Change Agent

by Daniel Suarez

  Durand awoke suddenly in the middle of the night to commotion. It took him a moment to orient himself, but he finally recalled where he was, and as he looked around in the semidarkness, a screen glowing on the wall pulsated in sync with rock music—a pounding beat.

  The text at the base of the pulsating colors read “Iggy Pop—Gardenia.” He glanced down at the pool area through the plate glass and could see Vegas’s Thai mistress and Frey dancing with reckless abandon, poolside, a champagne bottle in his hand.

  Durand put a pillow over his head and rolled back to sleep.

  Chapter 31

  The dream was always the same. She is six again. Aiyana’s mother calls to her in their two-room, windowless mud brick house. Aiyana kneels at the hearth, baking kissra—the thin, fermented bread of her childhood. She bakes on a sheet of tin pulled over the mouth of a cut oil drum glowing with coals. The aroma of the bread tantalizes her. But she responds to the second call of her name, entering the front room to see a man in a crisp white thawb and kaffiyeh made of fine cotton standing in their doorway, not entering, for this would be haram—forbidden. Instead, he stands in the rubble-strewn street. Aiyana’s mother wears a dark toub wound about her body and her hair and speaks to him quietly. This, too, is a sin, but Aiyana’s father never came back from the war—the all-consuming, ever-expanding war that Aiyana cannot understand. She imagines the war as a monster that eats people. People fear it. Men go to fight it and never return. Or they come back mangled.

  The man holds a satellite phone. He also wears a glittering gold timepiece on his wrist that is the single most beautiful thing Aiyana has ever seen. A blue SUV, coated in mud, is parked some ways behind him in the lane.

  The man says nothing to Aiyana, merely looks her over while Aiyana’s mother and brothers stand nearby. Eventually the man nods, and Aiyana’s mother leans down to her. Her mother’s face is always blurry in the dream. Aiyana can no longer recall her mother’s face.

  “Go with this man now. Do as he says, and be a good girl.”

  The man takes Aiyana’s hand, and Aiyana looks back again, bewildered, as she is pulled away, out the door, and her mother’s eyes watch her go from the darkness of their hovel. Sadness? Relief? What is the expression on her mother’s face? Aiyana would give anything to know now. Maybe that is the reason for the dream.

  Her brothers look on, for once not teasing.

  But the beautiful timepiece is there, right next to her face, wrapped around the man’s thick, hairy wrist. She reaches to touch the watch face, and the man smacks her hand away. She begins to cry.

  Inspector Aiyana Marcotte woke from the dream as she always did—crying. She fumbled for the light on the hotel nightstand, and then grabbed the medallion on a silver chain she knew was there. She looked upon the dull bronze medallion beneath the light.

  A Saint Anne medal. The patron saint of the childless. She had found it in the envelope of her foster mother’s personal things—after her adoptive mother passed away in the hospital.

  Marcotte had never known that her foster mother wore it. Not until that day.

  How long had her foster mother prayed for a child? How long had Marcotte prayed for a mother? What did it mean that Saint Anne was also revered in Islam? In the Qur’an she was known as Hannah. Different religions but the same prayer.

  Marcotte sat up and wiped her face. Collected herself. She looked down at the second medallion she had since added to her foster mother’s silver chain.

  Saint Peter Claver. The patron saint to slaves. It steadied her. She looked up at the window and the sunlight rising above Bangkok. Then she grabbed her LFP glasses from the charger and put them on.

  The newsfeeds were on fire. The story was everywhere. Two hundred and thirty-six dead. Thirty-one of the victims Thai police—among them members of the country’s most elite anti-terror unit. Prominent civilians from around the world dead. Children dead. Every member of the Luk Krung dead.

  And everywhere in the feeds, not the face of Marcus Wyckes but instead the face of the young suited man the media had dubbed the “Angel of Death.” Somehow clinic surveillance camera imagery of the Huli jing assassin had leaked. The same thing Marcotte had fought in the street had its face at the top of every media feed. His touch meant death . . .

  It wasn’t a he. It was an it. She remembered its unliving eyes. Headlines screamed that his skin oozed poison.

  There was a sharp knock on her door.

  She walked wearily to the peephole. Her skin was still raw from the decontamination chemicals and harsh brushes they’d used to scrub off the first layer of her skin. The biohazard team had incinerated her tactical vest. Her clothing. Her head was bald after they’d shaved off every lock of hair. She was clean. Alive.

  She peered through the opening and saw Sergeant Michael Yi Ji-chang with several grim-faced Thai men in suits. Detectives, no doubt.

  Marcotte closed her robe and opened the door.

  Yi nodded. “Morning, Inspector. No doubt you’ve seen the news.”

  She nodded back.

  “General Prem’s been sacked. They want us out of the country by nightfall.”

  She nodded again.

  “I’ll come and collect you when you’re ready.” He waited for a response, but finally shrugged and moved away.

  “Sergeant.”

  Yi turned.

  “Wyckes committed this atrocity to stop us. We do not stop. Do you understand? We pursue him. He will go to ground somewhere, and when he does, I want him to hear our hounds on his trail.”

  Yi nodded, looking relieved, and then headed for the elevators with the Thai detectives close behind.

  Chapter 32

  Well after dawn Kenneth Durand lay staring at the view of downtown Bangkok through his feet. The glass wall made it seem as though he was lying on a ledge overlooking Bhumibol Bridge with its golden, pointed spires.

  What troubled him most was that he hadn’t thought of his wife and daughter the moment he awoke. Instead, he’d stared out at the city, just grateful to be alive. What he should have been grateful for was his chance to continue—to keep striving to get back to himself. His growing comfort in this form angered him.

  A knock on the bedroom door interrupted his troubled thoughts. The knock was followed immediately by Bryan Frey walking in and jumping up to sit on the edge of the large bed. “Sorry to pester you, but the world has apparently not stopped turning. And there’s news you need to see.”

  Frey made inscrutable gestures above a new bracelet he wore, causing LFP projectors to descend from pods in the ceiling. These began shining content into Durand’s retinas. A virtual two-hundred-inch video screen appeared, superimposed before the view of Bangkok. Acoustic beams brought sound.

  The screen displayed newsfeeds and audio, all in Thai. But with a gesture Frey converted it to English. Harrowing scrolling headlines rolled past beneath grim-faced news reporters: “Pattaya City Massacre. Over Two Hundred Dead. General Prem Resigns in Disgrace.”

  Durand sat up. “What the hell . . . ?”

  Frey watched the images. “After we escaped. It seems Wyckes wasn’t content to let his people fall into the hands of the police. Either that or he’d hoped to eliminate you.”

  Durand felt a wave of horror sweep over him. “Those children . . .”

  Frey muted the video. “Police. Children. The clients. And Mr. Vegas—along with his Luk Krung.”

  “Jesus . . .” Durand’s breathing increased, and he could feel his tattoos surfacing all over him. He sat shirtless before a screen filled with sickening headlines. Headlines he had caused. “We killed them all.”

  “No. Don’t say that.” Frey pointed at the screen—at a crystal clear surveillance image that was in heavy rotation on all the feeds: the Angel of Death. “He killed them. A man ‘dripping in nerve toxins.’ That’s who we need to talk about.” Frey froze the image w
ith a gesture.

  Durand frowned at the screen. “Nerve toxins . . . ?”

  “You remember Vegas was afraid of Wyckes’s right hand—the man he called Otto?”

  Durand nodded.

  “That little Einstein girl, she cried at the mention of Otto. She called him the Mirror Man. Do you remember her saying that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought it was strange for her to use such a mystical name. Especially because she was so brilliant.”

  “She was still just a child.” Durand studied the face of the killer. “I think I’ve met this man before. In Singapore.”

  “You met the Angel of Death?”

  “I’ll remember those eyes for the rest of my life. Dead eyes. I recognize some of the face. He’s changed, but not entirely.” Durand turned to Frey. “This was the man who injected me. I’m certain of it.”

  Frey pondered something. “It’s making more and more sense. He’s immune to biotoxins.” Frey popped a pill from a half-empty blister pak.

  “What are you taking?”

  “I printed up a batch of nootropics. Improves brain function. It’s making things clearer. Follow me on this . . .” Frey pointed. “This is indeed Wyckes’s ‘right hand.’ Do you get it: right hand?”

  Durand just stared.

  “He’s an enantiomorph.”

  Durand kept staring.

  “Mirror life. That’s why he isn’t affected by biotoxins. He wouldn’t be affected by human viruses or parasites or diseases, either. Because he is the opposite of life.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Frey snapped his fingers, searching for words. “Chirality. Handedness. Molecules, like amino and nucleic acids, have a ‘handedness’—not literally hands, but orientations of a molecule’s atoms. They can be reversed—from left to right, to right to left. They could have the same chemical formula, but be mirror images of each other. And thus have different interactions, even though they are technically the same compounds.”

  “So you think this man—”

  “Is an opposite. All complex organisms on earth are comprised of left—or levo—amino acids. Nobody is entirely sure why that is, but that’s the way life evolved.” Frey pointed at the screen. “I think the Huli jing created an opposite form of life.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  Durand looked again at the killer’s face. “I can’t describe it, but there was something about him that was terrifying. It’s like he was alive but shouldn’t have been.”

  Frey nodded to himself, riding the nootropics. “Fascinating. I would have guessed it would be no different from a racemic mixture.” He looked up. “Which is a mixture of both left- and right-handed enantiomers.” He held up a finger. “But . . . perhaps some aspect of mirror life evokes an evolved revulsion in us—some survival instinct that is repelled by its presence. This ‘Otto’ . . . antiperson—he would have no connection to any other living thing on earth. He wouldn’t even be able to digest normal food.”

  “It can’t have been a coincidence that he was there. He must have followed me.”

  Frey looked grim once more. “It wasn’t a coincidence. Radheya Desai is also dead.”

  Durand snapped a look at Frey. “Dead?”

  “Yes. Gruesomely, too. The news said it was a gang killing. But I think it was Otto looking for you.”

  Durand lowered his head into his hands. “I’ve gotten all these people killed.”

  “No.” Frey pointed at the screen. “It is this person—or this antiperson—who’s done this. It’s Marcus Wyckes who’s done this. Not you.”

  “I caused it to happen.”

  “You degans are always so willing to accept guilt. You were just trying to survive, Ken.”

  Durand gestured to the image of Otto on the screen. “He was there because of me. All those people died because he had come there to kill me.”

  “And what about the police? What were the police doing there?”

  “I don’t know.” Durand lowered his head into his hands again. “I don’t know.” Durand looked up. “And what does it matter if this man is ‘mirror life’ or just a killer? All it shows is how twisted the Huli jing are—to create this abomination.”

  Frey crawled toward Durand across the bed. “Ah, that’s where you’re wrong, my friend. I think there might be a link between your transformation and this Otto. Look . . .” He poked the trefoil knot tattoo still visible on Durand’s arm. “Why is the Huli jing lab symbol a trefoil?”

  Durand examined the tattoo. The single looping line.

  Frey tapped it. “These are Wyckes’s tattoos. Tattoos are personal things. We’ve been wasting an incredible source of intelligence about Wyckes that’s woven right into your skin. Unless he was on a bender when he got these, he didn’t choose them by chance.”

  Durand looked down at his arm again.

  Frey jabbed a tattoo. “A trefoil is significant. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before. A trefoil knot is the simplest chiral knot in existence—meaning it is not identical to its mirror image. And DNA trefoils have major implications in intramolecular synapsis of—”

  “English. English, please, Bryan.”

  “Right. That’s the nootropics talking.” He stood on the bed examining Durand’s tattoo array, studying them like a psychic reading a palm. “What I’m saying is that I think the trefoil holds the key to the change agent’s morphology.” On Durand’s blank look, he explained: “Its structure.”

  Durand nodded. “Okay.”

  “But there’s more.” Frey pointed at the screen. “What do you see on Otto there? On his neck. Do you see it?” He zoomed the image in.

  Durand saw a tattoo of a gray-white-and-gold butterfly on the man’s neck. There were other tattoos, but the butterfly was most prominent.

  “Just like yours, probably not visible unless the blood’s up—like yours is now. But . . .” Frey stretched the skin over Durand’s butterfly, comparing it to the tattoo on the screen. “He and Wyckes got matching tattoos. Check it out. Same species and everything.”

  “But that doesn’t tell us what it means.”

  Frey poked him. “Maybe it does. Huli jing—if we had bothered to read up on our mythology—is a shape-shifting mythological being. A mischievous spirit that can—”

  “Take any form. Yes, I know. I sat through a briefing on the Huli jing the day I got injected. Interpol thought the name meant Wyckes’s organization wanted to remain hidden.”

  “Clearly the name—and the tattoo—was chosen for its literal meaning.” He tapped his finger on Durand’s butterfly tattoo again. “And I think this butterfly was as well. What do butterflies undergo?”

  “Metamorphosis.”

  “Right. Metamorphosis—changing from a caterpillar into its final form. Do you know something interesting about caterpillars and butterflies that not a lot of people realize?”

  “What?”

  “A caterpillar and its butterfly have the same genetic sequence.” Frey pounded his fist into his hand. “Same exact DNA and completely different forms. How is that possible?”

  Durand realized he’d never known that. And it did seem puzzling.

  “Epigenetics. Gene expression. Turning genes on and off. That’s what happens during the butterfly’s metamorphosis. It builds a chrysalis and secretes chemicals that cause it to fall into a comatose state as its body changes.”

  “Like my coma. After they injected me.”

  Frey nodded. “I think that’s what the Huli jing discovered—not only how to edit DNA, but how to turn genes on and off on demand, not simply write them into the chain. After all, computer code doesn’t do anything unless you execute it.” He stabbed at Durand’s butterfly tattoo. “I think this was the butterfly species that helped them figure it out, and why Wy
ckes and Otto wear it as a tattoo: Archon apollinus. The False Apollo.”

  “What did you just say?”

  Frey turned to him. “Archon apol—”

  “No, the other name.”

  “False Apollo.”

  Durand got to his feet and paced. “Christ . . .” He rubbed his hands over his bald, tattooed scalp. “Get rid of his damn face, please.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” With a gesture, the television screen blinked out of existence. Frey watched Durand. “What’s up?”

  “False Apollo. Is that really this butterfly’s name?”

  “I checked it this morning. I’ve been busy. Talk to me.”

  “I worked on an anti-bioterror team back in the ’30s. Naval Intelligence. We were searching for nihilistic terrorist groups. Or brilliant idiots. People who might accidentally or purposely create genetic weapons that could wipe out humanity. Either directly or by crippling our ecosystems.”

  “So, what about this False Apollo?”

  “They briefed all the teams on it. False Apollo. It was the name of a multibillion-dollar illicit biodefense project. It was a big deal. They shut it down.”

  “It was a military project?”

  “It was unclear who was running it. Government. Industry. No one knew. It spanned borders.”

  “What was False Apollo’s purpose?”

  “To create a universal defense against an extinction-level pathogen.”

  “In other words: mirror life.”

  Durand shrugged. “I don’t know. Like I said, they shut False Apollo down. I never saw it. Maybe parts of it got out into the world. We were warned to keep a lookout.”

  “Well, fuck me . . .” Frey pondered the implications. “The name fits. Apollo was the Greek god of music, healing, and light. But he was also the god of plagues.” Frey looked up. “So the Huli jing might be remnants of a rogue biodefense project?”

  Durand paced. “No wonder they had so many connections. We’ve got to get moving.”

  Frey nodded. “Gardenia and I were able to transact some business last night.”