The Miracle Strain (26 page)

Half an hour later, the GENIUS security guards were changing shifts in the main gatehouse. The two new guards clattered through the door and exchanged a few obscene pleasantries with their outgoing colleagues. Gus Stransky had been with Shield, the private security firm that oversaw the GENIUS campus, for almost seven years. He was in his fifties and had been one of Boston's finest before being pensioned off early with a bullet-damaged right ankle. Despite the hours, he liked security work. It gave him a breather from his nag of a wife, Doris.

The GENIUS contract was a dream. The place had money and was equipped with the best technology. All he had to do was sit in the gatehouse and watch the CCTV screens for anything weird. And ever since Sweden, when Mrs. Carter had been shot, security had been doubled--so he even had company too. His partner tonight was new, a young dark-haired guy called Bart Johnson, tallish with a strong build. Bart had been drafted onto the GENIUS contract only a couple of days ago. Still, he seemed okay and Gus was used to being paired off with the rookies. His supervisor always said that he had a way with them.

In the gatehouse there were two banks of CCTV monitors. One showed views outside the main pyramid, covering most of the campus including the protein production sheds across to the right. The other bank looked inside the pyramid, including one screen that permanently displayed the atrium and the other two guards sitting there. One man could sit between both banks and cover them all, but tonight Gus took the external set and let the rookie have the interior shots.

Gus quickly checked all his CCTV screens and saw that everything appeared to be in order. He turned to his partner. "You married, Bart? Or are you happy?"

Bart smiled. "Happy, I guess."

Gus watched the younger guy scanning the screens in front of him. All showed empty offices. Only the ward and the Crick Laboratory appeared to be occupied. Dr. Carter was still at work in the Crick Lab. It was impossible to make out exactly what he was doing, but he seemed engrossed at his bench.

Bart punched a button, opening up the intercom to the guards in the atrium of the pyramid.

"How's it going in there?"

One of the guards on screen put up his right hand and raised a thumb. "Okay so far. That you, Bart?"

"Sure is, Georgie boy."

"Is old Gus there?"

Bart looked across and grinned at Gus's frown. "Yeah, old Gus is here. How you both doing?"

"It's very quiet," crackled back the voice on the intercom. "So quiet that I could do with some excitement."

Gus took out a stick of Doublemint gum and began chewing it. He offered some to Bart, but the younger man just shook his head. Gus put the gum away in his top breast pocket, sat back in his chair, and methodically flicked through his screens. The protein sheds were deserted inside and out; as were all the grounds. Nothing stirred.

Suddenly he felt his young partner stiffen beside him. Gus turned to see Bart staring at the screen that displayed the Crick Lab, where Dr. Carter was working.

"Anything wrong?" he asked wearily. Why were these young guys always so uptight, always seeing danger lurking in every shadow?

Bart's eyebrow creased. "Not sure." He stood up and vacated his seat. "Gus, come and take a closer look at this, and tell me what you see."

Gus sighed, but stood up. "Okay," he said unenthusiastically. If he had a dollar for every time a rookie asked him to pass his experienced eye over some stupid shadow or dirty smudge on the screen he wouldn't need to work. That was for sure.

The younger guard made way for him as he bent to check the monitor. "What's the problem?" Gus asked. "I don't see anything."

"Bottom right. It's small. Real small."

Gus leaned farther forward. But he saw nothing. Only Dr. Carter, scratching his head over a row of glass dishes. What the hell was Bart playing at? Then there was a quiet metallic click behind him. At first it didn't register; then like a note from a long-forgotten song he remembered what the sound was.

A gun being primed.

He turned, more angry than frightened. "What the fu--?"

He said no more as two hissed reports sent a searing heat into his chest. It was a strange feeling. Not so much pain as total breathlessness. Stunned, he reached down and touched his tunic. It was damp and sticky, and there were red splatters on the monitors ahead of him. Blood, he realized, with bemused calm: his blood. Shit, he'd been shot. He felt weak and giddy, so he sat down on the chair and tried to get his breath back--but it was gone--gone for good. He looked around and saw Bart watching him closely. It didn't make sense; his young partner was holding a gun, with a silencer attached to it. He felt a deep tiredness and lay back in the chair, trying to get more comfortable. All the time Bart kept staring at him.

As everything began to fade, only two thoughts remained to trouble his consciousness. One was the realization that he would never see his wife Doris again, which made him surprisingly sad. The other was why he'd never noticed before that one of Bart's eyes was blue, and the other brown.

Maria Benariac made sure Gus's lifeless body wouldn't fall from the chair before opening her bag. She put the gun inside it and checked the other tools she had brought along for tonight. It had taken her a whole day to find the nails. None of the hardware stores seemed to stock any which were long or strong enough. But she was confident the five she had eventually found in Charlestown would suffice. She only needed four but a spare might come in handy. And the mallet she'd found in Bart Johnson's apartment was heavy enough to drive in the nails.

Shooting Gus hadn't counted as a kill in the true sense of the word. Nor had killing Bart Johnson, the rookie guard from Shield security from whom she had borrowed the uniform, job, and identity. They had merely been irritating obstacles that stood in the way of completing her sacred mission.

For a fleeting moment she thought with sadness of the Father, and their recent argument. She hoped that once Dr. Carter and his project were finished the Father would see the wisdom of her actions, and welcome her back into the fold. But even if he didn't, she was convinced that she was following the Second Imperative correctly. Her God would tell her where to strike next, and she would have to do without the guiding intervention of the Father, or the comforting bosom of the Brotherhood.

So be it, she thought. She had been reborn once before. She would be again.

She flicked on the intercom switch and kept her trained voice low in tone. "Hey, guys. I'm coming over to deliver something. Okay?"

On the screen one of the guards in the atrium of the pyramid gave a small nod. "No problem. We'll open the door for you."

"Much obliged," she said, clicking off the switch. Then without even a backward glance at Gus's slumped body, she left the gatehouse.

She adjusted her cap as she crunched down the gravel driveway. Ahead of her the glass pyramid seemed to soar into the night sky like some futuristic temple. It would be right to kill the scientist in his lair. She had waited for this moment and allowed herself a whole week, but it had finally arrived. With every step she could feel her excitement build, and with every step she whispered a line of her creed:

"I am Nemesis. May my sword of justice be keen... May myarmor of righteousness be unblemished... And may my shieldof faith be strong."

With every crunch of her shoes on gravel she repeated the lines like an incantation into the cool night air.

The walk took less than five minutes and the main door opened for her just before she reached the DNA scanner. In the lit atrium beyond she could see the guards sitting behind their consoles grinning at her. Her eyes fell on the junction box behind the second guard: the box that controlled all the phone lines coming into and out of the building.

"Hey, buddy, welcome to our humble abode," greeted George, the man who had spoken to her on the intercom. "What have you got for us?"

She walked inside and with a smile patted her bag. "Just what you were looking for."

The guard's grin widened. "Oh, yeah? And what's that?"

She reached her hand into the bag and closed her fingers over the trusty Glock. "A little excitement."

Chapter Twenty-One.

IT Section, GENIUS Headquarters

Boston

No more than forty yards away in the IT Section, Razor Buzz was in a trance as she worked on breaching the ramparts protecting the Black Hole. Her fingers moved with precise speed over the keyboard, while her eyes stayed locked on the virtual world beyond the screen.

The official database title at the top of the monitor acted as a permanent reminder of the seriousness of her task--and the consequences of getting caught. As did the warning message flashing red across the middle of the screen--PREDATOR V.3 PROTECTION ENABLED. She'd already disabled the first three password gates of probably the most secure DNA database in existence, and was on the verge of turning the fourth and final red light to green--breaching the last barrier to the files.

Once she entered the database proper the Predator system would immediately detect her, and could within one minute trace the origin of her computer. She would have just sixty seconds to search for a match and then exit cleanly, leaving no files of her own behind. If she delayed for one instant longer she would be trapped, unable to log off, while the system owners tracked her down. And they definitely weren't people either Jasmine, or Razor Buzz, wanted to mess with. Not at all.

Suddenly the screen flickered as if there'd been a power surge. Then the final red light on the bottom of the screen turned green. She had disabled the fourth password gate.

So far so good. And to come this far had felt good---very good. Going deep into the complex program language behind the database, she had rewritten extensive stretches of it without alerting the system itself.

She paused for a moment, calming herself down as she placed the cursor over the on-screen icon that acted as an electronic "open sesame," giving her access to the data. Once this was pressed the Predator countdown would commence and there would be no other chances.

She extended her left hand and took off her watch. She tested the digitized voice alarm. "Five seconds," said the toneless voice of the watch. With a satisfied nod she set the alarm on the watch and laid it beside the keyboard. Her hand went back to the mouse and moved the cursor over the file icon containing the Nazareth genes. This compressed electronic file held only the genetic sequence of the three hybrid genes. Jasmine had created it to expedite the search for a match. By inserting the icon into the database and activating "search" the files could seek out the matching sequence in any of the genomes residing in the database. She moved the icon to the center of the screen, allowing her to insert it quickly into the database.

Razor Buzz took a deep breath, pushed a button on the side of the watch, then clicked the mouse cursor on the entry icon.

She was now inside the database.

With lightning finger movements she embedded the Nazareth genes icon in the search box and selected "Topline Quick-Search."

Then the Predator system kicked in. A red WARNING message flashed at the top of the screen and an electronic voice barked from the speakers: "Trace enabled. You have sixty seconds to givepersonal identification code and access authorization symbol."

Suddenly a large 60 appeared at the top right-hand corner of the screen and instantly started ticking down--59, 58, 57...

Razor Buzz was aware of the perspiration threatening to break out on her forehead, but she remained calm. Ignoring the distraction of the declining numbers, she kept her eyes on the search window in the center of the screen. A horizontal strip of white ran across it, which was gradually filling from left to right with black. Beneath it a percentage figure was displayed, which increased in steps of five, indicating how much of the database had been checked.

The black fill was now a tenth of the way along the strip with the message "10% of database searched" displayed below it. Then after what seemed an eternity the black fill moved along another notch and the 10% changed to 15%.

The clock on the top right-hand corner continued to count down--42, 41, 40...

The progress of the white strip was erratic. The black raced from 15% to 20% and 25%. But then took an age to reach 30%.

32, 31, 30 ticked the clock.

"Thirty seconds," warned the digitized voice of the watch beside Razor.

She could hardly bear to keep her eyes on the screen. The "Topline Quick-Search" facility would give only the barest details of any match, but at least it should allow a 100% search of the database in the time. It was getting tight though, very tight.

Seventeen seconds.

The fill was now 78%.

Then, suddenly and simply, a match was found.

"Hallelujah," she whispered, springing swiftly into action. She didn't bother to open the found file and examine it. She just selected it, copied it, and exported it to her backup disk. Then with speedy clicks of the mouse and sweeps of the cursor she moved the Nazareth genes icon out of the search box and exited.

As the clock on the screen ticked to 3.

"Sixty seconds," bleated her watch.

Only now did Razor Buzz wipe off the perspiration that had gathered on her brow, and let out a long sigh of relief. She had her prize. The cyberlord had been into the heart of the Black Hole and escaped undetected to tell the tale. She was safe.

Suddenly the screen fizzed and the main menu came up. With a frown she realized that the modem line must have gone down, or been disconnected.

She reached for her phone and punched out the internal number for the atrium reception desk. Nothing. Dead silent. What the hell was going on?

She rose and walked out of her office to the computer room, and looked through the tinted glass to the atrium. Where were the guards? Both desks were empty. Since the scare over Carter, Jack had made it a sackable offense for both stations in the atrium or the gatehouse to be left unmanned at any time. She walked over to the nearest desk.

Then she saw the black, perfectly polished shoe.

It looked odd, sticking out from the other side of the desk at a weird angle. It took her tired brain a second to realize that the shoe possessed a foot. With mounting horror she walked around the desk, watching the ankle come into view, then the trousered leg and its twin splayed out to the left, and finally the whole body of George, the security guard. She liked him; she'd met his wife and two sons at the company barbecue last summer. He was staring at her, but his eyes were like a blank computer screen. Three neat bullet holes punctured his chest and neck, and a slick of blood had leaked across the marble toward her, nudging her toes.

Jasmine felt nauseous as she stepped across the sticky puddle of spreading red to check the pulse on George's still-warm wrist. But his eyes had told the truth; George's wife was now a widow, his two sons fatherless. Just as the nausea hit her she saw the second body lying behind the other desk.

Holding her hand over her mouth and trying to quell the rising panic, she instinctively grabbed for the phone. She numbly put it to her ear and cursed her own stupidity when she once again heard the silence. Think, damn you! Think!

Run! Get out of here! Now! The orders came coldly and unbidden from deep within her. With them came the fear. No longer was she simply shocked by what had happened to the two men, she was suddenly terrified that it might happen to her. She turned from the bloody bodies and the desks, barely registering the CCTV monitors as she focused on the stairs to the underground garage.

The TV monitors.

The white coat on the screen, seen only for a microsecond, burned into her retina. Hoping her eyes had been mistaken, she forced herself to delay her flight, and look again at the monitors in front of the desk. The figure in the white coat was moving now--on the screen marked Crick Laboratory.

Tom was still here.

And in that instant she knew that the Preacher had come to kill him.

There were two voices in her head now. One still shouted Run! but only louder, and more persuasively. Get to your car! it said. Call for help! No one could ask you to do more than that. The other voice, a whisper she could almost ignore, told her that help wouldn't come in time. That it was up to her to help her friend--to warn him.

"But what can I do?" she said aloud, looking down at her feet, watching them lead her to the garage stairs and safety. Then the thought came to her and she stopped. She turned and walked back to George's body. Trying not to look in his eyes, she rolled his body over in the sticky blood.

The holster was clipped down, but the ugly, black gun was still there.

With trembling fingers, she unbuckled the leather, checked the gun's chamber--just as her brother had taught her to. Fully loaded. She took off the safety and held it in her hands, feeling its weight, reminding herself of her dead brother's macho words---only pull a gun if you're prepared to use it.

Was she prepared to use it? To do what she had vowed never to do: to aim a gun at someone and shoot? Her mouth felt dry and her legs jelly-weak as she walked to the elevator.

No! commanded the voice in her head. Don't take the elevator! The killer will know you're coming. She mustn't evenknow you're here. Take the stairs!

She turned and ran for the stairwell. And as she pushed open the doors she tried to imagine she wasn't Jasmine anymore, but the Razor Buzz of old--a cyberlord freed from the virtual world to roam the real one. She had a gun, and she had motivation.

What more could she ask for?

Courage, she thought, I could do with a hell of a lot morecourage.

Then she took a deep breath, steadied her trembling legs, and began to climb the dark stairs.

On the floor above, Tom sighed and looked deep into the man's eyes.

"Tell me about the third gene!" he commanded. "Tell me what it does!" He raised a glass vial of the serum loaded with the new genes, and thrust it in the man's face. "And tell me what this does!" he demanded. "How the hell do the three genes work together? Dammit, tell me!"

The man said nothing--just stared back at him. Tom took a frustrated swing at his head, but gained little satisfaction when his hand passed through it. That was the problem with holograms; they didn't make great talkers--or punching bags.

Tom shook his head in disgust and yawned. He walked back over to DAN, still running countless iterations in its "virtual mind," trying to unravel the Gordian knot of the third gene. He bent and punched two keys on the keyboard and the hologram of Christ vanished. Tom had been reviewing all the findings since half past eight in the morning--yesterday morning--and was still no wiser.

He picked up one culture dish bearing the title "Naz 3--E coli" written in Nora's tidy script. He held it up to the light and just stared at it for a while. No proteins. Nothing. He did the same with " Trinity--E coli," containing all three hybrid genes together. An entirely new protein had been produced. Lots of it too. But what the hell did it do?

Perhaps the genes do nothing, his tired mind taunted him. Perhaps there is nothing to know. Tom checked his watch and walked to the phone. He wondered whether Jasmine was still downstairs working on finding a match. It wouldn't be the first time she'd worked all night. He picked up the handset and put it to his ear. Then he shook it and listened again. This was all he needed. It was completely dead.

He slammed the phone down and turned to walk to the elevator. The shadowy uniformed figure in the doorway took him by surprise.

"George, is that you? What the hell's gone wrong with the phones?"

"I've closed them down, Dr. Carter. We're alone. Just you and me."

The deep female voice shocked him. "What the hell's going on? Who the hell are you?"

The shadowy figure stepped into the full light of the lab. "You know who I am."

Tom froze by his workbench, an icy band of fear squeezing his chest. The man was shorter than he was but still above average height. His build was athletic with powerful shoulders. The face was conventionally handsome to the point of being bland, with a firm jaw, fine nose, and sculptured cheekbones. It was only the eerie voice and striking cat-shaped eyes--one blue and one brown--that told Tom he wasn't looking at a man at all, but a woman. He remembered seeing those eyes before. On the hologram of the Preacher. And he knew without a shadow of doubt that he was looking at Olivia's killer.