by John Bolin
Gator managed to lift the man up in the air and against the side of the catwalk. Without thinking, Alex kicked the guard’s feet from under him. That gave Gator the leverage he needed, and the man went over the edge. He fell through the leaves and onto the jungle floor below.
Alex blinked at Gator. “How did you—”
Gator put a finger to his mouth. He rolled the other guard’s body over and pulled the pistol from its holster and handed it to Alex. He slung the guard’s radio strap around his neck, where Alex saw two other radio necklaces already dangling. He smiled and motioned Alex to follow.
She followed him across the bridge, back toward the glistening geodesic dome. But he didn’t take the swaying bridges that would’ve led them to the dome’s entrance. Instead, Gator led her across several other bridges, including one that led from the treetop canopy to the mountainside. They stepped off the last bridge and onto a narrow path dug into the side of the mountain. Alex could see the big dome below them.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
By way of answer, Gator turned into a cave in the side of the mountain. The dank passageway was lit occasionally by caged mercury lights, punctuating the otherwise dark tunnel. Looking down different hallways, Alex could see that metal garage-type doors had been lowered in the hallways, preventing their forward progress. Somewhere in the distance, Alex could hear the sound of music. Beethoven’s Fifth—she’d know it anywhere.
She heard something else. Guards talking and moving down the hallway.
“We need to find concealment,” Gator said. He checked a door in the rock wall, but it was locked.
They continued past several other locked doors. They passed a door with a placard that read Mining Implements.
The sound of the guards was getting closer. They had to either run the other way or find somewhere to hide, fast.
“Hold on,” Gator whispered, stopping at a door.
He turned and spun the handle. Locked. He pulled on the handle and the door gave, just a fraction of an inch. It wasn’t a magnetic lock or a deadbolt. He unclipped the stolen ID badge from around his neck and slid the card against the return bolt. He toyed with it a bit, but nothing happened.
“Here, give it to me,” Alex said. She played the card in the door for a moment, and it popped open. She turned to Gator and smiled. “It pays to have brothers.”
“I don’t want to know what they do for a living,” Gator said as he stepped in and closed the door behind them.
They heard the guards walk by.
They were inside a small storage room littered with all kinds of mining equipment: modified pickaxes and headlamps. Alex watched Gator’s eyes scan the room quickly, like he was looking for something. He pulled out a box on the top shelf that was marked with its chemical contents. Most of them she didn’t recognize. The last one she knew: phosphorus. Under the label it said, “Danger: Highly Flammable.”
“It’s so good to see you, Gator! I thought— Well, I . . . ”
“Yeah,” Gator said, looking at the box in his hands, “we thought that, too.”
“Is Peter all right? I mean, Peter and Linc and Skins.”
Gator raised an eyebrow. “Peter’s fine. I am, too, and thanks for asking.”
“Well, I—”
“Skins is hurt but not too bad. We left him at the morgue and told him to hang tight for us. We don’t know about Linc. He stowed aboard their chopper when it came here, but we haven’t seen him since.”
“Oh,” Alex said, feeling her stomach tighten, “I heard Dr. Khang getting upset about an American they’d found. I wonder if it was Linc.”
“Could be.”
Alex rubbed her face and wondered how she must look. She hadn’t seen a mirror in a hundred years. “But what happened to you guys? I thought they were going to kill you.”
Gator told her how they’d been locked in reliquaries and thrown into a sinkhole. He asked her why Khang had wanted to talk to her, and she told him about his advances in nanotechnology and transhumanism and light-bending camouflage. Gator told her about the aqueous swarm pods and briefed her on the plan to rendezvous with Peter and the others. If all went well, he said, they’d meet back in one of the upper-level rooms.
“Peter said he’d call with more details,” Gator said. He pulled down another box and handled it carefully.
“What is it?” Alex asked.
“Grenades.”
Alex felt her eyes go wide. “What are you planning?”
“I’m not exactly sure yet. But it’s never a bad idea to have these at your side.” He grabbed half a dozen of the egg-shaped devices and put them into his pockets.
Gator eased the door open and looked both ways. He stepped into the hallway and motioned for her to follow.
Alex stayed at his side as they walked another fifty yards away from the cave mouth. Gator stopped at a corner. She heard a low humming sound. It sounded like machinery of some kind.
Alex peeked around the corner in time to see a guard step into a side room.
Gator saw him, too. “Let’s go.”
* * *
“What are you talking about?” Linc said.
The man in the white coat came closer. He was tall, maybe six feet, and looked strong. He had bright red hair and a beard that went to his Adam’s apple. He carried a clipboard and was making notations. “I’m afraid you are going to die.”
“Did you poison me?”
“No, I wouldn’t call it that.”
Alarms sounded in the hallways, and a white light began flashing in the corner of the room. The red-haired man looked over at the light and then at his watch.
Linc shifted, trying to free his arm enough to gain some leverage. It was no use. “What would you call it then? I already know that you’ve put something into my bloodstream. I watched you do it.”
“You really want to know?” the man asked, glancing at his watch again. “I suppose it doesn’t much matter now. What I put into you are called nanites. You’re part of our human testing program, you see. And I’m afraid they are going to kill you.”
Linc struggled again, then eased. “Kill me? Why are they going to kill me?”
“Because your DNA is below the baseline.”
“Below the what?”
“The baseline. Look, we have established what we believe is a basic healthy DNA. We call that the baseline. Everything below that line is, shall we say, inferior. Your DNA is well below that baseline. So the nanites in your system are programmed to, well, destroy your genetic makeup.” The man sat on a stool near Linc and analyzed him with a handheld scope device of some kind.
Linc tried to stay focused. “How is my DNA below the baseline?”
“Let’s see . . . ” The red-haired man flipped through several pages of notes. “Says here that you’ve got a few problem genes. Unfortunately, you’ve inherited one that makes you susceptible to alcohol and another that gives you a 30 percent chance of acquiring Huntington’s disease.”
“What disease?”
“Huntington’s. It’s a horrible way to die. I assure you what you are about to experience will be much less painful than Huntington’s. At least this way you will get better before you get worse.”
“Get better? I’m not sick!”
“No, but you probably will be.” The man shrugged. “Anyway, nothing you can do about it now. The nanites are programmed to enhance your physiological condition at an accelerated pace before they fully destroy your frontal lobe. The process normally takes anywhere from two days to two months, but we have accelerated your process.”
“How much time do I have?” Linc asked.
“Two hours, tops, is my guess,” the man said. “But we’ve never done this before.”
Linc breathed stiffly, taking it all in. “Are you saying that I have miniature robots inside of me that are programmed to attack my brain cells simply because I am potentially prone to a debilitating disease?”
“Precisely,” the red-haired man said a
s he tapped a long needle, getting the air bubbles out.
“But why does it heal me first? Why not just get it over with?”
“We don’t know, exactly. The nanites are programmed to both heal and destroy, depending on your DNA. If you are not below the genetic baseline, it will automatically begin to enhance your physiology, like you’ve seen in the guards around here and some of the Indians. For some reason, if your DNA is below the baseline, the nanites try to repair your DNA. When they find it can’t be done, they begin to destroy it.”
Linc gulped.
“Anyway, your chance of Huntington’s is borderline. I mean, it’s not Alzheimer’s or Down’s. Those are automatic. I think the combination of risk factors is what pushed you under the line. This shot of morphine will knock you out until the nanites take over.”
Linc’s eyes widened as the man leaned in toward him with a needle in his hand.
“What’s the matter? Afraid of needles?” The man’s hand moved to plunge the needle into Linc’s chest.
Just then, another arm came in around him, knocking the needle out of his hand and snapping his arm behind his back. Linc saw a steel pistol grip rise up and smash down into the red-haired man’s skull. The body slumped to the tile floor. And a familiar face appeared in Linc’s line of sight.
Linc smiled weakly. “Its about time.”
Chapter 21
“I see you!” Peter said. “Take a left. Fourth door.”
Lights flashed in the hallway, and Peter knew Gator and Alex had only a few moments to get to them before more guards stormed the hallway. A few seconds later, Gator and Alex burst into the room.
Peter swung the door shut. Locked it.
Everyone greeted each other. Alex embraced Tima with tear-filled eyes.
“I can say I’m even glad to see you,” Gator said to Linc.
Linc pulled his harmonica out from under his shirt.
“You’re telling me they didn’t take that thing?” Gator said. “Talk about a weapon of mass destruction.”
“I got lucky. The doc who took it from me is taking a little Zachary-induced nap in the other room. He left it on the counter.”
Linc lifted the harmonica to his lips and played a few bars of Indiana Jones’s theme music.
Everyone laughed.
“Shh,” Gator said, pulling it out of Linc’s mouth. “Let’s not get too excited.”
Peter turned to Alex and stared at her for an awkward moment before they embraced.
“You scared me to death,” Alex whispered in his ear. “I was afraid you were dead.”
“What? Before I had a chance to kiss you? Are you kidding me?”
Alex pulled back, embarrassed.
“Okay, guys!” Linc said. “What’s the plan?”
Peter turned back to the group, snapping into strategic focus. As far as he was concerned, it was pure luck that they’d all found each other again. They’d been lucky that they’d each found radios and managed to coordinate a place to meet and that they were all still in one piece. For ten minutes they exchanged notes. Alex told them about her visit with Khang, and Linc told everyone about his talk with the doctor.
Linc was sitting on the floor next to Tima, holding her hand. Peter had shoved the doctor into a neighboring room, and they had set up this one as a sort of meeting room. Tima was awake but had only spoken a few words. Peter was struck how alike they looked. Peter noticed that Linc’s face was bright red and the veins in his arms and chest were purpling. There was no doubt. He’d been infected. Though the timing of it all didn’t make it seem likely, they looked like they were at the same stage of the disease, or whatever it was. Stage eight—the final stage.
“I still don’t get what’s going on,” Linc said. “What’s this guy trying to pull off? What’s all this about baselines and inferior DNA?”
“Sounds like he’s playing with eugenics,” Peter said. “The guy’s nuts, no doubt about that.”
“Oh, man,” Linc said, head in his hands. “I’m just supposed to be a cameraman for the stinking Discovery Channel. Now I’m going to die!”
“Shut up,” Gator said. “No one’s dyin’ unless I say.”
Linc moaned and shook his head.
“Don’t ask me how,” Alex said to Peter, “but I think Khang has somehow created synthetic organisms.”
“Nanites?” Gator said.
Peter nodded.
“Khang took me on a little ego trip around Eden,” Alex said. “I’m still trying to put all the pieces together, but I saw some pretty incredible things. He showed me some sort of fish creature that was made up of thousands or maybe millions of other tiny organisms. You know, like mini robots, but made from organic material. It’s hard to explain.”
“Yeah,” Peter said, looking at Gator and Linc, “we’ve met those little things, self-assembling nano-fish. I think he’s planning on using them to carry pre-programmed disease nanobots to the world’s water supply.”
Everyone looked at Peter.
“What?”
“In one of the rooms, I saw a list of diseases. And each one was matched with a major body of water around the globe.”
“Baseline diseases,” Linc said. He explained what the doctor had told him.
Gator moved forward. “Are you saying the guy is planning to pollute the world’s water supply in hopes of eliminating every person with a physical defect?”
“Not just people with defects,” Peter said, “but anyone who might get sick. If you have bad genes, you’re out.”
“No one can just run around playing God,” Gator said. “Every human life is valuable.”
Peter nodded.
Alex noticed and smiled slightly.
“All right, look,” Gator said, “I don’t know what this guy’s doing and I don’t really care. We’re in way over our heads, boss. And if you guys are right about this place, we need to get away from it ASAP.” He reached into a backpack and pulled out the incendiary grenades. “I brought us a few party favors. So I say we get to the chopper and have Linc fly us out of here before the bugs eat him up. We’ll figure it out while real doctors are working on him.”
“What?” Alex said. “Look, Peter, don’t forget why we came here. Look at Tima. She needs the antidote. And you think Linc can fly with those things running around in his bloodstream? How do you know when they decide to attack his brain? Maybe when we’re a thousand feet over the jungle?”
“It didn’t work that fast on Tima,” Linc said, his voice recovering strength. “But the doc did say they’d sped it up for me.” He looked at the ceiling. “Just great.”
“The point is,” Alex said, “that we can’t leave here without the cure.”
“We don’t even know if there is a cure,” Peter said. “We could be chasing—”
“That’s right,” Alex said, getting in his face, “we don’t. But if there is one, it’s here. Not in some hospital in San Jose. You want to help Linc?” she said to Gator as she turned. “Then help us find the antidote before you go blowing things up.”
Peter kept a tight rein on his tongue. She was right. That was the worst part. He couldn’t let Linc die of some mystery illness when he was right in the place where they made the antidote. Or didn’t make it. Still, he couldn’t just roll over on this. He turned to Gator.
“Got any bigger bombs where that came from?”
Alex’s eyes went wide. “What? Didn’t you just hear me?”
Gator worked his jaw side to side and looked at Peter, ignoring Alex. “I think so. It was a full mining supply room. Probably for blowing out these tunnels. Now that you mention it, I saw fuses and blasting caps.”
“Ugh!” Alex said. She plopped to the floor beside Tima and felt the girl’s forehead.
Gator smiled at Peter. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that if we can set off charges in the seismic cracks under the octopus thing—the assembler—it might send enough of a shock up and through the rock to implode the whole cave
. Maybe that would stop the process in Linc and Tima.”
“I don’t know,” Gator said. “That would take a lot of energy. Maybe more than grenades or even TNT could buy us.”
“Unless it somehow triggered an aftershock,” Linc said.
Gator shrugged. “It might work.”