by V. J. Deanes
“It’s worse than you think Sahil,” Trent asserted. “People will question their own identity. Social media will whip that up into a firestorm. Panic will ensue. That is the threat that the perpetrator is counting on to get what he or she wants. Change leadership now and the threat goes away. Don’t change leadership and the secret will be revealed.”
“The science that our group is dedicated to has to be practiced with the greatest of confidentiality. If I understand the membership correctly maintaining our perpetual veil of secrecy has spawned a form of oppression,” Duncan remarked. “We live in a free society. Yet we are held captive by the results of our work to further human enhancement. This continues to be the hypocrisy with which we must live with, for now. The free world isn’t ready to accept our best discoveries, in spite of the benefits they bring. Unassisted evolution ended over a decade ago. Creating human babies with mitochondrial transfer using DNA from multiple people has been around for over ten years. It is widely accepted. Yet, we cannot share our main work within the broad community of scientists for fear of reprisal from those scientists who don’t support human enhancement. Add to that the psychosis brought on by these secret societies who have chosen to politicize science as evil, in order to advance their agenda. That is the burden that we all knew we would carry when we signed on to this project. There will come a time when society will welcome the work that we have done. Better to divulge our secrets then, instead of caving to pressure and wreaking havoc now.”
“Who do you think killed Don Mars?” Sahil asked Duncan.
“I suspect that we have been infiltrated,” Duncan replied angrily. “That’s why I requested this meeting. If an organization like the Society for the Elimination of Artificial People knew of Don Mars’ role in the life of Hadley’s Crossing then they also knew that killing him would start the process of revealing the secret.”
Trent and Sahil looked at each other with dismay.
“Watch your backs gentlemen,” Duncan warned. “Who you trust may be your undoing.”
Shannon Wood watched Sahil and Trent leave Duncan’s office from behind a corner at the other end of the hall. A moment later she knocked twice on the door, then let herself in as planned.
“You seem stressed,” she remarked.
“Not more than usual,” Duncan replied.
“Your heart rate is erratic. Your blood pressure is elevated. Your electrodermal activity suggests that you are highly agitated, perhaps even nervous. Your brain waves are close to maximum frequency. Something important has recently disturbed you.”
“I don’t think we need a diagnosis of my physiology at the moment,” Duncan replied dryly. “Let’s get on with reviewing your report.”
“Where would you like to start,” Shannon asked as Duncan opened her report on his computer.
“I read your findings with great interest. They are, in one word, complicated.”
“In what way?”
“They raise questions about loyalty that I had not expected.”
“Does that observation apply to the whole group, or just certain individuals?” Shannon asked.
“You tell me,” said Duncan.
“The group seems to accept the cover that you set up for me: an immunologist working on contract who attends each campus on a rotating basis to study the health of their laboratory specimens. This group of scientists has two populations. The longer term members are motivated by a sense of purpose. Some of the newer members are driven by personal ambition. Their membership is simply a platform for them to launch their careers, in spite of what they tell you. Nisha Lin is the one whose loyalty to the group is most in question.”
“That seems hard to believe,” Duncan remarked.
“She tries too hard to fit in,” said Shannon. “Whenever the two of us meet her biometric responses show that she is agitated, possibly nervous. I can’t be sure of her intentions.”
“Perhaps you simply have not spent enough time with her,” Duncan remarked.
“My findings are only qualitative,” Shannon reminded Duncan. “They are limited because my questions are incidental, perhaps even social, in nature since the main topic of my interaction with the group is the health of their specimens.”
“Your extra sensory skills,” Duncan remarked, “seem quantitative enough.”
“You must be careful when interpreting that information,” Shannon replied, “as random error is relatively high. I only see the group members intermittently. There are no controls on the observations that I make. I have no sensory baseline for each member to compare to.”
“Perhaps your observations about Nisha can be explained by personal chemistry, or the lack of it. Maybe you just don’t like each other,” Duncan suggested.
“Are you suggesting that my assessment of Nisha is rooted in dislike for her?” Shannon asked.
“I admire her skill to think creatively. Her courage to fight for truth is exemplary. Nisha has an edge to her. She can be vain at times. That bothers some people. Makes her somewhat of an outsider. I suspect that she may regard you with envy. You are more accepted within the group.”
“I highly doubt that,” Shannon replied coolly, seeing an opportunity to change the subject. “Why do you only want me to work with such a small group of scientists?” she asked.
“I have my reasons,” Duncan replied.
“Do you know that two of the microbiologists on the south campus, outside of the group of twenty scientists that you asked me to work with, are agents for the Society for the Elimination of Artificial People?”
“They are only passive agents,” Duncan noted with some disdain. “They are not invasive, or actively looking for secrets to disclose. They are just doing their jobs.”
“You don’t seem concerned.”
“Their presence adds a certain complexity to how we manage information at the south campus. But that facility is dedicated to therapeutic studies, not our more controversial work. We can tolerate this pair for now.”
“I have nothing else to report,” Shannon concluded. “Do you have any further questions?”
“No, I don’t,” Duncan replied. “You have been most helpful.”
Duncan stood pensively looking out of the window in his office, shrewdly pondering his next move when Shannon entered the air lock of the bio-mechatronic laboratory on the floor below. Once the glass door locked behind her, air from the jets above swirled softly downward through her long dark hair. She stood alone in the chamber, eager to see what was concealed behind the interlocked steel door just beyond the glass door in front of her. The powerful whir of air flowing from the jets by her sides suddenly kicked in. Wind blew furiously like a tornado throughout the tiny chamber. Her hair was tossed in all directions. Her lab coat blew open, her dress fluttered around her thighs. The airflow stopped almost as suddenly as it started. The bolts recessed from the door in front of her. It swung open with an uncanny silence, as if to invite her to step onto a small mat situated in front of a lens.
“Good afternoon Doctor Wood,” a computerized voice said after the facial recognition scan was complete.
The steel doors in front of her opened slowly. Shannon walked into a secret world where new building blocks of biological life were expanding the possibilities of human definition.
“This way,” Trent beckoned as he began to step down from behind the bank of computers on the platform in the middle of the laboratory. Shannon looked windswept, from her encounter at the entrance, yet she was even more attractive to Trent.
“At last. The mystical bio-mech lab,” she remarked while glancing around as she walked toward him.
“What makes this place so mystical?” Trent asked in a serious tone.
“It actually looks genuine,” she quipped. “With all of the security around here you would have the perfect cover for a boys’ club. You, Sahil, Duncan all the guys. I half expected to come in here and find the world’s largest golf simulator.”
Trent wasn’t sure how to respond to
an attempt at humor from someone who was typically only serious.
Shannon could sense that he was eager to carry on from where they left off in the pool the night before last. His heart rate was increasing. His arteries were dilating.
“It’s hot in here,” she said as she walked up to the platform with Trent. When she reached the top it became clear to her why this was such a secretive place.
A collection of smaller laboratories were recessed deep into the ground. Reactors of many descriptions were shrouded with sensors and cameras. Computers on the platform provided all of the details about the creatures that were forming under Trent’s watch. She ran her fingers through her hair to recompose herself.
“I guess I’m used to the temperature in here,” Trent replied. “It won’t break any protocols if I take this off will it?” Shannon asked as she fanned herself with the lapels of her lab coat.
“No,” Trent replied. “Better?” he inquired, once Shannon had draped her lab coat over a chair, to reveal her slender figure in a sleeveless dark knit dress.
“A little better,” she answered. “What’s this?” she asked, while pointing to one of the video images.
Trent struggled to maintain his composure. “That is the electrical activity of the human brain.”
“How about this?” Shannon asked as she looked at the screen with great interest.
Trent stood behind her and put his hands on her hips. “This is a more sophisticated experiment,” he said. “The reactor is an artificial womb.” Trent reached over her shoulder to touch the magnified image. “On this side you can see an egg in this small chamber. Over here you can see the pool of gametes. Seed, that will be shot into the chamber in a few minutes, once the conditions are just right.”
Shannon turned around and looked into Trent’s eyes. She stepped closer, so that her body touched his. Your reactor is getting excited is what you are saying,” she remarked.
“I had not thought of it that way.”
“It’s still a little warm in here,” Shannon purred. She reached beneath her dress then delicately stepped out of her red tanga panties. “That’s better,” she said. “How about you Trent? Are you getting excited? I sense that you are.” She guided his hand to the zipper. Seconds later her dress slipped to the floor.
Chapter 9
Kalan crouched down, exhausted, against a tree trunk to watch the safe house from the cover of a dense thicket. Suspense gripped him as he braced for another encounter with Dagger Lady and her gang. He watched for any movement that would reveal the position of those who had been in close pursuit throughout the night. Patience was in his nature, but he was running low on energy. He needed to find food.
There were no voices nearby. Only a tenuous silence that was periodically disturbed by the rustling of leaves in the trees. Lack of sleep and the stress of being hunted had blurred Kalan’s senses. He shuffled through the tiny opening in the bush. The safe house was empty.
Broken glass littered the kitchen floor. A couple of pot roaches had been left on the table, near a half empty forty ouncer. Kunai swords were lodged firmly into the bullet hole ridden door that led out one side of the house. Blood had dripped down the door and pooled on the floor.
He rummaged around Dagger Lady’s room, then the bathroom. Luck was on his side. A bottle of rubbing alcohol was next to the soap beside the sink. The sharp sting on his leg shook off his lethargy. His fall the night before, at the edge of the ravine above Hawthorn Creek, had opened a gash down one of his legs. Once a bandage was secure Kalan looked around for whatever other supplies he could find. Two slices of stale bread were all he could find. He devoured them quickly.
“Scape” was hand written on the label of a small package of tiny purple pills on Dagger Lady’s night table. The recreational drug of choice in this part of the country was known for instilling a powerful feeling of invincibility. Gangs commonly used it to prepare for conflict. Scape was also renown for unleashing raging sexual desire. Stains on the unmade bed were the first clues.
Judging by the lone used condom one man must have reached the safe house before the rest. Kalan surmised that the sex was over well before the other three men arrived. He figured that all of the men had partied with Dagger Lady as they crafted a plan to track him down. They must have smoked up, downed some of the gin and then sampled the Scape. Their pursuit of Kalan was likely delayed when something have set off Dagger Lady.
Glasses had been thrown indiscriminately. One man had tried to rush out the side door. A barrage of the Dagger Lady’s swords almost pinned him to the door. One of the men hit him with a shot gun blast, but he managed to crawl away into the night.
XXXX
Kalan peered out of the window in the cedar cabin by the old cemetery as the storm raged outside. He knew they would come for him under the cover of darkness. Soon after the rain let up he caught glimpses of beacons off in the distance moving slowly through the bush. The lights went out just before they reached the clearing that led from the forest to the cemetery. Kalan slipped out of the cabin and found refuge behind a small woodshed nearby, to wait apprehensively for the inevitable encounter. Wisps of fog swirled through the cemetery. Dagger Lady and her stoned clan suddenly appeared, like apparitions who had just risen from the dead.
“Die, clone,” the big man yelled out as he drew his gun and kicked the cabin door open.
“Don’t kill him,” another man yelled. “We need him alive.”
The big man refused to be told what to do, but his accomplice fired first. Dagger Lady retrenched to the side of the cabin, away from the shooting. The big man fell to his knees, turned and fired back. His accomplice squeezed off one more shot. Silence. Dagger Lady stepped forward and peered into the cabin. Both men lay dead on the ground. The cabin was empty.
“He must be alive when we do the test,” she told the one man who remained. “He’s still on the run. We have to find him.”
Kalan backed away slowly through the forest towards the ledge high above the river to escape from his pursuers. He just needed to climb down the first few feet of a steep rocky slope to take shelter beneath the craggy overhang then disappear along the path near the top of the ravine. But he slipped on the wet ground and tumbled over some sharp rocks before crashing into a tree. It broke his fall, but the noise gave away his position.
Kalan could hear someone running towards him. He tried to crawl under the ledge to seek cover, but his stalker reached the ravine first. Kalan froze. The man looked around cautiously in the dark. Kalan aimed his Silent Destroyer towards the shadowy figure. His nemesis slipped in and out of view as the clouds let glimpses of moonlight through. Footsteps drew closer to the small bush where Kalan was taking cover. He fired a few pulses off into the darkness. The high energy shots were invisible to the human eye.
Dagger Lady’s accomplice yelled out. She stepped unknowingly within inches of Kalan as she took cover behind some bushes.
“I’m hit,” he said, writhing on the wet ground.
Dagger Lady looked around to try and discern where the shot came from. The man managed to stand up and limp towards the ledge. “The shot came from over there,” he pointed. Kalan fired again. The man’s cries faded as he fell toward the river below.
Dagger Lady rushed to where the man has last stood. It was too late. Kalan had already made his way to the path at the top of the ravine and disappeared into the night. She walked back to the small cabin to spend the night.
XXXX
Kalan had picked up the package of Scape to look it over once more. When he put the drugs back on the dresser he inadvertently knocked over a small lamp. The base of the lamp was hollow. He was too young to recognize the old style high definition transmitter. He crushed it anyway. Now Kalan was even more convinced that this place was a trap, in spite of being called a safe house. He stepped out of Dagger Lady’s room to follow the blood spattered foot steps of the man who had fled out the side door. Rain from the storm had washed some of the tracks away in the nigh
t, but they were still visible enough. It was not long before Kalan came across a Kunai sword lying on the ground covered in blood. Judging by the impressions in the dirt the man had collapsed here.
Kalan followed the cryptic hand prints that grasped for one more yard and the smear from a leg that could no longer walk that was dragged through the dirt, as the man struggled to get to the main road. A few minutes later Kalan came across the corpse.
Buck shot riddled the man’s back. Kalan patted him down. The dead man wasn’t carrying much. A locked smartphone was the real treasure. Kalan swiped the phone over one of the dead man’s index fingers. Luck was on his side.
He ordered the robot car as fast as he could. Then he pulled out his pistol. The dead man’s index finger remained rigidly in place, on account of rigor mortis, so Kalan used his Silent Destroyer to severe it off at the first knuckle. Then he made his way to the main road.
Dagger Lady crashed hard in the night. By the time she dragged herself back to the safe house Kalan was long gone. She knew that a reckoning with Duncan would come soon.
XXXX
Raging winds hurtled sheets of rain in the path of Vern Gedder’s Renegade Alien. The auto-navigation system was taxed even further while it rapidly searched for a hideaway. Wind blew the bike from side to side. Vern lay slumped unconscious on the carbon fiber bike frame. Power drawn by the gyroscopic stabilizers drained even more charge from the batteries as they fought to keep the bike upright. Vern and his motorcycle were running out of time.
The computational search engine set co-ordinates for a farm in the rolling hills beyond the town limits. The headlights switched off. The bike rolled slowly over the dirt and stones of the unpaved laneway as it quietly made its way into the storage shed. The batteries were almost drained. A Renegade Alien looked oddly at home hidden behind a mighty Lone Harvester autonomous tractor. This place was isolated. There was a power source that worked with Vern’s motorcycle. The survival search criteria had been met. A small red indicator light on the control panel faded as the bike switched into sleep mode.
