Wired

PART FIVE Captured

David Desh awoke and absently shook his head to clear it, his eyes still closed, vaguely becoming aware of something uncomfortable stabbing into his cheek.

Suddenly, it all came rushing back. The helicopter. Kira falling. So they hadn’t used lethal force on him, after all. Either that or he was in heaven, which was unlikely since pain wasn’t supposed to be part of that realm, and the ache in his mouth was very real. On the other hand, perhaps he had ended up in that other place …

Desh opened his eyes, but only a crack. He wanted to appear unconscious for as long as he could. He and Kira were sitting on the floor, together, their backs against a concrete wall in a gray, dimly lit basement. The room’s only light was supplied by an uncovered bulb that hung down from the unfinished ceiling with a pull string hanging down beside it. Heavy steel rungs had been bolted into the wall at even intervals, and his wrists were bound together behind his back and through one of the rungs with plasticuffs. Kira was bound in a similar fashion to a rung five feet to his left. In one corner there was a sump hole, about two feet in diameter, with a pump inside and about ten inches of standing water at its bottom. Three steel poles rose to meet the ceiling in strategic locations to lend structural support to the house.

The basement was empty save a large wooden worktable in the middle of the floor, about eight feet away from the prisoners, with an assortment of tools hanging from a pegboard above it. An unfinished wood staircase at the opposite wall led to the first floor, eventually rising to a door that was out of sight.

They appeared to be alone. It was possible no one had been watching when Desh had first stirred, but he knew it was more likely that someone had picked up his return to consciousness on a video monitor and was approaching even now.

Desh instinctively sized up his position and considered options for escape, but came up empty. As he continued to explore every facet of his surroundings and commit them to memory, he noticed with alarm that a small section of Kira Miller’s skull, just over her right ear, had been shaved bald and was now covered by a white bandage.

He pushed at the heart-shaped locket with his tongue and repositioned it in the front of his mouth. As he did so, Kira began to stir. If his movements hadn’t been noticed, hers certainly would be. He had no time to spare. He tried to work open the locket’s tiny clasp with his tongue and by manipulating it with his teeth, but was unsuccessful. Finally he positioned the locket’s seam carefully between his incisors, hoping to force it open like a particularly stubborn pistachio. After a few tries he managed to pry the two halves apart, but only a millimeter. This would have to do. He was afraid of applying too much pressure and having the locket squirt out of his mouth and out of reach. His molars would be safer, but might seal it again for good rather than open it further.

He swallowed the locket whole—its point stabbing the inside of his throat on the way down—knowing his stomach acid would enter the miniscule rift he had opened and begin dissolving the gell that imprisoned Kira’s gene therapy cocktail. But how long would this take, given the gellcap was barely exposed? It was impossible to say.

Kira’s eyes came open with a start. She shook her head to clear it, wincing in pain as she did so, and turned to Desh with a puzzled expression on her face. But a moment later she must have remembered being at the gas station and hearing a helicopter just before she had lost consciousness. “Shit,” she said dejectedly. “They got us with tranquilizer darts, didn’t they?”

Desh nodded.

“I’m not usually hypersensitive to pain,” said Kira, “but it feels more like they shot an arrow into my head.”

“The dart hit your neck. That’s not what you’re feeling.” Desh frowned worriedly. “A small portion of your head above your right ear has been shaved. There’s a bandage there now.”

The color drained from Kira’s cheeks. “That would explain the intense pain, all right.”

“Any idea what they might have done to you?” asked Desh.

“None whatsoever,” she replied uneasily.

“Are you going to be okay?”

Kira paused for a moment and then nodded. “It hurts like hell, but not so much that it’s debilitating,” she replied stoically. “I’ll get by.” Her eyes darted around the basement. “Where are we?”

“I don’t know,” said Desh. He was about to continue when the door opened and two men walked down the stairs. As the first man came into view, both prisoners recognized him immediately. The wiry Black Ops agent who had called himself Smith.

The same could not be said for the man who followed him. He was in his late forties, of average height but slightly overweight. He was wearing gray suit pants, a blue-striped oxford dress shirt, and black wingtips. He had a small mouth and thin lips, and blond-brown hair that was parted down the middle. There was something about the man that was unsettling, as if the sight of him had set of subconscious alarms that he was a dangerous predator, despite his unassuming appearance.

“Kira Miller,” the man said smugly. “At long last.”

He put his back to the workbench and hoisted himself to a seated position on the table facing the prisoners, his legs hanging down casually. Smith remained standing, ten feet away from the workbench and facing in the same direction.

“Who are you?” demanded Kira.

“You don’t really think I’m going to answer that,” he said in amusement. “Call me Sam, and let’s leave it at that. And to anticipate your next question, we’re in what is called a safe house. There are four heavily armed men upstairs whose job it is to follow any order I give.”

Desh had no doubt from their respective postures that this was Smith’s boss, which meant he was also probably the man they had been calling Moriarty. And he had access to a safe house and considerable legitimate authority. Not surprising.

“So you must be government,” guessed Desh. “Sam as in Uncle Sam? Is that supposed to be cute or just psychotic?”

The man moved in a blur, much faster than his appearance would have suggested. He pushed off the table, took the few steps to where Desh was immobilized on the floor, and kicked him savagely in the gut, leading with the point of his black wingtip. Desh tightened his stomach just in time and tried to turn away, but his stomach took the full brunt of the kick, and he reeled from the blow. Pain signals bombarded his nervous system.

Sam, calm again, returned to his perch on the table. “I don’t like your tone, Mr. Desh,” he said, as if reprimanding a grade-schooler. “You will address me with the proper respect. My business is with Dr. Miller here. The only reason you aren’t dead yet is because I’m trying to figure out how you factor into this. But I would watch how you speak to me. I’m not that curious.”

Desh didn’t respond as the man who called himself Sam turned once again to Kira. “How’s the head?” he taunted.

“What did you do to me?” she demanded.

“Oh, we’ll come to that, never fear. But first we have some other business. I don’t suppose you’d want to make this easy and just give me the secret to the fountain of youth? The GPS coordinates for that buried flash drive of yours would work just as well.”

She said nothing but glared at him icily.

Sam held out his palms innocently. “I didn’t think so. Worth a try, though,” he said, shrugging. “I thought this might be a bit of a challenge. After all,” he added, the corners of his mouth turning up into a cruel smile, “you were willing to let me barbecue your brother.”

Kira’s eyes blazed like twin suns. “You son of a bitch!” she screamed hatefully, pulling against her restraints.

He raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Son of a bitch?” he repeated, amused. “I would normally take offense, but you are technically correct. Mom was a bitch. How did you know?” he added wryly.

“I will kill you,” she growled. “If it’s the last thing I ever do.”

Sam was unimpressed. “You’re hardly in a position to be making threats, my dear.” He shook his head in mock regret. “But I see now that killing your brother probably ruined any chance for us to have a romantic relationship.”

Desh could tell that Kira was seething inside, but was fighting to stay calm so she wouldn’t give this Sam the added satisfaction of getting a rise out of her. The man was purposely pushing her buttons to cloud her thinking, and Desh knew he had to do something to intervene. “So you’re the one who broke into her condo,” he said, risking the point of Sam’s shoe to deflect the conversation from its current course. “And stole her treatment.”

Desh braced himself for an attack, but none came. “That’s right.”

“But you aren’t enhanced now,” noted Kira, having already regained her equilibrium. “Why not?”

“You of all people know that running your brain at warp speed takes a lot out of it. Can’t do it every day.” He paused. “But if your real question is, did I run out of pills? the answer is no. I didn’t. What’s more, I have a molecular biologist working for me who’s almost managed to duplicate your work. Another month and I’ll have a lifetime supply.”

“And will he be signing his own death warrant when he succeeds?” said Kira.

“Why ask questions to which you already know the answer?” Sam shrugged. “Everybody dies sometime.” He tilted his head and grinned. “Except for maybe me and you, my dear.”

“So who is the molecular biologist working with you?” she asked.

“Oh, I doubt you know him. He was in the bio-defense division at USAMRIID. I discovered he was conspiring with terrorists for money.” He rolled his eyes. “He also had a taste for young boys that was quite troubling. So I, ah … pressed him into service.”

“You mean you blackmailed him,” said Kira.

Sam ignored her. “I do have to hand it to you,” he continued, shaking his head in admiration. “Even with your lab notebook, even with the instruction manual right in front of him, it’s taken him years to duplicate your work.”

“Why not just enhance his intelligence?” asked Kira.

“I have. Several times. If not for this, he’d still be trying to figure out how to replicate what you did. But I didn’t want to give him too many pills. First, I don’t have that many left. Second, that kind of intelligence makes someone extremely difficult to control. You and I both know that. You can’t imagine the precautions I had to take each time I souped him up.”

Desh searched his own mind for any signs of a change but detected none. Part of him still didn’t believe her therapy would really work, but if it did, he had no idea what to expect when it began to kick in.

“How many people other than Desh know about the longevity therapy?” asked Kira.

“Good question,” said Sam, smiling. “The wheels are always turning with you, aren’t they. Always gathering intel. The answer is, only me. I clean up after myself very carefully. True, the entire US military has been after you, but I’m the only one who really knows what’s going on.”

“Other than me, of course,” corrected Smith.

With a burst of motion, Sam pulled a silenced pistol from a holster and put a bullet into Smith’s head at point blank range. The impact threw Smith off his feet and he landed roughly on his back, dead before he hit the ground.

Blood mixed with tiny bits of brain matter leaked from Smith’s head and began to puddle on the concrete floor next to him.

Kira Miller shrank back in horror as blood continued to pour from Smith’s head.

Sam returned his gun to its holster. “Now where was I,” he said casually, as if nothing had happened

Desh didn’t need to consult a textbook to know that this man was a true psychopath.

“Oh, I remember,” continued Sam. “I was telling you that I’m the only one who really knows what’s going on.”

Sam nodded at Smith’s glassy-eyed corpse on the floor and then his gaze settled back on Kira Miller. “Although, admittedly, there used to be two of us. But now that I have you, Dr. Miller, I won’t be needing him anymore,” he explained, and then frowning, added, “and to be frank about it, he wasn’t all that useful. I had you dead to rights at that motel and he fucked it up.”

Desh’s last reservations about the veracity of Kira’s story had now vanished. Everything she had told him was true. This was the man Connelly had been looking for.

“How will you explain Smith’s murder to your men upstairs?” asked Desh.

Sam grinned. “No need for explanations among friends. The men upstairs were handpicked and are all completely loyal to me. I pay them extremely well, but I’ve always believed in wielding a stick to go along with the carrot. None of them are big believers in the Ten Commandments and have unfortunately committed some major, ah … indiscretions … in their lives. I have enough dirt on each of them to put them away forever. And if I die, this dirt becomes public automatically.” A self-satisfied look settled over his features. “These men would do anything for me. And since they have absolutely no idea what’s going on, unlike our dead friend here, they don’t have to worry about, ah … early termination, so to speak.”

Desh knew that Kira had been badly shaken by the ruthlessness of Smith’s execution, but she appeared to have composed herself once again. “What’s the game here, Sam?” she said, spitting out his name hatefully. “You know you can’t get the secret of longevity out of me through torture or with drugs. And you’d better believe I’m not going to tell a psychopath like you anything of my own free will. So what am I doing here?”

“We’ve already established you won’t tell me the coordinates.” He raised his eyebrows and an amused expression came over his face. “Not even to save your brother’s life. But there are sacrifices that are far greater even than this. I’ve been working ever since that moron Lusetti lost you—paying with his worthless life—to find the proper leverage to get you to, ah … voluntarily … tell me what I want. And I found it. So here is the question: will you tell me what I want to know to save the future of humanity?”

Kira remained silent, not taking the bait.

“After Lusetti used truth drugs on you, he told me he had learned why you felt it was so important to keep your discovery secret. Overpopulation. Fear of societal upheaval. Well, you’re in luck. I can help you out. What if there were no longer any births in the world?” Sam smiled cruelly, quite pleased with himself. “That would solve this problem, wouldn’t it? Give you no excuse for not sharing.”

“What are you talking about?”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “Sterilization of every woman on the planet,” he said simply.

Desh heard Sam but didn’t react in any way. His mind had begun to feel strange. It had been painful at first, like a sharp headache, but now the feeling was electric, like the pins-and-needles feeling of a limb falling asleep, only in his head, a place in which he knew there were no sensory receptors of any kind.

Kira looked at Sam as though he were mad. This wild, over-the-top threat could have easily come out of the mouth of a villain on a Saturday morning cartoon. But sadistic and deranged though Sam was, he was clearly formidable, and she sensed that this threat was not entirely an idle one.

“You’re out of your mind,” she said.

“Am I? My enhanced molecular biologist doesn’t think so. He thinks mass sterilization is child’s play. Well, child’s play for a child trained in molecular biology with an immeasurable IQ,” he said in amusement. “A woman is born with all the egg cells she’ll ever have. Take them out and it’s game over.”

“How?”

“I’m not the expert, but I’m told that it’s pretty simple if you really make the effort. Lots of ways to target just egg cells. Hell, there are venereal diseases that lead to infertility all by themselves. All you need are determination and an artificially boosted IQ.”

As Kira thought about it, she realized he was right. Even a mediocre molecular biologist, his mind transformed by her treatment, could manage something relatively simple like this. And the entire female population wouldn’t have to be infected at once. If an engineered virus was set loose, designed just to attack female eggs and nothing else, the attacks would go unnoticed for some time. Each woman infected would have her ability to reproduce destroyed without coming down with as much as a sniffle. And once all human egg cells were destroyed, that was it. Even cloning required an intact egg cell to work, albeit one with its own genetic material removed to get an exact carbon copy of the donor.

“I can see in your eyes that you’re beginning to fully grasp the implications of what I’m saying,” said Sam, gloating. “The only real challenge is a logistical one: making sure the hyper-contagious virus is spread to every corner of the world. But there are any number of ways to accomplish this.” He began ticking them off with his fingers. “Genetically engineered E. coli, designed to be able to out-compete and replace the E. coli found in every human gut—harmless other than having a gamete destroyer on board. Poisoned water supplies. Contaminated cigarette filters.”

Kira looked puzzled by this last entry.

“Don’t be fooled by the anti-smoking lobby, my dear,” said Sam. “Cigarette use is thriving in every corner of the world. Over five trillion are smoked each year. Do you think it would be difficult for someone with immeasurable intelligence to figure out a simple way to contaminate a majority of the world’s cigarette production lines with a hyper-contagious agent? With all the world’s smokers playing the role of Typhoid Mary, it would spread to every human on the planet in no time.” He grinned. “I guess second-hand smoke isn’t the biggest danger you can face from smokers, after all.”

Kira shook her head in disgust but said nothing.

Desh’s mind leaped! A massive acceleration of his thoughts occurred in an instant. Like one hundred billion dominoes falling into place at once; like a chain reaction leading to a massive explosion, his neurons had reordered themselves into a more efficient architecture. Thoughts arrived at a furious pace.

Square root of 754, Desh thought to himself, and seemingly before the thought was even finished he saw the answer: 27.459. Time seemed to slow down. His thoughts had been traveling through molasses previously, but now they were jet-propelled.

As Sam delivered a sentence the pauses between each of his words were agonizingly long. Spit … It … Out! thought Desh impatiently. He studied Sam and realized his body language communicated almost as much as his words—in some cases more. His every movement, breath, eye blink, and facial expression telegraphed what he was thinking.

Sam opened his mouth to speak and a thought flashed into Desh’s mind: just to be sure, I’m going to use several strategies. This is what Sam was about to say, or something very close.

“Anyway, to ensure maximum exposure, I plan to use multiple strategies,” said Sam, right on cue. “But I don’t think we’ll really need the others. When we unleash the engineered cold virus on the world, that alone will almost certainly do the trick.”

“We?” said Kira.

“Me and my terrorist friends, of course. It helps to have a vast organization with cells in every country that follow orders without question. That way we have thousands of epicenters for our little infection.”

Desh turned toward Kira Miller handcuffed beside him. In a flash of intuition he knew: he was in love with her! He had been for a while now.

But how did he know this?

A memory of all of his recent vital signs flashed into his mind. Heart rate, levels of brain chemicals, pupil dilation. His body and brain had been responding to her so powerfully his condition was laughingly obvious. The un-enhanced version of David Desh had been clueless, and in fact would have called the idea beyond ridiculous if someone had had the audacity to suggest it, not believing love was even possible in such a short amount of time. But he had been hit by Cupid and hit hard.

Enhanced Desh was not in love, of course. Far from it. He had lost his ability to feel love the instant his mind had transformed, just as Kira had suggested. Now he was able to gaze into Kira’s limpid blue eyes and feel nothing. He could study her with clinical detachment. Love was a lizard brain instinct. A survival mechanism bred into the species that was totally separate from reason. Women were extremely vulnerable during pregnancy, and children were helpless for many years. If humans didn’t have a mechanism for cementing a pair bond, nothing would remain but selfishness and promiscuity. Certain animal species were wired in the same way.

How did he know that!

And there was more, he realized in amazement. He knew that research on prairie voles, animals known for establishing long-lasting monogamous bonds with their partners, had shown that the male brain became devoted to its partner only after mating, coinciding with a massive release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Experiments had later shown that the dopamine restructured a part of the vole’s brain called the nucleus accumbens, a region that was also found in the human brain.

Desh traced these memory threads to their source. A magazine article. The memories surrounding it were so vivid, it was as if he was there once again. He was a freshman in college, flying home to visit his family. There was a faint smell of microwaved airplane Chicken Marsala in the air. He was sitting next to a older woman who was flying for the first time. He saw her face just as clearly as if he was staring at her now. He had brought a book, but hadn’t been able to get into it. He reached for the airplane magazine, the one that was tucked into every seat pocket. He flipped through it. Page twenty-eight had a torn corner. Three words had been filled in on the crossword puzzle by the previous passenger before they had given up.

And beginning on page nineteen, there was an article on the chemistry of love. He could see every word: read and digest them far faster and more efficiently than he could a page of text he was reading for the first time. Prairie vole males only fell in love after sex. Interesting. The pathetic lizard brained Homo sapien he had been before his recent transformation had become smitten with Kira Miller prior to even a single kiss.

Desh would have bet his life he knew nothing about the mating habits of prairie voles. But he would have been wrong. What else was buried in the near-infinity of his memory, ready for instant access?

“Not even terrorists would help you destroy the future of all mankind,” said Kira. “Their wives would be affected as well.”

“Good point. That’s why I didn’t tell them,” he said smugly.

Kira frowned. She should have seen this coming. “They think they’ll be unleashing an Ebola attack against the West, don’t they?”

Sam smiled broadly. “I think the bit about the affliction being triggered by pork is what really won them over. It has a nice, ‘The finger of Allah striking down the infidels’ ring to it. They really loved the PowerPoint presentation,” he said sardonically. “Naturally, I had my representative demonstrate the real thing on some of their prisoners, triggered by bacon, and when they saw how horrific a disease it really is, they loved the idea even more.”

“You faked the demonstration, didn’t you?”

He nodded. “Right you are. Perfecting something like that in the proper time frame would take your skills, combined with heightened intellect. My representative saw to it that the prisoners were infected with the genuine Ebola virus before they got the fake, supposedly genetically engineered, cold virus and were forced to eat bacon. Since the real Ebola is highly infectious through contact with blood, he made sure no one got too close while the prisoners were, ah … expiring. When the audience left, to make sure the infection was contained, he torched the bodies.” Sam smiled cruelly. “Reminds me of your brother,” he added coldly.

David Desh had fought terrorism for many years and had a wealth of knowledge imbedded in his mind. He focused on anti-terror strategy for thirty seconds and had insight after insight. Patterns of sleeper cell organization flashed into his head that US forces had completely missed. There was a better way to find them. It was so obvious. There was a better way to deploy Special Forces teams. There was a better way to arm them.

He was a kid in a candy shop. Wherever he turned his intellect, provided he had a solid knowledge base in the area, and sometimes even if he didn’t, breakthrough ideas presented themselves. Desh was able to monitor and analyze the conversation between Sam and Kira with just a small fraction of his attention, and on multiple levels at once. While calm on the outside, Sam was enjoying himself so much he was almost giddy, especially when he was able to taunt Kira about the murder of her brother. And while her pretend stoicism might have fooled other men, Sam knew with certainty, just the way a dog could smell fear, that his barbs were boring into quivering, exposed nerves just as surely as if he were wielding a dentist’s drill.

As Desh continued exploring his newfound faculties, he realized with a start that his autonomic nervous system was now under his complete control! It would work as usual, unsupervised, until he decided to assume command.

His resting heart rate was about fifty beats per minute. He lowered it to forty. Then thirty-five. Then back to fifty. He adjusted his body temperature down to ninety-seven and then quickly brought it back to normal. He ordered his circulation to abandon his extremities and concentrate at his core, something the body did naturally in extreme cold to conserve body temperature. His circulation dutifully complied, the blood altering its usual path. He ordered it back to normal and blood immediately rushed back into his extremities. He accomplished all of these feats without any idea how he was doing so.

Desh pondered existence for several minutes. He could use a far more extended analysis, even enhanced, but it was immediately clear that Kira had been right. There was no God or afterlife. He had been a fool. Without emotional baggage, and able to draw on his memory of everything he had ever read or heard, this was crystal clear. Like love, religion was a useful delusion—an opiate of the masses sort of thing. He still harbored some slight interest and affection for Homo sapiens, but could see how this interest could quickly wane. The power of thought he now possessed was intoxicating. How had Kira managed to resist it for so long? To ignore the will to power that was the obligation of every living being? And Kira had achieved a higher level of optimization even than this. Incredible!

Desh had been so quiet that Sam had almost forgotten he was there. His eyes remained locked onto those of Kira Miller. “I hatched the sterilization plan using only one of your pills,” he boasted, “right after you escaped Lusetti. I began to frame you for the E. coli plot immediately, and I added evidence that it was real—because I was making it real—as I went along. At least real as far as the terrorists were concerned.”

“I hate to break it to you,” spat Kira condescendingly, “but this plan of yours won’t get you what you want. Were you not paying attention the last time you tried to get the secret to longevity? I was desperate to save my brother’s life, remember. But I couldn’t unlock the memory of the flash drive’s location. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. I couldn’t. Is this ringing a bell? The enhanced me set things up to make sure nothing, or no one, could ever force the secret from me. Not by threatening me, my brother, or the entire universe for that matter. Shoot me full of truth drugs again and I’ll tell you the same thing: bigger threats and greater duress just make the information more impossible to access.”

Sam glared at her. “No, my dear,” he said evenly. “I haven’t forgotten. My strategy takes this into account as well. But I’ve always believed that you could find a way inside your little memory prison if you were, uh … properly motivated.” He paused. “Well, I’m giving you plenty of motivation.”

Kira shook her head. “I set up a failsafe that I can’t fool. Can’t! If I’ve been coerced in any way to seek out the information, the failsafe kicks in and locks me out. Even if I enhance myself I can’t undo it. I locked the metaphorical gate and fused the keyhole.”

“Then this will be your chance to put that to the test, won’t it?” said Sam, undaunted. “You will tell me the secret,” he said, sneering. “Make no mistake. I believe you’ll be able to break through your self-imposed memory barrier to prevent me from going forward with my sterilization plan. But if I’m wrong, you’ll ultimately tell me anyway—of your own free will.”

“If you believe that you’re even more insane than I thought,” snapped Kira defiantly.

“Guess again,” said Sam icily. “I’ll keep you a hostage until you’ve confirmed that the entire species is sterile, however long this takes. And on that day, you’ll know that the survival of humanity will depend on you. Despite your hatred of me, you’ll do everything in your power to make mankind’s last generation immortal.” He held out his hands. “No duress at that point. No threats. You’ll honestly want to share your secret, of your own accord. At that point your request for the information from your memory will sail right past any failsafe mechanisms in your mind.”

A horrified expression came over Kira’s face as she realized what he said was probably true.

Sam smiled. “And you won’t have to worry about overpopulation. I’ll have removed your objections to sharing your secret, and I’ll make sure you aren’t under any duress.” He paused. “But no need to thank me, my dear.”

Kira lunged at him, her eyes burning with hatred, and she was yanked back, hard, by the cuffs, which almost pulled her arms from their sockets, and cut into the skin on the back of her hands painfully.

“Look, I’m on your side,” said Sam, extending the palms of his hands innocently. “I don’t want to do this. Really. It’s a lot more hassle than it’s worth. I’d rather just give all the terrorists vials of aerosolized water to spray about in population centers rather than active virus. All you have to do is give me the secret and agree to work on immortality. Find a way to unlock your own brain before the deadline.” He shrugged. “And if not, I’ll just wait for you to give it to me by choice.”

Kira felt nauseous. “All this just for a few more years of life?”

Sam grinned and shook his head. “A hell of a lot more than a few. We both know that. With the proper use of your gell pills and an extra seventy years, I have every confidence I can push you, nanotechnologists, and others to eventually make your blueprint for immortality a reality. Your treatment will buy me enough time to be certain I’ll be alive when immortality is perfected.”

Silence hung in the air for several long seconds as Kira glared at him hatefully. “I need information on the viral construct used,” she said finally, “and the method for attacking egg cells. I won’t even make an attempt to unlock my memory unless I’m convinced this isn’t a bluff.” She frowned. “Not that my attempts will do any good anyway,” she added grimly.

“Trying to buy time already, I see,” he said approvingly. “But it’s a fair request. I’ll give you the information you require. With respect to timing, everything has been ready for a while now, awaiting your capture. But there are some details I have to start in motion now that I have you, so this will give you about three days. After that, if you haven’t told me what I want to know, I will begin distribution of the vials. Once they’ve gone out, not even I can recall them, and the terrorist cells around the world can’t be reached to abort the mission. At that point it will be out of my hands,” he added.

Kira’s eyes darted around the room, desperately seeking a way out.

“I can practically see the wheels turning in that brilliant mind of yours, my dear. Think you can trick me somehow? Think you can escape and then stop me? Well, I’ve gained a very healthy respect for your abilities. As impossible as this would be, I’m not sure I’d put it entirely past you.” Sam paused. “Which brings us to our little outpatient surgery on your skull,” he said, smirking.

David Desh turned his attention to the last forty-eight hours of his life. He had been drinking from a fire-hose but now was his chance to sort everything out. Kira’s analysis was right, as far as it went, but she had been too shortsighted. Doubling the span of human life in one fell swoop would lead to disaster. But there was a better answer than just burying the discovery and walking away. And it didn’t involve sacrificing the next generation. It simply meant expanding human territorial boundaries to adsorb population increases: it meant conquering space.

If humanity could readily expand into infinity, Kira’s therapy could be disclosed to the fanfare it deserved, with no concerns for its effect on the species. Not the pathetic attempts at space travel that were currently being made, focused on incremental improvements, but attempts at revolutionary leaps in technology, with inexpensive interstellar travel as the goal. Leapfrogging the next several generations of space technology in a single bound. Antimatter. Wormholes. Alcubierre’s warp drive. Tachyonic drives.

This would require the optimization of top physicists, perhaps with Kira’s even more potent potion. This is why she had failed to consider it. She was too used to working and thinking alone, too certain until she had decided to trust Desh that this was critical to her survival. And too certain that her enhancement therapy was too corrupting to be unleashed.

But it didn’t have to be that way. With enhanced intellect, there should be a foolproof way to assess someone’s inherent trustworthiness and integrity. Yes, the treatment led to a ruthless megalomania, but the ethics and morals of those treated would return to baseline levels when their brains returned to normal.

It would require teamwork among truly good people, but it could be done. Safeguards could be taken to ensure that whoever was enhanced remained under control and working toward joint purposes. Even Sam had managed to enhance someone who was already a psychopath and contain him for the hour. It would simply require a team of Dr. Jekylls to restrain the one chosen to unleash their super-intelligent Mr. Hyde.

He pondered the identity of Smith and Sam and their possible connections to Morgan, Kira’s boss at NeuroCure, and also how Morgan had managed to learn of her work in the first place. He called up his every memory since he had first stepped into Connelly’s office and let his mind search for patterns and connections. His mind raised a few interesting possibilities to his consciousness for consideration. Very interesting possibilities, in fact.

After a few more minutes of concentrated thought on the subject, the probability that he was on the right track continued to grow, although there were so many unknowns he was far from certain of this. Still, he needed to assume his working hypothesis was true and plan accordingly.

And in the meanwhile, he would attempt to do something about another discovery he had made, one that he had already incorporated into his analysis. To do so would require redirecting untold trillions of his own antibodies and lymphocytes. He wondered if his newfound ability to control his autonomic nervous system applied to his immune system as well. There was only one way to find out.

Sam smiled at Kira and tapped his head, just over his ear, with his index finger, taunting her. “While you were unconscious,” he said, “I took the liberty of having a tiny, tamperproof capsule implanted in your skull. With an explosive charge inside. Not much of a charge, I’ll admit, but enough to turn the inside of your skull to liquid.”

Kira’s eyes widened in alarm. The persistent, piercing pain from the minor surgery, obviously performed without anesthetic, served to make Sam’s words all the more chilling.

“I’ve set it to blow at 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. And it will, too, unless I transmit the proper encrypted signal from my cell phone before then. If I do, it resets for 10 o’clock the next morning. And so on. It resets in twelve-hour increments. You see where this is going?”

Kira glared at him but said nothing.

“Your chances of escape are exceedingly small. But I’m a careful man, and you have an impressive history. So I’ve implanted this explosive device to be on the safe side. Just in case you do manage to pull off a miracle and escape, or think you see an opening to kill me while you or Desh are still hostages.” He paused. “So until you’ve given me your secret, if I happen to end up dead somehow, you’ll have until the clock strikes ten, either a.m. or p.m., whichever is closer, to say your prayers. With me dead, the sterilization plan goes forward automatically. And even if you managed to escape and kill me right after I’ve reset the timer, you would only have twelve hours to stop my plans. Even with your skills, even taking multiple doses of your treatment, you’d never be able to do it in that short of a time.”

“You’re bluffing,” said Kira. “Implanting an explosive device in my skull would be risking my death, leaving you no way to get the secret of longevity you so desperately want.”

Sam shook his head. “No risk at all. I have every intention of resetting it every twelve hours religiously—as long as I’m in good health. The only way you die is if I’m already dead, and at that point the fountain of youth won’t do me a lot of good.”

“No risk at all?” said Kira scornfully. “You’re more insane than I thought. What if the receiver fails? And what if your signal can’t make it down to this basement and through my skull? How many bars of reception do you think I get inside my head, anyway?” Her lip curled up in disgust. “Take it out.”

Sam’s eyes blazed, betraying a rage at having been spoken to in this manner, but only for a moment. His eyes quickly returned to normal and he smiled serenely. “Not to worry. The device has two receivers for redundancy. And while the explosive is a few centimeters deep in your skull, the receivers are affixed just a few millimeters below the surface of your skin. And they’re next generation. Won’t be available to the public for another year. Nothing but the best for you, my dear. You could be in a coal mine in West Virginia with your head in a freezer and my call would make it through.”

Kira glared at him but said nothing.

Sam pushed himself off his perch on the table to a standing position on the concrete floor. “So let’s review your options,” he said. “Option one: you tell me the secret, and no one’s reproductive abilities have to be destroyed. I remove the explosive device from your skull and you live a life of luxury—heavily supervised luxury, but luxury nonetheless—while you continue to work on immortality.”

Sam smiled insincerely. “Option two: you don’t tell me, our generation will be the end of the line for humanity, and you’ll end up telling me your secret and working on immortality eventually anyway.”

Kira’s eyes continued to burn with a seething hatred. “As I’ve said,” she hissed in barely contained, clipped tones. “I need to verify that you can do what you say before I make any decisions.”

Sam nodded. “I’ll make sure you get all the evidence you need.”

David Desh realized it was time to turn his attention toward escape. Even though his watch had been removed and he had been unconscious for an extended period since he had last looked at it, his mind had somehow kept perfect track of time. It was nearing 10 o’clock. Sam’s discussion had come to a somewhat logical conclusion, and he would need to leave and reset the booby trap in Kira’s head. He had no doubt planned to end the conversation just prior to having to reset his device for dramatic effect.

When Sam left, would he leave them alone, handcuffed, or would he have them actively guarded? Desh raced through probabilities and options, considering and discarding dozens of strategies. His mind seized on one he thought had a good chance of succeeding. But he would need to interact with the species Homo sapiens dullard, which meant he had to create an avatar personality of the old Desh so he could operate on their delayed level and not arouse suspicion.

Sam’s watch began emitting a series of high-pitched beeps, and he smiled in satisfaction. He pushed a button on his watch and the beeping stopped. “I’m afraid I have to go now, my dear,” he said to Kira. “I have a helicopter waiting for me. And it’s already 9:40. You were unconscious for quite some time. So before I leave, I need to reset the device in your skull. If I don’t—” He spread his hands helplessly. “Well, let’s just say that neither of us wants that.”

He barked an order and seconds later three plain-clothed men had joined him in the basement, each holding a tranquilizer gun. Under any other circumstances they would have been armed with automatic rifles, but Sam was taking no chances that something would go awry and result in Kira’s death.

Sam gestured at Smith’s corpse lying in a pool of blood ten feet away. “I’ll call in a clean-up crew when I’m in the air,” he informed the newcomers. He didn’t offer any other explanation for the body and the men didn’t ask for one.

Sam pointed to the tallest of the three men. “Jim here will be in charge when I’m gone,” he announced to his prisoners. “He’ll take good care of you.” He paused. “Mr. Desh, I’ll be back to interrogate you tomorrow morning. As much as I would enjoy slicing off digits and beating you to within an inch of your life, I’m afraid that truth drugs have become just too damn good to justify this sort of thing. Oh well,” he said in disappointment. “I’m sure the session will prove interesting, nonetheless.”

Sam turned to Kira. “As for you, my dear, you’ll have all the information you’ll need to confirm the activity of our sterility virus very soon.”

Sam paused in thought, and a look of mild amusement came over his face. “Jim, if the girl needs to relieve herself,” he continued, “I want one of you in the bathroom with her and one of you outside the door. And don’t turn away while she’s going either. As for Desh here, if he needs to go—” He shrugged. “Let him pee in his pants.”

With that Sam turned and walked to the wood staircase. When he reached it, he turned and faced Kira. “One last thing. Listen for three high-pitched beeps in a few minutes. This will tell you that your twelve-hour clock has been reset.” He smiled. “I thought it was considerate of me to provide an audible confirmation for you. I’m trying to minimize your stress until you’ve come to your senses.”

“Yeah, you’re a real prince,” said Kira bitterly. She paused. “Look, we’re handcuffed to a concrete wall. Do you really think you need three guards?”

Sam looked amused. “Just the fact that you asked the question tells me that I do.” With that he took a careful look at his watch and rushed up the stairs.

The three guards fanned out in the basement at equal distance from the prisoners.

Kira turned toward Desh with an alarmed look in her eye. There was no getting out of this situation. Moriarty, or Sam, or whoever he was, had won. He had an explosive charge planted in her head and a knife at the throat of the entire species. The situation was hopeless.

Desh winked. The gesture had been completed so quickly she had almost missed it, but it was unmistakable. She wrinkled her forehead in confusion. What did he know that she didn’t?

It was time. Desh instructed sweat to exit the pores in his face, and in less than a minute moisture started to bead on his forehead and cheeks. At the same time, at his command, the color drained from his face and lips. He moaned softly.

Hearing the prisoner moan, the guard nearest Desh studied him more closely. “Jesus,” he said to his companions. “This guy is sweating like a pig. He looks like death.”

“I need a doctor,” gasped Desh, the avatar personality he had set up ensuring he said the words in character and with mind-numbing slowness.

Kira struggled to make sense of what was happening. She would have been sure he had come down with the mother of all fevers if it had not been for its sudden onset and the wink he had given her. So this must have been planned. But the sweat sliding down his face was real. They were in a basement and the air was currently cool and dry. No one could cause themselves to sweat. This couldn’t be faked. Unless …

She glanced down at her chest and stifled a gasp. The locket was gone!

Her eyes widened.

The guard named Jim, stationed between his two colleagues, peered at Desh uncomfortably. “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded.

“Don’t know,” uttered Desh feebly. “Gonna vomit,” he whispered. “Bathroom. Please.”

“It’s a trick,” said the guard closest to Desh. “It has to be.”

“Brilliant conclusion,” said Kira mockingly, rolling her eyes. “Can’t you tell when someone’s feverish? How the hell could it be a trick?” She shook her head in disgust. “Look at him! You can’t fake that.”

Desh moved his head forward and swallowed hard several times, as if fighting a gag reflex.

“In another few minutes he’ll be covered in vomit!” pressed Kira. “Are you prepared to live with that smell all night? You think your psychotic boss will be happy about this when he returns?”

Jim frowned miserably. “Ken,” he said, nodding at the guard closest to Desh, “cut him loose. And get him to a toilet.”

Ken hesitated.

“Hurry!” barked Jim.

Desh moaned as Ken approached, pulling a combat knife from his belt. The other two guards raised their guns and trained them steadily on Desh, as Ken reached behind him and cut through the tough plastic of his restraint, which fell to the ground, and returned the knife to his belt.

Desh grunted in pain as he rose unsteadily to his feet, hunched over and clutching at his stomach. He glanced at the other two guards. Ken began escorting him to the stairs. When Desh was halfway there, he bent over and made a loud, throaty, heaving sound, as though a week’s worth of stomach contents were erupting from his throat.

The guards all glanced away, just for a moment, in disgust.

Desh moved! He snatched Ken’s knife with a speed and precision that could never be equaled by a normal man and flicked it toward the guard farthest from him with a smooth, practiced motion. The knife buried itself deep in the guard’s chest. The instant Desh released the knife he spun Ken to his right and into the path of the tranquilizer dart that Jim had sent racing toward him. Desh threw his human shield forward and into Jim in front of him, who shoved the dead weight of his tranquilized colleague violently to the concrete floor. As he did so, Desh was on him immediately, landing a vicious kick to his arm and sending his gun flying. The guard attempted a knifehand strike to Desh’s throat in combination with a palmhand blow to his nose, but Desh blocked both attempts easily. He had read the guard’s body language so precisely he knew the man’s intentions before he had begun to move.

Desh now read Jim’s defensive posture, and spotting an opening, wheeled around and landed a roundhouse kick on the guard’s chest, exploding him back against the staircase. Even as the kick was landing Desh calculated the exact distance to the staircase and the exact speed and force he would need to exert to achieve his goal. As the man’s head cracked against the staircase, he crumpled to the ground, unconscious, and Desh knew his calculations had been perfect.

Desh snatched Jim’s tranquilizer gun from the floor, stepped over Ken’s body, and crouched low under the open staircase. As he had expected, the guard who had remained upstairs bolted through the door to the basement and down several stairs holding an automatic rifle out in front of him. So much for non-lethal force, thought Desh.

The man expertly covered the staircase and entire basement with his gun. He took in the sight of Kira, still bound, and four bodies sprawled on the floor, but could detect no other movement, which he immediately realized suggested his adversary was hidden under the staircase.

His realization came far too late.

Desh casually sent a dart at point blank range through the opening between two stairs and into the guard’s leg. He collapsed and slid down four stairs before finally coming to a stop.

Desh was expert in several forms of hand-to-hand combat, and long practice had made his movements precise and cobra-strike quick. And this was before his mind was enhanced. With his thoughts so vastly accelerated, the guards’ quickest movements had appeared almost deliberate to him. He had been outnumbered four to one and he knew it hadn’t been a fair fight—for the four guards.

Desh rushed over to Kira. As he was cutting her free three loud, piercing tones emanated from her skull, startling her but having no effect on him.

Perfect, he thought. His timing had been exact. He ordered the sweat to cease pouring from his face and his blood to flow normally, and the color quickly returned to his face. He considered if Kira could assimilate his speech if he sped it up to more closely match his thoughts, but ruled it out: as intelligent as she was, he would need to continue to relegate a portion of his mind to creating a simulacrum of his old self.

“Are you sure you want to go?” he asked. “You’ll need to be sure Sam resets his device by 10 o’clock tomorrow morning.”

Kira nodded defiantly. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” she said.

Desh took her hand and led her through the obstacle course of scattered bodies and up the stairs. Sam had said there were four guards, but Desh wasn’t about to trust this number. He cautiously peered around the door, counting on his enhanced reaction time to get him safely through any ambushes. There were none.

They found themselves in the kitchen. “Wait here,” said Desh.

Before Kira could respond, he rushed off and canvassed the entire house, confirming they were alone, and returned to her a few minutes later. “I want to check the men downstairs for identification. I doubt I’ll find any but it’s worth thirty seconds.”

Desh bounded off and down the stairs, closing the door quietly behind him. He pulled the knife from where he had implanted it in the guard’s chest and checked for the man’s pulse. He was dead. Desh knelt beside the unconscious men, two in the basement and one on the staircase, and slit each of their throats in turn, careful not to get any blood on himself.

He isolated the memory of these murders and created a temporary dead zone in his mind so they would be hidden when he returned to his vastly inferior normal state, ensuring he would not be improperly burdened by them. He knew that the emotional, un-enhanced version of himself would never sanction the murders of helpless men.

This other Desh was an idiot!

The enhanced version had just ensured that when Sam returned, he would get zero information as to how they had escaped. They needed to keep Sam as off-balanced as possible. The more confused he was, the more intimidated by their magical escape artistry, the better chance they would have.

The stakes were simply too high for squeamishness.

David Desh rejoined Kira on the first floor. “Did they have any ID?” she asked.

Desh shook his head. “None.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” she said. “Good news, though. I found our personal items and cell phones in a kitchen drawer.”

She held out his watch and cell phone and he took them gratefully. “Good work,” he said as he slid his watch back around his wrist.

The fraction of Desh’s mind he had used to set up a simulacrum of his slow self waited patiently for the second-and-a-half he expected to pass before Kira’s next utterance. The rest of his mind continued to race at fantastic speed, following several trains of thought simultaneously. One train of thought involved their escape. He had learned how to hot-wire a car as part of his general “surviving with what was at hand” training, and he isolated these memories and amplified them in case he turned back into a pumpkin before locating a suitable car.

“Let’s get out of here,” suggested Kira. “We have to stop this sick bastard,” she added with determination. “And we don’t have much time.”

Desh computed a number of probabilities almost simultaneously. The probability that homing devices had been planted on them or their retrieved personal items. The probability there was detection equipment at hand. The odds that they would find this equipment if it was here, and the amount of time this could be expected to require. The increased risk they were taking with every second they remained where they were. He input all of these figures into a complex equation that he solved the instant it had been formulated: one course of action was optimal—but just slightly. He transmitted the result to his puppet personality.

Desh held up a hand. “Not just yet. Sam thought escape was impossible, so my gut tells me he didn’t plant homing devices on us. Odds are he put the device in your head just to be on the safe side and for intimidation purposes. But we need to be sure. We’re in a safe house, so there must be bug detection equipment here somewhere. Let’s find it.”

They separated and ransacked the house at breakneck speed, tearing through closets and dumping the contents of drawers onto nearby floors. Only four minutes later, Desh found a case in a bedroom closet containing instruments for detecting both homing and listening devices.

He hurriedly scanned both Kira and himself, along with their phones and other personal items. Everything was clean. He checked carefully around Kira’s bandage for any signals but detected none.

They cautiously exited the house, wishing they had night vision equipment as they made their way through the darkness, punctuated by the lights from other houses in the neighborhood. Several streets over Desh found an old car that was susceptible to being hot-wired and quickly did so, performing the procedure by the dim light of his open cell phone. He was just pulling away from the curb when—like a hundred billion rubber bands snapping back into their original shape—his hyper-intelligence vanished.

Desh gasped out loud as if he had been hit in the stomach.

Kira glanced at him and nodded knowingly. “Welcome back to the world of the feeble-minded.”

He wore an expression of complete disconsolation. “I feel like I’ve just been blinded,” he whispered

She nodded. “Ten minutes from now it will all seem like a dream and you won’t miss it so much.”

Desh searched his memory. Had he retained anything? He was relieved to find that several of the ideas he had had while enhanced were still with him, although the underlying logic he had used to arrive at these concepts was either gone or far beyond his ability to comprehend. Desh forced himself to stop pining for lost brilliance. Time was short.

He gasped again!

He had remembered yet another surprising conclusion reached by his super intelligent alter ego: he was in love with Kira Miller.

“What is it?” asked Kira anxiously.

Desh turned to her. He looked into her dazzling blue eyes, and now that his alter ego had shined a spotlight on his emotions he realized it was true: he was in love. Or infatuated at any rate. His entire being basked in her presence. She was like a drug to which he had become hopelessly addicted without his knowledge or consent. The rewards of breathless intellect were great, but the primitive lizard brain manufactured rewards of its own. “Nothing,” whispered Desh. “Sorry.”

Kira looked puzzled but let the subject drop.

Desh knew he could continue to gaze at her beautiful face forever. She truly was an extraordinary woman. But now was not the time to give into these irrational impulses. Now was the time to focus on one thing only: survival.

Desh tore his eyes away from her and focused on the road. “How’s your head?” he asked worriedly.

“It’s getting better,” she said unconvincingly.

Desh suspected she was lying but decided to leave the subject alone. “It won’t be long before Sam discovers what happened at the safe house and points a satellite this way,” he said. “So in the immediate term, we have to get as far away from this spot as possible.” As if to emphasize his point he stepped hard on the accelerator.

“And the not so immediate term?”

“We need to elevate our game. It’s time for more desperate measures. And for that we need Connelly.”

In response, Kira pulled out her cell phone, the partner to the one she had given Connelly, and flipped it open.

“You’re certain the signal can’t be unscrambled?” said Desh.

“Absolutely positive,” she confirmed. She hit a speed dial button and handed the phone to Desh.

The colonel answered on the first ring and they exchanged greetings.

“What the hell happened to you two?” asked Connelly worriedly.

Desh frowned. “Sorry about the radio silence. We ran into trouble but we’re clear now—as far as we know. Assume this is a private channel. What’s your status?”

“We’re still with my doctor friend at his house,” reported Connelly immediately. “I’ve been patched up and filled with blood and pain-killers. I’ve gotten plenty of sleep and am recovering nicely. And Matt has brought me up to speed on events.”

“Understood,” said Desh. “I now have a much clearer picture of what we’re dealing with than I had when we separated. I’ll brief you further as soon as I can. Bottom line is that I’m now absolutely convinced Kira is innocent and an ally. But a lot of really bad shit is about to happen if we don’t move quickly.”

“How bad?”

“Bad enough to make me wish for the original Ebola plot you told me about.” He didn’t wait for the colonel’s reply. “The soldiers in the clearing were told you’d gone rogue. Was it just these men who were misinformed, or is it more widespread?”

“It probably wasn’t initially, but it sure is now. They’ve poisoned the entire well. The military is convinced I’m a traitor and will do whatever is necessary to bring me down.”

“Understood,” said Desh. “You trusted this doctor with your life. Anyone at Bragg you would trust with your life who can fly a chopper; and has access?”

Connelly considered. “Yes.”

Desh sighed. “Let me put this another way. Anyone at Bragg who would trust you with their life. Someone who will believe you’ve been framed and will risk their career and life to stick by you.” Moriarty would have made sure the misinformation he had put out to frame Connelly had been devastating and airtight. It would take quite a man to put the trust of a friend over damning information put forth by the highest levels of legitimate military authority.

There was a long pause. “I’m as sure as I can be,” replied Connelly. “But I guess we’re going to find out,” he added evenly.

“Make sure to throw all the weaponry and any other military equipment you can find into the chopper before you leave,” said Desh. “We don’t know exactly what we’ll need, so the more the merrier.” He paused. “Not to put any added pressure on you,” continued Desh soberly, “but getting this chopper is mission critical. I’ll brief you fully when I see you, but trust me: the stakes couldn’t be any higher.”

“Understood,” said Connelly grimly.

“Good luck, Colonel,” said Desh. “Call me when you’re in the air and we can choose a rendezvous point.”

“Roger that,” said Connelly somberly as the connection ended.

David Desh found a main road and stayed on it for ten minutes until he located an all-night convenience store. A dented four-door Chrysler, filled with teenaged boys whose radio was blasting hip-hop at eardrum-crushing decibel levels, pulled out just as they arrived, leaving the lot empty.

They entered the deserted store. Kira hastily opened a bottle of the most potent pain pills she could find and quickly downed twice the recommended dosage. Desh bought a dozen glazed cake-donuts, each having the density of a neutron star. He finished eating two of the donuts before he had paid for them, wolfing them down as if his life were at stake. He desperately needed to replace the glucose his amped-up brain had devoured, and the speed with which a donut unleashed its glucose into the blood stream—its glycemic index—was legendary.

Desh continued cramming donuts into his mouth like a participant in a hot-dog eating contest as he drove, washing them down with the two quarts of Gatorade he had also purchased at the store. They had learned from the attendant that they were fifty miles east of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and they headed off in the direction of this city.

Given that Desh had now experienced her gene therapy, Kira was eager to compare notes with him. Before long the conversation turned to Desh’s theories on how her brain optimization could be safely used for the good of civilization, as well as conquering space so extended life could be introduced without threatening disaster.

Now Desh understood precisely what Kira had been afraid of and why she had sworn off her therapy. He had only undergone the treatment a single time, during which his boundless but ruthless intellect had already begun to crowd out much of his innate compassion, and his feelings of kinship with the rest of humanity and concern for human welfare had dramatically diminished.

But this could be managed—and harnessed. The hyper-intelligence only lasted for about an hour, but thankfully, so did the antisocial effects. When the brain’s structure returned to normal, so did a subject’s true nature. Emotions and compassion and altruism returned as if they had never left.

He explained his vision to Kira. An individual couldn’t be trusted with the power of her therapy, but a team could—if it was properly chosen. Even Frodo hadn’t gone it alone.

Desh trusted Connelly with his life and his every instinct told him that Griffin was a good man as well. If Connelly could vouch for the pilot he was even now recruiting, Desh was prepared to trust him also, at least for now. Like it or not, the five of them would already be in the game and would form the core team. But after this, newcomers they wanted to recruit with important expertise would be carefully screened. The first level could be done in the same way Kira had screened Desh, by studying their computer-accessible histories. Once this level was passed the newcomers would be screened further; still without their knowledge. Desh was certain that if he was optimized again, his enormous intellect and enhanced understanding of the nuances of human physiology and body language would enable him to invent a foolproof detector, not just of lies but of intentions; of innate virtue. Those that passed these screens would be added to the team.

Only one subject would ever be enhanced at a time, and this would occur under security conditions that would turn the gold in Fort Knox green with envy. And Desh knew that the people who passed their screens would welcome these precautions, and even insist upon them, wanting to be sure their super-intelligent alter egos couldn’t escape to do things they would regret upon returning to dim-witted normalcy.

The ever growing team, probably organized into a private company, would be sworn to secrecy and would be motivated by a desire to improve the human condition rather than by greed or power—the testing would ensure this was the case. And improve the human condition they would. Enhanced economists could derive revolutionary theories to lift third world economies. Physicists could develop clean energy that could be produced at a fraction of the current cost: cold fusion perhaps.

And the team would be ever mindful of the lessons of Midas. They would analyze their breakthrough inventions with great care to be certain their introduction didn’t have unintended consequences that might prove disastrous, as had been the case with Kira’s age-retardation treatment.

The team would advance civilization, and all the proceeds from their inventions would be poured back into turning additional ideas, conceived by optimized minds, into reality. They would continue to selectively recruit additional top talent: expanding the team’s base of expertise and relentlessly extending the frontiers of human knowledge. All the while they would channel massive resources into revolutionary propulsion systems to bring unlimited habitable planets within human reach, and the gift of a greatly extended lifespan to the entire species.

Meanwhile, Kira could work with a team of biologists and psychologists to find a way to enhance someone’s intelligence while maintaining their core humanity. To scale up, not just their intellect, but their capacity for selflessness as well. He couldn’t believe that hyper-intelligence and compassion could not coexist. If anyone could find a way to accomplish this, she could.

Kira was at first skeptical, but as Desh fleshed out his vision and answered many of her concerns, she became intrigued. It was a utopian dream. But as long as the Mr. Hydes they created were contained by multiply redundant security measures, and foolproof screening technology could be perfected, they could turn this dream into reality. Desh was finally able to persuade her that he was right: that she had thrown in the towel too quickly.

Desh knew that the vision he had had while enhanced was truly breathtaking in scope and ambition, but this didn’t change the current stark reality. They were wanted and on the run. Kira had an explosive device in her skull with little time remaining. If they were unable to defeat Moriarty, his utopian vision would be forever unrealized.

They had been driving for close to an hour when Kira’s phone rang. Desh took a deep breath and answered. It was the colonel, as expected, and the news was good! He was in the air. His friend, a Major Ross Metzger, had come through.

The colonel handed the phone to Metzger and he and Desh exchanged greetings. Desh offered his heartfelt thanks and gave him their location near Lancaster. Metzger consulted his onboard computer and after a few minutes suggested a rendezvous point. If they caught route 283 northwest toward Elizabethtown, they would find a high school just outside the city limits. The helicopter would land on the fifty yard-line of the school’s football field.

Desh spotted the school forty minutes later. He parked in the lot, and they walked the short distance to the field. They had been unable to find a flashlight in the stolen car so their vision was severely limited on this dark night. They stationed themselves under the bleachers and awaited their ride. Even by helicopter, it would take Metzger a while to cover the distance from Bragg, probably another hour or so.

This wasn’t the first time he had been under the bleachers with a beautiful girl, Desh reflected, but never as an adult, and never a girl like this. He desperately wanted to hold her. He suppressed this ridiculous impulse, disgusted with himself. Civilization was coming to a fork in the tracks, with one track leading toward heaven and the other toward hell, and his actions could determine who controlled the switching station. What an epitaph that would make: the future of humanity destroyed because the man in a position to stop the threat was in the thrall of infatuation and couldn’t keep his head in the game.

After what seemed like an eternity they heard the sound of a chopper cutting through the night sky, and minutes later an elongated helicopter appeared above the field, its body dimensions roughly those of a dragonfly. It hovered noisily over the fifty-yard line and lowered itself to the ground. Desh and Kira jumped through a wide opening in the middle of the aircraft and were greeted heartily by Griffin and Connelly as the helicopter lifted off once again. Despite the presence of eight steel troop seats facing the front of the craft and two side-facing gunner seats, all the passengers remained standing, holding on to straps to help maintain their balance.

Connelly was wearing a sling on his left arm to prevent movement, but looked surprisingly good. Griffin looked somewhat ridiculous without his facial hair—a clean-cut Wookie—but Desh pretended not to notice any difference in the man.

“Jesus, Colonel,” shouted Desh appreciatively over the din of the helicopter. “You got us a Blackhawk?”

“Only because Bragg was all out of Harriers,” replied Connelly wryly.

Jim Connelly handed them both a sophisticated set of padded black headphones, with a speaker arm they could position under their mouths. They slipped them over their heads while Connelly repositioned the set he had been using, which he had removed while greeting them.

Metzger was in the pilot’s seat in the front of the chopper. He looked back over his right shoulder. “Where to?” he said into his own headset. He was about the same age as the colonel, with black hair and bushy eyebrows.

“Hagerstown, Maryland,” said Kira in a normal tone of voice. Even so, the entire group could easily hear her through the headphones, which did a remarkable job of insulated their ears from the unrelenting din of the chopper. “It’s about seventy miles northwest of D.C.”

Metzger nodded and the Blackhawk swooped off on a southwesterly heading. He dialed up a map on his computer and within minutes settled on a flight plan. When he had the aircraft under control he reached back and shook hands with Desh and then Kira in turn.

“We appreciate the ride, major,” said Desh. “Do you think you got away cleanly?”

“I think so,” he answered. “I altered some computerized flight logs to disguise the theft. Hopefully this will buy us a day.” He shrugged. “I also disabled the transponder so they can’t locate us immediately when they do discover the unauthorized use.”

“Well done,” said Desh.

Metzger nodded to acknowledge the compliment. “We should be there in about thirty minutes,” he announced. “Where do we land?”

The four passengers eyed each other for inspiration, but no one offered any immediate thoughts. A Blackhawk wouldn’t be easy to hide.

“We need abandoned areas that don’t get any traffic,” said Metzger. “Think.”

Kira pursed her lips in concentration. She had been living in a trailer park just outside of Hagerstown for months. She should be able to come up with something. “There’s a community pool near the town’s northern border,” she said. “After summer it’s drained and the facility is chained up. It has a very large deep-end we could land in.”

Metzger shook his head. “Won’t be deep enough. This bird’s almost seventeen feet high.”

Damn, thought Kira in frustration. She turned back to sorting through additional possibilities. They had been picked up in a football field. While this was a nice wide-open space, it couldn’t conceal the chopper. She smiled. Perhaps she just had the wrong sport. “There’s a minor league baseball team in Haggerstown,” she said. “The Suns. They play in Municipal stadium. Seats over 4000. Enclosed by bleachers and a home-run fence.”

“How tall are the bleachers?” asked Metzger.

She had never been to a game but had driven by the stadium on many occasions. “At the entrance, behind home plate, taller than seventeen feet.”

“Is it locked up in the off-season?”

“Can’t imagine it’s not,” replied Kira.

“How close to residential areas?”

“Not,” she replied. “Fairly industrial. No bars or stores in the area open at night.”

“Sounds like we have a winner,” said Metzger. “Let’s give it a go.”

With this decided, Desh motioned to Connelly to join him in the back of the chopper. The two men knelt beside two large, green canvas bags that Connelly had loaded aboard that contained a wide assortment of weapons and other equipment. Desh unzipped the first bag and inspected the contents approvingly: four combat knives, plasticuffs, metal handcuffs, rope, tape, six flashlights, a first aid kit, a wire cutter, a bolt cutter, and six pairs of night vision goggles. Desh also found several assault vests sporting multiple pockets for weapons, spare clips and grenades.

The second bag contained a wide variety of electronic and communication equipment, four H&K .45s, four MP-5 machine pistols, and a dozen stun grenades. These grenades were also known as flashbangs. Like this name implied, they would create such an intensely bright flash and earsplitting bang that they would blind and deafen an enemy for about ten seconds. Several pairs of eye protectors and electronic earplugs were present as well to minimize the effects of the stun grenades on those who were using them. Finally, Desh located several empty rucksacks that could be filled for specific missions as needed.

Connelly had done well. He had loaded the chopper for bear as Desh had requested.

As Desh continued inspecting the equipment he removed his headphones and motioned for the colonel to do the same. He leaned in close to Connelly’s ear. “This Metzger really came through for you,” he shouted. “But it’s inner circle time. I’m going to lay out information so sensitive I don’t trust myself with it.” He looked at Connelly meaningfully.

“He’s solid,” bellowed Connelly, but even so Desh could barely hear him. “He was on my team back in the day. We’ve been on dozens of missions together, including some that went bad. Real bad. Clusterfucks. He’s as good as it gets.”

“Integrity?” asked Desh.

Connelly nodded. “We took out a Columbian drug lord once. Just the two of us. The guy had a silk drawstring bag in his safe filled with diamonds the size of marbles.” He raised his eyebrows. “Ninety-nine guys out of a hundred would have at least raised the philosophical question: who would know if some went missing? But Metzger pulled the bag from the safe, looked inside, and tossed it to me. Never mentioned it again.” Connelly locked his eyes firmly on Desh. “He’s one of us, David. He prides himself on doing what’s right.”

Desh nodded. “Thanks Colonel. Good enough for me. I assumed as much, but I had to ask.” He slid his headset back over his ears and Connelly did the same. The two men carried the heavy canvas bags to the front end of the helicopter.

When they were within twenty miles of Hagerstown, Desh passed out night vision goggles and Metzger killed the helicopter’s lights. They were now invisible from the ground. Piloting a helicopter blind using night-vision equipment wasn’t for the faint of heart, but Metzger had considerable experience doing so. Five minutes later they were over Hagerstown and Kira directed Metzger to the stadium. He circled it quickly and landed as close to the bleachers as he could, well behind home plate.

As expected, the gate entrance had a heavy chain around it and was padlocked. Desh pulled a pair of bolt-cutters from one of the canvas bags, and they were soon on their way.

They came upon some parked cars about three blocks from the stadium, and Desh expertly broke into one and hotwired it. They returned the night vision equipment to one of the canvas bags, threw both bags in the trunk, and climbed into the car. Kira drove, Connelly took the passenger seat to protect his injury, and Griffin, Desh and Metzger crammed themselves into the back.

Kira pulled away from the curb. “Next stop, my place,” she announced. “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”