But there were hurdles to overcome, both technical and political. This was a technology that might prove dangerous in the wrong hands; the University of Illinois had soon been forced to hand over all license to the federal government, and Fort Detrick, a Maryland facility northeast of D.C., held the bulk of it in strict confidence.
He missed California. He missed Berkeley. Every day, he had to remind himself that coming to Atlanta had been the right thing to do. The Center for Gene Therapy at Emory was the only public institution that had been allowed access to NANs.
In the waiting room, he slouched into a seat near the boarding gate. He’d once been a spry, athletic farm boy, the captain of his high school baseball team. But he’d let himself go—his straight spine curved forward from years of hovering over laboratory benches, his keen eyes weakened from staring into microscopes and computer screens. His mother would fret over his health, he knew, plying him with plates of spiced lentils and rice. He could taste them already.
James looked around. At this early hour, most of the seats were empty. In front of him a young mother, her baby asleep in a carrier on the floor, cradled a small GameGirl remote console in her lap. Ignoring her own child, she seemed to be playing at feeding the alien baby whose wide green face appeared openmouthed on her screen. By the window an elderly man sat munching a ProteoBar.
James jumped at the feel of a buzz at his wrist—a return message from DOD.
Dr. Said:
No reschedule. Someone will meet you.
—General Jos. Blankenship, U.S. Army
He looked up to see a man in a plain gray suit stationed by the gate. The man’s thick neck rose out of his collar, his chin tilting upward in an almost imperceptible nod. Removing his ocular, James glanced to his right. His arm flinched reflexively from a light tap on his shoulder.
“Dr. Said?”
James’s mind went blank. “Yes?” he croaked.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Said. But the Pentagon requires your presence.”
“What?” James stared at the young man, his crisp dark uniform and glossy black shoes.
“I’ll need you to accompany me to Langley, ASAP. I’m sorry. We’ll have your airline tickets reimbursed.”
“But why—?”
“Don’t worry, sir. We’ll get you there in no time.” Latching a white-gloved hand around James’s arm, the officer guided him to a security exit and down a set of stairs, through a door and out into daylight. A few steps away, the man in the gray suit was already waiting, holding open the back door of a black limousine, ushering James inside.
“My luggage?”
“Taken care of.”
His heart forming a fist in his chest, James wedged his body deep into the leather seat. He placed his right hand protectively over his left wrist, guarding the phone—his one remaining link to the world outside the limo. At least they hadn’t confiscated it. “What’s going on? Why are you detaining me?”
The young officer offered him a wry grin as he climbed into the front seat. “They’ll fill you in at Langley, sir.” He pushed a few buttons on the dash, and James could feel the pressure of a smooth acceleration. “Just sit back and relax.”
The young man reached out to activate a transceiver on the car’s center console. “Subject en route,” he assured someone on the other end. “Expect arrival ten hundred hours.”
“That fast?”
“We’ve got a jet lined up. Just sit tight.”
Outside the tinted window, the black tarmac sped by. James held up his wrist, punched on his phone, and whispered a short message: “Amani Said. Message: Sorry, Mom. Won’t be home. Something came up. Tell Dad not to worry. Send.”
His voice shaking, he added a second thought. “If you don’t hear from me in two days, call Mr. Wheelan.” Silently, he prayed that his message would go through.
3
RICK BLEVINS POWERED on his computer and settled into his chair. As he waited for his secure link to boot up, he ran the palm of his hand down the length of his thigh, massaging the place just above the knee where the prosthesis joined what remained of his right leg. He winced. The adjustment to this new device was proving difficult.
Like his old one, the bulk of the new prosthesis was covered with a synthetic mesh that stiffened and softened as he moved, mirroring the softness or stiffness of the tissues in his upper thigh. Its bionic muscles were controlled via the same electrodes, connected to his own nerve tissue. But this new appendage, built for better mobility, seemed to have a mind of its own. When he snapped it into place each morning, tiny pinpricks of energy surged upward toward his spine, a force like something alien. Worst of all, the new leg seemed to be waging war on his neurostimulator, the device they’d implanted in his lower back to dull the pain. The old phantom signals, pulsing and burning, were inching back.
He stared out the window. The weather wasn’t helping. The previous night’s freezing rain had painted the concrete facade of the Pentagon with a thin layer of frost. Running his hand over his scalp, he felt the stiff growth of his thick brown hair. He needed a cut . . .
He was startled by the buzz of the intercom at his lapel. “We need you down here,” came a clipped male voice.
“Down here” was General Blankenship’s basement office. Rick gulped coffee from his thermocup and straightened his tie. He was pretty sure he knew what this was about.
A month prior, he’d been summoned for comment on a biowarfare project at Fort Detrick. He was no longer subject to the immediate threats that had dogged his life in special ops, but in his desk job as an analyst at the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, he’d found plenty of use for the same keen instincts that had served him so well in the field. With growing concern he’d pored over the feasibility report, acquainting himself with difficult scientific terms like “apoptosis,” “programmed cell death,” “caspase,” and “nucleic acid nanostructure.” He’d heard of the DNA nanostructures, nicknamed “NANs,” before; it was his job to oversee approval of their use in domestic research labs. But this was different.
The project was called Tabula Rasa, a moniker that was frightening enough. But as he’d rescanned the section labeled “Expected Impact,” he’d felt his heart skip a beat. The basis of the bioagent was a specific type of nucleic acid nanostructure called IC-NAN. When a victim inhaled this particular sequence of nanoparticulate DNA, his infected lung cells would begin to outlive their “use by” date: Rather than dying off to make way for fresh new cells as they were supposed to do, the old, infected cells would replicate to produce more defective cells. These mutated cells would overgrow good tissue, impeding proper lung function and eventually invading the body, robbing other organs of nutrients. The desired result was akin to an aggressive lung cancer—a slow but inexorable death.