The enigmatic businessman, Chris thought. Full of mystery, lacking in answers.
“The work would involve cellular delivery of genetic material for medical therapeutics,” the man said. “You would be a bioengineer, responsible for research and product development. How does that sound?”
“I’ll need a little more time to think about it. That’s okay with you, right?”
“Given your unique background, I don’t think you’ll be able to find a better job.”
“My background? You mean the fact that I spent eight months locked up with a bunch of killers and thieves?”
“No,” the man said. “I’m talking about the particular charges that led to those eight months. If you had been in prison for assault and battery, your odds of getting another job in the industry would be more favorable. Companies won’t touch you with a ten-foot pole since you got caught stealing technology from Ingenomics and perverting it so you could sell illegal genetic enhancements.”
Chris scowled. “I didn’t just ‘pervert’ those genes and the delivery vectors. I made them better.”
For the first time, the stranger smiled. It was a slow, subtle curl of his lips that may have been mistaken for a slight tremor, but it was a sincere smile. “I know you did. That’s why I want you to accept this offer.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, but I’ll need time to consider all of this.”
Fog whipped around the car as they approached Route 40 into Baltimore. He recognized the looming apartment buildings surrounding a strip mall that advertised all-you-can-eat Chinese and sushi at Forever Yum. The restaurant hosted the usual salty and greasy smells along with the aroma of rubber from the neighboring car repair shop. His stomach rumbled at the mere thought of room-temperature California rolls and dried-out lo mein noodles. Might as well be a Michelin-rated restaurant compared to the food he had eaten in prison.
“This isn’t the best way to my place,” Chris said. “Sure you put in the right destination?”
“I’m not dropping you off yet. We’re making a stop for dinner.”
“Dinner and busting me out of prison. You trying to get in my pants? I don’t swing that way, buddy.”
Chris imagined his mysterious benefactor rolling his eyes behind those opaque shades. The man shook his head. “I haven’t quite expounded on the full terms of my offer. I want to make them quite clear for your consideration. A short car ride wouldn’t do it justice.”
“Just so you know, I don’t have any money and don’t have a job yet, so I hope you’re buying.” Chris grinned, aware that the man would not reciprocate.
The businessman’s lips tightened. “I’m surprised that you’ve maintained such a sense of humor when you almost died a few days ago. You do realize that there’s still a hit out on you, don’t you?”
Chris’s smile vanished. Memories of the attack in prison flooded his thoughts. Whoever possessed the power to incite such a riot had the same, if not more, power in the streets of Baltimore. His stomach grumbled, and nausea squeezed it. He wasn’t sure if he’d be hungry for dinner anymore.
***
Seated at Old Ellicott Brewery and Grill, Chris probed the chunk of bread on his plate with a knife. He sat across from the pale man in a wood booth, a candle situated on a brass centerpiece between them. A yellow haze cloaked the room as the candle flames flickered and caused shadows to dance across Chris’s plate.
The businessman placed his sunglasses in the breast pocket of his suit jacket. His eyes were as calculating as they were cold.
“Are you celebrating something tonight?” the waitress asked. “Promotion? Anniversary, maybe?”
Chris let out a slight but unenthusiastic guffaw. “Freedom.”
“Ah, patriotic,” the waitress said. She winked. “Good to see that still exists.”
When she asked for their drink orders, the businessman requested a glass of ice water with lemon.
Chris gazed at the menu, overwhelmed by the options. Where his choices had been limited to eating or not eating just a day before, he could now choose from over a hundred beers, draft and bottled.
The waitress smiled but tapped her finger across the ordering tablet.
“Uh, what kind of pale ales do you have on tap?” he asked.
“We have a Beaver Dam Blue from—”
“I’ll have that.”
“Can I have an ID?”
“You flatter me,” Chris said. “I’m thirty-five.”
“I never know, nowadays. It’s 2058, after all. You could be eighty-two or eighteen and still look the same, you know what I mean?”
He nodded. Working in biotech and around other researchers who specialized in so-called anti-aging therapies, he understood her predicament. He fumbled in his pocket, but he had forgotten his old comm card in the Lincoln. In prison, he hadn’t needed an ID, and his old habit of carrying the card around had been lost. He needed to rekindle it now that he was back in the real world. “I’m sorry. It’s in the car. I can go get it, though.” Chris looked at the businessman, whose expression remained steadfast and stern. “Or not. Never mind.”
Placing a hand on his shoulder, the waitress leaned in and winked. “Nah, you’re okay.” Her breath tickled his ear, and he watched her hips sway as she moved on to a couple seated at another booth.
He flipped the pages of the menu. All the words, the dishes, even the select pictures blended together in a mottled stew of choices. He struggled to pick out an entrée. His mind wandered back to prison. Corrections officers told him when to eat, the cafeteria workers slopped on food whether he wanted it or not, and strict schedules prescribed the allotted recreation time and when to shower. Choices were yet another aspect of life outside prison that he would need to relearn.
The businessman sat with his hands clasped on the table. “Get the venison, sides of garlic mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus.”
“You know, I still haven’t decided if you’re going to kill—”
“Are you all ready?” The waitress dropped their drinks on the table. After taking their orders, she floated away.
Leaning across the table, Chris whispered. “I don’t know if you are planning on killing me or if you’re telling the truth about this job. When do I get to know what the hell is actually going on?”
The gray-suited man’s eyes bored straight into Chris’s.
“Nothing?”
“I can’t tell you more. You’re right to think you’re still in danger, but I can promise you it isn’t from me.”
“You keep saying that,” Chris said. “Why not explain to me why you want to give me a job?”
“I already told you: your skill in genetic enhancements has me impressed.”
“Bullshit.”
The couple dining near them quieted. Both turned toward Chris in feigned concern.
“I’m not the only PhD qualified for a job like that,” Chris said. “In fact, there are far more researchers out there looking for jobs than there are available positions. I’m sure there are plenty of people more brilliant than me that would do twice as well as I could. Stop playing hard to get and tell me why you want me.”
The man’s lips trembled slightly. He might have been about to smile again, but the flickering candlelight cast shadows that obscured his features. “I’ll tell you, Mr. Morgan. You are in a unique position. As one of the conditions of your parole, you will be required to find work that is commensurate with your education and experience, but also within reporting distance to your parole officer in Baltimore. I have just such a job.”
Chris opened his mouth to speak but was silenced by a single skinny, pale finger.
“And I know that you will be desperate for such a position. Not only that, but you have made it clear you aren’t bound by state or federal law when it comes to your work.”
The businessman’s eyes glowed in the candlelight like a cat’s at dusk. And he pounced.
“If you accept this offer—and I am sure that you will—I will ask you
to do things that are illegal. If you don’t...” The man raised his shoulders in a gesture of nonchalant apathy. “That’s your choice, but I would no longer be obligated to protect your life.”
Chapter 5
Chris strode up the stairs to his Fed Hill condo off of South Charles Street. The condo was located on the third floor of a building that his landlord claimed used to be a factory in the early 1900s. A century and half since then and a cycle of renovations made the building look no different than the complexes that stood sentinel along the highways and roads stretching between DC and Baltimore.
The morning sun usually burned off the blanket of fog that enveloped the neighborhood. Such persistent haze seemed like a harbinger of his uncertain future.
His comm card held up to the lock, he opened the door to his condo.
Shaking his head, he rolled his eyes. He needed to stop reading so much into the world, as though it contained the same symbolism and foreshadowing as the books he had subsisted on for almost a year. The fog was no omen.
In his right hand, he carried his boxed-up food from dinner. He laid the leftovers and the single bag of belongings from prison on a coffee table. The air in the two-bedroom condo smelled of mold and neglect. With lights on, the condo still seemed gloomy. A layer of dust covered the hardwood floor.
He sat on the couch. A cloud of dust puffed up. Punching a command into his comm card, he adjusted the window opacity in the room. The windows transitioned from a dark shadow to an invisible barrier that the fog condensed against.
Take the job, do what I say when I say it, or your life is as good as forfeit.
Chris had been shaken and had told the businessman again that he needed time to think it over. Everything that had happened in prison frightened him, but now he worried what freedom might entail for his safety. Even if the threats were empty, even if the man didn’t intend to have him killed, Chris was lost. He needed a decent job. Plenty of biotech companies called the area home. Most specialized in tissue engineering, genetic treatments, or a combination of the two. But how many would hire an ex-con who’d stolen company technology to sell on the street?
He had considered his sentencing lucky: two years instead of the maximum forty for his original charges. The police had screwed up the chain of custody with most of the evidence, and they had only convicted him on an antiquated “intent to distribute contraband” charge.
The damage had been done, though. His criminal records showed the original charges. Any potential employer worth his or her salt would be able to scrounge up enough information from the archived news streams by searching out Chris’s name in conjunction with Ingenomics and his convictions.
As he stared at the white plastic box of leftovers on the coffee table, his stomach turned over again. Anxiety and nausea overcame him, and he ran into the bathroom. He threw up into the toilet. His arms across the cool porcelain, he gagged again.
When the nausea passed, he turned on the sink to wash out his mouth. The faucet spat stagnant water and sputtered until a clear stream poured into his hands. He splashed the water into his mouth and across his face. With a washcloth and soap, he removed the greasy polish from his skin.
He wanted to talk to somebody, anybody. He wanted to call Veronica, but he worried what she would say to him now, how she would berate him. How it might hurt her.
Calling Rajeev or Phil from Ingenomics would be out of the question. Though he had worked with both and enjoyed their weekly happy hours, neither had been aware of Chris’s extracurricular activities until his arrest. Embarrassment prevented him from speaking to them now.
Jordan. Jordan had stood behind him throughout his entrepreneurial undertakings in illegal genetic enhancements. But all contact with him had ceased as soon as Chris was arrested. Besides, Jordan also shared far too much interest in activities that might land Chris back in prison.
He flopped onto the scarlet couch in his living room. Sprawled out, he stared up at the ceiling and wondered what his next move should be. His parole officer had scheduled a meeting about a month from his release, and he needed to demonstrate an active job search. He would first update his resume and then send out cover letters and applications.
But the condo felt too rotten, too uncomfortable. He’d cleaned it the night before entering Fulton, but that hadn’t stopped whatever vermin had moved in with the layer of dust that lived there rent free. Finding a job could wait until tomorrow. Besides, the smell of vomit saturated his clothes, and since leaving Fulton, he had felt the prison grime that stuck to his skin like the dust clung to his apartment.
A shower seemed more pressing a concern.
***
Steam rolled around him, and he closed his eyes in the shower. Despite his return home, Chris retained the eerie sensation that someone watched him. He shivered and shook his head as beads of water smacked against the shower curtain. He needed to get used to a shower that didn’t contain twenty other men.
A muffled clang interrupted his thoughts. At least, he thought he’d heard the sound. Paranoia crept deep within him, a learned survival instinct. He turned off the shower faucet and listened for another sound.
“Hello?” His voice sounded more timid than he would have liked, so he tried again. “Hello? Anybody there?”
No response. Shampoo, slightly gelled, bubbled in his hair. He rubbed his head and body with a towel that smelled like the must in the rest of the condo. Once out of the shower, he slid up the boxers that he had dropped on the bathroom floor.
He crept out and into the narrow hallway. Bending into the main bedroom, he turned the lights on.
Nothing moved. Everything looked just as undisturbed as when he had entered the apartment.
Down the hall where he had left the lights on, nothing seemed amiss. His holoscreen remained off with just a minuscule red light that glowed to let him know it received power. His leftovers and prison bag sat on the coffee table in front of the couch.
The door to the second bedroom, his home office and makeshift laboratory, was cracked open, but no lights glowed from within. He crept up to it. Holding his breath, he nudged the door. It creaked open. Light from the hall sifted into its corners.
Something moved in the shadows.
Chris shoved the door open and held up his fists. He flicked on the light with his left hand, his right hand still clenched. White light illuminated the room.
A brown mouse scurried from a corner and squeezed under the closet doors.
His heart still thudded against his rib cage, but he let out a slight guffaw. The guffaw inspired another until he erupted into uncontrollable laughter. His anxiety evaporated as he saw the tipped-over glass sculpture of the U.S.S. Constellation he had bought at a gift shop in the Inner Harbor. Little glints of light reflected on the edges of the trinket from its resting place next to a holoscreen module on his desk. He leaned against the door frame as he laughed. With one hand, he kept himself upright and used the other to hold the healing wounds that throbbed on his side.
All laughter ceased when he saw the footprints imprinted in the dust on the carpet.
Chapter 6
Chris gazed around the room. He disregarded the scared mouse in his closet. The electric central heater, tucked away within a utility closet down the hall, buzzed as it churned warm air into the heating ducts throughout the condo, making him jump. His eyes darted to the doorway of the bathroom. In his pants strewn on the floor, his comm card lay in a pocket.
Besides the thrumming heater, the whoosh of air above him, and his thudding heart, no other sounds haunted the condo. He retrieved the comm card and went back to the second bedroom, where he knelt to examine the footprints. Two distinct patterns appeared in the footprints, and both sets shared dimensions that dwarfed his feet. A thin layer of dust caked the prints. They weren’t fresh. Still, his heartbeat didn’t obey what his mind told him.
Standing, he wondered if he should call the police. Someone had been in his condo while he’d been at his extended stay
in Fulton. Images of the businessman telling a couple anonymous goons to dig up more information on Chris flashed through his mind. Worse, the men that had been in here might be connected to the people who’d tried to kill him. Desperate to drive the burgeoning anxiety from his mind, he dismissed those thoughts. Maybe the police had scrounged around in here. Still, he’d never been notified of a warrant issued for another sweep. Dirty cops looking for dirty answers to keep him in prison?
In that case, it might not help to call the authorities. Hell, there might be something in the office that he had forgotten. Call the police and ask them to search his condo for evidence of a home invasion when they’d never find the culprits, but they might find evidence that could land him back in prison?
Not ideal.
Instead, he snapped pictures. Just in case, he’d file them away as his own personal evidence for this trespassing. The footprints were concentrated around the filing cabinets near his desk and around the workbench now devoid of the home lab equipment that had been confiscated in the initial search and seizure when his operations were uncovered.
Ring marks and dents marred the wooden surface of the worktable. Only the lone MakerSix 3D printer and an old holoscreen sat on it. Awfully generous of the police to leave those here for him, his attorney had said. If they’d known what he had been able to do with the printer, they never would have left it. In fact, there might still be residue from the DNA-based materials he’d used with the printer.
Better not call the police.
For a moment, he smiled to himself, recalling the ingenuity of using DNA as a biomaterial. He had not been a pioneer in this field. Far from it. His work had been inspired by an academic researcher whose work had delved into printed DNA-based materials as early as 2013 but had gone neglected by the biotech industry.
The device had not been tampered with as far as Chris could tell. The filing cabinets appeared to contain most of the paper copies of his work, legal documents, and patent applications—minus, of course, the documents still in the Baltimore PD evidence room.
The Black Market DNA Series: Books 1-3 Page 3
