The answer, surprisingly, had been lurking in the mirror neurons. The pattern of damage was easy to change, and she’d already managed to affect the way that parasite victims identified with each other — creating the first seeds of reciprocal animosity. While the plan had many obvious weaknesses, if she could get them interested in attacking each other, she estimated that she could reduce the rate of spread by as much as forty percent.
Even more important, she’d discovered that the parasite had a significant exposure-response relationship — the higher the initial parasitic load, the faster the onset of symptoms. She’d used that to convince Omidi that she was actually making progress in reducing the time to full symptoms when, in actuality, she was just giving progressively larger doses of infected blood to the test animals.
What he wasn’t happy about, though, was that this was creating a corresponding effect on the time to death. The fact that the believers were starting to slowly disappear seemed to indicate that Omidi was setting up an alternate group somewhere else in the facility to review her research and work on the time-to-death problem. She also had to assume that they would be testing her “modifications” on humans and that it wouldn’t be long before they figured out that they didn’t actually work.
That’s why it was so important that phase two of her plan be enacted quickly and decisively. Unfortunately, she hadn’t yet been able to come up with a phase two.
Sarie finished with the brain and went through the primitive decontamination procedures before entering the large room next to the lab. Five softies manning somewhat-dated computers watched her as she took a seat in front of the only terminal with an English operating system.
She was just starting to enter her notes when Yousef Zarin slid his chair up next to her.
“I know what you’re doing,” he said, leaning close and keeping his voice barely above a whisper.
“Excuse me?” she responded, continuing to enter numbers into a matrix of bogus mortality rates.
“I’ve been looking at your data and examined some of your samples myself.”
She smiled weakly through clenched teeth, refusing to let her growing fear affect her ability to think.
“Mirror neuron damage is evolving very quickly.”
“I have to apologize for my ignorance of neurology, Dr. Zarin. What are mirror neurons again?”
It was his turn to smile. “You might be surprised to know that I actually read your paper on the effects of toxoplasmosis on human behavior. Your intellectual gifts and grasp of brain function were very much on display.”
“I appreciate the compliment,” she said, sounding a little too cheerful for a woman in her position but finding it impossible to get the right balance. “It’s just that I’m not sure what—”
His voice lowered even more. “I believe that if these changes continue, victims of the parasite will no longer be able to differentiate between infected and healthy people.”
She stopped typing, but her fingers seemed frozen to the keyboard.
“It’s very clever,” Zarin continued. “I would have thought you’d simply try to reduce aggressive impulses, but of course that would have been too obvious, wouldn’t it? How do you say…I take my hat off to you.”
“I think you’re misinterpreting—”
“I don’t pretend to be your equal, Doctor, but I am not an uneducated man.”
“You…,” she stammered, trying to come up with something credible to say. “Maybe it’s a side effect of decreasing onset times that I missed. We could—”
He shook his head and she fell silent.
“No, the more I think about it, the more I see the brilliance of it. Given time, it could have a significant effect on the spread of the infection. Unfortunately, time is something we don’t have.”
“What?”
“We are not all fundamentalists and fanatics, Sarie. The time for more and more horrifying weapons is done. It must be. Technology has put too much power into men’s hands — the power to destroy everything that God has created.”
Was it a trick? Was he just trying to find out the details of what she had done in order to reverse the damage? How the hell was she supposed to know? The bottom line was, she’d been caught. There was no point to further scheming or protests. If Yousef Zarin was truly with her, he could potentially help her save millions of lives. If he was against her, she was already dead.
“You’re not going to tell Omidi?” she said, mindful of the ever-present cameras bolted to the ceiling above them.
“Omidi is a pig. This is an act of desperation — an evil perpetrated by politicians trying to cling to power and disguising it as piety. I will help you. But I’m afraid the path you’ve taken is of no use.”
He was right, of course. It had been her own act of desperation. In the unlikely event that she was given the time necessary to perfect the genetic modifications, they wouldn’t last. The parasite was too adaptable — if it were released in a place that didn’t have Africa’s geographic isolation, it would evolve with devastating speed, hiding its symptoms, modifying the way it spread, extending the contagion period in the people it infected.
In the back of her mind, she knew she should be cautious, but she so desperately needed someone to stand with her. To not be alone anymore.
“Is there a way out, Yousef ? Or a way to communicate with the outside world? I have friends who might be able to help.”
The Iranian shook his head. “We are a hundred meters underground and all messages leaving the facility have to be approved by Omidi personally.”
“Then we have to think of something else.”
He nodded. “And quickly. I suspect that the scientists who are no longer with us — the ones loyal to Omidi — are working on a way to transport the parasite outside the human body.”
“What? Are you sure?”
“He came to me and asked if I agreed that work on transportation should wait until the final genetic sequence was done and I supported you, but he asked questions that were too technical for him to have devised on his own. It was clear that his people were advising him that the modifications wouldn’t affect transportation modalities.”
“Then we have to get out of here, Yousef. We have to get help.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible. However, we are not powerless.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was brought here years ago when this was a secret bioweapons lab and asked to write a report on safety issues. There were many problems — systems that are archaic or nonfunctional, poorly thought-out procedures, unrepaired cracks in the walls and ceiling. The government counted on the facility’s isolation. The closest population center is a village two hours’ drive from here.”
“As near as I can tell, they didn’t listen to you. This place is a disaster waiting to happen.”
He nodded. “Shortly after my inspection, America attacked Iraq because of the WMD program they believed was going on there. My government feared the same fate could befall Iran and shut the facility down.”
“So you still understand the weaknesses in the systems here?”
“Better than anyone, I imagine.”
She leaned back in her chair and stared past him, watching the other people in the room doing their best not to call attention to themselves. She wondered what they’d say if they knew what she and Yousef were about to doom them to.
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