by Brian Nelson
The voice of the narrator grew more insistent. Vigilance, it seemed to say. Don’t let it happen again. Then it stopped.
Immediately, as if a switch had been turned, all the workers resumed their tasks.
Not an hour later, Eric noticed something even odder. A large number of the workers, perhaps one in every four, simultaneously answered their cell phones. But none of them spoke a word. They just stood there listening for maybe five minutes; then, simultaneously, they hung up and went back to work. It wasn’t long before another group, another quarter, picked up their cell phones and listened in silence before thumbing them off. As the afternoon wore on, it happened again and again, until he was sure the same people had been called at least three times.
It was the government, he realized, calling the scientists, perhaps as often as four times a day, to pour propaganda into their ears.
Now he understood the looks, the glares, the disgust. He didn’t think that they hated him. Not all of them, at least. He saw humanity in them: how the women hugged each other, how they smiled and encouraged one another. Yet, there was a powerful system controlling these people. And that was the other thing he felt in the Great Lab: fear. It hung in the air like sweat in a gymnasium.
Day after day, he toiled, twenty hours up, six hours down. And day after day, the way they treated him began to wear him down. He desperately needed acceptance, any contact that might pass for affection, but it was always denied him. He tried to ignore it. He reminded himself that they had not put a hand on him and were treating him well. Yet for some reason, this seemed the cruelest torture of all. He found himself working harder, doing more in the hopes that Chu or one of the other scientists would thank him, would smile or touch his shoulder. But they never did. And that hurt like an affliction, like a disease that would eventually consume him from the inside.
You can’t know what it’s like until you’ve felt it. That was what he’d tell them. Bill, Jane, the admiral. When it was all over, he’d make them understand why he did it. Why he had helped the enemy.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Truth
April 24, 2026
Tangshan Military Laboratory, China
“You will be working with me today. You can call me Dr. Hui.”
She was in her midforties and beautiful, but in an austere way. Her English was perfect, and Eric complimented her on it. “University of Chicago,” she said. When he asked her how she had ended up studying there, she coolly directed him back to their work. She kept him busy, but after five hours of working, she abruptly said to him, in midsentence and without any change of inflection, “Ryan says you need to stay strong.”
Eric made no indication of noticing, just went on talking about their work. He wanted to ask more, but he dare not. But a message. It filled him with a sudden exhilaration. Of course, the message told him nothing really, yet it was still powerful. Ryan knew how to reach Eric if he had to, and it suggested that they were not so alone after all—that there were others, a resistance. And that meant there was reason to hope.
Chu continued to work him hard. The Chinese still had not figured out how to make the nanosites transdifferentiate into any desired system. Eric knew the answer, of course: forced evolution. But now that he was feeling a little stronger, he decided not to tell them. It was the key. In fact, it was the reason they had kidnapped him, although, ironically, they didn’t know it. And that, too, was important, because it showed there was a limit to how much the Chinese knew. Forced evolution had been given a level of secrecy that not even Meng’s spies could penetrate. They suspected that Eric had something to do with a big breakthrough, but they didn’t know any more than that. So he was able to convince Chu that it was a genetics problem and that it had been Olex who figured it out, which was at least half the truth.
But Chu soon grew impatient with him.
“Dr. Hill, I will be perfectly honest with you,” he said. “We don’t know who solved this problem, but two of our sources say that it was you. Please, if you know, you must tell us. If General Meng finds out you have been withholding information …” Chu trailed off, shaking his head. “I say this to you as a friend. Those who have crossed him, well, they tell stories about the things that happen to them.”
“I swear, I’m giving you all I have.”
Chu nodded a conditional acceptance.
Two days later, Eric was working in one of the private labs when Dr. Hui came in again. She wore a bright smile and reintroduced herself.
“I met you several weeks ago,” he reminded her.
She let out a high, infectious laugh, and Eric realized it was the first time since his arrival that he had felt genuine joy directed at him. God, it felt good. It was just a laugh, but it made him inordinately happy.
“You met my sister,” Hui said. “She’s Dr. Hui Ying; I’m Dr. Hui Lili. We are twins. I’m the smart one, in case you were wondering.” Another laugh. “Poor Ying, her whole life she’s been trying to get away from me. She was even born an hour earlier because she was already sick of me—or so she says—but I just keep following her around wherever she goes.” She gave that infectious laugh again.
“And why would she want to get away from you?” Eric asked.
“Because I talk too much, of course.”
This, it turned out, was not hyperbole. While they worked, she went on and on about her adventures with her sister: being born in Hong Kong, growing up in Beijing in the 1980s, going to Illinois for grad school, returning to take care of their parents. It was a chaotic stream of consciousness. She laughed easily along the way and touched his arm at the funny parts. Eric did his best to nod and grunt his acknowledgment. At any other time, the ceaseless chitchat would have gotten annoying, but now he found it wonderful.
At some point in her monologue, she absently asked the other technician for some reagent. When she and Eric were alone, she produced her iSheet. “Let me show you something,” she said. “If you take a look here …” She leaned in close. “Ryan has a very important message,” she said softly. “He knows that you are stalling, but you need to stop. Give them what they want. It’s very, very important that you give them what they want.”
Eric tried to hide his shock, and he couldn’t help turning his gaze to her, to try to gather more information from her facial expression. But she only smiled pleasantly and continued talking in her enthusiastic, childlike way.
How could it be? Was it all a trick? Was Ryan really communicating with him through the twins, or was it all a mind game? It made sense that it was a deception. The twins were just agents for the Chinese, trying to trick him into helping them. But he didn’t want to believe that. He wanted to believe there was hope, that Ryan was still safe and communicating with him.
When his shift was over, he went to bed, desperate for rest, yet too anxious to sleep. God, the stress was getting to him. Should he really help them? It was maddening. And the pressure, Jesus! Chu was on him every day to get them to replication, and it was getting harder and harder to feign ignorance. Eric knew he was eventually going to slip up, and they would know he was lying.
* * *
Sometime in the night, through the heavy fog of deep sleep, he became aware of a presence in his room. He tried to push the disturbance away by rolling over to face the wall. It’s nothing. Go back to sleep. But slowly, he sensed light through his eyelids. Reluctantly, fearfully, he turned over and opened his eyes.
There at his desk was a man in uniform, a star on his shoulder. He was drinking from a coffee mug, relaxed, with one ankle across the other knee, examining some papers in his hand. “I remember this one,” he said softly. “The fearless one. Beautiful, too.” A grunt. “Very beautiful.”
Eric forced himself to sit up, the cot creaking under him. He rubbed his eyes. “What are you doing here?” The man made no move, just took another sip of his coffee. His uniform was immaculate, pressed to
sharp creases. He had a handsome face, but a hard face, as if he had lived long for his years and lost much.
This must be Meng.
Finally, the man finished his coffee with a soft ahh and set the mug down in its saucer, with a porcelain clink. He turned his eyes to Eric and spoke. “I understand that you may have something that I want. There, in that head of yours. Is it true?”
“I—I’m working as hard as I can with Dr. Chu. As the architect, I only knew so much. Olex—”
“Olex,” Meng interrupted. “Yes, the famous Olexander Velichko. So you say that he figured out this problem … What did you call it? Forced evolution? You say it was him?”
“Yes, it was Olex.”
Meng nodded to himself. “You certainly sound sincere,” he said. Then he seemed to relax, and a reassuring smile broke over his face. “I really have no reason to doubt you, do I? Chu says you have been helpful so far. I’m sure you are doing all you can.”
“Yes,” Eric said. “I am.”
Meng’s smile held for a few moments, then dissipated. He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees. “But just in case you are not, let me speak plainly. I know all the different ways that prisoners try to resist. Perhaps you are like some of the other men I have broken—men who decide that they are willing to die. Or perhaps you think you can stall us long enough to give your friends such a lead that we’ll never catch up. Whatever it is, it won’t work. I promise you. I will find a way to get what I need out of that head of yours, even if it means dashing your brains against the Wall.”
He stood, giving two taps to the manila folder he had placed on the table. “Please don’t doubt my power or my reach. I brought you here, remember. I snatched you right out of Admiral Curtiss’s hand, and I can get to anyone if I wish.”
When the door had latched, Eric scrambled to the table. Hands trembling, he opened the folder. It contained a series of time-stamped photographs, all taken in the past three days. Jane. Leaving the base in her car. Jogging along the George Washington Parkway, alone. Walking out of the commissary with a bag of groceries, a carton of high-protein soy milk sticking out of the bag. And then came the most disturbing image of all: Jane smiling. It was a reserved smile; in fact, it had almost a note of sadness in it. But he could still feel her joy. The other images were taken at a distance, as if through a telephoto lens, but this one was up close. Inside. Whoever took it was standing right next to her, smiling with her. A feeling of deep vulnerability washed over him.
How did they know?
“I’m so sorry,” he said, putting his fingertips to her smiling face, her blond hair. He was haunted by the way he had left her. The things he had said to her. “I’m so sorry.”
The next two days were dark days. He felt sick with worry for Jane. He couldn’t let them hurt her, and they knew it. They had him. And so a part of him decided it was time to tell Chu the truth. Meng was right. There was nothing he could do. So he began by making incremental steps, enough so that Chu felt they were making progress. But he still held back a little. Waiting, hoping for more information. His only excuse was Olex. He could say that Olex was the one who really knew forced evolution, and Eric was just piecing it together for the first time.
But going to work the next day, he got another shock. As he and Chu were passing the entrance to the main lab, the elevators opened and General Meng emerged with a smiling Olexander Velichko. Apparently, one of them had just told a joke, and Meng was laughing while Olex gave him an approving smile. It was surreal. Olex. Here. Stranger still, chatting casually with Meng, and smiling! Acting as Olex never acted. He caught sight of Eric, and the smile vanished. Then Meng put his arm around Olex’s shoulder, and the two disappeared down the corridor.
For the rest of the day, he was too flustered to think straight. What did it mean? Had he just arrived, or had he been here for weeks? His casual behavior suggested the latter. But Olex knew forced evolution better than Eric did. Yet they still hadn’t implemented it. Why? Was Olex hiding the truth, too? Based on what Eric had seen, it seemed hard to believe. And yet, the Chinese were still stuck. Perhaps Olex was saying that only Eric knew the truth, just as Eric said it was Olex. If that were the case, then the moment one of them gave in, the other would be revealed as a liar and would surely die. He felt panic race through him. To save himself, he had to tell the truth immediately. Every minute he waited gave Olex the chance to beat him to the punch.
It took him all day to settle his mind. Controlling his panic was the hardest thing in the world to do. Jesus Christ! It felt as if everything had been orchestrated just to mess with his mind: the solitary confinement, the twins and their bogus messages from Ryan, and now a smiling, compliant Olex. The world had gone crazy.
Still, he managed to keep from telling Chu the truth. Still he waited. Deep down, he knew that something, some glue, was holding this thing together. Perhaps Olex had betrayed them, but Eric was still alive, and he felt sure that Jane was, too. If he made a move without understanding things better, that glue might not hold.
Two more days passed. Twenty hours up, six hours down.
On the third day after seeing Olex, Hui Lili came to see him. They worked diligently and quietly until, once again, she sent the technician away for supplies.
“You must stop stalling,” she whispered. “Time is running out.”
“How can I trust you?” Eric hissed.
“Ryan has something for you. Read it and you’ll see I’m telling the truth. You must check the code inside and have it ready for me by tomorrow morning. Now, please tell them what they want to know. It will be much worse for everyone if you don’t.” A moment later, he felt something small fall into his pocket.
At last, he had some real information. But he still had to act as if everything were normal. Even in his room, he followed the same routine for the cameras: brushing his teeth, washing his face. He was quivering with excitement when he finally got into bed. Finally alone. He turned out the lights and pulled the heavy blankets over his head, making sure that no light could escape, then reached into this pocket. The small piece of iSheet had been folded down to the size of his thumbnail. Fingers trembling, he gently unfolded it until it was a four-by-two-inch strip, then turned it on. Stored inside was massive amounts of code, essentially the DNA of the Chinese replicators. Ryan had made an index of the code he needed to debug.
Eric scrolled down to the first series of subroutines. They were essentially timers, telling the nanosites to do certain things at certain times.
After they achieved replication, the nanosites would begin a massive twenty-four-hour reproduction cycle, their numbers growing geometrically until they reached a critical volume of two sexdecillion units. At that point, they would begin a series of “special tasks.”
So far so good. Eric found only one error and fixed it. He began to look at the “special tasks.”
Then he saw it. And when he did, a cold tingle ran down the inside of his scalp to the nape of his neck. Oh, my God, he thought. He shook his head and scanned it again. He couldn’t believe what he was reading. Oh, my God! He kept repeating it in his head, his eyes glued to the tiny iSheet. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
Suddenly, dozens of bits of information, things that had seemed random and unconnected at the time, began to lock and bind together in his mind.
Bill: Eric, I’ve got a little side project for you. It’s a favor for the admiral …
Jane: That’s funny. Olex had a weird side project for me, too.
Ryan’s last words to him on the plane: I’m sorry you got dragged into this.
Curtiss: I’m gonna tell it to you straight, Dr. Hill. There are gonna be a lot more bodies before this is all over. I guarantee it. And it’s my job is to make sure that most of those bodies are Chinese.
* * *
Eric stared at the tiny iSheet. Mesmerized. Refusing to believe.
&nbs
p; It was all a setup. The whole thing. Curtiss had known. He had known that Ryan was going to be kidnapped. In fact, he’d counted on it, enlisting Ryan’s help and giving him the tools he needed to sabotage the Chinese program. But Eric shouldn’t be here. His presence was a mistake or a miscalculation. I’m sorry you got dragged into this.
Eric scanned the code.
It was his code. The lamprey code, the Trojan horse that was undetectable. Now he understood why Ryan wanted them to reach replication. He wanted to give the Chinese what they wanted. Then Eric’s code would turn their own nanosites against them.
And what exactly would the nanosites do?
He saw Jane’s code.
It was terrible. It was disgusting. But he knew that he would do exactly as Ryan asked.
* * *
He debugged the code for four hours. That left him two hours until they would return for him. He had to make the most of his access to the little iSheet.
At times, he had forgotten all about the invention he still possessed. He had become accustomed to its warmth. It was only at night, when all was quiet, that he felt (or imagined he felt) the tickling of the nanosites as they fed on his dead skin. He wondered how Chu and Meng would react if they ever discovered that one of their prisoners had been walking around with a device teeming with the very self-replicating nanosites they were trying so desperately to create. Luckily, they didn’t suspect a thing. He had been meticulous about the design of the shirt. Even its crude interface—a small tag along the seam—looked completely real.