Vector by Marcus Richardson

Author:Marcus Richardson [Richardson, Marcus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Freeholder Press, LLC
Published: 2019-10-28T22:00:00+00:00

8

Buzzkill

La Cañada Flintridge, California

Ridgeview Guest House

Norman Yang raced from room to room, dumping clothes and toiletries on his bed. He muttered to himself as he ransacked his apartment, gathering anything and everything that might come in handy during his upcoming trip.

He checked his phone every few minutes, waiting for the alert that would signal the kidnappers—whom he was convinced by now were terrorists after he ran a trace program to figure out the emails he’d received came from servers based in Lebanon—had released his daughter as promised. That had been the price of his willing submission to their demands, of his dismantling his entire career, the price of him being an accomplice to the deaths of millions of innocent people.

Norman had paid that price gladly—he would have done anything they’d asked to get his daughter back. He took it as a bargain that they were too ignorant to know how he’d masterfully hidden his subtle changes to the Elixr CRISPR. They expected him to grant them behind-the-scenes access to the greatest medical discovery in the history of mankind, so they could turn it into a sadistic super weapon. He didn’t know anything concrete about their plans and frankly he didn’t care. He’d effectively castrated the genetics in the Elixr formula, so whatever they’d intended, the formula would be useless. Except to those who handled it directly—they would suffer an agonizing death.

He paused, holding a pair of boxers in one hand and his toothbrush in the other. Of course, unforeseen mutations were always an inherent risk with any gene modification...

Norman shook his head and tossed the underwear and toothbrush on the pile, then rushed from his bedroom. It didn’t matter, none of it mattered. Once he got Kelly back, he was going straight into hiding. Desmond Martin had unwittingly assured their survival.

A few years back, when the press had gotten a hold of Norman’s private number and his privacy had been shattered like a glass window, Martin had provided Norman with a no-expenses-spared golden parachute: an iron-clad new identity complete with government issued identification, a full bank account, property, backstory, the whole nine yards. Norman had been the test case in a program Martin had been cooking up in preparation for Elixr—since then, all the chief executives with the same services, should something go awry with Elixr.

Norman had waved off the paranoia at the time. "Nothing will go wrong, Des, it’s locked down, stable, and safe. This is going to change the world," he remembered telling his boss.

Martin had been just as enthusiastic as ever, but he didn’t become one of the wealthiest men on the planet by being foolhardy. There was a cautious—some would say paranoid—streak in Desmond Martin a mile wide.

Norman opened his fire safe in the bedroom closet and pulled out the plain manilla envelope that held his new identity, several thousand dollars in cash, and keys to his new house in an obscure little town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In fact, most of Martin’s executives had property in or around the sleepy little hamlet of Beacon Point, including the mastermind himself.

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