56

Bristow Genetics

Five Years Before

 

The nagging voice in Dr. Emily Coutant’s head wouldn’t go away. The one that told her she’d made a tragic mistake. That she should never have come here. That she’d let curiosity and vanity overcome her common sense.

For months she’d been pursued by the exorbitantly endowed Bristow Genetics lab, a scientific research outfit known to have some of the brainiest scientists in the nation and several lucrative government contracts. What she couldn’t figure out was why they wanted her. Her field was neuropsychiatry. She was a clinical and therapeutic analyst, not a data cruncher, not a lab slave. And the Institute kept her completely occupied. So what possible good could she be to Bristow? Made no sense, but the relentless offers kept coming.

Today they offered her a preposterous retainer just to sit in a chair and watch a presentation. No strings attached. Sounded more like the offer of a time-share salesman than a scientific headhunter. She scanned the check with the Secure Funds app in her glasses. The money was there, already transferred to her account. Technically, she could leave now and keep the cash. But no. She’d fulfill her end of the bargain. But even if she kept their money, they did not own her. Nobody told her what to do. Nobody charted her course.

“Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining me today.”

The man behind the podium was, of course, Dr. Simon Estes. She’d heard of him. He’d made a big splash with his findings on these people called “Shines.” Estes’s involvement with Bristow guaranteed a high level of respectability.

So why were they bribing people to get them in the room?

“My friends, donors, and scientific colleagues,” Estes continued, “I am proud to tell you that we stand on the threshold of a dream. For years, humanity has been victimized by the vicissitudes of genetic fate. Forced to live with the cards we were randomly dealt. Often leaving some of the greatest minds and the most valuable public servants trapped in physical bodies that made their work difficult if not impossible. My friends, I am happy to tell you that those days are reaching an end.”

She supposed she should be more excited, but she’d heard this declaration before. Since the human genome was first mapped, many a soul trumpeted the dawn of a brave new era in human evolution. So far, however, the actual benefits were few. And some of the proposals were not so much promising as terrifying.

She glanced around the room. The woman sitting beside her was a middle-aged brunette, reasonably attractive and able to apply a little makeup properly, unlike some of the female specimens who worked in these laboratories. She knew some of the others sitting around the oval acrylic table. Scott Banner used to work at the Gen3² lab in Las Vegas. Mark Fisher had something to do with neuroprogramming, but she was sketchy on the details. Last she heard, Emerson Ogilve was doing some kind of top-secret work in North Korea on quantum computing. George Mason was trying to make teleportation a reality. Was Schreiber still trying to develop that extra-dimensional ray gun, or did the government finally shut him down? She couldn’t remember. But it was an impressive assemblage. Estes appeared to have gathered a diverse group of people from the top echelons of the scientific research community.

“Yes, we have reached a new frontier in human evolution, one that will yield a bountiful harvest for every man and woman on the planet.” Behind Estes, a fast-paced array of images from the history of science flickered past. Galileo. Copernicus. E=mc². Dinosaurs. The Vitruvian Man. A mushroom cloud. “But this is not something we can do alone. That’s why we’ve invited you to witness this presentation. We need your help. We need your genius. The threshold work has been completed, but there are still many tests to be run, applications to be developed, and trillions of lines of code to be written. Whatever it is you are asked to do, I can assure you it will be worth your time. Indeed, it will be the most important work of your life.”

Mark Fisher swung around in his seat. “Hate to tell you this, Dr. Estes, but I’m swamped. No way I can take on a new project. In fact, looking around the room, I don’t see anyone who doesn’t already have a full plate.”

“Whatever you’re doing now,” Estes replied, “it dwarfs in significance to what you could be doing tomorrow.”

“That’s your point of view, of course. We’re all fond of our own projects. But even if yours were the most important work on earth—it’s still yours. And no one ever made a name for themselves doing someone else’s work.”

Estes kept his smile in place, but she felt certain Fisher had ruffled the scientist’s empirical feathers. “If Galileo offered to let you peer through his telescope and be the first to glimpse the moons of Saturn, would you refuse because it wasn’t your telescope?”

“Are you suggesting that you’re Galileo?”

“An even better question,” Estes continued, “might be this: would you protect Galileo from the Inquisition, from the emissaries of Rome and the enemies of science? Because that is also what I will be asking of you, my friends. Your scientific contributions to the project itself, yes. But also your scientific strength, your assistance in warding off the threat.”

“The threat?” She jumped into the conversation. “Care to be more specific?”

“Dr. Coutant, you’re wise enough to realize that every scientific innovation is potentially a double-edged sword. Gunpowder was used by its Chinese inventors to create beauty and splendor. It was used by the Europeans who stole it for mass murder. Nuclear power can be a source of almost limitless energy or almost limitless destruction. The Internet can be an unprecedented tool for the dissemination of knowledge—or the basest tool in the history of mankind for the dissemination of lies. I am talking about genetic research of unprecedented scope. Opposition is inevitable.”

“Does this relate to those Shines?” Fisher asked. “Because if that’s what you’re talking about, believe me, the opposition is already there.”

She cut in. Might as well earn her paycheck. “You’re asking us to take sides without knowing anything about it. I don’t like all the secrecy surrounding this operation. It’s contrary to the scientific process. We need qualitative data. Peer review. Repeatable results. I’m not going to be a part of anything that isn’t completely above board.”

“Of course not,” Estes replied. “Perish the thought.”

“That goes for me as well.” This was the brunette to her side. “I’m sure you know there are many rumors flying around about this project.”

“Am I to be pilloried by the malicious gossip of the underachiever?”

“No.” The woman scooted her chair out and stood. “But I think it might be best if I leave now.”

“Just give me five minutes. For a simple demonstration.”

“Very well.” She sank back into her chair.

On Estes’s cue, three men in lab coats entered through a side door. Each carried something about the size of a microwave oven. A white cloth prevented her from seeing precisely what they carried.

“We have developed a prototype for what we call Project Intensify,” Estes said. The lab assistants placed the three boxes in the center of the table. “For years we’ve toiled unsuccessfully for the means to enhance the human chromosome. Eugenics became an ugly word, usually code for racism or genocide or other ugly hidden agendas. Science had little to contribute. Even if we could create a stable modified gene, we couldn’t reproduce it. And it certainly could not reproduce itself. Then two breakthroughs changed everything. First, the discovery of the 47^th chromosome.”

She was no expert, but she believed this to be a reference to Shines.

“And the second came when someone suggested that instead of attempting to incubate a cell in vitro, we inject a nascent cell into a living creature.”

An audible stir rustled around the table. That sentence alone suggested about four different potential breaches of scientific ethics and possibly a violation of law.

“I wish I could tell you that idea came from me, but it did not. I was too hidebound, too locked into one way of thinking, restrained by old school paradigms of what is and is not permissible. I forgot that there are no shackles on men of science, though kings and princes and priests have tried since the dawn of time. Once I cast aside my old ways of thinking, the pathway became much clearer.”

“Is this some kind of stem cell research?” Fisher asked.

Estes chuckled. “Stem cell research is to my project what a matchstick is to a nuclear bomb.” He lowered his hand to the cloth covering the first of the boxes. “Our first approach involved experimenting upon white mice. But they did not survive the initial trials. Mice proved too fragile, too weak. Our next round of experimentation was far better. We found a more resilient breed.” He removed the white cloth. “We used rats.”

The box was a small cage. The front door was bolted shut, but through a mesh screen she could see the rat inside.

Black, with pink squinty eyes. Twitching whiskers. Sharp outsize front teeth.

She sensed the woman beside her shuddering, shrinking ever so slightly from the table. She understood. Rats were disgusting, and this one more than most.

“This is a control rat,” Estes continued. “Perfectly ordinary, as you can see. Goes about his business. Eats. Drinks. Excretes. That’s about it. Consumes its body weight almost every day. Has teeth capable of ripping through cable or shredding plywood. A resilient species indeed. Come the holocaust, the final one, the rats and cockroaches may be the only creatures to survive.”

“When you say this is your control rat,” Fisher asked, “do you mean you’ve done nothing to it?”

“That is precisely what I mean. So if you’re staring at that cage thinking about how loathsome it is, remember: this is the way nature made it. Or perhaps more precisely, this is the way the random process we call evolution made him.”

Estes laid his hand on the second cloth. “The question is: could we make him something else? Something different? Something better?”

Estes removed the cloth.

The beast inside this cage was not a rat. At least, not like any rat she’d ever seen. If she’d encountered this in a dark alley—and she hoped to God she never did—she would not have thought it was a rat.

She wouldn’t have known what else to call it. But she would’ve run like hell to get away from it.

Monster was the first word that came to mind.

“This rat—we call him George—was injected two weeks ago with the latest trial version of PI—Project Intensify. You can see that even in that brief period of time, genetic change has occurred. This rat is forty-four percent larger. Its eyes are wider. Its teeth are sharper. It may have other abilities we are just beginning to discover. And if you’re thinking this serum is nothing but some souped-up steroid, let me add another telling detail. George is smarter, too.”

Everyone sitting around the table exchanged glances.

“On trial runs with a standard labyrinth, this rat scored more than fifty percent higher than the average member of its species. More importantly—it improved its initial scores in a remarkably brief period of time. In other words—it learned. Quickly.”

“You mentioned…other abilities,” Fisher said. “Like what?”

Estes ignored the query and skittered along the table, like a little boy delighted to show off his toys. He laid his hand on the cloth covering the third box. “The compound has been tweaked each week based upon our newly acquired knowledge. This injection does more than simply stimulate bacterial growth or reinforce antibodies. It quite literally rewrites the genetic code.”

He lifted the cloth. “We call this rat Dickie.”

Dickie was much larger than the previous rat. And more monstrous. Its flesh and fur had a green tint. Its teeth seemed too large for its mouth. Its eyes were bloodshot. And it twitched. Constantly. Almost as if it were unable to stand still.

Open sores pocked its hindquarters, oozing pus. Something black moved beneath its skin. A continuous stream of drool dripped from one corner of its mouth.

The rat peered through the mesh screen. She found she could not turn away.

They made eye contact.

She sensed the exchange was more than coincidental. She sensed intelligence behind those eyes.

Worse, she felt as if the rat were…trying to do something. Trying to…tamper with her.

She looked away. What was going on? Was she completely losing her mind?

“Dickie’s strength has increased more than three hundredfold since he received his first injection of PI. Allow me to give you a demonstration.” He opened a door on the side of the cage and inserted a fist-sized ball of string. He closed the door. “Unfortunately, Dickie is not in the Mr. Universe contest. He has no desire to flaunt his strength. So I will have to provide a small incentive.”

The black device Estes removed from his coat pocket was thin like a pencil, but it delivered a powerful jolt.

Estes tased Dickie.

Dickie went into shock, but did not pass out. The gargantuan rat shook violently for several moments, then flung itself against the walls of the cage, creating a fearsome clanging and rattling the tabletop. It thrashed and growled and shuddered.

Then it attacked the ball of string.

Dickie pounced with such ferocity that, had she not known about the genetic tampering, she might have thought the rat bore it a personal grudge. String flew through the cage like a localized snowfall. Grotesque guttural noises made her cringe.

Dickie did not stop until there was nothing left of the ball of string.

“As you can see,” Estes said in a subdued tone, “the PI injection is definitely having an effect, not just in terms of ferocity, but also in strength, agility, and cunning. The practical applications have probably already occurred to you. Imagine having a fleet of small but determined, useful though expendable, workers endowed not only with amazing strength but a considerable degree of intelligence. Imagine what they might do. Imagine the risk-filled tasks that could pass from humans to these enhanced servants.”

“Imagine what might happen if one of those workers decided to go on strike,” Fisher said. “I for one will not be breaking that picket line.”

A smattering of laughter followed, but it was akin to the nervous sniggering heard in a movie theater after a macabre one-liner has been pronounced over a corpse.

The brunette pushed away from the table. “This is what you thought would reel me in? A rat too big to fit in a mailbox?”

“Sit.” Estes spoke quietly, but as if there were no question about her compliance.

“I won’t participate—”

“Sit.” Two men in lab coats moved in front of the doors. Were they technicians or security cops? “There is nowhere for you to go.”

“Are you holding me against my will?”

“No. I’m suggesting that you want to sit down. For your own good. I have something else I want to show you.”

They locked eyes for a moment. And the brunette sat down.

Afterward, Coutant tried to recall the exact chain of events that transpired, the cause and effect, the action and the reaction. Sometimes she got it confused. But these were the essential facts as they occurred:

Estes removed his taser.

The brunette rose from her chair.

Estes activated his taser and pushed it toward Dickie.

The brunette’s knees hit the table, knocking over a goblet of water. It splashed toward the cage.

Both the water and a thousand volts of electricity hit Dickie at the same time.

The rat was electrocuted. Its entire body tensed, then shook, vibrating at an impossible speed.

But it didn’t kill Dickie.

It just made Dickie mad.

Dickie battered the front door of the cage, growling with such ferocity that everyone at the table jumped back. The second time Dickie lunged, they moved even further back.

The wall of the cage started to give. Dickie sunk its teeth into the screen and ripped out a chunk.

The third time Dickie lunged the screen burst and the rat and skidded sideways across the tabletop.

Someone screamed. Dickie skittered upright with astonishing speed, then leaped into the air—landing on the brunette’s throat.

The room descended into chaos. Everyone scrambled, pushing chairs backward, crawling over the tabletop. Scientists shoved one another aside and stepped over fallen bodies. Water glasses crashed to the tile floor.

Dickie clung to the brunette like a Titanic passenger clutching a lifeboat. The desperate woman tried to pull away, but the rat dug its half-inch talons deep into her flesh. She screamed again.

Dickie bit her neck. Blood shot out like a bullet from a pistol. The brunette’s eyelids fluttered and she lost consciousness, tumbling to the floor.

Coutant wanted to run out the door like all the others—but she couldn’t. She grabbed the rat from behind, trying to pull it away from the brunette’s neck.

Dickie clung tight.

She squeezed both fists, hoping she could crush the beast in her hands, or at least cut off its respiration.

Dickie dug in deeper. Its only reaction was a chilling noise she didn’t know how to describe. Something between a rumble and a warning.

She mustered all her strength and pulled even harder.

She managed to yank the rat free, but it took a chunk of the brunette’s neck with it. Blood and flesh spurted everywhere.

She threw Dickie onto the floor, then slammed her foot down for the kill, but it skittered across the floor, too fast for her.

In their haste to depart, the other scientists left the door open.

If that rat escaped into the main lab, it might attack hundreds of victims before someone caught it.

She ran toward the door, unsure what she was going to do.

Dr. Estes crawled out from under the table. He held a knife long enough to skin a deer, sharp and curved and serrated. Funny he should have that on him that during a scientific presentation.

As Dickie raced past, Estes impaled the beast. Blood and rat guts splattered in a gruesome rainbow. Even pinioned to the floor, the rat struggled, thrashed, and squirmed, blood and froth oozing from its mouth. At least a minute passed before it finally gave in to the inevitable and died.

She fell into the nearest chair. Estes rolled onto his back.

“If nothing else,” the scientist said, “this work has definitely improved my hand-to-eye coordination.”

***

The bathroom did not have enough soap or water to get Coutant as clean as she desperately wanted to be. Every time she immersed her hands, some new piece of rat slid out from a previously unforeseen crevice. She had never wanted a bath so much in her life.

Even as she finished, she knew she wasn’t entirely clean, but perhaps she was clean enough to drive home. Tonight, there was no telling how long she might soak in the tub.

Estes waited for her outside the ladies room.

“I, uh, wanted to thank you for your help in there, Dr. Coutant.”

“I wish I could have saved the woman.”

“Yes. I regret that. Very much.”

“I assume this means you’ll be shutting down the project.”

Estes looked puzzled, as if she had just suggested the moon was made of green cheese. “Why would I do that? Did you not see how dramatically that rat was transformed?”

“Did you not see what that rat did to that woman’s throat?”

“It was excessively provoked.”

“It was dangerous and potentially homicidal.”

“Perhaps we need to institute stronger security protocols.”

She couldn’t believe what she heard. “I don’t know what they’re teaching at Harvard these days, but in my book, when your lab rat breaks loose and kills someone, it’s time to shut down the project.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You’ll never get anyone to work with you.”

“In fact, I have already signed everyone I wanted. Except you.”

She stared at the man. Could that possibly be true? “I don’t believe it.”

“I can be quite persuasive when I want to be.”

“Well, you’ll never get me. Look, I can’t make you see the obvious. And really, I don’t care what you do. But there’s no chance I’m going to be any part of it. Zero. None.”

Estes’s expression was hard to read. “Did you really think I was giving you a choice? When you apped that money into your account, you forged a binding contract.”

“No way. There is not the slightest—”

That’s when Estes showed her the photograph.

“Funny how love makes us vulnerable. Wouldn’t you agree, Dr. Coutant?”

And that’s when she knew the discussion was over.

She would work on this despicable project. She would do anything Estes wanted her to do.

Because whether she liked it or not—he owned her.