THE FLENSE: China: (Part 3 of THE FLENSE serial) Page 7

  "Our technology, of course. It's very expensive to produce."

  "What are they?" she asked. "What did you put inside those people? Viruses?"

  "No, not viruses. I'm not a scientist, so my understanding of the technology is rudimentary at best. They're more like . . . cells. Well, they assume some of the functions of cells, anyway." He gestured the gun at Jamie. "The ones inside of Miss Peters there, the ones that got inside of her from that piece of bone, they don't belong to her. They're not hers. So I will be needing them back."

  "But how? They're microscopic. They're in her blood. I can't just—"

  Aston shook his head. "The ones in her blood?" He shrugged. "No no. Not going to bother with them. I'm talking about the ones that made those . . . those—" He pointed at Jamie's abdomen, at the protrusions, and shivered in mock disgust.

  "What are they?" Angel whispered fearfully.

  "Why, they're bones, of course," Aston replied. "What else would they be?"

  Chapter Forty Eight

  He told Angel to remove the bindings then lift Jamie up and carry her into the lab and place her onto the examination table. It was a struggle for her, as she had no strength, but she somehow managed.

  Norstrom didn't move as she stumbled passed him. She could see that he was still alive, though only barely by the looks of it. He lay on the floor against the wall with his eyes closed, one hand still clutching his side, the other against the wound on his upper chest. His face had gone from gray to an alarming white from the blood loss. And his breathing was fast and shallow.

  "What a mess this is," Aston muttered, throwing her a box of latex gloves and ordering her to put them on. As to whether he was referring to the lab or the entire situation in general, she couldn't tell. He pulled drawers open, searching for something, which he eventually found in one of the overhead cabinets along the back wall. He set the aluminum case onto the bench and opened it up, revealing a set of surgical instruments. "Start harvesting. You've got a half hour."

  "But they're not sterile," Angel said. "None of this is sterile, not the gloves, the scalpel—"

  "Sterile?" Aston laughed. "That's what you're worried about? The poor girl won't live long enough for that to be a problem."

  "Then anesthesia. Please," Angel begged. "Even if she's going to die, give her something so she won't suffer. Even you can't be that cruel."

  Aston limped over and stuck his cane into Angel's belly, driving her backward into the wall. She nearly tripped and fell, and only the sudden certainty that he'd simply shoot her if she did fall and then expect her to continue with the surgery kept her on her feet. She fought the pull of gravity and the weakness in her legs and somehow managed to remain upright,

  "Cruelty would be letting her live," he growled. "Besides, she doesn't feel a thing right now. None of them did."

  Them?

  Angel's eyes flicked over to the aluminum case, took in the gleaming instruments. Besides the scissors and scalpels, the hemostats and retractors, she noticed bone saws, several large-bore aspirating needles, scrapers. There were instruments that looked like metal nutcrackers. Instruments of torture, she thought. "What the hell did you do to these people?"

  He followed her gaze and nodded, seeing that she had guessed correctly. The kit was indeed part of their experimentation. "Well, it's not like we just took their bones and tissues without making sure they'd grow back."

  "What?" Angel gasped.

  He hobbled over to the bench and plucked the UNDIFFERENTIATED vial from the full box. "Pluripotent nanites," he said, holding up the bottle. "Not cells, but like cells. Stem cells, to be more precise. That's what the science boys tell me. The tech guys say they're more like tiny little computers just waiting to be programmed."

  He gave it a little shake and smiled at the black swirls. "Whatever they are, they're beautiful, don't you think?"

  Angel didn't reply.

  "Aren't you curious what they do? Not even a little?"

  He set the bottle back down and picked up the syringe she had filled earlier. "Inject them into the bloodstream and they spread out into the body, finding every single nook and cranny occupied by living cells. Yes, even the brain. Of course, getting them to cross the blood-brain barrier had been a technical challenge, but the scientists eventually figured it out. That was in Florida. You might recall the so-called bath salt incidents there a while back?" He chuckled. "Bath salts. The media will believe anything you tell them. More like faulty programming. Anyway, there were a few hitches in the early runs, but we got it all sorted out in the end."

  "You're insane, you and whoever else is involved."

  "That's what they always call visionaries." He set the syringe back onto the benchtop and patted it. "Once distributed throughout the body, these little technological marvels settle in. Then the magic begins. They read and record the specific gene expression profile of the cells around them. They become those cells. Sort of."

  He plucked the next bottle out of the box. "In the parlance of cell biologists, they differentiate, although that's not technically correct. As I said earlier, they aren't cells. They don't replicate, for example. Which is too bad, as it would make manufacturing them so much easier. And cheaper."

  "Is that what you make here?"

  "Make? No, they don't make a damn thing here, actually. No, we mass produce these in West Af—"

  He stopped himself and smiled wickedly at her. "I see what you're doing. Not that it matters if you know or not."

  "Because you're going to kill me."

  He didn't answer. Instead, he continued with his lecture: "It takes millions of these little guys to make a real difference in a person. If you put just a single one inside a body, it's pretty useless by itself. Even a few thousand, if they're spread out instead of concentrated, won't do much."

  He gestured at Jamie. "But concentrated, well, you can see what a few thousand can do. It's wonderful."

  "It's horrible," Angel whispered. He ignored her.

  "This bottle holds ten billion nanites per cubic milliliter. Inject one hundred milliliters into a person's bloodstream and you're talking about populating every single part of the body."

  "To do what?" Angel demanded. "What exactly do they do?"

  "They heal, of course. Rebuild. The little buggers remain quiescent, doing nothing at all, just sitting quietly. But then, boom! Trauma happens, and your cells send out a localized stress signal. Wakes these things right up, makes them go to work. They're like microscopic trauma centers. They start repairing the damage, fixing cells and tissues, rebuilding what would otherwise be destroyed. They fix you right up good as new!"

  Angel didn't know what to say. She'd never heard of such a thing before, never even knew it was possible. How could it be?

  "The bone," she whispered, her eyes widening with sudden understanding. She pressed a hand gently again Jamie's abdomen, then pulled it away again. "Those things got inside of her from the bone. They spread and started making bone where it didn't belong."

  Aston nodded. "Alas, that's yet another technical issue that needs to be resolved before we can start general distribution. It seems that once they've differentiated, these little pretties have trouble reverting when they're not needed. We've been testing a few ways to deprogram them."

  "Technical issue?" Angel cried, incredulously. "These are people we're talking about! Human beings, not computers or machines!"

  "Of course! Why do you think we're doing all this testing? South America, Kansas, Wales . . . a whole host of other places. I already told you about Florida. We are literally this close to having a final product! The purpose of the China study was to establish exactly how much damage whole individuals can receive before it's too much to be reversed. We know that isolated damage can be completely repaired within a few days time. We're working on shortening that. The engineers tell me it's all in the programming. They say it'll one day be possible to repair lethal injuries within minutes."

  He placed the second bottle back in the
box and picked up the bone saw. "There was one old woman here," he said, running the serrated edge over the barrel of the pistol, setting Angel's teeth on edge. "She must've been eighty years old when we cut off her hand." He chuckled. "Do you think there's something in yak milk that makes these people live so long? Never mind. Anyway, we amputated three times, all at the very same place, and each time the damn hand grew right back. The first time took a month, the second two weeks. The last time, she had a functioning hand again in four days. Simply amazing. Microscopic cellular repair resulting in macroscopic tissue regeneration, just like lizards. Think of it! With these things inside of every human being, trauma and disease and radiation will become things of the past."

  "It's not natural."

  "Mortality is what's not natural, my dear. Soon, we'll be able to defeat that disease, too."

  "You are completely insane."

  "Don't dismiss it so out of hand. You might think it's a fantasy, but it's not. It's inevitable!"

  Angel shook her head. "How is any of this even possible? How could you keep it secret? The villagers— The woman whose hand . . . . She would have told somebody. Someone had to notice!"

  "The subjects have no memory of any of it. We keep them here during their recuperation, in special recovery rooms."

  He snapped the bone saw back into the case and went over to the device on the back counter, the one that looked like a small computer server. The machine was still emitting a slight hum from earlier. He reached for it, but then pulled his hand back at the last moment, as if he were afraid it might shock him. "Um, you may want to hold onto her," he advised, turning and gesturing at Jamie. "I wouldn't want her to fall off the table. That leg might snap clean off."

  "Why? What—"

  He pressed the button and the lights and humming immediately faded away. At the same time, a scream rose from Jamie's throat and she lurched upright on the table. Angel spun around in time to see the look of agony on her face before she suddenly went limp and fell back again. The scream died, becoming nothing more than a ringing echo in the room.

  "What did you do?" Angel yelled.

  "It's this thing," Aston admitted, patting the machine beside him. He had turned it back on again and was looking at it like he wanted to toggle it off one more time, just to prove to her that it was responsible for the changes in Jamie's condition. "They call it a resonance uncoupler, but to be honest, I don't understand how it works. The hardware guys explained it to me once. I just couldn't seem to wrap my brain around it. It interacts somehow with the nanites in the brain is all I know, and it somehow turns off certain neural functions. Not essential ones, just those involved in consciousness, I think."

  "You think?"

  He shrugged. "Like I said, I don't understand it. But that doesn't matter. What does matter is what happens to people with them inside when this thing on— they mentally uncouple. Very limited range, of course, this device. Maybe fifty feet or so. Makes it work great as anesthesia while not interfering with the nanites' functions. Our girl is lucky that enough of them got through to her brain to render her uncoupled, otherwise I can't imagine how painful the surgery would be for her."

  He pushed the aluminum case toward her end of the bench. "The lab guys will want to study the nanites in those bones to figure out how we can avoid—" He waved his hand in the air, looking for the right word. "What is it called when something grows where it's not supposed to?"

  Angel shook her head in disbelief. How could he possibly just stand there and act like this was normal? How could someone who claimed to be working to benefit mankind be so cruel and heartless, so utterly unrepentant of the inhuman things they were doing?

  "You should know the term," he said, oblivious to her thoughts, "being a doctor and all."

  "T-tumor?"

  "No no. The investors don't like to hear those kinds of words— tumors and metastases and such. We try and avoid those kinds of negative connotations. No, I mean like a fetus, you know, developing in the body but outside the womb. There's a term they use . . . ."

  "Ectopic," she whispered.

  "Yes! You got it! That's what the research guys called it. They're still trying to figure out how to prevent ectopic tissue formation when the differentiated nanites end up going somewhere they're not supposed to be."

  "I won't. I won't do it. I won't be a party to—"

  He sighed and his face went slack. He raised the gun. "I don't want to have to harvest those bones myself. I will if I have to, but I'd prefer not to."

  "But—"

  "Enough!" he roared. "Get on with it!"

  With shaking hands, Angel pulled on a pair of gloves, then reached for the scalpel. She thought about telling him that she hadn't done any surgery in over four years — longer when it came to anything abdominal — but she knew it wouldn't make any difference to him. She held the blade up to the light to check for defects. It appeared to be new, though it was hard to tell by eye if it had been used before. There was no trace of blood on it.

  Past it, she could see Aston standing with the pistol raised. He had purposefully placed the bench between them, out of her reach should she choose to swing the blade at him. He was sweating profusely, plastering his greasy hair even tighter against his scalp.

  He's a disgusting man, Angel thought. Then she turned and faced Jamie and, without hesitating, inserted the tip of the blade into the girl's left flank, halfway between the iliac crest and her bottom rib. With firm pressure, she drew it straight across to the near side, the whole time expecting the girl to cry out. She didn't. Blood leaked out of the wound and pooled in the hollow of her umbilicus. It ran down her side.

  There wasn't as much bleeding as Angel expected, and she guessed that it was because the girl was so dehydrated. But another terrifying possibility came to mind. The molecular building blocks for those bones had to have come from somewhere. Those things inside her body were cannibalizing her to make them, breaking down tissues to drive their production. It explained her paleness, the hollows of her eyes and cheeks.

  And in that thought Angel realized that they were exactly like tumor cells: they were eating her alive to carry out the function they were programmed to do.

  And just like tumor cells, they wouldn't stop until they or the patient died.

  The blood formed a shallow puddle, and the puddle widened and became a swamp. The swamp breached its levees and poured down onto the pad. Angel realized that the table had been modified to collect such fluids, draining them somewhere unseen below. She could hear the muted tock tock tock of it dripping into a container.

  Not once did Jamie flinch. She continued to stare up at the ceiling without emotion. Her breathing remained steady.

  Digging her fingers into the incision, Angel carefully pierced the underlying tissue, the thin, almost nonexistent layer of subcutaneous fat, through the tougher connective tissue of the rectus fascia. Then the abdominus muscle, which she was surprised to see was intact, not torn as would have been the case if there truly had been a hernia. She recited to herself the proper names of the layers, surprised that they would come back to her so easily and under such duress. The blade felt almost natural in her fingers. She'd forgotten how much she missed it.

  Focus, Angel!

  The tissue separated easily against the strain placed upon it by the bones pushing up underneath, practically tore itself in front of her blade. She went as rapidly as she dared, hoping to stay ahead of it to avoid further damage. A thin spray of blood jetted into the air, hit the ceiling and wall, before abruptly stopping. Some of it sprayed onto her face, and she backed away, coughing to try and keep from vomiting.

  Don't stop. Just do it.

  Her mind spun. She needed to figure out a way to save them both, to disable Aston. But he had moved over to the door to check on Norstrom, giving her nowhere to go.

  Step back to the table, Angel. Keep going.

  Down the blade plunged, through another tough, glistening layer of connective tissue — posterior rec
tus fascia, her mind numbly informed her — through the peritoneum and the omentum, slicing shallowly, carefully.

  And then she was into the abdominal cavity. She pulled the last layer aside, exposing a dense, hard tangle of tissue— not intestines, as her mind kept trying to convince itself was there, but bones.

  Dozens upon dozens of bones.

  Chapter Forty Nine

  Her stomach was rebelling. She gagged, wanting to cry out in disbelief. In horror. She wanted to make it all go away.

  "What the hell are you waiting for? Take them out, goddamn it!"

  She turned to him. "Wh-what do you want me to put them in?"

  He stared back at her for a moment, as if it were the stupidest question he'd ever heard. Then he rolled his eyes and went over and yanked out a shallow drawer, dumped the contents onto the floor, and slammed it down onto Jamie's chest. "Need anything else?"

  Angel glared at him as he returned to his post in the doorway, backing slowly away while keeping the gun pointed at her. "Just the tissue retractors," she muttered, gesturing at the surgical kit. "I need them to hold the incision open."

  "Well, get them your goddamn self!"

  She placed the scalpel down on the bench, where it left a bloody smear, then walked slowly over to the case.

  "Don't try anything," he warned. He eyed the scalpel nervously, as if he expected it to leap at him of its own free will.

  The retractors were snapped into notches in the lid, and she had to hold the case with one hand while prying it out with the other. He kept his eye on her, but as she struggled with it, she noticed his gaze drifting impatiently to the woman on the table.

  Incredibly, Jamie was still breathing at the same slow, steady rate as before, still staring up at the ceiling. Now, however, a tear slipped out and ran across her cheek, cutting a pink line through the blood splatter.

  She feels it. There aren't enough of the nanites in her brain. She hurts, but she can't respond.

  "Hurry the hell up!"

  Angel jumped at the sound of his voice and returned her attention to the kit. With her right hand prying the retractor from its holding spot, she slipped her left hand behind the lid of the case to where he'd left the syringe filled with the undifferentiated nanites from Jamie's bottle. At last, the retractor popped free.