“Particles that they made themselves?”
“Yes. And once these new NANs were synthesized, they caused the archaebacterium to . . . explode, for lack of a better term.”
“Releasing the spherical NANs back to the environment . . .”
The doctor nodded slowly. “It would appear so. Restarting the cycle with fresh IC-NAN.”
Rick leaned forward. “So let me get this straight. The spherical NAN that you sprayed from the drone can infect human cells. The degraded linear form, to which it reverts in the environment, cannot. That was supposed to be your safety feature.”
“Correct.”
“But these archaebacteria are capable of taking in the linear form, making more copies of it, and manufacturing more spherical NANs from that DNA?”
“Yes,” Dr. Garza replied, staring fixedly down again at his notes.
Rick drew a deep breath. “And these spherical NANs can then get back out of the archaebacteria and infect more humans?”
Dr. Garza looked up, his expression stony. “Yes. There appear to be two mechanisms for this.” He turned his tablet around to face the group. The diagram on the display showed a green, rod-shaped organism, the archaebacterium, packed full with small clumps of DNA labeled as IC-NANs. As if to enhance their ominous nature, the NANs were drawn in red. The archaebacterium was just starting to split open along one end. And scattered around the outside of its ruptured cell wall were more NANs, some still clumped in their spherical infectious form, some degraded to wormlike linear structures. “In one scenario,” Garza said, “the newly synthesized spherical NAN is excreted by the archaebacterium directly into the environment. Given a few hours, this NAN might degrade to the linear form—which as we now know is capable of infecting a new archaebacterium, though not of infecting a human. Or, if there is a human close by, the NAN might infect that human before it has a chance to degrade.” He swiped forward to a second diagram, showing a cutaway cartoon of a human subject from the side, his airways open to admit hosts of tiny green and red dots. “As I said, a human might breathe in this new NAN. But in another scenario, the archaebacterium is breathed in by the victim and then releases its NAN within the body.” He looked away from his screen. “We have evidence that all of these mechanisms can and have occurred.”
Rick sat back, gripping the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “So, this thing is out of control,” he said. “Now these soil organisms are replicating this IC-NAN DNA sequence and excreting active NANs back out into the biosphere. Now they can act as agents of a new sort of archaebacterial infection, one that might turn on anyone. On us.”
Garza turned off his tablet, holding it now to his chest. “Yes.”
Rick turned to Blankenship. “I warned you about the unpredictability—” He caught himself. Of course, no one had asked his opinion before storming ahead. Exasperated, he turned back to Garza. “The human victims can’t transmit the NAN to other humans, can they?”
“No,” Dr. Garza said. “This part of the plan was effective. The victims are not infectious. Only the infected microbes are—”
“And animals and plants will not be affected?”
“The effects of this DNA are specific to humans.”
“So let’s get back to these archaebacteria. Do we know how many of these are infected? Or how many different species of such might be infected? They could be anywhere . . .”
“We are assessing the degree of spread. So far we have only isolated the DNA from one archaebacterial species. We are not sure if different species of microbes will be capable of exchanging this genetic material with one another in the wild. But we are currently testing that hypothesis in the laboratory.”
Rick clenched his jaw, his accusing gaze drifting toward Henrietta Forbes.
“It’s all hands on deck,” said Blankenship, sparing the secretary the need of a response. “But right now, you’re the only agent we have with complete knowledge of the project.”
“Complete knowledge?” Rick asked, making sure his gaze met Blankenship’s. “Have you really told me everything?”
“Everything we know at present,” Dr. Garza said evenly. “Although the story is constantly evolving.”
Rick felt the beginnings of a rude laugh bubbling in his throat. Of course, everything he’d thought might happen was now happening—and worse. Nature always held the cards—it didn’t take a Ph.D. to understand that. “Evolving,” he said. “Like these little bugs that have picked up the ability to synthesize NANs.”
Rudy Garza was looking straight at him now, his blue eyes gone steel gray. “Yes. Like the archaebacteria.”
“Rick, you’ll be reinstated into active duty at your former rank—colonel,” Blankenship said. “You’ll oversee the joint investigation, including DOD personnel, the science team at Fort Detrick, and any ancillary science personnel we may call in.”
“But . . . sir . . .” Rick looked around the room, at the expectant faces turned toward him. “I’m not a scientist,” he protested. “A career in special ops and a minor in biology from West Point hardly qualify me . . . They’ll never listen . . .”
Blankenship shook his head. “You’re on the security side,” he said. “They have to listen to you. If they don’t, we’ll block ’em out.”
“Fine,” Rick muttered. “Fine. In any event, I suppose I have no choice.” He settled back, the wooden slats of his seat digging into his spine. Why else had they brought him down here, confessed their sins to him? Though it would have been his choice to halt its inception in the first place, it was he who would be charged with cleaning up this mess.
There was an awkward pause as Blankenship fumbled with a tablet on his desk. “Now, we’ve identified another scientist we’ll need on the team. Someone at Emory. He’ll need to be brought up to speed,” the general mumbled.
“Emory? Who?”
Blankenship put his hand to his forehead, kneading his brow. “You know of him. Said. Dr. James Said.”
Once again, Rick was startled. Said. The difficult clearance he’d worked on, just last year. “James Said . . . Emory . . . Do you mean the Pakistani? But you’ve already got the team at Fort Detrick . . .”
Blankenship glared over the top of his tablet. “Dr. Garza’s team knows all about the NANs we’ve released—how to synthesize them, their structure, how they’re supposed to work. But if we’re going to protect people against this thing, we’re going to need more expertise on the human physiology side. In . . . what was it, Garza?”
“Cell biology,” murmured Dr. Garza.