The Fourth Layer Page 6

  Grace touched Hannah’s elbow with concern; she was one of very few people Hannah trusted to touch her. “No offense, Han, but you look like shit. Just what the hell is happening to you?”

  “I…I’m not at liberty to say, outside anything that’s on the chat board,” Hannah replied, which was the truth. Both Todd and Grace knew that Hannah’s first experiment with the nanobots had been a success, and that she’d visited MIT to discuss further experiments with the team there. But after that all talk about said experiments on the chat board went dark; everything had to remain confidential until a definite conclusion had been reached with the experiments.

  Hannah supposed this particular experiment would end with the complete loss of her tattoos.

  And then…what? What gets tested next? I told Peter I wasn’t interested in the neuronal network stuff—

  ‘And I said it was too late for you to say no to that.’

  “Be quiet!” Hannah huffed.

  “Han, I think you should get some rest,” Grace said. “Take a couple days off from the lab. I’m sure Dr. Greene—”

  “Doctor Greene is mad enough with me as-is,” Hannah laughed humorlessly. “And I’ve taken so many days off over the past month that I somehow doubt he’d allow me to take more. I have a hard enough time hiding my disappearing body art from him, let alone having to hide why I need more days off.”

  Todd stared at her in horror. “Your supervisor really doesn’t know what you’re doing with MIT? I thought for sure you’d have buckled and told him by now!”

  “I agree with Todd,” Grace admitted. “I mean, you’re not exactly a good liar, Han. You’re the worst one I know, if I’m being honest.”

  “Maybe I’m getting better at it—”

  “That’s not a good thing.”

  Hannah grimaced. “I know. But I can’t tell Dr. Greene about what’s going on, anyway. He’d probably kill me.”

  “He will not and you know that,” Todd said. “He wants to save the world too, I’m sure. If your methods were a bit…unorthodox…then I’m sure he’ll forgive you. The ends justify the means and all that.”

  “That’s probably Walsanto’s way of thinking when it comes to whatever evil thing it is that they’re doing.”

  Grace scratched her nose. “Don’t suppose anyone is any closer to knowing why they’re trying to turn people into photosynthetic, sterile weirdos?”

  Hannah shook her head. “There are some leading theories but it’s not as if Walsanto will confirm or deny them. Not to mention the FDA are almost definitely in their pockets…”

  “You don’t know that, Hannah.”

  “Oh, I don’t?” She rounded on Todd. “Then why would they have declined my appeal to test nanobots in humans? They worked like a charm! Literally no side effects whatsoever.”

  He waved a hand at Hannah. “So what do you call all of this? Missing tattoos, no sleep, terrible mood…”

  “This has nothing to do with the first lot of experiments,” Hannah replied tetchily. “I cleared my system of Walsanto’s unholy trinity of no-good in a week.”

  “So why run more experiments? Surely that’s all you need to prove to the FDA that your method works?”

  “Todd, let’s be realistic,” Grace said, jumping to Hannah’s defense. “Hannah and the lot over at MIT conducted an unsanctioned, unheard of, and potentially unsafe experiment on a human being. There’s no way that’s going to go down well with the FDA.”

  “Exactly!” Hannah agreed, nodding fervently. “Cas’ team wanted to do some follow-up experiments to test the efficacy of the nanobots in and around the human body. They’ve already performed these experiments in model organisms and they worked, so this will round out their entire research and make it seem…altogether more reliable. Trustworthy. That way the FDA can take the Walsanto-battling ‘bots more seriously.”

  Todd frowned. “You sure you can’t tell us or Dr. Greene about what in and around the human body means?”

  “I’m sure. One-hundred percent sure.”

  Mainly because I have no idea what exactly the nanobots are doing.

  Hannah left her lunchtime meet-up with Todd and Grace feeling decidedly worse than she had done at the beginning of the hour. The couple had headed back to their own PhD research in the biomedical lab with renewed promises to watch what they were eating and a further insistence that Hannah talk to somebody about what was going on with her.

  “I don’t need anybody else,” she muttered. “The MIT team and I are enough.”

  But the problem was that the team was in Massachusetts and Hannah was in South Carolina. She wished, unbidden, that Peter would come and visit his relatives soon just so she wasn’t quite so isolated.

  Hannah froze in her tracks, blushing furiously. Just for the research! she insisted. It’s better to be monitored in person.

  ‘Keep telling yourself that, Hannah.’

  Whether that was the bodiless voice within her head or her own self, telling her to get a grip, Hannah was too tired to care.

  Chapter 10

  South Carolina

  Clemson’s Forensic Genetics Lab

  It had been two weeks since Hannah jumped on a flight over to MIT and, in the process, changed her life—and herself.

  She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Right now she was bordering somewhere between intrigued and terrified. It was an odd, unsettling place to be. Hannah had grown accustomed to the voice in her head that did not belong to her, if only because it refused to disappear. She found that, so long as she talked back to it, the voice remained friendly and unassuming. It was only when she ignored it that it grew more insistent.

  It must be Zeus, Hannah concluded on more than one occasion. It must be. It’s learning everything about me. And everything I see, and hear, and touch, and everyone I talk to. Everything.

  It learned fast.

  Hannah barely understood computer networks on the best of days—it was not a subject that had ever piqued her attention. Now, especially with the rise of synthetic biology, she sincerely wished she had a few years of proper experience working with networks and circuits and interfaces. For if she did then she could understand how Zeus came to be and, in turn, just what the hell was going on with her.

  It wasn’t that the MIT team hadn’t tried to explain it to her. Of course they had. But they’d explained it to Hannah in the simplest terms possible and that wasn’t what she needed. Hannah needed to understand exactly how Zeus made every decision for the nanobots in her system. Where it chose to direct them after Hannah and Cas’ team had fed the choker interface the simple orders of search and repair. What was useful? What was dispensable? Clearly the system didn’t know her tattoos were deliberate; it viewed them as damaged skin cells and that was it.

  So it can’t be that aware, she thought, although it knows much more about life now than it did two weeks ago. It might now know what tattoos are and wouldn’t ‘fix’ them anymore. But that’s conjecture.

  ‘Indeed.’

  “Be quiet.”

  If disembodied voices could laugh then Hannah was sure this one was. She shook her head, for all the good it would do. She was currently doing actual lab work—running repeats of her initial nanobot experiments in mice for the sake of a larger sample size—while waiting for a message from Peter that the next video call had been organized. Hannah had been particularly careful with the way she spoke to the man ever since the voice in her head had begun making comments about him.

  ‘But you like him. And he likes you? Why not pursue a relationship? I do not understand you.’

  And that was the crux of the matter for Hannah; part of her did not want this computer program understanding each and every part of her. If she could prevent its pursuit of knowledge with as simple a move as keeping Peter at bay, then so be it.

  Even if she did like him.

  Hannah risked a glance towards her supervisor’s office. Doctor Greene was looking as haggard as Hannah felt—pale skin, sunken eyes
and a haunted, gloomy expression on his face. She knew he was struggling with the knowledge of what Walsanto was doing resting heavily on his shoulders. She also knew Rusty was calling him more and more frequently, perhaps hoping that Dr. Greene had somehow come up with a safer and more orthodox method of combating the hybridization genes than Hannah’s crazy nanobots.

  Rusty had called Hannah a few times, too, but she’d ignored him each and every time. She would talk to him when she had so much evidence that the ‘bots worked that he—and the FDA—couldn’t possibly say no to her. To the cure that was sitting right in front of their faces, if only they would stop bureaucracy from getting in the way of something wondrous.

  “Poor Dr. Greene,” Hannah uttered, for nobody to hear but herself.

  But the man in question perked up immediately and pinned Hannah down with a suspicious stare. “Poor me what, Hannah?”

  “How did you—how did you hear me from all the way over there?!” she exclaimed, too impressed to be shocked or embarrassed that Dr. Greene overheard her.

  He pointed above her head. “The lab’s been mic'd. There are cameras all about now, too. Mister Whitman—Rusty—forced me to put them in to monitor everything that happens in the lab. I can see and hear it all in my office, and so can he—remotely.”

  Hannah’s eyes narrowed. “So the two of you—you’re spying on me?”

  “Not just you, Hannah,” Dr. Greene replied. He sunk into his chair for a moment before sighing, stretching, and leaving his office for Hannah’s lab bench. “The entire lab is working on this Walsanto shit show. But, yes, it’s obviously you in particular. You aren’t telling me or Mr. Whitman what exactly it is you’re up to, which has understandably made a lot of people suspicious.”

  “So you thought spying on me was the right thing to do?”

  “I don’t know, Hannah, is it?”

  Hannah said nothing. The two of them stared at each other, completely at a stand-off. Eventually she could take no more and looked away. “I’ll…tell you when I can,” she mumbled. “Why don’t you believe that?”

  To her surprise, Dr. Greene laughed. “By the time you tell me it may bloody well be too late,” he said. His non-Queen’s English accent—his real accent, which Hannah had recently discovered was northern English—was slipping through along with his coarse language. Hannah liked the sound of his real accent, though now certainly wasn’t the time to tell Dr. Greene as such.

  She struggled not to pout. “It will not be too late,” she insisted. “I won’t let that happen. What would be the point of trying to save the world if I’m too late to save it?”

  “You tell me, Hannah—you’re the one who I don’t recognize anymore, not the other way around.”

  “I—excuse me?”

  “Don’t excuse me. You know exactly what I mean. The long absences; that change in your diet weeks ago; the impromptu trip to MIT; the uncharacteristic silence. Hell, you’re not even dressing like yourself anymore! Would this Hannah please talk to me, before it’s too late?”

  I’m only dressing like this to cover the fact my tattoos have disappeared! Hannah thought sullenly. Though, granted, beforehand she’d changed how she was dressing in order to appear more responsible. Was that such a bad thing, when she needed older adults than she to believe and trust in her?

  Hannah sighed. “I’m me. Just me. I’m just…having a tough time right now. Going by the way you look, you are too.”

  “Rude.”

  “I thought you wanted me to speak my mind?” Hannah asked, risking a little smile. A flash of amusement crossed Dr. Greene’s face, but then he schooled his expression back to normal.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just…tell me you aren’t doing anything dangerous. Tell me that and I’ll get off your back…for now.”

  “I’m not doing anything dangerous,” Hannah replied easily, just as the voice inside her head echoed the same sentiment.

  Is that true? Hannah asked the voice.

  ‘I would not have said it if it weren’t true.’

  Why should I believe you?

  ‘You have no other choice.’

  A burst of pain exploded behind Hannah’s eyes, and she clutched at her bench. Dr. Greene put a hand on her back; she was in too much pain to flinch away.

  “Hannah, what—what’s wrong?” he worried.

  “Nothing,” she breathed, though she could barely see. “Just a—migraine. I can handle them.”

  “You’ve been getting them a lot these days.”

  “I just need to get a good night’s sleep,” she replied. With great effort Hannah managed to straighten her back and face Dr. Greene without grimacing. “All I can think about is how—any week now—people really will be growing too green to ignore. Too green and too many of them to ignore. The fact that everything’s been kept under wraps so far is astoundingly improbable. Do you not think? The whole thing feels even more like a conspiracy because of—”

  Doctor Greene coughed, surreptitiously pointing above their heads. Hannah caught on to his meaning immediately.

  ‘Don’t say something like that here.’

  “Perhaps you should call it a day and try to get some rest, then,” he told her, sweeping Hannah to the side and taking over the clean-up of her experiment. “I’ll head home soon, too. God knows I could do with as much sleep as you.”

  Hannah nodded her thanks, rushing off to the closest bathroom stall to violently throw up before her knees could buckle beneath her. Her head had never hurt so badly—not even when Hannah had fallen from her bike and gained the scar behind her ear.

  A scar that no longer exists, she thought numbly. What is going on with me? Why am I so sick?

  ‘It will pass. The pain is necessary.’

  When Hannah was retching up nothing more than air she leaned against the cubicle door, chest heaving. The nausea would have to pass soon or she wouldn’t be well enough to stand, let alone continue her research.

  She ran a hand through her hair, peeling away strands that had stuck to her forehead thanks to her feverish migraine. But when her fingers reached the back of her head Hannah paused. She rubbed the area. Scratched it.

  Weird, she thought. If I didn’t know any better I’d say my skull felt—

  ‘Bigger?’

  Hannah froze.

  Just what the heck are you doing to me?

  ‘It will all become clear in due time.’

  Don’t spout the same sentiment I gave Dr. Greene! Tell me what you’re doing!

  ‘You need more time in order to understand.’

  Hannah closed her eyes, breathing deeply. She figured that there must be a way to ask Zeus what it was doing. A way to trick it, perhaps. After all, it was a computer—not a human.

  What do you think are the ‘imperfections’ in my body? Hannah asked the voice.

  It did not reply. All Hannah was met with was echoing, cavernous silence to pair alongside the throbbing migraine in her head.

  “I’m not going to sleep tonight, either,” Hannah said miserably, forcing herself to her feet before she figuratively became part of the linoleum floor. She’d have to push off her video call with Peter and the team until tomorrow—as she currently was, there was no way Hannah could talk.

  That night all she did was lie in the darkness of her bedroom, eyes closed to the world around her. To the unknown. To the fear. To the impending doom.

  She could not escape the same feelings that came from within her very soul.

  Chapter 11

  Massachusetts

  MIT

  “No way—Cas, are you seeing these readings?!”

  “There’s no way they’re accurate.”

  “Way. Zeus is communicating with Hannah’s choker way more than it should be.”

  Peter didn’t like the sound of that. Hannah’s wearable interface was supposed to have rudimentary connections with Zeus at best—it’s specific function was to communicate with the nanobots themselves.

  “So what…what
does that mean, exactly?” Hannah asked nervously, her voice cracking a little over the speaker. Peter had been concerned when she put off the call they were supposed to have the day before, but she had said it was because she was tired. Looking at Hannah it was clear she hadn’t managed to sleep despite her exhaustion.

  Cas smiled reassuringly for her. “It’s all good, Hannah. The entire system is just a little more interconnected than we thought, is all. I suppose it shouldn’t come as a surprise; back when we ran these experiments on animals they obviously didn’t have the same level of complex thinking as we do. Zeus must be having a field day learning via you.”

  Hannah breathed a sigh of relief. “So it is supposed to be learning!”

  “Of course,” Rei cut in. “It has to learn to know what to do next. We can look through the data-log and tell you specifically what it’s been learning most recently, if you want.”

  “That’s—wow, you can do that? That’s so cool!” Hannah replied, interest and enthusiasm lighting up her pale, tired face.

  Rei pushed Cas and Jax out of the way, taking over the computer keyboard to search through Zeus’ database. “…research articles on soft tissue damage, scarring, tattoos…all expected, given the parameters we gave it and the orders sent to the bugs.”

  Hannah nodded as Rei listed things off, then mirrored her friend’s eventual frown. “What is it, Rei?” she asked, uncertain once more.

  “It’s not…no, yeah, it’s a bit weird,” Rei murmured, which piqued the interest of the entire team. “Look at this, guys.”

  “What are you all looking at?” Hannah demanded. Peter felt sorry for her, all alone in South Carolina while a group of—largely—strangers monitored her every step and breath and heartbeat.

  “Han, it seems like it’s reading up on your research notes about the hybridization genes you isolated—specifically in chickens and cattle. And whatever limited data there is on pigs.”