36

Midnight had come and gone. Sarah Bellman was alone in the now well-equipped laboratory, stooped over her computer screen, staring at the latest sequences of DNA code that Sphyris had introduced to his infinitely detailed map of the brain. They belonged to tiny clusters of cells grouped in the ventral tegmental area towards the base of the skull. These were the Holy Grail: the cells that he and Holst had been attempting to isolate and distinguish from those grouped around them. A few short lines expressed in the genetic language that comprised only four letters, C, A, G and T, lent them their uniqueness and held the keys to dopamine production. When mildly stimulated, the cells bearing this section of code brought about a sense of warmth and well-being. When excited more vigorously, they could provoke a high that was more intense and overwhelming than any caused by an intravenous shot of heroin.

Now they had their target, her and Professor Kennedy’s task was a purely mechanical one. Over the coming days, with the help of gene-splicing machines that could do in hours what even ten years before had taken teams of technicians months of painstaking manual work, they could set about creating their microscopic containers, woven from strands of DNA, that would deliver charged nanoparticles to exactly the cells, and only the cells, they were targeting.

When she had started her work the objectives had been entirely noble. Her delivery systems would attack cancer cells wherever they lurked without the need for drugs that indiscriminately destroyed everything in their path. She had never for a moment contemplated their destructive capacity.

She heard footsteps outside the door. She turned to see Dr Holst’s face framed in the observation pane. He smiled at her and came through.

‘Couldn’t sleep?’ he said, rubbing his tired eyes beneath his reading glasses. ‘Me, too. Exciting, isn’t it?’

‘Very,’ Bellman murmured.

Holst wandered towards her, admiring the newly installed banks of equipment. ‘This must feel like home from home. Possibly better. It would take me years to persuade the funding committee back home to come up with something like this.’ He perched on one of the stools at the workbench at the side of the lab. ‘It makes you realize just what can be achieved with enough money and determination.’

Bellman nodded, finding his presence unnerving.

‘Forgive me, Sarah, but do I detect some misgivings about our work …? I know none of us chose to be here, but now that we are –’

‘I need to know how you got this data.’ The words seemed to come out of her mouth without conscious thought. She immediately regretted them and felt her cheeks burning as Holst regarded her with an even more searching gaze.

‘You know how we got it, Sarah. I took biopsies. On a purely human level it’s not a pleasant task, but for the betterment of mankind …’

She felt the urge to hit him. To wipe the look of false sincerity from his fleshy features, but she remained paralysed, too frightened and unsure of herself to do anything but stare at him like a resentful child.

Holst struck his most mollifying and avuncular tone. ‘Of course you feel squeamish. We all do. But many of the greatest breakthroughs have the bleakest of beginnings. Wernher von Braun was the Nazis’ chief rocket scientist. His creations rained death on London but two and a half decades later put men on the moon. Don’t you find that inspiring …? It’s as if there is a natural order to these things. Knowledge finds its true purpose in the end. We are just its instruments.’

He eased off his stool and stepped towards her.

He placed a clammy hand on her shoulder.

‘Out of this darkness you are bringing light into the world, Sarah. Never forget that … Goodnight. Don’t stay up too late.’

He patted her twice on the arm and made his way out, closing the door quietly behind him.

Bellman sat in silence for a long moment, then lifted her eyes to the screen.

It was code. Letters. That’s all it was.

Holst did his work and she did hers.

No one was asking her to hurt anyone.