by Tarah Benner
Axel and Soren were armed with the stolen rifles, and Portia had the silver pistol. Soren took cover behind a cluster of boulders surrounding Griffin’s mailbox but kept the front door in sight. He whistled to Portia, who held the pistol in the air and fired off two rounds.
A red light flickered on over the fisheye camera, and Soren knew that Griffin was watching them.
“Come out, Griffin!” Axel shouted. “We got the place surrounded!”
No answer.
“Come on, you coward!”
Still no reply. They waited for several minutes, but there was no sign of movement from within the bizarre house.
“Griffin,” said Soren in a loud, controlled voice. “We just want to talk, but we’ll let ourselves in if we have to.”
“Come out ’fore we blow this place to smithereens!” yelled Axel.
Soren let out an irritated sigh. Leave it to Axel to come barging into a dangerous situation like the proverbial bull in a china shop.
But Axel’s threats seemed to have no effect whatsoever. Griffin did not emerge.
Soren let out the breath he’d been holding. Maybe this wasn’t going to be quite as easy as he’d imagined. Griffin had gone to great lengths to secure his house; surely he was prepared to hunker down in the event of an ambush.
Then another thought occurred to Soren: Maybe Griffin was dead. The last time they’d seen him, he’d been lying unconscious in his destroyed kitchen. He’d tried to hold them hostage and call the police, so they’d blown up his cellar, raided the house, and stolen his vehicle to make their escape.
Was it possible that GreenSeed had shown up after they’d left? Could they have been so angry with Griffin that they’d decided to kill him? It seemed extreme even for GreenSeed, but if they’d determined that he was too much trouble, it was possible that they’d gotten rid of him. There was only one way to find out.
Steeling himself for a battle, Soren raised his head above the rocks and took aim at the tall windows. He fired off three rounds, and two of the windows shattered with a spectacular crash.
“Last chance, Griffin!” Soren called, pausing to see if Griffin would emerge.
Nothing.
Soren breathed in deeply and took aim at the next window. He felt a little guilty about blowing the guy’s greenhouse to smithereens, but then again, Griffin had tried to get them arrested.
Then, suddenly, a crackle of sound erupted from the speaker mounted under the eaves.
“Wait!” burst the voice, followed by more static. “Stop! Please stop!”
Soren paused and lowered himself back down to the ground, feeling a burst of satisfaction that his plan had worked.
“Come out and fight like a man, you yellow-bellied fruitcake!” Axel yelled.
Soren rolled his eyes but aimed his rifle at the door. They waited in silence for several long seconds, and Soren started to wonder if Griffin had decided to flee around the back of the house. But then, finally, the front door swung open.
They waited in silence for Griffin to emerge, but then Soren heard a high-pitched whizzing sound. He looked up.
An oddly shaped object was barreling toward them down the walkway, and Soren felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
The object was a brass umbrella stand. It was mounted on a board and was being propelled by what appeared to be a remote-controlled skateboard. Griffin steered it down the narrow dirt path, where it stopped a few feet from Soren’s hiding place.
“Come out with your hands above your head and deposit your weapons in the umbrella stand,” Griffin called from the speaker.
“Awww, hell no,” Axel growled. “Las’ time we did ’at, you tried to trap us in your creepy house so you could turn us in!”
And then Axel did something stupid that probably saved their lives. He shot at the umbrella stand.
Soren expected the bullet to punch a hole through the metal or knock it off the skateboard, but instead, the umbrella stand exploded.
A tower of flame shot toward the sky, scattering shards of metal and splintered chunks of wood all over the yard. Portia screamed. Soren threw himself into the dirt, but he still felt the surge of heat flare over his back.
“Holy fuck!” Axel yelled as shrapnel rained down.
Soren felt momentary relief that Axel was able to shout anything at all. He had the immediate urge to call out to Portia, but he didn’t want to risk exposing her position.
“You motherfucking — cowardly — asshole!” Axel yelled. His words morphed into an incoherent stream of curses. “Try to — motherfucking — blow us up!”
Soren didn’t move. He just lay there on the ground with his heart pounding against his back, waiting for his breathing to return to normal. One thing was certain: They couldn’t trust Griffin one bit.
But before Soren could come up with a plan, he saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. He sat up.
Axel had emerged from his hiding place. He was sprinting toward the door with his rifle in tow.
“Axel . . . Don’t!” Soren yelled.
But it was no use. Axel burst through the front door with a wild battle cry that quickly faded into an indistinguishable stream of swear words. Soren let out a growl of frustration and ran after him, hoping that Griffin had used all of his explosives.
He flew through the door and into the foyer, blinking in the dim light of the stairwell. The entryway was built like a cave, but he could see long beams of light coming through the windows of the greenhouse.
“Axel!” Soren yelled, sprinting through the house after him.
He could hear Axel’s footsteps slapping against the flagstone floor, and Soren caught a whiff of singed wood and unwashed bodies.
He tore into the living room just in time to see Axel climbing up the ladder to Griffin’s office. He’d left his rifle on the ground beside the ladder, and Soren groaned.
Axel was planning to kill Griffin with his bare hands.
Ignoring the fact that he was attempting to save a man who’d just tried to kill them, Soren followed Axel up the ladder with his rifle swinging from its strap. His injured arm was still sore and useless, so he could only use his good arm to pull himself up the rungs.
Soren emerged at the top of the ladder just in time to see Axel staring dumbfounded at the swivel chair by the window. It was empty.
Suddenly, the ladder jerked beneath his feet, and Soren flung out his good arm to slow his momentum. Someone was pulling the ladder out from under him, and he couldn’t stop himself from falling.
As he slid toward the edge of the landing, his rifle strap slipped off his injured shoulder. He couldn’t bend his elbow fast enough to stop it, and it fell to the ground with a loud clatter.
Soren yelled for Axel, who turned and dived onto his belly with near superhuman speed. He grabbed hold of Soren’s good arm and tugged just as Griffin yanked the ladder out from under him.
Shaking and panting, Soren pulled himself onto his knees and peered down into the living room. Griffin was standing below them with Axel’s discarded rifle pointed in their direction.
He looked much worse than he had the last time Soren had seen him. He was dressed in the same black pants and white button-down shirt, but his clothes were wrinkled, and he hadn’t shaved in days.
“Easy,” said Soren, holding up his hands and trying desperately to think of a way to talk Griffin down. The man’s eyes were red and bloodshot, and his whole body shook as he held them at gunpoint.
“Dr. Griffin, put the gun down. Let’s talk.”
“Do I look stupid to you?” Griffin cried, his voice shaky and much higher than Soren remembered. He blinked several times very quickly and licked his dry, cracked lips.
“I don’t think you’re stupid,” said Soren. “But you’re not thinking clearly.”
“Oh, it’s all crystal clear,” Griffin spat. “You ruined my life. You took everything from me. You made me look like a fool!” He panted for a moment and licked his lips again. “Al
l this time, I thought they were the evil ones, but you . . . People like you are a scourge on humanity.”
“What are you talkin’ ’bout, crazy?” Axel moaned.
“How do you think that made me look . . . when you just disappeared like that?” Griffin’s head quivered from side to side. “You made me look like an imbecile — a liability who was too much trouble to keep around.”
“What did you expect?” Axel called. “You tried to turn us into the po-lice.”
“They were so angry with me,” Griffin continued. “They think I can’t be trusted. They watch me all the time, even when I’m sleeping. They’re watching me right now.”
Soren chanced a glance at Axel, who seemed to have reached the same conclusion that he had: Griffin had officially lost it.
“Come on down now, and I’ll turn you over nice and peacefully.”
“We can’t do that,” said Soren.
Griffin’s eyes widened, and he shook his head. “Well, I can’t let you leave.”
“Here we go again,” Axel mumbled. He raised his voice slightly so that Griffin could hear. “You listen now . . . You try anything, and we’ll see who’s leavin’ here alive, Griffin.”
“Oh, yes,” said Griffin softly. “I think we will.”
“You don’t want to do this, Griffin,” Soren called. “You’re not a killer.”
“I don’t know what I am anymore,” he muttered. “But I suppose we all must rise to the occasion . . . Goodbye.”
“Drop it,” said a soft, sly voice from down below.
Soren’s heart skipped a beat, and Griffin’s eyes grew wide.
For a moment, all of them froze. The room fell silent, and Soren became aware of a dull ringing in his ears. Then all the color drained from Griffin’s face, and he looked as though he might wet himself.
At first, Soren wasn’t sure what had happened, and then he saw the silver muzzle of a pistol appear, followed by a slender feminine hand.
7
Soren
As Soren watched, Portia stepped up behind Griffin and pressed the muzzle of her gun against the back of his head.
It was just like watching a movie. One moment, Griffin was getting ready to kill them, and the next, he stood frozen and whimpering with a gun at his back.
“Listen up, motherfucker,” said Portia in a cold, harsh voice.
Soren’s eyebrows shot up. He hadn’t been expecting that.
“You’re gonna put the gun down, and we’re all gonna have a nice little chat.”
Judging by Portia’s tone, their chat was going to be anything but nice, but her presence was so terrifying that Soren felt confident that she could make Griffin do her bidding.
“A ch-ch-chat?” Griffin stammered.
“Yeah,” said Portia. “Come on, now. You seem like a smart guy. This isn’t a tough choice. Tell us what we need to know, and we’ll leave you alone.”
“And if I d-d-don’t?”
“If you don’t, you won’t have to worry about GreenSeed anymore,” said Portia. “You won’t have to worry about anything, because they’ll be carrying you out of here in a body bag.”
Griffin closed his eyes, and for a moment, it seemed as though he were contemplating a sweet release into the great beyond. But then he let out another soft whimper and dissolved into a fit of soft pitiful sobs.
“Put down — the gun,” said Portia.
Griffin continued to weep but lowered the rifle. With his shoulders hunched and his head bowed, it looked as though he’d deflated completely. He was a far cry from the badass Griffin who’d threatened them only seconds before. It seemed that he’d finally cracked.
Portia disarmed Griffin immediately and forced him down onto the ground. She shoved his face into the floor and made him place his hands on the top of his head.
Soren was impressed. Clearly Portia was no stranger to violence or high-stakes negotiations; in fact, it seemed as though she’d done this before.
Once Portia had replaced the ladder, Soren climbed down and helped guide Dr. Griffin into a lumpy leather armchair by the bookcase. Axel stood over him with his rifle ready as Soren grabbed Griffin’s microscope from the office and pulled out the seeds that Lark had given him.
When presented with a concrete academic task, Griffin seemed to calm down. His tears dried up, his back straightened, and his expression brightened with concentration.
“Ah, yes,” said Griffin fondly as he examined the seed under the microscope. “I worked on a few of these strains for GreenSeed. At least I think they’re mine . . . No way to know for sure without further testing.”
“Well, what are they?” growled Axel.
Griffin jumped and seemed to shrivel under Axel’s glare.
“Can you tell us what these seeds are?” asked Soren, forcing himself to keep his voice calm and controlled.
“Y-yes,” said Griffin, clearly rattled. “These are a few varieties of hardy ancient grains: pearl millet, small millets, sorghum . . . They don’t look any different than these grains usually do, but I suspect that these varieties carry the Mirror-to-Kill gene.”
“What?” said Axel.
“W-well,” said Griffin. “The first generation of crops that used this method carried a gene that encoded a bacterial protein into any insect that ingested it. Basically, it killed them. The problem was that the insects eventually developed a resistance to this technique, rendering it useless.”
“What’s that got to do with these seeds?” asked Axel.
Griffin blinked nervously but fixed his gaze on Soren so that he didn’t have to stare into Axel’s cold, beady eyes. “W-we developed a new m-method . . . a toxin in a virus that infects bacteria and causes specific mutations. An insect ingests the toxin when it feeds, and the toxin binds to proteins in that insect’s cells. The toxin triggers mutations in the proteins, which eventually kills the insect.”
“But . . .” said Soren, sensing a big problem with this magical evolving toxin.
Griffin nodded and began to speak very quickly, as if he were nervous about the consequences of his confession. “We designed the Mirror-to-Kill mechanism to evolve based on protein present in each pest’s gut. Keep in mind that the toxin was primarily present in the foliage of the plant, and it was designed to affect invertebrates. But since we designed the toxin to bind to the prey’s specific proteins — ‘mirroring’ it, so to speak — the result was a crop that was mildly toxic to humans.”
“Well, that sounds like a swell idea,” said Axel sarcastically. “Let’s give everybody food designed special to kill ’em based on their DNA.”
“And you used this toxin on grains?” said Soren.
“We worked with all sorts of ancient crops,” said Griffin. “Certain varieties of Andean potatoes, purslane . . . anything that could survive extremely harsh growing conditions. You would not believe all the plants that humans can eat. We in the developed world have just forgotten how.”
“Do you know if any of these crops were ever approved by the FDA?” asked Soren.
Griffin shook his head. “I couldn’t say. I knew we were having particular trouble with the sorghum and the pearl millet. Test subjects kept falling ill after consuming it in large enough quantities . . . usually over a period of weeks or months.”
“Motherfuckers,” grumbled Axel.
Thinking back to his time in San Judas, Soren remembered Simjay, Shep, and Finn getting hit with what they had thought was the flu late last fall. They’d been sick for days before the bug finally worked its way out of their system, and since half the colony had gotten sick, they hadn’t thought much of it. It didn’t occur to anybody that their mysterious illness could have been triggered by the crops they’d been growing.
“What if someone planted versions of these crops that didn’t have the mirror gene?” asked Portia. “Would they still grow in drought conditions?”
Griffin shrugged. “I-I suppose . . . You would just have all the same p-pests that cause crops to fail in the develop
ing world. W-we were working to end those sorts of catastrophes. That was the whole p-p-point.”
“I think the point was to line GreenSeed’s pockets,” Axel grumbled.
Soren caught Portia’s eye. She seemed to be thinking the same thing he was: Since GreenSeed’s versions of the crops made people sick, the logical thing would be to get their hands on the original strains without the Mirror-to-Kill gene.
“Where could we find seed to grow the original version of these plants?” asked Soren.
Griffin let out a heavy sigh. Helping them seemed like the absolute last thing he wanted to do, but he didn’t have much of a choice. Axel still had his gun pointed at him, and he was staring at Griffin in a way that said he would have liked nothing better than to blow him away.
“At the university’s seed bank, I suppose.”
“Seed bank?” repeated Soren.
“They have been cataloguing and preserving just about every variety known to man for the past twenty years,” said Griffin. “I used to have access to the building before . . .”
“Before they fired your ass?” said Axel.
Griffin gave a shaky nod.
“Can you still get us in there?” asked Soren.
Griffin sighed. “It won’t be easy.”
“Nothing ever is with you,” Soren muttered.
“Well, let’s go,” grumbled Axel. “I wanna get the hell outta this creepy place anyhow.”
“I-I should warn you,” said Griffin, suddenly very nervous. “If I d-don’t return . . . GreenSeed will be l-l-looking for me.”
“Don’t worry,” said Soren, getting to his feet and pulling Griffin out of his chair. “We’ll bring you back . . . just as long as you help us get what we need.”
8
Soren
As they set off for the seed bank at Texas Tech University, a small voice in Soren’s head kept reminding him that they couldn’t trust Dr. Griffin. Griffin had tried to turn them over to the police twice already, and they’d done nothing to make him like them any more since their last encounter.