This time Miller leaned back, throwing out a sarcastic retort, “Wonderful.”
“And that’s just regarding the plants,” Borger spoke up. “Not the source itself, which is the liquid we found. That’s the real catalyst.”
“You’re talking about Africa.”
“Yes, sir. If there really is another vault, it’s the liquid inside that everyone will eventually be after.”
Langford frowned. “This just keeps getting better and better.”
“If it’s something that really did affect our evolution,” Neely said, “the implications may only get bigger.”
“So, now what?”
“Sir, I think we need to step back and think about this,” Caesare said. “This bacteria, now that we know it’s not perfect, could still lead to some frightening scenarios if other people got a hold of it.”
“Or other governments,” added Borger.
“Or other governments. And even if it’s flawed, I’m guessing there’s still a hell of a lot someone else could do with it.”
“That’s true.” Neely nodded.
“Admiral,” Caesare said, peering at the screen, “unless I’m mistaken, this DNA-infused bacterium is the only sample in existence. It was the only stuff extracted by the Chinese, before—”
He suddenly stopped, not wanting to finish the sentence in front of Neely.
“What’s your point, Steve?”
“My point, sir, is that if this stuff is as dangerous as Commander Lawton suggests… maybe we don’t want it.”
“Whoa! Whoa!” started Miller. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. It is the only sample on the planet, which means we need to be very careful here. Let’s not do anything irrational.”
“I’m not, sir. I’m merely pointing out that this thing is already a weapon. Even if it’s not altered, what would happen if this got into the general population? What if someone managed to dump it into a public water supply? Or found some other way to infect a large group. Remember it was that liquid that was in the water in Guyana, which caused the plants to mutate in the first place. So it’s not a huge stretch for the bacteria to get out in the same way. And as Commander Lawton explained, this stuff is potent.”
Langford and Miller were now both looking at each other through their screens.
“Commander Lawton,” Langford said. “Once infected, how long of a gestation period are we looking at?”
“Absorbed is probably a better word,” she replied absently. “And I’m not sure. My mice took only a few days. A human… could take… weeks maybe. But I’m only speculating. Once that DNA takes hold, and their cells stop dying, the rest could come on very quickly.”
“And what do we think a person infected with this DNA would experience?”
“Rejuvenation, mostly. A level of healing within their bodies that would probably seem… magical. Their senses, their strength, even their minds would all probably feel stronger. Much stronger. At least until their brains could no longer shut themselves off. That would be the first sign.” Neely stopped for a moment before adding one more thought. “And maybe one of the last.”
34
In Beijing, a blaring musical chime awoke M0ngol from a fitful sleep. With his long dark hair plastered to his head and still dressed in the previous night’s clothes, the hacker instinctively rolled over and retrieved his phone from a side table. He then found his glasses and slipped them on to study the phone’s bright screen.
It wasn’t a person calling him but rather one of his computers. And instead of a call, it was actually a notification generated by one of the computer scripts he’d written. Known as a bot, the program was constantly churning through thousands of pages of communication logs from other agencies, looking for anything that could be related to their search for Li Na Wei.
It wasn’t until M0ngol clicked through a series of links that the information that triggered his script was revealed, and he practically slid off the side of his bed. The source was an image, from one the Ministry’s public surveillance databases. And even though they had been scouring for any possible trace of the teenage girl, when he finally saw the digitized image of her face, he couldn’t believe it.
The photo appeared to be taken from an angle and under less than ideal lighting, but it was her. There was no question. She was alive.
And she was still in the country.
It took only minutes to find the number and make the call. To his surprise, the call was routed several times before someone finally answered. The voice was slow and deliberate and not one he recognized. But it was clear that whoever it was had not been sleeping either. And they knew exactly who M0ngol was.
“What is it?” the voice asked.
“I have a positive identification!” M0ngol nearly shouted.
“Where?”
He dropped his phone from his ear and studied the data again. “I’m not sure yet. The Heilongjiang province, I think. From a surveillance camera. I only have coordinates.”
“What are they?” the voice asked.
M0ngol read them off, and the person on the other end repeated them, slowly.
“Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Who else knows?”
M0ngol suddenly paused. It seemed an odd question given the entire department was working on the search. “I don’t… I don’t know.” A sense of fear suddenly welled up in his chest. It was his bot script that had found it. Sure it was already on the Ministry’s servers, but they obviously hadn’t made the connection yet. His script had done it first. And it was a script that no one else knew about. In fact, it was running on a different system even fewer people knew about, and its results wouldn’t be in the rest of the logs. So anyone monitoring his progress wouldn’t see it.
M0ngol grew increasingly nervous. He wasn’t trying to keep anything secret. A lot of hackers had their own systems. Systems that avoided having to worry about someone else changing something, or screwing it up.
But now he realized how it might look from the other side.
“I wasn’t…” he fumbled. “I just… wrote some of my own code. Something easier and faster. I just wanted—”
The voice cut him off. “How long ago?”
“Uh…” M0ngol looked back to the small screen. “Twelve minutes.”
“Disable your program.”
“Okay.”
“Speak to no one else about this until we can verify. Is that clear?”
M0ngol nodded. “Yes. Perfectly.”
“Delete the record of this call from your phone. We will call you back if needed.”
“Okay.”
The voice promptly hung up, leaving M0ngol sitting in the dark, still in his wrinkled clothes. And praying that he hadn’t just signed his own death warrant.
35
With a start, Li Na Wei woke up in the darkness. She looked around the room listening for it again. The sound of movement. But it never came.
She remained motionless, propped onto her side, before she allowed her breathing to normalize.
To her surprise, she found a few of the apartments in the ghost buildings to be unlocked. With locks either picked or mistakenly left open by someone. Maybe a facilities person or a security guard assigned the arduous task of checking hundreds of apartments in each building. Eventually, anyone was bound to miss locking one or two. At least that’s what Li Na hoped.
There were over thirty floors, and from what she could guess, a couple dozen apartments on each level. The people she tried to follow had to be hiding in some of them. And like her, without any electricity or water.
But the empty, one-bedroom apartment she’d found near the top floor still had a working door. The lock appeared to be broken, but a few scattered pieces of furniture gave her something to prop up against the other side. And a dirty stripped-down mattress provided a softer place to lie than the floor.