Elixr Plague (Episode 1): Vector Read online

"Not this home—are you spying on me? Seriously, what the hell?"

  "Don’t take that tone with me, Norman. You’re the one who’s missed staff meetings, ignored my calls, and made Edith so nervous, she just asked me if she should send someone to check on you. Dammit, Norm, what the hell is going on?"

  Silence. Then a long, deep sigh. "I’m so sorry, Des. I really am. But this is something I have to do—I have to. It goes beyond you and me and even Elixr itself."

  Desmond sat up in his chair. "What about Elixr? Is something wrong?"

  "No, it’s fine. Or it will be. It’s too late to explain. When this all blows over, I’ll tell you everything. But for now, I need to go."

  "Wait, Norman—"

  "Goodbye, Des." The line went dead.

  Desmond stared at the phone for a moment. The first wide-production run of Elixr doses was scheduled to be given to the first wave of volunteers in twelve hours. Seven major cities, all over the world, all at the same time. It had already cost him billions of dollars in bribes to government regulatory officials in a dozen of the most influential countries in the western world, but he would become the most famous man in human history if he pulled this off.

  And his chief scientist had checked out of work weeks ago, and now handed a cryptic message about Elixr to him. It was maddening.

  "Nobody hangs up on me!" he roared to the empty, spacious office. "Unmute!”

  The computer beeped, reactivating the room’s suite of microphones.

  “Edith!" he bellowed.

  "Yes, Mr. Martin?" called his admin’s voice from seemingly all around him.

  Desmond spun his chair around to face LA again and stood, the movement so violent the chair went spinning away on the polished marble floor. "Have my car brought around. I’m leaving the office early today."

  "Very good, Mr. Martin. The self-driving prototype has been delivered after the modifications you requested were completed. Shall I have it—"

  "That’s perfect. I’ve got a lot on my mind at the moment."

  "Of course, sir. It will be waiting for you when you get downstairs. Are you headed home, sir?"

  Desmond strode for the door. "No, I’m going to visit Dr. Yang. Please inform my wife I won’t be making our dinner reservations." He paused. Catia would be so disappointed, and she’d already given up so much of their time together since the Elixr announcement.

  He imagined her hearing the news and watched her smile fade on that radiant face he loved so much. Dammit, no. I won’t do that to her.

  “Scratch that, Edith—see if you can you move our reservations to…" he looked at his watch again, calculating the drive time at this hour of the day to Yang’s bachelor pad, some five miles away. "…uh, let’s say 9 o’clock?"

  "Sir, the chances of the restaurant having an open—"

  "Dammit, Edith—if that’s the case, just buy the damn restaurant and have them cancel all the reservations for tonight except mine!"

  "Yes, sir. I’ll make it happen," Edith said, a hint of her Virginia drawl in her words. He’d spooked her—Edith held her southern accent in tight check and only let it slip when she was upset or nervous.

  "Good." He sighed. “Sorry, Edith. I’m just worried about Norman.”

  “We all are, sir,” Edith said, her voice under tight control once more.

  Desmond stormed out of his office, barely giving the automatic door enough time to clear his path with a whispered shoosh. He was going to get to the bottom of Yang’s quirky behavior of late, one way or another.

  7

  Blood Will Bring Blood

  Los Angeles, California

  Central City

  Rashid looked at his mujahideen. His team was as ready as they were going to be. The Elixr distribution events, timed to coincide at several major cities around the world in a little less than twelve hours, each had a team assigned. Rashid’s own team was poised to strike at the Los Angeles distribution—the Staples Center, a professional hockey arena.

  He shoved a parcel of stolen clothes into the waiting arms of the first man. "Take this and go with Allah."

  The young man, his forehead shiny with sweat, accepted the bundle like a precious gift and nodded, then stepped back to allow the next man forward. So pre-operation ritual continued, Rashid handing out the clothes his men were to don at the arena, the giving of the blessing, and the next man stepped up.

  At last, faithful Samir stood before Rashid. "You have been with me since the beginning, since that day the Americans took my family from me. My most trusted companion." He placed his right hand on Samir’s shoulder and smiled. "We will turn this abomination of the West against the Jews first, then strike against America." Turning his attention to the other men, he continued. "I have kept you purposely in the dark until now, brothers, for your own safety. If any one of you had been captured—for whatever reason—we couldn’t allow the knowledge of this operation to fall into the hands of the infidels. But now I wish you all to know what we are about to do. We are about to strike deep into the heart of the Zionists—"

  "A thousand pardons, my sheikh," interrupted one of Saudis on Rashid’s team. "But if we are striking at the Jews, why attack Los Angeles?"

  Rashid stepped away from Samir, who took a sharp intake of breath at the crass interjection and made to reprimand the foolish youth for interrupting his leader. Rashid put a hand out and stopped his lieutenant.

  “Nasim, is it?”

  The younger man nodded.

  Rashid smiled. “I assure you, the distribution event in Tel Aviv will be hit as well…the Jews will not escape our wrath." He took a step forward and towered over the man clutching his bundle of clothes. Speaking barely above a whisper, he said: "And I assure you, if you interrupt me again, you shall know my wrath."

  He moved away from the cowed group of militants and examined the world map he’d pinned to a crumbling wall in his study. Latin music thumped through the walls from a car in the street. "You all know your assignments?" he asked.

  “Allah hu ackbar!" the men replied in unison.

  Rashid stared at the map. Red thumbtacks had been pushed into the cities where the Elixr volunteers would receive their doses. He’d been paying careful attention to Desmond Martin’s progress as the man bribed governments and politicians all over the world in order to give his gift to all of mankind. Now, after almost a year of watching from the shadows, that very gift would become a curse as it wiped Israel off the map, then consumed America from within.

  Los Angeles, NewYork, London, Pais, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Osaka, New Delhi. Of all the major players on the global scale, only China was left out of the first disbursement. If all went well, Rashid assumed Martin had plans for a second wave of releasing his CRISPR virus in even more cities until it spread across the globe.

  A wry smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. Oh, to be a fly on the wall when the news hit that only people of certain bloodlines, containing certain genetic markers had received the Elixr…and that the effects were not what had been promised.

  The irritating "music" outside grew louder. Rashid glanced over his shoulder when one of the others peered out a grimy window and reported someone had stopped a vehicle out front. He looked around the room at the stacks of ammunition, illegal weaponry, and bomb-making materials. They couldn’t risk exposure now, just hours away from the launch of the organization’s most ambitious attack in the history of jihad.

  Someone pounded on the front door hard enough to rattle the cage that the previous owner had installed. Most houses in the run-down neighborhood had bars on windows and doors because few people made social calls. Rashid had spent enough time living there to know there was only one man brave enough to demand entry to his safe house—the rep from the cartel they’d partnered with to rent the place.

  Rashid, as a godly man, had been disgusted with the necessity of interacting with the peddlers of filthy drugs from Mexico, but the ends justified the means. However, now that the mission was so achingly close to completion, the
time for dealing with the cartel rapidly drew to a close.

  He smiled, walking to the door, and accepted the AK-47 handed to him by Samir. The pounding continued, along with a string of rapid-fire Spanish that Rashid ignored. He hadn’t bothered to learn the savage tongue of the local chieftains yet, and he never would.

  "Open up, puta! Rent day!" an accented voice yelled through the thin door. The bars rattled. "Don’t make me come in there. You’re here as a guest, you remember that! This here is our turf."

  Music continued to blare from the garishly painted hot rod in the street. Several men lounged against the vehicle, smoking and laughing, pistols prominent in every waistband. Rashid grinned as he pulled back from the grimy window. He unlocked the four deadbolts holding the warped wooden door closed under the rep’s onslaught, and threw it open, surprising the smaller man on the porch.

  He recovered his bravado quickly enough. "‘Bout time. Where’s my money?” he demanded, hand out, arm covered in tattoos. “And you better have that extra we talked about last time—"

  The infidel never finished his statement. Rashid’s AK-47 barked twice and before the rep’s body fell to the ground, he had already taken aim and fired on the crew by the car. When the last echo of his rifle reverberated off the houses across the street, four men lay dead or dying in their own blood, one splayed across the hood of the ridiculous car. He’d hit something vital inside the lowrider, as the music had stopped, and the horn blared.

  Rashid backpedaled into the house and slammed the front door. He glanced at his watch as he handed the smoking weapon back to Samir. "It is time, brothers. Grab your gear and weapons. Disperse with the wind, and Allah’s blessing be upon us all."

  He clapped his handpicked men on the back as they made their way out the back and disappeared through the disguised hole in the fence that led down a back alley. In seconds, each one went a different direction—some stole the first car they found, others continued on foot—and his team was gone, not to see each other for eleven hours.

  Then it was only Rashid and Samir. He embraced his lieutenant, then they poured gasoline on everything in the house, dowsing the living room and kitchen, and especially the bomb-making supplies he’d been forced to leave behind. When all their gear was safely in the backyard and the first signs of life returned to the barrio—a dog barked in the distance and someone shouted in Spanish down the street—Rashid and Samir walked out of the house and tossed lit matches through the open door.

  By the time Rashid squeezed through the hole in the fence and helped Samir through, the house was already engulfed in flames and thick, acrid smoke roiled up into the sky. It would take the fire department ten minutes—at least—to work up the courage necessary to travel this deep into gangland, so Rashid felt no rush to get to their vehicle.

  Samir walked ahead and checked that the stolen car was secure, then opened the trunk and tossed his gear in. Rashid did likewise, then sat in the passenger seat while Samir struggled with starting the decrepit Toyota. He didn’t want to draw attention to themselves by stealing a fancy new car, but he would also not demean himself by driving when he had an underling to do so.

  Rashid folded his hands in his lap and didn’t bother to waste a last look on the raging inferno they left behind. He focused on the future, upon his vengeance.

  He smiled. Now that his mujahideen were in play, he had only one more task to complete. He pulled out a burner phone and dialed the only number in its memory. The call was answered on the second ring.

  "Yes?" a gruff voice answered in Arabic.

  "Is she still alive?" He ignored Samir’s glance. He knew his most trusted companion had been smitten with the scientist’s daughter. He had argued—a bit—for sparing her and giving her to him as a trophy. Rashid had other plans for her though once their Libyan scientist confirmed the Chinese wizard from Martin Enterprises had made extra modifications to the CRSIPR virus contained in the Elixr. No one knew quite what would happen, but it was a subtle attempt at double-cross and Rashid could not let the insult stand. Whatever happened now would hit the Jews regardless, the Libyan had confirmed at least that.

  "As you commanded, brother. Yes, she still lives."

  Rashid nodded. "Good. Execute her, then send whatever videos and pictures you have to her father. Inform him we are merciful in not doing the same to his wife. That will ensure his silence."

  The man’s breath came faster. "At once brother. How shall we do it?"

  "Take your time and have fun." Rashid closed the call and tossed the phone out the broken passenger window. It hit a telephone pole as they passed and shattered into bits of plastic and glass, lost amid the everyday detritus that caked downtown Los Angeles like a festering wound.

  It would be an honor to cleanse the land of the pestilence of Western civilization.

  8

  Buzzkill

  La Cañada Flintridge, California

  Ridgeview Guest House

  Norman Yang raced from room to room, dumping clothes and toiletries on his bed. He muttered to himself as he ransacked his apartment, gathering anything and everything that might come in handy during his upcoming trip.

  He checked his phone every few minutes, waiting for the alert that would signal the kidnappers—whom he was convinced by now were terrorists after he ran a trace program to figure out the emails he’d received came from servers based in Lebanon—had released his daughter as promised. That had been the price of his willing submission to their demands, of his dismantling his entire career, the price of him being an accomplice to the deaths of millions of innocent people.

  Norman had paid that price gladly—he would have done anything they’d asked to get his daughter back. He took it as a bargain that they were too ignorant to know how he’d masterfully hidden his subtle changes to the Elixr CRISPR. They expected him to grant them behind-the-scenes access to the greatest medical discovery in the history of mankind, so they could turn it into a sadistic super weapon. He didn’t know anything concrete about their plans and frankly he didn’t care. He’d effectively castrated the genetics in the Elixr formula, so whatever they’d intended, the formula would be useless. Except to those who handled it directly—they would suffer an agonizing death.

  He paused, holding a pair of boxers in one hand and his toothbrush in the other. Of course, unforeseen mutations were always an inherent risk with any gene modification...

  Norman shook his head and tossed the underwear and toothbrush on the pile, then rushed from his bedroom. It didn’t matter, none of it mattered. Once he got Kelly back, he was going straight into hiding. Desmond Martin had unwittingly assured their survival.

  A few years back, when the press had gotten a hold of Norman’s private number and his privacy had been shattered like a glass window, Martin had provided Norman with a no-expenses-spared golden parachute: an iron-clad new identity complete with government issued identification, a full bank account, property, backstory, the whole nine yards. Norman had been the test case in a program Martin had been cooking up in preparation for Elixr—since then, all the chief executives with the same services, should something go awry with Elixr.

  Norman had waved off the paranoia at the time. "Nothing will go wrong, Des, it’s locked down, stable, and safe. This is going to change the world," he remembered telling his boss.

  Martin had been just as enthusiastic as ever, but he didn’t become one of the wealthiest men on the planet by being foolhardy. There was a cautious—some would say paranoid—streak in Desmond Martin a mile wide.

  Norman opened his fire safe in the bedroom closet and pulled out the plain manilla envelope that held his new identity, several thousand dollars in cash, and keys to his new house in an obscure little town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In fact, most of Martin’s executives had property in or around the sleepy little hamlet of Beacon Point, including the mastermind himself.

  "Rain gear…winter gear…" Norman muttered, thinking about his new life on the Great Lakes. It was cold there,
wasn’t it?

  His phone chirped, and his chest tightened. He pulled the slim device from his pocket and pressed his thumb to the screen. It took a second to control his shaking hands, but he saw the long awaited text message. They’d sent a photo to prove she’d been released.

  Despite the sweat on his brow, Norman smiled, his vision blurred. It was over. He just had to make it to the airport in the next thirty minutes and catch his flight to…

  "Wait…what the hell?”

  He stared at the screen, then wiped at his eyes. The image sharpened. It looked like a finger—like someone had taken a picture by accident and the phone had only captured…

  “Idiots…”

  Another image message appeared, shoving the first one off screen. It had been a finger—a severed finger. Blood splattered the concrete floor next to a slim, manicured finger that still wore a little bumblebee ring.

  Norman’s eyes widened. It was the same ring Kelly had pulled from the quarter machine at a pizza joint last year when he’d made a surprise visit home and taken her to her favorite restaurant. It had been one of the best nights of his life in recent memory. Just the two of them, sharing terrible but tasty food, laughing, and remembering the days when she was just a little girl…

  Norman dropped the phone, fell to his knees and threw up all over his bed.

  Next to him on the carpet his phone buzzed. No images this time, just text:

  Unknown: To ensure your silence.

  Norman gagged and coughed. "I wasn’t going to tell anyone you sick fucks!" he roared at the puddle of vomit.

  Another text message, audio this time: "Daaaaaaaadddddyy!!!!!"

  Norman dry heaved for several minutes, crying and choking and shaking.

  Another text message: Unknown: Do I have your attention?

  Norman, now curled up on his side in a pool of his own puke and tears, sobbed as he reached for the phone. He wiped the goo off the screen with his thumb and tapped out a response.