The Dark Side of Angels

Author’s Note of Introduction

While this is a work of fiction, immortality is a scientific fact. Turritopsis dohrnii, a jellyfish first discovered off the coast of Italy in 1988, is the only known immortal animal on Earth, able to go from stem cell to full adult medusa and back again. Work is underway to decode its genome and understand its remarkable transformation at a cellular level.

In addition, thanks to recent scientific breakthroughs, including a new gene-editing tool called CRISPR, molecular biologists can now identify and modify any gene in any living organism, including those in humans. The technology will revolutionize medicine and the biosphere we all share. The process was discovered while investigating a gene-editing defense mechanism that bacteria use to destroy attacking viruses. Since its discovery, scientists using CRISPR have created goats with longer hair, dehorned cows, virus-resistant pigs and a host of other genetically modified crops and animals. They’ve corrected mutations that cause cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia and Duchenne muscular dystrophy in living human cells in the lab. It’s being used to develop treatments against deadly viruses. And recently, a rogue scientist in China created two HIV-resistant human babies.

The question is: Can we take this remarkable journey to cure diseases that have plagued humans since the beginning of our existence, perhaps even controlling our own evolution, while avoiding the dark side of genetic modification? The answer lies ahead of us on a journey we will all take together … hopefully with science on the side of the angels.

CHAPTER 1

Kayla Covington had been here before, but this time she was determined no one would die. She examined the prefilled syringe in its refrigerated case and admired her life’s work. Ten years after her twelve-year-old son died, she’d have another chance to regain her family. And this was the key.

She picked up her son’s picture from the corner of her desk and let the flood of love and guilt engulf her. She couldn’t feel one without the other. But it was a tradeoff she’d always accepted. It had been her decision. One any mother would have made for a chance to save her son. Even if it only gave them a few more months together. If she’d only had this technology back then, things might be different now.

She looked up and scanned the lab through the plate-glass window. After assembling the prefilled syringes for the first human trials, her team had stayed late to celebrate. Dressed in pale blue lab coats, they stood at their workstations in full personal protective equipment among the microscopes, computer stations and sparkling glassware and toasted the most remarkable breakthrough in the history of medicine.

Despite the public’s concerns, she knew it would work. The primate trials had gone perfectly and soon the world would have a gene-editing therapy that would save millions and change the destiny of the human species. But this dose was for patient number one. The only person who’d supported her all along. She’d snatch her father from the relentless grip of Parkinson’s disease, and maybe, just maybe, her daughter would finally forgive her.

Startled by a thud, she looked up from the case containing the syringe. Then the window to the lab exploded. Glass shards sliced into her face and the blast slammed her into the wall behind her. When she awoke, her skin felt on fire. Her ears rang and throbbed with pain. She wanted to rip them from her head. She thought her eyes were open, but she saw nothing but bright white light. The smell of tar mixed with the thick blanket of burning aromatics choked her. She pressed to a seated position and her sight returned slowly, as if she were peering through an evaporating fog.

Then she spotted them. They looked like aliens, with elongated snouts and large round eyes, roaming through the smoke and flames. She started to stand but dropped back to the floor when she saw the automatic rifles and recognized the gas masks and fire suits. The attackers systematically crept through the lab. The first attacker stopped, took aim at one of her team members on the floor and fired once, then grabbed their laptop computer from the debris. The others repeated the process equidistantly spread out across the flaming lab. An acidic bomb exploded in her stomach when she realized they were exterminating her crippled team.

She searched for her desk phone and found the shattered device against the back wall. She lunged for handset, pressed the talk button, and put it to her ear. Nothing. Tossing it aside, she glanced back toward the attackers who were still executing the last of her team. Catalyzed by the need to stop them and the panic detonating in her body, she stood and yelled, “Leave them alone! I’m right here!” Now the killers all headed directly for her.

Knowing they’d be on her in seconds, she forced her rebooting body to respond and scrambled onto her hands and knees, sweeping the floor ahead with both hands. Fighting off the numbing shock, she implored her stunned limbs to work faster as she searched under the debris for the only remaining scrap of her life’s work. As the curtain of thick, acrid smoke filled her office, her right hand hit something, and she skittered her fingers atop the syringe. It felt intact. She snatched it up. While she crawled toward the shattered window leading outside, she moved her left hand back and forth along the floor hoping to snag her backpack, which held her phone and wallet. Her pinky hooked the strap and she shrugged it onto her shoulder.

Squatting behind her desk, she checked the lab one last time. The smoke screened her view and burned her eyes. She listened for her team, but all she heard was breaking glass and the growl of the fire. She sprang up and leapt through the shattered window.

She hit the gravel hard but kept her grip on the syringe. She picked herself up and sprinted away from the building. Her mind raced. Who were these people? Why were they killing her team and destroying her work? When would help arrive?

Cover around the building was sparse, other than the late January darkness, so she dashed around the side of the building and across the parking lot. They’d spot her quickly and have a clear shot. She expected a bullet to pierce her skull at any moment. She checked over her shoulder and saw the smoke billowing out of the broken windows of the lab.

As she neared Torrey Pines Drive, she glanced back again and saw two figures facing the front entrance of the building. When she read the yellow letters on their jackets, she skidded to a stop behind the trunk of a thick eucalyptus tree. FBI. Were they responding? They turned and targeted her with their rifles.

As she caught her breath, her body vibrated with terror and disbelief. She’d battled the government to get the trial approved and tolerated their restrictions and security requirements, but she’d complied. Now they were trying to kill her.

The crack of two slugs hitting the tree trunk jolted her. She ducked and bolted across the empty northbound lanes and hurdled the guardrail in the median. Another shot rang out against the guardrail. She realized she’d never heard the rifles fire. Just like the killers inside the lab, they were using suppressors. She wanted to look back but she didn’t have time.

Ahead, she saw the dim security lights on the corner of the maintenance building for Torrey Pines Golf Course. Stuffing the syringe into her front pants pocket, she jumped and clung to the chain-link fence. She scrambled over it, but her backpack snagged on the rough ends atop the fence and pinned her body against it. Another shot buzzed past her head and she could see the two FBI agents advancing, still targeting her with their rifles.

She yanked herself out of the straps of the pack just as a pair of headlights appeared in the southbound lanes. She heard sirens in the distance and raced around the corner of the building.

In an instant, Kayla was into the thick darkness of the golf course. Guided by the feel of concrete under her feet, she followed the cart path until it ended. Then she entered the prickly brush marking the start of Torrey Pines State Reserve. The din of the city had faded, and she could hear the ocean clawing against the shoreline. The smell of coastal sagebrush was strong, and she stopped and listened.

Other than the noise from a passing car, she heard nothing. They’d either given up due to the first responders’ arrival or they were far better at concealment than she was. She worked her way down the arroyo to the shoreline cliff and sat on a sandstone rock at its edge. Her heart raced as she caught her breath. The pain began to rise. Her entire body ached, and her face burned from the cuts.

Her thoughts began to emerge from the fog of panic. She had to get somewhere safe. But with the authorities possibly involved, she’d have to rely on someone she could trust. The attackers clearly wanted her dead. And something inside said they wouldn’t give up easily.

With no money and no phone, her options were limited. While it was usually called out as a liability, she thanked God for her obsession with staying in shape. Tonight, it had saved her life. But only for tonight. She needed a plan, and that plan would require a five-mile run and the mercy of someone she’d shown little mercy the last time they’d been together.

Her lab had been destroyed and all the other prefilled syringes that contained the synthetic vectors outfitted with CRISPR components had been stolen. The genetic instructions they carried unlocked the secret of Turritopsis, the only immortal animal in the world, and translated it to work in the human genome. The prefilled syringes that stopped the process before it went too far were gone as well.

She pulled the syringe from her jeans. It was the last sample on Earth, and it wouldn’t last the night without refrigeration. Her life’s work would be lost, along with the only chance to regain her family.

As she looked out across the ocean glimmering in the moonlight and thought about the millions of people her work would save, she knew what she had to do. She pulled down her jeans and uncovered the needle. Stretching the flesh taut on her thigh, she pressed the needle into it and pushed the plunger. She felt the sting and watched the syringe empty. The Cas9 protein and the guide RNA entered her bloodstream, and soon the CRISPR process would cut out sections of her DNA and paste the modified DNA letters in exactly the right order. The process she’d called RGR—rapid genetic reversal—would begin, and her body would grow younger.

Her cells would store the genetic code—but without the injection that stopped the process, she’d die in less than a week. To survive, she had to stop the process now operating in every cell in her body.

She looked back up the hill into the darkness and saw no indication they were coming for her. She almost wished they were. She’d been so close, and now her path seemed hopeless. Death, not her redemption, had come—and two words echoed in her head.

Not again.

CHAPTER 2

Neville Lewis knew in his heart these killings would help him. He hated that part of himself. He absorbed the warmth of his five-year-old son, Darrin, asleep against his side, as if the boy were recharging his soul with innocence. He knew he’d need it.

His eyes scoured every word of the breaking news as it appeared on the crawler on the muted flat-screen TV. An explosion has destroyed a building just outside San Diego. The unedited film from the scene looked horrific. Fire crews poured water into the flaming building and police cars and ambulances hovered around the perimeter. Empty stretchers were slowly placed into the waiting ambulances whose drivers were in no hurry to leave. Many unconfirmed casualties feared.

The collateral damage was far worse than he’d hoped. But he’d done the calculation and the loss of life was worth it. There would probably be more, but eventually they’d all be revered as heroes by generations to come. Still, this act went against everything he’d stood for. He’d saved lives, millions of them. His foundation was one of the most successful philanthropic organizations in the world. He’d battled malaria, HIV, cholera and starvation. He’d delivered clean water to more people than the largest utilities in the country. His goal was to be counted among the world greatest philanthropists, like Carnegie, Mellon and Gates. But now, one of the world’s greatest philanthropists had embraced killing for the greater good.

Darrin snuggled closer and Neville shielded him from the truth with his hug. Neville heard his wife’s footfalls from the darkness of their expansive kitchen. Without looking away from the TV, he felt around the soft sofa for the remote and changed the channel.

Lying to Charlotte was never an option. Her short, thick brown hair was tousled, and her eyes foretold that her own bedtime was imminent. Her appearance was the result of her nighttime ritual for Penelope: pajamas, toothbrushing and bedtime story, softly told while sharing a pillow with her Merrythought teddy bear, Chester.

Charlotte stopped between Neville and the TV. “You ready for me to take him up?”

“You mind?”

Charlotte leaned in and extended both hands. “Not at all. I’ve been reviewing the team’s work on the robotic application of SZENSOR. We’re close, but I’m wiped out. I’ll take Darrin to bed with me.”

SZENSOR had made them rich beyond all definition of the word through an exclusive deal with the US government that kept the technology out of the hands of the public and in the hands of the US intelligence agencies. It was also the reason he never lied to Charlotte. The technology used behavioral biomarkers to read people’s minds. Minute shifts in facial muscles, changes in tone and word choice, length of smiles or frowns and fluctuations in the eyes all gave away humans’ closest secrets. It was more accurate than a lie detector but still considered inadmissible in court. Offshoots of the technology were available in hundreds of other applications, ranging from attraction ratings in dating apps to helping robots assess humans’ dispositions.

She was the behavioral scientist who’d helped him design the algorithms. They’d met after a lecture he’d given on the UW campus. She was a smart and attractive Chinese American professor there. Her mother and father were from Beijing but had homes in Seattle and Vancouver. Her father ran an import/export business with offices in Seattle, Vancouver and Shanghai. Neville was immediately smitten. They were married the same year.

Neville scooped up Darrin. He swore he weighed twice as much when he was asleep. He slipped Darrin into her arms and she cradled him against her body with his head draped over her shoulder.

“See you up there.” Charlotte shuffled quietly across the cherrywood floor to the staircase and disappeared into the shadows.

He turned off the TV and walked down the long hallway and across the covered footbridge to his office. He stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking across Lake Sammamish toward Mount Baker. From a thousand feet above the lake, the reflected light danced on the water like fireflies. A knock on the door leading to the private entrance to his office interrupted his momentary meditation.

Max Wagner, head of his security team, entered. “I have some information.”

“Okay. But we have to be careful. I don’t want to know the details.”

Wagner’s silence and raised thick eyebrows said otherwise. Neville suspected it was a tactic he’d learned working in the intelligence community. He’d been with Neville since the second venture round, when Neville’s net worth surpassed the one-billion-dollar mark. Recommended by one of the venture capitalists, his résumé was short: thirty years with the Central Intelligence Agency. Nothing else. But judgment and discretion were paramount for Neville.

Neville had to ask for more details since they’d both previously agreed on maintaining Neville’s plausible deniability in all sensitive matters due to SZENSOR. “What is it?”

“They missed her.”

“What? How in the hell could that happen? It looks like they blew up the building and killed everyone inside.”

Wagner deadpanned. “She got out through a window.”

“If she’s still out there, she can make it again.”

Wagner narrowed his eyes on Neville. “The word I get is that the FBI had an agent in there. She’ll be gone by tomorrow.”

“You’re pretty certain.” Neville knew that the longer Kayla Covington was out there, the greater the risk that she’d re-create this threat to mankind. “Did you at least get the new data?”

“Got all of it yesterday. On the lab computers, in the cloud, all of it.”

“When will we have it?”

“Soon.”

“Let me know as soon as it’s secured.”

Wagner nodded in agreement and moved back to the door.

“Hang on,” Neville said. “You and I need to talk about the problem in Equatorial Guinea.”

“Now?”

Neville just waited for Wagner to catch up.

“Right. We can’t lie to her,” Wagner said.

They headed to the side chairs overlooking the Cascades and talked about the logistics and security problems with the new water system going in at Malabo. Then Wagner left Neville alone.

Neville walked to the hand-carved mantel above the fireplace across from the windows. He gently placed his hand against the side of the gold urn. He turned and walked to the doorway to the footbridge. As he turned off the light, he softly said, “Good night, Mother.”

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