by Steven James
He pulled up a chair for her. “Please, have a seat.”
She did.
He sat beside her.
“Now, Clive,” she said, “tell me what your people have heard. I’m very curious where this research is taking place if it’s not in any of the rooms on the building’s blueprints.”
“Alright, here’s what I know.”
Fionna received a call from FBI Special Agent Ratchford that he was on his way to the Arête.
“How long until you get here?”
“Fifteen minutes or so. And the USB drive, do you . . . ?”
“I have it with me.”
“Perfect.”
“Text me when you arrive.”
“I will. And your associate Lonnie, Miss Antioch noted that he’s there with you?”
“Yes, he is. I’m sure he’ll be glad to talk with you as well.”
“I’ll see you soon.”
She hung up.
“Well, Lonnie, it looks like the FBI needs our help.”
“Cool.”
“Kids, let’s get some dessert. I’m thinking the Chocolate Fountain. A business meeting—dessert compliments of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“That’s what I’m talking about.” Donnie nodded. “Taxes actually being put to good use.”
Derek Byrne ran everything through in his mind.
So Calista had called for a wheelchair, but where did she go? And how would he find her? With Turnisen in the shape he was in, it seemed unlikely that she would just be able to wheel him out of the hotel without drawing undue attention to herself.
It was possible, but . . .
He made his way through the casino to the parking garage and found her car still there.
A taxi? A limo?
After confirming that his own car was in its spot as well, Derek returned to her car, made sure no one else was there watching him, then knelt and punctured her tires.
That would keep her from driving off.
He needed a way to narrow things down.
He knew her credit card number.
That was a start.
I take it easy on the roads. After having our plates run and our paperwork verified, we make it past the first two security checkpoints without any trouble, and at last we approach the final one.
“This is it, Xav.”
“Third time’s a charm.”
In my headlights I see the Cammo dude who checked us in earlier step into the middle of the road.
He raises his hand as an order for us to stop, which I do.
Tension tightens in my gut.
I roll my window down.
You’re still on the property and you’re not supposed to be. They could still arrest you.
Or shoot you.
“Clearing out?” he asks me with a touch of disbelief.
“Yeah.”
“You know what time it is?”
“We’re in a forty-twenty-two.” I point to Xav. “His wife was in a car accident. We just got the word.”
The guard leans a flashlight in, studies Xavier for a moment. “What’s your wife’s name?”
“My wife?”
“In the car accident.”
“Fionna.”
It takes him a long time to reply. “Well, I hope she’s alright.”
“Me too.”
“Radio in when you’re off the property.”
“Gotcha.”
We pull forward and almost simultaneously let out deep breaths.
“I had to think of a name off the top of my head,” he explains.
“Sure.”
“It was either her or Betty.”
“I think you made the right choice.”
“When we tell this story, we can leave that part out.”
“Right.”
Then he’s quiet.
We’d actually been on the base. We’d actually explored one of Area 51’s research facilities. Any number of Xavier’s friends would have given their right arm to have done what we just did.
Nothing on UFOs, but the unmanned aerial vehicle research sure did seem legit.
Xavier’s explanations of things over the last couple days run through my head, and I ask him about one of the things he brought up but we never really examined in-depth. “Hey, yesterday when you were filling in Charlene on transhumanism, you mentioned someone named de Grey. I don’t remember reading about him. What’s his deal, exactly?”
“What?” I must’ve caught him deep in thought.
“De Grey. I was wondering what you knew about him.”
“Oh. Yeah. Well, he points out a bunch of ways—six or seven, I’m not sure—that our metabolism eventually causes pathology, and that’s what causes us to age and eventually to die. I haven’t memorized his list, but he goes through things that could stop that like cell therapy, removing toxic cells, halting the degradation of cells as they reproduce. I’m no expert on any of it, but he claims that we’ve been able to do all those things on mice and should be able to do them all on humans within the next decade.”
“So this guy, he thinks he can cure aging?”
“He calls it engineered negligible senescence—um, senescence is when cells deteriorate as they age—but yes. From the things he says, it sure seems like he believes it. In science fiction movies you might have someone growing a clone to use their organs to stay alive, but it’s much easier to replace yourself with yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Growing an organ from your own cells. Create a scaffolding to support the cells, say with a 3-D printer, build the organ on it. If you need a replacement you won’t need to wait for someone else to donate an organ or fear that your body will reject it. It’s already been done with bladders, skin, muscle tissue, ears.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No. Any organ can be grown in a laboratory—kidney, lungs, hearts. There’s that famous case of Claudia Castillo back in 2008, when scientists used her own cells and the windpipe from a cadaver to create a lab-grown windpipe for her.”
It’s a lot to think about.
Is death really negotiable?
“In all of this bioengineering, don’t you think we’re playing God?”
“If there is a God, a good God—and I believe there is—then wouldn’t he want us to remove the most possible suffering from the most amount of people? I mean, to remove suffering, to show love and compassion, is the highest ideal, the core characteristic of God, the one he would want us most to emulate.”
“Maybe removing suffering isn’t the best way to show love?”
We both have to think about that.
“And, I suppose, if there’s no God, then we’re masters of our own domain, and why not help evolution along in welcoming in a new era of immortality.”
The field of transhumanism and the coming Singularity really do raise a lot of ethical questions, some of the most basic questions of existence: Who am I? How am I unique? What is the meaning of life? When does life begin? And at an even more fundamental level, what is life anyway?
All of these thoughts about living forever only serve to bring back memories of my wife and my two boys.
And Emilio.
All lost far too soon.
Death might someday be negotiable, but it isn’t yet.
Not by a long shot.
The stars stare down across the lonely desert. Xavier calls Fred to tell him we’re safe, and I drive through the bleak night toward home.
Derek stepped up to the Arête’s front desk and put on a worried face. “My wife is with my brother, and he has a very serious medical condition. I know she checked in earlier, and I need to find out what room she’s in. I was supposed to meet them here in the lobby, but my flight was late. I assume she had to take him up to the room.”
The clerk didn’t even look up from the keyboard. “And what’s her name?”
To use her credit card she would have had to use her real name.
“Calista Hendrix.”
&n
bsp; She typed, then shook her head. “I’m sorry. No rooms to a Calista Hendrix.”
He let that sink in.
Brantner? Would she have used your alias?
That was doubtful.
“Is there another name it might be under?” the woman asked.
Jeremy had his wallet with him last night when she brought him up to the room.
“Yes, actually. My brother’s. Jeremy Turnisen. Try that.”
After a moment of working on her computer, she smiled. “There it is—6743.” She gulped slightly, perhaps realizing she probably shouldn’t have said the room number aloud. “Would you like me to ring them?”
“As I said, my brother is ill. I’d rather just slip in if I could without disturbing them. Can you give me a key?”
She bit her lip. “I’m not supposed to.”
“Yes, I know, I understand.” He reached for his wallet, bluffing that he was going to show her his real name. “Do you need to see an ID? Is that it?”
“Um . . .” She looked around uneasily. “You know, no, that’s okay.” She processed a key card and handed it to him. “I hope your brother starts feeling better.”
“That’s kind of you. I’ll pass along the sentiment. Thank you.”
Charlene drove toward Summerlin, piecing together the connection between Emilio, Groom Lake, and RixoTray.
The key card.
The jellyfish research.
Building A-13.
She didn’t know why Emilio had landed in the middle of all this, but his relationship with Dr. Turnisen and his promise to Tim that he would help him to not grow old so fast were all related somehow.
Everything was interrelated.
Maybe the man she was on her way to see would help her figure out how.
Derek stood for a moment outside room 6743 and considered what he was going to do to Calista and Jeremy.
He still needed those launch codes.
The test flight was going to happen in just under ninety minutes.
That should still be plenty of time. He’d get the information, call it in to the number his contact person had provided him, and the drone would be delivered to Garcia’s people in Mexico.
If he was going to continue his research he needed to move the program out of the country, and if he didn’t deliver the drone tonight, that was going to severely hamper his working relationship with Garcia, whom he was now depending on for his new test subjects.
He mentally prepared himself to take whatever measures proved to be necessary to assure that things happened tonight on schedule.
As he was fishing the room key out of his pocket, he got a call from Dr. Malhotra that he had arrived at the Arête.
“Come up to 6743. I’ll be waiting for you inside the room.”
“What about your rifle?”
“Leave it in your car for now.”
Then he hung up, slid the key through the card reader, and swung the door open.
The Syringe
Derek stepped into the room.
Ten feet away, Turnisen sat in a wheelchair staring at him coolly. Calista stood beside him, a syringe in her hand, the tip pressed against the side of Turnisen’s neck.
“Close the door,” she said.
Derek did.
“So you drug me in the mornings.”
“Easy now, Calista.” His eyes were on the hypodermic needle. “You don’t want to do anything you’re going to regret.”
“I already did.”
“What’s that?” He took a step toward her.
“Trusting you—and don’t come any closer or I inject this, do you understand?”
Derek paused. “What do you want?”
“What do I want?” she scoffed. “To stay young! I already told you that! But you, you’re trying to cheat death.” Sarcasm shot through the last two words.
“I’m not trying to cheat death; death is trying to cheat me. It’s trying to take away all that I’ve ever accomplished, all that I’ve learned, all the memories and dreams and joys I’ve experienced in my life. You can understand that, can’t you, Calista? Death is trying to cheat me. And it’s trying to cheat you too, take your youth, your beauty—”
“Stop! Quiet!” She repositioned the needle. “You don’t care about anyone else. Just yourself. It’s all about you. You don’t care that death is cheating anyone but you. You kill and you don’t care as long as you get what you want.”
He held up his hands, palms toward her as if to show her that he was not a threat.
“So,” she said, “you need these codes for tonight? Or else you won’t be able to send them to your people?”
“That’s right.”
“Well then, this time I guess you’re not gonna get what you want.”
And then she injected the contents of the syringe into Dr. Jeremy Turnisen’s neck.
Derek sprang toward her, snatched at the needle, and pried it from Jeremy’s neck as the engineer began slumping in his chair, then turned to Calista. “What was it?” he roared. “What did you give him?”
“Wouldn’t you like to—”
He backhanded her violently and sent her spinning around, slamming face-first against the wall.
He grabbed her by the throat, heaved her to her feet. “I asked what you gave him.”
She spit in his face and tried to kick him in the crotch, but he was able to deflect her leg.
He slammed her to the floor and went to check Jeremy’s pulse.
The man was still alive.
Good, yes, good.
But what did she give him?
And where did she get it?
A knock at the door.
Dr. Malhotra had arrived.
The Escort
7:46 p.m.
1 hour left
Charlene drove up to the guard station at the entrance to Dr. Schatzing’s gated community in Summerlin.
“May I help you?” The man in a security uniform who was standing there paused flipping through his Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition just long enough to gaze over his glasses at her.
“I’m here to see Dr. Schatzing.”
“And your name?”
“Just tell him I’m the girl from the agency.”
“Ah.” He appraised her. Based on Dr. Schatzing’s phone records, Charlene expected him to call the doctor to announce that she was there, but the guy didn’t even bother. Instead, he just raised the bar for her, Charlene thanked him and drove through.
While Dr. Malhotra tried to awaken Turnisen, Derek Byrne mixed a saline solution in with the gray powder that he carried with him for his coffee.
Then he filled a syringe with it.
“Now, Calista.” He bent over her and brushed a strand of hair away from her bruised and swollen face. She lay bound on the floor. He’d wound the suture thread tightly around her wrists and ankles; she wasn’t going anywhere.
He held the hypodermic needle close to her face. “Do you know what’s in here? Dust from a mummy. The chemicals in it make it fatal if it’s injected into someone. And I can almost guarantee you that it would not be an enviable way to die.”
“You’re sick, you know that? You are one sick son of a—”
“None of us are well, Calista. That’s part of the problem.”
“I know you won’t kill me. You need me to tell you what I gave him. If he doesn’t wake up, you don’t get your precious little launch codes. So how does it feel to be the one who’s helpless?”
What drug could she have gotten on short notice? What did she inject him with?
It wasn’t like she was planning any of this. And he didn’t have a lot of medications or drugs around, in fact—
Oh.
Yes.
“You used the drug that was there on the counter, didn’t you?”
She gave him a satisfied grin. “The same one you used on me. Oh yeah. He’ll be out for at least six or seven hours. Remember? That’s what you—”
He hit her in the face again, this time
with a closed fist. She cried out, but then he was tired of hearing her talk and he used duct tape to gag her.
They could try an injection of adrenaline on Turnisen, but the syringe she’d given him had been full, and it wasn’t going to be easy to revive the engineer. And even if they did manage to, he’d be so groggy and incoherent he might not be able to help them at all.
You need those launch codes!
Where could he get them? Where could—
Banks.
He’s at Area 51, or at least he was.
He has the USB drive.
Garcia’s people were investigating Banks’s relationship with Antioch. There might be something there they could leverage to their advantage.
He pressed the side of Calista’s face hard against the carpet. “You told me you were more afraid of growing old than of dying. So in that case, this is going to be my way of showing you mercy.”
Her eyes grew large with terror.
“I’m not going to make you face your greatest fear.”
He jabbed the syringe into her neck and injected the mummy dust into her jugular vein.
Calista felt a terrible fire burst apart inside of her.
She screamed into her gag, but it was clear even to her that no one outside the room would ever be able to hear her calling for help.
“So,” Oriana Williamson said to Clive Fridell, “you’re saying that this man, Thad Becker, was working for you?”
“Not exactly, but he was under the employ of some people I know. I’m afraid that’s all I can really say at this time.”
“And he disappeared?”
“He did.”
And then Clive told her everything that Becker had told him before he went to visit Plyotech last month.
“You’re Lonnie?” Agent Ratchford said.
“Yes.”
“You’re . . . but you—you’re . . .”
“I’m seventeen.”
Fionna’s other children were all standing in line to order their fudge, truffles, and chocolate cake, watching the restaurant’s giant chocolate fountain flow down as they did.
“Ah, well, I wasn’t implying that you weren’t good at what you do, it’s just . . . Well, all I can say is, I’m impressed. So now, can you two tell me what you found out when you managed to open the DoD files?”