by Eli Constant
I shooed the girls off to class and nursery after we finished eating. Megan knew her way around now and I was confident in her ability to settle Kara in at the nursery.
I was shooing myself off to get some more much needed shut eye, but Jason ambushed me at the cafeteria exit.
“Elise.”
It really wasn’t possible to ignore him, but I did make a half-hearted attempt to scan the area for ditch locations. A door laughed at me from down the hall. ‘I’m too far away. Ha ha ha.’ If doors could be jerks, this one was a grade ‘A’ jack off.
As it often did in response to such situations, my tongue pushed against my closed mouth. It took a great physical effort to relax my tongue and avoid appearing like an immature child. I had to constantly remind myself that I was a fully grown adult; it was ridiculous to blow raspberries when I wasn’t happy.
“Jason. Something I can do for you?” I realized, standing there, that I’d been unconsciously avoiding him. Last time we’d spoken, he’d told me to ‘do what I needed to do.’
Unfortunately, what I needed to do involved him and I wasn’t relishing asking for his help. It seemed unfair, considering I couldn’t fully bring him into the loop. I knew I had to ask him. I couldn’t let opportunity slip by as I stood, hesitating in a doorway.
“Feels like I haven’t seen you in days.”
“Technically, you haven’t seen me in days…”
“Funny. Really, what’s going on with you? You don’t call. You don’t write. I feel used. Am I just three legs and an occasional therapist?” He was really laying on the guilt trip, only half-joking.
“I wouldn’t qualify that as a third leg. It’s far too short.”
He pulled back in shock and feigned a bruised ego. He started to retort, but I cut him off.
I laughed. “Okay, wait. I need to be serious for a minute. I’ve been avoiding you because I need to ask a favor and… well… I need you to not ask questions.”
“Okay. Can you tell me eventually?”
“Yes, but I think you’ll probably figure it out yourself.”
“What do you need?”
“I need you to notify me immediately if there’s going to be a rescue mission into the park.”
“Strange request, but consider it done.”
“Thanks Jason. You’re a life saver.”
“I could save your life quicker running with three legs.”
“Don’t push your luck. I’ll give you two legs and a very, very small cucumber.”
“But salty like a pickle.” He full-face grinned. I gave him my best gross-out face.
“Thanks again for the help.” I rose up on tiptoe and pecked him on the cheek. “See you later.”
I’d hit that window of wakefulness and new that trying to sleep would be a futile effort. So I headed off to the science wing. Walking into Lab-3, I tried to exude a confident ‘I know nothing’ air.
“Dr. Peters? O’Toole? Meg?” No response. “Anybody here? Hello?” I kept calling as I walked towards the entrance to Meg’s area. I got a response on the fourth ‘hello.’
“We’re in here, Elise.” The closet light was on and I could see shadows of movement against the lab floor. I started talking before I could see anyone.
“How are you this morning, Meg?” And then I saw her. She was holding very still and O’Toole was wrapping bandaging around her left forearm. Her form was leaner than when she’d been birthed, her frame about three inches longer with only a gain of two pounds.
“What happened?” I was genuinely alarmed now, no need to fake. In the past week, my affection had grown exponentially.
“I tried to help him.”
“Help who, Meg?”
O’Toole responded, not Meg. “We woke up last night to the male undergrounder in containment 2 screeching. He had two syringes embedded in his left eye. I ran out of the lab trying to follow whoever was here and when I got back, Margaret was in the cage trying to remove the needles and calm the male. The undergrounder responded aggressively. Margaret pulled the syringes out, but he took a swipe at her arm. Thank God she was fast enough to get out quickly.”
I turned from O’Toole and looked back at Meg. “Meg, how did you know the code to the room?”
“I heard Doctor Peters punch it in yesterday.” She looked back in forth between me and O’Toole. “Like this.” And she hummed the identical sound for each key tone. L-C-3-0-2. I stared at Meg, who’d changed and grown so much already, and then exchanged a weighted glance with O’Toole.
“Meg, can you wait here and read while I talk to Mrs. Swanson?”
“Yes.” Meg turned to a shelf above her head. One of the doctors must have reinstalled it after the initial clear-out. She pulled a rather large novel down and flipped to the middle of the story. I stepped out of the closet, O’Toole followed.
“Elise, there is only one conceivable reason why a person would enter those cages with empty syringes.”
“And what’s that doctor?”
“Blood.”
“How can you be sure? They could have been empty because someone had already injected the contents.”
“Well, for starters, there was no residue of anything inside the syringes Meg recovered. Also, someone took a large collection of humanoid blood from Lab 7.”
“Why would someone need all that beastie blood?”
“There are many possible reasons. The first that comes to my mind, however, would be further studying the genetic makeup of the undergrounder species. That would be useful in many applications. For example, it would be useful in implementing your nanotech notion. Have you spoken with anyone about your… idea?”
“No.” I pretended to contemplate for a moment. “Wait, I did mention it to Jason the other night, but no specifics.” He was quiet for some time. When he spoke, the words were unexpected.
“Only four people, including Margaret, know the codes to this lab area. Peters has been acting rather odd lately, but I can’t imagine he would jeopardize…” He trailed off and his eyes shifted towards the open closet door.
“No, I don’t think he would take a chance on exposing Meg. There has to be another answer.”
“Of course there is. The other answer would be you, Elise. I am, however, choosing to trust you.” For the second time that day, I was feeling very guilty.
“Have you changed the cage codes?”
“Yes. Peters and I reprogrammed them about an hour ago.”
“Where is he now?” It struck me as odd that O’Toole would reset them with Peters if he suspected Peters- definitely food for thought.
“He went to find a new book for Margaret. She reads quickly.”
“We need to find her a copy of War and Peace. That would keep her occupied for a while.”
He nodded. “Yes. That’s quite the page-turner.”
“Are you going to enhance security in the lab?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary. No sane person would break into the cages again. Whoever it was has to have sustained injuries. There was blood on the door and wall near the bed.”
Something in his eyes made me not believe him. Some underlying inflection in his tone gave me pause. I had the sneaking suspicion O’Toole wasn’t worried about Peters at all. He’d reset door locks with him and O’Toole hadn’t offered to give me the new codes. Yep, I was the number one suspect on the short list.
I didn’t stay long after that conversation. Being there felt awkward and it felt like O’Toole was studying my every move. The more I lingered, the more likely I’d slip up and say or do something incriminating.
I couldn’t be too careful.
Get With the Program
We were lucky to get Nick, our programmer- transferred from another facility. Turned out our chemist wasn’t going to be arriving, ever.
Nick Santos was your typical early twenties computer geek with a wardrobe to match. His shirt said ‘There’s no place like 127.Ø.Ø.1.’ Reading it, I laughed.
“You got a p
air of sparkly slippers to coordinate?” He looked at me, not understanding. “Come on. If you’re going to wear the shirt, you should be ready for comments.”
He glanced down at his shirt and chuckled. When his head bobbed back up to look at me, his glasses slid down to the end of his nose. He used his index finger to shove them in place. All things considered, he was an attractive guy. His hair was yellow-blonde, and cutely disheveled. His body was in pretty good shape. Behind the lenses, his eyes were stormy gray.
After our witty introductory exchange, we sat down to discuss the general plan. He’d arrived about half an hour before me and Jamie had him pretty well up to speed already. Nick was feeling confident by the end of our group discussion.
“So, do you think you’ll be able to write the programs we’ll need?”
“I can write software that’ll be so convincing it’ll fool Mother Nature.”
“Alright, wonder boy, I’ll hold you to that.” I punched him on the shoulder, already buddy-buddy with the guy.
Jamie and I left Nick to finish setting up his computer station. His work space now occupied more than a quarter of the lab and the lab was huge.
On the other side of the room, Jamie and I began isolating the DNA from the undergrounder blood samples. In the end, it didn’t really matter that we only had samples from two different humanoids. What mattered was modifying protocol to yield viable DNA.
We had to procure several books from the school library. I’d have given my left ovary for a copy of Watsons’ DNA text.
On the norm, isolating human DNA required 150 microliters. Animal blood, however, required a max input of approximately 650 microliters. The undergrounders were genetically similar and had the same 22 chromosomal pairs plus the additional three pairs. Chimpanzees are about 99.4% identical to humans. Our first obstacle: did we treat the undergrounders as human or as non-human animal.
Nick said the programming that Jamie had tried to modify to map and compare the DNA was antiquated. He’d know; we wouldn’t.
Replacing the humanoid samples into the fridge, I grabbed five of the human blood samples. I’d separate these samples first and run the DNA through our new mapping system- courtesy of military foraging and Nick’s ability to quick adjust.
I was actually amazed at the amount of equipment we now had. The government could be expeditious and effective. Surprise, surprise.
I set the capped test tubes containing blood and a heparin anticoagulant on the counter to warm to ambient room temperature. If the samples were too cool, I’d risk congesting our purification tray.
I looked over at Jamie who was puzzling over the animal versus human issue for processing the undergrounder samples.
She’d offered to stop and help me. I’d declined; I could handle separating a little DNA. I might just be a brain mechanic, but Biology 101 wasn’t beyond me.
Waiting for the blood to warm, I lined up my micro centrifuge tubes and pipetted in 15 microliters of Proteinase K and 85 microliters of a PK Digestive Buffer derivative into each. I set my tube tray to the side and tested the temperature of one of the blood samples. I used a sterilized pipet tip to avoid contamination. Still too cool.
I rolled my lab stool over to Jamie and peered over her shoulder. She was trying to decide how to equate a six individual chromosomal difference and how it would affect the DNA extraction process. She threw her pen down and huffed loudly.
“Frustrated?” I snickered when she jumped in alarm.
“I feel like I’ve been puzzling over this forever. Working off two hours sleep doesn’t help.”
“Okay… what do you have so far?”
“Let’s see. Chimps are 99 percent the same as humans, but those similarities stop in varied gene sequence and that sequences developmental history. They are so similar, but require 100 less microliters of blood for proper DNA extraction. Undergrounders have our exact chromosomes plus six different ones that we haven’t identified. That’s all we know- kudos to the big wig scientists at NIH before it became ‘nobody is here’ central.”
“Let’s quit trying to complicate it and just gamble. We’ll try it first at human parameters and if that doesn’t yield viable samples, we’ll repeat with chimp parameters and if that doesn’t work, then we’ll play ‘I’m thinking of a number between 150 and a million.’ We’re bound to hit a homerun eventually. Besides, we’ve got a jug of undergrounder blood. I don’t think we’ll run out.”
Jamie rolled her eyes. “Spoken like a true adventurist. What’s your specialty again?”
“Adventurism, apparently.” I zipped back over to my samples, the rotation of the stool wheels making a dull sound against the hard floor.
The blood was pretty close to the right temperature so I started adding 150 microliters of blood to each centrifuge tube, samples one through 10 to tubes one through 10 respectively- two tubes per sample.
Before changing pipet tips to move to the next sample, I mixed the PK and PK Buffer with the blood sample by sucking the solution up into the tip and then pushing it back into the tube several times.
My incubation set up was a bit below standards compared to some of the other equipment. I had a water bath, heated to 58̊ Celsius with a hinged lid covering the apparatus. The temperature inevitably fluctuated, but only within a degree or two.
I set my tube tray down in the water bathe. The tubes were closed so I wasn’t worried about a rogue water droplet. I set a handy kitchen timer for 10 minutes and decided to check on Nick.
“How’s it going over here?”
“Well, this stuff isn’t top of the line, but I can make it work. I’m altering the new mapping software to dually accept the human and undergrounder DNA coding. When that’s functional, we can sit back and let the computer extract and assign the different chromosomes. From there, I can plug in our parameters for vectors and we’ll have a template for manufacturing the real virus. Theoretically, our final Nano-programming should partner with the virus and play house inside our artificial O atom. Of course, there’s still the issue of sizing down our virus… and I have to tell you, that’s going to be a real bitch.”
I grimaced. “One issue at a time. On the bright side, you weren’t overselling yourself before – you’ve made a ton of progress in a limited span of time. Did you read over the parameters for our artificial oxygen atom?”
“Yep, sure did.”
“So… any idea how to simulate the Oxygen’s positive and negative charges with the programming?
Nick raised his hands in the air, a gesture of defeat. “Genius does not always come quickly. I’ll work on that when I’m completely happy with the first coding. It’s not just a simple matter of writing the software and it working. I’ll need to go through the lines of code, test the software, go back to the lines of code, and test the software again. It may be days before I have a functioning program.”
“Ah… well, you have a day.”
“So I’ll sleep when…” Nick began.
“When the software is ready. Programmers like coffee, right? I’ll ask for a pot and an endless supply of grounds. You’ll have the caffeine jitters in no time.”
My timer dinged.
As I jogged across the lab floor, I called back to Nick. “Come on boy genius. I have faith in you.” I didn’t turn around, but I could sense the birdy flying in my direction.
I opened a container of DNA purification solution. Salt had precipitated on the bottom. I shook the container gently; then I transferred 7.5 milliliters into a test tube, inserted a clean thermometer and held the glass tube in the water bathe. I swirled the test tube contents gently. As soon as the salt dissolved and the temperature approached 37̊ Celsius, I pulled the tube out of the heated water.
My right pinkie grazed the side of the hot bathe.
“Shit.” I transferred the test tube to my left hand and stuck my right little finger between my lips. When I removed it from the wetness of my mouth, I waved it in the air, trying to cool it. My finger throbbed slightly; I i
gnored the pain.
I equally divided the purification solution between my centrifuge tubes. I mixed and switched to clean pipet tips after each addition; then moved my line of tubes over to a proper Nucleic Acid Workstation and followed the purification protocol as outlined by the corresponding manual.
I’d never used this particular station before. It looked pretty new, guess it had been stored in one of the many other NORAD labs.
I hadn’t extracted DNA since undergraduate. Miracle I even remembered the process. I almost mixed up the Elution 1 and 2 solutions. Thankfully, Jamie was checking up on me and stopped my hand before I added the second solution out of sequence. It would have been a kick in the crotch to start all over again.
I ended up with a seventy-five percent yield on our DNA per WBC; it was within the parameters, but on the low side. Purity could be improved. I tossed two of the DNA extractions after testing them- contaminated- probably Heme.
Jamie made gel plates to run a basic light chromatogram on the human blood samples and eventually the undergrounders. This would give us a first basis of comparison for gene expression.
It was about lunch time now. I left Jamie to separate the DNA on the undergrounder samples; we decided to try chimpanzee parameters first. I had a feeling it was a good thing I stole the gallon of blood from the autopsy lab.
I stretched on the walk to the mess hall; my neck was killing me. I always had really poor posture while working.
When I arrived, the girls were sitting happily at a table talking with Allison and Michael.
It was even more convenient for Allison to bring the girls to meals now that she alternated working in the nursery and monitoring the entertainment room. I really appreciated that she was nearby in case my girls ever needed to see a familiar face. I think Allison was just thankful she was off laundry duty.
I kissed the girls, waved a quick ‘hello’ to the others, and headed for the mess line. A hand on my back startled me. It was Jason.
“Don’t do that.” I reproached.