A Wish the Heart Makes : Fornever in Blue Genes

by: Tigger

 

Chapter 21: Rebirth Again

Cat and Mandy entered Bob’s lab, and were immediately assailed by the tableau, which still included Robert West’s inert form hunched over his terminal. Cat, more used to death than Matt or Mandy, stood stoically as Mandy fought to control her grief and fury. She awkwardly put her arm around the smaller woman’s shoulder, and felt Mandy momentarily lean into the contact. Then she pulled away, and began to scan the disarray that had been, up until a mere hour previous, a highly organized and sanitary facility.

"I can do this, Mandy," Cat said softly. "You don’t have to deal with this. It is, after all, what you pay me for."

"Wish I could do that, lady, but I can’t - for a couple of reasons. First, my main argument hasn’t changed - there’s no one else left who understands the big picture and a lot of the pieces as well as I do. I might see something no one else would recognize."

Cat nodded grimly and sighed. "And the other reason?"

"He was my best friend for more than twenty five years. I owe my life to him, such as it is, and those . . . those animals *killed* him. Until they pay . . . until I understand *why* they did it, I won’t be able to rest."

"Understood," Cat affirmed. "But you understand that we may never know the reason? This isn’t an adventure tele-novel, little girl. This is the real world, and the sad truth is that the real world isn’t very big on ‘happily ever after’."

Mandy went very silent, her face darkening, then she shook her head violently. "I can’t accept that, Big Cat. They have to have made a mistake, and I won’t rest until I find it and make them pay."

"Okay, boss. What do we look at first?" "Let’s look at his body first, Cat. I . . . I don’t want him just . . . sitting there. I know it’s stupid and emotional, but I want him . . . I want him put to rest."

As one, the pair moved to where Bob still sat. Carefully, Cat checked over the physical evidence. She shook her head. "One shot, perfectly aimed or very damned lucky, Mandy, and I don’t believe in luck."

Gently, they pulled him away and laid him down on the floor, out of the way. "Wonder what he was doing, Cat," Mandy mused. "He had to know he was under attack, and yet, he stood his ground."

Cat nodded, then sighed. "Well, the same shot that got him blew a hole in his work station. Any chance we can recover what was stored in it?"

Mandy looked inside the box, and then turned away, frustration evident in her face. "Everything inside this box is dead . . . fried."

"Crap. Can’t even see what was on the screen. It’s dead, too."

"Wait a minute!" Mandy said. She spun around, obviously looking for something. "There!" she yelled and ran over to a light fixture and came back with it. "Black light," she explained as she came back to stand in front of the terminal. "Security!" she yelled. "Darken the room!"

The lights went out almost instantly and an eerie black-purple glow radiated from the light fixture. "The screen works by biologics, too, Cat. Emitting light for the screen characters stress the bio-phosphor. Black light will be absorbed by the phosphor differently depending on how recently stressed it is in different areas."

Slowly, the screen began to luminesce, and characters began to form. It meant less than nothing to Cat, but one corner of the screen caught Mandy’s attention, and she very carefully concentrated the black light there.

"Damn," she said quietly.

"What?" Cat demanded.

"He was in the process of trying to dump the main computer cores of every system in the compound. See that command sequence up there?" Mandy pointed to a series of characters. "Well, add a 666-9999.exe to that string, and every bio- computing component in the company connected to the bio- network commits suicide. The Number of the Beast, and the old 20^th century trap code."

"Okay, so now we know how, and the immediate why of his death, although not the strategic why." Cat wandered around the lab thinking. "We will have to let the cops in here soon, Mandy. They are at least as well equipped as we are to look for physical evidence. Do we tell them what we are really doing here?"

"Would it really help them, Cat?"

She wandered over to a lab table and picked up one of two amber bottles. "Probably not," she said as she read the label on the bottle. "Omigod," she whispered and then read the other bottle. "Mandy?" she called.

"Yes?"

"Didn’t Bob say he wanted to do tissue samples on you, me and Morag last night? To test his new process?"

Mandy came over to stand beside her security chief. "Yes, why?"

Cat handed Mandy the two bottles. "Then why are there only two bottles marked transition formulae? One for you, one for me."

"None for Morag?"

"Not immediately obvious, Mandy, and more importantly, no Morag."

"You don’t think . . . "

"I don’t know, girl. But I think we’d better find her, quickly."

"Okay. Get the cops in here. Keep an eye on what’s going on, and if you think knowing the whole truth will materially help them, no matter how little, brief them in."

~-------------~

The holo of the Leader shimmered into being in Freuda’s private office. Teri was there with the other woman as the primary medical support person for Morag’s transition.

"It has been two days since you administered the transition treatment to that woman, Freuda. What is the status of the experiment?"

Freuda looked at her datapad. "The subject is about 90% male. She, or rather he, has the gonads of a pre-pubescent male, and her female organs have just about been . . . well . . . absorbed into the surrounding tissue is as close as I can come to describing what has happened. The labia majora are almost completely grown together forming a scrotum containing what seems to be vestigial testicles. And at the rate he is maturing, I would expect him to be fully potent in another 12 to 36 hours."

"What about physical size - height, weight, etc.?"

"He’s grown five inches in height. Not much weight change, but even with the nutrient baths and IV’s, he can’t possibly assimilate sufficient proteins and other nutrients to build up any comparable muscle mass. I would say that will . . . or rather would take, several carefully supervised months of post-transition treatment before he would begin to reach his full potential."

"But the subject *will* survive?"

Freuda turned to Teri who nodded. "Dr. West said that if a subject was going to . . . suffer DNA breakdown, it occurred within the first ten hours after administration of the treatment. Based on this, I expect the subject to survive the transition."

"Excellent, Florence," the Leader said jovially. "And I am glad to see you as I have a question. What are the security arrangements for getting into that central enclave you worked in? Where they kept Sorenson?"

Teri shrugged. "A few checkpoints, but most of the security is DNA-based. There are about five locked doors that only open if your DNA matches the precise genome of someone on the access list."

The Leader nodded. "Well, our watchers report that a security team from BioCybernetics have been at your apartment looking for you, so I think it is safe to assume that your DNA is no longer on the approved access list." The holographic face smiled. "Very well, Florence, that will be all. I need to speak with Frueda. Alone."

"Yes, Leader," Teri murmured, and then let herself out of Freuda’s office.

 

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© 1996 by Tigger. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.