“I love you, too, Dad.”
***
Few cars rolled along Founder’s Street, between the looming apartment towers. Preston’s feverous calls to Anil and Meredith had continued to go unanswered. Meredith’s house, just a mile from Preston’s near Lincoln Park, seemed devoid of life. He suspected a similar revelation when his car dropped him off at the Legacy Towers where Anil lived, a place he had only been to a handful of times to attend Anil’s lavish parties.
The wind ripped across his face as he climbed out of the car and up the steps to the sleek apartment building. Though he doubted Anil would do anything so foolish as to bomb his own company, he wondered if Anil’s secretive dealings to oust Preston had led the man to involve himself in social circles that he couldn’t control.
The glass doors of the apartment building slid open, granting Preston entrance. He had received permanent guest access some time ago, when he and Anil were closer in both their working relationship and their friendship. If he hadn’t had access, the glass doors would have offered an insurmountable obstacle. The synthetic polymer coating on the glass, invisible but impermeable, was a barrier to everything from bullets to cars. The windows and doors were as strong as they were clear.
At the end of the empty lobby, the elevator opened to admit him. He selected the fourteenth floor. His heart raced as the elevator slowed to a stop at Anil’s floor. Preston strode down the hall, half-expecting Anil’s door to be open, wondering if he was stepping into a movie-plot-type setup.
But Anil’s door was closed. Preston rapped on it. After waiting for a moment, he pounded on the door again and leaned into it to see if he heard footsteps.
No one answered.
“Anil,” Preston said. “Anil!”
He pounded again, losing hope that Anil would answer, but persisting nonetheless.
“Anil! Open up!”
The creak of a door opening down the hall caused him to stop and turn around. An impeccably dressed older man glared at Preston. “Will you stop that obnoxious racket? I’m going to call the police if you don’t knock it off.”
“Do you know the man who lives here? Have you seen him today?”
“No,” the man said. “I haven’t seen him all day. Then again, I don’t take occasion to bother my neighbors and they do not bother me. Please see yourself out before I have to summon security.”
The man’s voice was stern. Clearly, Preston would get no further information from him, so he left the way he came.
He returned to his Infinity and sat inside the car. The destination-input screen blinked at him in steady rhythm. He needed to find someone who might know about both the Sustain research and the sabotage, and the events that had taken place that day.
The abrupt sound of his comm card buzzing made him jump. Preston answered and Erik’s voice filled the car.
“They found him!”
“Found who?”
“They’re reporting the arrest of the guy responsible for the bombs.”
Preston’s eyes widened. “Who? What happened?”
“Of course, the guy is saying he didn’t do it. But they found all the soldering tools and wires and whatever else bomb-makers need in the guy’s apartment. And get this: he was a janitor for NanoTech.”
“How’d they find him?”
“Apparently, they tied a couple of threat messages back to this guy’s comm card.”
“Did anything come up about his involvement in the Sustain updates?”
Erik didn’t respond immediately. “No, I don’t think so.”
Preston let the thought of this janitor bombing LyfeGen sink in for a moment. “Why do they say he did it?”
“Not sure,” Erik replied. “There’s speculation he did it to win favor with NanoTech, and there’s also theories about his radical, anti-establishment leanings or something. Name’s Cody Warren, if you want to look it up.”
Preston wanted to feel relief. He yearned to be satisfied with this answer cooked up by the police. “Was anyone else involved?”
“No. It seems like it was a one-man job. Just a nut.”
With that assertion, his skepticism increased. “Could you see if that man is connected with the threat we received?”
“Good idea,” Erik said.
There must be someone else behind it. Certainly, no janitor at NanoTech had just abruptly decided to bomb a press conference, especially when there was an emergency evacuation of the entire LyfeGen building going on at the same time. There had to be some connections within the company, even if this Cody Warren had been responsible for the bomb. There were far too many factors involved in the bombing for Preston to accept that a disgruntled janitor had acted alone.
“Are you still there?” Erik asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m guessing, by your silence, that you think there’s something else going on.”
Preston hesitated. “Yes.”
“So you aren’t coming home yet?”
He heard the pain in Erik’s voice. The excitement Erik had exhibited, thinking an answer had been found, that their family was safe and Preston would be done with this mess, was now replaced with somber realization. “No, I can’t come home. You should still head to Elizabeth’s as soon as you can.”
“Okay.” Erik remained quiet for a moment. “Please, keep me updated.”
“I will.”
When the call ended, he pounded the steering wheel in frustration. He let his head fall back against the leather headrest and stared up through the tinted glass roof of the car into the murky night sky.
He had been far too focused on the idea that Anil might hold all the answers. His tunnel vision had inhibited him from thinking clearly. There was another person that he knew would have been at LyfeGen today.
Audrey Cook had certainly attended the press conference. Maybe she would know something.
But, as with Anil, she couldn’t be reached by calling. Preston resorted to looking up her address, though he figured the journalist wouldn’t want to be caught at home sipping tea while the biotech industry literally exploded around her. Still, he needed to do something. He grew restless sitting in the idling car.
When he managed to find Audrey’s home address via public network listings, he recognized the name of the second person reported to inhabit that address: Matthew Pierce. One of the engineers and researchers responsible for the LyfeGen update research.
Preston figured that he might be stumbling onto more information than he had anticipated. He also couldn’t believe how easily he had unraveled the secret to how Audrey Cook had found access to some of the most protected data and information at LyfeGen. Since Audrey couldn’t be reached, he would settle for an alternative. He called Matthew.
A shaky voice answered. “Hello?”
“Matthew Pierce?”
“Yes,” Matthew said. “Is this—is this Preston Carter?”
“It is. I need to speak to your wife—and, then, maybe you, too.”
“Okay,” Matthew said. The line remained silent for a moment.
“So, can I speak with her?”
“No. She’s—she’s unconscious still. I don’t know if she’s going to wake up.”
Chapter 39
Hannah Boyd
December 4, 2063
The naked, savaged body of Christ hung above Hannah. As she knelt in the pew, she stared into his hollow ivory eyes. She wondered why they worshiped the ragged, skinny body hanging on the cross. Why not a statue of Jesus in better health, telling a parable, or feeding the masses with a couple of fish and loaves of bread? Why not the miracles? Why death?
Her joints felt stiff and her muscles were cramped. She maintained the position, though. Her pain paled in comparison to what she had caused. Unwittingly or not, she bore the responsibility.
“God, forgive me. God, forgive me. God, forgive me.” She repeated the prayer endlessly, eyes shut and hands clenched together. She squeezed her interlaced fingers until they felt numb and weak.
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The protest was supposed to be peaceful. She wasn’t supposed to have deployed a hellish device. That had never been what she intended.
Charlotte and Gray had manipulated her. They had told her it would act as a gateway. More protesters, hymn-singers, worshippers, people to join their voices in from around the world through projections to disrupt LyfeGen’s press conference.
Never fire.
Not a bomb.
The air in the sanctuary chilled her. Each little hair on her arms stood up and goose bumps formed up the lengths of her limbs. The darkness enveloping St. Gemma’s transformed the place of worship into a haunting chamber of solitude and frightening silence. Barely a respectable church during the day, the cathedral smelled of mold and neglect. The place scared her, but she refused to retreat to her apartment.
Instead, she pictured herself confessing to Father Cooney. She imagined the penance that he would bestow upon her, telling her to atone for her sins. She couldn’t imagine that he would be able to respect the privacy of information between confessor and priest, though. If she admitted what she had done, she knew it would result in her immediate arrest and certain prosecution.
She knew she deserved whatever sentence a jury or judge prescribed.
She had been so dumb, so gullible.
Gullible Hannah. She never learned. She could trust no one, should not have trusted anyone. Brian. Charlotte. Leading her to the path of temptation and sin.
She resolved to turn herself in and tell the whole story. It was just. But she couldn’t let Charlotte get away with what she’d done. She had to find the woman.
But Charlotte couldn’t be found as easily as Franklin Gray. Gray, who had convinced Hannah that she was doing the Lord’s work, had been in his untidy office in the church’s basement. It wasn’t hard to convince him to let her in.
When she had stepped into the dimly lit room, a perplexed look had washed over Gray’s face, and he had blubbered nonsensically. “What? You’re the girl? Not expected...” His eyes had been red and bloodshot, a far cry from the charismatic preacher who had convinced a contingent of believers that from his mouth came the Word of God.
Hannah had not been able to tell if the man had been drinking or was high or just surprised when she pushed aside the notebooks piled behind the door and across his wooden desk. After the initial shock, his face had drooped into a twisted sadness. She had thought she could sense a strange pity in his eyes, as if the man felt sorry for her.
The pity didn’t last long, though.
Gray felt nothing now. Hannah was sure of it. His body still lay where she had left it, splayed out behind his desk, blood pooling on the cold stone floor and staining the papers strewn about him.
The wicked deserved condemnation. God would be proud of her. She had believed the devil had existed in and spoken through Gray when the man had tricked her into aiding him in his wicked deed. She saw the fires and pain that the devil wanted for her, for everyone. She needed to stop him and eliminate his hosts on earth. So she killed Gray. A strength she had never known erupted within her when she had plunged her knife into the man.
She would have to continue her penitent prayers another time. Whoever Gray had thought was going to join him might yet discover his corpse, now turning as cold as the stone floor beneath him.
And Hannah wasn’t satisfied. Gray didn’t bear all the blame. Charlotte had been his accomplice, maybe even his provocateur. The woman had egged Gray on, invoking the name of the Lord in Hannah’s assigned task.
If Charlotte would just answer her comm card, Hannah could finish God’s real work. She could send the evil woman back to hell with Gray.
Chapter 40
Matthew Pierce
December 4, 2063
The rhythmic beeping of the EKG machine told Matthew his wife was still alive. He held her hand in his and watched her bruised eyelids. He waited for any kind of movement. A ventilating hose snaked up her nostrils, through the bandages covering her nose and the left side of her face. He ran his fingers through the messy tangles of her red hair.
Underneath the bandages, a woven mesh of biodegradable fabric and live skin cells toiled to replace the damage that the explosion had inflicted on Audrey’s face. Dr. Paul had told Matthew that Audrey was lucky. Her superficial wounds were simple enough to treat. The fact that all her limbs were intact was another stroke of luck. There were plenty of other spouses, children, and parents who would be missing someone tonight.
Audrey now rested in a bed, post-surgery, at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. When the interns and residents had first shown up at her bedside, Matthew had demanded that a real doctor attend to her. He wanted a doctor with extensive experience, not some kid fresh out of medical school.
However, the ER doctors and surgeons, those with extensive trauma experience, were tending to patients who were now missing an arm, leg, or more. Some patients had been torn open by the blast. Despite the advances in drug delivery, nanotechnology, and tissue engineering, traumatic injuries couldn’t be fixed as easily as conditions like cancer or diabetes, which were slower to progress.
So, while Audrey’s third-degree burns could eventually be healed by the tissue-engineered skin patches, other patients underwent more extensive procedures in the operating room as doctors sutured up loose blood vessels, damaged nerves, and bleeding internal organs. Technology had not completely replaced the crude, but quick and efficient, hands of surgeons when time was a critical factor.
The surgeons had worked quickly to stem the internal bleeding in her abdomen from piercing shrapnel. To monitor Audrey’s internals, thermal and optical coherence monitors flashed over her body every few minutes to gauge and measure blood cell density and location, mapping out the orientation and size of her organs, ensuring no detrimental change from one moment to the next.
They just had to wait.
As Matthew held her limp hand in his, he wondered if she would even want him here. Thoughts of guilt and shame mushroomed and tore at his conscience. He hated the lingering memories of Jacqueline, the still-glowing embers of infatuation and lust. He vowed, whatever Audrey decided to do with him, he would cut his ties with Jacqueline.
“I’m sorry. I was terrible. I’m sorry.”
Audrey didn’t respond. Her eyes didn’t open to lovingly accept his apology. She didn’t wake up to embrace him and tell him everything would be okay. No amount of guilt could ensure that her brain didn’t sink into a permanent coma.
***
When Matthew’s comm card jingled, he promptly answered it. The call conveniently distracted him from more pressing, anxious concerns and emotions.
But even those fleeting hopes were dashed.
Instead, Preston Carter wanted to speak to Audrey. Matthew couldn’t speak to her, as much as he wanted to, and Preston certainly wouldn’t be able to, either. Inwardly, Matthew cursed the man for bothering him.
His anger, though, couldn’t manifest itself in his face. He responded in a tremulous voice as he tried to contain himself. “What do you want from her?”
He could hear Preston take a deep breath. “She’s done a pristine job of keeping us both in the dark.”
“How so?”
“It’s pretty obvious to me now that she used you as one of her sources. I had a lot of confidence in your work at LyfeGen, so I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. I’m guessing you weren’t exactly cooperative.”
“That would be accurate.”
“I’ve been working with her recently, as well.”
“Working with her? What do you mean?”
“Since I’ve been”—Preston paused—“absent from the company, I’ve done some investigating of my own.”
Matthew said nothing, glumly waiting for Preston to continue. “All right.”
“My research has been nothing substantial, given my lack of access to the top-quality laboratory equipment we have—or, rather, you have—at LyfeGen.”
“You found genetic inconsistenci
es with your own Sustain update, didn’t you?”
“Yes, that’s exactly right.” There was a hint of pleasant surprise in Preston’s voice. “Did she tell you?”
“No. Your update was faulty, too, wasn’t it? I’m not surprised.”
“Sabotaged, I’d say.”
Matthew closed his eyes, wishing for everything to be over. “Yes, that’s probably more accurate.”
“I believe that’s exactly what’s going on. The bombing was just part of it.” Preston stopped for a moment, his tone of voice taking a dramatic plunge. “I’ve been horribly rude. I’m truly sorry for what you must be going through right now. Forgive me for my rambling. I’ve been through quite the adventure myself, but that doesn’t make it excusable.”
Matthew let out a deep breath, conscious of the effort it took to keep himself under control. “I understand.”
“How is she? And, how are you?”
“I’m, obviously, better than her,” Matthew said. “She’s been through the worst of it, I think. Nothing quite as bad as some of the others still in the OR. Her doctor said she’ll be okay. Just some brain inflammation, internal bleeding that they have to watch.” He tried to believe the words coming out of his mouth, repeating what the attending resident had told him, but he couldn’t assuage his innate pessimism.
“Just brain inflammation and internal bleeding? That sounds serious. Again, pardon me.”
“It is. The doctor flew off without explaining anything in depth.”
Matthew knew that Preston wasn’t just calling to check on the development of Audrey’s health or the current state of affairs regarding the Sustain updates. He was looking for something. Matthew thought to play naïve and put off, for as long as possible, the inevitable request from the former CEO, but decided procrastination wouldn’t be of any significant benefit. “What is it that you’re calling about?”
Preston told him about his efforts to pinpoint who was responsible and Matthew, in turn, told Preston about his more recent findings of the stroke genes that had introduced the deleterious DNA into the Sustain patients. He catalogued the difficulties, the technical expertise that would have been overcome to integrate the DNA with the Sustain updates. Preston summarized his initial suspicions of Anil’s involvement, and Matthew brought up the contradicting point that Anil had personally asked him to investigate the more recent victims of Sustain sabotage.
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