Wired (20 page)

PART FIVE

Captured

32

David
Desh awoke and absently shook his head to clear it, his eyes still closed,
vaguely becoming aware of something uncomfortable stabbing into his cheek.

Suddenly,
it all came rushing back. The helicopter. Kira falling. So they hadn’t used
lethal force on him, after all. Either that or he was in heaven, which was
unlikely since pain wasn’t supposed to be part of that realm, and the ache in
his mouth was very real. On the other hand, perhaps he had ended up in that
other place . . .

Desh
opened his eyes, but only a crack. He wanted to appear unconscious for as long
as he could. He and Kira were sitting on the floor, together, their backs
against a concrete wall in a gray, dimly lit basement. The room’s only light
was supplied by an uncovered bulb that hung down from the unfinished ceiling
with a pull string hanging down beside it. Heavy steel rungs had been bolted
into the wall at even intervals, and his wrists were bound together behind his
back and through one of the rungs with plasticuffs. Kira was bound in a similar
fashion to a rung five feet to his left. In one corner there was a sump hole,
about two feet in diameter, with a pump inside and about ten inches of standing
water at its bottom. Three steel poles rose to meet the ceiling in strategic
locations to lend structural support to the house.

The
basement was empty save a large wooden worktable in the middle of the floor,
about eight feet away from the prisoners, with an assortment of tools hanging from
a pegboard above it. An unfinished wood staircase at the opposite wall led to
the first floor, eventually rising to a door that was out of sight.

They
appeared to be alone. It was possible no one had been watching when Desh had
first stirred, but he knew it was more likely that someone had picked up his
return to consciousness on a video monitor and was approaching even now.

Desh
instinctively sized up his position and considered options for escape, but came
up empty. As he continued to explore every facet of his surroundings and commit
them to memory, he noticed with alarm that a small section of Kira Miller’s
skull, just over her right ear, had been shaved bald and was now covered by a
white bandage.

He
pushed at the heart-shaped locket with his tongue and repositioned it in the
front of his mouth. As he did so, Kira began to stir. If his movements hadn’t
been noticed, hers certainly would be. He had no time to spare. He tried to
work open the locket’s tiny clasp with his tongue and by manipulating it with
his teeth, but was unsuccessful. Finally he positioned the locket’s seam
carefully between his incisors, hoping to force it open like a particularly
stubborn pistachio. After a few tries he managed to pry the two halves apart,
but only a millimeter. This would have to do. He was afraid of applying too
much pressure and having the locket squirt out of his mouth and out of reach. His
molars would be safer, but might seal it again for good rather than open it
further.

He
swallowed the locket w
hole—
its point stabbing the inside
of his throat on the way down—knowing his stomach acid would enter the
miniscule rift he had opened and begin dissolving the gel that imprisoned Kira’s
gene therapy cocktail. But how long would this take, given the gellcap was barely
exposed? It was impossible to say.

Kira’s
eyes came open with a start. She shook her head to clear it, wincing in pain as
she did so, and turned to Desh with a puzzled expression on her face. But a
moment later she must have remembered being at the gas station and hearing a
helicopter just before she had lost consciousness. “Shit,” she said dejectedly.
“They got us with tranquilizer darts, didn’t they?”

Desh
nodded.

“I’m
not usually hypersensitive to pain,” said Kira, “but it feels more like they
shot an arrow into my head.”

“The
dart hit your neck. That’s not what you’re feeling.” Desh frowned worriedly. “A
small portion of your head above your right ear has been shaved. There’s a
bandage there now.”

The
color drained from Kira’s cheeks. “That would explain the intense pain, all
right.”

“Any
idea what they might have done to you?” asked Desh.

“None
whatsoever,” she replied uneasily.

“Are
you going to be okay?”

Kira
paused for a moment and then nodded. “It hurts like hell, but not so much that
it’s debilitating,” she replied stoically. “I’ll get by.” Her eyes darted
around the basement. “Where are we?”

“I
don’t know,” said Desh. He was about to continue when the door opened and two
men walked down the stairs. As the first man came into view, both prisoners
recognized him immediately. The wiry black-ops agent who had called himself
Smith.

The
same could not be said for the man who followed him. He was in his late
forties, of average height but slightly overweight. He was wearing gray suit
pants, a blue-striped oxford dress shirt, and black wingtips. He had a small
mouth and thin lips, and blond-brown hair that was parted down the middle. There
was something about the man that was unsettling, as if the sight of him had set
off subconscious alarms that he was a dangerous predator, despite his
unassuming appearance.

“Kira
Miller,” the man said smugly. “At long last.”

He
put his back to the workbench and hoisted himself to a seated position on the
table facing the prisoners, his legs hanging down casually. Smith remained
standing, ten feet away from the workbench and facing in the same direction.

“Who
are you?” demanded Kira.

“You
don’t really think I’m going to answer that,” he said in amusement. “Call me
Sam, and let’s leave it at that. And to anticipate your next question, we’re in
what is called a safe house. There are four heavily armed men upstairs whose
job it is to follow any order I give.”

Desh
had no doubt from their respective postures that this was Smith’s boss, which
meant he was also probably the man they had been calling Moriarty. And he had
access to a safe house and considerable legitimate authority. Not surprising.

“So
you must be government,” guessed Desh. “Sam as in
Uncle
Sam? Is that
supposed to be cute or just psychotic?”

The
man moved in a blur, much faster than his appearance would have suggested. He
pushed off the table, took the few steps to where Desh was immobilized on the
floor, and kicked him savagely in the gut, leading with the point of his black
wingtip. Desh tightened his stomach just in time and tried to turn away, but
his stomach took the full brunt of the kick, and he reeled from the blow. Pain
signals bombarded his nervous system.

Sam,
calm again, returned to his perch on the table. “I don’t like your tone, Mr.
Desh,” he said, as if reprimanding a grade-schooler. “You
will
address
me with the proper respect. My business is with Dr. Miller here. The only
reason you aren’t dead yet is because I’m trying to figure out how you factor
into this. But I would watch how you speak to me. I’m not
that
curious.”

Desh
didn’t respond as the man who called himself Sam turned once again to Kira. “How’s
the head?” he taunted.

“What
did you do to me?” she demanded.

“Oh,
we’ll come to that, never fear. But first we have some other business. I don’t
suppose you’d want to make this easy and just give me the secret to the
fountain of youth? The GPS coordinates for that buried flash drive of yours
would work just as well.”

She
said nothing but glared at him icily.

Sam
held out his palms innocently. “I didn’t think so. Worth a try, though,” he
said, shrugging. “I thought this might be a bit of a challenge. After all,” he
added, the corners of his mouth turning up into a cruel smile, “you
were
willing to let me barbecue your brother.”

Kira’s
eyes blazed like twin suns. “You son of a bitch!” she screamed hatefully,
pulling against her restraints.

He
raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Son of a bitch?” he repeated, amused. “I would
normally take offense, but you are technically correct. Mom
was
a bitch.
How did you know?” he added wryly.

“I
will
kill you,” she growled. “If it’s the last thing I ever do.”

Sam
was unimpressed. “You’re hardly in a position to be making threats, my dear.”
He shook his head in mock regret. “But I see now that killing your brother
probably ruined any chance for us to have a romantic relationship.”

Desh
could tell that Kira was seething inside, but was fighting to stay calm so she
wouldn’t give this Sam the added satisfaction of getting a rise out of her. The
man was purposely pushing her buttons to cloud her thinking, and Desh knew he
had to do something to intervene. “So you’re the one who broke into her condo,”
he said, risking the point of Sam’s shoe to deflect the conversation from its
current course. “And stole her treatment.”

Desh
braced himself for an attack, but none came. “That’s right.”

“But
you aren’t enhanced now,” noted Kira, having already regained her equilibrium. “Why
not?”

“You
of all people know that running your brain at warp speed takes a lot out of it.
Can’t do it every day.” He paused. “But if your real question is, did I run out
of pills? the answer is no. I didn’t. What’s more, I have a molecular biologist
working for me who’s almost managed to duplicate your work. Another month and
I’ll have a lifetime supply.”

“And
will he be signing his own death warrant when he succeeds?” said Kira.

“Why
ask questions to which you already know the answer?” Sam shrugged. “Everybody
dies sometime.” He tilted his head and grinned. “Except for maybe me and you,
my dear.”

“So
who is the molecular biologist working with you?” she asked.

“Oh,
I doubt you know him. He was in the bio-defense division at USAMRIID. I
discovered he was conspiring with terrorists for money.” He rolled his eyes. “He
also had a taste for young boys that was quite troubling. So I, ah . . .
pressed him into service.”

“You
mean you blackmailed him,” said Kira.

Sam
ignored her. “I do have to hand it to you,” he continued, shaking his head in
admiration. “Even with your lab notebook, even with the instruction manual
right in front of him, it’s taken him years to duplicate your work.”

“Why
not just enhance his intelligence?” asked Kira.

“I
have. Several times. If not for this, he’d still be trying to figure out how to
replicate what you did. But I didn’t want to give him too many pills. First, I
don’t have that many left. Second, that kind of intelligence makes someone
extremely difficult to control. You and I both know that. You can’t imagine the
precautions I had to take each time I souped him up.”

Desh
searched his own mind for any signs of a change but detected none. Part of him
still didn’t believe her therapy would really work, but if it did, he had no
idea what to expect when it began to kick in.

“How
many people other than Desh know about the longevity therapy?” asked Kira.

“Good
question,” said Sam, smiling. “The wheels are always turning with you, aren’t
they. Always gathering intel. The answer is, only me. I clean up after myself
very carefully. True, the entire US military has been after you, but I’m the
only one who
really
knows what’s
going on.”

“Other
than me, of course,” corrected Smith.

With
a burst of motion, Sam pulled a silenced pistol from a holster and put a bullet
into Smith’s head at point blank range. The impact threw Smith off his feet and
he landed roughly on his back, dead before he hit the ground.

Blood
mixed with tiny bits of brain matter leaked from Smith’s head and began to
puddle on the concrete floor next to him.

33

Kira
shrank back in horror as blood continued to pour from Smith’s head.

Sam
returned his gun to its holster. “Now where was I,” he said casually, as if
nothing had happened

Desh
didn’t need to consult a textbook to know that this man was a true psychopath.

“Oh,
I remember,” continued Sam. “I was telling you that I’m the
only
one
who really knows what’s going on.”

Sam
nodded at Smith’s glassy-eyed corpse on the floor and then his gaze settled
back on Kira Miller. “Although, admittedly, there used to be two of us. But now
that I have you, Dr. Miller, I won’t be needing him anymore,” he explained, and
then frowning, added, “and to be frank about it, he wasn’t all that useful. I
had you dead to rights at that motel and he fucked it up.”

Desh’s
last reservations about the veracity of Kira’s story had now vanished. Everything
she had told him was true. This was the man Connelly had been looking for.

“How
will you explain Smith’s murder to your men upstairs?” asked Desh.

Sam
grinned. “No need for explanations among friends. The men upstairs were
handpicked and are all completely loyal to me. I pay them extremely well, but
I’ve always believed in wielding a stick to go along with the carrot. None of
them are big believers in the Ten Commandments and have unfortunately committed
some major, ah . . . indiscretions . . . in their lives. I have enough dirt on
each of them to put them away forever. And if I die, this dirt becomes public
automatically.” A self-satisfied look settled over his features. “These men
would do
anything
for me. And since they have absolutely no idea what’s
going on, unlike our dead friend here, they don’t have to worry about, ah . . .
early termination, so to speak.”

Desh
knew that Kira had been badly shaken by the ruthlessness of Smith’s execution,
but she appeared to have composed herself once again. “What’s the game here,
Sam
?”
she said, spitting out his name hatefully. “You know you can’t get the secret
of longevity out of me through torture or with drugs. And you’d better believe
I’m not going to tell a psychopath like you anything of my own free will. So
what am I doing here?”

“We’ve
already established you won’t tell me the coordinates.” He raised his eyebrows
and an amused expression came over his face. “Not even to save your brother’s
life. But there are sacrifices that are far greater even than this. I’ve been
working ever since that moron Lusetti lost you—paying with his worthless life—to
find the proper leverage to get you to, ah . . . voluntarily . . . tell me what
I want. And I found it. So here is the question: will you tell me what I want
to know to save the future of humanity?”

Kira
remained silent, not taking the bait.

“After
Lusetti used truth drugs on you, he told me he had learned why you felt it was
so important to keep your discovery secret. Overpopulation. Fear of societal
upheaval. Well, you’re in luck. I can help you out. What if there were no
longer any births in the world?” Sam smiled cruelly, quite pleased with
himself. “That would solve this problem, wouldn’t it? Give you no excuse for
not sharing.”

“What
are you talking about?”

Sam
raised his eyebrows. “Sterilization of every woman on the planet,” he said
simply.

Desh
heard Sam but didn’t react in any way. His mind had begun to feel strange. It
had been painful at first, like a sharp headache, but now the feeling was electric,
like the pins-and-needles feeling of a limb falling asleep, only in his head, a
place in which he knew there were no sensory receptors of any kind.

Kira
looked at Sam as though he were mad. This wild, over-the-top threat could have
easily come out of the mouth of a villain on a Saturday morning cartoon. But
sadistic and deranged though Sam was, he was clearly formidable, and she sensed
that this threat was not entirely an idle one.

“You’re
out of your mind,” she said.

“Am
I? My enhanced molecular biologist doesn’t think so. He thinks mass
sterilization is child’s play. Well, child’s play for a child trained in
molecular biology with an immeasurable IQ,” he said in amusement. “A woman is
born with all the egg cells she’ll ever have. Take them out and it’s game
over.”

“How?”

“I’m
not the expert, but I’m told that it’s pretty simple if you really make the
effort. Lots of ways to target just egg cells. Hell, there are venereal
diseases that lead to infertility all by themselves. All you need are determination
and an artificially boosted IQ.”

As
Kira thought about it, she realized he was right. Even a mediocre molecular
biologist, his mind transformed by her treatment, could manage something
relatively simple like this. And the entire female population wouldn’t have to
be infected at once. If an engineered virus was set loose, designed just to
attack female eggs and nothing else, the attacks would go unnoticed for some
time. Each woman infected would have her ability to reproduce destroyed without
coming down with as much as a sniffle. And once all human egg cells were
destroyed, that was it. Even cloning required an intact egg cell to work,
albeit one with its own genetic material removed to get an exact carbon copy of
the donor.

“I
can see in your eyes that you’re beginning to fully grasp the implications of
what I’m saying,” said Sam, gloating. “The only real challenge is a logistical
one: making sure the hyper-contagious virus is spread to every corner of the
world. But there are any number of ways to accomplish this.” He began ticking
them off with his fingers. “Genetically engineered E. coli, designed to be able
to out-compete and replace the E. coli found in every human gut—harmless other
than having a gamete destroyer on board. Poisoned water supplies. Contaminated
cigarette filters.”

Kira
looked puzzled by this last entry.

“Don’t
be fooled by the anti-smoking lobby, my dear,” said Sam. “Cigarette use is
thriving in every corner of the world. Over
five trillion
are smoked
each year. Do you think it would be difficult for someone with immeasurable intelligence
to figure out a simple way to contaminate a majority of the world’s cigarette
production lines with a hyper-contagious agent? With all the world's smokers
playing the role of Typhoid Mary, it would spread to every human on the planet
in no time.” He grinned. “I guess second-hand smoke isn't the biggest danger
you can face from smokers, after all.”

Kira
shook her head in disgust but said nothing.

Desh’s
mind leaped! A massive acceleration of his thoughts occurred in an instant. Like
one hundred billion dominoes falling into place at once; like a chain reaction
leading to a massive explosion, his neurons had reordered themselves into a
more efficient architecture. Thoughts arrived at a furious pace.

 
Square root of 754, Desh thought to himself,
and seemingly before the thought was even finished he saw the answer: 27.459. Time
seemed to slow down. His thoughts had been traveling through molasses
previously, but now they were jet-propelled.

As
Sam delivered a sentence the pauses between each of his words were agonizingly
long. Spit . . . It . . . Out! thought Desh impatiently. He studied Sam and
realized his body language communicated almost as much as his words
—
in
some cases more. His every movement, breath, eye blink, and facial expression
telegraphed what he was thinking.

Sam
opened his mouth to speak and a thought flashed into Desh’s mind:
just to
be sure, I’m going to use several strategies.
This is what Sam was about to
say, or something very close.

“Anyway,
to ensure maximum exposure, I plan to use multiple strategies,” said Sam, right
on cue. “But I don’t think we’ll really need the others. When we unleash the
engineered cold virus on the world, that alone will almost certainly do the
trick.”

“We?”
said Kira.

“Me
and my terrorist friends, of course. It helps to have a vast organization with
cells in every country that follow orders without question. That way we have
thousands of epicenters for our little infection.”

Desh
turned toward Kira Miller handcuffed beside him. In a flash of intuition he
knew: he was in love with her! He had been for a while now.

But
how did he know this?

A
memory of all of his recent vital signs flashed into his mind. Heart rate,
levels of brain chemicals, pupil dilation. His body and brain had been
responding to her so powerfully his condition was laughingly obvious. The
un-enhanced version of David Desh had been clueless, and in fact would have
called the idea beyond ridiculous if someone had had the audacity to suggest
it, not believing love was even possible in such a short amount of time. But he
had been hit by Cupid and hit hard.

Enhanced
Desh was not in love, of course. Far from it. He had lost his ability to feel
love the instant his mind had transformed, just as Kira
had suggested. Now
he was able to gaze into
Kira’s limpid blue eyes and feel nothing. He
could study her with clinical detachment. Love was a lizard brain instinct. A
survival mechanism bred into the species that was totally separate from reason.
Women were extremely vulnerable during pregnancy, and children were helpless
for many years. If humans didn’t have a mechanism for cementing a pair bond,
nothing would remain but selfishness and promiscuity. Certain animal species
were wired in the same way.

How
did he know that?

And
there was more, he realized in amazement. He knew that research on prairie
voles, animals known for establishing long-lasting monogamous bonds with their
partners, had shown that the male brain became devoted to its partner only
after mating, coinciding with a massive release of the neurotransmitter
dopamine. Experiments had later shown that the dopamine restructured a part of
the vole’s brain called the nucleus accumbens, a region that was also found in
the human brain.

Desh
traced these memory threads to their source.
A magazine article.
The memories
surrounding it were so vivid, it was as if he was there once again. He was a
freshman in college, flying home to visit his family. There was a faint smell
of microwaved airplane Chicken Marsala in the air. He was sitting next to a
older woman who was flying for the first time. He saw her face just as clearly
as if he was staring at her now. He had brought a book, but hadn’t been able to
get into it. He reached for the airplane magazine, the one that was tucked into
every seat pocket. He flipped through it. Page twenty-eight had a torn corner. Three
words had been filled in on the crossword puzzle by the previous passenger
before they had given up.

And
beginning on page nineteen, there was an article on the chemistry of love. He
could see every word: read and digest them far faster and more efficiently than
he could a page of text he was reading for the first time. Prairie vole males
only fell in love after sex. Interesting. The pathetic lizard brained Homo sapien
he had been before his recent transformation had become smitten with Kira
Miller prior to even a single kiss.

Desh
would have bet his life he knew nothing about the mating habits of prairie
voles. But he would have been wrong. What else was buried in the near-infinity
of his memory, ready for instant access?

“Not
even terrorists would help you destroy the future of all mankind,” said Kira. “Their
wives would be affected as well.”

“Good
point. That’s why I didn’t tell them,” he said smugly.

Kira
frowned. She should have seen this coming. “They think they’ll be unleashing an
Ebola attack against the West, don’t they?”

Sam
smiled broadly. “I think the bit about the affliction being triggered by pork
is what really won them over. It has a nice, ‘The finger of Allah striking down
the infidels’ ring to it. They really loved the PowerPoint presentation,” he
said sardonically. “Naturally, I had my representative demonstrate the real
thing on some of their prisoners, triggered by bacon, and when they saw how
horrific a disease it really is, they loved the idea even more.”

“You
faked the demonstration, didn’t you?”

He
nodded. “Right you are. Perfecting something like that in the proper time frame
would take
your
skills, combined with heightened intellect. My
representative saw to it that the prisoners were infected with the genuine
Ebola virus before they got the fake, supposedly genetically engineered, cold
virus and were forced to eat bacon. Since the real Ebola is highly infectious
through contact with blood, he made sure no one got too close while the
prisoners were, ah . . . expiring. When the audience left, to make sure the
infection was contained, he torched the bodies.” Sam smiled cruelly. “Reminds
me of your brother,” he added coldly.