“Listen,” my dad said, his teeth almost clenched as he held back the anger, “Lisa is already sick. If this thing spreads, there is no way her immune system will stand a chance. The telomere virus will kill her. We only have a limited amount of time to contain this thing. It’s your responsibility. I run the operation, you run the lab. That was the deal. As of now, the op is shut down. I’ve already informed the Secretary of State.” He paused and I held my breath. Lisa was my mom’s name. Was he talking about her?
“You prick. If we let this get any farther, who knows what the end result will be. We’ve got to get these cities quarantined and under lockdown. Now. I don’t care whether you have a cure or not. Not that I believe you in the first place. Not after what you’ve done.”
Dad walked out of the living room toward the front door, which was open to the external screen door. I peeked out and saw him standing, staring out the screen door, and listening to the man on the phone. What did he call the man? Thyssen? What a weird name.
“If we don’t lock this down, any cure you have will not be able to catch up to the spread of the virus. The Telomere Project is dead. Let’s fix this before any more people follow suit.” I jumped when he slammed his hand against the doorjamb, slapping the phone shut. He whirled towards the kitchen, and caught me looking at him from the corner of the sofa. His demeanor shifted, relaxed. He smiled at me and cocked his head.
“No sneaking about, Rock. What’re you doing?”
“Playing soldiers,” I said, holding up the two dolls. He came over, sat on the sofa and motioned me to his lap.
“Who was winning?” he asked. “Good guys? Or, the bad guys?” He asked the questions innocently enough, but I saw something strange in his eyes and told him the truth.
“The bad guys. But, they don’t always win. Almost never.” He nodded and then hugged me tight.
“We should never let the bad guys win, huh, my little Rock?” he said. “But they still manage to every once in a while. So what do we do about it?”
“Never stop fighting,” I replied, repeating the advice my dad had given me so often I could never forget it.
“You got it.” He pulled me in for a gentle kiss on the forehead and said, “Let’s go upstairs and see if mommy’s cold is getting any better.”
I regained consciousness just as an older woman in white was pulling the needle from Kel’s arm. I tried to move, but I now had the straps back around my wrists, with additional points of constraint at my ankles. There were locks at each point. Wonderful, I thought. Let’s see Kel’s double-jointed ass get us out of this one.
“What’re you doing to him?” I asked, still groggy from Thyssen’s punch. The whole right side of my face felt like it was twice its original size and throbbing like a son of a bitch. Luckily, the pain seemed to be easing a bit with every passing minute. My left shoulder, just above my collar-bone, was aching as well. That must have been from the damned syringe with which Thyssen had attacked me.
“I gave him the Nanomere9 serum. Just like you got. From Dr. Thyssen.” The woman glanced around, but no one other than her and us prisoners were in the room. “Sorry about that.” She gave me a sincere look of regret and then turned to walk back to the sterile workbench.
“What will it do to us?” I asked. I suspected that I already had a good notion of what it was supposed to do. Just not what it would actually do.
“You really want to know?” the nurse asked, turning to face me. Kel had not moved since I’d awakened and I was growing concerned. The nurse noticed my glance and nodded in understanding. “His body is not taking to the serum as well as yours.” She shrugged. “Not sure why. Some subjects do better than others. But, in the end, they all get better. At least, they have since Nanomere7. That’s when he got it right.”
“Thyssen, you mean?” She nodded at me and then sat down on the metal stool.
“I know what you know. My name is Karen Hollister. I’m a doctor specializing in cryogenics.”
“Cryogenics?” I could not hide my surprise. What would cryogenics have to do with the serum?
“Yes,” Hollister said. “I maintain the CryoLab facility. It was the first lab when you came off of the elevator. That’s where we keep them.”
“Them, who?”
“The President. The First Lady. The Secretary of State. Two brilliant scientists you probably never even heard of. You must have been a baby when it happened,” she said, noting my apparent age.
“I was six. Why the hell do you have those people frozen in there?”
“Thyssen thinks he can safely restore them to even better health than they had before. I’m doubtful. But, he has done wonders in the area of life extension. Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps Nanomere9 is the cure-all. I guess we’ll see.”
“You said you know what I know. What did you mean by that?”
“Thyssen. It’s his fault. He let the world die. Honestly, it doesn’t matter if Nanomere9 is the key to healthy extended life. What he did to get to this point negates all the good he’s been trying to do. That’s the way I see it, anyway.”
“What is this Nanomere9, then?” I asked. Since Hollister was talking, I wanted to get as much as I could from her.
“Well, a few things led up to Thyssen’s discovery and first serum. He did have the best of intentions — as selfish as they may have grown. In 2011, there was a scientist, a biologist with Rockefeller University, named Steinman. He discovered the immune system’s sentinel dendritic cells and the possibilities of harnessing their power to extend life. The dendritic cells could be used to bolster the immune system, to curb the detrimental effects of infections and various other communicable diseases. He even used it to extend his own life, after he wound up with pancreatic cancer.
“Anyway, a few other scientific leaps happened after that. Beutler and Hoffman discovered the receptor proteins that could be utilized in conjunction with the dendritic cells. Later, in the early ‘20s, there was the breakthrough with the enhancement of telomerase enzyme activity. Governments began funding military research that was geared towards telomere repair strategies combined with advanced medical nanorobotics.”
“That was the Telomere Project?” I asked before I could stop myself. Hollister peered at me in curiosity, but nodded acknowledgement.
“Even though he was warned against specific human testing, Thyssen had a set of six subjects, all volunteers, mind you. The Telomere6 serum, the one he thought was perfect, is the one that killed everyone off. None of the subjects seemed overtly affected by the serum, other than their immunity dropped to almost nil. Thyssen called the test a failure, issued the subjects a range of immunodeficiency drugs and sent them on their way. It wasn’t two weeks later that he found the trouble in some blood work he was performing on the failed subjects.”
“Where was the fuck-up?” I turned to Kel who had finally come to and entered the conversation in his own unique manner. I smiled at him, glad to see he was looking alive. Hollister came over and began taking his temperature and blood pressure, while still detailing the end of the world.
“Telomere6 worked a little too well. The problem was actually in the immune system of the subjects, themselves. Nanorobotics was not as advanced as it needed to be. The immune system saw the nanobots as system invaders and tried to destroy them. The response of the serum, nanobots included, was to counterattack in order to repair what it saw as a damaged system. The serum bonded to the immune system, essentially destroying it.”
“Well, that sucks,” Kel said.