Change Agent

  He shook his head to his own reflection.

  Durand saw the tattoos appear on his skin again. Perhaps for the last time. He laughed harder.

  The security detail cast strange looks at him.

  “Be quiet!”

  But Durand felt steady. As the private jet taxied onto the runway, he gripped the autoinjector between his fingers under the fine suit fabric.

  The jet engines throttled up, and Durand pressed the ampoule against the side of his leg. He felt the glass tip snap.

  And then he thrust the exposed needle into his leg.

  The pain was shockingly severe. He screamed as what felt like acid spread through him.

  The jet rolled along the taxiway.

  A voice behind him. “I said be quiet!”

  Durand felt his face already beginning to swell. He started to cough, and sweat coated his skin. But he also started laughing uncontrollably.

  One of the guards nearby shouted, “Shit! Stop the plane!”

  He heard seat belts being undone as the guards raced over to him, running their hands over him.

  “He dosed himself!”

  In a moment one of the guards located the spent ampoule under a wet spot on his jacket. He held it up for the others. The exposed needle and empty vial said it all.

  Durand began to have trouble breathing, but he still laughed just the same. His wrists swelled against the zip ties. He panted, sucking for air. “I don’t think Mr. Wyckes . . . is going to be very happy . . . about losing his patsy.”

  The guards looked at one another gravely.

  Durand started a wheezing laugh again and blacked out.

  Chapter 45

  Kenneth Durand awoke strapped to a table. He was racked with pain, and his face and body felt tight with swelling. When he looked around, it was obvious he was back in the Huli jing labs. In a familiar room.

  He heard voices and closed his swollen eyes again. Male voices. Angry.

  “We could all get killed if you screw this up.”

  A more familiar voice. “It will take time to figure out how far the change agent got before neutralization. Then I’ll need to compute a new edit plan to undo the changes.”

  “He was your patient. You should have most of his bio-data already.”

  “The editing process was only under way for a half hour or so.”

  The familiar voice countered, “The agent triggers many changes early in the process to prepare for metamorphosis. How did he get ahold of an ampoule?”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  A different voice. “This needs to be done now! Do you hear?”

  Yet another voice. “If you do not fix this, you will be the first to die. And it won’t be quick. I promise you.”

  “Forgive! Please forgive! I can fix it! It will take time to synthesize a correction. But I promise you—”

  “Mr. Wyckes wanted this subject dumped tonight. He should already be on a plane.”

  “Tonight? That is too soon.”

  “Just get it done.”

  Durand heard retreating footsteps.

  Then someone approached his table.

  Durand opened his eyes. He saw a very nervous lab technician staring at the ground. It was Hanif—the genetic counselor he had seen earlier in the evening. Durand tried to speak—but it was surprisingly difficult. “Hanif . . .”

  Hanif’s eyes darted away. “Do not speak to me.”

  “Hanif.”

  “Do not speak to me. Please.” He got busy moving his arms to virtual interfaces.

  “Don’t.”

  “I have no choice. They will kill me.” He leaned into Durand’s field of vision. “And you lied to me.”

  Durand’s somehow even more alien voice croaked, “I’m trying to destroy the Huli jing.”

  Hanif paused. Then he got busy again. “It’s impossible. Just let me be. Have you not done enough already?”

  But then Durand noticed Hanif stiffen. He stood up straight and raised his shaking hands.

  Bryan Frey’s voice came from close by. “Untie him.”

  Durand looked to the side. “Bryan?”

  Hanif cursed in a foreign language and began unbuckling Durand’s restraints. “They will kill me. You realize that, don’t you?”

  Frey walked into view wearing a medical gown and holding a wicked surgical knife. “You’re the one who signed up for this, Hanif.”

  “I did not sign up for anything. They took my passport. I have been a virtual prisoner for four years.”

  Durand craned his neck toward Frey and spoke through swollen lips. “You son of a bitch, I thought you sold me out.”

  Hanif took the last strap off Durand’s ankle. Durand tried to sit up.

  Frey narrowed his eyes. “How is my not wanting to die selling you out?”

  Durand successfully sat up, but with difficulty. “You said—”

  “No, I stand by what I said back there. You must admit it was the rational decision. I thought I might have a chance to save myself. I wasn’t going to work for the Huli jing. But getting revised would certainly have helped to start a new life.”

  Hanif shook his head. “You would never have escaped.”

  Machine gun fire and explosions rattled the glassware.

  “The Shan attack is still under way.”

  Hanif whispered, “Gentlemen! You are going to get us all killed.”

  Durand examined his hands, which were hideously swollen. So was his body.

  Frey gestured toward him. “I barely recognized you when they wheeled you past.”

  Durand looked at his own reflection in the cabinet glass. The tightness he was feeling in his face wasn’t just swelling. The left side of his face looked partly deformed. Asymmetrical. Other parts of his body felt strange or painful as well. Bruises ran down both his arms. “Shit.”

  Hanif moved about, gathering items from cupboards. “It is nothing that cannot be fixed.” He grabbed Durand’s swollen hand. “If you help me, I will help you. Please help me get away from here. I, too, have a family. Back in Indonesia. But where can I go? The resistance is throughout the countryside. They would kill me. I cannot leave through the airport or roads, either. I am a prisoner here. Help me.”

  Frey lowered the surgical knife. “We know people in the resistance. We can get you out.”

  “I have your change agent, Mr. Durand. It finished while you were away. I can bring it with us.” Hanif moved toward refrigerated cabinets and started rifling through them.

  Frey shouted, “Get mine as well!”

  “I want immunity! For what I’ve done. I did not do it willingly. Many people here are wishing to bring an end to this madness.”

  Durand held his deformed arms out. “What did I do to myself?”

  “You injected a sheik’s bodyguard’s DNA, Mr. Durand. It is fixable.”

  Frey pointed. “Ah. I can see a hint of it. On the left side.” He dropped the knife onto a tray and called out after the lab technician, “You’ll find my own change agent is being synthesized in the lab next door. The name is Bryan Frey.”

  Durand jerked his swollen head. “Go with him, Bryan. We can’t trust him just yet.”

  “Oh, right.” Frey nodded and grabbed the surgical knife again as he followed the man.

  Durand got up from the table and nearly fell. His legs were swollen, and his rib cage felt strange. He could see his blurry reflection in several polished surfaces throughout the lab, and none of them looked good. To make matters stranger, he was still wearing his dinner jacket and torn shirtfront, only parts of which still fit.

  The lab side door hissed opened.

  Durand felt another presence in the lab now. That same feeling of dread. He closed his swollen eyes in resignation and turned to see Otto standing in the doorway. The full complement of H
uli jing tattoos was still displayed darkly against Otto’s neck and hands.

  Durand glanced down to see no tattoos at all on his own warped skin. It was strangely a relief. He looked up at Otto. “Wyckes lied to you.”

  Otto approached.

  Durand felt the fear building, but he faced those undead eyes. “I know you’re alone. I know you’ve always been alone.”

  Otto stopped just a foot away.

  Durand’s swollen, discolored hands trembled. He held them up. “But I know that inside you’re a person. Like me.”

  “Your kind is an abomination.”

  Durand nodded. “We are. Sometimes we most definitely are.” He caught his ragged breath. “But our minds are the same as yours. If nothing else, we can share knowledge.”

  Otto stared.

  “Humanity isn’t going extinct, Otto. I’m sorry. Wyckes will never raise your people.”

  Otto pounded on the bench and got in Durand’s swollen face. “A lie!”

  “How do you know those embryos even exist?”

  “I saw them! He showed them to me.”

  Durand trembled, but he faced the uncanny visage. Felt Otto’s unliving breath upon him.

  “Embryos in cryo. Whole mirror life ecosystems. Preserved. Waiting. I am the first of my kind. The first of many.”

  Durand, still trembling, said, “How long ago did you see them?”

  Otto’s dead eyes glared.

  “I’m guessing years.”

  Otto said nothing.

  “Go and ask Wyckes, Otto. Ask to see them again.”

  Just then Frey and Hanif returned. Hanif dropped a metal tray and fell to his knees at the sight of Otto.

  “Please forgive! Please forgive!”

  Frey stood warily. Obviously taken aback. “What’s going on?”

  Otto’s gaze did not waver from Durand.

  “Ask Wyckes to show you the mirror life in cryo. He won’t be able to. Because after they had the change agent, they didn’t need the False Apollo Project anymore. They incinerated everything when they shut it down. They showed us video of the labs. I didn’t know what they were destroying until I met you.”

  Otto’s stare faltered and he looked down.

  “I’m sorry.”

  An explosion outside rattled the glassware again.

  Otto spoke to the floor. “What color were the walls in those labs?”

  Durand contorted his swollen face. “The walls?”

  Otto’s terrifying eyes got right up to Durand’s as he screamed, “The walls, damn you! What color were the walls of the False Apollo labs? If you really saw them, you’d—”

  “Blue!” Durand shook in fear to have Otto so close. “They were light blue! The floors, the walls.”

  Otto’s fierce expression faded, and he staggered back.

  “I don’t know why everything was blue. But it was.”

  Otto stared at nothing. His voice was calm. “It had to do with filtering reflected light on test samples.”

  The room was silent for several moments except for gunfire crackling in the distance.

  “Leave this place, Mr. Durand.” Otto moved toward the door.

  Hanif and Frey leaped aside, pressing against the wall as if a grizzly bear were marching past.

  Otto stopped in front of them. He pointed at an emergency biohazard station on the wall. “You will want to use biohazard suits. The atmosphere in here is going to become unsuitable for old life.”

  Chapter 46

  Hanif sealed and locked the lab doors behind Otto after he left. “We must depart if Mr. Otto is going to use what I think he’s going to use.” Hanif broke open the biohazard station and started pulling out the protective gear. He tested the oxygen mask.

  Durand struggled to walk as Frey gathered ampoules and vials of reagent.

  “We have more than enough here to provide evidence of what they’ve been doing.”

  Hanif ran about frantically. “We must leave! I suspect very bad things are about to happen.”

  It took them nearly ten minutes to gather all their materials and suit up in biohazard gear. Frey’s protective suit looked particularly alarming since the arms and legs were mostly empty. At some point a klaxon went off—whooping as biohazard strobes flashed.

  Hanif looked at Durand and spoke through his mask: “We must hurry!”

  Hanif entered the corridor pushing the wheeled lab table. Both Durand and Frey were piled onto it as if they were corpses. Durand looked out through his visor at the passing hallway.

  Hanif shouted through the radio in his gas mask, “Biohazard! Stand back! Biohazard!”

  As they moved through the corridors, Durand saw security guards and clients lying motionless here and there. They showed no obvious signs of injury, but they didn’t appear to be breathing.

  The biohazard strobes still flashed and the alarms wailed. Distant machine gun fire and explosions filled the gaps. Hanif rolled the gurney partly into the elevator, and then pulled a dead body out of the elevator car before trying again.

  Durand could hear his own ragged breathing through the mask as the elevator doors closed and they descended to the lobby.

  When they got to the ground floor Durand could see through his gas mask that some of the lobby windows had been shot out. There was glass all over the floor. Several soldiers lay dead—blood everywhere. Other soldiers tended to the wounded.

  The sounds were all muted through the biohazard gear.

  Hanif shouted again, “Biohazard! Stand clear! Stand clear!”

  The soldiers kept their distance.

  As Hanif reached the portico, there was no longer any valet. Bullet-riddled cars were scattered about, some burning. Frey pulled off his hazmat headgear and waved like mad for Thet somewhere out there in the darkness.

  Durand sat up to help, but Frey stopped him. “No offense, Ken, but I don’t think Thet will recognize you.”

  Soon the lights of the Maybach appeared, and Thet nodded toward them as he brought the car to the edge of the drive.

  • • •

  Wyckes stood near the window in his office, watching the attack still under way. The military was driving the insurgents off, but there was something wrong. He could feel it.

  When the biohazard alarms went off, he knew. And when there was less and less activity on their comm network. Clicking through the surveillance confirmed his fears.

  He waited. And prepared.

  Soon enough, the double doors to his office opened, and Otto entered, his tattoos visible. “Marcus.”

  Wyckes stood up from his desk chair. He wore a full biohazard suit with the hood flipped back to reveal his face. His own markings on display.

  Otto stopped ten meters away across the wide floor. In the conservatory nearby the butterflies flocked away from him as best they could. But then they dropped, fluttering, to the floor dead.

  Wyckes shook his head. “What have you done, Otto?”

  Unlike the eyes of everyone else he’d ever known, Otto’s eyes were unreadable to Wyckes. They always looked dead. Unfeeling.

  “I need to see them, Marcus.”

  “Who do you need to see, Otto?”

  “My kind.”

  Wyckes hesitated. “There are things you need to understand . . .”

  “Do you realize how much I want to not feel this anymore? This world is a hell to me. Do you understand?”

  “You’re upset.”

  “You told me my time was coming. That old life on earth would end. You told me I would cleanse the world.”

  “Otto—”

  “I’m tired of waiting. It’s time to begin.”

  “Otto—”

  “Show them to me!”

  Wyckes sighed. “I didn’t want you to find out this way.”

  Otto lau
ghed ruefully and withdrew a flask from his pocket. He unstoppered it and began to pour the liquid over his arms.

  “You were meant to be a savior of mankind.”

  Otto just laughed.

  “You were meant to be humanity’s last hope.”

  Otto tossed away the silver flask. “That’s what you’ve been telling me since I was a child.” He extended his arms and smiled his uncanny smile. “You were like a father to me—embrace me. For once let me feel your touch . . .” Otto walked toward Wyckes.

  Wyckes flipped the hood of his biohazard suit closed—then lifted an automatic pistol from his desk. “Stop.”

  Otto halted his advance.

  “There is what you were meant to be and there is what you are.”

  “Give me my people.”

  “I incinerated your ‘people’ the first chance I got. Once they were no longer necessary, those embryos went into a furnace.”

  Otto’s icy grin faded, and he lowered his arms—for once looking truly wounded. He then curled into a kneeling position in the middle of the floor and hugged himself while rocking gently. A soft groaning sound came from him.

  Wyckes lowered his pistol. “You’re no longer a child, Otto. Even then I found your terror at this world pathetic.”

  Otto continued rocking.

  “But it’s almost over. I want you to know something before the end.”

  Otto kept rocking back and forth, groaning.

  “You are the abomination. As a boy, they gave you to me to be destroyed.”

  Otto kept rocking.

  “But I thought I could get some use out of you first.”

  Otto rocked harder, groaning louder.

  “I’ll have to burn your body. Do you know why?”

  Otto paused.

  “Because not even maggots are willing to eat your flesh.”

  Otto curled up tighter and groaned again.

  “You’re no longer a child, Otto. Stand up and face your death like a man.”

  Otto replied softly, “No, I’m not a child.” Then, more confidently, “But neither am I a man.”