She closed her eyes. The girl was not human.
Sophia could do things to her she would never do to another human.
Like splash her brains over the tarpaulin.
* * *
When she opened her eyes, her target was gone. She was back in the library, under the watchful eye of Adamicz.
‘What were the men doing?’ she said. ‘The static, the needle, the light buzzing in my face.’
‘Fluorescent strobe light, yes?’ Adamicz said. ‘With monoatomic gold filament. It is hypnotic opener.’
‘Opener for what?’ Sophia yelled.
‘For hypnotic suggestion. First step is to implant your loyalty. Then I enter picture, to program you completely.’
‘I killed an operative,’ she said. ‘She died. And I was allowed to live.’
Adamicz said nothing.
Why was she even telling him this? His silence sparked a deep-seated rage.
‘Say something!’ she yelled.
Her voice boomed through the library, bouncing back at her. Her lower lip trembled. She bit it, held it between her teeth until it tasted sour.
‘You hesitate that day,’ he said. ‘I had no choice but to scrub hesitation from records. Just to keep you in project.’
‘Stop it!’ she yelled again, turning away from him. ‘I don’t want to hear any more of your lies!’
She heard him say, ‘The exquisite corpse will drink finest wine.’
For a moment, she was certain nothing had happened. But when she looked down, she was shocked to find that same knife in her hand again. This time, it was inches from her neck. Blood ran from her hand, down her arm.
Her last thread of certainty drained from her like a viscous liquid. The piece of glass fell from her hand. She felt nothing.
No.
She felt hollow.
Chapter Seven
An army of do-it-yourself satellite dishes were angled towards the Super Jesus statue perched high on the mountain above Rio. Six-year-old Jay ducked under a swathe of cables patched into a utility pole. His younger brother, Hélio, had fallen behind again. Jay checked over his shoulder. Hélio was still running heartily to keep up, a small blur alongside the concrete walls and graffiti.
Jay scaled the tin roof and stepped through a broken window. He had found his way inside a recently abandoned hideout before Hélio had even started climbing. Lots of empty rifle shells and racks that a few days ago would have been brimming with cable television equipment. Jay had heard someone had been planning to set themselves up as illegal cable providers — before BOPE, Rio’s Police Special Forces, had raided the place.
A rabbit scurried around a large hole in the floor. Jay ignored it. He saw rabbits all the time, many of them, but they were too disease-ridden to eat. Jay was more interested in finding whatever BOPE might’ve missed. Anything he might be able to sell for money.
Hélio stumbled through the window behind him. Jay ignored him and checked the next room. It was bare except for three empty fireworks cylinders and a dusty bottle of soda.
‘Nada,’ Hélio said, kicking a glass bottle.
Jay heard the bottle drop down the hole. A few seconds later, it smashed onto concrete several floors below.
Jay picked up a fireworks cylinder and inspected it. Empty shells fell out and scattered on the floor. But they didn’t sound hollow. He picked one up. It wasn’t empty at all. He was holding a real bullet! And it was a big one too. As thick as his thumb and as long as his whole hand. He picked up the other bullets, one after another.
Hélio called out to him. ‘Irmão!’ Brother.
Jay counted thirteen big bullets.
‘Irmão!’
Jay wondered if he could sell them to a gang member. How much would he demand for them? He’d have to act tough otherwise they’d try to scam him.
A sharp popping sound made him jump. Fireworks.
The gang used fireworks as a warning when BOPE arrived.
‘Irmão! BOPE!’ Hélio screamed.
Then came the cracking sound of bullets. One smashed through a window.
Jay ran back to Hélio. The glass had sprinkled over the floor. Close call. Hélio hadn’t been hit. More bullets cracked past the building. Jay ducked. Where was his brother?
Hélio’s head of matted black hair bobbed just over the edge of the hole. His fingers were clinging to its edge. ‘Irmão!’ He was sobbing.
Jay couldn’t move. Fear had riveted him to the spot.
More rounds cracked past.
Hélio’s fingers were white at the tips. He hung there, just his fingers and head visible. Jay could see his eyes. Tears streamed from them.
‘Ajuda mim!’ Help me!
The unused bullets slipped from Jay’s hands, scattering across the concrete. His heart was racing. BOPE would be here any moment.
‘Irmão!’ Hélio screamed.
Jay’s legs wobbled. He wanted to help, but his body wouldn’t listen. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t look away.
He shut his eyes.
Every time he had this dream, it always ended the same way. His brother let go of the edge. And he would never get him back.
When he opened his eyes again, he was sitting in a mess hall with over seventy other kids, some a bit younger, some older. Boys and girls. He’d passed all the selection tests in Rio, and then all the entrance tests at the Desecheo Island training facility. And now, he wasn’t sure why he was here, but he secretly hoped that he was sitting with all the successful entrants into the Argus Foundation’s scholarship program.
People in white coats were serving them lunch. Neatly cut sandwich triangles, a small bladder of long-life milk and a choc-chip cookie on a plastic tray. Everyone had the same food, but Jay’s table hadn’t been served yet. There were more people in white coats pacing about, checking kids’ names off their tablets and asking questions.
Sitting opposite Jay was a boy, about his age. A quiet one. He looked a bit nervous. He had a round face, slightly curled brown hair and pinkish cheeks. His skin was paler than Jay’s, but he didn’t look American. He sat with his hands in his lap. All Jay could see above the table was a head and shoulders.
‘Hey, I’m Jay. Do you speak English?’
The boy blinked.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Damiano,’ he said. ‘Uh, Damien.’
‘Damiano.’ Jay grinned. ‘Sounds like a superhero name. What’s your superpower?’
Damien blinked again. He looked confused.
‘Your ability?’ Jay leaned closer, whispering. ‘I think everyone here can do something cool, you know? Like run super fast. Or see people naked!’ He nodded. ‘I want that one.’
Damien shook his head furiously. ‘No. I don’t have anything.’ His cheeks flushed.
‘Yeah, right.’ Jay winked. ‘It’s a secret, huh? So, do you think we’re going to be X-Men?’
More kids milled about, taking whatever seats they could find. Jay leaned back, didn’t say anything more. The spaces next to him and Damien filled quickly. And, finally, the food trays arrived. Jay’s side of the table was served first, then Damien’s, but they were a tray short. A boy on the end, sitting next to Damien, had missed out.
Damien was inspecting his food, perhaps deciding what to eat first.
‘You’re not eating that?’ the boy said, and slid Damien’s tray towards himself.
Damien looked confused. ‘That’s my tray,’ he said.
It was the boy’s turn to look confused. ‘No, this one was meant for me. You stole it!’
Jay ignored them and started eating. He was so hungry. He shoved a sandwich triangle into his mouth in one bite.
A man in a white coat returned with another tray of food, which he gave to Damien. The boy scooped up Damien’s choc-chip cookie.
‘Can I have your cookie?’
Damien froze again. ‘No, that’s mine,’ he said softly.
Jay swallowed his sandwich triangle and picked up another.
&nb
sp; ‘But you’re not eating it,’ the boy said. He took a mouthful out of the cookie. ‘Hey, these are nice!’ He chewed enthusiastically and took another bite.
Jay felt the air heat in his nostrils. He dropped his sandwich triangle, picked up the milk bladder and peeled the foil cover open just a little bit.
The boy finished Damien’s cookie and picked up his own.
Jay extended the milk bladder towards the boy. ‘Want some milk with all your cookies?’
The boy looked surprised. ‘What for?’ He sprayed crumbs as he spoke.
‘To wash it down.’
Jay squeezed the milk bladder. The foil cover shot off and milk exploded over the boy, coating his hair and face. Laughter erupted from around them. Jay laughed too.
Damien moved unexpectedly fast, snatching the boy’s cookie from his grasp. There was a splash of milk on it, but Damien didn’t seem to mind. He grinned at Jay. ‘Nice one.’
Jay shoved another triangle in his mouth. ‘Thanks.’
Suddenly, his body seized up. Jay shut his eyes and cried out. He fell off the seat, onto the floor. Pain surged through him.
He opened his eyes again. The dreams were over. He was awake now, back to his adult self. On an operating table. He couldn’t quite remember how he’d ended up here.
He craned his neck to look down. Legs. Check. Arms. Check. Good, he wasn’t injured. Or limbless. But the pain was fucking unbearable. He lay there, breathing heavily, as it receded.
A man in a white coat lingered over him. ‘Please relax, we’re almost done.’
Jay turned his head to see Damien lying on a table next to him. His brother.
The man in a white coat stepped between them, blocking his view. He slipped a needle into Jay’s arm. Liquid rushed his bloodstream. He couldn’t feel the needle’s sting any more.
* * *
Denton wiped a smudge from the one-way glass. He turned to Major Novak, a short, solid man with rosy cheeks and a thick mop of black hair that he wore a little too proudly.
‘Scrub them from the shocktrooper program and requalify them for service,’ Denton said.
‘Yes, Colonel.’ Novak left the room.
Denton turned back to the window. Damien and Jay were lying peacefully on their operating tables, their reprogramming in its final stages.
Denton inhaled sharply. ‘I have plans for you two.’ Leaving them to rest, he headed for the Blue Gene lab.
Glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose, hands resting above the keyboard, Dr. Benito Montoya worked the front-end node of the facility’s supercomputer. As Denton entered the Blue Gene lab, he could see jeans under Benito’s lab coat. Probably accompanied by a shirt that hadn’t been ironed for a year. The cryptanalyst looked a bit worse for wear today, his iced-coffee complexion shadowed by dark circles under his pale green eyes.
‘I want good news, Benito.’
Denton’s words echoed through the vacant lab, making Benito jump. He turned to face him, ash brown hair still damp from his morning laps at the facility gym. At least he was exercising.
‘Yes, Colonel,’ Benito said. ‘We have more information on the encrypted data.’
‘Can you break it?’
‘It’s over 40,000 characters long. I hate to say it, but even if we send it to our quantum computer in Denver, it would take somewhere between five and twenty years to breach it.’
‘In five years, breaching encrypted data will be the least of your concerns,’ Denton said. ‘It would be quicker to find the Chimera pseudogenes from scratch.’
Benito’s hands fidgeted beside the keyboard. ‘That’s a very small needle in a very large haystack.’
Denton folded his arms. ‘Define small.’
‘OK, well… the code contains the chromosomal locations for the Chimera pseudogenes; that’s spread over more than a dozen chromosomes. Each pseudogene is no fewer than 10,000 base pairs long.’ Benito’s gaze dropped to Denton’s shoes and he shook his head. ‘I don’t think Doctor McLoughlin was looking for the Chimera pseudogenes on purpose. It’s more likely she found them by accident.’
Denton unfolded his arms. ‘I need the encryption breached; there’s no other option. Have you tried her login password? It’s NephalimGene94.’
‘I doubt she’d use a password we can gain access to. And besides, I can’t try anything. The encryption has a destruction mechanism in place. If we get it wrong the first time, it destroys the Chimera vector code. There’s no second chance.’
He matched Denton’s gaze, a little too confidently for Denton’s liking.
‘Colonel, the reason I called you here is that Doctor McLoughlin seems to have used a very strange encryption. The key is 40,713 characters long.’
Denton arched an eyebrow. ‘And that’s strange because?’
‘Because the standard key length closest to that is 40,960. It doesn’t make sense why she used such an unusually specific key length.’
‘Divide 40,713 by three,’ Denton said.
Benito appeared confused, but did as ordered. The answer was 13,571.
Denton didn’t take his eyes off the screen. ‘Do you know what this is?’
From the corner of his vision, he saw Benito shake his head.
‘Genetic code comes in sets of three, correct?’ Denton said.
‘Correct. The three-letter code is used to encode an amino acid.’
‘McLoughlin was a computer geneticist,’ Denton said. ‘The key length is divisible by three. Genetic code is divisible by three. The encryption key is genetic code.’
Benito nodded his head slowly. ‘You could be right.’
‘Of course I’m right. Run a search,’ Denton snapped. ‘Find any catalogued pseudogene clusters containing 13,571 nucleotides.’
He looked over Benito’s shoulder, arms folded, watching as the cryptoanalyst queried the pseudogene database.
bmontoya@DesBlueGene:~$ sqlplus
SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.3.0
Copyright (c) 1982, 2012. All Rights Reserved.
Connected to:
Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.1.0—Production with Partitioning, OLAP and Data Mining options
Projectgate.org
Enter username: BMontoya
Enter password:
SQL> SELECT * FROM pseudogenes WHERE nucleotides = “13571”;
C_REMCOG
SQL> _
‘I have one pseudogene family listed with the specific amount,’ Benito said. ‘But we don’t have the—’
‘Open it,’ Denton snapped.
Benito pulled up the data on the cluster.
Pseudogene Family id: C_APSY_AXTL
Class: Chimera
Expression: _
Transcription effects: _
Family members: 2
‘Good. Our family of Chimera vectors,’ Denton said. ‘Show me one of the family members.’
Benito did as ordered without saying a word.
Member #001: Essential Psychopathy
Name: C_APSY
Gene map locus: Human.chrXp11.23
Start: ********
Stop: *******
Strand: *
Type: Allelic variant type.0003
Parent Protein Accession Num: C_APSY*****
Parent Protein Name: C_APSY*****
Parent Gene ID: *
Genome Build: ***
Denton stared at the screen in earnest. He was close. ‘Where are the chromosomal locations?’
Benito shook his head. ‘It’s encrypted. I can’t find out.’
Denton rubbed his inch-long beard. It was overdue for a trim. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘The car’s locked and the key to unlock it is in the fucking car.’
Benito frowned. ‘And the key-maker is dead.’
Denton ground his teeth. ‘Run it against the subjects’ genomes. See if there’s a match in their DNA. Wait, that’s too long. Narrow it down. All operatives. No, all current operatives.’
Benito’s fingers pecked furiously at
the keyboard. Denton waited for the results to come up onscreen.
SQL> SELECT * FROM Operatives WHERE Genome = “13571”;
No matches.
SQL> _
Benito pushed his glasses up again. ‘Colonel, what exactly are you—’
‘Staff,’ Denton said, pointing at the front-end node. ‘Run it against the DNA of anyone who’s ever been assigned to Project GATE.’
Benito worked the keyboard in silence.
SQL> SELECT * FROM Staff WHERE Genome = “13571”;
No matches.
SQL> _
Denton ground his molars with slow, steady precision. ‘Pull up McLoughlin’s record.’
Benito typed some more, then leaned in to double-check his query. ‘That’s strange. She’s not on here.’
He tried the same query again.
Denton could see it was met with the same result.
He shook his head, partly in frustration and partly in admiration. ‘Search for all projects. Everywhere.’
No matches.
Denton laughed. A little too loudly. ‘The bitch used her own DNA.’
Chapter Eight
Sophia peeked around the corner, into the living room. The man with the shaved head from the Argus Foundation stood there, briefcase in one hand. There was another man who stayed outside the apartment. He had rosy cheeks and a thick mop of hair. The bald man called him Major.
The bald man handed the briefcase to Mama. She placed it on a chair, then tucked wisps of hair under her shawl.
‘Welcome to Kamýk,’ she said. ‘I am sorry for this heat. The pipes are very hot and we have to open the windows even in—’ She spotted Sophia and a smile appeared under her squashed nose. ‘Sophia! The lovely man from the Argus is here to see you.’
Reluctantly, Sophia stepped out where Baldie could see her.
He smiled at her. ‘Hello, Sophia. It’s good to see you again.’
He mopped sweat from his shiny forehead with a handkerchief.
‘Are you excited?’ Mama said. ‘Today you go to the smart school.’
‘It’s not called the smart school, Mama.’ Sophia rolled her eyes. ‘It’s the Argus Foundation.’
She pronounced it slowly and carefully to impress Baldie. He nodded but didn’t seem overly impressed. Did she say it wrong? She didn’t know what to do with her hands, so she clasped them in front of her and fidgeted. Her stomach was spinning with butterflies: pink butterflies of happiness and blue ones of nervousness. The blue ones were winning.
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