.” Wallace nodded. His hands were tied together behind his back with polymeric cuffs designed to withstand the superhuman strength of enhancers. “It gives users short-term benefits until the gene mods kick in and cells start producing the proteins corresponding to the enhancements I sell.”
Although he cut such a brutish figure, Ana couldn’t help but be slightly impressed by the man’s scientific prowess. With easy access to home-based genetic and biologic lab equipment, biohacking had become prevalent enough to the point that most anybody could afford to explore the intriguing realms of life and DNA. But some, like Wallace, had abused these privileges.
“And the guy in the suit wanted to buy these technologies?” Ana asked.
Wallace nodded.
“So you showed him your wares in action on two men who escaped your Frankenstein laboratory.” She placed her palms on the table and leaned into Wallace’s face. “Then you went after them, hunting them like dogs after a fox, huh?”
“I didn’t want to kill them,” Wallace said. “It wasn’t my idea, but Kaufman—”
Ana raised an eyebrow. “The guy in the suit?”
Wallace nodded. “Kaufman said he didn’t want evidence running around the streets. He wanted them dead. I didn’t.”
“Yet you experimented on them like lab rats.” Ana glared at him. She pictured Roy caged up in Wallace’s basement, and it took every ounce of self-control to prevent herself from leaping across the table and strangling Wallace.
“Tell us what you know about Kaufman,” Browne said.
“Not much. The guy played me. Stole everything without paying me and then left me with the cop in my car.” Creases formed across Wallace’s brow. “Look, I didn’t even contact him. He showed up and came after me. I don’t know anything else about him, where he came from or who he is, other than the one name.” A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. “That’s all I got.” For a moment, the hulking man’s expression softened. Despite the enhancements that had morphed his body into a veritable monster of a man, he was only twenty-three. “Am I looking at a life sentence?”
“Longer if we’re lucky,” Ana said.
***
A cool wind blew across the sidewalk, bringing with it the salty smell of the harbor. The sun hung high in the sky but did little to lift the tendrils of winter still lingering over Baltimore. Ana sidestepped a gaggle of people in suits out for lunch.
“I prefer these daylight patrols,” Ana said. “Little nicer than our old beat, huh?”
Miguel grinned. Fading white scars still shone along his cheekbones, but most evidence of the cuts and lacerations had vanished with prolonged dermal tissue treatments. “You got that right. Don’t miss it one bit.”
“Feels good to be back on patrol, or would you rather be home in bed watching the holo all day again?”
“Didn’t mind it the first few days when my ribs felt like someone was standing on them and I kept coughing up blood, but it got boring real quick.” He peered around the sidewalks. A couple blocks away from the Inner Harbor, the tourist center of Baltimore, a mixture of families and businesspeople descended on the restaurants and storefronts on their beat.
The excitement in this area didn’t compare to the McElderry Park neighborhood Ana had previously patrolled with Miguel, but she figured the low-stress shift would help ease him back into his service on the force. “You want to grab a bite to eat?”
“What’d you have in mind?”
Ana guided him to Cranky’s, where the scent of fried food filled the air. Her face felt almost greasy just being in the restaurant, and it wouldn’t normally be her first choice. The cuisine here wasn’t her primary reason for her recent habit of frequenting the place.
“Officer Dellaporta, ma’am, good to see you.” Roy beamed from behind the counter. “And Officer Cruz, happy to see you out and about.”
“You too. You clean up nice.”
“It’s a lot easier to stay clean when you come back from the certainty you’re about to die.” Roy frowned. “But that’s all behind me thanks to you two. Got myself a job, living in a transition place. Won’t be long before I’m running this joint.”
“Can’t wait to see it,” Miguel said.
“Tell you what, lunch is on me today,” Roy said.
Ana waved both her hands. “No, no, we couldn’t.” The man was likely still struggling financially, and she didn’t want to add weight to his burden, however slight.
Roy leaned across the counter, the muscles in his arms bulging. There was nothing the doctors could do to reverse the genetic mods Wallace had injected into him, but Roy didn’t seem to mind showing off his improved form. It even seemed like his rejuvenated body gave him new inspiration to dislodge his demons and move on with his life. “Look, ma’am, I owe you a meal or two. Nothing you can say to convince me otherwise.”
Without further debate, he plugged in Ana’s and Miguel’s orders on his holoscreen. They sat at a table near the place’s wide front window, and after several minutes, Roy brought their tray of food.
“See, isn’t this place better than all those others serving you through bots and drones?” He winked. “Human interaction makes a world of difference, huh?”
“Sure does,” Ana said as she took her basket with a cheeseburger and fries.
When Roy left their table, Miguel took a bite of his steak-and-cheese melt. “Still no word on the Kaufman character?”
“Afraid not,” Ana said. She stared at a pair of black suits strolling by. “No leads, no more information from Daniel Wallace. At least we shut down Wallace’s operations. No more people going missing from the street.”
“Whatever’s going on in the bio black market, it looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us.” Miguel gulped down a bite. “But at least it keeps us employed and my rent paid on time.”
A buzzing in Ana’s pocket startled her. She withdrew her flashing red comm card and clicked its screen. A hologram appeared before them along with a voice message. “Biocontraband suspects spotted on foot at the corner of South Linwood and Eastern.”
She set her burger down. “That’s one block away. You ready?”
“Been waiting too long.” Miguel cracked his knuckles and then took one more bite. “Suppose there’s always time to eat later.”
Ana stood and pocketed her comm card. She’d helped put Wallace away and end his wretched human experiments, but there were still others out there like him, others with their fingers in the biotech black market. She was no fool; she’d learned her efforts alone couldn’t cleanse the city’s streets of unscrupulous biocontraband distributors and users. But that wouldn’t stop her from trying.
“Let’s earn that paycheck.”
Thank you for reading
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What follows is an excerpt from The God Organ, another novel set in the world of Black Market DNA taking place in Chicago.
THE GOD ORGAN
October 15, 2063
Chicago, Illinois
Joel reached out to the glimmering incandescent light bulb and wrapped his fingers around it. It didn’t burn him, even when he clenched it tighter and his mind screamed at him to let go. Instinct was hard to shake. With an unquenchable curiosity, he squeezed the bulb and let out an embarrassing yelp as the glass shattered. Shards projected from his open palm as he rotated and examined his hand. Silver blood streamed between his fingers.
Stepping away from the holofield, he headed back into the main art gallery. He shook his head in quiet amusement and rubbed his hand against his black slacks. No blood actually seeped over his palm and no glass shards were embedded in his hand, but he couldn’t help trying to get rid of the mess. It was just another strange exhibit in the Findwaker Modern Art Gallery, where philanthropist Tara Delrey was hosting a fundraiser for a charity Joel had already forgotten.
Gingerly, he stepped over a stream that flowed into the shape of a voluptuous woman. He couldn’t tell if the water was real or another projection, and waited as a man with an obnoxious, flaming red bowtie approached the installation, only to turn and avoid it. Joel watched the liquid breasts, their curves rising and falling as if the whole thing were breathing, even as the water appeared to drain into a hole in the floor.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
He looked up to see Tara Delrey, her bright green eyes accentuated by a pair of dangling emerald earrings.
“Simple, almost derivative, and utterly captivating.”
“Yes, captivating,” Joel said, though the curving forms provided him a brand of captivation he didn’t think Tara shared. He found it difficult to believe shapes formed by flowing water could inspire lust, but he couldn’t deny the heat rising up inside him.
Tara blinked, smiling.
Joel noticed the crow’s feet spreading their toes against her skin. He wondered why she had never bothered to fix those. Maybe she wasn’t as rich as she appeared. Then again, maybe appearing natural evoked artistic appreciation or some equally tedious concept that he couldn’t be bothered to understand.
“Is there a reason you haven’t had one of my Sustains implanted?” he asked. “You’d never have to worry about glaucoma. Your skin would be as smooth as a twenty-year-old’s. And your chance of developing any kind of cancer would be almost nil.”
“Ah, Joel. I’m not interested in your artificial organs. I don’t think immortality would suit me, and who would want to miss the life after this one?”
“I’m all for enjoying this life for as long as I can.”
“I’m certainly glad you can enjoy it at my fundraiser.” Tara’s unamused expression spoke otherwise. “Your name will make the rounds of the news streams, I’m sure.”
Though he needed to attend the event, he didn’t need to participate. It was easy to manipulate public opinion when software programs wrote the brunt of the news by utilizing natural language algorithms to capture items of interest. The Board of Directors at LyfeGen insisted Joel’s positive presence in these articles would earn favor with the public and, most importantly, the automated algorithms that drove stock purchases and share prices. The Board claimed that appealing to those audiences would bolster the upward swing of LyfeGen share prices. Any good publicity would be welcomed, particularly with the spate of religious groups defaming Joel’s invention and LyfeGen’s keystone product as a perversion of God’s design.
Joel thought the whole argument ridiculous, wondering why any deity would design such a flawed organism to begin with. People didn’t need their appendix and the tailbone didn’t attach to any tail. Wisdom teeth had to be taken out before they ruined a person’s smile. Hell, ninety-eight percent of the human genome was noncoding. Useless. Joel thought, if anything, the LyfeGen Sustain took advantage of the untapped potential within human beings and made people better than nature—or, if people insisted, God—had designed them.
“I’d better make my rounds.” Tara offered a practiced smile.
“Sure, sure. Thanks for the invite. I’m, uh, really enjoying the art.”
She scoffed and floated away, her spike-heeled shoes plowing straight through the water nymph. Joel frowned as the liquid parted for the train of Tara’s dress. The stream appeared to giggle at the intrusion.
In a nearby room, a group of people were talking and laughing. The room appeared devoid of perplexing artwork and a bartender was serving drinks behind a small bar.
As soon as Joel entered, stars were projected around the ceiling and walls. A dark purple hue cloaked the room, like the sky as the sun sank behind the horizon. The bartender appeared to be wearing a fluorescent orange rabbit mask. In another corner, a woman with a bird-of-prey disguise leaned in toward a man with a mask resembling a pink boar. The group that had appeared so normal from outside was suddenly adorned in fluorescent, beastly disguises. Another trick of the museum’s displays, Joel figured.
He shook his head and wondered what the hell this had to do with art. He feared he was becoming a cynical old man.
“Whiskey,” Joel said to the bartender. “On the rocks.”
“I’m sorry, sir. We are only serving pinot arc en ciel.”
“Rainbow wine?” No, he wasn’t a cynical old man. Just a normal person with normal tastes and a sense of disdain for the absurd.
The bartender waved a fluorescent-gloved hand. “To match the theme, sir.”
Joel grunted but took the glass. The wine, made from jellyfish-gene-infused grapes, shifted colors. He chugged it and imagined the way his stomach must be lighting up. When he placed the empty glass on the counter, the bartender refilled it.
“Careful. That rainbow shit gives you awful hangovers.”
Joel turned to find the voice belonged to a woman hidden behind a yellow-and-green raccoon mask projected by the room’s holosystems. He grinned. “Sure, we’ve cured cancer, but we can’t cure hangovers.”
The woman laughed. “Sometimes we need to be taught a lesson when we’ve been bad.” Her golden skin lit up as bright as the stars floating around the room.
“Or eat a bacon sandwich. That works for me.”
She smiled and downed her own glass of wine. “Does that really work?”
“Nine times out of ten.”
“Good enough for me.” She turned to the bartender. “Another, please.”
“Art fundraisers,” Joel said, raising his glass in toast.
“Pretentious gatherings.” The raccoon-masked woman met his glass with hers.
“So, I take it you’re about as excited as I am to be here,” Joel said.
“Probably here for the same reason you are. The ever-present press bots.”
Joel nodded. “By the way, what am I?”
“That’s quite an open-ended question for someone I’ve only just met,” the woman said. She grinned as slyly as the animal she hid behind.
“What animal?”
“A tiger.”
Joel laughed.
She tilted her head. “You don’t think that’s fitting?”
“I am feeling particularly carnivorous tonight and the food here doesn’t quite cut it.”
“I hear that.” The raccoon leaned in. “So, what am I?”
“You spend a lot of time in people’s garbage.”
She placed a hand on her hip. “Oh, now you’re going to insult me?”
“That’s the last thing I want to do to you, Ms. Raccoon.” Joel set his wine glass on the bar. “How about we grab a drink that doesn’t look like a rainbow took a piss?”
***
“You make a prettier woman than a raccoon.”
Amy Park raised an eyebrow. “Is that the
best you have? CEO of a Fortune 500 company, inventor of a world-renowned biotechnological miracle, and that’s your line?”
Joel laughed. “Co-inventor. Cut me a little slack, huh?” His words slurred slightly. He usually didn’t let himself get this drunk and wondered if he’d miscounted the drinks he’d had. Maybe it was that damned rainbow wine. “But when you put it like that, it seems like I shouldn’t really need a line, huh?”
Shaking her head, but smiling, Amy rolled her eyes. “You’re something.”
After they had left the fundraiser, Amy had introduced herself to Joel as they settled into the bar at the Hilton. She had already recognized him, given his pseudocelebrity status around Chicago. He was a prominent figure in the biotech industry and business at large. She had told him she wrote for a living, but, when pressed, would offer no more about exactly what she wrote. She might be an investigative reporter who wanted a scoop. Then again, she might be too coy to admit she wrote erotica or kinky romance novels.
Joel didn’t mind; her straight black hair and shapely curves were more than enough of a reason for him to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Their conversation floated on until last call. Then Amy grabbed his hand from across the table and gave him a sly grin. “I’m not tired. You interested in continuing this talk over a couple more drinks? I’ve got the whole mini-bar untapped in my room.”
Maybe the alcohol had gotten to him. He could already tell he’d have a hangover and he hardly knew this woman. A fleeting instinct whispered for Joel to leave, to go home, but he looked at Amy. Her thin red lips curled into a seductive smile and her hair drifted over her shoulders.
“That sounds perfect,” he said.
Amy didn’t turn on the lights when they entered her hotel room. Instead, she guided him toward the bed.
A surge of anticipation coursed through him. His heart pounded. It thumped against his ribcage harder than he was accustomed to.
Amy unbuttoned Joel’s shirt and slid her fingers across his skin.
For a moment, a stab of pain etched through his chest and he froze, grimacing.
The Black Market DNA Series: Books 1-3 Page 82