The Zen Gene (13 page)

”I checked his eyes and I think he has suffered a brain injury his left pupil is fixed and unresponsive. He needs immediate medical attention,” she said. Andi looked directly at Hunter and said, “What do you want to do?”

“I’ll think of something to tell them on the way to the Emergency room,” Hunter said.

She started to stand up but Andi stopped her.

“He is going to be in there a while please tell me what is going on, what do you and your partner have to do with my son? I don’t understand any of this.”

Her voice was soft and she was simply requesting information like any parent would when their child is involved. Hunter considered her request for a long moment and then made a decision she hoped she would not come to regret. She decided to tell her some of what she knew, not because she was obligated, but because she felt she owed it to Tyler. He did a remarkable and courageous thing, he came back to help them when most people would have left them.

“I won’t tell you who we work for beyond the fact it is a Government agency. Here is what I know. We were assigned to do surveillance on Tyler Worthy, a sixteen-year-old who may be involved with a terrorist cell. His father is the leader of this cell and he has made some kind of bio-weapon. Sergeant Nichol and I picked up Tyler’s trail at your house this afternoon,” she looked at Andi to see how she was taking it,” and we followed him and watched him enter an abandoned pharmaceutical factory. He was inside for a few minutes and then his girlfriend showed up,” Hunter nodded towards Zen,” and she was inside with him for an hour and when they came out they rode away on their bikes.

After they were gone Nichol and I decided to enter the factory and have a looksee. We found a sophisticated lab set up inside which was obviously in regular use. There was a computer, as well as a padlocked bar fridge wrapped in yellow caution tape,” she said.

“I got it at the dollar store,” Tyler said.

He was lying on the bed and he did not look away from the television screen when he spoke. The adults all looked at him surprised that he was monitoring their conversation.

“I reported what we found to my superior and he instructed us to re-enter the factory and take the lab apart and transport the pieces to a bio-safe location. It was while we were disassembling the lab that Tyler came back. He was near the van speaking with my partner when I came out of the building. I heard him tell the my partner to run shortly before the van exploded. I did not know what happened to Tyler. He was gone when I recovered from the blast. I dragged my partner away from the blast site because I did not want to explain to the police what we were doing there. I don’t know why the van blew up but I think Tyler does. That is all I can tell you,” she said.

Andi’s face had turned white at the mention of the explosion; they had all heard and felt it at her house. This was not the kind of situation most parents find themselves in and she was searching for a way to understand what was happening. She turned and looked at Tyler; she had not spoken to him since he ordered her to sit down an hour earlier.

“Do you know why the van blew up Ty?” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

She waited but he did not expand on his answer.
“Why did the van blow up Tyler?” she said.

“He unplugged the fridge,” he said.

“Was there a bomb inside the fridge?” she said.

In her heart she did not want to hear the answer but she had to know if her son was capable of building a bomb.

“No,” he said.

“What was in the fridge?” she said.

“Viruses,” he said.

“So what made the fridge explode?” she said.

“The fridge did not explode,” he said.

He answered her like this fact would be obvious to anyone.

“So what made the explosion?” she said.

“Magnesium and gasoline,” he said.

Mann could see that Andi was beginning to lose control of her temper.

“I think I understand what happened. Something in the fridge was supposed to destroy the live virus if the power went off. Is that right, Tyler?”

“Yes,” he said.

“It was a failsafe device. It began a countdown when the fridge was unplugged and unfortunately for your partner, when he put the fridge in the van, he must have placed it over the vehicle’s fuel tank. When the failsafe device ignited the magnesium, which burns extremely hot, it melted the bottom of the fridge and burned through the metal floor of the van and into the fuel tank. Am I right Tyler?”

“Yes,” he said.

Andi was shaking her head in shock.

“Where did you learn to do that?” she said.

“YouTube,” he said.

There was a pause in the conversation and Mann was not sure if this was the right time to bring up the subject of the Peters girl but he could not imagine a better time because, for once, Tyler was talkative.

“Tyler, last July did you put something on a girl at the swimming pool?” he asked.

He noticed Zen dart a worried look at him.

“Yes,” he said.

Mann saw Andi’s mouth fall open. The sudden change of direction of his question and the fact Tyler admitted doing it had caught her unprepared. He saw she was about to say something to him but he caught her eye and vigorously shook his head at her to warn her off. He did not want her to sidetrack the discussion.

“What did you put on her, Tyler?” he said.

“POrna,” he said.

“What the hell is that?” Andi yelled angrily and Mann grabbed her hand and squeezed.

“Poliomyelitis-Okinawa Ribonucleic Acid,” Tyler said.

Mann was trying to keep Andi from reacting but when he heard Tyler’s answer it was his turn to have his mouth fall open. Western’s infected soldiers had elevated antibodies for polio. It took him a few seconds to recover from this stunning revelation. The line of thought he was pursuing was completely derailed by this startling information and he was trying hard to sort out what it meant. He slowed his thinking and smiled, I must not have heard him right.

“Tyler,” he began again carefully choosing his words “are you saying you put polio virus on the girl?”

“No,” he said.

“What did you put on her?”

“POrna,” he said.

“Is that a virus?” he said.

He was not consciously aware of it but he had been slowly shaking his head from side to side in disbelief at what he was hearing. His reaction was because he found it amazing a kid could make up a story like this. It was incredibly detailed.

“Dr. Ok created it,” Tyler said.

Andi looked at Mann and shrugged her shoulders as if to say, who is that? He was completely baffled by what he was hearing and he was thankful Andi was showing restraint because he knew she was upset and this was a lot to digest.

“Do you mean Dr. Okinawa, the geneticist?” he said.

“Yes,” he said.

Mann looked at Andi and explained.

“Dr. Okinawa was a well-known geneticist in the seventies. He was brilliant and eccentric and some say ‘certifiable’ but he was also way ahead of his time and nobody disputes the fact he was an amazing theorist. I read some of his early work before he became completely radicalized in his thinking. He was clearly way ahead of his time in his approach to genetics. Luckily for humankind his ideas depended upon theoretically possible techniques and tools which hadn’t been invented yet,” he said.

He turned his attention back to Tyler.

“What happened to the girl you put the virus on?” he said.

“Nothing.”

He was wrestling with Zen for the television remote control as they talked. She wanted to switch to the news channel again and he wanted to watch The Simpsons.

“What was supposed to happen to her?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“Why did you do it?” he said.

“She is a vector.”

“A vector how?” he said.

“Her father is a soldier.”

Mann was feeling increasingly anxious with each question. Tyler’s answers solidified in his mind the belief that what he was saying was true though all his training told him that it was impossible. It felt like he was looking over the edge of an abyss and starting to feel dizzy.

“Was something supposed to happen to her dad Ty?”

He was working hard to keep his voice steady and his tone even.

“Yes.”

Mann found himself in the weird position of being both impatient and afraid to hear the answers to his questions. He was frustrated by Tyler’s halting conversational style though he realized the boy was not doing it to piss him off as some teens might, it was simply his extremely frustrating communication style. This communication problem was likely compounded when, from a young age, the adults in his life gave him grief about it. It was probably the reason he was reticent to speak with adults.

“What was supposed to happen to him Tyler?”

Ty never took his eyes off the screen when he answered.

“Grow receptors in his basal ganglia to receive an endogenous molecule that makes his eye close.”

Mann jumped up from his seat and went to the end of the bed and stood in front of him. He wanted to look at face.

He tried to read the boy’s expression to grant himself some relief from his growing fear. Tyler was not smiling or laughing and there was no “gotcha” grin on his face.

“Tyler, are you telling me you created a molecule which causes people’s eyes to close?” he said.

“Soldiers.”

Tyler was trying to look beyond him because he was blocking his view of the television.

“I don’t understand, what is the difference between people and soldiers?” he said.

“Soldiers have +.023% more ATS 51-a.”

He clearly thought this would be sufficient to explain everything.

“That sounds like a neuropeptide designation. Is it?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Mann swallowed the square lump of air in his throat as the carnage to his world view continued to grow.

“What does it do?” he said.

“It suppresses an autonomic stress response.”

“Does POrna suppress or express this molecule?” he said.

“
ATS 51-a
is an endogenous peptide which is a precursor to aggression.”

“Okay, I think I’m following this,
ATS 51-a
is a biological indicator that the body is preparing for fight or flight, so what does POrna do?” he asked.

“It instructs cellular growth.”

“What kind of cell growth?” he said.

“Reptilian brain cells.”

He looked at the boy.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Is this a joke, Tyler?” he said.

Tyler shook his head.

“You’re telling me you created mRNA which causes cellular growth in reptiles?” he said confused.

“No.”

“In humans?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mean it grows brain cells in humans that alters eyelid control?”

“Yes.”

“That does not make sense Tyler, humans don’t have reptilian cells,” he said

“Human cells do not recognize this mRNA as reptilian.”

Mann went and sat back in his chair and laughed. This is a joke. He is kidding me, he thought. It’s all wrong. If this kind of genetic manipulation were possible it would not be a teenage boy doing it. What the heck is going on here? None of what he was hearing could possibly be true yet how did he know the soldiers were unable to open their eyes and what about the polio antibodies? He wiped the sweat from his brow and tried to relax.

“How did you know which genes to manipulate?” he said.

He wanted to gently tease the details from him and look for the inconsistencies he knew had to be there.

“The iguana sequence was completed in 2008.”

“Tyler,” he said smiling with relief because this was the inconsistency he was looking for.

“Reptilian mRNA will not work with mammalian DNA.”

“I modified it.”

“Modified it how?” he said.

Tyler did not answer because a crash came from the bathroom and Mann and Andi ran to see what happened. They found Sergeant Nichol lying unconscious on the floor. Talking to Tyler would have to wait. They needed to get him to the hospital now. Andi helped drag the unconscious man to the car, and after putting down two motel towels to cover the vomit from his last ride, they put him in the back seat.

Before he left for the hospital Andi drew him aside.

“We need to talk. I need to get these kids home. Come to my place when you’re finished at the hospital.”

She embraced him and they held each other for a moment.

“I think you should check out of here and stay with us.” She looked into his eyes and he kissed her and then jumped into the car. He was tired and driving carefully and thinking about Andi’s invitation when Lt. Hunter cleared her throat.

“Dr. Mann, there is something I didn’t tell the boy’s mother. The reason we were ordered to clear out his lab was because we found a corpse. Someone, presumably Tyler or his father, used duct tape to seal the room off with the body inside. We did not try to identify the body but I suppose it could be the boy’s father.