Second Nature

Chapter 13

13 

On the inner wall of the Level Four Biohazard Isolation Suite, the airlock door unsealed with a sharp pop! like a burst balloon. Within its aquarium-like cage, a Florida White rabbit glanced up nervously from its feeding tray. It stopped chewing, stood on its haunches and twitched its pink nose, sniffing. It smelled only dried rabbit chow, water in a drip bottle, a bedding of cedar shavings. But the rabbit sensed danger. Instinct whispered, Death is coming. When the man's shadow passed over the cage, the rabbit had already retreated to cringe against the far glass wall. 

Wearing a blue plastic spacesuit, Col. Jack Eberhard busied himself with a digital lock on a liquid nitrogen freezer that stored Gen's tissue specimens. The lock opened to his typed-in code. From the upper rack, he removed one of the stainless steel vials that held 10 cc's of Gen's frozen blood. He checked the date to be sure it was a recent sample containing the latest stage of her evolving mitobots. 

He set the vial in a warming bath and waited a few minutes for its contents to thaw and rise to room temperature. Then he drew a syringe full of Gen's blood, moved to the rabbit cage, and shoved his gloved hands through flexible sleeves that reached inside the glass. The rabbit's pink eyes bulged with fright, its long ears flattened along its back. The animal kicked up a confetti storm of cedar shavings while trying to squeeze more tightly into the corner.  

"Don't be scared," Eberhard said. "I'm not gonna hurt you. Come to Papa." He shot out his hand and grabbed up his test subject by its soft neck fur. He injected Gen's blood into a fold of loose skin and when the syringe was empty, he let the rabbit scurry back to its corner. There it huddled, shaking so hard the cedar shavings vibrated around it. 

Eberhard checked his watch: 0200:12. The lab was vacant except for the two guards of the indoor security crew, one roving and one in the video monitor room. Their presence did not worry Eberhard. After all, he was Project Second Nature's director, and with all his browbeating about security measures and safety drills, he had placed himself above suspicion. Besides, he was a notorious workaholic; so as far as the guards were concerned, he was just busy with more wee-hour lab work.  

None would guess the purpose of his private research: He needed to learn how the mitobots functioned in someone other than Gen, so that he might one day inject himself with her miraculous blood. Eberhard wanted to be the new god on the block. Then he would find Gen and exterminate her, and he would remain the only god on the block. 

But the alchemy to change himself into a god might prove deadly. All merits aside, he knew he was, biologically, an ordinary man, created in the ordinary way. Gen was from the very beginning a unique kind of human being. She had been created, not from sperm and ovum, but from a mitochondrion and ovum. Instead of a human sex cell, the free-swimming mitochondrion in her mother's bloodstream had fused its DNA with an egg cell. The embryo had developed in her mother's womb and Gen had been born-all in a rush of two hours. 

Gen's mitobots had demonstrated the ability to read her body's genetic code and repair or renew damaged tissue. He could see no reason that same power would not also work in his body. The mitobots would simply access his genetic code and do their job, reassembling his injured structures from scratch, protein by protein, cell by cell, tissue by tissue-and in a matter of minutes. 

Eberhard believed this hypothesis. But for all he really knew, the mitobots would disassemble his body and he would end up a gooey crimson puddle on the lab's floor. So, like any good scientist, he needed to experiment on an animal first. What was the Latin phrase? Fiat experimentum in corpore vili-Let experiment be made on a worthless body. 

The albino rabbit remained huddled in the corner of its cage, but it appeared less panicked. It ears pricked up and its pink nose wriggled. As Eberhard watched and waited, it even seemed to grow drowsy, blinking its eyes. He checked his watch again. Forty-six minutes. At the rate the mitobots replicated, he figured they should be saturating the rabbit's tissues by now. 

How long would it take mitobots to become active at full strength in a human body? Gen's ability to heal kept accelerating, but obviously, the mitobots required an incubation period in a new body-look at Toshi's fate. Gen's mitobots had infected him, and the son of a bitch had ended up as chunks of bait on the ocean floor. Eberhard estimated Toshi had been infected seven hours. Probably that was enough build-up time to enable the mitobots to repair broken bones and such, but slamming into the ocean from the clouds? Must've been a real sudden stop, pal. 

Eberhard thrust his arms through the flexible sleeves and opened a shoe-box sized compartment inside the rabbit's cage. He drew out a surgeon's electric bone saw. A bulge at the base of its stainless steel handle held a battery pack; the other end of the instrument was equipped with a fine-toothed circular blade the size of a drink coaster.  

He flicked the toggle at the base to LOW. The saw whined like a metallic mosquito. He switched to HIGH and the spinning blade gave a shrill scream. 

"Okay, little bunny," Eberhard said. "Now be scared. Papa's gonna hurt you."