COSMOS magazine

Monday, June 23

"Paul?" Alex called from across the room where he was filling the food dispensers.

"What is it, my man?"

"This brown mouse looks sick."

"Yes, I gave her a dose of something new I'm working on. It makes the mice a little sick at first, but after that, they seem to be healthier—and smarter—than ever. Someday this might help get you better, Alex." Jill caught his look as he lowered his voice. "I think the auxosomal proof-reading enzymes might even be able to fix multiple mutations. They'd find the insertion or deletion, snip it out, and reinsert—"

Someone was standing in the doorway. Turning, Jill saw a stocky man with short, dark brown hair. His face, though not unattractive, would have been easy to forget except that the eyes were terrified.

"Looking for someone, mate?" Paul jumped off the stool.

"You Paul Gibson?" the fellow said between clenched teeth.

"That's me." The two stared at each other for long seconds, until Paul broke the silence. "And you are?"

"Call me..." He hesitated. "What the hell. Payback." The man locked the door to the lab behind him, then stepped over to the mouse pens. With a little cry, Alex ran to stand beside Jill.

"Well, what can I do for you, Payback?" Paul didn't seem particularly concerned, but Jill was appalled. She put her arm around Alex and pulled him close; with no further notice, Payback lunged at her. Horrified, Jill saw that he was pointing a large handgun at her.

"Everybody hold still, or I'll blow this little lady's head off." Payback's left hand, holding the big gun, was shaking, and Jill feared he might squeeze the trigger by accident. Her best hope for staying alive might be to calm the guy down.

"My purse is over there on the table," she said carefully. "There's some money in my wallet, which you're welcome to take."

"I didn't come here for money. Are you stupid or something? Why would I come all the way up here to steal someone's wallet?" But he crossed to the table, rummaged through the purse, emptied the wallet. Keeping the gun fixed on Jill, he pocketed the bank notes. For a moment his eyes flicked down. Oh shit, her driver's license.

Alex began to cry, and Jill saw that when Payback had shifted his focus, the gun shifted too, so that now it was pointing at her son. Slowly, so as not to alarm the man, she moved until her body was between Alex and the gun.

Paul cleared his throat, and Payback jerked his head around. "I'm serious, man. You so much as move an inch, this lady's going to die."

"Just relax, mate." Arms hanging loosely at his sides, Paul spoke in his normal calm voice, as though he dealt with mad gunmen every day. "No need to hurt anyone. Why don't you tell me what you want, and I'll try to help you. But we don't have any narcotics in this lab."

"I want some of that smartness drug. That stuff that turns people into geniuses."

After a shocked moment of palpable disbelief, Paul shrugged and nodded. "The auxosome? Okay. No worries. I can do that. Hang on just a moment and I'll fix some up for you. Really, there's no need for the weapon, won't you please put it away? You're terrifying the little boy."

He'll get some sort of tranquilliser, Jill thought in a daze of hope. He'll load the hypo up with some major shit that'll knock this Payback creep out until we can get the police to the lab.

"Oh, one more thing." Payback added. "Make up two doses of it, one for me and one for you. That way I'll know you're not trying to poison me."

Paul stared back silently for what seemed a long time. Finally he said, "Look, Payback, you need to understand something. The auxosomes are still in the experimental stage. They've never been tested on people. Never. Only on animals. When they're given to the mice, the mice get sick at first."

"I just heard you tell the kid that after they get over being sick, they're healthier and smarter than ever."

"That's true with the mice. So far. But it might make people a lot sicker. We don't know."

"I'm willing to take the risk, and you better be too, if you don't want to have a bloody mess to clean up off your nice clean floor." Payback poked at Jill with the barrel of the gun.

"Don't you hurt my mom!" Alex struggled to free himself from Jill's arm.

"Well, aren't you a cocky little runt. Lady, you'd better teach your kid some..." Looking closely at her son for the first time, seeing Alex's patchy hair, he fell silent; a spasm of disgust crossed his face. "Somebody already run an experiment on you, kid?"

Fury. Rage. Terror. Just stay calm. Breathe slowly. Jill realized she was squeezing Alex so tightly he must be terribly uncomfortable. She loosened her grip, thinking bitterly of how today might have been her last chance ever to touch Paul as well.

"All right, Payback. I'll make up two doses of the drug."

"Make up four. More the merrier. We'll start with the kid."

She screamed. "Paul, no!"

"It'll be okay, Jill."

"You fucking prick," she yelled at Payback, spray bursting from her lips. Never in her life had she been so icily furious. "You'll inject my kid over my dead body. Go on and shoot me, I don't care."

Paul said in an absurdly calm voice, "Jill, Alex needs his mother to take care of him. Please don't do anything."

"Everyone gets the drug," Payback said. "Alex first. That's your name, right, buddy?"

"Mom?" Alex whispered. "I'm sorry I talked you into coming to the lab."

"Shut up!" Payback drew back his lips like a growling dog. "Hey, Paul, I'm keeping an eye on you, man. You make any move except to get the drug ready, and pock-face here and her bald-headed kid are history."

"We have to do what he says," Paul was murmuring in a soothing tone. "Jill, look, I'm ninety-nine percent certain we won't suffer any bad side effects from the auxosome. Not compared to getting shot dead, anyway. Sorry, bad joke." To Payback he said, "I need to measure the bolus based on body weight, Payback. How much do you weigh?"

"One eighty-five."

"Okay, same as me, roughly. I'm going to walk to the other side of the room and take four bottles from the warm room. That's where I keep the auxosomes, because there's a very narrow range of temperatures at which the viral vector remains stable."

Payback nodded his head curtly. "Do it. Get what you need, but don't try anything clever. It better be the drug you give me and not just water or something. I want you to show it to me."

Time slowed down, dragging on and on. Payback fidgeted, switching the gun from left hand to right. The tip of the fourth finger and over half of the pinky on his right hand, Jill saw, were gone, nothing but ugly scar tissue.

"Quit staring at my hand!" Payback kicked hard at Jill's ankle, and she tightened her grip on Alex again, afraid he would again try to defend her. "You won't be making any police reports, bitch."

At last, Paul turned toward them.

"It's ready." Paul walked slowly toward Payback, holding a tray with four thin, one-use hypodermic syringes.

"Shit, no, I hate needles, man. I want to swallow mine with water."

"It has to go directly into the bloodstream."

Payback hesitated. "I need to think." His eyes were fixed on the syringes, but he kept the gun pointed at Jill. "Do the kid."

"Chin up, son," Paul said, kneeling down beside the trembling boy. "Lean over, I'm going to give you a little shot in the leg, your arm's too thin. It'll sting a little bit, but you'll be okay in a moment."

"I hate 'jections, like he does."

"Can you be brave?"

The boy's eyes were filled to overflowing with tears; he nodded.

"Okay. Deep breath." Paul eased the tip of the needle beneath the skin of Alex's right thigh, withdrew it, dabbed with a medicated square of gauze. "You all right, honey?"

"Sure." Alex was crying silently, but he nodded.

"Give me your arm," Paul told the gunman.

"I'm not an idiot," Payback said. "You two first. I'll tell you which needles to use. But first we wait for half an hour. I want to see what happens to the kid."

"The janitors might walk in on us. Let's get it over with. You can choose one of these two, Payback. Your weight's close enough to mine."

"The door's locked."

"They have keys, you know."

After five endless minutes, with Alex visibly unhurt, Payback reserved one of the syringes with shaking fingers, more agitated than ever. "Okay, inject her and yourself," he said, still pointing the gun at Jill. Paul rolled up one sleeve, swabbed the skin of his left arm with an alcohol patch, took a syringe from the tray, flicked it with a practiced finger, slid the needle in.

"Go on! Inject it!"

Paul pushed the plunger. After a moment, he swabbed Jill's arm, injected her.

"Now me. Hurry!" Payback held out his arm and winced, his face going pale, as Paul injected him with the drug. Jill wondered in a wild moment of hope if Payback were going to faint.

"Mom?" Alex whispered. "I need to go to the potty."

"I thought I told you to shut up." Payback reached around Jill and grabbed the front of Alex's shirt.

"Don't you touch him!" Jill pushed at Payback's arm; there was a deafening blast, and Payback's body was jolted backwards. Jill could see Alex's mouth wide open, screaming, but she could hear nothing but a low-pitched roar. It took a moment for her to realize that Payback's gun must have gone off. Paul, face bloodless, turned to look at her, took a step toward her, stopped when Payback, hands shaking, pointed the gun at her head.

Alex went limp in her arms, then jerked convulsively. Her first thought was utterly desperate: he had been hit when the gun went off! No, thank god, that couldn't be right. A bullet would have hit her first. Her son's face was ashen, his lips blue, his jeans stained with urine. If he slid to the floor he might injure his head, but she was afraid if she moved to lower him more gently Payback would panic and fire another shot.

She swung her face up toward Payback, tried to make him meet her eye, but he stared fixedly at the top of her head. "My boy is very ill," she told him, barely able to hear her own words over the roaring in her ears. "You must let me call an ambulance. He might die! Please. Kill me if you have to, but please let me call a doctor for my little boy." Surely someone must have heard the gunshot, she thought. These labs usually had a couple of students or researchers, even in the evening, people wandering in to check on their experiments, tending to the animals. Why the hell wasn't anyone trying to get in here to see what had happened?

"Shit!" The gunman's face was a livid mask of fear and hatred, staring at Alex's sagging body. "You asshole! You've poisoned us all!"

"Alex has cancer, you moron!" Her voice was ragged, edging toward a scream; she didn't think she would be able to remain still much longer. "I've got to get him to a doctor. I think he's dying."

Paul caught her eye. "Payback, you need to let Jill take care of her son. He's seriously ill. He needs to lie down. She's not going anywhere. Just let her put the child down."

Payback studied Jill and Alex for a few long seconds and finally said, "Okay."

"Thank you." Jill gently lowered Alex to the floor, and a little colour returned to his face. His heartbeat was weak, but regular.

Paul was saying, "There's something else you need to know. Another two injections are required, two weeks apart."

"Bullshit," Payback said. "You're making it up."

Damn it, Jill thought at the same moment, why bring up the need for extra treatments? Then she understood: he was providing an incentive, a motive to stop Payback from killing them immediately, as the gunman surely intended.

"Call them booster shots. Genetic regulators. Look, the auxosomes will start to multiply very fast inside our cells, like a virus. But they won't harm us. They regress some of our body and brain cells back to stem cells, how they were in the womb, and force others to build new cells."

"Extra brain cells," Payback said.

"Many more than we need," Paul told him with terrible, contained calm. "It's what happens in the foetal brain..." He paused, plainly searching for words. "There are two processes that put the brakes on neurogenesis. On nerve-building, right? That's the process we just kick-started. One's called apoptosis—" He paused again. "Call it nerve pruning. Like cutting brambles back, see? Without the two regulator shots, our brain cells might just keep multiplying in an uncontrolled way. I can't make any guarantees." In a hard, angry tone he said, "Damn it, this was years away from human clinical testing." Paul glanced sideways, then, as though he heard something. Instantly, his face was impassive. Jill, ears still ringing from the gunshot, didn't catch anything until a fraction of a second later. Raised voices in the hallway.

The voices were getting closer. Jill could make out some of the words now. "...check this one... clear... of the building."

A rattling sound: someone trying to turn the locked doorknob.

A masculine voice shouted, "Police!" Something crashed against the door.

Panicked, Payback looked wildly around the room, ran to the nearest window and climbed out, moving amazingly fast. Paul ran toward him, blocking Jill and Alex.

There must have been a ledge under the window. The intruder faced the room, raised the gun, pointed it at Paul. As a second crash brought the door down, he fired the gun again.