Chapter 5
“We did it. Everything our team has poured years of research and work into has come to fruition. There’s much yet to determine, but now we have living test subjects. I’ll give the team a day to celebrate, but then it’s back to work.” – Excerpt from the journal of Ingrid Voss, leader of Island Three
Six years ago
Marcus
I put my security badge, wallet, and car keys into a break room locker, then go back out to the main lab area to wash my hands.
My first year of medical school changed me. I had to become even more disciplined than I already was, pretty much giving up my social life to study, work, and get in enough sleep.
The PHP project has changed me even more, though. A lecturer in residence at my med school, Dr. Randall McClain, recruited me to join it in January, and while I’m glad to have my first year of med school under my belt, I’m more excited about being able to work full-time for PHP this summer.
The Partnership for Human Progress has goals so big they seem impossible, and bottomless funding to work toward them. I don’t know who the wealthy investors who hired McClain and other scientists for this research are, but I’m grateful to be included in it.
Dr. Paul Martinez, a geneticist, looks up from the microscope he’s hunched over. “You stone-cold sober, kid?”
“Yes, sir. I was out with friends, but I only drank water.”
He goes back to his work. I get why he’d question someone my age who walks into the lab at this hour, but the truth is, I didn’t even want to go out with my friends.
All evening I was thinking about this place.
We’ve already accomplished things that would blow away the entire scientific community if we were allowed to reveal any of it.
The nondisclosure agreements force us to stay quiet, though. I thought I’d be leaving my mark on the world by becoming a doctor, but I’m starting to wonder if this might be my true legacy.
I’m the youngest in the group of twenty-six people Dr. McClain put together, and though I still don’t think I belong in this elite company, I’m soaking it all up anyway. There’s a Nobel Prize winner in our group. A former astronaut. The world’s leading expert on plant diseases.
We range in age from my twenty-three to seventy-one and hail from eleven different home countries. Two of our team members use computerized translators to communicate with the rest of us in English.
Yeva Zykova is a twenty-six-year-old genius from Russia. She’s one of the smartest people in the world, though you’d never guess it looking at her. She has short, pale-pink hair and survives entirely on ramen noodles and condensed milk, which she eats right out of the can with a spoon.
“You want?” she asks me absently, not even looking up from the notebook she’s writing in.
She means sex. Yeva let me know the day after we met—through hand gestures and mimed thrusts since she spoke no English then—that she’s down to fuck anytime I want. No matter how many times I decline, she keeps offering.
“I’m good, thanks. How’s the research going?”
“Progress is there.”
I sit down at my workstation, my eyelids heavy with fatigue, but my mind wide awake. Dr. McClain left a printed copy of a paper I wrote on my desk, marked up with his comments in red pen.
We don’t have internet access here because we can’t risk anyone gaining access to our work. Yeva was smuggled out of Russia to join us, and she had to agree to live in hiding not just now, but forever. None of my friends and family have any idea what I’m working on.
I’m not on the virus team, and I don’t know everything about it. But I do know the team has created a virus patterned after biological weapons that already exist. They’re using that virus to make a vaccine and an antidote.
When the work is complete, biological weapons should become obsolete. The vaccine will trigger human DNA mutations to make people immune to biological weapons.
“Why aren’t you playing the Pixies?” Dr. P asks as he walks into the lab.
He’s Korean, and he said he’s been over people mispronouncing his name for more than fifty years, so we should just call him Dr. P and leave it at that—no first name.
“It’s Pixies,” Martinez grumbles. “There’s no the. Just Pixies.”
“Pardon fucking me,” P says. “Just turn on some music, will you? I hate listening to the rats.”
Martinez types into his iPad, and music starts playing over the lab’s sound system. I turn my attention to the lengthy summary of tests I did on rats.
Only nine of the thirty rats I used in this round died, which is good. I’m working to figure out what aspects of the compounds we’re testing are killing some of them.
The compound team’s work is broad—we’re trying to find ways to make humans more adaptable and resilient.
Able to withstand harsher climates and survive on less food and sleep.
We’re also engineering food that grows faster and is hardier; if we’re successful, we’ll be able to save hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of people as the climate changes and the population grows.
There’s an indoor garden adjacent to the lab, the spaces divided by a glass wall.
Dr. Lucy Hollis has it filled with tall corn stalks, rows of tomato, bean, broccoli and potato plants, and lots of different greens.
Grow lights simulate sunlight, and sprinklers in the ceiling kick on every day at eleven a.m. lab time to keep everything watered.
Even her workspace has plants all over it. I only recognize the aloe, but there are several different ones, one trailing across a stack of books on her desk.
I read the notes Dr. McClain left me.
Nice work, Marcus. Let’s get the next round going immediately. I’ve ranked the remaining variables.
I read it again, the rush of warmth reminding me of being complimented by my college football coach. Sure, I played to win, and I played for my team, but mostly I played for him. Growing up without a dad, coaches and teachers were my role models.
Even now, at twenty-three years old, that feeling is still there. I know my mom is proud of me, but when McClain tells me I’ve done well, it’s like a glass of ice water after a long desert walk.
“Marcus,” Dr. P calls from the other side of the lab. “Check on your rats, something’s up.”
I go over to the individually ventilated cages where the rats are kept. After a few steps, I hear a high-pitched shriek that makes my shoulders sink with disappointment.
One of the rats is having a seizure. It’s happened before—many times, and the seizures are usually fatal.
When I reach the cage, I can tell the creature is in agony. Terror swims in its eyes. A stab of guilt slices through me over being a rat murderer.
“Dr. P,” I call over my shoulder. “Can you come take a look at this?”
He walks up behind me, making a humming noise as he looks into the cage.
“Euthanize it,” he says. “That’s the humane thing to do. You know how?”
“Yeah. I haven’t done it before because they’re usually already dead when I find them, but I know how.”
He takes off his rubber gloves. “I’ll watch you do it. Get your supplies.”
I go over to a cabinet and open the door, taking out the things I’ll need.
I guess that makes ten rats that didn’t survive the latest strain.