by Nicholas Lim
***
The grasslands beyond the Porton Down chain link fence were standing grey waves, the sky above a blank white. At one point Garrett heard the faraway pant of a chopper coming in from the east. The aircraft flew unseen above the thick tree canopy shielding their parking spot. Bryce gave no reaction.
The guardhouse was barely a hundred yards away. Garrett could see a soldier on duty. It would take just seconds to sprint over and raise the alarm. But she sat still. Bryce had been clear.
“Understand I cannot allow any threat to our plans. If you try to escape, or draw attention to yourself in any way, I will shoot you. If necessary, I will shoot myself too –and early knowledge of a possible cure will die with us.”
“Do not be mistaken. I do not fear death. This life is but a link in a chain. And Arshu will be waiting for me in the next.”
Garrett was certain he would act as he promised. She was trapped in the knowledge that if a message existed, buried in junk DNA, it could be some time before someone stumbled upon it; and the smallest delay would cost countless lives. The speckled map from the news broadcast remained vivid in her mind.
She sat silent in her seat, hands folded like sleeping birds in her lap. Deep in her stomach she could feel waiting the loss and the trembling. The terrible pain was not gone: she knew it would return. But right now, for what she needed to do, she refused it, refused to think back to the valley, to the stone circle and what she had left there.
She held fast to her anger, let it make of her one piece, a single purpose, forged around the revelation of a possible cure. During the drive she had thought back, step by step over the last few years, since Skyler had first spoken of Asari. Each memory, re-evaluated, drew her purpose afresh over her anger, sharper each time. That was enough. She could not afford to feel more.
She had applied herself to the problem of finding a possible message, composing a series of regular expressions: powerful pattern-matching programs useable by Sherlock, each a single complex mathematical sentence.
The red and white road barrier beside the guard house rose and fell like a salute as a car passed through the fence. Garrett wondered if Micky was on duty. She shuffled her limited options but could see no way out of the cul-de-sac she had escaped down.
She was under no illusion: she had bought some hours, maybe enough to locate the cure; past that point she became expendable. He would make a quick clean end to it. He had the gun. She felt herself studied.
“When I met you I thought you were one of the walking wounded.” The amusement was back in Bryce's voice. “I underestimate you. Again and again. And even when I decide not to, still I do. I cannot get your measure, Christine. “You look all claw and beak.” She stared straight ahead. I know you are planning algorithms, analyzing chances, options–”
She did hate him then; hated most his understanding of her.
“Alright. Let’s go.” His command when it came, was abrupt.
She drove down to the gate. They were waved through without delay. Garrett drove across the grey meadows. The sky lightened a notch. Faint colour washed into the land.
She circled past the regimental HQ and drove out towards the lab compound. Five or six cars were parked out front. A busy morning. Garrett felt a lift of hope and glanced at Bryce. He was smiling. Her hopes sank back. He knew this complex. He understood its layout, its systems. He would not miscalculate.
He raised the barrier with his security card then directed her to a loading bay at the back of the main building.
“Move.”
He took the car keys. The gun pushed her in the back towards a short flight of steps. They led up to a metal security shutter. Bryce swiped his security card then tapped a code into a keypad. Garrett heard the surprised glissando of an electric motor starting. The shutter rattled up, revealing a collection of crane-yellow flatbed trolleys and yard ramps, and at the back, a service lift. It rose out of the shaft when called, cables pulling smoothly upward as though hand over hand. Prodded into work, Garrett heaved at the heavy lattice gate. When it opened, in a concertinaed crash of metal, the unyielding finger poked her back again.
Garrett stumbled onto the lift floor. Looking down as she crossed the gap she glimpsed the plunging dark and felt a warm draught. She smelled hydraulic oil and something else, trapped and alive.
***
The lift squeaked as it descended, small metallic cries. Something else settled in her stomach with her weight at the bottom of the shaft. The lift opened onto a curving access corridor. Cold conditioned air poured into the spaces of her clothing. Fluorescent overhead light held no heat striking her face.
Bryce dug the gun into her kidneys. As they stepped forward their partnering footsteps scratched at the metal floor of the lift. Garrett sensed again the encircling concrete, the corridors and contained rooms, like the deep burrow of an oversized rodent. The underground pressed on her. A question shivered in her mind: Am I just helping him?
They stopped together, an arrested tango. The gun reminded her of the lead.
Wait! Think! What should I do?
Her thoughts took sudden flight, passing through the tons of surrounding earth, up and out, to consider from above the base, the inland and coastal towns, the speckled map of a country under attack...
The gun dug harder into her back. She wondered what a bullet would feel like. Hot? Like a needle? When she didn’t move the gun pushed harder, bruising her spine. Her thoughts continued past her anger to the thought of other outbreak specialists at work, other doctors and researchers. There was another chance; she had to take it.
“Out!”
Garrett blinked, back in the lift, her back bruised. She took a breath and stepped out of the lift.
***
The outer access corridor was empty. They passed the door to the Bacteriology lab. Their shoes squeaked on the thick gloss floor-paint. They reached Parasitology. Bryce used his card. The door shut behind them.
So here we are again.
Pieces of equipment remembered themselves to her: a double-headed microscope, the microtome beside it, the submarine door into level III. Bryce pushed Garrett over to his desk.
The laptop vibrated in its docking station as it woke from cold standby. Garrett noticed a spare laptop battery beside the keyboard. The screens around the lab were blank, showing only power standby, except for one, Zahra’s, where tropical fish swam back and forth.
Bryce reached out to flick a video switch. “Let's use the overhead projector shall we? It would be a shame to miss any of the show.” He pulled out a stool for himself a few feet to the left and slightly behind her.
Garrett bent over the keyboard. “I'm going to connect to the dataset for the sequenced Krissa genome. Then I’ll start a pattern recognition script.”
She navigated folders, found the data file, started the pattern recognizer and keyed in the five regular expressions she had composed in her head on the journey. A window popped up with a message above an empty bar. “Fourteen chromosomes in dataset. Processing one of fourteen...” The bar began filling up from left to right, making level progress, like the predetermined flight of a bullet.
Garrett glared down at the keyboard. She estimated distances.
On screen the status window refreshed. The pattern recogniser had found nothing in the first chromosome. Bryce told off his lips, loudly. He held the gun two-handed, angled across his knees.
“Processing two of fourteen...”
The progress bar emptied and began refilling. Garrett let go of the mouse. The laptop battery, a narrow bar of black metal, lay six inches from her left hand. When she shifted her feet the on-screen cursor moved. In her peripheral vision, gold winked at her from Bryce's spectacles.
“How did Christmas survive for so long?” Garrett said.
The screen flickered. “Processing three of fourteen...”
“Christmas was O negative. That blood type confers a limited resistance to Krissa. The parasite cells don't clog the blood, cere
bral hernias do not occur. Salivary glands are still colonised, so the carrier is still infectious, but he stays alive longer. That makes an O negative carrier a lethal vector.”
“Processing four of fourteen...”
“A human mosquito, if you like.”
Bryce watched, hypnotized by the progress bar. Garrett moved her feet again. She shifted her left hand. They watched the screen fill and refresh, fill and refresh, again and again without result. Five of fourteen, six…
Perhaps she had been wrong about the message. Or her regular expressions contained errors, or weren’t checking for the right pattern. She had made an assumption: that Richardson wanted his message to be found. Her expressions looked for unnatural runs of base pairs to signal the quote-unquote of a message start and end. Then they trialled various candidate ciphers. Each was tested simply, against the two strongest patterns in English she could think of: the most frequently occurring letter – “E” – and words – “The”, “Of”, “And” – delimited by spaces. Primitive, but the best she could manage in the time.
“Processing seven of fourteen...”
“You were very lucky to survive Kirtananda at the hospital.”
“Processing eight of fourteen...”
“His team don't usually make mistakes.” Bryce's voice trailed off.
“Significant unnatural sequence identified. Processing... Processing...”
“Well, well,” Bryce said softly, moving off his stool. His feet touched the ground. The gun still pointed at Garrett's back.
Okay. Careful! Don't rush. He will wait. He must wait. The battery lay under her fingertips.
“Unnatural sequence end detected. EBCDIC pattern match confirmed. Translating...”
Bryce leaned forward. Garrett let weight collect in her knees and onto the balls of her feet.
A lower text pane began to fill. As they read, the progress bar continued to fill and empty. “Translating… Translating...”
Cipher match analysis
Trial scheme 3 indicated by letter and word frequency analysis
Encoding:
EBCDIC
Probability:
very high
Start sequence:
GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
Start location:
Chromosome 8 Base Pair 1,102,223
End sequence
GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
End location
Chromosome 8 Base Pair 1,124,007
Text translation
TITLE
Termination protocol for malaria parasite Achilles, genome carrier of this message.
Author
Professor Stephen Richardson
ABSTRACT
The following compounds, collectively named Paris, will show significant immediate growth-inhibition rising to lethal effects for the parasitic infection by protozoa of strain Achilles. In addition, active ingredients in this pharmaceutical composition have a high selective toxicity. They contain no poisonous atoms such as antimony and arsenic and will not harm mammalian cells. Confirmed by in vivo assay test.
Methods and materials
Synthesis of 3-dibutylamino-7-diethylamino phenoxazinium perchlorate (Compound A-8)
A mixture of 3-dibutylaminophenol (1.0 mL, 4.43 mmol) and N,N-diethyl-4-nitrosoaniline (790 mg, 4.43 mmol) was suspended in ethanol (55 mL) at a room temperature, and 60% aqueous solution of perchloric acid (0.5 mL) was added by dropping to the suspension. The resulting mixture was refluxed with heating for 3 hours and cooled to a room temperature. It was then concentrated under reduced pressure to half an initial volume of its solvent, and cooled to 0° C. The resulting precipitate was removed by filtration and filtrate was concentrated. The concentrated crude material was purified by means of silica chromatography (eluate: chloroform:ethyl acetate=9:1) to give a crude compound. The resulting crude compound was dissolved into methanol and cooled to 0° C., to which added few drops of diethylether for crystallization. The resulting dark blue crystal was filtered to give -dibutylamino-7-diethylamino phenoxazinium perchlorate (33.3 mg, isolation yield of 2%).
1H-NMR(400 MHz, CD3OD) δ: 7.77 (d, 2H, J=9.8 Hz), 7.38 (dd, 1H, J=9.8, 2.6 Hz), 7.35 (dd, 1H, J=9.8, 2.6 Hz), 3.77 (q, 4H, J=7.1 Hz), 3.70(q, 4H, J=7.8 Hz), 1.74 (m, 4H), 1.46 (m, 4H), 1.35 (t,6H, J=7.1 Hz), 1.02 (t, 6H, J=7.5 Hz). FAB-MS 380.
CLINICAL USE
Pharmaceutically effective amount and administration route or means of the compounds according to the present invention may be optionally selected depending on therapeutic strategy, and the age, weight, sex, general health conditions and racial (genetic) background of a patient. Generally, the compounds may be administered in an amount of 1 mg˜10,000 mg/day/70 kg of a body weight, more generally 50 mg˜2,000 mg/day/70 kg of a body weight.
Scan completed.
Chromosome 8, Base Pair 1,102,223. Start sequence Gs. Encoding EBCDIC. EBCDIC, the old IBM mainframe encoding chosen by an old-school scientist. Garrett breathed out. She felt a lumpy mixture of pity and respect. Well done professor. She repeated the information in her mind, over and over.
She looked at Bryce. There was only a description of a formula. Their gaze held. What was between them was completed.
“Paris.” He smiled. “Nothing more. Good old Sikanda. Always the scientist.” He turned away. His voice was gentle, tender with her. “Christine–”
He raised the gun.
She threw her left hand like a punch, fingers opening. The battery extended her reach by a short flight. It hit the side of Bryce’s head. He grunted and dropped to his knees.
The gun fell. It bounced hard, a pin ball rattling over the floor, off a lab bench, a wall, across the floor again, and stopped under the trap of Garrett’s foot.
Bryce brought a hand down from the side of his head. The fingers were bloody. He looked up at the screen, dazed.
Garrett picked up the gun. It was heavy in her hand. She checked the safety was off.
“You were going to kill me,” Her voice was as steady as her hand.
Bryce smeared the blood over his fingertips. “Life is a deadly business.”
The outer lab door gave a decompressing hiss. Zahra ducked her head through the hatch.
“Sounds like I’m not the only one who can’t sleep!”
Bryce hit Garrett low down, around her hips. Her left arm slammed into a bench as she went down. Pain lit up the nerves and for a moment she saw nothing. She heard Bryce roll past, chasing a released rattle. The rattling stopped.
“Hello?”
She was moving then, in between the lab benches, left, left, right, through the maze, quiet as quiet can be, except for her arm shrieking.
“Shani!” Bryce’s shout echoed around the lab.
“Rheinnalt! What on earth…?”
“Help! I’m hurt.”
“Hurt? How?”
“It’s Christine!”
Garrett crouched low. Bryce was approaching Zahra, two lab benches away. Making sure it's two against one. Then two against none. Then one against none, with no one left to tell.
Stay on the move, stay low, out of sight. He has the gun. Shani is bait for me, I’m bait for her.
Must get the message out.
“Christine? What’s going on here?”
“Be careful! Look, she hit me. I was lucky, I got her gun but she's still dangerous. Can you see her?”
“Why did Christine hit you?”
Garrett kept her head down. He's backtracking, down the left side, looking along the rows. Use the cross benches.
“Why is she dangerous? Rheinnalt!”
“Can you see her, Shani?”
Garrett placed her feet with care, her knees bent. Track his voice. Stay low. Keep moving. Go for the exit. Predictable, but I must get the message out. Ah!
Garrett stopped, crouched beneath the double-headed microscope. Pain throbbed blackly in her left arm. Zahra stood in front of the exit hatch, looking straight at her. Garrett held her breath. She could kill her with a word. Less. With a pointed finger.
“Shani, listen to me! We don't have much time. I think Christine was using us.” Bryce's voice approached. Zahra and Garrett continued to stare at each other.
“We must find her! We don't know what she is capable of!”
Bryce's voice moved behind Garrett's back. She scuttled down another narrow corridor between lab benches.
“Rheinnalt? What are you–”
The silenced bullets sounded two soft thuds. The shots spun Zahra around. Bryce lowered the gun. He breathed in the smell drifting off the muzzle of the silencer. It reminded him of melted hair. One down.
Now finish it. It has to be done. Make it quick.
A dozen lab benches: she's in there, a mouse in the maze. Don't underestimate her this time. What is she after? Getting the message out. So where? Watch the workstations. There’s the exit door, centre of the wall. Covered. Good. Now it's simple. Sweep the room. It has to be done.
Garrett crouched, panting, beside Zahra’s body. The young girl lay curled on the floor hugging her belly. Blood stained the front and back of her shirt and trousers. Her eyes were open, wide with shock.
“Where were you hit?” Garrett whispered. She leant down to place her ear beside Zahra’s lips to catch the reply.
“Left arm and leg.”
Garrett looked around. She saw a computer under a nearby desk. Working quickly, she unplugged two USB cables. She tied one high on Zahra’s left arm, using her teeth to pull it tight.
As she worked she listened. She could hear nothing except the hum of air conditioning and computers. Where was he?
She explored the exit wound in Zahra’s left thigh with her fingertips. Anger tightened her chest, her throat. She tied another tourniquet then arranged clothing to hide the cables. Zahra looked frightened. Garrett leaned down to whisper, maintaining the precise calm and steady eye contact of a prescribing doctor.