Desh considered. “I’m guessing this signaled Moriarty that you had made a breakthrough and didn’t need to experiment further.”
“That’s right. A few days later my condo was broken into again. I had long since stopped keeping records in a lab notebook. By then I was keeping my notes on my computer. The file was encoded and also protected by security I had devised while I was enhanced. Even if someone breached my computer, they’d have to decode the file. But a breach wasn’t possible. Not by a member of Homo sapiens at any rate.” She frowned deeply. “Which goes to show that just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you can’t be incredibly stupid at the same time.”
“Moriarty was able to open the file?”
She nodded. “After he broke into my condo, he must have taken one of the gellcaps that Morgan had stolen. He sat at the computer, enhanced, and was easily able to bypass my security.”
Kira scowled, clearly annoyed with herself even now. “I was lucky,” she continued. “I had been paranoid enough to only keep records of individual animal experiments on the computer, and philosophical musings. The actual step by step and gene by gene instructions for the longevity therapy, and for the second level of intelligence enhancement, were stored on a key-ring flash drive I kept with me at all times. There was no mention in my computer, whatsoever, that I had been working on an even greater level of intelligence enhancement. Moriarty still knows nothing about this. But I did have notes on the longevity therapy. He couldn’t get the recipe, but he learned that I had found a way to extend life.”
Desh’s eyes narrowed. “Smith knew you had slowed the aging process by half. He also said your ultimate plan on the road to immortality was to design nanobots to patrol the bloodstream, and then find a way to transfer consciousness.”
“That’s right. This general plan was recorded on my computer. It was my initial thinking before I realized what a disaster even the first step would be. Exactly as Smith described.”
“Interesting,” said Desh. “So do you think he’s Moriarty?”
Kira considered. “Maybe, but my intuition tells me no. I think he’s just Moriarty’s lieutenant.”
“Go on,” said Desh, pushing his barely touched dessert to the side, having concluded that he couldn’t split his focus between Kira Miller and the entrance and eat a dripping sundae at the same time.
“I knew as soon as Moriarty realized I’d discovered the fountain of youth he wouldn’t rest until he had it,” continued Kira. “Which meant I was in big trouble. I put the flash drive in a stainless steel pill bottle and buried it where I thought no one would ever find it. I memorized its GPS coordinates. And then I enhanced myself. I was panicked, and my thinking was scattershot, so even though I had just promised myself never to do it again, I felt I had no other choice.”
Desh nodded sympathetically. Under the circumstances he couldn’t blame her.
“Once I had transformed myself,” she continued, “it became clear what I needed to do. The instructions for reconstructing my therapies were dozens and dozens of typed pages long. To be absolutely certain that the secret was safe, even if I was under duress, I imprisoned my memories of the formulas and the GPS coordinates to the buried flash drive: even the memory of the general area in which it was buried. I partitioned these memories behind an impenetrable mental wall.” She sighed. “It wasn’t easy.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Desh.
“Even enhanced, finding and isolated specific memory traces in my own mind was an extraordinarily difficult challenge.”
“But you were able to do it?”
“Yes. I structured these memories so I could only access them if I made a powerful, conscious decision that I wanted to. And like a Chinese finger trap, I set it up so the more I fought to get at the memories while under duress, the stronger the barrier would become.” She paused. “As it turned out, I didn’t do this a moment too soon.”
Desh leaned forward intently.
“A few hours later Larry Lusetti broke into my condo and took me hostage,” said Kira. “He wanted the secret to extended life and told me he wasn’t leaving without it. He used truth drugs on me. They were very effective. I told him about the discovery and why I hadn’t shared it with the world. But when he asked about age retardation, I told him I didn’t remember the recipe.”
“Which was now absolutely true,” said Desh.
Kira nodded. She took a final bite of her sundae, her spoon clinking loudly against the sides of the tall parfait glass as she retrieved it, and pushed it aside. “Unfortunately, I was unable to hold anything else back from him. Under the drugs I told him about the flash drive. I told him exactly how I had partitioned the GPS coordinates in my memory so I couldn’t retrieve them under duress. He dutifully reported this to Moriarty.”
“And did Moriarty believe you?”
“I assume so. If not, I think he would have had Lusetti use torture in addition to truth drugs, which he never did.” Kira paused as if bracing herself to continue, dreading the prospect.
Desh could sense something was very wrong. “What happened then?” he prompted gently.
“I woke up the next morning, still a hostage.” She looked off into the distance and a tear slowly formed in the corner of one eye. “And Lusetti told me they had my brother, Alan.”
Desh’s eyes widened as the connections became obvious.
“Lusetti told me his boss was in Alan’s home in Cincinnati,” she whispered in horror, “and would burn my brother alive unless I gave him the secret.”
“Did you?” said Desh softly.
She looked pale as she shook her head no.
Desh realized he had asked a stupid question. If Moriarty already had the fountain of youth, he wouldn’t be so desperate to capture her alive.
“I knew that Moriarty was a man without principles before his brain was rewired,” she explained somberly. “But if he had the secret to extended life, he could become the biggest monster in history. What could stop him? He could enhance his intelligence and could use the promise of extended life to amass power beyond imagining. The kind of power that Smith accused me of wanting.”
Kira stopped and a single tear shook itself loose and rolled slowly down her cheek.
Moriarty had forced her to make an impossible decision, Desh realized. He could tell this had caused a deep rift to her psyche that would never heal. “You knew the stakes, and you did what you had to do,” he said softly. “I admire you for that.”
She shook her head as tears now welled up in both of her eyes. “I wasn’t a hero,” she said miserably. “I was a weakling. I would have done anything to save Alan, even at the risk of unleashing another Hitler on the world. I tried to unlock the memory with all of my might. But I couldn’t,” she whispered. “The barrier I had constructed was too good.” Kira lowered her eyes. “It didn’t matter, anyway. I knew in my heart that Moriarty would never let Alan go. Once I gave him what he wanted, he would kill Alan and me both—and Lusetti as well. We would be dangerous loose ends.”
Desh realized her analysis was dead on. She had truly been in a no win situation. “So what did you do?” he asked.
“I needed to buy time to rescue my brother. So I told Lusetti the truth. I told him I was trying but couldn’t reach these memories. The software I had set up in my mind to guard them wasn’t fooled. I explained I was under more duress because of the threat to my brother than if I was being physically tortured.”
“Did he believe you?”
“I think so,” she said, absently wiping a tear away with the back of her hand. “I pleaded with him to make sure Moriarty wouldn’t hurt Alan for twenty-four hours while I found a way to unlock my memories. He told me Moriarty agreed to this.”