Taming the Telomeres, a Thriller

by R. N. Shapiro

  "Where am I?" I ask him. I’m in an easy chair of some kind. Tom from the limo is facing me in a chair, and there’s a young lady in a white lab coat seated beside him, studying me, which really freaks me out. Then, I notice my feet are hooked together with some sort of plastic restraints.

  "Why are my feet hooked together? Who are you? Where are we?" The room looks like a large bedroom in someone’s home. “Who’s she?” I ask the guy from the limo.

  "She’s a doctor. Please just calm down,” he says in a reassuring voice. “Everything’s going to be fine. We have no intention of harming you. We both work for the U.S. government, here’s my badge.” He flips it open and shows me an FBI badge.

  By now I know badges mean nothing. “Look, I know anybody can make a fake badge.”

  “This lady beside me is a medical doctor. We had to sedate you before we brought you here so you wouldn’t be able to divulge this location, voluntarily or otherwise.”

  “You mean there was never any Healing Heroes interview? So you are… who are you really?”

  “I just told you. We work with the FBI.”

  “You could be anybody. Look, I’m not scared of you, not after everything I’ve been through. But I don’t have any secret information or anything, so you’re wasting your time."

  Peters glances over at the “doctor” and back at me. “In a moment we’re going to give you quite a shock. That’s why Dr. Walters is here. I want you to prepare yourself."

  "I suppose you're going to make some outrageous demand, for what, money? Or you’re going to draw my blood to study and keep me hostage here?”

  "If I release you, do you promise that you won't run or anything?”

  “Sure, I promise. Just tell me this supposedly shocking news already.”

  The doctor reaches in a small black medical kit and pulls out a pair of hemostat scissors.

  “Please hold your legs still,” she says, and then clips the plastic ankle restraints off my legs.

  I stand up and feel light-headed and unsteady. “You drugged me pretty good.”

  “You were sedated appropriately, but maybe you should sit back down,” the lady doctor suggests.

  I follow her advice and sit back down. "Alright, what is it?"

  Peters then reaches into his sport coat, removes a small hand-held walkie-talkie and says, "The finch has been released, you can bring in the Phoenix."

  Tom and the doctor stand up like they’re waiting for something, but don’t say anything. They give me a really weird look, and that finally scares me. Then the door opens and Uncle Andy and my dad are walking toward me. My dad?!

  “Amanda!” The one who I know is my dad shouts as he dashes toward me.

  That’s when I faint.

  They use some smelling salts on me and eventually I come to.

  “She’s back,” the lady doctor says. “Keep her laying down please.”

  She moves away and I dreamily see my “twin dads” hovering over top of me. Just like my NDE, I think.

  My dad sits down on the bed and starts talking to me. “Amanda, I’ve been waiting for this moment for the last year. They wouldn’t let me contact you at all. I’ve been dying inside.”

  Uncle Andy stands at the foot of the bed with a big smile on his face. For a split second, I think about Dorothy waking up back in Kansas after being in Oz.

  “So, there wasn’t any crash, right? Mom’s here? And Kent, he’s still alive, and all that stuff was just the worst nightmare, right? Tell me it didn’t happen.”

  “I’m not sure she’s totally oriented to her surroundings yet…” the doctor interjects from somewhere, but I just stare into my dad’s eyes, struggling to understand.

  "I couldn’t tell you. I’ve been at this safe house since the day of the crash, they had to believe I was dead.”

  "What about Mom? Where is Mom?"

  My dad doesn’t answer me, and he starts to choke up. I know at that moment I wasn’t dreaming.

  "I'm afraid…she didn't make it. She was on the plane with you." Dad says, standing in front of me now.

  "Then how did you survive? You were on the plane too,” I say grabbing his forearm, still trying to convince myself he’s real.

  “She suffered a brain injury, Mr. Michaels,” the doctor says, walking over to me. “Her memory from before the crash hasn’t come back.”

  "I was on the last shuttle bus from the gate heading out to the plane, but that’s the last thing I recall. They apparently drugged me and diverted the shuttle bus. I want you to know I had no part in any secret plans, and I didn’t find out about the jet crash until weeks later when they finally decided to tell me. I knew nothing about Chinese sabotage until today, when the agent told me.”

  That’s when my dad turns and looks toward the open bedroom door, at another guy observing everything, but not saying anything.

  "But we buried you. They matched your DNA, and Mom’s too."

  Uncle Andy finally speaks up. "I’m sure they have easy ways to match it, Amanda, and you know there were only partial remains recovered in that crash.”

  I notice another woman standing in the doorway next to the other agent. She’s fairly young and pretty, in a flowing maternity dress, maybe seven or eight months pregnant.

  “Amanda, let me introduce you to Odette,” my dad says smiling, as she walks a few more steps into the room.

  I snap like a rubber band stretched clear across a room. My fists pummel my dad all over. I’m flailing and punching him, screaming like a wild banshee.

  “How could you do this? No, no, you couldn’t do this to Mom! You couldn’t. No!”

  Andy tries to grab my right arm with both his hands, but I swing free. My dad’s arms surround his head, he’s just defending himself any way he can, while I keep trying to hit, punch, or hurt him. My brain, my heart, everything is going haywire.

  “Amanda, stop, stop!”

  Peters grabs my left arm, and Uncle Andy finally secures my right arm.

  “Doc, give her something!”

  And I’m out like a light.

  Chapter 121

  Odie

  I just know my brain synapses won’t fire right.

  * * *

  Nooo Sir… Sir!…ohhh…Get… jeez..Sir..Get!.”

  “She’s still not here with us…” a voice says. “Sir…gut…uh…get…uhh…Sir…gut.”

  * * *

  When I start to come to I’m restrained to the bed. I try to flail my arms but can’t. Dad and Uncle Andy are touching my arms. I can hear them speaking, but my drug-addled mind doesn’t understand the words.

  "Sir-get it-sir—uhh—get," My dad seems to be saying, which makes no sense.

  Uncle Andy tries next: "oh-debt is…oh oh debt..sir, uhhh, get it…”

  I try to say "What? Who?" but the words don’t come out.

  They keep trying to get through to me until they are both almost shouting at me from either side of the bed.

  Finally the fog in my brain clears and I can form words again. "What? What are you saying?"

  "Sir-uh-get. She’s a… surrogate.” My dad says. "We used my sperm and your mother’s egg from the D.C. sperm bank. That agent, Mr. Solarez over there, he worked out everything for me. Odette, or ‘Odie’ for short, lives nearby. She's carrying the baby and has agreed to nanny for a year. It’s going to be a boy! I couldn’t contact you to get your opinion, so I had to make the decision on my own. You always wanted a little brother, right?”

  I look over at Agent Solarez, who flashes a smile.

  “Let’s leave them alone now.” Andy whispers to Solarez and Odette, and he pulls the door closed behind them.

  Andy’s not sure, but he thinks he sees a hint of moisture in the corners of Solarez’ eyes.

  “Is that one of the best things you’ve ever done in your life?” He asks Solarez.

  “Maybe. No, probably. I’ll go with probably.”

  Odette smiles. “That was so special. And meaningful. Avec plaisir.” She then takes a s
eat on the couch, leaving Andy and the agent standing in the hall near the bedroom door.

  “Well, what’s the plan now?” Andy asks Solarez.

  “Getting you both home safely. Making sure your brother is happy and working on his research. I don’t know if we can bring him back to the U.S. yet.”

  “Are you saying you’re not sure he can ever come back?” Andy asks.

  “Unfortunately, yes. We’re still not divulging where we are, and it’s critical that you and Amanda not tell anyone that Ron is alive. At least for now. I know that’s going to be hard to do, and we took a huge risk bringing you here. I had to convince the director himself. If we hadn’t found the mole and made the deal he would never have approved this.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Of course I’m serious.”

  “A couple other questions. Kent Perless. You know the deal we made and how I represented his father?”

  “Look, he was just a kid who got caught up in something much more dangerous than he knew.”

  “Wasn’t working for anyone?” Andy asks.

  “Nope.”

  “Stein wouldn’t tell me everything about Pletcher, if he was your agent, or whether the Chinese…”

  “There wasn’t ever really a Pletcher. An agent became Pletcher, but we essentially created him to help us expose the mole. We created a fictional patent application, and your brother had no idea what he was even meeting Pletcher about. We based his persona on a 30-year-old Brit who died suddenly. We needed them – the mole and whoever he worked for – to believe someone else was going to acquire the technology, and Pletcher was the broker. When your niece and Owlsley went to Manhattan, we had to kill him off, or should I say, kill off his persona. It actually helped us expose their mole, through monitoring their communications, when Pletcher died.”

  “Unbelievable. They showed him on TV, a headshot and everything. Wow, that’s crazy.”

  “Yeah, building an entire persona takes a lot of effort.” Solarez says.

  “What do you remember from the crash?” Dad asks me. He knows nothing except that I survived, they never supplied him any details.

  “This rescue guy thought I was dead, but he pulled me out of the broken up fuselage, that’s what they tell me. I had a broken neck, so I had to wear this metal halo thing, and I suffered a brain injury that gave me total amnesia about everything before. I still have flashbacks about Mom being with me on the jet, of this guy Kent I met, and about four Dorothys. Do you remember when I dressed up as Dorothy, with three other girls? Like, for Halloween?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Okay, doesn’t matter. Hey, did you have a home lab with mosquitoes?”

  “Yes and no. I had a home office with some lab stuff. I never had mosquitoes, but I did have fruit flies.”

  “Oh, fruit flies. Did they glow in the dark?”

  “I painted some of them, and I looked at them under a black light.”

  “I knew it! It was in my NDE. Why did you make them glow?”

  “I told Steven I wouldn’t discuss my research with you,” he says lowering his voice to a whisper, “but, I was tracking their lifespans. I would spray different batches of them different colors so I could tell if some were living longer than others. I extended their lifespans by 50%.”

  “So, making cells last longer and stuff. That’s pretty exciting.”

  “It goes way beyond cancer cells. I figured out how to transfuse stem cell chromosomes, and let’s just say there are all kinds of bio-medical applications. We have a lot more to learn, especially about longevity of the human cells that are treated.”

  My dad then admits he treated me with stem cells and rapamycin in the elixir of blood treatment he concocted.

  “You used me as your human guinea pig?”

  “No. I transfused myself first for months. Oh, I want you to begin taking enzyme and nutrient pills regularly, Solarez has them.”

  My dad gives me the longest hug, and tells me he loves me. I then launch into how I met Kent, me buying a horse farm, that I was certifiably crazy for a while, and I just can’t stop talking. I cover everything I can think of.

  "Dad, how are you going to handle a baby? And when will you come back…?"

  "Stop worrying. Leave that to me. Solarez will help me."

  Finally, after we talk out everything, we go find Andy and Solarez, and my dad asks me, “Oh, would you like to name the baby? You can start thinking of names.”

  “I already have one, Dad.” I say.

  “Really?”

  Chapter 122

  Convergence

  Everything started getting a lot better after that, even though I didn’t know exactly when I’d see my dad again. Solarez promised to keep me posted.

  About a month later, I drove up to D.C. from Charlottesville. David took the Amtrak train down from MIT for the big kickoff picnic for the Broken Halo charity. I picked him up at Union Station. I don't know why, but David really loves trains. Everybody else flies. We did have a magical time together on the train going up to New York. I wonder if that’s why?

  I was sitting in one of the chairs waiting for the train to get in, watching the people all trying to get somewhere. I knew it was going to kill me not to be able to tell David everything I had found out since we were practically soulmates. He actually asked me if we were soulmates in one of our many online chats. I replied that we had a “special connection.” I didn't hear from him for almost two days, and I knew I had hurt his feelings. Honestly, I just wasn't sure at first, but the more I thought about it the more I felt bad and I wanted to take it back. I mean, how many soulmates can you have in one life? Isn’t there a limit or something? I had already lost one. So, that’s what I was stressing about inside.

  Even though I couldn't tell him my biggest secrets, we still had a lot of catching up to do on the drive out to Middleburg. Like how Kyle Perless had refused to buy back the farm from me, even though he now had the money to do it. However, he did take me up on the offer to make music part of Broken Halo, and he agreed to run it. So we now had horse therapy and music. Just about anybody who is down and out can qualify – drug addicts in rehab, people with brain injuries. I told him I hate to only come and volunteer every few weekends, but I’ll be around a lot more once the summer begins.

  Then we got to a touchy subject for me, about Kent. I told him Uncle Andy found out Kent was totally innocent when he negotiated the whistleblower thing. David told me he had known that already, ever since he scoured everything on his laptop.

  Jon and his roommate were coming up to visit him at MIT soon, David said, to catch a Red Sox game in Boston. He watched for my reaction, but I just kept looking at the road. I wouldn’t take that bait.

  He wanted to know who was going to be at Crossroads when we got there, so I told him just about everybody. I explained about the Broken Halo Charity’s board that Uncle Andy had put together: himself, Barbara Smithson, from Loudoun Memorial, a rehab doctor, an occupational therapist, and Dr. Lucent. Lucent wouldn’t be at the farm for the kickoff though because he was on a signing tour for his new NDE book, the one that included me.

  Then David asked if I’d heard from Britt. I turned down the music – I want to say it was the Shins song, “Caring is Creepy” – and I said yeah, she had texted me one time. Some weird five-digit fake number, so I assumed she was overseas. She just said hello, she was thinking about me and would keep in touch. Not sure if I really believed her, I told him. David said she was the best actor ever, she should have been in Hollywood. He asked if I ever did any secret superhero stuff, and we laughed.

  We finally got to Crossroads. I drove up the long gravel drive and there were cars parked everywhere, so I just pulled all the way up to the front near the big pasture like, well, like I lived there. I didn't want to get out right away though since we were having such a great conversation. It was so nice, the windows were rolled down, allowing the familiar scent of grilling and pasture grass to come wafting into the c
ar.

  David asked me if I knew what I wanted to do yet. He meant like in college, and I told him, no, I had no idea. He said that it’s crazy at MIT, they do job fairs even for freshmen. Every big science and technology company shows up. He dug around in his pocket and flipped through some of the cards. He said the most bizarre one was that the FBI was there, and he pulled out a business card and held it between us. He brought it to show to Uncle Andy to ask him if he knew the guy, and what he thought about an internship there.

  * * *

  It was Steven Solarez’ official FBI business card. I almost lost it, but turned quickly to look at something out my window—there was nothing there of course – and I recovered.

  We both notice a large van has pulled up and parked near us. The attendant opens the side door and a built-in ramp lowers an older woman in her wheelchair to the ground. A young girl, maybe 10 or so, hops down from inside the van.

  I reach for my door, and so does David.

  As soon as we get past the front of my car, I see Uncle Andy walking across the pasture grass and he recognizes the little girl from the van running toward him as fast as she can. She wraps herself around both his legs and Andy beams. We are just within earshot, and I hear her asking Andy to show her the horses.

  “Where are the horses, Mister? Did you see Grammy? She’s right over there,” Gracie says, pointing. “She loves horses too, Mister.”

  I give my uncle a hug myself and he shakes David’s hand and asks how the train trip was. Gracie begins to dart away toward the stables. Suddenly she stops and twirls her small body back to face us.

  “Did you save that glow rock I gave you at the park, Mister?”

  “Sure did.” Uncle Andy says.

  “Am I supposed to remember her from before?” I ask, watching her run across the gravel driveway.

  “That’s a good question,” he answers.