by Cliff Ryder
As they passed out of the industrial district, Alex saw bright lights ahead. Liang saw them, too, and grinned. He sped up, pulled down a side street, turned up an alley and moments later they emerged onto a wide, well-lit street. Colored neon rippled over the doors. Men and women flooded the streets, moving from club to club in an ocean of color and sound. The contrast was incredible.
Liang pulled onto another side street and found a place to park. It was easy to see why he preferred the small vehicle.
“We got lucky.” Liang grinned. “Most nights we’d have had to go half a mile from the action for a parking space.”
Alex eyed the streets and shook his head. The brilliant colored lights irritated his eyes, and he fought to keep his sight clear. His legs ached, but he thought they’d support him. He didn’t want to have any drinks. The last thing he wanted was anything that might fuel the erosion of his motor control, but he couldn’t do anything to make Liang suspicious. Once he was inside—once he was on his own—he could worry less about the MS and more about the job, but up to that point he needed Liang. The big man had the explosives, the key to the doors of the MRIS plant and the files.
“Have you had a chance to go through the files?” he asked, turning quickly to exit the vehicle and pulling his hand in close to his chest. It was shaking again, and he was afraid if the spasm became more violent he wouldn’t be able to conceal it.
“I’ve been through them,” Liang said. “We’ll get to that in the morning. Have you ever been to Beijing, Mr. Vance?”
Alex shook his head. “I’ve been in China several times, but never the city.”
Liang nodded. “Good. I like it when I can show a man something he’s never seen before.” They locked the car and headed back to the main drag, stepping into the ocean of bodies. Liang had to shout to be heard over the laughing, babbling throng.
Alex was taller than most of those around him, but he spotted a few non-Asian faces in the crowd.
Music blared from several doorways. Young couples, teenagers and groups of older men and women who he assumed were businessmen, rolled in and out. Each time one of the doors opened wide, the music from that particular club rose, blotting out the others, and then faded back into the general roar of sound.
“What would Confucius have thought of this?”
Alex wondered out loud.
Liang stopped, as though considering the question seriously, and then he laughed. “It’s a whole new world,” he said. “The West leaks in through all the cracks, across the Internet, through television and popular music. Everything about your culture is popular with the youth of China, and even the rest of us are catching the fever a little. It’s too close for me to what came before.”
The big man’s face darkened. “I remember students being shot for their beliefs. I remember days when you didn’t dare write or say a thing that wasn’t programmed into you from birth. We’ve been fighting a very long war with ourselves, our ancestors and our culture. We always hope it will get better.” Liang considered his words for a moment, then added, “Confucius would probably say too much of anything is bad for everything.”
Alex nodded. They stepped up to the doors of a club outlined in bright blue neon. He focused on the sign, but they passed under it before he could fully translate. His spoken Chinese was fluent, but accented. He’d worked on it carefully. American accents were recognizable, and more likely to draw attention. His Chinese had been learned from a woman with a thick British accent. The combination of her influence on his pronunciation and his own slight accent gave his voice an odd European inflection. It had served him well in the past because its very ambiguity made it forget-table. In a company where Arab doctors worked side by side with Hindu researchers, it wouldn’t even register on the scale of oddity.
The interior of the club throbbed with sound.
There were three dance floors, all brightly lit with fluorescent borders and colored spotlights. Disco balls dangled from the ceiling and spun slowly.
Lights flickered off the walls, the floor, the faces, and behind it all was the music. There was never a break in the sound. The conglomeration of dance tracks and techno beats stretched from the l970s into some future world of sound Alex had never experienced.
“Loud, huh?” Liang cupped a hand over his mouth and directed his hoarse yell into Alex’s ear.
“What?” Alex grinned as he answered, and Liang laughed. He led Alex through a beaded curtain and into a hallway where the sound was muffled. A few yards farther they stepped through into a shadowy bar. Soft music played—
so soft that after the cacophony of the main dance area, it was a few moments before Alex even heard it.
They stepped up to a cherrywood bar and leaned on it. Alex was grateful for the support. He was also grateful for the dim lights. His legs shook, and the pain, which had been no more than a steady ache during the drive into the city, had evolved into something like bags of broken glass shifting under the muscles.
Liang spoke to the bartender and a moment later two tall brown bottles of beer appeared. Alex didn’t even glance at the label. He picked his up and took a long drink. The beer stung a little going down, and the faint tang of formaldehyde burned his tongue, but he ignored it. He’d drunk worse, and the cool liquid soothed him. He drained half of the oversize bottle in a single long gulp.
“Thirsty?” Liang asked. He was watching Alex with cool curiosity. His smile was genuine, but Alex knew when he was being sized up.
“It’s been a long day. The flight in was rough, and I didn’t sleep too well the night before. I guess I’m more tired than I thought.”
“We’ll have just one more,” Liang said. “I was going to show you some of the city, but maybe we better concentrate on this one and get through it.”
Alex nodded. He glanced around the room.
“From the street you’d never guess this room was here. I thought for a minute you were going to try and get me out on a dance floor.”
Liang laughed again and took a swig of his beer. “I’m not much of a dancer. I come here because the beer is cold, and with the sound out there, this is a good place to talk. Not many know it’s here, and those that do have business of their own. It works out well.”
Alex’s respect for the big man jumped another notch. It was easy to see why he’d gotten the nod from Room 59. It was almost always easy to see.
There was something about the men and women who were capable of doing what Alex did that shone through, if you knew how to look. Their eyes were a little brighter—they moved with a certain grace—and invariably they saw through everything you thought they shouldn’t. It was going to be harder to conceal anything from Liang than it was to get into MRIS. Maybe it would be impossible.
“You do look tired,” Liang said abruptly. “We’ll go back and have that second beer at my place, and then you can get some rest. Tomorrow you can hole up in a place I know and hit those files. We have a short fuse on this one.”
“When don’t we?” Alex asked, lifting his beer and holding it out.
Liang tapped his bottle against Alex’s and grinned.
They downed the last of the beer and turned away from the bar, disappearing back into the dancing crowd and the wall of sound. Liang took the lead, and Alex, his hand shaking like a leaf in a heavy breeze, followed.
The lab was cleared in less than an hour, just in time for Rand’s people to start rolling in with their equipment. Steph and Billy tried their best to hang around at first, pestering Brin with questions and trying to peek at the equipment as it rolled in, but she chased them away with a promise that she would tell them whatever she was authorized to soon. The laptop arrived in a sealed case. Brin took this in herself, setting it up on a small desk in the rear of the lab.
She was anxious to know what was in the files, but she knew she couldn’t begin reading until the room was clear and secured. She made herself ignore the machine and concentrated on supervis-ing the equipment setup. She grinned when she
saw that Rand had included a small espresso machine. Apparently even her coffee breaks would be private for a while.
The windows were blocked and sealed, inside and out, and the locks on the door had been drilled out and replaced with several high-security coded devices.
“Ma’am?” the technician installing the lock called her over. “We’re going to need you to key in a code for this when we’re done. Our orders are that only you will know the access code—and Mr.
Rand, of course. The code needs to include numbers, letters, upper- and lower-case. The longer the better.”
Brin nodded. She thought for a few moments.
“Where do I enter it?”
The young man handed her a keyboard that was wired into the lock. He stepped away, leaving her alone.
She typed her code quickly, then repeated it to verify.
“S@VanNah60024220.”
She knew she’d never forget. It was Savannah’s name and her birthdate backward. She knew, also, that it made the password less secure, but the insertion of the @ symbol and random caps should make up for her lack of attention to protocol. A series of lights flashed on the keyboard, and the small digital screen went blank. Only a single green light remained.
Brin handed back the keyboard, and the tech glanced at it, then smiled. “It accepted the code.
Usually we have to have people give it three or four tries to find something complex enough.”
“I’m a complex person,” she replied.
He held out a second keypad. “This one is a print analyzer,” he said. “Please place your right thumb on the pad.”
Brin did so, and a thin beam of light scanned her thumbprint. The tech went back to work for several more minutes, installing the print analyzer next to the door, then he turned back to her. “In order to enter the lab, you’ll need to key in your code, then place your thumb on the analyzer for a scan, okay, ma’am?”
She nodded, thinking that of all the labs in the building, this was the only one she knew of that had both a coded lock and a thumbprint lock to get in. Curious, she asked, “What happens if either the code or the print isn’t correct?”
The tech shook his head. “The whole lab will go into lockdown,” he said. “Short of someone blowing this steel door off the frame, no one will go in or out unless the system is reset by us.” He grinned at her, then added, “Try not to do that, ma’am. I hate being called out in the middle of the night for a lost password.”
“Got it,” she said.
Within fifteen minutes, the techs were cleared, the equipment was set up and only two things remained. Whatever was in the case she’d seen on Rand’s desk would have to arrive, and she would have to figure out what the hell it was.
She closed the door, started up the coffee machine and booted up the laptop. Four hours and so many pages of data later that they blurred in her mind, she sat back and stared at the machine in disbelief. Her coffee sat cold and forgotten beside her. She glanced at her watch, noting the time, and gasped. She closed the files, stood and turned to stare at the sample case, which was still sealed. Cables ran from the case to an outlet on the wall, and to a UPS backup in case the building power failed. Now she understood the caution and the secrecy. She reached out and touched the case gently—almost reverently.
Despite the mountains of data, what she had in her lab was relatively simple, at least in principle.
It was an answer, and the question was as familiar to Brin as her own heartbeat.
Degenerative diseases could be attached in a number of ways, but in too many cases all that medical science had done was find ways to slow them down. When the body quit fighting on its own, or began eating itself from within because some cell or protein mutated, or changed or blended incorrectly with another, it was difficult to reverse the process. In fact, for all practical purposes, it was impossible.
But this case held an answer. In fact, it held an army. It was a very small army, but potent. What the Chinese branch had sent for verification and further study was nothing short of the miracle she’d worked her entire career encounter.
They called them nanoagents—small manufac-tured structures capable of performing work on the cellular and subcellular level. They represented the smallest machines ever created, biological in nature and programmable to a purpose. That purpose was the restructuring of cells. She ran the data through her mind, searching for flaws and somehow unable to concentrate because she was lost in the possibilities.
In China, they’d taken healthy cells and used them to program the agents. Using tiny electrical signals, they’d brought their tiny machines into harmony with those cells, and then they’d released them into the biosystems of diseased cells. The nanoagents served a single purpose. Once programmed, they worked to bring their host into harmony with their programming. They’d been used to slow, halt and even reverse viral attacks and cellular dysfunction.
The claims made in the report on her laptop were pretty outrageous, but the research seemed solid. It hadn’t been slapped together or hurried, and somehow they’d managed to keep it under wraps. That alone was amazing, because just the possible discovery of something this big—something this overpoweringly wonderful—would have sent waves of reaction through several scientific communities.
She turned off the coffeemaker, checked the equipment and shut off the lights, slipping out into the hall. The building was down to a skeleton staff—she was nearly half an hour beyond her normally scheduled departure time. It wasn’t like her to forget time, even less like her to risk being late picking up Savannah. She had just enough time if she pushed the speed limit on the way.
A FEW HOURS LATER, Brin sat on the sofa, chewing her thumbnail and forcing herself to watch television. She wasn’t even sure what program was on.
She’d reached Dr. Britton’s call service and left a message, as well as a numeric page. There had been no return call, despite her use of the word
“emergency.”
Now her eyes flitted between the TV screen and Alex’s computer. It sat idle on the desk in the corner, mocking her—tempting her. There might be something in one of the files that would clue her in as to what was happening with him. As much as she needed to know the truth, she also hated violating his privacy. He’d never forbidden her access to the machine, but he’d mentioned it was work—
and that there were security issues. She’d always felt that was enough reason to leave it alone.
“Screw it!” she growled at last, slamming one fist on the sofa as she rose, stalking to the computer as though it might run away from her at any moment.
She hit the power button and watched the machine hum to life. She knew he had the system password protected. She was also pretty sure she knew what the password was, or at least a varia-tion of it. The security login screen opened and she stared at it, frowning.
Savannah. She typed it in with the caps at first.
When it didn’t take, she dropped the caps. Met with that failed attempt, the furrow on her brow deepened and she sighed as she sank back in the chair and folded her arms around herself. Then she sat up, and she smiled. She reached for the keyboard and typed.
“Savannah02242006.”
The computer screen went blue, and then the desktop popped into view, icons all in their neat rows along the left side.
“Bingo!”
Brin started sifting through files in the documents section. Chances were the document she was looking for would be a word processor or database document. She tried e-mail briefly, but the password was different and she couldn’t manage to break it. She even tried Alex’s old standby from their early days, but it was a no-go.
Then she found a document titled “Resignation.” Her finger paused over the mouse button for a second, and then dropped on it with some urgency.
It was a letter of resignation to someone named Denny, dated just two days before Alex’s departure. She had just begun to read it when an odd thing happened. A chat window popped open in front
of her, obscuring the letter and flashing an annoying orange bar.
“Hello, Mrs. Tempest.”
Brin gasped and yanked back her hands. The top of the window said “Room 59” but she had no idea what that was. That aside, how had the person on the other end known she was on Alex’s computer?
“Who are you?” she typed in, and then minimized the window and popped open the search bar.
She searched for Room 59, but received no results.
She closed the search and maximized the chat window.
“My name is Denny. I think we need to talk about your husband, don’t you?”
“I’ve got a better idea. You talk, I’ll listen. How do you know my husband, and what is it you think we need to talk about? Is he in trouble? Is he hurt?”
“Alex and I work together, and as far as I know, he’s fine. But we can’t chat here. Follow this link and it will lead to a secure chat location. At the bottom of the screen is a small Easter egg—a hot spot on the screen that only activates when you mouse over it. You’ll have to search around the bottom left corner until you find it.”
Brin hesitated for a minute, but then searched and found the login. A voice suddenly began speaking through the computer’s speaker. It recited a password. When it repeated, she typed. It took her a moment to realize what it was.
“I’m in,” she typed in the window that opened.
The password had been a shared secret. Alex had once shown her a code called Caesar’s Cipher.
They’d played with it, encoding first his name, then hers and finally Savannah’s. She hadn’t realized it at the time, but he’d been leaving her an emergency message. She noticed that when the new chat window opened, nothing else on the computer reacted. She couldn’t close the window or open any others.
“This chat program isn’t just secure, it’s paranoid,” she whispered to herself, as though someone else could actually hear her.
“Now,” she typed in carefully, “why don’t you tell me just who the hell you are, and what you know about Alex?”
“To start with, I know what’s wrong with him.
