The Blood Betrayal

by Don Donaldson

  “I totally agree,” The Worm said. He leaned back in his chair and put both white hands on the armrests as though preparing for blast off. “Now why have you come to see me?”

  “We’d like for you to get us into a particular computer system so we can have free access to roam through their files.”

  “You know that’s illegal.”

  “Yes,” Carl said.

  “We know,” Beth replied.

  “And that by enlisting me to help you do that, you both would be as guilty as I?”

  Carl turned to Beth, who nodded. “We understand.”

  “Are either of you affiliated in any way with law enforcement?” He looked first at Beth.

  “I’m not.”

  Then at Carl.

  “Nor am I.”

  “I was sure Daniel wouldn’t send you to me if you were, but I had to ask. Now, where do we start?”

  “I’ve got a user ID and password that will get us into an email system and also allow us to read, and if desired, comment on the contents of a few isolated files.”

  “So our access in the latter instance is not read only. We also have write permission?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Then our target lies naked before us.”

  Chapter 44

  “I’VE JUST LINKED each of your computers to mine, so you can watch,” The Worm said. “Nudge your mouse and you’ll be able to see everything I see. What’s the web address?”

  Carl moved his mouse and his monitor came to life. Because of The Worm’s sensitivity to light, the brightness on all the monitors was turned way down. So Carl had to hold the scrap of paper in his hand very close to it to see anything. As he read off each digit of the IP number he’d copied from Hollenbeck’s PDA, The Worm typed it on a keyboard, simultaneously bringing it up in the internet address box on all their computers.

  It seemed odd to Carl that The Worm had agreed to help without even asking why they wanted to hack this site. But he was probably more interested in the challenge than the reason. The restricted access screen of the suspect website flicked onto the three computers.

  “User ID,” The Worm requested.

  “HollenbeckA, all one word,” Carl said.

  The Worm filled in the ID box.

  “Password is Pellucida5, no space.”

  “Spell it.”

  The Worm waited to hear the entire spelling, then made the entry.

  The screen flicked to the one Carl and Beth had seen earlier in Puerto Rico.

  “Now we begin,” The Worm said, his fingers already flying over the keyboard.

  “What are you doing?” Beth asked.

  “We need access at a higher level, so I’m putting a password miner into their system. It’ll find their user ID and password files and give them to us.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “Depends on whether they’re encrypted and how complicated the encryption is. Could be seconds, could be longer.”

  On the screen a message said, WORKING . . .

  THOUSANDS OF MILES away, Jurgen Adler, the night IT administrator for the computer system under attack, noted on one of his monitors that Arnold Hollenbeck had just signed onto the system.

  Hollenbeck? There was something familiar about that name.

  Adler navigated to his email account and rapidly began roaming through the subjects of his old messages. It took him a little more than a minute, but then he found it: Hollenbeck Account.

  He opened the file and refreshed his memory.

  Due to the death of Dr. Arnold Hollenbeck, his system access is to be terminated, effective immediately.

  And it was dated months ago.

  Why this order hadn’t been carried out was a mystery to Adler. Even more puzzling was how a dead man could, this very minute, be using the system.

  Unable to comprehend what was going on, Adler decided to err on the side of security and he began typing a command into the system that would terminate Hollenbeck’s session and lock him out until all this could be cleared up.

  BACK IN LITTLE Rock, The Worm watched with satisfaction as his password miner delivered its first fruits:

  User: Hayden Lairmore User ID: LairmoreH Password: Fredric3

  It’s working,” Beth said.

  “Why do you sound surprised?” The Worm asked.

  “It just seems amazing you could do that.”

  Another user was added to the list:

  User: Nathan Podgorski User ID: PodgorN Password: amylase77

  Suddenly, a message appeared: CONNECTION TERMINATED

  “What happened?” Carl asked.

  “Someone at the host site, probably the system administrator, cut us off. Do you know any reason why use of this portal would get their attention?”

  “The original user died six months ago. That might have something to do with it.”

  The Worm glanced at Carl. “You think?”

  “It was the only way we knew to get in,” Carl said.

  The Worm shifted his attention back to his monitor and hit a few keys that brought a nearby printer to life. A page bearing the two names the password miner had yielded before they were cut off slid into the print tray, and The Worm grabbed it. He propped the sheet on a stand next to his monitor, retyped the target site’s IP number into the Internet address box, and hit Enter.

  When the site’s access screen loaded, he typed in the user ID and password of Hayden Lairmore. The screen flicked briefly and a message appeared: SESSION ALREADY UNDERWAY

  “Ooops.” The Worm quickly navigated to another site. “Apparently Hayden Lairmore is already logged onto the system,” he explained. “Hazard of the trade. But let’s hope . . .” He looked at the sheet propped on the stand “Mr. Podgorski is otherwise occupied.”

  The Worm navigated back to the target site and went through the ritual to log on as Nathan Podgorski. This time, he got in.

  Nathan Podgorski’s world on the site was much larger than Hollenbeck’s, for there were many folders and unfiled documents available to him. Each icon was identified by what Carl recognized as a German word or two followed after a slash by a few English ones. The English on the first item identified it as Employee Assignments.

  “Open that first file,” Carl said.

  The Worm did as he asked, and a huge alphabetical list of people’s names appeared. Each entry had a designation opposite it in both German and English. The English notations were things like R and D Stroke Unit, or European Marketing, or US FDA Compliance Section.

  “This looks like the personnel list for a drug company,” Carl muttered more to himself than anyone else. Then a thought hit him. He looked at Beth. “It’s a site for a pharmaceutical house. That substance you all were taking . . . maybe there’s a connection.”

  He scanned the first thirty names on the list, most of which appeared German, but included a sprinkling of other nationalities. “Close this file and let’s see what else is available,” he said.

  The Worm clicked his mouse, and the employee list left the screen.

  Surveying the remaining possibilities, Carl said, “Let’s look at that folder labeled Reproductive R and D unit.”

  Inside, they found a list of files identified by employee name. Even though he didn’t think it would be useful, he had The Worm open the file for Astrid Engel. Immediately, something formatted like a resume appeared.

  Responding to the fact it was all in German, The Worm said, “It appears this is a German site.”

  Carl wanted to say, You think, but he didn’t.

  “I don’t read the language,” The Worm said. “Either of you?”

  “I can a little,” Carl said. “But even that I do with difficulty.” He looked at Beth.

  “Sorry,
no.”

  “Not a problem,” The Worm said. “I’ve got a translation program I can use on anything that looks interesting. It’ll handle German, French, Spanish, or Russian.”

  “I can see that Daniel sent us to the right man,” Carl said. “It looks like this guy, Podgorski, is a personnel director or something. We need to find somebody higher up the food chain.”

  “We’ll have to mine some more IDs and passwords,” The Worm said, already setting to work.

  Over the next hour, as new passwords came in, they used The Worm’s German translation program to explore the worlds of twelve more employees. But the only discovery of any significance was learning that this was the site of Jaeger Medicamente, one of the biggest pharmaceutical houses in the world.

  “This is too random,” Beth said. “We need to start checking the names the miner is giving us against that personnel list showing their work assignment.”

  “Good idea,” Carl said.

  Using that approach for the next four names on the mined list, they decided not to follow up on any of them. The next name was Hanno Kaufmann. When they found him on the personnel list, there was no assignment opposite his name.

  “That’s odd,” Carl said. “Let’s be him for a few minutes.”

  The Worm went through the ritual to access the system as Kaufmann.

  “Hooo . . . Time to pour the Gatorade on somebody,” Carl said, as Kaufmann’s world opened. “This is huge. He must be very high-level management.”

  The folders here were designated only in German. With Carl’s limited knowledge of the language, he couldn’t even translate the first one. He looked over at The Worm. “Afraid I need that translator program again.”

  The Worm initiated the program, and a new window appeared in which a vertical list in English magically flicked onto the screen several phrases at a time.

  Trying to be very selective in what he chose to examine in more detail, Carl passed up a lot of folders that sounded like they contained nothing more than dreary financial information, marketing plans, and government regulation compliance reports. But one, titled Long Range Planning, sounded as though it was worth a look. He asked The Worm to open it.

  Inside, there were three subfolders, which, after translation, were titled, Near Horizon, Intermediate Horizon, and Far Horizon. Bracketed by a pair of parentheses, the Far Horizon folder had an additional identifier: Project Creation.

  “Open Far Horizon,” Carl asked.

  Inside, they found three files: Construct Acquisition, Construct Placement and Use, and Retraining and Relocation.

  Feeling like that little girl on the oatmeal box holding a box of oatmeal bearing a picture of herself holding a box of oatmeal bearing another picture of herself holding a box of oatmeal, Carl asked The Worm to open Construct Acquisition.

  Finally, they found a document to read. But this one wasn’t in German. In fact, it didn’t look like any language.

  “What the hell is this?” Carl said in frustration.

  “It’s encrypted,” The Worm said.

  “In a way isn’t that a good thing?” Beth said. “If it’s encrypted, it must be very important and something they don’t want anyone else to read.”

  “That’s what I’d conclude,” The Worm said.

  “Can you unencrypt it?” Carl asked.

  “The word is decryption and yes . . . I can.” The Worm set about making good on his promise. He clattered around his keyboard for nearly twenty seconds, then hit a final key with a flourish. “Here we go.”

  Suddenly, all the computers turned to blank blue screens.

  “Clever bastards,” The Worm muttered.

  “What happened?” Carl said.

  “Trojan horse in the file. All my hard drives have been erased.”

  Chapter 45

  “THIS SURPRISES ME,” The Worm said. “Everything I download is in quarantine. Any malicious code should have been contained. Whoever set up their security is good.”

  Are we beaten?” Carl said, looking from his blank screen to The Worm.

  “Hardly. I’ll have us up and running again in fifteen minutes.”

  “Can you keep that from happening again?”

  “Watch and learn, my son.”

  Sooner than the IT guru at Jaeger Medicamente would have wished, they were all once again looking at the icon for the file that had knocked them out of action.

  “The nasty part of this file is probably in the first few lines,” The Worm said. “I’d just erase that part, but I can’t get into it unless I can download it. And if I try to download it, the same thing will happen. So let’s see if they thought of this . . . I’ll do another encryption of the file before I open it and download the new version. That should inactivate the Trojan. Then, I’ll just erase that part on my version and do a double decryption.”

  Carl and Beth got most of The Worm’s plan, but couldn’t have passed a test on it.

  The Worm’s fingers flew over the keyboard, then he sat back to see what would happen. On all three monitors, a working progress bar appeared. In less than a minute, a message flashed FILE DONE and a new icon appeared on the screen. The worm began the download of the new file. While the computer made what sounded like happy little noises, the monitors began filling up with unintelligible images. In a few seconds, the lines of displayed text stopped appearing and the noises ceased.

  The Worm studied the first paragraph of the new document, then eliminated some of it. Playing the keyboard now with the exaggerated movements of a concert pianist, he said, “Ain’t no way we can be stopped now.”

  Quickly, he had the dual encryptions decrypted. Of course, the resulting file, being in German, then required translation to English. Finally, that, too, was completed and they could at last see what Construct Acquisition meant.

  And it was incredible.

  Chapter 46

  Construct Acquisition

  May 14, 1974

  In any human clinical trial, should a participant be injured, there is always the possibility they may initiate a legal suit against the company that could lead to a disastrous financial judgment against us. In addition, as the years pass, there is increasing government regulation of human drug trials, which results in overly cautious research and development planning with a resultant heavier than necessary financial burden. We have therefore decided to proceed with a plan now made possible by the work of Dr. Arnold Hollenbeck at the University of Arkansas Medical School, whose research we have been supporting for the last few years.

  Through a financial arrangement with the Medical Examiner’s Office in Little Rock, Arkansas, he will obtain as needed, ovaries from suitable recently deceased individuals. Immature eggs will be harvested from these ovaries and matured in vitro. This approach will avoid unwanted publicity from a public egg solicitation initiative. Though as mentioned above, there will be a financial consideration incurred to acquire the medical examiner’s cooperation, it will be a fraction of what it would cost to solicit eggs directly from living individuals.

  Matured eggs will be fertilized using selected sperm donors. Compensation for these donors will be negligible.

  There is, however, no way around the need for surrogate mothers to carry the constructs. To minimize the cost of surrogate recruitment and to ensure that this part of the enterprise proceeds smoothly with no media awareness or government intervention, this part of the project will take place outside the United States under the supervision of Dr. Hollenbeck.

  And that’s where the document ended.

  Finished before the others, Carl sat and stared at the screen, no longer seeing it, his mind a collage of shock and anger.

  “Hey, this is some weird shit,” The Worm said. “Do I read this right? Are these people talking about making human beings to use as guinea pigs?”

&nb
sp; “That’s exactly their plan,” Carl replied. He wanted to believe such a thing couldn’t be done, that it was too complicated, that no one could be so morally corrupt as to do this. But there it was in print. So much for the moral argument. And as for the complexity of the plan, it had the resources of a vast financial empire behind it. Of course they could pull it off. Suddenly, a horrible implication of the document’s contents rumbled across his mind.

  He looked over at Beth to see if she, too, had seen the larger meaning of what they’d just read. From the expression on her face, she hadn’t gotten there yet, but was working on it.

  “Print this will you?” Carl asked.

  The Worm set the printer in action.

  “Then I’d like to see what’s in the Placement and Use file,” Beth said.

  After going through the same procedures as for the first document they’d read, the next one’s contents were ready for viewing.

  Construct Placement and Use

  August 15, 1975

  When constructs are born, they will be housed in three “orphanages” operated by the Angels Without Wings charity, an organization created by Jeager Medicamente. Periodic fund-raising drives once the facilities are open will offset all building and operating costs. Construction is already nearing completion at three sites in Guarabo, Caguas, and Loiza, Puerto Rico.

  “Loiza,” Beth hissed. She looked at Carl. “That’s where we were. And those children’s remains we found . . . They must have been three of the people they created.” The darkness in the room was suddenly a tangible presence closing in on her as her mind moved a step closer to the terrible truth.

  “And I’m betting they died as a result of sloppy, unregulated drug testing,” Carl said.

  “That sounds like murder to me,” The Worm said.

  “Me too,” Carl replied. “Somebody’s going to jail over this.”

  He turned back to read the remaining few lines of the placement document.

  Applications are now being taken and some interviews have already been conducted for the necessary teachers, maintenance people, cooks, servers, housekeepers, and clerical workers necessary to staff the three facilities. Early indications are that there will be no shortage of competent workers to fill these positions. Again, the salaries for all these positions are projected to be more than covered by fund-raising activities.