Change Agent

by Daniel Suarez

  Dr. Chaudhri cast an annoyed look Belanger’s way. “I had no way of knowing who this man was. Not even the police could identify him.”

  Yi interceded. “She’s right, Claire. The SPF must have gotten their samples mixed up. I came here last month hoping this guy was Ken—been to every hospital and morgue in Singapore and Johor a dozen times. City police gave me his DNA profile. I ran it through CODIS. No matches.”

  Belanger thought out loud. “And today—”

  “I watched Dr. Chaudhri draw two different blood samples. Ran the GlobalFiler assay myself, and the DNA profiles were both perfect matches for Wyckes. I nearly fell over. The first test had to be a lab mix-up.”

  Belanger mused, “And the only reason we’re here is because he claimed to be Ken. Wyckes called us here himself.”

  Yi shrugged. “Strange, isn’t it? For Wyckes to do that.”

  “There must be some reason.” Belanger held up her hands. “Apologies for my ill temper, Dr. Chaudhri. But our missing agent’s wife and daughter are more traumatized than ever by your call. I’ll need to go see them.”

  Yi turned to Belanger. “Claire, what was all that about in there? Why is Wyckes trying to convince us he’s Ken?”

  The doctor folded her arms. “Could be psychosis. The man did suffer swelling of his brain. Did he know your missing agent?”

  Belanger said grimly, “He knew of him.”

  Yi studied the medical imagery. “But how does he know all that personal stuff about Ken? And about us?”

  “The Huli jing were clearly planning their abduction of Ken for some time. We must assume they have the entire GCD team under close surveillance.”

  Yi frowned. “But even Ken’s mannerisms, Claire. The way Wyckes talked. It’s so much like Ken.”

  Belanger grabbed Yi by the shoulders. “Michael, I need you to function. I know you’re hurting about Ken. So am I. But to think that the man in that hospital bed is Ken is not rational.”

  “It isn’t . . .” Yi looked to both Chaudhri and Belanger. “Right? I mean, full-grown people can’t be edited.”

  Belanger shook her head. “Modifying the genetic sequence of the thirty-five trillion cells that comprise a living, breathing human being—it isn’t possible. You’d kill the person.”

  Dr. Chaudhri nodded. “Retroviruses modify the DNA of living cells, but only to replicate the virus. Even that small degree of editing can kill the host. The human immune response is—”

  “This subject isn’t worth discussing. What we need to figure out is why Marcus Wyckes is in that hospital bed. And how it relates to Ken’s disappearance.”

  Yi nodded reluctantly. “Wyckes was puffed up like a dead whale when I came here last month—like his body was fighting off some type of poison.”

  “And poison is the preferred weapon of the Huli jing,” Belanger mused.

  “Maybe Wyckes got an accidental dose. This was around the same time Ken disappeared. Inspector Marcotte said even microscopic doses could be fatal. Maybe it damaged Wyckes’s memory somehow.”

  Dr. Chaudhri instantiated a virtual lab report for their review. “We considered biotoxins. Didn’t find any—although there were trace amounts of XNA in the initial toxicology report, which was strange. They didn’t appear in subsequent tests.”

  “Synthetic DNA.”

  “Right. Since XNA doesn’t interact with normal cells, it’s sometimes used as a delivery mechanism for printed narcotics, date rape drugs, nanomachines—but it doesn’t make much sense for a poison. If you’re trying to kill someone, you’re not worried about preventing an immune reaction.”

  Belanger pondered the situation. “There’s something here we’re not seeing.”

  Yi examined the lab report. “Is there anything else that might help us, Doctor? Anything you haven’t already told us?”

  Dr. Chaudhri thought for a moment, then looked up. “The patient’s caloric needs while he was in his coma.”

  “What about them?”

  “After a few weeks he was burning more calories than an Olympic athlete. At one point he was getting nine thousand calories a day in his drip. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was almost impossible to keep him hydrated, and his fever was close to fatal. His body was literally burning itself up.”

  • • •

  Durand lay wide-awake in the private room, the door closed. Each time he moved, the handcuff chain rattled. This was a waking nightmare.

  With his free hand he picked up the Interpol Red Notice still lying in his lap and studied it. DNA ladders, physical description, criminal history, extradition info—and a color computer model of a bald-headed, thick-necked Eurasian man.

  An insane fear began to form in Durand’s mind. The reaction of Yi and Belanger to him. Their insistence that he was Wyckes. Durand lay numbly for several moments, his heart beating faster.

  Durand shouted at the top of his lungs: “Nurse!”

  A nurse did not immediately appear, so he found the call button and pressed it with his bandaged fingers.

  After a few moments an unfamiliar Caucasian male nurse opened the door and poked his head in.

  Durand spoke, emotionless. “I need a mirror.”

  “I can’t give you any hard objects.”

  “I want to see myself. I need to see my face.”

  “I can’t give you—”

  “Then you hold the mirror. Please. I need to see my face. I need to know I’m okay.”

  “It’s just bruising, sir.”

  “I need to see my face. Please!”

  Something about the desperation in Durand’s voice caused the nurse to nod. He left and after a minute or two returned with a round, polished metal mirror with dull edges.

  The nurse moved along the left edge of the bed, on the side opposite of where Durand’s hand was cuffed to the rail. The nurse remained out of reach as he raised the mirror up to Durand at head level.

  “See? It’s just bruising. You’ll look fine in a week or so.”

  Durand took a deep breath and looked up into the stainless-steel reflection of his face.

  What he saw there drove him insane.

  The face in the reflection was not his own. Not even close. His cheekbones were different. His nose, his neck, and his jaw—all different. It was more than plastic surgery could ever change. Even his race was different—no longer Caucasian but Eurasian. The shape of his eyes and his eye color—though still bloodshot red—was different. Instead of blue, his eyes were now brown.

  He was without doubt the Marcus Wyckes in the photo on the Red Notice.

  Durand started hyperventilating, and then he shrieked in anguish.

  “Sir! Sir!”

  “What have you done to me!” Durand felt his adrenaline surging. He looked down at the catheter extending into his groin and took a deep breath.

  He began to carefully pull it out, screaming against the pain. He got splashed briefly as the tube fell away from the bed.

  “Sir! Stop!” The nurse smacked an alert button on the wall. “I need help in here!”

  Durand was already clawing at the bandages holding his IV in place on the back of his hand. He screamed again in anguish as he pulled out the IV needle, toppling the IV stand.

  “What have you done!”

  Just then Durand noticed dark, curving lines had begun to appear on the surface of his bruised arms in several places, lengthening as though some mysterious force was writing on his skin with ink. He turned his arms over, staring at them in horror.

  Elaborate tattoos began appearing up and down his arms. Chief among them was the nine-tailed fox of the Huli jing just now solidifying on his right forearm, with Asian script and a stylized trefoil knot on his left arm. It was as though they had floated to the surface from within him.

  Several orderlies and a male doctor rushed in. They c
ame to a full stop as they beheld him in shock.

  Durand screamed, holding up his arms. “What have you done!”

  The nurse pointed. “Those weren’t there—”

  Durand shouted, “What have you done to me!”

  The doctor motioned to the orderlies. “Strap him down.”

  Durand screamed again and again. “What have you done to me? What have you done!”

  The orderlies swarmed him.

  Durand struggled as they grabbed his arms.

  More orderlies arrived to help get Durand under control.

  “What have you done!”

  • • •

  Back in the radiology lab, Dr. Chaudhri pointed. “What’s going on there?”

  Belanger and Yi followed the doctor’s gaze toward a bank of virtual surveillance screens—one for each bed in the ward. Belanger expanded the screen where Wyckes wrestled silently with orderlies as they strapped him down. At the screen’s edge a doctor prepared a sedative.

  Belanger pointed to the elaborate, curving tattoo lines that now ran along Wyckes’s neck, across his bald head and his arms. “Gang tattoos?”

  Yi examined the surveillance image. “Where did they come from?”

  “It appears Inspector Marcotte was wrong. The Huli jing are using some new type of tattoo to identify their members.”

  Yi nodded numbly.

  Belanger turned to him. “Do you still doubt this is Marcus Wyckes?”

  Yi gazed at the violent struggle on-screen. He hesitated—but then threw up his hands in frustration. “I still don’t understand how Wyckes knew some of the private things he mentioned in there. He knew about a conversation Ken and I had before my wedding.”

  Belanger put a hand on Yi’s shoulder. “Michael.”

  “You think they tortured Ken.”

  “I’m hopeful we can still find him. What I don’t understand is why the leader of the Huli jing would come to Singapore in the first place. Wyckes is wanted in a hundred and ninety countries. Singapore has extradition, ubiquitous surveillance, a highly trained police force. There are a million safer places for Wyckes to be.”

  Yi tried to control his emotions—to concentrate on the case. “He doesn’t seem so happy to be here now.”

  On the room monitor orderlies finished strapping Wyckes down. A doctor administered a sedative. Wyckes looked to be convulsed with sobs.

  “Call in the Singapore police, Michael. Let’s get this man into custody. And contact Inspector Marcotte. Tell her that Ken Durand found her man after all.”

  Yi pondered the surveillance image for several moments, then nodded to Belanger.

  Chapter 9

  The encrypted line rang several times before it picked up without a word.

  The caller spoke into the silence. “The transformation ran its course, but hospital staff revived him at the end.”

  A digitally altered voice replied, “Then he’s still alive?”

  “Yes. He’s been positively identified as you. They’re transferring him into police custody to face charges.”

  After several moments, “The change agent was supposed to kill him after it completed.”

  “It stopped his heart, but apparently the doctors at Mount Elizabeth have talent.”

  Several more moments of silence, filled with encryption static.

  “Finish it. Make it look like an escape attempt.”

  “I’ll take care of it personally.”

  “No. I don’t want you under scrutiny. Let other police do our work for us—preferably in public.”

  “I understand.”

  “And, Detective . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Make his escape violent. There must not be a shred of doubt who this man is.”

  The line held for a moment in silence.

  “Consider it done.”

  The line disconnected.

  Chapter 10

  Durand lay disconsolate, strapped to his hospital bed. It occurred to him he might have suffered neurological damage from the biotoxin—that he might not be perceiving reality.

  He looked at his arms, strapped down at the wrists. No tattoos in sight on his bruised forearms.

  Hallucinations. If he was honest with himself, brain damage seemed increasingly likely. He knew it could manifest strange symptoms. Men and women who were convinced their spouse was an imposter—identical but not genuine. Or people who could no longer recognize facial features for even the most significant people in their lives—fathers, sons, wives. What if he was unable to recognize himself?

  But that didn’t explain his colleagues. Why didn’t his colleagues recognize him? Was he misperceiving that, too?

  And would it be any better to be insane? After a moment’s thought, he decided insanity would be preferable to what he’d seen in that mirror. What had he seen in that mirror?

  Heavy footsteps approached in the corridor outside. The hospital room door opened. Half a dozen uniformed Singapore police officers entered, hands resting on the butts of their holstered pistols as they checked out the room.

  Strapped down and helpless, Durand looked up at them.

  The officers acted as though he wasn’t there. Instead, one of the policemen called out in Malay, “Memberselikhan!”

  A pair of uniformed constables wheeled a gurney into the room and alongside Durand’s bed. More officers and a dour-looking detective with facial moles and designer LFP glasses crowded around the doorway. Durand could hear police radios squawk in the corridor beyond as well.

  The detective spoke in British-accented English. “Marcus Demang Wyckes, you are under arrest on multiple counts of murder, racketeering, extortion, human trafficking, tax evasion, unlawful genetic editing, and kidnapping. You are to be remanded to a prison infirmary to await arraignment.”

  Durand closed his eyes and shouted, “I’m not Marcus Wyckes! I’m Kenneth Durand!”

  “Do not test me, Mr. Wyckes.”

  “I’m Kenneth Durand! There must be a way to—”

  “You will be silent or you will be silenced.”

  Four officers grabbed Durand’s arms and legs, while another two officers unfastened the bed’s restraining straps.

  Durand did not struggle, but he looked up at the detective again. “Please. I’m not who you think I am. I’m—”

  “Silence this man.”

  “Wait! Please—”

  An officer fitted a seizure muzzle over Durand’s lower face. It had a plastic mouthpiece apparently designed to prevent a patient from swallowing or biting his tongue—which effectively made it impossible to speak as well. The officer tightened the Velcro straps. Moments later Durand could only emit muffled noise.

  The police lifted him from the bed, transferring him to the waiting gurney, where they cuffed both hands and both feet to the railings. They then wheeled Durand out the door and down the corridor—past lines of uniformed police amid the crackling of radios.

  Durand saw Michael Yi and Claire Belanger standing among them, looking down at him as he rolled past. Durand struggled to speak through the muzzle. Yi watched Durand go with what looked to be an odd mixture of animosity and concern. Belanger was stone-faced.

  The gurney rolled noisily into a hospital elevator, attended by two uniformed officers. Durand’s prolonged stare at Sergeant Yi ended only when the elevator doors closed. He then slumped back onto the gurney, without hope.

  One of the officers turned a key in the panel and the elevator descended. The radio on one officer’s belt squawked, “Transport five ready in loading dock. Area secure for transfer.”

  The officer responded in English. “Descending elevator four. Prisoner secured.”

  Durand lay staring up at the harsh ceiling lights. Secured. Yes, he was definitely secured—hand and foot. Gagged. Trapped in an alien body. Clearly this was
not happening—some fever dream. It had all the surreality of a dream.

  They traveled for perhaps thirty seconds in silence until one of the officers muttered as he worked the elevator key.

  The other snorted. “You missed.”

  “Fuck off.”

  The elevator doors opened to reveal a subbasement corridor. A tactical police officer in body armor, helmet, and balaclava looked up at them. He approached, submachine slung across his chest. The word “Police” was printed in bold white letters on his black vest. He pointed upward. “You’re supposed to be on one, lah.”

  The officer sighed and looked closer at the markings on the elevator panel. “This damned thing . . .”

  The tactical officer chuckled and leaned in. “If it’s in fire mode, it’ll go to the basement. Here . . .”

  His gloved hand moved forward, but instead of operating the panel, it held a disposable polymer revolver—which he fired from the waist upward into the throat of the nearest officer. The shot hammered Durand’s eardrums in the closed space.

  The other officer scrambled for his holster, but two more deafening shots caught the man in the eye and the jaw—splattering blood over the back wall and onto Durand’s feet. The officer’s hat fell off as his body collapsed onto Durand.

  Durand struggled, screaming into his muzzle.

  The tactical officer placed the printed gun alongside Durand’s bandaged hand—and fired one more shot into the second officer’s scalp.

  Durand let out another muffled shout as blood streamed onto him from the bullet hole.

  The tactical officer then pivoted the gun and fired two more shots into the first officer on the floor nearby. After which he stowed the revolver in his weapon harness.

  Durand’s ears rang.

  He felt the gurney pulled out of the elevator and into the corridor. The tactical cop aimed his MP6 from its strap and stared menacingly at Durand as he worked a key to unlock all four handcuffs.

  Durand’s eyes darted in confusion. Finished, the cop tossed the key into the elevator, then put his booted foot to the gurney and kicked it over—rolling Durand onto the concrete floor. Every bruise and ache flared up anew as he tried to raise himself up.