Chris turned her wrist over in his hand, massaging her palm with his thumb. He did not look into her eyes. “I’m not sure yet.” He held her hand as his eyes explored her pale skin between the white scars. A vessel in her wrist protruded, reminding him of its hidden contents. “I think I might start my own business.” He looked up at her, a new light in his eyes. “Yes, I think I’ll give it a go as an entrepreneur.”
He sat up straighter and grinned. “Jordan mentioned that he would be willing to invest in me.” Shaking his head, Chris chortled. “I don’t know why the man has so much faith in me, but I’d like to think it’s for a good reason.”
Veronica smiled again. The jubilant innocence returned to her face. Her cheeks flushed with a red warmth and her teeth appeared to shine. Her face, small scars still evident on her cheek and high up on her forehead, appeared beautiful, optimistic to him.
“What did you have in mind?”
Chris took both her hands in his. He’d never told Jordan or the police what he had told Ben Kaufman. The police, of course, knew Veronica had been tortured but had fallaciously connected it with efforts by Tracy’s group to find out if he had told her anything about the Kaufman brothers and their whereabouts.
But no one, not even Veronica, knew of the advanced genetic technology coursing through her arteries, pumped by her heart, and returned through her veins. The vectors replicated, nascent and innocuous to Veronica. With reverse engineering and a bit of modification, Chris could manipulate the genes. He could make them seem new, different from the samples from his own blood. He could make them his.
“I’ve got a couple ideas,” he said. He smiled at her, hoping he did not appear too gleeful or happy. After all, he should be stricken with guilt, bedridden by depression. He forced his grin to dissipate. His lips became tight, his eyes narrow. “You know, nothing can be the same now. Not between us, and not here in Baltimore.”
For a moment, he saw Tracy’s hazel eyes and her dirty blond hair. He felt her solid grip on his arms, the way she embraced him, pushed the air out of him. He heard the brashness in her voice, the determination and fierceness. She was not so different from him. She had wanted what he wanted.
She had killed someone, multiple people, to prevent them from getting in the way of her succeeding in her black-market business. Chris had never killed anyone before that day.
He thought for a moment, reminding himself of what Jordan had done. People had died for Chris’s manufactured enhancements and vectors. People had died because he had stubbornly pursued his enigmatic businessman, refusing to comply with the man and give himself up without a fuss.
Maybe he had not pulled the trigger, but he could not claim complete innocence. Had Tracy wanted anything different than he had? After all, she had offered him the opportunity to stand by her side. In the end, he thought she had been the most honest. She could have killed him. She’d had everything she needed within herself, if she wanted. Instead, she’d waited. She’d asked Chris to leave with her. And he had killed her.
He shook the thought away and gave Veronica’s hands a gentle squeeze. He recalled the hurt on her face when he had first pushed her out of his life, remembered her virtually lifeless body in her apartment. “We can’t just go back to the way we were before all of this, before I went to prison.”
“I know,” Veronica said. “I know. I didn’t come back here for you. I came back for me. For closure.”
Chris nodded. He would let her go. He would let her go with those genes inside her. He had taken enough from her, and he would take no more.
Malignant
Anthony J Melchiorri
Malignant (Black Market DNA)
Copyright © 2015 by Anthony J. Melchiorri. All rights reserved.
First Edition: March 2014
http://AnthonyJMelchiorri.com
Cover Design: Paramita Bhattacharjee
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America.
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Prologue
February, 2059
Baltimore, Maryland
Veronica Powell didn’t have time to figure out how the three men thwarted her electronic lock. But it didn’t matter how they’d come in. All that mattered was that they stood in her doorway now.
They sauntered toward her. Only their cold eyes and straight lips showed from beneath the black ski masks they wore.
Her pulse thudded in her ears as her eyes darted among the approaching figures. Two sprinted forward as she scratched at her comm card, desperate to reach the police.
One of the men shot a hand out and took the card from her. Clad in a black leather coat contoured to his broad frame, he gave her a crooked smile and handed the card to his accomplice.
“Leave me alone!” Veronica backed away, her hands in front of her as if that could stop the two men staring her down like rabid bulldogs. Behind them, the third man laughed. He wore a collared shirt tucked into slim khakis. Except for his knit mask, he appeared no different than the average business-casual office employee. But the look in his jade-green eyes sent shivers down her spine.
She ran down the hall, her bare feet slipping on the slick hardwood floor. In the living room that served as her art studio, she searched for a weapon. The man in the leather jacket lunged forward, and she dodged to his left. His hulking frame crashed into an easel. Half wet with oil paints, a half-finished canvas spun through the air.
She sidestepped the other large man. He sneered, his blue eyes narrowed. As she scurried past, he grasped a handful of her hair. She lurched and pushed forward. A clump of hair tore from her head. She screamed in pain, her vision flashing red.
She powered through the agony and ran behind the island counter in the kitchen. The other beastly man recovered from his dive. Both thugs strode toward her, one on either side of the counter. She pulled out a knife from the wooden stand next to the cutting board.
“Leave me alone.” Brandishing the blade before her, she mustered as much menace as she could into her gaze. She knew full well she didn’t strike them as an imposing figure but clung to the slimmest of hopes they’d rethink their assault.
Instead, the third man laughed.
“We don’t intend to leave anything alone.” He still lingered in the hall, rolling up his sleeves.
One of the brutes charged Veronica, and she swung the knife. He caught her wrist and tightened his grip until she yelped and her fingers splayed. Her makeshift weapon clattered harmlessly on the tiled kitchen floor.
With a grunt, he spun her around and grabbed her other arm. He secured both wrists behind her back. She screamed again. He clapped a hand over her mouth and pressed the back of her head against his muscled chest.
She struggled, trying to yell into the palm of his hand.
The man turned to his partner as she flailed. “Help me, will ya?”
“Come on, boys. Let’s hurry this up.” The man waiting in the hallway tossed the other burly intruder a coil of rope.
Catching it one hand, the second brute in leather sidled up to his partner. He wound the rope over Veronica’s wrists and dragged her back to her studio.
Half finished, a holosculpture rotated in the middle of the room, near the discarded paint canvas. The projection depicted a mermaid rising out of the water. It had taken Veronica the better part of a week to design. Each delicate movement she had made with her hands affected the simulated block of marble projected in a hologram from the small black nodule at her fe
et.
Now the leader of the trio dug his heel into the device until the holoprojector shattered into plastic shards clicking across the floor. The hologram fizzled out.
“Better make room for the real art.” He pulled on a pair of leather gloves. The man with the jacket threw the free end of the rope over an exposed crossbeam.
The ringleader leaned forward, rubbing his gloved palms together. “Have you seen Christopher Morgan lately?”
Veronica said nothing. Her heart thumped against her ribcage, but she vowed not to give in to these men, whoever they were. She didn’t want to reward their fiendish behavior, and judging by their actions, whatever they intended to do to her, to Chris, to anyone else...it wouldn’t be benevolent.
“It would be easiest if you answered first. Just a nod will do. Have you been in contact with Christopher? Maybe even physically?”
Gazing straight ahead, she focused on the small painting of dancers above her sink. Her lips remained tight. She would not succumb to the threats of these criminals. She could not give in.
“Very well. I’ll find the answer out myself.” From his coat, the leader of the group took out a small syringe and uncapped the needle. He indicated for his lackeys to hold Veronica in place. With a sharp jab, he inserted the needle into her arm and pulled on the plunger. The syringe filled with blood.
In one motion, the trio’s leader cleared a small table, knocking Veronica’s paints and a toolbox full of art supplies to the floor. He withdrew a small plastic device from his pocket and set it out next to his comm card. After he dropped a sample of her blood on the device, the card projected a spiral of DNA strands. Veronica recognized the helical structures from Chris’s work with genetic engineering. Beside the DNA, a stream of letters flowed through the air. The green hue of the projections glowed on the shadowy man’s masked face.
The man pumped his fist. “We’ve got it, boys. Goddammit, remind me to thank Tracy for the tip.” Veronica vaguely recalled the name...Tracy. Then it hit her. Tracy was Chris’s new girlfriend. Was something going on? She apparently had something to do with these men. Had she betrayed Chris?
Whatever they’d found in her blood pleased them. She worried she’d somehow caught something from Chris they wanted. Some kind of engineered virus or something? All these strange thoughts whirled in her mind.
The leader slapped one of his men on the back. “Tracy said she smelled the scent of another woman on Chris, and she was dead on. Real actress, isn’t she?”
One of the other men nodded as he paced. He flicked through brushes and palette knives resting in cans. At the boss’s gesture, the other grunt withdrew his hand from Veronica’s mouth. She panted. Her chest rose and fell with her arms strung up above her.
“We’re going to have a little chat.” The man yanked up a fallen stool. He situated it in front of Veronica. His breath tickled over her face. “You can’t be so quiet.”
“Screw you.” She spat on him.
He wiped it away with the back of his hand. “Feisty, too. Trevor, what do you have for me?”
Trevor turned, his leather jacket rustling. A couple of palette knives glinted in his outstretched hands. “These might work.”
“Who the hell are you?” Veronica narrowed her eyes, her brows meeting in a crease in a desperate attempt to appear stronger than she felt. “And what the hell do you want?”
“First things first: I want your blood,” the man said. “More accurately, I want what’s in it. Valuable stuff. You can thank your friend Chris for his gift to us through you.” He raised an eyebrow and appeared lost in thought. “Actually, I suppose you won’t be able to thank him at all.”
Veronica chewed her bottom lip to prevent it from quivering, but she couldn’t stop the nervous sweat beading and rolling down her forehead. The man used a finger to wipe away the perspiration. “Don’t be so scared. I promise this doesn’t have to be hard. We can be out of here before you know it if you help us out.”
Trevor handed the man the palette knives.
He examined each as he rotated them. He gave Trevor the rejects and held up his selection. “I’m a man of particular tastes. I enjoy the finer things in life—like art.” With the knife still in his hand, he indicated the rest of the studio. “You’ve done a wonderful job of curating your own collection here. You’re quite the artist.” He let out a melodramatic sigh. “Alas, isn’t it the fate of prolific artists to disappear just before they reach the pinnacle of fame?” He gave her a sympathetic look as he shook his head. “Hardly anyone read Poe or Dickinson until they died. And who bought Van Gogh before he committed suicide?”
Licking his lips, the man rotated the knife between his fingers. “Maybe death will make you immortal like it did them.”
“I haven’t done anything to you!” Veronica thrashed, the ropes digging into her wrists. “Let me go!”
“I’m afraid I can’t. We can’t risk letting you live.” He drew his finger over the flat side of the knife. “But this doesn’t have to be hard, either.” He pressed the blade against her arm. His green eyes seemed alight in giddy pleasure. “Let’s make some art together. Tell me what Chris is doing with Lawrence Kaufman.”
“I have no idea.”
The questions continued, and he dug the blade into her with each unsatisfactory answer. Her mind whirled; she felt dizzy. He inserted another needle into her arm. It connected to a plastic tube delivering her blood to a couple of vials. After they were full, Trevor pocketed them. He injected something else into her before the pain became too much, and her world faded into darkness.
***
It remained a vivid memory, sure to haunt Veronica for the rest of her life.
When she woke up at the hospital in a bed next to blinking monitors, her doctors told her she was beyond lucky. The intruders had left her lying as still as the landscapes she’d painted in her studio. Someone had administered CPR. Those life-saving pumps had reinvigorated the Sustain and enabled the artificial organ to spread the clotting proteins through her body to help stop the bleeding. The artificial organ represented the zenith of biotechnological health advancements. It prevented and cured everything from cancer to wrinkles, but it could not assuage the deep mental agony she’d suffered.
The police had questioned her about what happened. Reciting the events to them caused the burned-out cinders of that day to smolder until they erupted into as much pain as the actual attack. They demanded to know what the men looked like, but they’d never removed their masks. She found herself repeatedly describing the ringleader’s eyes, but knew of nothing else distinctive to provide the officers.
Veronica tried to force those memories into a distant corner of her mind. Let them grow dusty and forgotten, she said to herself.
But such memories could not be easily stowed away in her mind’s attic.
Her scabs itched and irritated her. She watched a holofeed of an Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performance. A woman leapt and appeared to glide through the air.
Veronica lifted her feet six inches off the bed before she stretched her skin taut enough to hurt. She had only spent two days in the intensive care unit before she had been moved into her current room. Here, she had lain for three more. Her muscles already felt atrophied from disuse.
She prayed that, once released, she could twirl and twist as the Alvin Ailey dancer did. Her livelihood depended on it. She made her living in a dance company and teaching classes. She might still be able to produce her paintings and holosculptures, but she only sold those at the open-air craft markets during the summer weekends. She enjoyed the hobby, but it didn’t pay her rent.
And she didn’t think she could stay in Baltimore or move back to her apartment. She could never sleep there again.
Her parents would always take her into their Chicago home in Lincoln Park. But she had worked too hard, danced for too many years to give up her passion now and retreat to her childhood home.
Maybe she could move in with her sister in Manhattan. Th
e art scene thrived there far more than in Baltimore. New York harbored plenty of opportunities for dancers, if she recovered.
She groaned as she pointed her toes and tried to flex her legs. Pain coursed through her limbs. She couldn’t imagine life without dance. It was physical poetry and passion. It was her release.
Her comm card buzzed on the small table next to her. She grimaced as she reached for it. The holodisplay projected an unknown number.
“Hello?”
“Veronica Powell.” That voice.
Shivers raced down her spine, and her voice caught in her throat. Her teeth chattered.
“Veronica, can you hear me?” A robotic twinge affected his words as though he employed a voice-concealing algorithm. But no matter how he disguised his voice, she feared it was scorched into her memory. The man with bright-green eyes.
She inhaled. “...Yes.”
“I’m certainly glad we could reconnect so soon.”
She slammed the nurse’s call button.
A holoimage of a nurse immediately appeared at the foot of her bed. “Is everything okay? Can we help you with something?”
“I heard that, Veronica,” the unnamed man said. “Tell her it was a mistake, and don’t call anyone else.”
Cupping her hand over her mouth, she spoke low into the comm card. “I’m hanging up. I’m going to the police.”
“Don’t.”
She knew she shouldn’t listen to him. She should call the police. But the calmness in his voice frightened her. He didn’t seem worried or alarmed. “Why?”
The holoprojection of the nurse adopted a concerned expression. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. A nurse will be with you shortly.”
“Your mother loves cupcakes, doesn’t she?” the voice asked.
“What?”
“Every day after she leaves Prestige Associates, she picks one up from Cupcakes on the Corner. Not a very creative name, huh?” The man paused for a moment. “Love of pastries appears to run in the family. Your sister, Catherine, is a frequent visitor to Buttercake’s on Lexington. Loves the red velvet, from what I hear.”
The Black Market DNA Series: Books 1-3 Page 25
