‘Did you sign?’
‘I needed the money,’ Earl said. ‘But it’s gnawed at my conscience ever since …’
‘Did you think about going to the cops? Or the CDC?’
Earl snorted. ‘I’ve lived in this town long enough to know better than to go to the cops complaining about the Janssens. And I called the CDC, but their manpower is focused on preventing the next synthetic-virus outbreak. The guy I spoke to was sympathetic but blunt: they’ve dealt with a major disease crisis and they don’t have resources to send a team to Nevada to start digging around a hospital records department.’
Harry sighed. ‘So the Janssens win again.’
‘I’m being followed,’ Earl said nervously. ‘My daughter says I’m senile. But he’s a big fellow, with his hair in a ball … I forget what you call that.’
‘A man bun,’ Harry said, shuddering.
‘They came inside my house while I was bowling. They didn’t take squat, but I live alone and I could tell things had been moved around.’
‘What about evidence?’ Harry said, knowing that one old man whose own daughter accused him of being senile wouldn’t count for much. ‘Do you have printouts of the records?’
Earl sounded outraged. ‘Medical records are sensitive documents. Removing them would be a gross breach of patient confidentiality. But I am willing to give you names of the people whose records were changed. If you tracked down their relatives, they can legally request to see their deceased relative’s medical records.’
This could be a huge story, but I’m a sixteen-year-old, who has school and homework and twice daily Vegas Local updates. The earliest I’m going to have any chance to consider this is Saturday, and that’s when Charlie is coming. Unless I bunk off school. But I’d get suspended for sure and Kirsten will ground me, and take my driving privileges away and then I’ll be more screwed …
‘Earl, I appreciate you calling me,’ Harry said. ‘But this is a complex investigation. Have you thought about contacting one of the local TV stations? Or the Vegas Mirror?’
‘Janssen is the third biggest advertiser in this state,’ Earl said, sounding a little desperate. ‘The money men will squash the story. I’ve never liked what the Janssens have done in this town, and seventeen seniors dying to keep dollars flowing into a rundown casino is sickening …’
‘I agree,’ Harry said, but he felt burdened by Earl’s expectations and part of him wanted to fess up to being a schoolboy without the time or backup to run a real investigation.
Ellie might help, but most likely he’ll tell me to drop it. And chances are, when we get to the medical records, the Janssens will have covered their tracks.
‘How long do you think it might take?’ Earl asked hopefully. ‘Ain’t sleeping right with people in my house and tailing me.’
Harry pounded the sink with frustration. ‘Best not to think about it,’ he said, unable to come up with anything more reassuring. ‘I can’t give any kind of schedule, but I’ll try looking into this. Now I’m sorry, sir, but I’m late for a meeting.’
Harry was now ten minutes late for class. But a message from Charlie had come through and he was desperate to hear her news.
‘I finally got a break …’ Charlie’s message began.
Harry smiled and pumped his fist, but before he heard the rest a key turned in the door. It was Mr Bowers, a greying jock who taught phys-ed and ran Queensbridge’s cadet squadron. He’d never liked Harry, because he refused to join the academy athletics team.
‘Smirnov,’ Bowers growled, cupping his ear and smiling like a git. ‘Thought I heard something in here. It’s eleven minutes past.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Harry said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘And the door was locked. Give me the key.’
Harry pulled a pair of keys out of his trousers. Mr Bowers snatched and jangled them.
‘Pupils do not have keys. Do you know how serious this is?’
‘It unlocks the room we use for school news meetings,’ Harry explained. ‘Vice Principal Presley always gives a set of keys to the news editor. I guess the darkroom key is a relic, from when they used film.’
Bowers didn’t like being wrong, so he grunted and jangled the keys again. ‘Then you have abused the trust VP Presley put in you, which is worse. Smirnov, you need to focus less on outside interests, and engage fully with your education.’
Harry thought of a million answers he’d like to give, but rolling his eyes was the most dissent he dared show. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Phone,’ Bowers snapped. ‘Collect it from the front office at the end of the day. And I’ll be seeing you in the hall at zero-eight-thirty Saturday for detention.’
‘Aww, come on,’ Harry begged, feeling like his head would burst from stress. ‘Besides, I’m busy Saturday.’
‘If you bring a parental note, the detention can be deferred until the following Saturday.’
Kirsten’s gonna love hearing that I got Saturday detention. And she’s no fan of Charlie, so she won’t write a note so she can visit …
‘Ugh!’ Harry groaned, convinced that school was a waste of his valuable time. To make it worse, Bowers clearly enjoyed busting a kid he didn’t like.
‘Your attitude stinks, Smirnov,’ Bowers said, then raised his voice significantly. ‘Now march to class, double quick!’
30 DEVELOPMENT KITCHEN B
Ken gave Charlie permission to go out after the meeting, and she rode a 119 bus for half an hour, then made a short walk to an aluminium-clad industrial unit with four zebra-striped trucks out front and a sign bearing the giant punkish logo of the Radical Cake Collective.
It wasn’t exactly the little bakery where everyone mucks in that Mango had described the night before. After making her don a hairnet and polythene shoe covers, an assistant led Charlie through an oppressively hot space, passing lines of giant ovens, waist-height mixers and a packaging area where brightly coloured cakes were iced by hand and slid into boxes that matched the zebra-striped vans out front.
Mango’s office was up a set of metal stairs, painted pastel pink. Awards and photos were hung along the hallway wall and while Charlie didn’t like the idea of working somewhere so hot, she felt super emotional when she stepped into Mango’s office and accepted a hug.
‘You are so awesome,’ Charlie sniffled as she stretched over Mango’s pregnant belly. ‘You barely know me, but you really put your neck out.’
Mango shrugged as if she hadn’t done much. ‘I had a battle with Ken Kleinberg,’ Mango said. ‘But his daughter’s getting married in the spring, so I offered him a six-hundred-dollar wedding cake, and here you are.’
‘Really?’ Charlie said, outraged. ‘There I was thinking Ken had done the decent thing.’
‘Have a squat,’ Mango said. ‘Would you like tea and cake?’
The office was done out in mid-century modern. There was a variety of cakes laid out on a wooden serving trolley with breads and croissants on the shelf beneath. Charlie went for a frosted lime muffin as Mango buzzed her assistant and asked for a pot of tea and two cups.
‘This tastes so good,’ Charlie said, as she bit the muffin and got moist lime sponge and tart raspberry cheesecake frosting. ‘It’s so fresh it’s still warm.’
‘I have to say I’m confused,’ Mango told Charlie as a bearded man put down a pot and two cups with saucers. Then to the assistant, ‘Close the door on the way out.’
There was something a touch sinister about the door closing, and the clack of a spoon as Mango stirred the teapot.
‘What’s confusing?’ Charlie asked, the tea and cakes making her feel British.
‘Your ingenuity reminds me of a younger version of myself,’ Mango began. ‘After I got home, I sat in bed reading a bunch of old news articles about the Rock Spring High bombing.
‘Some things didn’t make much sense. For instance, why would a smart individual like you make a bomb, but make no attempt to destroy the explosive residue or hide the rest of the explosives? And w
hy bother slashing someone’s tires to make them late for school, so that you – a smallish thirteen-year-old – can sneak into a high school and place explosives inside a locker …’
Charlie finished Mango’s thought. ‘Why plant the bomb in Deion’s locker in a busy high school hallway with CCTV cameras, when it would have been easier to place a bomb under his car?’
Mango shook her head. ‘You got framed?’
Charlie was so used to not being able to protest that she shuddered and went on a tangent. ‘You said the FBI busted you for hacking. So, you know how it is: they put you in a room. You’ve hardly slept. You’re scared witless. Then they tell you you’ll get two years if you confess, and thirty if it goes to trial.’
Mango looked slightly tearful. Charlie was impressed by Mango’s intelligence and liked having one more person in the world who didn’t believe she’d half burnt two people to death.
‘The Janssens?’ Mango asked.
‘Who else,’ Charlie said. ‘My friend Harry – the skinny guy you saw me with at Makers Yard on Saturday – wants to go after them. I just want to put the crap behind me and start fresh.’
‘My wife, Veryan, and I started Radical Cake Collective in a unit in one of the Janssens’ strip malls,’ Mango explained. ‘Their property manager was awful. Extra charges for lighting improvements that didn’t happen, a leaky roof that damaged a four-thousand-dollar oven, cockroaches and mice coming through from the unlet unit next door.
‘When Veryan was pregnant with our oldest, the site manager said we were troublemakers. She grabbed Veryan and threatened to push her down the stairs leading to her office. I took photos of Veryan’s bruises, but the cops couldn’t have been less interested.’
‘Your wife could have miscarried or something,’ Charlie said, horrified.
Mango nodded, then strained as she pushed against the desk to haul herself up.
‘Do you need an arm?’ Charlie asked anxiously.
‘Could you rescue my shoes from under the desk?’
Charlie leaned under the desk and flicked two worn pool shoes, which Mango struggled to put on.
‘Everything’s swollen,’ Mango said, holding her back. ‘My feet look like footballs.’
‘When are you due?’ Charlie asked.
‘Nine weeks, and twins for my sins,’ Mango rhymed, as she headed for the door. ‘Now I know you’re more into science than cake-making. So I’d like to show you something.’
Mango held on to both handrails as she led the way down to the first floor. They rounded the end of the stairs, and Mango unlocked a door signed DEVELOPMENT KITCHEN 2.
‘Hope you can keep secrets,’ Mango said cryptically, and led the way in.
‘Is this where you …?’ Charlie asked, but was struck dumb by what she saw.
The brightly lit counter along one wall had everything you might expect of a space where cake recipes got tested: sinks, mixers, microwaves, weighing scales and metal shelving with commercial-sized tubs of icing sugar and colourings. But the opposite cabinet was obscured by some much more advanced gear, mounted on wheeled trolleys.
‘You know what this is for?’ Mango asked.
‘Gene editing,’ Charlie said, feeling tense, as she racked her brain to think what use this gear would be in a bakery. ‘Do you use genetically modified yeast?’
Mango smiled. ‘Yeast was one of the first things to be genetically modified; most bakers have been using it for more than a decade. But we buy that in big tubs, off the shelf.’
‘So …’ Charlie said, warily inspecting a large gene-sequencing machine. ‘Is this legal?’
‘For now,’ Mango said. ‘Because of SNor, Congress is rushing through legislation that will require sales and ownership of sequencing and gene-editing equipment to be registered. But, as we stand here, the only thing that’s illegal is unlicensed editing of human DNA.’
‘So you could make something like SNor, in this room, with this equipment?’
‘Easily,’ Mango said. ‘One of the scary things about synthetic viruses is that they’re relatively simple to create. I could swab samples of SNor from public restrooms all over town. Then I could alter a few genes to reshape the outer proteins and make a new SNor strain to which nobody would have immunity.
‘I’m no virus expert, but there will be websites and published scientific papers with all the technical information I’d need, and forums on the dark web where people have already posted prototypes and ideas for new SNor strains.’
‘This is hidden at the back of a bakery,’ Charlie said. ‘So the gear may be legal, but I guess what you’re doing with it isn’t …’
Mango smiled as she propped her bulk against a counter. ‘I originally trained as a physician,’ she began. ‘I drifted into genetic medicine, working on trials of skin cancer therapies in Boston and London. But at the same time the technology that enabled same-sex couples to produce viable embryos was starting to become reliable. So, instead of lesbian partners having to use a male sperm donor, or gay men having to use a woman’s egg, I could fertilise one of Veryan’s eggs using my own DNA.’
‘Pseudo sperm and hijacked eggs,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ve heard about them in the news, but it’s still illegal, right?’
Mango nodded. ‘It remains illegal in the United States, much to the chagrin of same-sex couples who feel it’s their right to mix their genes and produce true offspring the same as everyone else. After Veryan gave birth to our older son, I repeated the procedure for a couple of close friends.
‘Over a couple of years, that developed into a successful, if illegal, business. Besides producing offspring for single-sex couples, I’ve diversified into other genetic modifications. For instance, embryos can be given additional traits, so that children have a certain eye or hair colour, or you can determine a child’s sex, or eliminate single-gene defects that cause serious illness.
‘There’s also gene therapy, which modifies genes in the cells of living humans. Some gene therapies, such as regenerating macular cells to cure some types of blindness, are now routinely performed in hospitals. But less essential treatments, such as those that alter melanin production to give someone a permanent tan, reduce strong body odour, or increase muscular strength or lung capacity in athletes are still illegal.’
‘So you do all that stuff?’ Charlie asked. ‘Super athletes, designer babies …’
‘I started doing extra projects to finance expansion of the Cake Collective,’ Mango admitted. ‘We’ve created a lot of jobs in the community. Veryan and I are proud of Radical Cakes, but it has never made huge profits. We’d never have expanded to premises this size, or moved to our nice house, without the extra income.
‘I have a small, affluent client base. All my patients come through personal recommendation. An actress who wants a permanent perfect tan, or a teen basketball player who wants to be three inches taller and thirty per cent stronger will happily pay twenty to thirty thousand dollars for a personalised course of gene therapy.
‘There are labs in India and China that charge a tenth of what I do, but I have a reputation for excellent work. Botched gene therapy runs a high risk of tumours and other complications, and I’m sure you’ve seen online pictures of designer babies gone wrong.’
‘Horrific,’ Charlie said, curious but also a little scared. ‘Have you ever had any kind of …’
Mango shook her head. ‘I use the latest equipment and do all my work twice over. If two altered DNA samples aren’t a perfect match, I start the entire job from scratch. Even the latest Gen-9 equipment doesn’t eliminate minor errors when you splice DNA, but the chances of the same error occurring in two consecutive samples are thousands to one.
‘But if you send your DNA off to some dark lab in China, pay with Bitcoin and get your gene-therapy drugs back in a padded envelope three weeks later, how can you be sure they’ve done the work properly?’
‘I can’t believe people would take that risk with their bodies,’ Charlie said. ‘What about the mora
l side? Like, it’s basically cheating if an athlete has their genes enhanced? Or cultures where everyone wants male babies, and you end up with an entire generation of horny single men?’
Mango laughed. ‘I like the way you phrase that! I’ll do anything a client reasonably asks, except for z-mods,’ Mango said.
‘I’ve not heard of those,’ Charlie admitted.
‘Z-mods will be huge,’ Mango predicted. ‘They’re a range of gene therapies originally developed to alter brain chemistry in bipolar and severely depressed patients. However, they effectively make a person permanently high. The Z stands for zombie, because that’s what you turn into if you’re always happy.’
‘I’m so out of touch after being locked up,’ Charlie admitted. ‘You can only use the web in the White Boulder library, and only for life skills or a specific school project. And because I was in for bomb-making they let me do college-level math and language courses, but the warden banned me from advanced chemistry or biology.’
‘The genetic patterns for z-mods were only leaked on the dark net six weeks ago,’ Mango explained. ‘They were designed to help people who are institutionalised by mental illness, but I suspect a lot of people will pay a few thousand bucks to live in a permanent state of bliss.’
‘So why are you trusting me with all this?’ Charlie asked.
‘You drifted on to my radar, but I’ve been seeking someone like you for months,’ Mango said. ‘Gene modding work requires precision and intelligence. Pregnancy messes with your body and your brain. Right now, I’m a swollen mess, who gets hot flushes, leaves instant noodles to go cold in the microwave and forgets where she parked her car. And when that’s over I’ll have two tiny humans that will wreck my sleep patterns for years. So, Mango needs a lab assistant who learns fast.’
Charlie felt wary. She’d always loved anything to do with science, and gene editing was the most dangerous and exciting stuff out there. But she’d face years in White Boulder if she was caught.
‘I have to stay out of trouble,’ Charlie said after a few seconds’ thought. ‘From my life so far, I want to be the most boring, ordinary, well-behaved kid. I want to work hard, get top grades and earn a scholarship to a top college.’
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