The Fourth Layer

by Boyd Craven Jr

  “Uh…hello,” she said, feeling predictably shy as she was faced with a screen full of people. There were two men she definitely didn’t recognize, but there was Rei with her sleek, black bob, and Helena with her wispy, blonde pigtails, and—

  Hannah frowned. She recognized the face of the man sitting in the middle of the group but for the life of her she couldn’t work out why. But there was something about the long, chestnut hair tied in a messy bun at the nape of his neck and the ripped Pantera t-shirt he was wearing. Never mind the fact that the man, in turn, was frowning at Hannah.

  “I should have worked out you were the same Hannah I met back in South Carolina,” he said, and Hannah gasped.

  “Peter? From the record store? What are you doing at—”

  “I was visiting my folks when I met you. I was only there for the weekend. But I suppose you didn’t really listen to a word I said, did you?”

  Hannah looked at her feet, blushing furiously as everyone on the Massachusetts side of the video call broke out into questions.

  “You two know each other, Pete? How’d that happen?”

  “How did you not realize she was the same Hannah from the message board? Withers isn’t that common a surname, you know.”

  “Especially not when you add ‘Goth’ and ‘forensic scientist’ to the limiting criteria—”

  “Shut the hell up, guys,” Peter said, flipping a finger at them all. “We went on one date, and it only lasted an hour. Seems I wasn’t interesting enough to hold her attention.”

  “Hey—that isn’t fair!” Hannah complained a little too loudly. “I was rather preoccupied with, you know, the threat of the world ending looming over my head. I didn’t mean to be so…unreceptive. I’m sorry.”

  Peter’s entire frame seemed to relax at Hannah’s apology, and understanding wiped the scowl away from his face. “I…suppose that’s the best excuse anybody could have for being a bit out of it. Right, now that we’ve cleared that up, tell us everything about your research!”

  “Uh…” Hannah began, sweeping her gaze across the entire MIT team. She waved to Rei and Helena when they did the same to her. “Should I introduce myself properly to your other teammates? Or do they…know who I am already?”

  Peter looked like he could have punched himself in the face. Hannah realized that she did, in fact, like him. He seemed decidedly scatter-brained in a very pleasant kind of way.

  “Shit, sorry,” he said. “Hannah, the blonde dude on my right is Jax, and the giant on his right is Cas. You seem to know Rei and Helena already.”

  “We did our undergrad together,” Rei said, smiling at Hannah. “We had the best study group along with Todd and Grace. Ugh, I miss Grace’s baking.”

  “Her cookies!” Helena exclaimed, looking up at the ceiling and clasping her hands together as if she were praying. “What I wouldn’t give for some of those cookies now.”

  Peter coughed loudly; both Helena and Rei glanced at him apologetically. Hannah could only laugh. Clearly the entire team got on well, going by the ribbing Jax was now giving Peter for acting as the ‘leader’ of the group, for clearly none of them were.

  “Um, I’ve sent over today’s genome sequencing results already but it might take a while for you to decrypt it,” Hannah said, bringing the topic of conversation back around to what it was supposed to be. “You’ll be able to see that only three percent of all the reads contained the Walsanto genes, which effectively means I’m cured. All my yeast and flies and mice are doing well, too—none of the treated individuals have regressed after having been subject to the nanobots.”

  Rei clapped excitedly; the huge man named Cas threw a fist into the air.

  Peter grinned. “That’s…that’s freaking insane, that’s what it is. So you were definitely affected by the genes before you excised them? You never reported having any physical symptoms—”

  “That’s because I cut the genes out so quickly,” Hannah interjected. She looked down at her arm, pinching the beak of the peregrine falcon she had tattooed swan-diving to her wrist. “I’d rather not ever witness my skin going green, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “But you think the ‘bots will still work on people who have been affected by the physical symptoms of the genes?”

  She nodded. “They worked for all the model organisms I tested.”

  “Well, then…” Peter glanced around at his team; they began muttering to one another too quietly for Hannah to hear.

  She huffed and crossed her arms. “I thought the whole point of this endeavor was to be candid with each other? What are you discussing?”

  “Ah, sorry, Hannah,” Helena said, tone entirely apologetic. “See, before you messaged us earlier we’d been talking through an idea we had for another human experiment. We…think you might be the perfect test subject, given how well this worked out.”

  Hannah leaned forward, interest immediately piqued. “What kind of experiment are we talking about here?”

  “More nanobots, obviously,” Cas said, swiftly taking the conversation over from Peter. “How would you like to test some smarter ones? Ones that you could communicate with, as it were, who could—in turn—communicate with our cloud software?”

  “Your…cloud software?”

  “It’s called Zeus because, y’know, he lives up in the clouds.”

  Hannah wrinkled her nose in amusement. “Very creative. So what do you want to program these new nanobots to do? They wouldn’t—they wouldn’t change me as a person, would they?”

  “Oh God no!” Peter cut in, shaking his head emphatically. “No, nothing like that. We’d just have you ingest some blank ‘bots first so we can check the communicative links between them and you, and them and Zeus. Then we could have them try small tasks like—I don’t know—do you have any scars, Hannah?”

  “I do, actually,” she said, pushing her hair over one shoulder to reveal a long, ugly scar she had running up behind her ear. “I don’t know if you can see it over the camera.”

  Peter winced. “How the hell did you get that? It must be three inches long!”

  “Bike accident,” Hannah laughed, feeling foolish. “When I was nine. I didn’t wear a helmet. I never made that mistake again. Well, I never rode a bike again, so I guess that eliminated any risk I’d be involved in such an accident a second time around, and—”

  “Han, you’re rambling,” Helena said, not unkindly.

  Hannah smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. You know how I get. So…when do you want to try these new nanobots out? Shouldn’t we wait until after I’ve convinced the FDA to—”

  “If we try them out as soon as possible and demonstrate both their usefulness and how safe they are, it’ll help your case,” Jaz interrupted. “How soon could you get here?”

  “I—I don’t know...” Hannah stammered.

  But Jaz waved a dismissive hand. “If it’s money—our lab will cover your flights and accommodation, obviously. No way would we expect you to pay out of pocket.”

  Oh, if you only knew… Hannah’s heart fluttered with excitement. She glanced at the clock on her wall; it was nearly three in the afternoon. “I could see if there’s a flight this evening,” she suggested. “Or perhaps I should wait until tomorrow morning—”

  “This evening it is,” Jaz grinned, leaving absolutely no wiggle room for negotiation. “Send me through your Real ID information and I’ll book one for you. You should get packing!”

  She could only stare at her laptop screen as the MIT team nodded their agreement. All but Peter left their seats to begin immediate preparations. He smiled at her. “I guess I’ll see you in a few hours, then.”

  “I guess so,” Hannah replied. “Um…I swear to listen to you this time.”

  Peter chuckled. “You’d damn well better, otherwise who knows what’ll wind up getting put inside you?”

  Hannah wasn’t normally the type of person who understood innuendo, but this one appeared so obvious that even she got it. Her face flushed red with embarrassm
ent.

  It was however nothing compared to the color of Peter’s own face. He sputtered incoherently for a moment or two, finally waving his hands wildly about in front of him as he said, “That totally came out wrong! I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s okay,” Hannah cut in, laughing a little to hide her nervousness. “I say really stupid things all the time without realizing it, too. I’ll…see you in a few hours. Goodbye, Peter.”

  “Bye, Hannah,” Peter replied, avoiding her gaze completely as he turned off the video call.

  Hannah leaned back against her sofa, head spinning with a thousand different trains of thought. There was so much she had to process. So much to do. So much to note down before she forgot it.

  She had to contact Dr. Greene to let him know she’d be taking a second unexpected leave of absence, for one. Hannah didn’t relish what that conversation would sound like. She decided that, just this once, she could justify taking the coward’s way out and send her supervisor an email. It was wretched, Hannah knew, but if she had to speak to the man in person or over the phone, she wouldn’t be able to hide the excitement from her voice. She’d blab about everything, and then she’d definitely never be allowed to get on a flight to Massachusetts.

  My Real ID, Hannah thought, leaping to her feet and scurrying through to her bedroom to find the damn thing. Everybody had to get one just recently, but she’d never had an occasion to make use of it’s capabilities until now. She took a picture of both sides and sent them to Jax privately—he’d already sent her an email asking for her details—before hauling out a suitcase from beneath her bed and flinging the passport inside it.

  She glanced at her closet, wondering what to pack. Hannah wanted to maintain a trustworthy, respectable appearance for the sake of her research being taken seriously, but the team already knew her as herself. Black clothes, dark lipstick and eyeliner. Overly talkative. Too passionate about everything. Willing to put herself on the line for the sake of said things she was passionate about. Not playing at being reserved and sensible for the sake of secrecy.

  Hannah grinned as she carefully folded her favorite black, cable-knit sweater into her suitcase. It was time to act like who she truly was once again.

  Chapter 7

  Massachusetts

  MIT

  Hannah was exhausted by the time she reached the nanobot lab at MIT. The man who’d organized her flight—Jax—had picked her up from the airport in a pick-up truck that looked to be about fifty years old. “It’s my dad’s; my Nissan’s in the shop right now,” he’d explained. Hannah had been too nervous to talk to him all that much.

  Now she was standing in the middle of a ridiculously high-tech laboratory, surrounded by the team she’d been talking to mere hours ago via a video call, and her nervousness skyrocketed. It didn’t do, to feel both tired and anxious; it was an uncomfortable mix to say the least.

  Rei rushed forward to hug Hannah, then quickly retreated when Hannah stiffened beneath her arms. She smiled softly. “Sorry, Han. I forgot. You don’t like hugging.”

  Hannah shifted uncomfortably on the spot. She’d been getting better with physical contact—she’d really been trying—but considering the situation she was in the last thing she wanted was for someone to touch her.

  “It’s alright,” she said, returning Rei’s smile, which widened when she locked eyes with Helena. It really had been too long since she’d seen the two of them in person. When Hannah scanned over the rest of the team she deliberately didn’t meet Peter’s gaze; she still felt awkward about their failed date.

  “Was the flight okay?” Peter asked, reaching forward to take Hannah’s bag from her. “Sorry to have called you out so quickly.”

  “I was the one who was keen to start sooner rather than later,” Hannah replied, following Peter and the rest of the team as they led her through the laboratory to a smaller room. There was a bed inside it, and one of the walls were made of glass.

  Hannah raised an eyebrow. “Am I…do I really have to sleep here?”

  She made a face when Peter nodded his head. “We have to monitor every second of the first seventy-two hours that these bugs are in your system. You did agree to being monitored the whole time, after all. Can’t exactly do that if you’re staying in a hotel.”

  Hannah blinked. “Bugs?”

  “Oh. The ‘bots. We call them bugs—force of habit.”

  She couldn’t quite get behind calling the nanobots ‘bugs’, considering Hannah herself worked with actual bugs. Bacteria. Yeast. Viruses. But she kept her mouth closed; now was not the time to pass comment on such a pedantic thing.

  Hannah grazed her fingers across the innocuous white duvet covering the bed. “I guess I’ve gotta do what I’ve gotta do,” she mumbled, more to herself than for the benefit of anyone else. She didn’t relish the idea of being watched and monitored as she slept. But, then again, Hannah didn’t reckon she’d get much sleeping done for the next seventy-two hours anyway. She turned to face the team. “Who heads up this lab, by the way? How are you getting away with running this experiment?”

  It was Cas—the most unassuming member of the team—who took a step forward. “I run it, actually. I may not look it but I’m thirty-five—”

  “No you are not.”

  Hannah covered her mouth in shock, horrified that she’d let her foremost thoughts slip without filtering them first. But Cas merely laughed.

  “I have a baby face, I know. Even though I’m so tall, most people don’t believe I run this place, either. But I do, and I’m very good at my job. I just…don’t see how following protocol and informing the university about what we’re currently doing would serve humanity right now. If I have to perform these experiments under the radar for now then so be it.”

  Hannah found herself grinning at the man before she could stop herself. She liked him—she imagined Dr. Greene would like him, too, even if he himself would never perform experiments ‘under the radar’.

  Oh. Don’t think about Dr. Greene right now.

  He hadn’t been impressed by Hannah’s email. He’d tried to call her no fewer than five times already. But Hannah could do nothing about it now; she was in Massachusetts, at MIT, and she was about to ingest a fresh batch of robots that could do God-knows-what to her.

  “So…” Hannah began, running both her hands through her hair to push it out of her face as she spoke, “where are these nanobots?” She couldn’t bear to call them bugs.

  Rei looked at her pointedly. “You still have the ones you used to excise the terminator gene and stuff inside you, don’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, we’d like to test the Zeus interface with those first—just to be sure that everything is working correctly. So we want to connect them to Zeus and then use it to calculate exactly how many bugs are inside you, then deactivate them. As soon as they’re deactivated, your immune system will recognize them for what they are—foreign bodies—and will naturally break them down.”

  “I suppose that makes sense,” Hannah replied, relieved to know that the first step held little-to-no risk whatsoever. “How long do you think that will take?”

  It was Jax that answered. “The bugs will probably be deactivated as soon as they’re commanded to, but we’ll give it twenty-four hours to make sure they’re appropriately broken down.”

  Hannah considered this. Though she was supremely tired and wanted nothing more than to eat some food, go for a shower and curl up in bed—whether she actually slept or not—she knew it was better to start the experiment immediately.

  She locked eyes with Peter, who she discovered had already been staring at her. Her stomach twisted and turned like a stormy sea. “Let’s…hook me up, then.”

  To her surprise, the entire group laughed. “Oh, Han,” Helena said reassuringly, “we’re not gonna hook you up to anything. The computer interface for you to ‘talk’ to the bugs is completely mobile and needle-free. It just has to be against your skin.”

&nbs
p; Hannah frowned. “Which means…what exactly?”

  Rei grinned. She held up a black choker, which was embedded with round-tipped, metallic studs, and handed it to her. If Hannah hadn’t known any better then she would have assumed her friend had just raided her suitcase.

  “This is the interface,” Rei said. “Since all it needs to be capable of doing are simple tasks—turning nanobots off and on, adjusting their activity levels, or giving them new tasks to complete—there’s not actually all that much wiring to it. And the bugs themselves—as well as the choker—continuously send new data to Zeus, so they don’t need to store any information, thus reducing the size of the interface even more.”

  Hannah turned the choker round in her hands, feeling the grain of the material beneath the pads of her fingertips. Now that she was holding it she realized it was not, in fact, leather. Hannah reasoned it was likely some kind of synthetic, insulating material that she had not heard of. She tapped one of the rounded spikes somewhat hesitantly.

  “So I should just…put this on?” she asked, unfastening the choker she was already wearing when the entirety of Jax’s team nodded at her. The moment she fastened the new choker around her neck Peter ran over to a computer immediately, letting out a low whistle as he browsed the screen.

  “How many bugs do you reckon you ingested, Hannah?” he asked, waving them over to his side as he did so.

  Hannah stared up at the ceiling as she considered her answer. “Well, considering the volume of resuspension solution…ten thousand?”

  “Ten thousand, three hundred and twelve,” Peter called back, lips twisting into a self-satisfied grin. He touched the screen. “And with that, each and every one of them has been deactivated. And now our observation begins.”

  “So Zeus will just…work out how many are left based on whether they’ve been broken down or not?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That won’t make for very interesting observation.”

  Peter chuckled. “Good thing it’s almost midnight and you look exhausted enough to pass out. Though that might just be how pale you are. How can you possibly be a resident of South Carolina?”