The Immortality Curse: A Matt Kearns Novel 3

by Greig Beck

  “Professor Kearns.” He sat and motioned to two seats in front of his desk. His club-like fingers meshed in front of him. “Thank you for working with us.”

  Matt nodded, but didn’t want to say it was a pleasure, as frankly, he didn’t like the idea of becoming embedded in FBI processes or politics. Suddenly he had the feeling of water rising up to his neck and he swallowed hard. Once he’d written up his report, he would ease himself out of the relationship. He’d been to Canada as he’d promised Eleanor and now he hoped he could wind up his involvement in this bizarre case. He didn’t need any more nightmares.

  Matt glanced at Rachel, looking at her profile for a moment. He liked her, a lot, but then he shook his head as if to clear it. In his mind a sensible voice whispered: don’t get entangled in this, even if there’s a nice girl involved – it just isn’t worth it.

  He’d ask a few questions he had, and then say goodbye.

  “Any clues on the bombing?”

  Wybrow didn’t flinch. “None. The bomber was picked up on CCTV coming down the street, tossing the package into your car, and then disappearing around the corner. And I really mean vanishing around the corner, as on one feed the guy was there, and then once he rounds the building, he wasn’t.” Wybrow shrugged. “Seems this guy knew the layout before the attack.”

  “I see.” Matt frowned. “Hey, haven’t you guys got facial recognition software now?”

  “Yes, we do.” Wybrow replied. “As long as people are on a database somewhere, we can cross check for a visual match. But first we need a clear shot, and our guy didn’t give us that. We’ve got nothing yet, Professor Kearns.” His voice took on an edge. “Don’t forget, one of my agents was killed, so be aware that we have no intention of letting this go.”

  Wybrow breathed in and out for a few moments, his nostrils flaring like a bull about to paw the ground. He turned to Rachel. “We got bodies piling up, and a killer or killers unknown, background unknown, profile unknown, designation or demands unknown, who seem to be one step ahead of us. We still seem to have a lot of work to do, Agent.”

  Rachel, sitting upright, just nodded.

  Wybrow sat back. “And they even followed you to Canada.”

  “Or were already there,” Matt added.

  “Maybe.” His eyes went to Rachel again. “Agent Bromilow, I’ve read your preliminary report… not much in it. But you have a few things to follow up on. Is that right?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve now read the full coronial report on those hitters that turned up to attack us at the church in Fort Severn – no fingerprints, none of them carrying ID, and, as I expected, dental records and facial identification impossible to use as their heads were obliterated. But my gut feeling is that these guys were the same group that attacked Clarence van Helling.”

  “And I think the bomber was from the same cult,” Matt put in.

  “It’s a cult now?” Wybrow sat back.

  Rachel shrugged. “Profile fits; the men all had religious looking iconography seared into their skin – pretty extreme.”

  “So do a lot of teenagers these days.” Wybrow waved it away. “Still, it sort of all ties together if you squint real hard and think of you two as the eye of the cyclone.” His eyes narrowed. “Because if it is the same group, then frankly, they seem to dogging you, Agent.” His eyes shifted to Matt. “Or maybe you, Professor.”

  “Terrific.” Matt slumped in his chair.

  “Professor Kearns needs some lab time to process the glass window images. Also, I have some biological specimens that need to be analyzed,” Rachel said.

  “About that.” Matt held up a hand. “I think I’ve done all I can, and you probably don’t need me anymore. I’m expensive and since we know the language used is Chaldaic, there are several paleolinguists who can be…”

  Rachel’s head whipped around and she glared at Matt, brows drawn tightly together.

  “Don’t worry about your fees, they’ll all be taken care of for as long as we need you.” Wybrow’s flat stare pinned Matt for a moment, before sliding back to Rachel. “Labs are ready for you. This is a priority, and I don’t need to tell you the political pressure this is drawing, from both our guys and the Canadian government.” He turned to Matt. “Harvard has okayed your consulting. I have to tell you that they’re very proud of you, Professor.”

  Matt grimaced as he watched Wybrow press his phone com. “Janine, can you get Agent Moddel up here?” He sat back, smiling benignly at Matt. “Agent Moddel heads up our scientific imaging department. You tell him what you need, and he’ll source it, pronto.”

  “Just a ride home,” Matt said, feeling trapped. Rachel threw him a thunderous look and he couldn’t meet her eye.

  “Anytime you like, Professor.” Wybrow leaned forward. “But remember, agents like Samuel Anderson died for you. Let’s find out who killed him and bring them to justice. Giving us a few more days is nowhere near the price he paid.”

  “I just…” Matt felt like an asshole. “Yeah, sure.”

  Rachel pressed her lips together and looked away.

  A slim man peered in through the glass door, before knocking. Wybrow held up a hand, flat, and then turned back to Rachel.

  “Move quickly. If we’re going to run these guys down, we need to do it while the trail is hot.”

  “Yes, sir.” She got to her feet.

  Matt guessed they’d just been dismissed and stood.

  “Go with Agent Moddel, tell him what you need. He’ll help.” Wybrow held out his huge plank of a hand again. “And thank you for choosing to work with us.”

  “Yeah, no problem.” Matt walked to the door, moving stiffly like a jerky robot. He could feel the assistant director’s eyes on him the entire way. Outside, it seemed several degrees cooler, and Moddel grinned at him.

  “Intense, huh?”

  Matt blew air through his pressed lips and then grinned back. “Nah, I deal with the military all the time. This is grade-school stuff.”

  “Yeah, right.” Moddel led him to the elevators. Matt went to say good bye to Rachel but she just nodded cooly and continued down the hallway. Matt paused, watching her go, and then shrugged.

  Moddel also watched her shapely form depart. “Forget it; she’s way out of your league. C’mon.”

  Matt sighed and followed the scientist.

  Once inside the elevator, Moddel turned to Matt. “I’ve read some of your papers.”

  Matt raised his eyebrows, waiting. Moddel simply turned to face the elevator numbers as they rose.

  “Well, okay then,” Matt said, now wondering whether the guy was a fan or critic.

  The lift doors slid open and Moddel strode off, talking as he walked. “You’ve got some images you want processed?”

  “Yes and a sample.” Matt said, fishing in his pocket for the plastic bag containing the glass shards.

  Moddel held out his hand, took the bag and held it up. “What do you need to know?”

  “Composition, spectral analysis, dating, basically everything. And if you have predictive analysis, I’d also like you to reassemble it, and show me what it looked like.”

  Moddel bobbed. “Maybe, but we’ll have no way of knowing what the entire piece looked like. What about the images you mentioned?”

  “Ah, they’re for my own analysis. I need to try and work out what it says, and what it means. You can use the pictures for reassembly.”

  “Translation?” Moddel snorted. “We have programs for that now. We’ve obtained a translation app from Harvard. I can run the language fragment through it and then we’ll see what it comes up with.”

  “Nope, you won’t find this language, or its nuance.”

  “I bet we will. It’s top of the line.”

  “I bet you won’t.” Matt’s lips curled into a smile. “If you got that from Harvard, then it’s the language app I wrote. Believe me, this language and dialect isn’t in there.”

  Moddel nodded, looking impressed.

  “Besides,” Matt said. �
�It’s usually never about a straight translation. You need to determine two things – what the writer was saying, and what they were actually meaning. They can vary greatly.”

  “O-ookay.” Moddel pushed open a door. “Here we are – welcome to my bat cave.”

  *

  “Here.”

  Rachel handed Howard “Howie” Bilson, a bureau scientist, the small bottle containing the dried worms.

  He held them up, squinting in at the remains. “Tell me about them.”

  “The geographical location was northeast Canada. I doubt they were indigenous. They were in the basement of a church, and I think they might have exited some human remains… while it was being burned up.”

  Bilson’s eyebrows went up. “An internal parasite?” He turned to his workbench and opened the bottle and emptied the remains into a petri dish. He lifted a large magnifying glass and scrutinised the thread-like things.

  “Could be some sort of nematode. Pretty desiccated now.”

  “Like I said, they were escaping a fire,” Rachel said slowly.

  “But not charred.” Howie slid along his bench to a large microscope, taking the dish with him. He used a pair of long tweezers to remove one of the worms, placing it in another small glass dish. This time he added a few drops of sterile water, and then carefully slid it into the staging area of his scope.

  Howie bent over the eyepiece and using one hand began to adjust the focus and changed it up to 50 times magnification. He hmm-hmmd and pursed his lips for a few moments before pulling back.

  “No discernable mouthparts, and, given its state, I’m not sure what type it is.” He took a picture and relayed it to a screen on the wall. There was a dark glistening worm that seemed to have hydrated a little from the sterile water. It was glossy, tapered at both ends with no eyes or external sensory organs at all. Strangely, it seemed a little lighter in color than when it had first entered the sterile water.

  The scientist shrugged. “I can get a parasitologist or perhaps an entomologist to look at the specimens to give us an exact identification.”

  “I need information now,” Rachel said. “I don’t want to wait weeks while some other nerd – sorry – specialist looks them over. Besides, I don’t really care about naming it, just finding out what it was doing and why it was there.”

  “Nerd?” Howie grinned. “I’ve been called worse. Okay, we can find out an awful lot right here and now. Let’s see what these guys were doing in that cadaver. Might give us some more clues.”

  He selected another of the dried worms and using the tweezers dropped it onto another dish. He then used a scalpel to carefully chop it up. He then added a few drops of water and continued to mash the remains a little more, before scraping the mush into a test tube.

  In his chair, Howie rolled along the floor again, making Rachel step back quickly to avoid flattened toes. No wonder they had linoleum floors, she thought. Means these guys never had to get to their feet.

  He capped the lid of the small tube and placed it in a centrifuge. He set it to spin and pressed a timer for 20 minutes.

  “That’ll separate the materials – the serum, proteins, any matrix from the stomach. We’ll then be able to use the mass spectrometer to determine what chemical residues are inside. Of course, finding human protein fragments will tell us it was feeding on the body.” He spun in his chair toward her and folded his arms. “Why the hurry? These guys aren’t going anywhere.”

  “Priorities – murder investigation.” Rachel paced away.

  “Hey, I’m busy too, you know. I’ve got several murder investigations that need evidence analyzed,” the scientist retorted.

  “My murder was one of our own, plus two entire families.” She turned. “If you’d like to speak to Assistant Director Wybrow, let me know.” Her jaws tightened and she went to turn away, but froze. She squinted at the screen.

  “Hey, and as for these little guys not going anywhere, I think you better have a look at this.”

  Howie turned in his chair, looking up at the microscope’s screen feed. The image of the worm under the scope showed a glassine worm, now fully plumped and whipping back and forth.

  “Holy shit – natural rehydration.” He scooted over, peering down the eyepiece and adjusted the lens. “Not that uncommon really. There’s a sea snake called Hydrophis platurus, that can totally dry out, and stay that way for months. Add water, and in an hour or two, it rehydrates and off it goes.”

  “Well, this took about two minutes.” Rachel’s lips curled at the revolting image.

  “Beautiful.” Howie grinned as he peered down the lens. “Maybe I should have expected it. Dehydration is a form of hibernation for creatures at the smaller end of the scale. They convert sugars in their system to something like glass that surrounds their organs to protect them from collapse. You just add water, and…”

  “And we’re good to go.” Rachel said, turning to look at the writhing worm. She stood transfixed as the tiny, thrashing thing continued to inflate. Beside her Howie mumbled, keeping up a steady stream of biology facts and figures mixed with the wonders of the natural world. Time moved on, and she paced, fidgeted, and sighed long and loud.

  Behind them the centrifuge timer finally pinged.

  Thank god, Rachel thought.

  “Now we can see what our little friends have been up to. Or at least what makes them tick.” Howie crossed to the centrifuge, lifted the lid, and pulled out the small test tube. He held it up, looking at the bands of different colored matter.

  “Excellent separation.” He used a pipette to extract each of the solution bands, and piped them onto separate slides that he then slid into a machine that looked like a cross between a photocopier and bar fridge.

  “Gertrude.” He grinned. “Our mass spectrometer; she’s an older model, but still works just fine.”

  He sat down on a chair and pressed two buttons on the face of the device, causing two trays to slide out, like a CD player awaiting its disc. He carefully placed the slides in each and then nudged the trays closed.

  He moved along the control panel to a keyboard and immediately started entering data.

  “I’m now telling Gertrude what I’m feeding her today, a-aaand what I want back.” He lifted a hand, single finger hovering over the enter key. “And voila.” He hit the key with a flourish and sat back with arms folded. Gertrude seemed to purr.

  “How long?” Rachel asked.

  Howie smiled for a second or two. The small screen showed graphs of different colors rising and falling in spiked peaks and troughs.

  The screen beeped and then displayed a green banner: ANALYSIS COMPLETE.

  He pressed PRINT x 2, and immediately two sheets of paper were ejected into a tray. He snatched them up and handed one to Rachel. She glanced at it and sighed.

  “Well?”

  Howie looked at the information, his lips pursed and he nodded now and then. He stopped and his brows came together.

  “Hello… that’s weird.”

  “What’s weird?” Rachel looked over his shoulder at his paper, even though she was holding a duplicate in her hands.

  “These elements – hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen – basic chemicals, but their proportion are way too familiar.” He spun in his chair so fast Rachel had to leap out of his way. Howie then grabbed up a computer tablet and started to type furiously, opening multiple pages in a flurry. He snorted as he read the results.

  “Yep, knew it, amino acids.” He showed her the results, but the chains and connectors meant nothing to her.

  “Amino acids?” She leaned over him. “So?”

  “Human.”

  “But you expected that – you already said if you found human protein fragments, that’d just confirm the parasite might have been ingesting the body.”

  “Yeah, I did.” He grinned. “But think about what I said – I was talking about protein fragments. And that’s not what we’ve got here. What we’ve got here is… so much more.” He whizzed back over to the m
ass spectrometer. “I think, no, I know, we’ve got indicators for hormones.” Howie practically bounced in his chair. “It’s basically 75 per cent hormone – 75 per cent freaking human hormone.”

  She grimaced. “Huh, so you’re telling me they were feeding on this guy’s hormones?”

  “No, no, no.” He looked exasperated. “For them to be at this concentration in the parasite, these things weren’t taking them from the host, but were so loaded they were excreting them back into the host’s system.” He started to type again. “But which one?”

  “It’s a specific one?” she asked, leaning over his shoulder.

  “I think so.” He hummed as he typed. “Let’s see if we can isolate it.” He clapped once. “Yes – FGF21 – good ol’ Fibroblast Growth Factor 21.”

  Howie continued to nod and read figures, and Rachel’s impatience swelled. “Well, what the hell is that?”

  “Oh, it’s what we call a growth and repair hormone. The thymus gland produces it and it’s very prevalent in our bodies… but only when we’re young. We stop producing it as we age.” He turned. “It’s actually why we age, as some specialists say it protects the immune system against the ravages of age by giving us super defenses against disease and cell destruction, and it also super charges our repair system.” He straightened. “You know what? I think this thing might not be a parasite at all, maybe more a symbiote.”

  He rubbed at his chin. “Or perhaps it was just a super-efficient parasite – just taking what it needed to keep itself and its host alive.” His brows knitted. “If you had this much FGF21 in your system you could live for… “ His eyes flicked up at her. “This guy that the worms came from, how old was he? What did he look like?”

  “What did he look like?” She snorted sourly. “The remains of a fucking bonfire.”

  *

  “From Fort Severn way up in Canada, you say, Professor?” The science agent, David Moddel, hmmd, as he looked from the glass fragments up at the image. “And from within an old Christian church?”