“It is. Mutations in the TERT can kill or slow the function of telomerase, which allows telomeres to become too short as cells divide. As you probably know—”
“Shortened telomeres are believed to be the main cause of age-related breakdown in our cells.”
“Exactly,” he said. “So it’s another antiaging gene. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say someone was trying to turn you into a superhuman. And this list is just the alleles we have some knowledge of.”
“There were more changes to my genome?”
“Thousands. We’re cross-referencing as much as we can, but it’s a big job, and a lot of the affected gene systems and how they interact with one another and your body are unknown. There are even alterations in your junk DNA, which are way outside our understanding.”
Even in a post-Scythe world, what Edwin was talking about was impossible. The most successful dark labs we busted might manage to manipulate a handful of genes successfully. An entire suite of changes was beyond anything I’d encountered or even heard of. While there are approximately twenty-five thousand known genes, the variance of their interactions approaches infinity. And beyond the known genes, our genome contains numerous control regions and so-called junk DNA, which aren’t junk at all but a collective, self-adjusting web of systems, evolved under the selective pressure of existence for more than three billion years. It added up to a system of unimaginable complexity, one where any single change—let alone thousands—might express itself in dozens of unforeseen ways.
“Does my family know I’m here?” I asked.
“They know you’ve been detained under suspicion of self-editing.”
“I want to talk to Beth.”
“That isn’t possible right now.”
“I didn’t do this to myself, Edwin.”
“Then who did?”
“I don’t know. Henrik Soren? Whoever devised what we walked into in Denver.”
“You didn’t show any genetic changes immediately after Denver. We ran an analysis.”
“If I had the know-how and equipment to change my own DNA, why would I have my doctor’s office run an analysis at some highly regulated lab? Why take such an absurdly stupid risk unless I couldn’t do it to myself? Let’s stick to the facts, not to convenient witch hunts. I’ve already stood trial at one of those. We know that someone infected me with a package designed to alter my DNA. We assumed—big mistake—that it didn’t work. But it was obviously a sleeper package, remaining dormant for the first month or so.”
“Is that even possible?”
“I mean, is any of this? Do you understand the level of mastery required to pull this off?”
Edwin powered off his tablet. He was looking at me like there was something else he wanted to say.
I waited to hear what it was.
Instead, he stood and walked out of the room through a door beside the terminal.
My hands shook. A trail of icy sweat ran down my spine. I closed my eyes and tried to just breathe.
I was being changed into something unknown.
My employer had kidnapped me and was holding me incommunicado in a black site, having told my family who the fuck knows what.
And Scythe had shown us that even the simplest genetic changes carry with them unintended, unforeseeable consequences. The possibility—likelihood, even—of collateral genomic damage, which might, for good or bad, subvert the original intent of the gene’s function, which nature had carefully shaped over eons.
Whoever did this to me was overwriting nature’s programming and taking control of evolution itself. That was a precarious game. My genome, for better or worse, had the information encoded to self-regulate, combat disease, and deal with toxins, environmental threats, and glitches on the fly, again, with the primary goal of survival of the species.
The same gene edits and insertions that were improving my acuity, and possibly even my longevity, might also upend the entire, fragile balance of my genome. And my life.
But that wasn’t even the most existentially terrifying thought.
When Watson, Crick, and Franklin discovered DNA’s double helix structure in the early 1950s, it changed how scientists thought of species delineation. In 1980, Niles Eldredge and Joel Cracraft suggested that, under the phylogenetic definition, animal species could have DNA that differed by just two percent and be categorized as separate species.
What if two percent of my genome had been changed? Would that render me an entirely new species?
* * *
—
Two hours later, I heard the bolt in the door of my cell slide back.
A woman walked in, aiming a Taser at me, with a man trailing behind her. He was unarmed and huge. Six-four. Chiseled out of granite. Guards.
I started to rise from the bed, but the man-beast said, “Just stay where you are.”
They stood on either side of the open door, and then Edwin appeared, followed by an older, kind-faced woman who reminded me of my grandmother on my father’s side.
I looked at Edwin. “What is this?”
“I want to ask you some questions.”
“So ask.”
“I’d like to know that you’re telling the truth. This is Hana Jalal.”
The man-beast brought in an extra chair, placed it beside the desk, and then motioned for me to have a seat.
Hana sat at the desk and set up a tablet, with its myriad sensors aimed at my face. I recognized the device right away—one of the next-gen polygraph rigs.
In the analog days, polygraphists would tie rubber tubes called pneumographs around a suspect’s chest to provide a metric for respiratory rates. Blood pressure cuffs would be velcroed to arms. Finger plates called galvanometers would be attached to fingers to measure the skin’s ability to conduct electricity.
This tablet did all of that on a no-contact basis with transdermal optical imaging software that extracted real-time measurements of blood pressure, pulse rate, sweat detection, respiratory rate, and iris dilation based on ambient light penetration of the skin’s outer layer.
I knew from my own experience in law enforcement that lie-detector tests don’t actually detect lies. They detect guilty feelings, which most people experience when they lie, evidenced by dramatic swings in the metrics the tablet facing me was designed to track.
Hana insisted that everyone leave. Then she told me a bit about herself and how she approached her job. I told her a little about me, although I was certain none of what I revealed was new information to her.
She asked about my life. She asked how I felt about being in this glass cell.
“Anxious and afraid,” I said.
“I bet.”
Like the best polygraphists I’d worked with, she exuded a sense of wanting me to succeed, of being in my corner, and of believing the best in me.
She was already profiling me, of course, getting baseline readings, gathering a preliminary assessment of my reactions. How I processed questions.
“Logan,” Hana said finally, “if it’s okay with you, I’d like to begin the examination.”
“Ready when you are.”
“Remember. Yes or no answers only, please.”
I could see the reflection of the tablet’s screen in the glass behind her.
She touched the screen, which I assumed started the test, and then turned over a sheet of paper and lifted a pencil.