‘Your office mentioned something about cellular activity in their report. Is that why you’ve called us here?’ Eklund asked. ‘Some of the cells from some of the bodies in the explosion exhibited these involuntary impulses?’
‘I would not have called you here for that,’ Zander assured him. ‘What we have found goes well beyond the established posthumous activity that has been documented.’
‘In what ways?’ Miles asked.
Zander flipped a switch on the microscope and a powerful lamp illuminated the specimen slide that was pinned to the stage. Next he reached over and pressed the power button on a flat-screen display that was mounted next to the lab table. When the screen came to life, the group could see that it was connected to the microscope. Everything seen through the eyepiece was now projected for them to examine.
‘What do you see?’ Zander asked.
Miles and Hanna stepped closer to the screen for a better look.
To Dial, the screen simply looked like a collection of squiggly lines against a blue background, with paler blobs dotted across the image. He had no idea what he was looking at.
‘Healthy human tissue cells,’ Miles answered.
Hanna nodded, confirming his assessment.
‘That is precisely what they are,’ Zander said. ‘Healthy human cells. What I would like to know is … how?’
‘What do you mean?’ Dial asked.
‘These are the cells from one of the victims, Chief Dial. The donor died more than a full day ago, yet these cells continue to exist. Not only that, they appear to be thriving.’
Hanna shook her head and gesticulated wildly as she spoke.
Eklund translated for Dial’s sake. ‘She says that’s impossible. She says the fire alone should have damaged the cells beyond repair, and if any cells did somehow manage to stay alive in the blaze, they would have died shortly after. Without the bodily functions of the host — fresh air from the lungs, fresh blood from the heart — the cells cannot exist on their own.’
‘And yet you are looking at them doing just that,’ Zander said defensively. ‘Feel free to choose a sample for yourselves if you have doubts, but I assure you this sample was pulled from the remains of one of your victims.’
‘There’s no known chemical compound, natural or otherwise, that can prolong the life of a cell in that way,’ Miles argued. ‘It has been discussed, but only in a theoretical sense. It’s always been assumed that science of this kind was centuries away, if it was even possible at all.’
Dial cleared his throat. ‘Didn’t you tell me that Berglund was ahead of his time? It seems to me that you said he was a visionary.’
The comment hung in the air without a response.
Several seconds passed before Hanna broke the silence.
‘Tell me more about the sample,’ she said in Swedish. ‘Is this an isolated discovery from a single body? A single organ? Or are these findings widespread?’
Zander answered in English. ‘The phenomenon is not relegated to specific organs. Tissue samples from the skin, liver, kidneys and brain all show the same signs of cellular activity. And no, the findings were not widespread. Only a few of the victims suffered from this affliction, if those are even the right words. Five, to be precise.’
Dial groaned in realization. He knew the number wasn’t a coincidence. And yet he still had to ask the question to eliminate all doubt from his mind. ‘Which five?’
34
Dr Zander knew the answer to Dial’s question about the identity of the victims without consulting his notes. Details like this were impossible to forget. ‘The five felons.’
Dial nodded. ‘That’s what I figured.’
‘Felons?’ Hedman remarked. ‘What felons?’
‘We’ve identified the majority of the victims,’ Eklund explained. ‘Most were scientists, but there were also five men with distinguished criminal records. As of yet, we have no idea what role they played in all of this. We can’t say for certain why they were there.’
Hanna launched into a line of questioning, but Dial had to wait for Hedman to translate.
‘She wants to know if cell activity within the sample has changed over time. Was this exact number of living cells always present?’
‘What does that tell us about the criminals?’
‘Nothing,’ Hedman answered. ‘At least not directly. Frankly, Mr Dial, the presence of criminals is the least of her concerns. That is a mystery for you and Agent Eklund to solve. Her focus is on the science involved.’
‘And the number of living cells tells her …?’ Eklund asked.
Miles answered. ‘It tells her whether the cells were dying off, or whether they were multiplying.’
‘They were dying off,’ Zander announced. ‘At least at first.’ He sat in front of the keyboard and tilted a nearby computer monitor so that he could see the screen. After finding the right file, the image on the large plasma screen changed as he loaded a video. ‘This is a recording of the cellular activity over the course of our examination. As you can see, the cell count was much greater when the sample was first taken.’
Dial could see that the footage plainly supported Zander’s claim. The image they were looking at a moment ago had only showed a handful of pale blobs; now the screen was completely speckled. Dial guessed that at least seventy-five percent of the picture was covered in the pale oblong cells.
‘Watch what happens over the next several hours,’ Zander said.
With a click of the mouse, the footage began to roll forward at high speed. A day’s worth of video sped by in the time-compressed clip. Dial watched intently as more and more of the screen changed from white to blue.
‘Do the cells always stand out like that?’ Eklund wondered.
‘No,’ Zander explained. ‘We add a blue dye to the sample before it goes under the microscope. The walls of healthy cells keep the dye from penetrating into the interior of the cell, so they show as white against the blue background.’
‘And what happened when the screen turned mostly blue?’
‘The balance shifted from a majority of living cells to a majority of dead cells. The cell wall loses integrity when the cell dies, allowing the blue dye to permeate the remains.’
Miles, the microbiologist, stared at the screen. ‘Something kept the cells alive through the fire, but let them die afterwards. Something common to the subjects? A mutated gene, perhaps?’
Zander shrugged. ‘It’s impossible to answer that without a full sequencing of each subject, but the odds of probability would suggest otherwise. For an unknown genetic mutation of that type to manifest itself in five individuals from the same Scandinavian subset would be a nearly impossible likelihood. If it were that common — present in one out of every five million people, given the populations of the relevant countries — it would have been detected long ago.’
Miles agreed with the assessment. ‘Which means you believe the variable was introduced into the subjects.’
Zander nodded. ‘I do.’
Eklund was a half-step behind the others. ‘Introduced into the subjects? Does that mean what I think it means? The scientists at the lab were running tests on humans?’
‘That’s exactly what they’re saying,’ Hedman answered.
Eklund stared at them, incredulous.
Hedman did his best to explain. ‘The world at large condemns those who would dare to use humans in the name of scientific advancement. But the truth is, such experimentation is essential to the development of science. Innovation in every field — surgical, pharmaceutical, medicinal and more — requires exhaustive studies across a wide range of subjects. There is only so much that can be gleaned from mice, rats and chimpanzees.’
Miles concurred. ‘Eventually you must involve the targeted recipient. That means humans must be tested, and studied, and tested again.’