Akela frowned as he recalled Lotus roughly handling Natti and Kaleo, pressing a device to their necks. He had thought she was injecting more medicine, an inoculation of some kind, not a chip. Then he remembered what Lotus had said afterward. “They’re in the hands of God now.”
The comment had briefly puzzled Akela at the time, for a moment before that, Lotus had uttered prayers to the four gods, leading him to conclude she was a believer of Unity. Akela now realized Lotus had meant something entirely different. She said her medicine was a gene therapy, a banned gene therapy. “This chip, where does it come from?”
“What? Why do you care? You want them all to die anyway.”
Akela thought of the history lessons about the Genetic Revolution taught to the children of the village and the infamous tale of Dr. Dyan Mugabe. “Like the GODD chip?”
“It isn’t like the GODD chip. It is the GODD chip…an upgraded version of it.”
“But the technology was destroyed…many years ago.”
“Yes and no.”
“You should have told me what you were implanting in Natti and Kaleo. I thought you just gave them a higher potency dose of the medicine.”
“Would you have stopped me if I’d told you about the chip?”
“Yes.”
“So, you prefer they turn into jakalis?”
“No. We would not allow that to happen.”
“Oh, that’s right,” said Lotus. “You’ll wait until they become too dangerous to you and your people and then you’ll put them to sleep. Meanwhile, pain and uncontrollable urges will eat away at their sanity unless you sedate them so much they become catatonic. I’ve got a little secret to share with you, Akela. They still feel the pain and urges even when they’re sedated. It speeds their insanity because they’re locked in a mental room with no way to get out, no way to express or release their anguish.”
As Akela responded, he began to stalk around Lotus. “You make our care sound evil, but we do the very best we can to provide them the highest quality of life for as long as possible. Many of our refugees live until they are eighteen, giving them seven, eight years’ more life than if they were euthanized in their home countries.”
“Ha!” Lotus said, clapping her hands. “Bully for you. You must be so proud to delay their euthanizations.” She stepped forward and blocked Akela’s path. With her face inches from his, she said, “I’m trying to stop euthanizations. I’m trying to heal them. And you make my care sound evil? The irony is thicker than your skull.”
Akela grabbed her arm and squeezed. “Playing God with DNA is what destroyed our world, Lotus. Don’t you understand that?”
She dug her fingernails into his hand and yanked it away. Reaching up with her other hand, she grabbed the back of Akela’s head and pulled it until their foreheads met with a thud. “I understand that perfectly. Do you understand that unless we break the vicious cycle we’re in, humans are doomed? Evvies, didgees, gutants…all the castes…everyone. Gone. Extinct. It’s a math problem, Akela. We aren’t reproducing enough to outlast gutations. Soon, even evvie DNA will begin to gutate. That’s another little secret you should know.”
CHAPTER 22: READ BETWEEN THE BINDS
Baker Street
Thunder Bay, The Northlands
With the windows down and music blasting on the pickup’s radio, Damon followed a pizza delivery van along the street. It was time to find out whether NASF was onto Mariah Bloom or not. Tapping his hands on the steering wheel in rhythm with the music, Damon scanned both sides of the street from behind sunglasses and a scarf covering his face below.
He picked out the first Viper with ease. Even disguised in street clothes, the Caucasian android’s chiseled features stood out. Ahead, he spotted the parked command vehicle. It, too, was easy to spot. The tradesman panel truck was just like those used by Damon’s Beacon task force. Okay, now time to answer the next question. Have they already found Bloom?
As the pizza delivery van neared the corner, it began to slow down. Damon honked his truck’s horn and gestured out the window for the van to get out of his way. Nothing like drawing attention to yourself to hide in plain sight, thought Damon.
A glance in the rearview mirror revealed another Viper, this one a black female atop a nearby rowhouse. Damon pressed the horn again, swerved around the pizza truck and continued down the street. If his plan had worked, the NASF commandos were now focused on the pizza truck stopping in front of the corner rowhouse, not him. This allowed Damon to briefly slow down to get a clear look at the rowhouse entrance without attracting attention. There were no Vipers standing guard.
Okay, so if they’re following standard operating procedure, that means Bloom isn’t inside the rowhouse. If she were, Vipers would be stationed at every possible entrance. They know Beacon’s looking for Bloom. They’d want to send a clear signal to stay away.
So, that means they’ve either already found her and taken her somewhere else and they’re sticking around to set a trap to catch someone from Beacon, or they’re still waiting for Bloom to show up. Looking in his rearview mirror, he mumbled, “Guess I’ll find out shortly.”
Damon expected there would be initial confusion in the command vehicle when the delivery android mounted the rowhouse stairs carrying a stack of pizza boxes. But he doubted the confusion would persist. In short order, NASF would realize the delivery was a probing ploy. Of course, they would immediately suspect Beacon was the perpetrator of the hoax, but how would they respond?
If they were waiting for Bloom, they would probably do nothing. If they were setting a trap for Beacon, they’d likely take the delivery andro into custody and search the pizza van…or, if whoever was manning the command truck was smart enough, they’d pursue Damon and his truck. But in the mirror, he saw no sign of any pursuers and no one had accosted the delivery bot. So they still must be searching for her…unless…
Turning onto a side street, Damon looked up to see if he could spot any gliders above. He saw none but it brought him no comfort. Two more turns onto other streets brought Damon to the parking garage he had scoped out earlier just in case he’d been pursued by Vipers he hadn’t seen or surveilled from above. He pulled in, drove up two levels and parked on the empty third floor. Seconds later, he was out of the truck and dousing the cabin with gasoline. When the can was empty, he lit his scarf, tossed it in the cabin and ran for the garage stairwell.
As he reached the street level, he tugged the hood of his jacket over his head, slowed to a stroll, crossed the road and disappeared down an alley. Hidden by the shadow of the building, Damon kept walking, hoping the rest of his elaborate diversion would shake any unseen NASF assets trailing him. He was within a few feet of the end of the alley when the pickup finally exploded. Though he was now a city block away from the garage, the rumble of the blast shook the ground beneath his feet. He turned and looked back just as several people rounded the corner.
“What happened?” one of them asked Damon.
He shrugged. ‘Beats me. Maybe a gas leak?”
Smoke began to pour into the alley as even more people gathered to gawk. While they all conversed, Damon heard the first siren in the distance. He wound his way through the crowd and turned the corner. Across the street was a small shopping center with a dozen cars parked in its lot. One of them was a car Damon had stolen from the garage before calling in the bogus pizza order.
While he felt a strong urge to jump in the car and speed away, Damon played it cool and strode into a trading-post-themed sundry store in the shopping center. As soon as he entered, he was bombarded by questions from the clerks and customers standing by the window.
“What’s going on?” one asked.
“Was that a bomb?” questioned another.
“Is anybody hurt?” posed a third.
“Couldn’t tell you. I was just walking by and there was this boom. That’s all I know,” he said.
After picking out a few items, he roused one of the gawking clerks to scan his purchase.
Moments later, he left the store, slid into the stolen car and calmly guided the vehicle onto the street.
As he headed for the main road leading west out of town, Damon checked the rearview mirror often, but never saw anyone tailing him. Nor did he spot any NASF gliders above. He was sure they were up there, but their cameras and scanners were apparently focused elsewhere. Sooner or later, however, Damon was sure the commandos would link his truck with the pizza delivery scam and the garage explosion.
But by the time he reached the tire marks Takoda left on the road earlier in the morning, there was still no sign of gliders, nanos or any suspicious vehicles trailing him. An uneasy feeling began to gnaw inside Damon. That was too easy. Something isn’t right.
While he wanted to believe NASF had staked out the rowhouse because their search for Mariah Bloom had come up empty, the commandos’ passive response to Damon’s ruse troubled him. Why didn’t any of the Vipers chase me? And where were their drones? One should have been on my ass before I passed the pizza truck.
It was certainly possible they had already found the woman, Damon reasoned. But if that was the case, why had the command truck been stationed so close to the rowhouse? They had to know the presence of the truck would be a clear warning sign to any Beacon operatives to stay away. No, there was something else going on. But what?
Damon parked the stolen sedan on the gravel shoulder and climbed the embankment. As he pushed between pine-needle-laden branches, he thought, maybe there have been developments back in Eagle Bu—
He stopped dead in his tracks. Through a gap in the branches, he spotted the tree where he had left Takoda. By the trunk sat the backpack and rifle Damon had given the doctor and the bloody towel Takoda had used to stanch the cut on his forehead, but Takoda was nowhere in sight. Under other circumstances, Damon would have called out Takoda’s name and searched the area, but his instincts and the note pinned to the backpack told him the geneticist was long gone.
Beacon lab
Eagle Butte, South Dakota
Rubbing the back of her neck, Yon closed her eyes and willed the spasms to subside. Come on, let me work just a little while longer, then I promise I’ll lie down. A twinge at the base of her neck reminded Yon she had said the same thing two hours ago.
I can’t help it, Yon argued with the quivering muscle, I need to figure this out.
For the past few hours, she had labored at the three-dimensional holoscreen of a DNA scanner, attempting to resolve an odd discrepancy she had noticed when she compared gutation repairs in Billy Hearns’ and Hoot’s DNA. Something just didn’t add up.
Yon returned to the scanner and prepared to examine all the repairs yet again. Just then, however, Cassidy Willow entered the lab. As usual, the android was straight to the point. “You spoke with Dr. Wells.”
“Ah, I see you read my holomessage.”
“All communications are supposed to go through me. Do you know how foolish it was for him to go off on his own?”
Sliding her hands into the pockets of her lab coat, Yon said, “Yes, I do. I made that abundantly clear to him. Did you know Maj. Spiers planned to split up and leave Tak behind?”
“Irrelevant. You violated protocol. If you hadn’t told Dr. Wells about the DNA ID, he would have stayed until Damon returned.”
Yon winced. Cassidy’s assessment was accurate. “Look, I’m sorry. He said you hadn’t been in contact. I thought it was important to tell him about Toni Gilbert. I didn’t know he would go off on his own. Why didn’t you contact them, by the way?”
For a moment, the android stared at her with unblinking eyes. She’s hiding something from me, Yon thought. Either that, or she’s thinking up a lie.
“Irrelevant. You jeopardized—”
“Like hell it’s irrelevant! The DNA ID should have been provided to them right away.”
“Hawkeye wanted more background information before—”
“More background? Are you kidding me? Aren’t we trying to find this woman as fast as possible?”
“Yes, we are. However, searching for known associates, other addresses, contact numbers, aliases, passport records, financial transactions and other data can help us narrow the search. Not just for Toni Gilbert, but for members of her family and other associates who might be able to lead us to her. We can’t just rely on her cousin’s home address. It’s highly speculative.”
Yon backed down. Cassidy was a police android. This kind of work was routine for her and she was right to do it. “Okay, I get it. I understand. Information like that could be very helpful. Again, I’m sorry. For all I knew at the time, Tak’s call could have been an emergency. I had to answer it.”
“Let us hope NASF did not intercept the call. Even if they can’t decrypt the content, NASF may be able to pinpoint the locations of each party on the call.”
“Look, Cassidy. There’s nothing I can do about it now.”
“Give me your phone. Your holoband too. I will return them as soon as the mission is complete.”
Flushing red, Yon dug out her phone from her lab coat pocket and slapped it in Cassidy’s open palm and did the same with the holoband on her wrist. “Satisfied? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
Yon turned back to the holoimage displayed by the DNA scanner. As she used her hand to isolate a section of one of Billy’s chromosomes, Cassidy came alongside.
“What are you examining?” the android asked.
“I’m trying to solve a puzzle,” Yon grumbled. She glared at Cassidy and added, “A puzzle that would have been solved a long time ago if Hoot had told us she was one of Dr. Mugabe’s patient-zeros.”
“Explain.”
Yon sliced off a segment of the chromosome image and stretched it out to zoom in on one of Billy’s repaired gutations. “There’s something not quite right about the smart proteins that repaired the binds between these genes.” With a finger, she circled the computer’s simulation of two protein molecules. “These two molecules should not be here.”
Cassidy leaned forward. Yon watched the android’s eyes dart around as she studied the bind. “I see no breakage. The binds appear intact. Why do you say the proteins are wrong?”
“Because I examined Hoot’s DNA.” Yon turned toward a second DNA holoimage, and performed the same slice-and-expand motions with her hands. She then dragged the new chromosome slice under the one from Billy. Pointing at the new slice, she said, “This is the same chromosome segment from Hoot’s DNA. You’ll note she and Billy shared a common gutation. Compare the repaired binds between the two samples.”
After studying the holoimages, Cassidy said, “Some of the smart proteins are the same. Others are different.”
“Correct,” said Yon. “The ones repairing Hoot’s binds were Mugabe’s original smart proteins. Billy has some of those too. But Billy also has what appear to be newly created smart proteins. Like these, here and here.
“Presumably, that means whoever recreated the GODD chip built upon Mugabe’s original work and upgraded some of the smart proteins. The same is probably true of the chip itself. It’s an upgrade of the original. But there’s an inconsistency in these repairs.”
Turning toward the scanner’s holokeyboard, Yon entered a stream of commands. On both gutation repairs, some of the binding proteins turned red. “The red molecules identify one of Mugabe’s original smart proteins. You see that the repairs to both Billy’s and Hoot’s common gutation have the reds.”
“Yes, but Hoot’s repair has many more reds than Billy’s,” said Cassidy.
“Correct. Now, watch.” After Yon entered another flurry of commands, a slew of blue protein molecules appeared on Billy’s gene binds. “The blues identify one of the proteins I suspect is new. Note how they appear in many of the locations where Hoot had red ones, but not all.”
When Yon turned to look at Cassidy, she once again saw the android’s eyes rapidly examining the images. “Can you highlight the receptors the red and blue binding proteins connect with?”
>
Yon nodded. It was a good observation on Cassidy’s part, one that would prove Yon’s point. A binding gene was like a jigsaw piece, to play upon Yon’s earlier puzzle analogy. To maintain the integrity of the connection between two genes, the jigsaw shape of the binding proteins must exactly “fit” into the corresponding gaps of the jigsaw-shapes of the receptors on the gene proteins.
As soon as Yon finished entering new commands, green molecules appeared on one side of the blues and reds, and brown molecules appeared on the other. “As you can see, the receptors for blues and reds look identical. That’s another clue the blues were intended to be upgrades to the reds. But, again, not all of the reds were replaced. To me, it looks like a flaw in the new chip or new smart proteins. Either the chip’s repair instructions were incorrect or the smart proteins did not properly interpret the instructions, creating this odd mix of old and new proteins in the repairs.”
“Could it be related to the fact Billy only had the chip for a short time?” Cassidy asked.
“I thought of that,” Yon said. “It’s possible. The chip might repair broken binds in cycles, rather than all at once. Billy may not have had the chip in long enough to complete the repairs.”
The idea of the GODD chip working in cycles to repair gutated binds appealed to Yon. Such an incremental approach would certainly be less traumatic than a one-fell-swoop change out of the entire bind. For there had to be a mechanism employed by the chip and smart proteins to “convince” the body’s innate DNA error checkers that the replaced proteins should be accepted. It seemed to Yon it would be more effective to convince the error checkers one binding protein at a time, rather than a full bind at a time. She shared these thoughts with Cassidy and then said, “But that’s total conjecture. The anomaly could just as easily be a true flaw. We won’t know for sure until we can talk to the new chip’s developers and study an operating chip in action.”
The GODD Chip (The Unity of Four Book 1) Page 28