15 years ago

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Jay ducked under a swathe of cables and ran.

An army of do-it-yourself satellite dishes were angled toward the Super Jesus statue perched high on the mountain. Six-year-old Jay checked over his shoulder. His younger brother, Hélio, had fallen behind again, still jogging by the concrete walls and graffiti.

Jay didn't wait. He scaled the tin roof and stepped through a broken window. This place was a recently abandoned hideout, but they'd left more than usual. He hoped to find something interesting, or maybe even valuable enough to sell.

The rooms revealed lots of empty rifle shells and racks that a few days ago would have been brimming with cable television equipment. Probably illegal cable providers who had been raided by BOPE, Rio's Police Special Forces.

A rabbit scurried around a large hole in the floor. Jay ignored it. He was more interested in finding anything BOPE had missed.

Hélio stumbled through the window behind him. Jay ignored him and checked the next room. It was bare except for three empty fireworks cylinders.

'Nothing,' Hélio said, kicking a glass bottle.

Jay heard the bottle drop down the hole. A few seconds later, it smashed onto concrete several floors below.

Jay picked up a fireworks cylinder and inspected it. Empty shells fell out of it, scattering on the floor. But they didn't sound hollow. He picked one up. It wasn't empty at all. He was holding a real bullet! And it was a big one too. As thick as his thumb and as long as his whole hand. He picked up the other bullets, one after another.

Hélio called out to him.

Jay counted thirteen big bullets.

'Jay!'

Jay wondered if he could sell them to a gang member. How much would he demand for them? He'd have to act tough otherwise they'd try to scam him.

A sharp popping sound made him jump. Fireworks.

The gangs used fireworks as a warning when BOPE arrived.

'BOPE!' Hélio screamed.

Then came the cracking sound of bullets. One smashed through a window.

Jay ran back to Hélio. Glass sprinkled over the floor. Close call. Hélio hadn't been hit. More bullets cracked past the building. Jay ducked. Where was his brother?

Hélio's head of matted black hair bobbed just over the edge of the hole. His fingers were clinging to its edge. 'Jay!' He was sobbing.

Jay couldn't move. Shadows of BOPE soldiers moved along the windows. Fear riveted him to the spot.

More bullets cracked past.

Hélio's fingers were white at the tips. He hung there, just his fingers and head visible. Jay could see his eyes. Tears streamed from them.

'Help me!'

The unused bullets slipped from Jay's hands, scattering across the concrete. His heart was racing.

'Jay!' Hélio screamed.

Jay's legs wobbled. But he didn't move.

Instead, he shut his eyes.

*

A year later

Somehow, Jay had passed all the tests.

He was in a mess hall with over seventy other kids, some a bit younger, some older. They were all successful entrants in the Argus Foundation's scholarship program. Jay was sure he wasn't smart enough for that, but he'd made it in. Maybe by mistake?

People in white coats were serving everyone lunch. Neatly cut sandwich triangles, a small bladder of long-life milk and a chocolate chip cookie on a plastic tray. Everyone had the same food, but Jay's table hadn't been served yet. There were more people in white coats pacing about, checking kids' names off their tablets and asking questions.

Sitting opposite Jay was a boy about his age. A quiet one. He looked a bit nervous. He had a round face, slightly curled brown hair and pinkish cheeks. His skin was paler than Jay's, but he didn't look American. He sat with his hands in his lap. All Jay could see above the table was a head and shoulders.

'Hey, I'm Jay. Do you speak English?'

The boy blinked.

'What's your name?'

'Damiano,' he said. 'Uh, Damien.'

'Damiano.' Jay grinned. 'Sounds like a superhero name. What's your superpower?'

Damien blinked again. He looked confused.

'Your ability?' Jay leaned closer, whispering. 'I think everyone here can do something cool, you know? Like run super fast. Or see people naked!' He nodded. 'I want that one.'

Damien shook his head. 'No, I don't have anything.' His cheeks flushed.

'Yeah, right.' Jay winked. 'It's a secret, huh? So, do you think we're going to be X-Men?'

'Who?' Damien asked.

The spaces next to Jay and Damien filled quickly. Finally, their food trays arrived. Jay's side of the table was served first, then Damien's, but they were a tray short and the boy beside Damien was left without.

Damien inspected his food, perhaps deciding what to eat first.

'You're not eating that?' the boy said, taking Damien's tray for himself.

Damien looked confused. 'That's my tray.'

It was the boy's turn to look confused. 'No, this one was meant for me. You stole it!'

Jay was hungry, so he started eating. He shoved a sandwich triangle into his mouth.

A man in a white coat returned with another tray of food, which he gave to Damien. The boy scooped up Damien's choc-chip cookie.

'Can I have your cookie?'

Damien froze again. 'No, that's mine,' he said softly.

Jay swallowed his sandwich triangle and picked up another.

'But you're not eating it,' the boy said. He took a mouthful out of Damien's cookie. 'Hey, these are nice!' He took another bite.

Jay felt the air heat in his nostrils. This Damien kid wasn't doing anything and it was starting to annoy him. Jay dropped his sandwich triangle, picked up the milk bladder and peeled the foil cover open, just a bit.

The boy finished Damien's cookie and picked up his own.

Jay extended the milk bladder toward the boy. 'Want some milk with all your cookies?'

The boy looked surprised. 'What for?' He sprayed crumbs as he spoke.

'To wash it down.'

Jay squeezed the milk bladder. Milk squirted the boy in the face, coating his hair and face. Laughter erupted from around them. Jay laughed too. The boy, meanwhile, just froze in shock, dripping wet with milk.

Damien moved unexpectedly fast, snatching the boy's cookie from his grasp. There was a splash of milk on it, but Damien didn't seem to mind. He grinned at Jay. 'Nice one.'

Jay shoved another triangle in his mouth. 'Yeah, thanks.'

*

Now

Jay was lying on an operating table.

He craned his neck to look down. Legs. Check. Arms. Check. He wasn't injured. Or limbless.

A man in a white coat lingered over him. 'Please relax, we're almost done.'

Jay turned his head to see Damien lying on a table next to him. His brother. They were adults now.

The man in a white coat stepped between them, blocking his view. He slipped a needle into Jay's arm. Liquid rushed his bloodstream. He couldn't feel the needle's sting any more.

*

Desecheo Island facility

Denton wiped a smudge from the one-way glass. He turned to Major Novak, a short, solid man with rosy cheeks and a thick mop of black hair that he wore a little too proudly.

'Scrub Damien and Jay from the shocktrooper program. Requalify them for service,' Denton said.

'Yes, Colonel.'

Novak's boots scraped the floor as he left the room.

Denton returned his attention to the window. Damien and Jay were lying peacefully on their operating tables, their reprogramming in its final stages.

'I have plans for you two,' he said.

Leaving them to rest, he headed for the BlueGene lab.

Despite the size of the facility, the laboratory wasn't far. A quick walk and one flight of stairs took him there in short time.

With glasses on the bridge of his nose and hands over the keyboard, Dr Benito Montoya worked the front-end node of the facility's supercomputer. As Denton entered the BlueGene lab, he could see jeans under Benito's lab coat. Likely matching a shirt he hadn't ironed in a month. The cryptanalyst looked a bit worse for wear today, his iced-coffee complexion shadowed by dark circles under pale green eyes.

'I want good news, Benito.'

Denton's words echoed through the vacant lab, making Benito jump. He turned to face him, ash brown hair still damp from his morning laps at the facility gym. At least he was exercising.

'Yes, Colonel,' Benito said. 'We have more information on the encrypted data.'

'Can you break it?'

'It's over 40,000 characters long. I hate to say it, but even if we send it to our quantum computer in Denver, it would take somewhere between five and twenty years to breach.'

'In five years, breaching encrypted data will be the least of your concerns,' Denton said. 'It would be quicker to find the Chimera pseudogenes from scratch.'

Benito's hands fidgeted beside the keyboard. 'That's a very small needle in a very large haystack.'

Denton folded his arms. 'Define small.'

'OK, well ... the code contains the chromosomal locations for the Chimera pseudogenes; that's spread over more than a dozen chromosomes. Each pseudogene is no fewer than 10,000 base pairs long.' Benito's gaze dropped to Denton's shoes and he shook his head. 'I don't think Doctor McLoughlin was looking for the Chimera pseudogenes on purpose. It's more likely she found them by accident.'

Denton unfolded his arms. 'I need the encryption breached; there's no other option. Have you tried her login password?'

'I doubt she'd use a password we can gain access to. And besides, I can't try anything. The encryption has a destruction mechanism in place. If we get it wrong the first time, it destroys the Chimera vector code. There's no second chance.'

He matched Denton's gaze, a little too confidently for Denton's liking.

'Colonel, the reason I called you here is that Doctor McLoughlin seems to have used a very strange encryption. The key is 40,713 characters long.'

Denton arched an eyebrow. 'And that's strange because?'

'Because the standard key length closest to that is 40,960. It doesn't make sense why she used such an unusually specific key length.'

'Divide it by three,' Denton said.

Benito appeared confused, but did as ordered. The answer was 13,571.

Denton didn't take his eyes off the screen. 'Do you know what this is?'

From the corner of his vision, he saw Benito shake his head.

'Genetic code comes in sets of three, correct?' Denton said.

'Correct. The three-letter code is used to encode an amino acid.'

'McLoughlin was a computer geneticist,' Denton said. 'The key length is divisible by three. Genetic code is divisible by three. That means the encryption key is genetic code.'

Benito nodded his head slowly. 'You could be right.'

'Of course I'm right. Run a search,' Denton snapped. 'Find any catalogued pseudogene clusters containing 13,571 nucleotides.'

He looked over Benito's shoulder, arms folded, watching as the cryptanalyst queried the pseudogene database.

bmontoya@DesBlueGene:~$ sqlplus

SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.3.0

Copyright (c) 1982, 2012. All Rights Reserved.

Connected to:

Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.3.0—Production with Partitioning, OLAP and Data Mining options

Projectgate.org

Enter username: BMontoya

Enter password:

SQL> SELECT family_name FROM pseudogenes WHERE nucleotides = 13571;

C_REMCOG

SQL> _

'I have one pseudogene family listed with the specific amount,' Benito said. 'But we don't have the—'

'Open it,' Denton snapped.

Benito pulled up the data on the cluster.

Pseudogene Family id: C_APSY_AXTL

Class: Chimera

Expression: _

Transcription effects: _

Family members: 2

'Good. Our family of Chimera vectors,' Denton said. 'Show me one of the family members.'

Benito did as ordered without saying a word.

Member #001: Chimera-1

Name: C_APSY

Gene map locus: Human.chrXp11.23

Start: ********

Stop: *******

Strand: *

Type: Allelic variant type.0003

Parent Protein Accession Num: C_APSY*****

Parent Protein Name: C_APSY*****

Parent Gene ID: *

Genome Build: ***

Denton stared at the screen in earnest. He was close.

'Where are the chromosomal locations?' he asked.

Benito shook his head. 'It's encrypted. I can't find out.'

Denton rubbed his chin. 'The car's locked and the key to unlock it is in the car.'

Benito frowned. 'And the key-maker is dead.'

Denton ground his teeth. 'Run it against the subjects' genomes and see if there's a match in their DNA. Wait, that's too long. Narrow it down. All operatives. No, all current operatives.'

Benito's fingers pecked at the keyboard. Denton waited for the results to come up onscreen.

SQL> SELECT * FROM Operatives WHERE Genome = "13571";

No matches.

SQL> _

Benito pushed his glasses up again. 'Colonel, what exactly are you—'

'Staff,' Denton said, pointing at the front-end node. 'Run it against the DNA of anyone who's ever been assigned to Project GATE.'

Benito worked the keyboard in silence.

SQL> SELECT * FROM Staff WHERE Genome = "13571";

No matches.

SQL> _

Denton ground his molars with slow, steady precision. 'Pull up McLoughlin's record.'

Benito typed some more, then leaned in to double-check his query. 'That's strange. She's not on here.'

He tried the same query again.

Denton could see it was met with the same result.

He shook his head, partly in frustration and partly in admiration. 'Search for all projects. Everywhere.'

No matches.

Denton swallowed. 'The bitch used her own DNA.'