“Influenza?”
“Yes.”
“Synthetic?”
“That’s the assumption.”
And then I asked the question I almost didn’t want an answer to. “Did it encode a Scythe complex?”
He nodded.
Ah, fuck. I’d been infected, not only with a virus of unknown origin, but with a payload encoding the most powerful genome-modifying system ever created. Almost certainly it had been designed, not to make me sick, but to infect some or all of the cells in my body, potentially editing and rewriting portions of my DNA.
“Do you know which genes and pathways were targeted?” I asked.
“Not yet, but we’re running a test and a full analysis of your white blood cell sample.”
I tried to brace myself against the wave of fear, but I couldn’t hold it back. It simply leveled me. This was the worst possible news, though not exactly a surprise. I’d lain on the dirt floor in the basement as the ice melted inside me. But it made the reality of my situation solid in a way it hadn’t been before.
Edwin reached over the railing on my bed and patted my shoulder. “I want you to hear this from me,” he said. “We’re going to find who did this and take a serious shit in their coffee. You just focus on getting better.”
“I’ll try, sir.”
He was trying to comfort me, but catching the culprit wouldn’t really help if these DNA changes turned out to be lethal. A Scythe system could wreak all manner of havoc on my genome.
If a person’s genetic code were written into a standard-size book, that book would be a twenty-story tome consisting of three billion permutations of the letters A, C, G, and T, which represent the four nucleobases—adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. The specific arrangement of these four nucleobases creates the code for all biological life on the planet. This code is the genotype, and the way it physically expresses in a life-form （eye color, for instance）， combined with its interactions with the environment, is called the phenotype. But understanding the correlation between genotype and phenotype—which DNA code programs which traits—still largely eludes us.
Edwin rose from the chair. Then he walked to the door, zipped it open, and stepped through to the other side.
As I watched him zip me back into my universe of sealed plastic, I felt truly alone.
It reminded me of my time in prison and the crushing sense that others could come and go.
But I was here.
Trapped with my changing genome.
* * *
—
They started me on a course of interferon gamma and a set of new antivirals.
I spiked one more fever the following night and then began a period of rapid improvement. My energy roared back. My appetite returned. I started sleeping through the night.
Within three days, my bandages were gone, my ice-lacerations scabbing over.
My ribs still hurt, but I was desperate to get out of bed and walk around—even if it was only up and down the ICU corridor.
I longed for a real bathroom instead of my humiliating bedpan.
But they wouldn’t let me leave my bubble.
Because they knew almost nothing about the hacked strain of influenza I’d been infected with, Dr. Singh would take no chances. Though I was symptom free, I was still shedding the virus, which meant I could be contagious to others.
And so I passed my days streaming movies on my tablet or trying to amass enough concentration to read. But mostly I obsessed over what Scythe might be doing to me.
The hospital had resisted letting my wife and daughter suit up and visit me inside the bubble, but after a week in bed, I insisted that I be allowed to see them.
My fourteen-year-old strode through the plastic partition in full hazmat gear that swallowed her whole, a canvas bag slung over her shoulder.
I laughed when I saw her—my first real laugh since waking up in the ICU five days ago. But with my cracked and broken ribs, the joy turned instantly to agony.
“Hey, Dad,” Ava said, her voice emitting through the built-in speaker. Then she leaned over the bed and gave me the greatest awkward hug I’d ever received, my face pressing into her plastic face shield. Even though it was through latex gloves and a Tyvek suit, the touch of someone I loved, and who loved me, brought me to tears again.
“You okay, Dad?”
“I’m fine.” I wiped my eyes.
She pulled the chair over and reached down into the bag she’d brought with her, lifting out a chessboard.
“Want to play?”
“God, yes. I’m so sick of staring at screens.”
I sat up, groaning as I tried to get the pillows comfortably arranged behind me. Ava opened the chessboard, placed it on the bed, and began setting up the pieces.
It moved me that Ava would suit up to spend time with me inside my bubble. If you weren’t used to them, a hazmat suit could be a claustrophobic experience. They were hot and bulky, and inevitably your face would begin to itch the moment you had entered the quarantine area. And, of course, looming over all of the inconvenience was the very real threat of a breach.
She held out both hands and I tapped the right one, which she opened to reveal a white pawn.
I would go first.
I had taught Ava chess when she was five. She took to it immediately and soon developed an innate understanding not just of how the pieces moved but of the need for a broader strategy to win.
We tried to play a game every day, usually sitting at the wrought-iron table in the backyard or, if the weather was inclement, in front of the fire with the board set up on the brick hearth.
By the time she was ten, she had become a formidable player.
By twelve, we were equally matched.
By thirteen, she had surpassed my skill level with a great opening repertoire and a strong endgame. I could only beat her by playing flawlessly and hoping she’d make at least one mistake. But that combination was rare.
Sometimes I wondered if she’d been gifted with my mother’s intellect.
I made my opening move.
“Hey, Dad?” she said as she responded—queen’s knight to F6. “Five hundred and sixty-one. Just wanted to make sure you knew.”
I rolled my eyes.
She was grinning through her face shield.
Five hundred and sixty-one days is what she meant.
She was reminding me of how long it had been since the last time I’d checkmated her.
* * *
—
We played every day for the next week.
Each time she won, and it was never even close.
Beth would also suit up to come sit with me, and removed from the routines and distractions of daily life in Virginia, we talked more than we had in years.
One afternoon, she looked down at me through her face shield and took my hand in hers, our skin separated by the layer of latex.
“When will it be enough?” she asked.
She meant my job. We had this fight often.
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve been shot. Now add almost-blown-up to your scorecard.”
“It’s not a scorecard.”
“Sure it is,” she said. “Please look at me. If I thought you loved this job, then as much as I hate the danger it constantly puts you in, I would never say a word to you about it. But I know you don’t love it. It isn’t who you are. You do this out of obligation and guilt, and maybe that made sense in the beginning, but it’s been fifteen years since you were pardoned. Maybe it’s time to forgive yourself and do something you actually love.”