The Fourth Layer Page 7

  “Well, I suppose we did put my notes on the cloud. That’s…Zeus is completely secure, right?” Hannah asked, twisting her hands in her lap as she spoke. “I mean, I’m already being watched in the lab and I’m pretty sure Rusty is still having me followed about South Carolina even though he insisted I wasn’t being followed anymore and—”

  “Relax, Hannah,” Peter said, in a voice he hoped was soothing. “It’s totally secure. Like, military facility secure. Cas and Helena made sure of that.”

  Cas and Helena subsequently flashed two equally large grins at Hannah. “Peter’s right,” Helena said. “Nobody else will be able to access your research notes. If they somehow managed to break into it the data would all be encrypted, anyway.”

  “But now Zeus has read it all. What does it want with that information?”

  Jax frowned. “Seems as if it was focusing on how the hybrid animal cells were performing photosynthesis. To be fair, it probably moved onto the subject because it’s still about skin. I’m sure it’s nothing to be concerned about, but we’ll look into it to be sure.”

  Hannah smiled slightly, though she didn’t look at all convinced from where Peter was standing. “Thank you,” she said. “Please keep me updated if you find anything.”

  “Will do. Anything else to let us know?”

  She shook her head. “No, that’s everything, but…”

  “But?”

  Hannah’s eyes flitted over to Peter then back to Jax. “I don’t suppose I could speak to Peter alone for a minute?”

  Peter could have hit each and every member of the team, they were so obvious in the way they looked first at Hannah, then at Peter, then at each other. But they dutifully vacated the lab, giving Hannah the privacy she had so politely requested.

  ‘Polite’ is definitely the word that describes her right now, Peter thought, as he sat down in front of the computer and smiled at Hannah. I thought we were getting along well then I took her out for pancakes. But she’s been completely shut off since she returned to South Carolina. There’s something she isn’t telling anyone—including me.

  “What is it, Hannah?” he asked her, wasting no time in jumping straight to the point. If all Hannah needed was a favor or some advice then he’d rather get the conversation over with quickly, so he didn’t end up making his continued interest in her so deathly obvious.

  Hannah gulped. “Peter, can you…come to South Carolina for a couple days?”

  Peter stared at the computer screen, eyes going hazy and unfocused until he could no longer properly see Hannah’s digital form. Clearly she’s not as shut off as I thought. She—

  “I could do with some back-up for…something.”

  “Oh.”

  He’d hoped that Hannah would ask him to visit her—had considered surprising her, even. But Peter knew that would be unfair of him to spring such a visit on her unannounced. And yet he couldn’t help but be bitterly disappointed that Hannah was only asking him to visit in order to help her with something, presumably work-related.

  He supposed he had to take every opportunity he could get.

  “I guess I could do that,” Peter said, trying to sound as non-committal as possible. “My folks still have some air miles that need used up.”

  Hannah was visibly relieved by his response; clearly whatever she needed ‘back-up’ for was not something she was looking forward to doing.

  If she was looking forward to it then she wouldn’t need back-up, you dolt, he thought.

  He kept up with his light and casual tone as he asked, “So what’s the problem? Need me to beat someone up? Do you have a scorned ex-boyfriend who has it out for you? Or—”

  “No, no, no, nothing like that,” Hannah cut in, immediately flustered. She let out the barest hint of a giggle, which caused his heartbeat to quicken. Okay, so maybe she did like him and he hadn’t imagined that their pancake date had gone well. He just wished that she’d drop her walls down around him already and allow herself to be more…herself.

  Hannah ran a nervous hand through her long, black hair after she had composed herself once more. “I…need to speak to my supervisor.”

  He frowned. “About what?”

  She stared at him pointedly.

  “About our research.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to tell him? That he’d tell the FDA or something?”

  Hannah wrung her hands in her lap as she had done a few minutes ago. “I don’t want to tell him everything. But I…he needs to know some things. I can’t keep all this a secret.”

  “So why do you need my help?”

  “Well,” she said, biting her lip and glancing over her shoulder. The curtains were drawn behind her; there was no hint whatsoever that somebody else was there. She turned back to face the camera. “Dr. Greene was forced to put up cameras and microphones all around the lab, so he could monitor everything that was going on, and so that Rusty could, too.”

  “Hannah that’s outrageous!” Peter exclaimed, clattering out of his chair in anger. “That’s a total invasion of your privacy! That’s—”

  “I know. I know. But Dr. Greene hates them. I can tell. I think, maybe…maybe he isn’t as likely to tell the FDA everything as I thought he would. But I mess up when I try to talk to people for long stretches of time, especially if I’ve been lying to them or hiding something from them. And I’ve done both to Dr. Greene, so I could do with some help explaining everything. Would you be able to help me, Peter?”

  Of course he was going to help her. Ever since Peter had first met the pretty, quiet girl with an excellent taste in music and a questionable taste in all-black clothes, he hadn’t been able to get Hannah off his mind. Even after she’d seemingly blown him off. Even when it became apparent she had much bigger things to deal with. But, then again, they all did. It was just that Hannah was brilliant and courageous enough to truly do something about what was going on in the world.

  He grinned. “Of course I’ll help. I’ll be on the next flight over.”

  Peter didn’t even care when the rest of his team snickered at him as he ran from the lab to pack a bag.

  Chapter 12

  South Carolina

  Jackson’s Bar

  “Do you really think your supervisor will appreciate having him meet us in a bar of all places, Hannah?”

  Hannah bit her lip, avoiding Peter’s gaze. She still couldn’t quite believe he’d flown out to South Carolina so easily just to help her.

  ‘Because he likes you, Hannah. All this new brain power and you still can’t understand that?’

  Hannah didn’t want to think about what ‘all this new brain power’ meant. Certainly not right now, at this very moment of time.

  She took a large gulp of her vodka and orange juice—Hannah didn’t normally drink but, considering the fact that humanity was quite potentially doomed, it didn’t seem right to abstain from drinking. “I have to make sure nobody else can hear us,” she eventually told Peter, who had patiently waited for far too long for Hannah to answer his question. “You remember the plan, right?”

  He nodded. “Tell Dr. Greene about the Walsanto experiments using the nanobots. Say they worked in a human subject, but don’t say who.”

  “A willing volunteer who was already affected by the hybridization genes.”

  “Okay. And then what? What if he doesn’t buy that that’s where we stopped?”

  “Whether he does or not doesn’t matter,” Hannah said, though she wasn’t entirely convinced by this. She fingered one of the long sleeves of her black dress; it had a hole in it that she’d been meaning to repair for weeks now. “Telling him this much will give Dr. Greene more than enough information to work with. Enough that’s he’s at least satisfied that I trust him enough to confide in him—to a certain degree.”

  “And when he decides he wants the whole story?”

  Hannah said nothing. She had to hope that, when the time came to spill all her secrets to her supervisor, it was not too late—just as he ha
d suggested it would be the day before.

  After a few moments of silence Peter commented, “It’ll be funny to see him in a rock bar. Your supervisor, I mean.”

  “Not really. He’s a big fan of classic rock. Mostly British stuff, of course.”

  “Of course?”

  Hannah laughed when she realized that Peter did not yet know very much at all about Dr. Greene. “He’s English,” she explained. “Northern English, apparently, though most of the time you can’t place his accent. Goes all Queen’s English on us.”

  “Probably assumes most people wouldn’t be able to understand him otherwise,” Peter snickered.

  “I didn’t assume—I learned through multiple, hard experiences.”

  Peter froze at the unfamiliar voice, wincing when he turned around on his bar stool to greet Dr. Greene. Hannah leapt to her feet with a somewhat hazy grin on her face—clearly the alcohol she was drinking was doing its job of keeping her nerves at bay.

  “Dr. Greene, this is Peter Connelly, who works over at MIT in the nanobot lab.”

  Her supervisor held out his hand; Peter dutifully shook it. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Greene. I’ve heard a lot about you from Hannah.”

  “Oh have you, now?” the man asked, raising an inquisitive eyebrow at her. She looked away. “Just what has she been saying, exactly? That I’m mad at her for skipping out of the lab to take a jaunt over to Massachusetts? That’s she’s obviously conducting some kind of research she doesn’t want me to know about? Something like that?”

  Both Peter and Hannah grimaced, though Dr. Greene merely laughed. He took a seat on Hannah’s left and hailed the bartender over. “Double gin and tonic, please,” he said, so easily that Hannah had to assume it was his regular drink of choice. Then he turned to them. “I have to assume that you calling me out here was to explain what the hell has been going on, Hannah. Am I wrong?”

  “No, you’re right. I did say I’d tell you about what was happening when I could, didn’t I?”

  “And what was so different about today compared to yesterday?”

  Hannah indicated towards Peter with a thumb. “I needed some back-up.”

  “Oh, I’m not that scary, am I?”

  “Not at all,” Hannah said, just as Peter chimed in with, “A bit, yeah.”

  Doctor Greene snickered. “Nice choice of secret venue, by the way. I still come here sometimes when my brother’s visiting.”

  Hannah beamed. “I thought you’d like it.”

  Once the man was handed his drink, he took a long draught of it and sighed happily. “Oh yes, that hits the spot. Alright, out with it, both of you. What’s going on?”

  Peter took Hannah’s hesitance as a hint to start speaking first. “Well, after Hannah’s experiments in yeast and flies and mice worked better than we could have hoped—”

  “Of course you shared your research notes with another lab,” Dr. Greene interjected. He shook his head. “Have you learned nothing from that incident with your essay?”

  “But it was the team at MIT who gave me the nanobots!” Hannah protested. “I had to share my results with them!”

  “Not necessarily. This is why you should have come to me first, Hannah.”

  Hannah crossed her arms and frowned at her supervisor. “Do you want to know what I’ve been up to or not?”

  Silence. And then: “Of course I do. No more interruptions. Continue.”

  She glanced at Peter before following on from where he’d began. “So—as you know—the model organism research has been going really well. The MIT team were keen to test out the protocol in a human subject. They—”

  “Hannah, you were forbidden from trying this out!” Dr. Green exclaimed, stricken.

  “I thought you said you weren’t going to interrupt?”

  “…fine. This better not end in some horrific mess that I have to clean up.”

  “It won’t. I swear. Anyway, it turns out that Peter’s boss already had a human volunteer.”

  “They were already showing signs of being affected by the Walsanto hybridization genes,” Peter explained. “And since this person came to us privately, and we aren’t doing this research through academic channels, and Hannah wasn’t the one who instigated it, there shouldn’t be a problem with the FDA or anything, right?”

  It was with some reluctance that Dr. Greene nodded. But Hannah could see through the stoic act. Her supervisor’s eyes had a familiar shine to them, and he had leaned forward in his chair. He was deathly curious. For how could he not be?

  “Anyway,” Peter continued, “we programmed the nanobots to do the same as they’d done in the model organisms: search for the Walsanto genes, excise them and destroy them. Within a week we had removed ninety-seven percent of all traces of the three genes. Within eleven days all traces of the genes were gone.”

  “Just like…just like that?” Dr. Greene shifted his gaze to Hannah. “It really worked that well?”

  Hannah clapped her hands together, no longer able to contain her excitement. “It did, Dr. Greene! It did. I was right all along.”

  “But this is still just one volunteer,” he replied, keeping his tone measured. “That isn’t enough. We need—”

  “We need the FDA to approve further experiments!” Hannah cut in. “This is proof of concept that the nanobots work. Can you not appeal to them, Dr. Greene? I feel like they don’t take me seriously. Or maybe that’s just Rusty…”

  Doctor Greene’s expression softened. “I have no doubt he takes you seriously. But he’s under a lot of pressure—from the President, from the FDA, from us. I imagine it’s a lot to juggle.”

  “But we have a solution to fix all his problems if he would only give us a chance—”

  “Hannah, I didn’t say I wouldn’t talk to him. I will. And the FDA. I trust your judgment here.”

  Hannah faltered. She thought it would be far harder to convince Dr. Greene to come on board. To her right Peter was staring at her supervisor as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “You…do? You really trust me?”

  Doctor Greene rolled his eyes. “Of course I do! If I didn’t I’d have never shown up here to discuss such things with you away from prying eyes and ears. After all, it was you who worked out what Walsanto were doing in the first place. Now, I’m not saying that I agree with your methods—keeping this from me wasn’t your best idea—but at least I understand why you did it. Can you write me a report on all your experimental findings so far on your human subject?”

  “It’s already written,” Peter said, sliding a small USB drive across the bar-top toward Dr. Greene. “Everyone in the report—including the MIT team—have been treated as anonymous scientists for security purposes. If the FDA approve a trial of the ‘bot protocol or want to meet us then we’ll agree to do so but, until then, it’s better for us all to remain nameless.”

  Doctor Greene nodded in approval. “Good idea. Is there anything else I need to know about before I take this forward?”

  Neither Hannah nor Peter replied. There was an awful lot they could tell Dr. Greene. But if they mentioned that Hannah was the ‘volunteer’, or that they’d continued the research with the nanobots on her even after completing the first round of successful experiments, then all trust the man had in Hannah would likely be lost. If she told him about the voice in her head, and her disappearing tattoos, or the way her skull seemed to be subtly but definitely changing shape…well, Hannah could say good-bye to Dr. Greene being on her side as a scientist altogether.

  “No,” she eventually said, downing her drink in the process. “There’s nothing else. Not right now, anyway. We need FDA approval before we can take things any further. Right now I’m focusing on getting all the model organism replicate experiments done to satisfy their stupid, bureaucratic way of doing things.”

  For a moment it seemed like Dr. Greene had seen right through Hannah’s lie. She hardly dared to breathe. But then, after three agonizingly long seconds, he nodded his hea
d and got out of his seat.

  “Alright,” he said. “Thank you for finally telling me about what you were doing. I’ll contact Rusty in the morning and see what I can do.” He turned to Peter and held out his hand once more. “Mister Connelly, it was good to meet you.”

  “You too, Dr. Greene.”

  It was only after her supervisor disappeared through the front door that Hannah drooped her forehead down to rest on the bar-top in front of her.

  Peter frowned at her in concern. “You okay, Hannah? I thought that went really well. Your supervisor’s a really good guy.”

  “But that’s the problem!” she moaned. “He is a good guy, and we’re lying to him. If he ever finds out that we kept the fact I’m the test subject secret from him then he’ll be furious. More than that: he’ll be SO disappointed in me.”

  “Then he won’t find out. Hannah, there’s no reason for him to find out. All human test subjects are kept anonymous anyway. Nobody ever has to find out you’re our test subject for any of our research. Things will be okay, trust me.”

  Hannah wanted to trust Peter. No, she did trust him, but everything she was experiencing as a result of Zeus and the nanobots was inciting in her a belief that none of the MIT team could possibly understand just what exactly it was that they’d created.

  ‘You’re completely right, Hannah. They don’t. I am much more wonderful than they could have ever imagined.’

  “I think I’ll have another drink,” Hannah said, desperate to ignore the voice in her head for just one evening. Perhaps alcohol would be the key to blocking it out.

  “You sure?” Peter asked, though he didn’t seem averse to the idea of staying out longer. “We don’t have any data on what the bugs will do if you have alcohol in your system. They might see it as a poison—an imperfection—and metabolize it before you can feel its effects.”

  She laughed. “Trust me, I can feel it. Zeus must have learned enough about people to know that we willingly fill our bodies with this stuff.”

  “Well if that’s the case…” Peter called the bartender over and ordered another round. He grinned at Hannah. “I guess another drink or four couldn’t hurt.”