The Silver Strand Legacy, page 12
part #1 of Eritis Trilogy Series
“Enhance them how?” Doc asked.
“Physically. Strength, stamina, etc. But they were also interested in the psychological aspects. They wanted to make the soldiers more aggressive, and less prone to emotions such as fear or remorse.”
“In short, they wanted to create their idea of a perfect soldier,” Kincade summarized.
A light bulb went on inside Rock’s head. “Aha! Then little miss superhero ninja was high on some crazy drug!” He turned to Ashrem and Arianne. “I’m guessing you two are doped up as well, huh?” He then turned to Lucielle with a wry smile. “Don't tell me they've got you on the same stuff too. That would be just … wrong, man.”
“What …? No!” Lucielle exclaimed. “I'm not on drugs! And neither are they!"
"You’re not?" said Rock, sounding surprised.
"If you would just let him finish," she said in an irritated tone.
"Don’t raise your voice, Luce," Arianne chided.
The young girl pouted as she crossed her arms and sank deeper into the sofa.
"Go on, Professor,” said Arianne.
“Ah, yes … after a great deal of time and effort, Dr. Brainsworth’s team succeeded in creating a drug that produced the desired effects … more or less.”
“Which is it?” Sonar asked. “Did it work or didn’t it?”
“It did, to some extent. But like all scientists who embark on this type of research, Dr. Brainsworth was confronted with a major issue.”
“What issue?” Sonar asked.
“Side effects, of course!” Professor Fournier motioned to some imaginary board, like a classroom teacher giving a lecture. “You can’t just tamper with the body’s internal functions without consequences. There’s always a price to pay. The soldiers were stronger, as intended, and from what I’ve heard most of them turned out to be quite mean. However, prolonged use of the drug resulted in other symptoms, like severe migraines, muscle spasms etc. A few subjects even died of cardiac arrest.”
“I bet that put a stop to the whole thing,” said Sonar.
Fournier wagged his finger. “Wrong. They kept going. The project had shown real promise. Plus, the soldiers were volunteers. They knew the risks. Even so, the variations in side effects were too significant from one individual to the next. And the longer the soldiers took the drugs, the more their bodies adjusted to them, which rendered the drugs less effective over time. You could say it was a partial success. Dr. Brainsworth worked tirelessly to resolve those issues, but to no avail.”
“I thought you said she was some kind of big shot scientist,” Rock commented.
“She was. But the simple fact is the human body has limits. You can bend the rules to some extent, but you can't break them. The body wouldn’t survive it. As time went by, the Agency grew frustrated with Brainsworth’s lack of progress. They were on the verge of shutting the whole enterprise down when Dr. Brainsworth approached them with an audacious new idea. She believed they needed to change the parameters of the project itself. Advances in science and technology presented them with a different solution, one which would have been inconceivable a few years earlier: Genetic manipulation.”
Those two words piqued the mercenary’s interest.
Chapter 15 – Unnatural
“Genetic manipulation?” Doc echoed.
“Yes.” Professor Fournier was pleased to see he had caught his audience’s attention. “It makes sense when you think about it. If you can’t push the human body beyond its limits, why not try to push those limits instead? Dr. Brainsworth was given a new mandate. She abandoned her previous research and redirected all of her resources in this new direction. It was, of course, as you say in English, easier said than done. Brainsworth had to rethink everything from scratch, starting with her team, and that proved quite a challenge. Genetic engineering was a new field at the time. She knew that in order to assemble the best possible group, she would have to enlist the help of scientists from other countries as well. One man, in particular, was considered vital to the success of the project. His name was Friedrich Engel. He was widely regarded as the world’s leading expert in the field of genetics. But there was one problem. Professor Engel was a German citizen living in East Berlin, which, as you all know, was part of the Eastern Bloc.”
Kincade smiled. “In the middle of the Cold War? Yeah, I can see how that would be a problem.”
“Indeed. The idea made more than a few people nervous. Dr. Brainsworth had to push hard to get the Agency to go along with it. But in the end, she was able to convince them. Then came the hard part.”
“The extraction,” Doc guessed.
“Correct. They needed to find a way to extract Professor Engel without his knowledge.”
“Why not try to contact him?” Sonar asked.
Fournier waved his hand like he was brushing aside a question from an overeager student. “Too risky,” he said. “Very little was known about Professor Engel on a personal level. The Agency had no idea if he would be receptive to their offer. What if he refused? Not only would they lose all access to him, they would also tip off the Russians to what they were trying to accomplish.”
Still standing in the doorway with his arms folded over his chest, Rock drummed his fingers with increasing frequency. The long-winded explanation was chipping away at his last nerve. “Can we skip to the end already?”
Sonar, on the other hand, was fascinated and wanted to hear the story in detail. “Let the man finish,” he said. “Never mind him, Professor, please continue.”
“Oh, come on!” said the giant. “We just asked them who they were. I don’t recall signing up for a lecture.”
“Ahem, very well,” said Fournier, “to cut the story short, they found a way to acquire, I believe was the term they used, Professor Engel. But as fate would have it, the professor was accompanied by his assistant at the time of the extraction. Well … I say assistant, but he was more like his protégé. A promising young Russian scientist named Aleksandr Karpov. He was a bright and kind man … with a …” His voice shook with emotion, and his throat tightened as he tried to fight back tears.
Ashrem moved closer to Fournier and gently rubbed his hand over the professor’s back. “It’s all right, Professor, take a moment.”
Lucielle went to the old man and wrapped her arms around his waist in silence.
Sonar glanced up at Rock. “What did I miss?”
“You’re seriously asking me?”
The other mercenaries were just as perplexed. Kincade turned to Arianne for an answer, but the tears in her eyes dissolved the words about to form in his mouth. She was staring at Fournier with a sad expression, and Kincade could see that she too was struggling to keep her own feelings bottled up inside.
In the end, it was Ashrem who provided the explanation. “Professor Karpov was murdered recently,” the young man declared. “He was like family to us. He and Professor Fournier have known each other since before we were born.”
“I’m sorry,” said Kincade. “Murdered, you say? Do you have any idea who could have done it?”
Ashrem lowered his eyes. “It was killed by one of us.”
Kincade was confused. “I don’t understand.”
“You will after you hear the rest of the story,” said Fournier. He took off his glasses and dried his damp eyes with a handkerchief. Then, he stuffed the cloth back into his pocket and caressed Lucielle’s hair. The silver-haired child responded with a warm smile and returned to her seat.
The old man cleared his throat and resumed his tale. “With the help of the British, the Agency smuggled Professor Engel and his assistant out of Berlin and eventually convinced them to help. I say eventually because it took a while before the professor was calm enough for Brainsworth to even present the project to him.”
“I guess it’s understandable,” said Doc. “Anyone would be upset if they got abducted.”
“No, it wasn’t the abduction,” said Fournier. “The Agency didn’t know it at the time, but Professor Engel had a child. He had had a secret relationship with a librarian a few years prior. Sadly, the woman had fallen ill and died when the child was still very young. After her death, Professor Engel had arranged for his daughter to be adopted by a wealthy couple and made sure to keep his distance. He knew if people found out about his daughter, she would attract all sorts of unwanted attention because of his high-profile status; he didn’t want that for her. Engel was furious because the abduction had made it look like he had defected, thereby putting his child in serious danger. If the state learned of her existence, they would use her as a bargaining chip to get him back.”
Jerome Fournier paused to make sure his audience was still following.
“Ultimately, Professor Engel agreed to work with Dr. Brainsworth on the condition her employers did everything in their power to retrieve his child. Personally, I believe his decision may have also been influenced by his scientific curiosity, which was no doubt sparked by the prospect of working on such an innovative project. The professor’s protégé, on the other hand, was far less open to compromise. Alek—Aleksandr Karpov—was young and an idealist. For him, the idea of working with the Americans and the British was unthinkable. Thankfully, his devotion to Engel was such that, in the end, he reluctantly agreed. Later on, though, he confessed to me he had intended to share all findings with his government at the first opportunity. In any case, Dr. Brainsworth had assembled her new team and was ready to begin.”
“I assume Engel and his assistant were asked to go to the US,” said Kincade.
“They were,” said Fournier, “but Professor Engel wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted to remain as close as possible to his daughter, to make sure the Agency would keep their word. He insisted the team work from London instead.”
Kincade raised an eyebrow. “Hmm, it must have been a tough sell.”
“Oh yes. But Dr. Brainsworth had made it clear the success of the project hinged on Professor Engel’s cooperation.”
“I hope he was worth all the trouble,” Sonar remarked.
“He was,” Fournier said. “Whenever the team ran into a seemingly unsolvable problem, Professor Engel would come up with a solution, or a way around it. He understood the human genome better than anyone else. The techniques he used were unheard of at the time. He was an exceptional scientist. So was his protégé. Dr. Brainsworth was quite impressed with the young Karpov. She understood why Engel had taken him under his wing. Thanks to them, the team was able to make significant advances in the first year alone. Within two years, they had reached the testing phase.”
“They actually found a way to manipulate people’s DNA to enhance them?” Doc asked in a dubious tone.
“Yes! Well, in theory at least. In reality, things were a lot more complicated.”
“How so?”
“They performed the procedure on groups of fertilized eggs divided into large batches. Each egg was then implanted into a surrogate mother for—”
“Why so many?” Sonar interrupted.
Fournier meandered around an invisible box as he gave his explanation. “Since they would have to wait for the babies to be born, they couldn’t afford to run the experiment one egg at the time, or to wait nine months before making the next batch. Instead, they produced a new batch every three months for the following three years.”
“Whoa! That’s a lot of babies!” Sonar exclaimed.
Fournier looked hesitant. “Um… actually … as it turned out, none of the first batches lasted long enough to reach the fetal stage. And it was the same for the following groups.”
“Why? What went wrong?” Kincade inquired.
“No one knew. Perhaps the genetic alterations were too extensive, turning the eggs into something too … unnatural. The team tried to exploit the knowledge gained after each failure to adjust the protocols used in subsequent batches, but nothing worked. Dr. Brainsworth and Professor Engel had become convinced the entire procedure needed to be revised. Then, the unexpected happened. Four embryos from the last group, Batch-12, defied the odds and survived. Day after day, week after week, the team continued to monitor them, waiting for something to go wrong. But it never did. They developed into healthy babies.”
“What was different about those four?” Doc asked.
The old man shrugged. “Again, no one had a clue.”
“Maybe it was just luck!” Rock suggested half-jokingly.
“Doubtful,” Fournier replied. “The fact they all came from the same batch indicated there was some other factor at play. Something had improved their chances of survival.”
Kincade sensed the professor was holding back. “Anything else you’re not telling us?”
Fournier’s gaze bounced around the room as if afraid to land on anyone. “The truth is there was another … event, which steered the team away from the idea of an accident. A horrific event.” Fournier paused and took a deep breath. “The four surrogate mothers of those four babies died on the delivery table. It was very strange. As though the children had literally siphoned the life force out of them. Even to this day, we still can’t explain it.”
“Creepy,” Sonar commented.
“Against Dr. Brainsworth’s objections, the Agency decided to try the procedure again. Only this time, they ran it on an even larger scale. They gathered hundreds of women for the next group, hoping to get even more babies.”
“Let me guess,” said Kincade. “No one told those new surrogate mothers what to expect if the experiment actually succeeded.”
Fournier shook his head. “No. Since no one could predict with any certainty what would happen to them, the higher-ups decided it was an acceptable risk given the time, money, and resources they had put into the project. They were determined to see it through.”
“Did it work?” Doc asked.
“I am pleased to say it didn’t. Their next batch had a zero percent success rate. And it was the same with all subsequent batches. No surrogate mother needed to be put in harm’s way. Even Professor Engel was baffled. They had recreated the exact same conditions and followed the exact same procedures.”
“If they did everything the same, shouldn’t they get the same result?” Sonar asked.
Fournier had been expecting the question. “Aha! You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But it doesn’t really work that way. How can I explain this …?” He scratched his head, trying to come up with a simple way to make his point. “Sometimes people make an analogy between genetics and cooking, a loose analogy, mind you, but the point is valid nonetheless. For example, imagine you have a recipe for a marble cake. You will never bake the exact same cake twice, even if you follow the same detailed set of instructions. This applies to genetics as well. You never quite get the exact same result. And when it comes to DNA, even the slightest change in certain genes can have a major impact in long run. Add to that an absurdly high number of possible permutations, and things can get very complicated.”
Unlike his redheaded comrade, Doc had grasped the gist of the professor’s explanation and was eager to hear the rest of it. “What happened next?”
“The team was stumped,” said Fournier. “All attempts to reproduce their one successful experiment had failed. No one could figure out why those four babies had survived when all the others had not. Meanwhile, as the babies grew up, the scientists ran all manner of tests on them. But it was impossible to make a conclusive determination because they were still too young. Therefore, the decision was made to halt the project and wait until the subjects were old enough to be accurately evaluated.” The professor marked a brief pause. “The wait was shorter than anticipated. By their fifth birthday, all four children were already displaying promising abilities.”
Strange glances passed between the mercenaries.
Even Rock straightened up. “What kind of abilities?”
“For one thing, they were ridiculously strong for their size. This had been the main goal of the genetic manipulation all along, but no one had dared hope it would work to such an extent. Professor Engel had also intended for his process to result in a higher bone and muscular density in the subjects. And it did. They weren’t just stronger, but also much tougher than the average individual. This was crucial. Otherwise, they would have ended up hurting themselves.”
“Why?” Rock asked.
“Because if a person were somehow able to punch a wall with the power of a sledgehammer, they would make a hole in the wall, sure, but they would also break every bone in their arm.”
“Strong and tough, eh?” said Kincade.
Fournier nodded. “Yes. Speed and reflexes were improved as well. Hmm … what else? Ah, excellent hand-eye coordination. That one was a surprise.”
Rock chuckled. “Hehehe. It’s starting to sound like a vampire movie.”
Sonar poked the giant with his elbow. “Try to be serious for once!”
“Serious? Come on, man. There’s nothing serious about any of this.”
Rock wasn’t the only one having trouble accepting the old man’s outlandish tale.
“I’m with the big guy on this one,” said Doc. “I find it hard to believe you can go around manipulating people’s DNA with such ease.”
“Easy?” Professor Fournier shouted. “Did I give you the impression any of this was easy?” He looked like he was about to have a heart attack. “It was incredibly difficult. We’re talking about some of the greatest scientific minds of their time. Not to mention they had the full resources of both the American and the British governments at their disposal. The team spent every waking hour of every day working on this project. And in the end, the only positive result they were able to obtain could pretty much be described as a fluke, one they were never able to reproduce. I assure you, young man, there was nothing easy about any of it.”
Rock raised his hand in a calming gesture. “Chill out, pops! You look like you’re about to check out on us.”
While the others were watching the professor mumble to himself, Da Costa caught something from the corner of his eye. “Hey! Where are you going?”
