Pandora's Succession

by Russell Brooks

  “Correct. That’s why it was so important for us to choose this location to set up this compound, far away from any populated areas. Other than starvation, Pandora’s virtually indestructible. Unlike a regular missile, shooting down a missile containing Pandora won’t do anything but release it into the atmosphere where it will inevitably drop to earth.”

  “If you were to feed it a large amount of its supplement, how would that affect its reproduction rate versus feeding it a smaller amount of the same supplement?”

  “An increase in supplement is directly proportional to its reproductive rate. The more food it ingests, the more offspring it produces.” Marx then motioned in the direction of the door. “Judging from the distance between here and where the helicopter was, whomever used this weapon must have fed Pandora with a fair amount of the protein supplement in order for it increase in such numbers that it would’ve reached it so quickly.”

  “But wouldn’t the force of the helicopter’s propellers be strong enough to fan away the microbes?”

  “Not necessarily. As I mentioned earlier, the reproductive rate of a single Pandora microbe is directly correlated with the amount of food it ingests. If a large enough quantity of the complex protein supplement were fed to it, it would not only reproduce so extremely rapidly as to appear as a green-colored explosion.”

  “Which is probably what happened here,” said Fox.

  “No doubt,” Marx nodded. “And the wonderful thing about Pandora is that energy from the parent is transferred to its clones, only gradually decreasing in each generation.”

  “I don’t know which school of thought you come from, but I don’t find anything wonderful about Pandora.”

  Marx gasped at the comment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it that way. I was only speaking from a scientific point of view.”

  Fox followed her out of the isolation chamber as she continued with the conversation. She put her hands into her pockets. “A few years ago there was a second outbreak, again up in Northern Canada, near the north pole, when two university scientists accidentally exhumed a Pandora-infected prehistoric man, buried under the ice for what could’ve been a few millennia. Their SOS was intercepted by the National Security Agency’s Echelon system. You could imagine the horror I felt when my phone rang soon after.”

  Echelon was the National Security Agency’s computer program that automatically intercepted keywords in regular conversation, either on a regular phone or through cyberspace, used to track potential terrorist threats. The system had been updated to include references to Pandora.

  “I flew up there with a team and fortunately arrived on time to contain the outbreak. I thought that was the last we’d see of Pandora, until now,” said Marx.

  Fox ran a finger over his left eyebrow. “Pandora wasn’t created, after all.”

  “Most definitely not. The ice man’s discovery suggests that Pandora is a microbe that existed in prehistoric times. It managed to survive over time by lying dormant in the ice man. My guess is that at the time that he and members of his community were infected, he either fell through a frozen lake or was buried under an avalanche while the rest were wiped out.”

  They reached the doorway to the dome and exited where Walsh was.

  Fox walked up to Walsh. “You all right? You’ve lost some color in your face.”

  “I’ll live, and I tan easily,” Walsh replied. “What I still can’t figure out is how Ares managed to get their hands on Pandora.”

  “Ares has spies everywhere, unless they discovered it on their own.” But Fox felt that the latter explanation was the least likely.

  “No matter how they discovered it, whoever’s responsible for this disaster went far enough to kill everyone to cover their tracks,” said Walsh.

  Dr. Marx turned when she heard a cleanup-crew member shout out to her. “Dr. Marx, we found another victim.”

  “I’ll be right there,” she replied. She turned to Fox and Walsh. “I have to go. I’ll send you my results when I’m done.”

  “Sure thing, Doc,” replied Walsh.

  Fox nodded to her. He was about to walk away when Marx called back to him. “Oh, Fox, watch your back. You never know what or who may turn up.”

  “I’ll make sure of that.” Fox checked the ground to make sure he didn’t step in anything gelatinous as both he and Walsh walked back to their transport helicopter that was outside the compound.

  With no survivors or any retrievable data so far, the trail was about to run cold. And those responsible wanted it that way. Fox knew he would go sleepless for several nights knowing that a surprise attack was imminent.

  Chapter 8

  West Tokyo

  Hideaki Hashimoto usually read the morning news from his laptop computer at 6:00 AM while he sipped on a cup of hot tea. He preferred sitting outside at the gazebo in the garden when it was sunny and warm. But this morning was different. It was 5:35 AM, and he was inside his office tearing through webpage after webpage on his laptop as his tea sat untouched on his desk. Three hours ago, a telephone call woke him up, alerting him of the incident in Uganda.

  He must have checked the same news pages several times over, convinced he had missed something. CNN. com, BBC. co. uk-they had nothing. Maybe news on the Pandora outbreak in southern Uganda would only break later that morning, unless the officials wanted to keep the incident under tight wrap to avoid a worldwide panic.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Enter,” Hashimoto said in Japanese. His personal secretary walked in holding an envelope and an agenda. She then closed the door behind her. “Come in, Ms. Miyake.” His eyes never left the monitor.

  Ms. Miyake removed her heels at the door as she crossed the Kars rug on her way to her boss’s desk and handed him a manila envelope. “Good morning, sir.”

  Hashimoto placed the envelope on the edge of his desk. “Any news worth telling me about?”

  “Yes, sir. The approval of Hexagon’s recent purchase of Warner-Parke Pharmaceuticals in the US has yielded great results. Shares have shot up from $820 US to $1027 US per share.”

  “Anything else?”

  “There’s another testing of Project Clarity this morning.”

  “At nine o’clock?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Make sure my driver knows I want to be there at least half an hour early. I personally want to meet the two test subjects.”

  “I’ll see that he gets the message,” said Ms Miyake as she scribbled notes into her agenda. “There’s also your scheduled teleconference with a Nick Archer from Financial Planet Magazine at-”

  “Cancel that meeting. I’ll conveniently be busy during that hour.”

  “I’ll email him the message right away, sir.” More notes were scribbled into the agenda.

  The desk phone rang and Hashimoto snatched it. “Moshi moshi?”

  “I’ve arrived a few moments ago with the package. I couldn’t contact you sooner for security reasons,” said a Russian-accented voice in English. Hashimoto covered the ear piece and gave a head signal to his secretary to leave. She quickly obliged, understanding his need for privacy.

  “That’s understandable,” Hashimoto replied in the same language, recognizing Valerik’s voice.

  “Not too much trouble, I expect.”

  “Of course not. I know these people. It was a piece of cake, as the Americans say. Nothing complicated. I only wish the two men you assigned to accompany me would relax a bit. A shot of Vodka to celebrate wouldn’t hurt.”

  “My men were not trained to drink, but to obey. The Undertaker would be very disappointed to hear you talk like that, after everything she’s done for us. I trust they’ve done everything you’ve asked?”

  “Yes, and all too well. They were both a bit more passionate than I was. Anyhow, I’ll see you later this morning after I get sleep. It was a long flight.”

  “Excellent work. Your brothers and sisters have much to be grateful for. By the way, I was notified not too long
ago of a certain incident. Our friends are searching for two men.” Men that don’t exist, of course. Hashimoto was careful to avoid using words such as Americans, manhunt or Uganda in the same sentence. “Do you have any concerns?”

  “My former comrades will also be kept so busy running from our friends that they won’t have time to come look for me.”

  “Don’t be too sure of that.”

  “I know.”

  Hashimoto hung up the phone, more assuaged than when he had answered it. Pandora was finally in his possession, the online news could wait. He knew his tea would be cold by now. That was nothing to stress over, he would send for another cup later.

  Hashimoto was a handsome man, standing five-foot-seven inches and he was relatively fit for sixty-four. He had a doctorate certificate in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Tokyo. That and his numerous awards took up an entire wall. The other side was covered with awards and framed newspaper articles related to Hexagon Pharmaceuticals, of which he had been the CEO for the past twenty-three years. He was one of the youngest CEOs to have ever been given that title in the history of the company dating back to 1860.

  Hashimoto’s association with Valerik went back as far as the early 1980’s, when the Soviets had recruited him based on his unique knowledge of brainwashing techniques. Hashimoto’s human experiments during the Soviet-Afghan war would’ve had him arrested for war crimes several years ago had the secret gotten out. In addition to the handsome salary the Soviets gave him, they facilitated his climb up the corporate ladder to become CEO of Hexagon Pharmaceuticals.

  This was all threatened the day Dr. Tabitha Marx-otherwise known as the Undertaker-paid him a visit. She told him that she knew everything about him and Valerik after she rummaged through her late mother’s belongings. Blackmailing him was easy. Her making him trick Valerik into visiting his office only to have the Clarity drug used on him in order to brainwash him into becoming a double agent for Dr. Marx was pure genius.

  Hashimoto accepted that he, himself, was tricked by Marx into taking Clarity, it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Since that day, Hashimoto was able to see that religion and politics were the root of all of the world’s problems. The world only needed one belief system, and that’s why she told him that he should establish his own cult, The Promise, and use Clarity to help recruit members. Hexagon was the perfect front.

  Hashimoto wasn’t surprised that Dr. Marx hadn’t called him yet. She was on an American Military base-she’d be crazy to think that her phone call was secure. Valerik should’ve text-messaged a code to her that would’ve passed under the Intelligence community’s radar, illustrating his success in acquiring Pandora. This would in turn let her know that it was all right to disperse of what she had obtained. Framing Ares for it was a bonus.

  Stealing Pandora from the weapons consortium, known as the Arms of Ares, would be a serious blow to that organization. Valerik was a professional. He’d proven himself several times before and wouldn’t be so careless as to lead a trail to either him or Hexagon Pharmaceuticals.

  Even if he did, Hashimoto was more than equipped to handle them should they ever come looking for him.

  Chapter 9

  Hexagon Pharmaceuticals Head Office, West Tokyo, Japan, three hours later

  Dr. Nita Parris parked her car in her reserved parking spot. It was the first time in days that she had chosen to drive to work. Most of Hexagon’s employees took advantage of Hexagon’s shuttle bus service from the nearby train station that dropped them off at each of the building’s four main entrances. She remembered the orientation session she had to get-mandatory for new employees and overseas transfers, like herself. Her guide even spoke English to her when he gave her a personal tour. All that was important to know about Hexagon Pharmaceuticals was that there were four Plexiglas-covered buildings that took up an area of ten football fields, named each according to orientation.

  The south building was the tallest and had a two-storey lobby area with five office floors above it. The north building had residences on its two floors and a basement for compensated human trials. The east building had a ground floor and four sub-basements where chemicals and other products were manufactured and stored. Then there was the two-storey west building which consisted of conference rooms, auditoriums, and a cafeteria. All four buildings were easily accessible by horizontal escalators inside. Someone that could memorize that would never get lost inside. If they couldn’t, then they could refer to the maps.

  With her black golf umbrella in one hand and her Madison Avenue Tote hanging from her opposite shoulder, she walked up the divided, flower-adorned walkway to the south entrance and joined a group that poured out of a shuttle bus. The crowd that surrounded her was a portion of the 105,000 that were employed worldwide in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Brazil, making Hexagon one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.

  Being the only black woman among mostly Asians wasn’t the only thing that made her stand out-it was how fast she walked. Even in her four-inch-high stacked heels, she moved quickly. Seven years after she had hung up her track spikes, she still couldn’t slow down. But to her, it was everyone else who was slow.

  As a young girl growing up in Barbados, she easily out-sprinted the boys, even the older ones. And although it’d been more than eight years since her last track meet, she couldn’t resist finding an outdoor, galvanized-rubber surfaced track to do some wind sprints on-just for the rush she used to have. She joined a gym that was a fifteen minute jog from where she lived and managed to go twice a week. She was flattered every time someone had trouble guessing her age, but she knew that most of the men did so just as a cheap pick-up line.

  When she had competed for the Princeton University Track Team she was always hunted by the boys on the football and basketball teams. They’d always been present at home competitions, in packs of eight to ten, and always tried to get the phone numbers of the girls on the team.

  Even today, things hadn’t changed in terms of how men looked at her. Such as the four men she had caught in her peripheral vision since she’d left her apartment earlier. It wasn’t a natural habit, it was a CIA-based trained habit to be able to spot people that either observed her or followed her inconspicuously.

  She liked the flowers in the center median. They reminded her of the ones that she and her aunt Pauline had planted around the house, back home in St Phillip parish in Barbados. Those were such innocent times for her, when she would share everything with her aunt, whom she owed everything to.

  She never knew her parents. Her mother had passed away a few days after she was born, and her father was a ghost. Aunt Pauline, with the exception of a few other aunts, uncles, and cousins who lived in Barbados and England, was the only family that she knew.

  After she passed through the revolving door to the South building, she glanced at the large digital clock that hung above the security guard’s round counter in the center of the atrium. It was 8:35 AM. She was well ahead of schedule. These past several weeks she had played to perfection the role of a senior researcher for Hexagon Pharmaceuticals. On the books, the company had several legitimate research contracts worth millions of dollars. But General Downing sent her there to spy on her boss, Dr. Hideaki Hashimoto.

  The National Security Agency always suspected that illicit human trials were conducted by the Soviets during the Soviet-Afghan war and that they had recruited Hashimoto to run the experiments. Every investigation turned up a dead end. Nevertheless, the NSA’s paranoia led them to believe that if he had perfected his brainwashing techniques, it would likely fall in the hands of an enemy nation or terrorist group.

  Downing felt that her background in biology and chemistry would make her a perfect fit. While she pursued her Biochemistry doctorate at Princeton, she had singlehandedly discovered a bio-weapon threat against the US. Downing wasted no time recruiting her. The CIA and the FBI’s top guns still could not figure out how they overlooked what she saw. To hi
m she was a perfect candidate-no parents and an aunt for a legal guardian.

  But what took her out of the labs at Langley, Virginia, and into the field, was the night she was nearly fatally wounded after a carjacking. It was all because some jerk stood her up on a date. She drove home after waiting for him for over an hour, finally arriving at the traffic light at the DC-Maryland border on Pennsylvania Avenue. It didn’t take too long until she heard someone tapping at her window, only to turn and stare into the barrel of Lorcin 9mm semi-automatic pistol. The next thing she knew, she lost her car and wound up having to be taken to the hospital with a mild concussion.

  The CIA managed to get her into Hexagon, in their San Francisco branch first, until she got herself transferred to West Tokyo’s International Headquarters. Fortunately, she didn’t have to speak Japanese since she worked with bilingual colleagues.

  She got on the horizontal escalator that carried her to the north building where she hopped on the elevator. There was a ping before the doors opened one floor below, to a white hallway with several doors on each side. The strong scent of lemon stung her nostrils as her heels clapped across the recently washed floor. She stopped once she got to the third door on her left, entered, and closed the door behind her.

  She reached to her right and grabbed a lab coat from one of the brass hooks. She removed her jacket and put on the lab coat, leaving her brooch exposed. The events would also be inconspicuously filmed with the miniature camera that was in the brooch pinned to the lapel of her pantsuit. She was there for one reason-to brainwash the two new test subjects with the latest variant of the Clarity drug. After submitting a report, she would meet with her colleague, Tomas Levickis, who was no doubt in his van somewhere doing surveillance as well as recording everything from the brooch.

  To her right was a door to the monitoring station, and the one ahead led to the testing room. Both rooms were separated by a one-way see-through window. She walked ahead, pushed the door open, and saw her two test subjects, Dewan and Eva, and her boss, Dr. Hideaki Hashimoto, as he spoke to them.