COSMOS magazine

Thursday, July 3

The front doors of the Theater Arts Building were locked. The place appeared deserted. Following Wayne's instructions precisely, heart thudding, mouth dry, Paul made his way around the building's perimeter. A heavyset business man stood near an Exit Only door on the east side of the building. Damn it! Maybe the man's presence had scared Wayne away.

"Over here!" the man called in a voice something like Payback's as Paul walked past.

"Wayne?"

"No, it's Paris fucking Hilton. Come on inside."

"Looks like the auxosome affected your appetite."

"Very funny. Listen, doc, I've been having headaches and episodes of short term memory loss, confusion, and like that. You know?"

"You really should let us do a complete check up on you, Wayne."

"Yeah, right. Like you're gonna do that for me."

"I don't feel comfortable giving you this injection without a medical. Especially since you've been experiencing problems. That's not altogether unexpected, since you weren't able to get the neuro-regulator shot on time. Still, the apoptotic enzymes should correct the problem. But..." Paul chose his words carefully to avoid offending Wayne, "I'm operating in the dark here. If we could get you to come in for—"

"I'm a kidnapper, remember? A wanted man. Just give me the shot."

Paul hesitated.

"The fucking shot," Wayne repeated. "If you want to see the kid alive again." He moved into the shadow of the door frame, took off his coat and held out his bared arm.

"Once I give you the shot, will you let Alex go?" At some stage Wayne would remember that he'd still require a third regulator dose, that holding Alex was his only get-free card.

"The boy wants me to take him to some ranch in the country. Said you'd tell me how to get there."

"Ranch? Cowboys and Indians, eh? Maybe that's just something Alex made up. He's an imaginative ten year old, Wayne." Paul tightened a tourniquet on the man's heavy upper arm.

"Come on, doc, let's not play games. I screwed up big time, but when I give my word I keep it. You're gonna have to trust me this one time." Wayne pushed his bare arm under Paul's nose.

Paul inserted the needle, injected the suspension. "Right, I've done what you wanted. Now please let me try to explain something to you. Do you know what chromosomes are?"

"Stop talking down to me like I'm stupid or something. Yes, I know what chromosomes are."

"Sorry, I'm just making sure we're talking the same language. You probably also know that human chromosomes are very similar to monkey chromosomes and dog chromosomes and mouse chromosomes." Paul paused to see how Wayne would take this statement; he merely nodded, and Paul continued. "A small change in the genetic material of an animal can cause a large change in the observable characteristics of the animal. What I injected into all four of us is a synthetic chromosome, a sort of box of tricks with extra genetic code."

"So you're changing my genes?"

"Adding to them. We still don't understand exactly how it works. The new chromosomes are designed to act as a switch that amplifies and regulates cell repair and growth, including the growth of neurons."

"Yeah, I know what neurons are. I finished high school, before—" Wayne broke off. "Neurons are brain cells, nerve cells."

"In that case you probably already know that the growth pattern of neurons varies at different stages in a human being's development."

"Yeah, you were talking about that in the lab, before I..."

"Right." Ye gods, was that guilt in the bastard's voice? "In a developing brain, the neurons grow rapidly and branch out in different directions."

"Axons and dendrites," said Wayne.

"Yes." The son of a bitch really had been reading about neurons. "As the brain matures, some of the branches die back, like being pruned."

"Yeah, you said that too. And then they stabilize. I read that, but I don't really understand it. What makes cells just stop growing?" Wayne leaned forward, clearly interested.

"There's a cascade of chemical switches that causes the neurons to shift from one stage to the next. Drew and I think the auxosomes—the new chromosomes, that is—that they regulate the switches themselves. We've pushed our neurons back into the rapid growth stage that normally ends in childhood."

"That explains why... I haven't felt this way since I was a kid. Interested in things, know what I mean?"

"Yes, I know exactly what you mean. Now, the reason I'd like you to get a medical checkup is that if the switches aren't regulated in exactly the right way—if they stay active for too long—your neurons may grow too rapidly."

"Fuck!" Wayne suddenly laughed coarsely, rolling down his sleeve and pulling his business suit coat back on. "So my head really might swell up and explode? Thought that shit only happened in Stephen King movies. I've been feeling that way for days."

"Well, not quite." Paul broke the hypo's needle, put the used set away in his pocket. "There are other control systems, they'd stop the overgrowth before it went that far. But yes, the symptoms you mentioned—headache, memory loss, confusion, violent emotional swings. Look, Wayne, the four of us are the only people this's ever been tried on. I was working on a way to insert the regulators along with the auxosomes so there's no need for follow-up injections. It's working well in the mouse trials. But obviously I didn't have that ready when you..." He tried to contain his anger, keep his voice level. "I just can't be sure what the unregulated auxosomes are doing to you."

"And you don't care, do you?" Wayne, too, was furious again. "You're the scourge of Gaia, you fucking scientists."

Paul backed away. "Scientists? You pointed a gun in my face. You threatened to kill us all unless I—"

"Yeah, yeah." Without a break, the man had exhausted his fury. He slumped against the wall, rubbing his eyes.

Watching him carefully, Paul chose to stand his ground, breathing carefully, bringing his pulse down. He could smell the stench of his own sweat. His mind roared down half a dozen tracks at once. "Wayne, I'd like to run some psychological tests. You'd improve your own chances."

"Yeah. And it'd be good for the textbooks, and your Nobel Prize." He sighed heavily. "You're not talking about doing some kind of test right now?"

"No, no," Paul told him hastily. "Let's get Alex safely back to his mother. You probably want to be out of town as soon as possible."

"Did she report me to the cops?"

"I don't know." Paul met the shadowed eyes candidly. "After the crash she was unconscious for a while. They might've interviewed her by now, but I doubt it. She was pretty groggy when I talked to her. Still, play it safe, wouldn't you think?"

"Yeah. Better safe than sorry. So let's get the show on the road, doc. Where's this ranch of yours?"

"It's not my ranch, Wayne, and I'm not free to tell you the exact location. I have to ask the owner if it's okay to go there. We need a meeting place. Neutral territory."

"That'll do."

"Do you have a car? How about the auxosome side effects? Can you drive safely?" Paul had a brief vision of Wayne, stoned or ill, driving off the road or crashing into another car. But the chances of a good outcome seemed much higher if he trusted Wayne than with any other alternative.

"I'll have a car. If I start to feel bad, I'll pull over and rest until I'm okay again."

"Right. Just west of Junction there's a place called the Lucky Star Motel." He could hardly forget it, because of its preposterous billboard—a Texas Longhorn cow jumping over a laughing quarter moon wearing a five-pointed star as a hat. "I'll get a room there and wait until you show up. Look for the black Humvee parked outside. That way you won't have to ask for my room number at the office."

"I'm not sure when we'll be there. I have to get some money together for the trip."

"Here." Paul took a money clip from his pocket, handed Wayne three fifty dollar bills. "I'll wait at the Lucky Star until you get there. Make it as soon as possible."

"Hey." Wayne was suddenly suspicious again. "You said... Back in the lab you were talking about three shots, not just two. We gonna find some way for me to get the third shot?"

"Sure we are," Paul said, walking away. "Just so long as nothing happens to Alex. Or Jill." Or me, he thought, the flesh crawling over his exposed back.

Thursday, July 3

Wayne half expected the kid to be gone when he returned to the costume storage room, but Alex lay stretched out in a pile of clothes he'd pulled from a box, just as he had been when Wayne left, dressed as a girl.

"Alex?" The pale figure lay perfectly still. Shit, the kid had something bad wrong with him. Maybe he'd died. Frantically, Wayne grabbed at the boy's shoulders to shake him, suddenly remembered Fern talking about some babysitter that killed a kid by shaking it. Instead, he gave him a slap on the cheek.

"Hey!" Alex opened his eyes, scowled indignantly at Wayne. "Don't slap me."

"Just a little pat to wake you up. Time to hit the road. We gotta find a car."

"Okay."

Safest thing to borrow would be some ride ordinary enough to be inconspicuous and new enough to be reliable. They got lucky in the parking lot of Mr. Gatti's Pizza: a late model Ford Ranger with doors unlocked and keys in the ignition. He lifted Alex into the front, tossed the wagon into the bed, slid behind the wheel and took off. It was that easy.

"Even has a full tank of gas!" he told Alex jubilantly.

"Won't the cops be looking for these plates?" the boy asked.

"Yeah, soon as they finish chowing down, the owners of this pickup'll report it stolen. So just to be on the safe side, we're gonna switch license plates with another vehicle."

"Cool," the kid said.