The Chimera Vector (8 page)

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.

‘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 10.2.0.3.0—Production with Partitioning, OLAP and Data Mining options

Projectgate.org

Enter username: BMontoya

Enter password:

SQL> SELECT family_name 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 8

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.

She’d been picked out because she’d done very well in her tests at school. Baldie had been watching. They must watch all the schools to pick out the clever children, she thought.

During his previous visit, over a mug of tea with two sugars (she remembered because she’d helped make it for him), Baldie had told her she’d done very well in all of the different tests. Some had been on paper, to see how well she could think and solve problems; others involved running, jumping, dodging foam balls—she thought she’d been clumsy in those tests, but he didn’t think so. Maybe he hadn’t been looking at her when she was tripping or falling. And there were the tests with doctors that used complicated machines and weird computers to measure things like her heart and her brain, and even a few needles, which she didn’t like much at all. She’d been quite proud for not crying like some of the boys. But Baldie was really impressed with something inside her body, so tiny no one could see it without special machines.

‘All the children at your new school are looking forward to meeting you, Sophia,’ Baldie said. ‘Have you packed your suitcase?’

‘Oh yes,’ Mama said. ‘We have everything ready to go, don’t we, Sophia?’ She turned to Sophia. ‘Sophia? Do you have your suitcase?’

Sophia nodded. She went to her room to fetch it. When she walked in, she realized it would be a while before she would see her room again. There would be visits. They would fly Mama and her brother and sister to see her, and sometimes she would be able to come home on semester break. But once school was over, she could do anything she wanted, and her schooling would all be paid for. Most importantly, Mama and her sister and brother would have enough money to buy what they needed. It was a dream come true.

She picked up her suitcase. It was Mama’s, big and clunky, even though she hadn’t filled it with much. She didn’t have teddy bears or dolls like her sister. She didn’t have many things actually, so she’d filled it with her clock radio, hairbrush, toothbrush, cassette player and her tapes of David Bowie—Papa’s favorites—and her favorite clothes and her pillow with the purple pillowcase.

Sophia’s little sister, Tereza, lunged at her from behind, hugging her and pinning her to the suitcase.