Forsaken Duty (Red Team #9)(71)

“The chemical they gave to Grams was meant only to induce a coma,” the man said. “But that coma caused a blood clot that triggered the stroke. When that happened, we went on strike. We refused to continue working, and we shut down our lab at a critical point. In order to get us back online with their program, we negotiated for the ability to treat Grams. They moved Grams out of the palliative care center and into a private residence under their control.”

Wynn gasped. “Grams said she saw you there. I thought it was just a dream she had. Of course, she couldn’t have known you were imposters.”

“We aren’t imposters, Wynn,” the woman said. “We are your parents.”

Wynn let that slide. She didn’t have enough information yet to argue the point. For now, she was going with the imposter theory. “So you did something to her. You’re why she recovered so completely.”

“And we’re why she died,” the man said.

“How so?” Owen asked.

“They kept her sedated for your visits,” the woman said, “but we were seeing remarkable recovery from her. Her cells were regenerating. The man holding her, Jafaar Majid, saw the power of the work we’d been doing. He wanted it for his employer. He tried to negotiate with a man named Mr. Edwards for the franchise. Apparently it was denied him. He ordered Grams to be murdered for two reasons. He wanted to strike back against the Omnis, weakening their hold on us. And, we think, he wanted a corpse so that he could begin reverse-engineering what we’d done to Grams.”

“You gave Grams the same regenerative modifications that you gave yourself, which is why you look so young,” Owen said. The couple nodded. “But you aren’t immortal.”

Wynn looked at him. Where was he headed with this?

“No. We can be killed, just like any other living organism,” the man said.

“But it can take more to kill us,” the woman added. “If we sustain a mortal injury, and receive life support quickly enough, our bodies can regenerate and heal.”

Owen looked at Addy, then back at the couple. “One of our own has been modified. Can you tell me if the modifications you developed were the ones given to her?”

The woman nodded. “We’ll need a blood sample, but yes.”

“Our lab wasn’t the only one at work on these modifications,” the man said. “The Omnis had dozens of labs going. Some of their work was successful, some not. Didn’t stop them from testing it on human subjects…often without proper protocols.”

“What was their objective with these human modifications?” Ty asked.

The woman pressed her lips together and sighed. “They wanted to engineer the perfect human. But they had several ideals they wanted configured. The perfect warrior. The perfect servant. The perfect mother. And, just in general, the perfect life—long, healthy.”

“And they wanted it done in a way that could be commoditized,” the man said.

“What does that mean?” Wynn asked.

“They wanted a corner on the market,” Ty said. “They wanted to control the market. Can you imagine the value of these human modifications? To live forever? To live forever in good health? To be able to decide who gets to live forever?”

The man nodded. “That’s the franchise Jafaar wanted for his employers. He’s willing to kill for it, and so are the Omnis.”

“We were told the Omnis are cleaning house and eliminating their researchers,” Owen said.

“It’s true,” the woman said. “They don’t want to risk these formulas slipping out into the wider population. They won’t even file a patent on them for risk of exposing their secrets.”

“So are these modifications truly epigenetic?” Angel asked. “Can they be passed down from parents to children?”

“In some cases,” the man said. “They can be passed from mother to child. It’s complicated. The ability to procreate is severely limited in those who’ve been modified. Once the shots are started, they have to be continually renewed, as the nanotechnology wears down inside the human body. Once started, especially on older patients, if the nanos are not renewed, the body begins aging at a rapid rate, one that sends it into shock and shuts it down. One lab has discovered how to trigger this rapid demise even on young patients.” He looked around at the group, then stopped at Owen. “This has the potential to be an extinction event if it’s not stopped…or if the antidote isn’t widely available at every hospital and clinic and remote medical outpost in the world.”

“How do these triggers operate?” Owen asked.

The man looked disgusted with himself. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “It depends on the type of nanos that were injected.”

“Another aspect that could more slowly affect world population is that unless certain modifications are made to the formula, it’s nearly impossible to conceive,” the woman said. “That was one of the pieces we were working on in our lab. On the one hand, it makes sense if people are going to be living longer and longer lives. But it wasn’t done for altruistic reasons. It was done so that only a handful of world leaders could decide who gets to procreate.”

“These modifications automatically give huge power to a small set of individuals, then,” Ty said. “Talk about an evil empire.”