Chapter 46
I wake up slowly. It’s warm, and there is a lovely aroma of something being cooked. I look around.
The place is very small, with an open kitchen, a small living area, and a bathroom door in one corner. Everything is made of wood, and it gives the space a warm and cozy feeling.
I’m lying on a couch with a warm blanket over me. I lift up the blanket and see that I’m wearing Sam’s button-up shirt and boxer shorts. He must have changed me.
How embarrassing.
I slowly push myself off the couch and sit up. Sam is cutting up some vegetables on the kitchen island. His head is bent forward; he’s completely focused on what he’s doing. I look at the nape of his neck, the muscles connecting to his back stretched and beautifully defined, his shoulders making a large shadow over the cutting board. In this position, his hips are pushed forward, and through the loose shirt I can see his abdominal muscles contracting whenever he pushes the knife onto the cutting board. It’s captivating and I find myself unable to look away.
I look at his hips, but then realize that he has stopped chopping.
I look up to meet his eyes. He has a mischievous grin on his face.
“Good morning. Or—good evening.”
He puts down the knife on the cutting board and walks over to me, taking a steaming cup from the dining table. He kneels next to the couch and says, “Here, drink this.”
I take the cup and sip slowly. The liquid is not so hot, but it still burns as it passes down my throat.
I cough. “What is that?”
“Tea . . . and some rum.” He looks at me and smiles. “It will warm you up.”
I smile and take another sip. “Is this your safe place?”
“Yes.” Then he looks down at the floor and whispers, “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.” He looks back. “I never should have let you out of my sight.”
I smile weakly. Never out of his sight. I like that.
Then I frown and look at him. “But how did you get free? I thought they caught you too.”
“They did.”
“So how did you—”
“You were already in their van when I came out. I knew I couldn’t fight them without putting you in danger, so the only way to rescue you was to allow myself to get captured as well, hoping they would take me to the same place as you. And not just kill me, of course.” He chuckles.
“But how did you free yourself, then? Weren’t you tied up like me? And where did you get the weapons? Didn’t they search you?”
“They did search me, and yes, I was tied up.” Then he stops and looks down. “Look, I don’t want you to think about that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just . . .” He sighs. “It’s just what I do.”
“I know, but—”
“Jane! Please, just . . . leave it. You don’t need to know how I did it.”
I look at him while images of the last moments in the warehouse flash before my eyes. He didn’t have weapons of his own. He had to improvise.
Yes. I think he’s right. I don’t actually need to know all the details. “Okay,” I say and nod.
He exhales, and it’s loaded with relief. “Good. I’ll continue making dinner, okay?”
I put the cup on the small table next to the couch and rub my eyes to wake myself up.
“Sam!” I say abruptly.
He turns quickly. “What?”
“Did you—did you take their laptop? With Frank’s data?”
His face relaxes. “I did.”
“Oh, that’s great!”
He waves his hand dismissively. “It’s just part of the job.” He walks over to the dinner table to fetch his own laptop. “I copied Frank’s data on here,” he says as he puts it on the coffee table and sits down next to me. He opens it up and signs in, then stands up again. “Let me know what you find out.”
“Absolutely,” I say. “You’ll get a live commentary. Did you find anything else on their laptop?”
“Emails and other files. But all encrypted. I sent them to the Sentinel tech guys. They should be able to crack them.”
The folder with Frank’s data is already open. I look at his initials and smile, remembering how Frank wanted to exchange his memory stick with someone else’s because the ink on his own had smeared. And then—it all comes flooding back. The shock, the sadness, the pain.
They killed him. Because he couldn’t give them what they wanted.
I close my eyes and try to bury these thoughts deep in the cellar of my mind, try to lock them behind a heavy door, sealed with an iron bolt, not letting them surface, because like this, I can’t think.
I can’t.
And I need to think. I need to figure this one out, because . . . a lot more people will die if I don’t.
Then I feel Sam’s hand on my shoulder, touching me softly. I open my eyes.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
I try to smile but it doesn’t quite work out as I planned. “I’m . . . no, not really.”
He sits next to me and squeezes me against him. I find a place between his shoulder and neck and lean my head into it, then close my eyes.
“I’m sorry you lost your friend, Jane,” he says, his voice deep and calm.
I expect him to say something else, but he doesn’t. He just lets me ride through this, like a buoy on the waves, letting this sorrow pass underneath me, until the ocean calms down and I feel peaceful again.
After a long while, he says, “Your other colleagues, Jane—they are fine. They are safe. And David as well. He’s recovering in the hospital.”
I look up at him. “Really?”
He nods once and smiles. “Your family too.”
“Oh, thank God!” I say, leaning back onto his shoulder, a weight I didn’t realize I was carrying lifting off. “So are they under the protection of Sentinel?”
“No. It was initiated by Sentinel, of course, but it’s official police protection. Your colleagues don’t know about Sentinel, and neither does your family. No one outside of Sentinel knows about us, not even the police.”
I don’t care who provides the protection, as long as they are safe.
“Feeling a bit better?” he says.
I nod. Though I wish they’d managed to save Frank.
Sam releases his hug and turns to look at me. “Hey, why don’t we eat first? Get some energy for the brain. Then we can look into the data. Okay?”
I attempt a smile. “Okay.”
***
I’m munching on the dinner Sam just made: chicken and rice with red peppers and sour cream. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until he put the plate in front of me. I don’t take any breaks to talk, and within minutes, my plate is empty.
“Is there more?” I look up.
He smiles. “Sure, let me get it for you.”
“Thanks!”
He picks up my plate and returns to the kitchen.
He is wearing old jeans and they hang on his hips. I cannot help but stare at him as he walks away. Then I shake my head to clear my mind and look back at the laptop.
“All right, let’s first check this one,” I say as I double-click on the file. It opens, and soon I’m looking at the sequencing lines.
“What are we looking at?” His voice is a bit muffled coming from the kitchen with his back to me.
“Genomics data,” I say, loud enough for him to hear me.
He comes back and sits on the floor next to me, putting my plate behind the computer and looking at the screen.
“Does that tell you anything? Looks like gibberish to me . . .”
I laugh.
“Hey!” He lifts his hands up. “I don’t have your IQ!”
I chuckle. “It has nothing to do with IQ,” I say, opening a new browser window. “You can’t tell anything just from looking at the sequence. I can’t either. What we need to do is to compare the database sequence of Crazy Gro with a prokaryotic databank. And that’s what I’m doing now.”
I copy-paste the sequence and click for mapping. The screen is blank while it matches different sequences to known bacterial strains.
“How long do we need to wait?”
I shrug my shoulders. “It depends. I’m almost one hundred percent sure that Crazy Gro is a hybrid.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Which means . . . ?”
“Which means that it’s made out of different strains, different pieces of DNA all combined together to make one bacterial genome, possibly with several mutations, like the one for the superfast growth. And that means that the database system”—I point to the screen—“needs to find all the different strains and also pinpoint the mutations. So it will take a few minutes.”
He nods.
“I know the main portion of the strain is made out of Streptococcus, not Thermus. That is what Frank wanted to tell me. That is the part that shocked him.”
“Why would that shock him? Didn’t you work with Streptococcus too?”
I nod once. “Yes, true—but you see, my strains have a mutation in them that makes them vulnerable anywhere outside of my Petri dish. They’re missing a specific amino acid—”
Sam frowns. “Translation, please?”
“Their DNA is missing a section needed to build an important building block: they can’t make it on their own, which means they can’t build new cells on their own, so I put that missing building block in their food. In that way, they can reproduce normally inside controlled lab conditions, but not outside. This one”—I point to the folder showing the genomic data of Crazy Gro—“for sure doesn’t have that genetic safeguard. This is a huge problem, because it grows so fast. I mean, even the most harmless bacteria growing that fast would be an issue. Take E. coli, which is important for our digestive system—it would kill us if it grew like Crazy Gro.” I sigh. “The growth speed of Crazy Gro is just scary, independent of what kind of Strep it is.”
“I see,” Sam says. “So they deceived the whole team from the beginning, back when they told you—or when they told David, actually—it was Thermus and that it wouldn’t be able to grow at normal temperatures, right?”
“Exactly.” I look back at the screen. “Ah, you see—the first part is done.”
Sam looks at the screen, but shakes his head, raising his eyebrows. “What am I looking at?”
“The highest percentage of Crazy Gro’s DNA is made out of Streptococcus DNA. That’s why the cells look like Streptococcus under the microscope. That’s what we figured, right?”
“No.” He laughs. “That’s what you figured.”
I smile to him. “You help me think.”
“Really?”
I look up. “Actually, no. If I remember correctly, you distract me from all thinking.”
“Oh! Sorry about that . . .” A mischievous smile forms on his lips.
“It’s fine. I like being distracted by you.” And I lean in and kiss him.
Just then a beeping noise announces another match and I turn back to check.
I sigh.
“Jane?” Sam says, stretching my name.
“You see this?” I say, pointing to the screen. “It’s a rather small part of Crazy Gro’s DNA, but it’s taken from a bacterial strain that spreads through the air. This makes Crazy Gro airborne and that means that whatever disease this bacteria causes, is transmitted through air, and not through physical contact, like tetanus for example.”
“That figures. The airborne transmission is the best way to spread it around.”
I look down at the screen, checking the new finding. “Hmm . . .”
“What?”
“It’s strange . . . the DNA also contains a part of the Bacillus genome.” I shake my head. “Crazy Gro really is a hybrid. Why is it so complex, I wonder?”
Sam shrugs his shoulders. “If it was engineered, then there’s probably a reason behind every piece in the hybrid.”
“You’re right. It has to be something like that . . .”
There is another notification sound on the computer.
I look down. Another result has just come in.
I open the match sequence.
And stop breathing.
Oh, no!