The Miracle Strain (41 page)

Still wielding his dagger, Ezekiel slumped to the stone floor beside Maria, and pulled her body onto his lap. He remained oblivious to the now incessant rumblings underfoot. Tom looked to his left and saw the rope and wood ladder hanging from the fissure in the rough rock ceiling. He began to move toward it.

"Tell me, Dr. Carter," continued Ezekiel, "does wanting to save your daughter--one insignificant human in a sea of humanity--give you the right to play God? Does it give you the right to risk creating a hell on earth? She was destined to die, and should have died. You had no right to use your intelligence and resources to change that. And that applies to the others you saved with your meddling genetics before Project Cana." Ezekiel paused then, as if weary.

Tom didn't bother to answer him. There was no time. He dropped the heavy sword, grasped the swaying ladder, and pulled himself up. His anger had evaporated. He felt nothing when he looked back at the stooped figure cradling the corpse on his lap in a grotesque parody of the pieta. Except some pity for a misguided, broken old man.

He'd reached the fifth rung of the ladder, halfway inside the fissure, when he heard the first cracking hiss of gas rip through the stone floor beneath him.

He looked up but could see only blackness above. There wasn't much time. He gritted his teeth and kept on climbing. The hand Maria had pierced was aching now, as was his old knee wound from Stockholm. With every rung he climbed, his elbows hit the rough sides of the fissure, bruising and cutting his flesh. But the real pain came from his stretched muscles and joints. Every muscle burned with effort as he inched his way higher and higher.

Rather than abating, the rumblings below him grew louder the farther he climbed.

At last. A glimmer of light above. If he could only keep going.

The sudden explosion beneath him was deafening. Seconds later a rush of hot air rose up, hitting him with such force that it tore him from the ladder, pushing him upward, crashing his head against the walls of rock on either side. Excruciating pain flowed through his whole body, every nerve ending on fire.

Then mercifully the pain stopped, and there was nothing.

Moments before, Ezekiel De La Croix sat and watched Dr. Carter disappear up the ladder. Despite the urgent tearing of rock beneath him Ezekiel felt a tired calm. The scientist might escape, but once the New Messiah awoke none of this nightmare would matter anymore. Once Maria passed her hands through the Sacred Flame, then the Day of Judgment would come and all the ungodly, not just Dr. Carter, would be punished. But he as Leader of the righteous would be saved.

He shifted Maria's weight on his lap, making his exhausted, aching frame as comfortable as possible. He looked down at her pale, peaceful features, willing those unusual eyes to open. As he caressed her cold forehead, he remembered the first time he'd seen her. She had been so vulnerable then, so bruised by life, so unaware of the greatness of her destiny.

He examined his wounded arm and marveled at the fading injury. Dr. Carter might have been able to unnaturally steal the genes of Christ, but he had been lying about Maria. Maria had been born with the genes--they were her birth-right. Despite what the atheist said, Maria would wake. He was convinced of it.

The sudden cracking of rock to his left, followed by a roaring hiss, made him turn his head in fear. Before his eyes he saw a fissure open up in the floor. The crack started by the wall where the tooth and nail of Christ were kept, and moved across the stone floor as if following some preordained route toward him.

"Not yet!" he screamed, watching the fissure lengthen like the shadow of a giant accusing finger.

He shook Maria's body, shouting: "Wake up! Wake up!" Then he threw her off him, and staggered to his feet.

"I can't die yet," he screamed, his body racked with mortal terror. "I'm not ready, we are not ready."

Just as the tip of the shadowy finger reached between his feet he heard an explosion beneath him, an incendiary of rage from the earth's core. Then a ridge of searing flame rushed from the fissure in a vertical sheet of pure white that seemed to reach for heaven itself. Even in his agony and terror, Ezekiel thought the white flame that now consumed him was the most beautiful thing he had seen in his whole life.

Chapter Thirty-Two.

GENIUS Headquarters, Boston

Four weeks later the vintage red Mercedes pulled into the deserted parking lot beneath GENIUS and turned toward the first parking slot. It braked suddenly when the surprised driver realized the space was already taken by a metallic green BMW convertible.

Tom Carter checked his face in the mirror. The superficial burns had now all flaked away, and the tender skin underneath had lost most of its pink complexion. "Cosmetic companies would charge a fortune for a peel like that," Jasmine had joked on his last day in the hospital three weeks ago. He knew he had been unnaturally lucky. According to Karen's people, if the flue had been fractionally more crooked, then the gas explosion would have splattered him against the walls "like roadkill on the freeway." Instead he had been coughed up beside the smallest of the five rocks, landing unconscious but intact on a ridge of mercifully soft sand. The short burst of white flame that accompanied him had even helped alert Karen's team, who had only just crawled to safety themselves. Miraculously only one FBI agent and two of the Jordanian troops had been injured in the escape. Apart from Ezekiel and Bernard the only death had been Brother Helix. He had been lost in the confusion and was now buried in the rock.

Not surprisingly, the other members of the Brotherhood hadn't told the FBI anything. But at least they had Gomorrah and Tom had been able to tell Karen about Ezekiel's confession. It was still unclear what could or couldn't be proved against the surviving members of the Inner Circle, but according to Karen they wouldn't pose a threat to him any longer. As for the rest of the Brotherhood, its assets and members were impossible to identify, let alone locate. But there was no indication that they were even aware of the killings. As far as Tom was concerned he didn't care what happened to the rest of the Brotherhood as long as they left him alone.

He climbed out of the car and locked the door behind him. In the last three weeks, after having had the opportunity to think everything through in the hospital, he must have flown around the world at least four times. But it had been worth it. Almost everyone he had spoken to had eventually agreed to the principle of his scheme. What's more, their response had reassured him that he had made the right decision. But after tonight's meeting he would definitely take a holiday. Just Holly, him, and some sunshine.

Tom walked across the quiet atrium and greeted the two new guards. The sun had barely risen but he still reveled in the pyramid's space and light. He felt a sense of freedom here, a sense of no frontiers or walls to hold him back. He stepped through the hologram of DNA that issued from the center of the atrium, and headed for the Hospital Suite. Tom hoped he would find confirmation there of the choice he had made.

Creeping into the silent ward, he waved at the duty nurse, who sat smiling behind her desk. The small bulb above her head was the sole light in the slumbering darkness. In the gloom Tom could just make out the dormant shapes of patients in the seven occupied beds. With the stealth of a ghost he went from bed to bed staring down at their sleeping faces, registering the humanity behind each pair of closed eyes. Tom knew that at best the experimental therapy available at GENIUS would save three of them, perhaps significantly lengthen the life of one other. But even with the best odds, three would almost certainly die.

Unless he cured them.

In the semidarkness he looked down at his hands, and at that moment Ezekiel's words came back to haunt him.

"... A world in which anybody could heal everybody, and noone ever died of natural diseases. Imagine a world where therewould be no consequences for any actions we took. A world withsuch an enormous population that instead of a heaven on earthwe would create a living hell. No space. No food. No respect forlife--or death--and certainly not God. Just a crowded desert oflost souls assured of only one certainty--a long life of suffering."

Perhaps the old man was right, he thought. Perhaps three of these unfortunate people should die. Who was he to interfere? He couldn't play God, deciding who should live and who should die. But then the doctor in him spoke, telling him that if he could save patients, then he must save them. It was as simple as that.

He imagined for a moment that each of these sleeping forms was Holly, and that he was their father, husband, or son. He knew then that he had no choice when it came to these seven patients. But as he walked past their beds again, touching a hand here or a forehead there, feeling them draw the energy out of his body, he still felt a sense of disquiet. This was easy. Thinking again of the meeting tonight, he hoped that he'd correctly answered the bigger question--made the right overall decision.

He left the last patient and waved back at the nurse, wondering what her reaction would be in a few hours when her sleeping charges awoke refreshed and well.

Leaving the ward, he made his way to the elevator and went straight to the second floor. Passing through the main body of the Mendel Laboratory Suite he opened the door to the Crick Laboratory. Jasmine was sitting, diet Coke in hand, poring over a pile of documents.

She looked up at him, her face lit up with pleasure. "Hello, stranger. How are you? How was your mysterious trip?"

"It was good. What are you doing in so early?"

Jasmine flashed an excited smile and patted the papers on her desk. "Well, since your success with Holly, Jack and I have been busy filling in the first draft patent applications for the serum. Plus of course this." She picked up a typed form from her desk, brandishing it like a trophy. "The FDA application so we can go into trials. Jack's already signed it. We just need your approval and signature."

Tom found her enthusiasm unsettling. He took off his jacket and hung it on the coat rack by the door. He walked over to the glass-fronted refrigerated cabinet at the end of the lab. Looking through the locked door he counted the vials left in the tray marked "Trinity Serum--Nazareth Genes." Good, he thought, they didn't appear to have been touched in the month he'd been away. There had originally been thirteen after the mice trials, one of which had been used on himself. This left these twelve vials--the only twelve in existence.

"What happened to your healthy skepticism, Jazz?" he asked, moving over to the drawer where the labels were kept. He opened them and checked that there were enough. "And what about your religious concerns? Now that Holly's safe I thought you'd be happy to put Cana behind you and get back to more conventional stuff."

Jasmine paused. "I've thought about this a lot, and believe that these genes aren't what made Christ the Son of God. How he used them, what he taught us, and how he died for us were what made him divine. These Nazareth genes are the greatest discovery in medical history--a true gift from God--and as such should be used. Just think how much good we could do once we gain FDA approval and market the genes. After we massproduce them--"

"Whoa, Jazz. We haven't even decided whether we should develop the Nazareth genes for wider distribution. You're making the assumption that it's a good thing."

"Of course it's a good thing. How can it not be?"

Tom moved to the cupboard where the backup hypodermics were stored. He quickly counted them and gave a small nod when he realized there were enough of them too. He'd be able to gather everything together discreetly, with no fuss or requisitions. "All I'm saying, Jazz, is I think we should consider it very carefully."

Jasmine couldn't believe her ears. Here was the man who had always said that the only constraint to what you can do should be what you can do. Nothing more, nothing less. This was the man who had inspired her to help him invent a fantastic supercomputer that could read DNA as effectively as a checkout scanner reads the bar code on a can of beans. The same man who had convinced her to trust him and put aside her religious fears, to seek out and exploit the genes of her Christ in order to save her goddaughter. And now all of a sudden, after succeeding beyond his wildest dreams, he was saying, "Whoa, Jazz!" and getting nervous about overreaching himself.

"What's going on, Tom?" she asked, folding her arms across her chest. "You have amazing power literally at your fingertips. But all we've got is a lousy twelve vials. We've got to clone the genes, make more of them, and give them to others. We've got to spread the healing power. It's only right."