Broken Symmetry by Dan Rix

Author:Dan Rix
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Burning Ember Press
Published: 2013-07-28T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

IT REGISTERED SOMEWHERE south of my sternum, a lump, almost pain—what Charles Donovan had just said. In a quarantined “hot zone” guarded by half the Army, USAMRIID was studying my DNA, sequencing it with Illumina HiSeq 2000s, and getting nowhere.

They had swabbed it off an artifact they’d found in the ground, where it had been for a decade. Now they were replicating it in vials and bringing in top scientists from around the country to decipher the organism it belonged to—me.

The extra two chromosomes I possessed. The crossover gene. That’s what Dr. Anderson had meant.

I wasn’t quite human.

I was an aneuploid.

Word got to Damian. He marched into Charles’s office and slammed the door behind him. Trembling in the hallway, I overheard their argument.

“How’d they get it?” said Damian, his voice menacingly quiet through the door. “How’d they get her DNA, Charles?”

“You heard. She was all over that artifact,” he said. “And don’t even start with this crap. You knew we had a breach. Blaire’s father proved it; there’s a mirror out there someone forgot to close.”

“Last I checked,” said Damian, “the U.S. Army doesn’t walk through mirrors. Even if there is a breach, they couldn’t use it.”

“You have a better theory?”

Silence. “You,” he said finally. “You were in contact with Doctor Benjamin. I think you gave it to them—I think you’ve been going behind our backs.”

“Oh, please,” said Charles. “That was basic reconnaissance, like we all should be doing. Not everything needs to be done in crossover.”

“How’d they get her DNA, Charles?”

“It could have been one of us. One of our own reflections wandering up.”

“Who?” Damian sneered. “You? Blaire? Amy?”

“Oh, get off your pedestal,” said Charles. “It could have been you.”

“Don’t insult me.”

“Or Blaire’s father. That’s where they picked him up, wasn’t it? Look, my point is it could have been anyone. I don’t know any more than you do right now.”

“You do realize what you’re saying, don’t you? Think of how many times we’ve crossed over, how many times I’ve ruined yours and Amy’s lives in a reflection, or you’ve ruined mine. Think of all the permutations. And you’re saying one of us is out there right now, one step ahead of us? That’s not good.”

“I don’t know what’s out there any more than you do. We’re all just guessing at this now.”

There was a long pause before Damian said, “then why do I get the feeling there’s something you’re not telling me?”

***

Because he was asking the wrong question. Charles assumed they’d gotten my DNA from a reflection; Damian wanted to know how.

I wanted to know why.

He was right about one thing, though. There was too much Charles wasn’t telling us about the artifact, about what it was—or did—and why he wanted it.

I could guess, though.

Only carriers of the 47 chromosome could crossover. Without an active carrier gene, the Army never could have accessed a reflection to collect my DNA in the first place. Either they had gotten it from Charles or someone else in the source, as Damian thought, or one of us .

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