by Shanon Hunt
He made no sound as he tumbled, and she didn’t hear him hit the sandy bottom of the ravine. The night was silent except for the melodic, liberating howl of the wolves in the distance.
She rubbed her belly as the fetus shifted, dropping lower in her abdomen, now content.
“The earth will be purified.” Tears filled her eyes. She’d never felt so deeply devoted to the vision of the Colony. “As a pure, I am responsible for the purification of the Colony and the propagation of purity into the world. This is the Father’s will for me.”
She opened her eyes to the sound of potato chips crunching.
The guard was leaning back with one hand rustling in the chips bag. His tablet rested against his computer monitor, the image of a sword between two halves of a watermelon splashed across it. His eyes flashed to her for just a second before returning to his game.
“Oof, I must’ve drifted off while I was trying to put all the pieces together,” she said, pushing her hair back and offering a lazy smile. “You know, I suspect those girls were just looking for attention. I’m glad I didn’t sound the alarm.”
He nodded and shoveled a handful of crumbs into his mouth.
“I’ll just let myself out, then. Enjoy your game—that one’s a classic.”
As she pushed her chair under the desk, her eyes landed on a black man on one of the screens. He wore a lab coat, but his unruly Afro and big round glasses were unmistakable: Isaac. He carried a small bag—dinner, maybe?—and badged himself into the heavy-looking door of an unmarked gray brick building.
The view changed, and she cursed under her breath. She sat back down heavily and fiddled with the strap of her sandal as she waited for the cycle to come around again. Why was he in a lab coat now? He had no medical training whatsoever. What could he be doing that required a GS-5 rank?
The screen switched back to Isaac’s building. Her eyes darted from one monitor to the next. She traced the path to the door; it led to a dirt road. A wide-angle screen from across the road showed a handful of picnic tables and off to the right, just a hint in the corner of the screen, was the entrance to a sports field. The ball field lay between the purification cluster and the science cluster, which is where James headed off to every morning. Her eyes bounced between the screens until she located the building, small and set away from the rest of the campus.
Mr. Potato Chips had returned to slicing fruit on his tablet with a greasy fingertip.
“Excuse me, do you know what this building is?” Layla pointed to the anonymous cinder block building just before it flashed away to the next view.
“Mm?” He glanced briefly at the monitor and then tapped New Game on his tablet. “That’s salvage.”
Layla heaved herself out of the chair to cover her discomfiture. Despite her relationship with James and her importance to the Colony, she’d only heard that name once before.
Don’t fuck up, Catie, or you’ll end up in salvage.
26
October 2022, Mexico
It had been a long day. James gazed down from his sixth-floor corner office at the sea of scientists and subjects flooding out of the research center to return to their residences. He was strict about shift end, insisting on a security sweep to ensure no one remained in the building after six p.m. His overachieving research and medical teams couldn’t be trusted to leave on time.
Work-life balance is a central value here at the Colony. Burnout results in a higher likelihood of illness, higher emotional stress, and lower productivity.
His Lights Out program had not been warmly embraced. Many physicians preferred to work at night when it was a little quieter, and most had never in their professional lives been constrained by set work hours. But James had been relentless, even authorizing security to physically remove staff members from the building if they resisted. It had taken a couple of months, but the culture had shifted and he’d eventually received feedback that staffers were pleased with the new way of life. They were using the fitness facilities, eating better, and getting eight hours of sleep.
And as they slept, his second shift, the reversion team, toiled away at trying to solve what seemed to be an impossible scientific problem.
He glanced at the clock. Ten minutes to six. He sifted through the folders on his desk, pulled out the one labeled NIH-Jennings and dropped it into a drawer, and spread the others across his desk. Site updates, mostly—case counts, carrier profiles, and observational data, the kind of things Stewart would be looking for if he happened to replay their short meeting and zoom in on James’s desk. Managing Stewart’s relentless suspiciousness and overactive mind was a significant part of James’s job. He made a final sweep of his office, then flipped through his notes. Stewart didn’t have the patience for science babble, which is why he refused to receive updates directly from the medical team. If they can explain it to you in a way that you can explain it to me, then I can trust your recommendations.
James was fortunate; Stewart did trust his recommendations, wholeheartedly. So far, anyway.
He stretched his neck and settled behind his desk.
At six o’clock, prompt as usual, he engaged the video conferencing screen, and a full-sized Stewart Hammond appeared barely five feet in front of him, as if he were seated on the other side of the desk. There was nothing cutting-edge about the technology—it had been around for decades—but James didn’t like it. That close, Stewart could see any drop of nervous sweat, any twitch, any other physical sign that something wasn’t right.
James grinned. “You look a little rough this morning. Big night of Scotch with the boys?”
“Christ, you can’t believe how these guys drink. All night long. And what am I gonna do? I can’t excuse myself and leave. That’d be rude. And the whole cultural thing about keeping your guests’ glasses full? All true.”
James knew it well. He’d handled the negotiations with China to launch the Chinese carrier program; Stewart was only in Beijing to celebrate its early success. James was all too happy to allow Stewart to take the credit. He had more important things to do.
“Any issues out there?”
“They fought for more autonomy, just like you said they would. They want to develop their own protocols, and they don’t want Eugenesis oversight. But I think I’ve been able to rein them in.”
The China colony had been one of the more difficult ones to establish, but it was by far the most important. Due to the high population, the Chinese authorities turned a blind eye to even the most aggressive recruiting efforts. Recruits, especially young females, could be bought cheaply from their families, and the sacrifice was viewed as honorable.
“So how did the carrier summit go?” Stewart asked.
Small talk was over. James rocked back in his chair and casually crossed his legs. “Quite well. Our recruiting efforts have really picked up lately. We’ve managed to shorten the induction program overall, and we’ve established a fast-track path that can get a recruit ready for implantation within weeks if she’s physically healthy and enculturates quickly. We’re finding our best recruits in the poverty-stricken areas, although that’s also where we find the most disease and drug abuse.”
Stewart nodded soberly, but James could see the joy burbling underneath. The carrier program had been Stewart’s dream from the beginning, even though it had gotten off to a rocky start.
“We’ll need to ramp up the adoption program,” James continued. “I talked with Madeline already. She’s expanding her reach to influencers in Eastern Europe and Russia. Getting the offspring into those countries is a bit more difficult. We’ll need government support.”
He was stalling. Stewart had a hard stop to their call in thirty minutes. He hoped they’d be cut off before he had to talk about the praefuro strain. “Also, we’re looking into an observation method so that we don’t have to rely on self-reporting from the placement families. One idea is to send an au pair—”
“And what about the praefuro strain? Did they figure it out?”
“How can we have the best geneticists in the world and the most advanced technology, and not have these answers?”
It was a rhetorical question, and James didn’t answer. But the truth was they didn’t have the best geneticists in the world. Not yet.
He changed the subject to one that would carry him out on a positive note. “But we’ve made some progress understanding the phenotype itself. We believe the rage syndrome is due to fetal microchimerism.”
“Oh, no.” Stewart flopped back in disgust. “You’re not going geek on me, are you?”
“Nah, it’s a simple concept.”
“That’s why you’re my man.”
James grinned. “During pregnancy—all pregnancies, actually, not just our carriers—the fetus sheds stem cells that pass through the placenta and are taken up in the mother’s bloodstream. The fetal cells are carried all over the body, including to the brain, where some of them turn into fully developed neurons and are integrated into the mother’s brain. What’s interesting about our situation is that these stem cells, which contain the modified DNA, appear to be replacing the carrier’s normal functioning cells, which then results in this rage syndrome.”
Stewart whistled. “Christ, that’s right out of a horror movie. Babies that hijack the brains of their mothers.”
James laughed. “Well, let’s not describe it that way to the council. A better analogy is cancer metastasis. Cells from the primary cancer tumor break away and travel through the blood or lymph system to create new tumors on other organs. This process works the same way.”
Stewart nodded his approval. He liked analogies. He endlessly communicated with governments and world leaders, many of whom didn’t speak English and required a translator. A metaphor that all people understood was a huge bridge across a language gap.
“But if you don’t fully understand the genetics,” Stewart asked, “how can you figure out which furos have the rage syndrome?”
James despised Stewart’s nickname for the carriers of the praefuro strain, but he overlooked it as usual. “Exactly the problem. But we have some ideas of what behaviors to look for, and as soon as we see early signs—appetite changes, hostility, confusion—”
“So a typical pregnancy.” Stewart rocked forward and chuckled.
James grinned at the joke for the sake of his boss, but in reality, what they were dealing with was no laughing matter. “We run some tests and isolate them.”
“And the offspring?”
James went back to his notes. “We’ve observed their behavior to be surprisingly homogeneous. We haven’t seen anything noteworthy besides the heightened awareness and the neurologic anomalies. Lack of crying, lack of emotion, no imitation of facial expressions. Many of the signs of autism, except they have excellent visual tracking and high engagement in their surroundings, including exceptional eye contact. In that way, they’re similar to the sensus offspring. For now, we’re keeping the praefuro offspring with their carriers in the den. There’s a bond there that we’re not yet ready to disturb. We need more time to observe and gather data.”
He finally raised his eyes to find Stewart leaning in, as if over his desk. Even though the video screen was five full feet away, it still felt as though his personal space was being violated.
He sat back.
“How much more time?” Stewart asked.
It wasn’t a question so much as a reminder that his patience was running out. Stewart had been all too clear about packaging the praefuro as a military model. Full characterization of the strain, including predictability, was necessary before negotiations could begin, and Stewart wanted it wrapped in a pretty pink bow yesterday. When you had as much money and influence as Stewart Hammond, you weren’t accustomed to having to wait for anything.
James sat up straight and answered with conviction. “Two, three months. At least.” He expected to know if the praefuro strain was viable a lot sooner than that, but he needed the buffer.
Stewart’s jaw tightened, as expected, and James was ready. He waited until Stewart opened his mouth to speak and cut him off. “A misrepresentation of what we’re dealing with here could damage our credibility. We have no room for error. And meanwhile, the other strains in development are already gathering a lot of interest at the top levels. We don’t want to lose the trust of our buyers.” If there was one thing James understood about Stewart, it was how much the man valued his reputation.
Stewart’s facial muscles softened a bit. “Absolutely. I would never suggest we cut corners on a product as important as this. Keep up the good work.” He checked his wrist. “I’ve got a plane to catch. Take care.”
The video went dark.
Navigating meetings with Stewart was becoming more and more challenging, but if James stepped down from providing the updates, Stewart would go around him, and that would be a death sentence to his unauthorized reversion program. Still, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep Stewart at bay.
He looked up at a knock on his door.
It opened just wide enough for a head to fit through. “I have the analysis you asked for. The security guard, Ortiz.”
James nodded, and his lead research manager set the report on the desk. He could read the answer on the woman’s drawn face, but he asked anyway. “So?”
“Nothing. No genetic mutations, no illness, no diseases.”
He studied her for a moment, hoping for a but we did find something else. No such luck. He dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his temples. It didn’t make sense. “You’re a hundred percent sure? There’s not even the slightest chance you might’ve missed something?”
Naturally, his top geneticist answered as any good scientist would. “With the genetic analysis technology we have today, which is to my knowledge the most accurate system on the planet, I can tell you with confidence that the subject had no genetic or health abnormalities whatsoever.”
He let his breath out. “Thank you for running it. Twice. Sorry to be so skeptical.”
“Not a problem. Any time.” She looked at her watch. “The reversion team is coming in now. I better get back down there.”
James gave her a wave. “Yeah, of course. Remind them how grateful I am that they’re willing to work the night shift. I know that’s not easy. Hopefully, we’ll get it right soon.” He wanted to say something to push her harder, to force her and her lab to work faster, smarter. He wouldn’t be able to keep his reversion program a secret for much longer.
“You bet.” She pulled the door closed behind her.
James looked down at the single paper in front of him. He didn’t know what he was reading, just a whole bunch of acronyms and numbers, but he fully trusted his top-notch research team.
What he didn’t trust was everything else: Stewart’s judgment. Eugenesis’ oversight. And most of all, he did not now, nor would he ever, trust the praefuro model.
His eyes shot to the single framed picture on his desk, the ceremony uniting him and his beautiful girl, never more beautiful than the day she’d gazed into his eyes and said, I’m forever yours in purity and perfection.
“You made a mistake, my beautiful girl, you made a huge mistake. Tell me why you did it, Lay. Help me understand.” He pursed his lips and growled at the inscrutable analysis in front of him. “And what about you, you cockroach? What are you hiding? What did you do to my girl?”
The paper didn’t answer hi
m either, so he unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk and dropped it next to a handheld radio with a Scotch-taped label reading Ortiz, a ziplock bag of short black hairs, and a specimen container of dried orange clay from the path behind their cabin that had somehow turned up on the front doormat.
Layla was in trouble. Serious trouble.
He drifted distractedly to the big window. On most days, he stood at that window and admired the elegance—the purity—of the perfect sphere as it sank behind the horizon, igniting the desert sky with brilliant reds and oranges. Tonight, however, dark, ominous clouds had barreled in, a warning that storms were imminent.
27
March 2024, California
Nick had been surveying the Boulevard Bistro from the coffee bar across the street for over an hour, as the Monday morning crowd began to thin. Jenna was certain she’d seen the recruiters conducting other interviews in the outdoor dining area on multiple occasions.
It’s not like I’m stalking the place, she said defensively. It’s on my dog walk route. I go by it at lunchtime pretty much every day. And she insisted they weren’t casual lunches. The recruits always have that uncomfortable posture people get when they’re being questioned. You know, arms shoved between their knees, deer-in-the-headlights look.
Nick barely slept last night. The enormity of EGNX had his brain churning. An unknown organization with top-secret government designation, who he’d alleged was responsible for illegal genetic experimentation on human subjects, was also connected to—maybe even implicated in—the development and release of the virus.
The suspicious deaths of two cops and the disappearance of a biotech CEO and his lover now seemed like a story for a high school yearbook.
He swallowed the last of his lukewarm coffee and crossed the street to the bistro. It was a long shot, but it was an obvious starting point that wouldn’t raise unnecessary suspicion.
An overly charismatic host sashayed over as soon as he stepped through the door. “Hey, there! Breakfast today?”
