The Dark Side of Angels

by Steve Hadden

“Bullshit. We looked into that when we did the deep dive on her background check before FDA approved this trial. The kid had glioblastoma. He was terminal. Ten to twelve months.”

  “Ex says she forced him into the trial. Son was gone in less than six months. Guy’s too bitter to help.”

  “What about the daughter? She’s a researcher, too.”

  “Found her at home. She doesn’t want anything to do with her but said her mother isn’t a killer. No communication with her for ten years, since the boy died. Says Covington sends her e-mails and letters, but she just ignores them.”

  “How lovely. Keep an eye on them both. She may have just torched an old co-worker’s townhome and stole his car.”

  “Shit.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get her.” Reed’s phone vibrated again. “Got another call. Thanks for the update.” He switched to the new caller. “Reed.”

  “Welch. I’ve got Secretary Graham on the line. I wanted her to speak with you directly.”

  Reed had briefed Delilah Graham, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, on the FBI’s safeguards two years ago. He braced to absorb her anger.

  “Hi, Agent Reed. I know you’re in the middle of this shit storm, but I needed to pass on some information.”

  Surprised by her support, he replied, “We’re close. We’ll have the suspect soon.”

  “I understand she may have injected herself?”

  “That’s what we think, Madam Secretary.”

  “Look. If she did that, CDC says you need to be careful. What I’m about to tell you can’t get out to the public.”

  “Copy that.”

  “While the earlier trials showed no risk of casual contamination, we don’t know her condition.”

  “Condition?”

  “Yes. Condition. Her health and what else she may have done to herself. NIH is telling me that if Rapid Genetic Reversal has been modified somehow and attached to an infectious virus, this could start an epidemic that would spread quickly and might contaminate the human germline.”

  “I understand that risk if it were modified, but based on all the briefings I’ve received about the work being done in her lab, I thought it couldn’t be passed on to subsequent generations in the trial?”

  “That’s true. It was designed to only treat somatic cells—cells that can’t be passed on to subsequent generations. Also, the humans in the trial were sterile. But until we know exactly what she’s done with the treatment now, we’re not sure if it’s safe in the general public.”

  “So it’s not safe now?”

  “It is in a controlled environment. As you know, determining its safety was the primary purpose of the trial. But the possibility exists that it isn’t. I just informed the president.”

  Welch jumped in. “And he called me, Reed. So get her but treat her as if she’s a biohazard.”

  “What?”

  “Avoid her blood, breath and saliva, agent,” Graham said. “And if anyone is exposed, you need to immediately quarantine them and inform the CDC immediately.”

  Reed knew this ramped up the risk and added another level of complexity to the case.

  “Where is she?” Welch said.

  “She’s in a car in the area. We have the roads blocked. We’ll get her.”

  “Anything else for Agent Reed?” Welch asked.

  “No, Bill. Just be careful, Agent Reed.”

  “Just get her,” Welch said.

  Welch ended the call and Reed called the Joint Operations Center and asked that the information be passed on to all agencies. He shoved the phone into his pocket and stared down the empty alley. One working theory had formed in his mind, and it wasn’t a good one. A suspected killer was on the loose—a killer who might have nothing to lose. She’d already killed her entire team to make her work nearly impossible to replicate and more valuable to her buyer—Reed decided that was the only reason to do that. And she’d have to be backed by a well-funded and well-organized buyer that executed the attack on the lab. That buyer could be a foreign actor or any one of at least a dozen domestic or international radical extremist groups. All would be a threat to national security. It was possible that Covington had injected herself with her own treatment to gain its physical and mental acuity benefits to provide proof of its efficacy and perhaps aid in her escape. And while the technology was intended to save and enhance human life, it also could be used as a weapon of mass destruction. Now she was out among the public he'd sworn to protect, and they had no idea what she carried inside her.

  CHAPTER 12

  Kayla glanced where the rearview mirror had been and saw it dangling from a couple of thin cables, bouncing against the side of Harrison’s car. She checked behind them as Harrison maneuvered through the residential streets of La Jolla. The streets were well lit, and it was just a matter of time before they were spotted. Looking ahead, she watched Harrison take another hard right turn.

  “You gonna tell me what the hell is going on?” Harrison kept his eyes on the road, but his taut jaw and terse tone made his anger clear.

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  He yanked the steering wheel into a hard left. “You’re not telling me the truth. Someone is trying to kill you—and now me. My house is in flames. I just trashed my car. I may have just become a killer wanted by the FBI, and you don’t know?”

  It was obvious he didn’t trust her. She held her tongue for a second, not wanting to aggravate him further, then said, “No. They attacked the lab and killed my team. I barely made it out alive.”

  Harrison shook his head as he silently made the next turn.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  He looked straight ahead. “Someplace where I can think.”

  “Where would that be?”

  Harrison didn’t answer. He turned right onto a four-lane parkway and they passed under I-5. The road immediately curved left and Harrison veered off the roadway onto a dirt trail on the right. With every second of her life now counting down in Kayla’s head, her tolerance for uncertainty was minimal.

  “Harrison!”

  “We’re going to my buddy’s shop in Miramar.”

  The trail ended at a pair of railroad tracks and Harrison drove over the gravel bed and onto the tracks. The car began to vibrate as they followed the tracks into the darkness. She could see I-5 to their left as the tracks drifted away from the interstate. Harrison’s anger hadn’t faded at all. The rumbling vibrated through her body and she focused to talk in a steady tone.

  “I didn’t ask for this.”

  “Neither did I,” Harrison said.

  Kayla turned away as her guilt about getting him involved swelled. “Look. You can let me out here and I’ll figure it out on my own.”

  “Sure. Now that I’m wanted, you’re gonna dump me again?”

  She turned back to Harrison. “There’s nothing to dump. You helped me in a moment of need and I appreciate it. But I don’t expect you and your friend to get any more involved.”

  Harrison pulled his attention from the tracks ahead and glared at Kayla. “You don’t get it. Do you?” Before she could answer, he continued. “I’m involved, like it or not, and I’m not about to let you get killed.”

  A part of Kayla wanted to believe Harrison’s declaration as a sign of a new beginning. Once the therapist had led her to her revelation about her real reason for their breakup, she’d secretly longed for another chance. But his eyes said something else. It was as if he were trapped by some unwanted obligation. Her practical side said the reason why didn’t matter. She needed his help. And if he was willing to give it, so be it.

  Harrison returned his attention to the tracks, then looked skyward through the windshield. “Shit. A chopper.”

  Kayla leaned forward and looked up to the right. She spotted the chopper’s red and white navigation lights. The blazing beam of its searchlight swept along the ground as it headed their way. Harrison sped up and it felt as though they were in a paint shaker. She wasn’t s
ure the car could hold together.

  “There we go,” Harrison said, squinting into the darkness.

  Kayla saw the silhouette of a small overpass up ahead. When she looked right again, the searchlight was racing toward them much faster than they were driving. She returned her attention to the overpass and realized she was leaning forward and holding her breath. Harrison sped up more, barely maintaining control. As they approached the overpass Harrison used the parking brake to slow the car. Kayla realized the brake lights would give them away. The umbra of the searchlight was less than a hundred yards away.

  They skidded to a stop under the overpass. The sudden silence was unnerving as they both looked ahead. The blinding light prowled in front of them first, and as she heard the rotors getting closer, it jumped behind them. At that moment, they silently shared a look of mutual relief. For a moment, Kayla felt they were on the same side.

  As quickly as it had arrived, the light disappeared, and the pulse of the rotors faded away. Harrison held his gaze on hers and Kayla saw his face relax for an instant. For a moment, her body quivered with a hint of the passion that sometimes used to make her lightheaded. But then he turned away and floored it, as if he remembered he was supposed to be angry.

  CHAPTER 13

  Neville looked at the caller ID and sank into his chair. William Rollins was the most active member of SZENSOR’s board. Neville was expecting his call. He glanced at the drizzle wandering down the window, and darkness blocked his view of Mount Baker. It was his meditative security touchstone when his anxiety ramped up. Tonight, he’d have to rely on his memory.

  He took a deep cleansing breath and answered the phone. “Hi, William. I was expecting your call.”

  “I bet you were.”

  Always an asshole.

  “What the hell is going on in San Diego?” Rollins said.

  “I’m sure you’ve seen the same reports I have, so I won’t waste your time recapping them. I’m trying to get more information.”

  “Well then you have less information than this Sienna Fuller of the San Diego Union-Tribune.”

  Neville immediately reached for his keyboard and googled the San Diego paper. The story turned up at the top of the search. Gene editing lab explodes. CEO wanted for questioning.

  “She has most of the information you said would be kept secret by the government.”

  Neville read while Rollins awaited his reply. The reporter had written that the lab had been doing the stage-one human trials of a gene-editing process with an unknown goal that had been kept secret by the FDA.

  “I see that,” Neville admitted.

  “I guess I need to remind you what this means. If she finds out what they were doing in there, the public will demand that the work continue. They’ll only see the fact that they and their elderly parents can live forever. Then it’s lights out for the HPP. If she succeeds, we fail.”

  The Neville and Charlotte Lewis Foundation had started the Human Preservation Project five years earlier to advocate and support responsible genetic research. Their singular goal was to protect and preserve the human germline from any gene editing that was heritable for the generations to come. Neville had insisted Charlotte adopt that position before they married.

  “I won’t let that happen.”

  “That’s what you said before. You said you had events in motion that would end this nonsense.”

  As the head of the largest family-owned pharmaceutical company in the country, Neville knew this was not about the HPP for Rollins. It was about protecting the billions his family was making from the maladies of aging.

  “I’m taking care of it,” Neville said.

  “Was this your work?” Rollins paused. “Wait, scratch that question. I don’t want to know. I’d just hate to see you lose that fat hog you’re riding—your lovely family and the great perks of those SZENSOR shares.”

  Neville felt as if he’d stepped out on the ledge of the Space Needle. Rollins’s threats carried teeth. As a board member and chair of the audit committee for SZENSOR, he had Charlotte’s trust. Rollins was a major contributor to the HPP through a foundation with no apparent ties to his family business. Charlotte loved the HPP and nothing came before her desire to protect the human genome. She’d said it would protect Darrin and Penelope and billions of children like them for generations to come. She was convinced that editing the human genome was God’s work, not scientists’, and that Neville’s mother would have avoided the terrible suffering at the end of her life if HPP had been active back then.

  Neville decided this root canal needed to end. “I get it, William. Let me work this and get back with you.”

  “You do that.” The call cut off.

  Neville hung up the phone and read the rest of the article. Rollins was an ass, but he was right about one thing. The information being public would erode support for HPP. What Rollins didn’t know was that this trial for the first human treatment to reverse aging was destined to be a success. Neville patted himself on the back for hiring the hackers who mined that information from the lab’s computers and cloud storage. He was shocked when the data showed the treatment was for rapid genetic reversal based on decoding the genome of Turritopsis dohrnii, the only immortal animal on Earth.

  The animal efficacy and safety studies were spectacular and had paved the way for approval of the stage-one human trials. But the US government wanted to keep the trials secret for several reasons. First, the public expectations for such a revolutionary treatment would be stratospheric. As far as Neville was concerned, those expectations would be valid based on the treated rhesus monkeys showing both physical and mental reversals of the effects of aging. In some cases, the treatment resulted in as much as an equivalent twenty-year reversal before the process was stopped by the suite of viral vectors loaded with instructions to stop the process in their cells. The process mended cancers and other age-related changes in their chromosomes.

  Second, there was a national security risk. That was key to Neville’s strategy. In the wrong hands, the treatment could be modified into a form of biohacking, able to infect a large population, like an army, faster than the flu, and it would render them helpless in a matter of days. It would change the fundamental nature of warfare. No longer would the conflict be person against person. It would be an invisible force deadlier than any bomb. It would change their DNA, and if somehow they survived, it would affect all their future offspring. Neville knew that just a small event that demonstrated that terror would tap into the non-GMO movement, and the public outcry would end any further research.

  His biggest problem was in the framed photo staring at him from the corner of his desk. Charlotte was just as determined as he was to prevent tinkering with the human germline, but she wouldn’t take another life to do it. She’d also shown signs of changing her stance as scientific advances made such treatments safer and lifesaving. He was certain that if she discovered what he’d done, let alone what he was planning, she’d turn him in and end their family. The longer this dragged on, the more likely he risked her discovery. He’d weighed those facts carefully and still came down on the side of mankind. The victims of the terror attack would be martyrs who saved the human race.

  Neville rose and walked to the window. Beyond the rain droplets clinging to the window, he saw the lights of the homes surrounding Lake Sammamish and remembered taking Penelope and Darrin for their first boat ride last Thanksgiving. He imagined life without them, and sadness swept over him. He hated what he had to do, but he hated Kayla Covington’s work more.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket and he checked the caller ID before he answered.

  Sienna Fuller.

  CHAPTER 14

  Neville listened to the phone and wondered if this was his chance to tilt public opinion in his favor and let it do the dirty work. But after hearing the first ring, his instinct was to ignore the reporter. He needed to be careful. If he spoke with her, he risked implicating himself if he slipped up. Staring at the family phot
o on the corner of his desk, he weighed his options. On the second ring, he thought about Kayla being on the run, carrying his fate and that of the human race with her. On the third ring, he picked up his phone and connected to the call.

  Fuller spoke first. “Mr. Lewis?”

  Her young voice bolstered Neville’s confidence. This would be easy. “Who is this?”

  “Sienna Fuller. I’m with the San Diego Union-Tribune. I got your number from Rebecca Temple, who spoke with you a few years ago about gene editing in humans. I’m sure you’re aware of the events in La Jolla and I wanted to get your perspective, if you had a moment?”

  “It’s after eleven.”

  “Sorry, sir. But this story will run overnight, and based on the interview you gave to Miss Temple here, I thought you’d want to comment on the explosion at the lab where what appears to be a human gene-editing treatment was being readied for human trials.”

  “Where did you get that information?”

  “We have our sources, and we’ve confirmed that the work involved the CRISPR-Cas9 technology. We don’t know what the ultimate goal of this gene editing is, but we’ve confirmed that the government was aware of it and approved the testing.”

  Neville was happy to hear they didn’t know the goal. Just as Rollins had said, that information could shift the public’s sentiment in the other direction. Still, he was confident he’d convince this young reporter otherwise. “Ms. Fuller. Let me begin by reminding you that my wife and I started the Human Preservation Project to prevent something like this happening.”

  “Prevent what from happening?”

  “The potential release of what the US intelligence community called one of the six weapons of mass destruction.”

  “Mr. Lewis, I don’t understand? What weapon?”

  “CRISPR-Cas9 and whatever it was trying to modify in the human genome. Are you a scientist?” He knew the answer, but it was a good setup.

  “No, sir.”