“His color is good,” Lisa pronounced.
She stood before the neonatal incubator. Her gloved hands gently rolled the newborn onto his side, and she listened to the back of his thin chest with her stethoscope. His heartbeat was as rapid as a bird’s, but strong, his pulse-ox readings normal.
She let him roll back on his own. Huge blue eyes, framed by a hint of eyelashes, ogled up at her, his lips pursed hungrily.
Edward Blake stood at her shoulder, watching her examination.
Petra was off in another lab, running the latest DNA analyses, using samples of the boy’s blood and skin, along with cells gathered from a mucosal swab.
“We should get another bottle.” Lisa snapped off her gloves. “He’s been suckling well on his own since we took out his NG tube and PICC line. Let’s keep him moving in that right direction. But all in all, he’s rallying beautifully.”
“That’s all because of you, Dr. Cummings,” Edward said.
It wasn’t false praise. Yesterday, she had found the child circling the drain. She had spent a full hour studying his labs, his radiographs, even his genetic analyses. She had stared with amazement at the triple helix formations on an electron micrograph: two natural DNA strands wrapped around an engineered foreign protein, PNA.
Peptide nucleic acid.
That little microscopic strand of PNA was the source of so much misery, horror, and abuse.
And it wasn’t doing the boy any good, either.
Edward had explained about the unraveling going on in the boy’s body, how these triple-helix compounds were breaking down. But the question still in the air was why. Did the boy get sick and that started to unravel the helices? Or did the unraveling make the boy sick?
The only way to know for sure was to stabilize the child and see if the unraveling stopped on its own.
Lisa had come up with a suggestion, after noting the slight spike in eosinophil levels in the boy’s lab work. Eosinophils were the white blood cells that modulated allergic inflammatory processes. They also reacted to parasitic infections, but stool tests had already ruled out that possibility.
The more likely source for this allergic response was the PNA strands. Peptide nucleic acid was a protein like any other, capable of being an allergen as surely as dust or dander. With the breakdown of the triple helices, the freed PNA was being washed out into the cytoplasm, then shed free of the cells.
Petra had shown her a picture of a worm-like PNA molecule squiggling out of an intestinal cell. This rush of engineered protein into the bloodstream and interstitial tissues triggered the mobilization of eosinophils, the body’s defense against such foreign invaders. This allergic anaphylaxis tipped the child into shock.
Recognizing this threat, Lisa had recommended a low-dose therapy of antihistamines and intravenous steroids to knock down that allergic response, to give the child’s body a chance to flush out the foreign allergen and stabilize again.
It worked out beautifully. She had kept a vigil beside the neonatal incubator all night, assisted by Edward as needed, and, hour by hour, the child improved. They were able to slowly unhook him from fluids, oxygen supplementation, and even the feeding tube.
Only one question remained: did it do any good?
Did the boy’s rallying health succeed in returning stability to the triple helices? She knew that was Edward’s hope. They both awaited Petra’s answer.
As Lisa fed the child with a bottle, Edward retired to a computer workstation in a neighboring cubicle. Both were lost to their own worries. Concern for the child’s well-being had staved off her terror for the past day, gave her something to focus on. She knew Kat was somewhere in this lab complex, but where was her friend holed up? For that matter, where was this lab?
So far, both Petra and Edward had treated her with a modicum of respect, appreciating and needing her help. She remembered those digitized words, a cold warning: Prove your usefulness, and you both continue to live.
With the child doing better, Lisa’s usefulness was about to come to an end.
Then what?
She remembered who had assigned her to this job in the first place, picturing his kind face, his soft words.
Thank you, Dr. Cummings, for agreeing to help my grandnephew.
Anger raged inside her against that cool, calm demeanor of Robert Gant. She knew how much pain and suffering and loss it cost to bring this special child into existence, to this place and time. Still, she could not blame the child for such atrocities. The boy might have been born out of blood and heartbreak—but he was still an innocent.
The child finished suckling, the bottle was empty. Those big eyes drooped, heavy with milk-sodden drowsiness. Lisa let him drift into slumber, oblivious to the horrors beyond the clear plastic walls of his incubator.
She turned to Edward and limped over to him, favoring her aching ankle. Up on the wall, a camera tracked her path, swiveling to follow her. She wondered if Robert Gant watched her or merely some bored guard.
Exhausted, Lisa was beyond subtlety or subterfuge. “Edward, what are you trying to accomplish with these triple helices?”
He swung around on his desk chair. “Ah, I can’t speak to the goal of my financial benefactors. All I know is my purpose in the grand scheme of things.”
“And that’s what?”
He raised an eyebrow, belying the hubris that followed. “To forge the key to life itself.”
He gave her a tired smile, and, surprisingly, she echoed it.
“As lofty as that might sound, PNA is that key,” Edward explained. “It unlocks the full power of DNA and places the blueprints of life into our hands. With PNA, genomics experts can engineer strands that can turn specific genes on or off, unfettering mankind from its biological limitations. But it also allows new genes to be introduced, new code written onto the PNA and inserted into a fertilized egg. In the end, God will no longer evolve man—we will.”
Edward stared toward the child in the incubator. “But all that will come later. For the moment, we have only one goal engineered into this first strain of PNA, a simple thing really.”
Lisa felt a sick turn to her stomach. “What goal?”
Edward’s eyes never left the sleeping boy, the doctor’s expression a mask of wonder and also sadness.
“Immortality.”
Lisa couldn’t hide her shock.
“Do not be so surprised, Dr. Cummings. This child is not the first immortal born into this world.” Edward finally turned to her, letting her see his sincerity. “They walk among us already.”
Five hours left.
Painter had returned to his own office, leaving the president with his daughter below, guarded by his Secret Service contingent. They were under the five-hour mark until James Gant would come out of hiding and pretend to be recovering from major surgery. Everything to maintain that ruse was already in place.
He found Kowalski sitting inside, his feet propped up on Painter’s desk, his arms folded over his belly, snoring.
Painter shoved his legs off.
The man snorted awake. “We ready?” he asked.
“As we’re ever going to be.”
Painter grabbed a holstered SIG Sauer from a cabinet. The rest of the strike team’s gear was waiting at the airstrip, a jet warming up. As he secured the shoulder harness and holster in place, his eyes caught on the picture of Lisa on his desk, smiling softly, hair glowing in the summer sun, lips parted slightly. His love for her was a tangible thing, not a thought or a feeling, but a weight in his heart, a pressure in his chest, a stirring of heat in his veins.
At that moment, he knew the truth.
I need to buy a ring.
Motion at the door drew his attention. Tucker stood there, shadowed by Kane.
Painter gave his holster harness a final tug, cinching it snugly, and faced the man. “Captain Wayne?”
Tucker stepped inside. “Sir, I’d like to join you on this mission.”
“I appreciate that, captain, but we hired you to find Amanda. Your obligation to us has been fulfilled.”
“Understood, sir.” Tucker’s countenance remained hard, rocky. “But not my obligation to Amanda. I left her baby back in Dubai, and I want a chance to correct that mistake.”
“We can certainly use the additional manpower . . . not to mention your dog’s nose. But we’ll be parachuting onto the Gant estate.”
Airspace above the presidential estate was restricted. The no-fly zone had been established before James Gant was president, going back decades, a courtesy of the state of South Carolina for the largesse of the clan.
Painter’s plan was to sweep in close, parachute out, and glide low onto the grounds. And those grounds were huge, over 300,000 acres, almost 500 square miles of misty mountains, towering waterfalls, dark forests, and grassy meadows. The estate had ill-defined borders, as the family bought neighboring farms, ranches, and orchards, extending their property in fits and starts.
That remote, rough terrain would serve to hide them, allowing them to hoof it overland from their drop point.
Tucker seemed to have no problem with parachuting onto the estate. “Kane and I have had plenty of jump time,” the man assured him. “I have my dog’s harness system with me.”
“Then welcome aboard.”
Kowalski stood, stretched, and headed out the door with the others. “This place is really going to the dogs.”
Painter set off down the hall. He had been expecting another teammate to arrive by now, but the latecomer would have to meet them at the airstrip. Time was ticking down. Jason Carter would take command at the communications nest in his absence and coordinate efforts from here. It was a lot to place on his young shoulders, but Painter knew he could handle it. Jason had already gathered his own intelligence team in preparation, ruling the nest of older agents with an enthusiasm reserved for the young.
Painter reached the elevators as the doors opened.
Inside the cage stood the last member of their strike team. Kat’s husband adjusted his new prosthetic hand, securing the cuff with a twist and wiggling his fingers. Monk must have already stopped by R&D to get the upgrade Painter had ordered for him, a prosthetic specifically designed for this mission, to help with the infiltration of the Lodge.
“About time,” Painter said.
Monk glanced up, meeting his gaze, his face fierce. “You try to find a babysitter on the Fourth of July . . . now let’s go get our women.”
“And you’re claiming this child can live forever?” Lisa asked. “That he’s immortal?”
Edward continued to sit in his cubicle in the medical ward. “Barring accidents or disease, yes, he could live a very long time. I imagine it will take further tinkering to achieve true immortality. But in the end, like I said, he’s not the first immortal born to this world.”
“What do you mean?”
“Since we have time until Petra finishes her evaluation of the boy’s genetics, I’ll do my best to explain. It’s the least I can offer you for saving the child.”
Lisa was prepared to listen.
“Many scientists, across a scope of professions, believe immortality will be achieved in our lifetime. The dates bandied about all seem to center around the middle of this century, 2045 or so. That means children born today will live to see those accomplishments come to fruition. They will take advantage of them during their lifetimes, becoming immortal. So in that regard, they are immortal already. Or at least something quite close to it. Their lifetimes could be easily doubled or tripled.”
She imagined what he envisioned, how some children born today will live forever. They were the immortals walking among us already.
Still, such a claim seemed impossible. She voiced it aloud. “You truly expect we can attain immortality in such a short time frame?”
“Or something very close to it. And it’s not just me making that claim. It comes from hundreds of scientists, researchers, and visionaries across a gamut of professions—from medicine, genomics, and gerontology to pharmaceuticals, nanotech, and robotics. What we’re doing in our labs here, financed by our benefactor, is taking the first tentative steps into eternity.”
Lisa pictured the man orchestrating this work.
Our benefactor . . .
Robert Gant.
It was beyond comprehension. All this horror perpetrated in an attempt to live forever. Still, Lisa sensed something more was going on, another agenda still being kept secret—but what?
She knew any true answers lay in keeping Edward talking.
He obliged, waxing proudly on where the world was heading. “There are two general schools of thought in regards to expanding man’s lifetimes. The first is moving machines into man. The other is moving man into machines.”
She shook her head, not appreciating the distinction.
“A thousand years ago the average life expectancy of mankind was only twenty-five years. It took another nine hundred years to extend that to thirty-seven. Today the average is seventy-eight. So, in the past hundred years, we more than doubled life expectancy. That amazing spurt of growth happened because of science and technology. And it will only grow faster from here. Estimates say we will soon be adding a year to our lives with every passing year. Just think about that. For every year you grow older, life expectancy will extend a year in front of you.”
“But what will drive that growth?”
“What has always driven it: the furnace of technology. In that forge, machine and man will melt together into one.”
He must have read her skepticism and smiled, ready to deflect it.
“Already people have artificial pancreases inside them,” he continued. “Currently thirty thousand Parkinson patients have neural implants. And as technology grows smaller, it will invade us even more. Advancements in nanotechnology—which is manufacturing at the atomic level—hold the promise of replacing vital organs in fifteen years, our blood cells in twenty years, and in twenty-five years, nanotechnology will reprogram our biological software to reverse aging.”
Lisa understood. “Moving machines into man . . . into our bodies.”
“That’s one path to immortality. But the reverse holds even greater promise. As computing power explodes exponentially, a term was coined—singularity—marking that moment when artificial intelligence will surpass mankind. Various futurists expect this to occur somewhere in the middle of this century.”
“So soon?” Lisa asked.
Edward nodded with a small smile of satisfaction. “By 2030, estimates say computing power will be a million times what it is today. Anything is possible with that much power. In the meantime, scientists from around the globe are searching for methods to merge that growing computing power to our own. In Switzerland, researchers are reverse-engineering the human brain, creating a neuron-by-neuron simulation, with the intent to have a complete virtual brain in ten years. Here in the States, a group of MIT researchers are building a map of all the brain’s synapses, those trillions of connections between neurons, all in a search for the seat of human consciousness.”
Lisa sighed. “And I assume that the ultimate goal is to fill that empty seat, to scan our consciousness into computers.”
“Exactly. Moving man into machines. The second path to immortality.” Edward glanced over to the incubator. “But I’m searching for a third path.”
“Which is what?”
“A new science. Cybergenetics. The merging of technology into our genetic code.”
“The PNA strand,” Lisa said, understanding, growing both awed and horrified, picturing that piece of engineered protein snaking into human DNA and regulating it.
“DNA is really just a set of information processes for building our bodies. But that software is old, millions of years old. PNA holds the potential for overhauling that system. Rebooting mankind forever.”
Lisa tried to draw him down from the lofty heights of theory to the reality of his lab. “But back to your own research. What does your PNA do, the one inside the boy?”
“It basically addresses the deleterious effects that come with growing old. The field of gerontology—the study of aging—has discovered that there are only seven basic ways a body damages itself as it ages. Reverse those seven deadly ways and immortality is within reach.”
Edward looked significantly toward her, lifting an eyebrow.
“You did it,” she said in a hushed voice. “Your PNA manipulates and regulates the DNA to offset those damages.”
“It does, but not perfectly. We concentrated most of our efforts on one of them. The death of cells. Are you familiar with the Hayflick Limit?”
She shook her head, finding it harder and harder to speak.
“Back in 1961, Dr. Leonard Hayflick estimated that the maximum natural age for a human being is about 120 years. He based that on the number of times a cell will divide before it stops. The number of these divisions is determined by the length of some repeated DNA at the end of each cell’s chromosomes. These repeated sequences are called telomeres. They basically act like the aglets at the end of shoelaces, keeping the laces from fraying. But after a certain number of divisions, the telomeres wear off, and the chromosome frays itself to death.”
“What does this have to do with your PNA?”
“We engineered the PNA to function as permanent telomeres, in order to create undying cells, and thus allow us to shatter through the Hayflick Limit.”
“Creating a path to immortality.”
He nodded. “We are at the very threshold to eternity.”
“But why do this? There are so many negative effects if man could live forever. Overpopulation, starvation, stagnation. There’s a reason we are meant to die, to step aside for the next generation.”
“True, but those dangers only exist if the technology is available to all. In the hands of an elite—a chosen people—there would be no such risks.”
Shocked, she pictured Robert Gant’s face. Was that his plan? To keep his bloodline alive forever, to create an undying dynasty?
“Why are you helping them?” she finally eked out.
“Because I must. Mankind has always chafed against restraints and limitations. We left our homelands to cross uncharted seas. We broke the bounds of gravity to fly. We even left our planet. Here is merely the next step toward freedom, the ultimate freedom, to break the chains of mortality and free us from our very graves.”
Lisa found herself aghast. She had warmed to the man over the past day, working alongside him, but now she saw the chinks in his armor, allowing the madness inside to shine forth.
“The visionary Raymond Kurzweil once posed the question, Does God exist?” Edward turned to stare at the boy in the incubator. “His answer was only two words: Not yet.”
She stared at the man, seeing the glaze of megalomania. She knew from her years in the medical profession that this affliction seldom presented itself as a raving lunacy. Instead, most of those afflicted were charming in demeanor, confident in their convictions, and all too often described as simply nice. They were monsters wearing sweet faces.
She was saved from responding by the return of Petra. The woman had a sheaf of reports in her hands as she strode stiffly toward them. Her expression remained unreadable as she reached Edward’s cubicle.
He faced her, looking up, hopeful. “And the verdict on the boy?”
“Not good. The child may appear healthy, but his triple helices continue to denature and shed their PNA strands. Worse yet, the process appears to be accelerating.”
Edward lifted his hands, rubbed his eyes, and sighed out his defeat. “So the breakdown wasn’t because the boy was sick. As I feared, he’s simply rejecting the PNA.”
“He’s no good to us,” Petra said.
“But we were so close.” Edward sagged.
“We will keep working,” Petra said. “Success cannot be far away. And besides, you know they only want females. The boy was doomed either way.”
Doomed?
Lisa stiffened. “What are you talking about?”
Edward, lost in his disappointment, seemed surprised she was still there. “Surely you understand that males with triple helices are basically mules. They might live forever, but they’re genetic dead ends. Only females can pass this PNA trait to future offspring.”
“No, I don’t understand,” she said, intending to keep them talking, shifting slowly toward the key card on Edward’s desk.
You’re not going to harm this child . . .
He huffed, swung to a computer, and tapped up a file. On the screen, a time-lapsed video of cellular division appeared. The two DNA strands were colored in red, the single PNA in blue. A couple of additional PNA strands hung loosely in the cytoplasm. As the cells divided, the PNA slipped out of the way, joined its brothers in the cytoplasm. Cellular division then proceeded as normal. Once the cell had pinched into two, one of the PNA strands from each of the new cells snaked out of the cytoplasm and back into the heart of the DNA strand, re-forming the triple helix in both cells.
“Do you understand?” Edward asked.
She did. She now understood why a male couldn’t pass on the triple-helix trait. A man’s sperm cell contains half of his DNA. A woman’s egg contains half of her DNA plus all of her cytoplasm and everything inside the jelly-like cellular fluid: mitochondria, organelles, proteins—and, in this case, PNA. Because of that, a father couldn’t pass on the triple-helix trait—the trait of immortality—because he couldn’t pass on any cytoplasmic PNA. Only a female could.
“It’s like mitochondria in women,” Lisa said. “All mitochondria get passed along the female genetic line, from egg to egg to egg.”
“Correct. So you understand?”
She nodded.
“Then you also understand why we have to kill this boy.”
She jerked straighter. “No . . . of course not!”
Edward sighed. “He’s a dead end, only useful for research fodder. If we’d been able to return stability to his triple helix by treating his shock, then he would have made the perfect test subject for Petra’s vivisection table, his organs divided into artificial suspension systems, perfect for challenging and testing the immortality trait. Better that than waiting decades to study this child’s growth. Science can’t move that slowly, especially in the face of something as inconsequential as morality.”
Lisa sat back on Edward’s desk, numb with shock. She had labored throughout the night and slowly pulled the child back from death’s door—only to meet this end?
She had also grown attached to the boy. How could she not, with those big, trusting blue eyes?
Petra stared sullenly at the child in the incubator, as if he were a dog who had chewed her favorite pumps. “Now he’s useless. Another failure.”
“A promising failure.” Edward patted Petra on the back of her hand. “You can still perform the necropsy, collect all the histological tissue samples you want. We can still learn much, even from this failure.”
Enough.
Lisa would not let them kill this child.
As they focused on the baby, with their backs to her, she made her move.
Already leaning on Edward’s desk, she grabbed his key card—and his desk lamp. She yanked the cord free and swung the lamp broad-armed at the back of Petra’s head. The weighted steel base hit her skull, felling her like a chopped tree. The woman hit the corner of the cubicle and tumbled hard to the floor.
Edward had started to rise, but Lisa kicked the chair out from under him. Off balance, he fell forward. She used that moment to ram her knee into his nose, smashing it and sending him sprawling. He wasn’t out, but he was down, dazed.
She dropped the lamp, ran to the incubator, and, as gently as she could, removed the cuffs and tapes of the NICU’s monitoring leads. Once he was free, she swaddled the child in a thin blanket and carried him close to her chest.
She knew the prison ward was a blind alley, as was this suite of labs. The only other true exit was the door through which Robert Gant had entered yesterday. She ran toward it, ignoring the flaring complaint from her swollen ankle. At the door, she swiped the stolen key card, unlocked the way, and dashed out of the ward.
A dimly lit maze of halls and rooms spread outward, looking deserted, waiting to be occupied by Edward’s new facility. She’d overheard that much.
She picked a direction and ran off blindly with the child, moving as fast as she could with her compromised ankle, thankful the child remained quiet after being fed.
She hadn’t bothered to dispatch or tie up Petra and Edward.
For a very simple reason.
She remembered the eye of the security camera following her as she fled. Someone already knew she had escaped.