De Novo (The Gene Thief Series Book 1 - Short Story) (3 page)

The rain was continuing to pour down, relentlessly. With her clothes soaking wet and hunger starting to set in, this mission was beginning to suck before it started. She was studying them and their habits. Her target was a shaman, most probably recognized as the leader of this group of people. They were indigenous to the land and knew it better than she ever would. It was important to stay on her toes and on her guard.

She noticed a man walking around with a massive headdress, his face appeared to match the projected image from her tablet, and on his back was the signature dream catcher that was listed as a unique identifier. She also noticed three men that seemed to shadow him 24/7. He never left their sight, not to go to the bathroom, or to be with friends.

She continued to watch for what felt like hours. She wondered if they ever saw the sun, or if it was just this perpetual onslaught of rain.

Boredom was setting in, these people lived very simple lives. Some went out to hunt, some crafted things from nature’s gifts in the environment, others took care of children, and all was well. They seemed like a peaceful people. She was beginning to realize she should do her best not to disturb or disrupt their way of life. She wondered if she was spotted would she become some sort of urban legend. Maybe the story of the disappearing woman would live on in their oral traditions. On second thought, it would probably traumatize a few people in the process, and it was too deeply ingrained to remain undetectable.

Losing focus, she shook her head, a wave of water washed off like someone spinning an umbrella. Her eyes were getting heavy, she was squinting, and doing anything she could to keep her eyelids from sealing shut. As she popped back into focus, she noticed something.

The shaman was in a hut all alone. He appeared to be performing some sort of ritual by himself, or a prayer of some sort. There was little straw dolls hanging all around the inside. She had a bad angle looking up inside the room through the entryway, but it looked like there were human skulls. Not exactly confidence-inspiring.

The moment was now, and she started to scale a nearby tree to gain a better perspective and vision of her target. The wet bark was like trying to climb a greased up totem pole. Impossible. She would jump up five feet, wrap her arms and legs around it, and slowly slide down. It felt like she was a contestant on some comical game show.

Something brushed her shoulder. She turned quickly with a red vial in her hand ready to respond accordingly. It was a swinging vine, and as her eyes followed it up, she noticed it reached all the way to the top. Kira wrapped it around her forearm a couple of times and tugged. The vine didn’t budge more than a couple inches. Then she jumped, held her feet off the ground so the vine held her body weight, and she dangled for a moment. The vine refused to budge. Perfect.

Her only option now was to walk up the tree as if it were horizontal, using the vines as her guide. As she ascended to about twenty feet up, she began to tremble, her periphery absorbing just enough information to know she would break a few bones if she slipped.

The voices from the people were growing louder as she grew closer. As she reached their level, her heart began to race, her pulse quickened, and her eyes focused like a predator closing in. She was getting in the zone.

Okay girl, it’s gametime. No mistakes, no sounds, no evidence, and no second chances.

She looked over towards the village hanging in the sky, built around these treetops and trunks. It was a magnificent sight.

Her eyes scanned the span of the village until they became fixated on a mother holding her daughter. All of the focus and intensity dissipated as she was filled with a sadness and a vague sense of nostalgia. Something inside of her knew she had experiences like that. Moments in her lifetime when she was held by a loving mother, kissed and coddled, protected from the cruel world that she’s been living in alone for all these years.

As Kira watched the two of them interact, her vision began to blur, she shook her head again, but nothing. The lens was out of focus and nothing she did seemed to help. Closing her eyes, she tried to regain focus, and when she opened them her world was dark.

A voice came through. “Mommy, can we go get ice cream?”

It was a young girl’s voice, probably similar in age to the one she had just seen. The voice was painfully familiar.

“Of course, would you like your usual strawberry cheesecake bar?” The woman and her daughter came into view. Kira couldn’t make out the details of her face, but her golden blonde hair flowed down past her shoulders to her butt.

The mother’s smile was pure bliss as she looked down at her daughter. They were holding hands, walking towards an ice cream truck parked out in the street.

“That would be great, Mom. You’re the best.” The little girl pulled her hand free and began to skip towards the ice cream truck, happy as could be.

The mother called out, “Don’t go too far. You know I don’t like you by that street alone.”

The little girl had stopped in her tracks, turned around and held her hand out, waiting for her mother.

Kira could feel tears falling down her cheeks. This time she knew it wasn’t the rain. She never did know for sure if these flashbacks were past memories, or conjured up hallucinations to try and re-create a past life. Some sort of personal history that she could relate to and make her own.

The mother and daughter began to fade, along with the truck in the street, as the village suspended in the canopy reappeared. The laughter, the deep voices of the hunters, came rushing back into her consciousness

The shaman was still alone in his room performing the ritual. Now or never.

A device in her pocket vibrated. She reached down with one arm, as the other white knuckled hand held the vine. Looking at the device, the message made her heart sink into her stomach.

There is fifteen hours left before the client will no longer need the gene.

She knew the flight took about thirteen hours, so the window of opportunity was closing. This could only mean one thing. The mission she was on was one of the “good” ones. Experience told her that when a countdown was placed on a mission, it meant someone was dying. This excited her because it meant someone could be saved. Her work may save a life, an invigorating notion.

Tentatively, Kira inched up the tree toward the wooden floor around the hut. The hut itself was constructed of bark, trees and leaves. An impressive structure, completely waterproof, and the pelt on the inside made for a nice area rug. Beat the hell out of her apartment back at home.

She scanned the surrounding area one last time and found the two bodyguards off in the distance, laughing and eating. The window of opportunity had just presented itself. This was one of those now or never kind of situations.

She took a moment to look down and instantly regretted this decision. The sight of the one hundred foot drop induced a complete paralysis. She stared at the ground, frozen in time and space. The world started to spin, and it wasn’t getting any better. She realized she needed to focus, peel her eyes from the ground, and back onto the hut.

The vines that she used to get this far were no longer useful. They ran out of slack, and in order to reach the next tree over, she needed to leap. A leap so risky it made her question everything. The tree was a good four feet away, but what made it so difficult was the fact that she had nothing to push off of. She had her arms hugging the tree and both forearms wrapped in vines. Not exactly an ideal situation to launch oneself four feet in the air to grab onto another soaking wet tree.

She had one shot at this. Kira began to unravel the vines from around her forearms until there was just five inches held tightly in each palm. She leaned away from the tree and put both feet flat up against it. She squatted down and backed up, practicing the motion as she stared at the tree she needed to get to.

Three, two, one…

She held onto the vines just long enough to explode off with her heels. Letting go as she flew through the air, and landed square into the next tree. Her chest hit so hard she was sure the tree was made of cement.  The air gushed out of her lungs. She wrapped her arms around, and squeezed with all her might, as if her life depended on it. Because her life depended on it.

Her feet were wrapped around, heels digging into the bark. She had made it. Now secured to the tree, laboriously breathing, she was a couple feet closer to the target.

She turned her head and poked around the tree to see how far the hut was. It was just a few easy transitions away. She grabbed the nearest hanging vine and used it to swing the rest of the distance. She navigated tree to tree like this until she had two feet on the platform that was built around the target's hut.

This was it. Her objective was inside, and time was running out. She could hear him tinkering away inside. She let the vines swing back towards their trees and reached into her gear.

One vial of bright blue liquid, an anesthetizing patch, and her camera. These were her essentials, her hammer and nail, mouse and keyboard, the tools of her trade. She had gotten so comfortable with them, that they were like external extensions of her. The vials were her fingers, the camera, her eyes, they were all one unit. The missions were just a matter of executing a predesigned plan. This was that moment.

She tiptoed around towards the side of the hut and poked her head around. She wanted to make sure that there were no patrolling guards or wandering children. The coast was clear.

She put the patch inside of her palm, the chemically treated side facing up. On it was a mixture of modified chloroform and other potent anesthetizing agents. Something she had concocted in her spare time to make things a little easier.

She flipped her hood up, pulled the black handkerchief up over her mouth, and made her way towards the entrance.

He was sitting there, eyes closed, head slightly toward the ceiling. His legs were crossed and arms stretched out from his sides with his palms facing. He appeared to be offering himself up to something, or someone.  There was a unique fragrance in the air.

Within the blink of an eye, she was a foot away, with her hand extended, and the patch on his neck. Unlike anything she had ever experienced before, he remained motionless. Silent, un-reactive, and then his eyes opened. He stared right into her eyes, his gaze igniting her soul. She noticed the corner of his lips curled. He was about to smile, right as the patch was taking effect.

What kind of human doesn’t react? For all he knows, his life may be over, and yet he had the audacity to smile? She was stunned, forgetting why she was there.

She pulled the hanging animal skin back across the entrance to the hut. She peaked out toward the village to make sure no one had seen her enter. Everything looked good, and she turned back into the hut.

Kira walked over and sat down next to the shaman who was now lying on his side. She stared at him curiously and tried to make sense of his reaction. It was as if he had expected her. The look in his eyes was not the look of a surprised man. Instead of surprise, desperation, or fear, it was a look of willingness and comfort. Had he looked into the future with some otherworldly ritual, and in knowing the nature of her visit, decided to go with it? She knew the inexplicable events that took place would haunt her for days to come.

She grabbed the vial of blue liquid, poked the end of his finger, and collected three drops of blood. Her eyes were fixated on the red liquid diluting itself, fading into the blue. She inverted the vial a few times to speed up the process, and then she took out her pipette. She pipetted 250 microliters on a glass slide and turned her camera on.

She placed the slide down on top of a small table. It appeared to be carved out of a stump, with the skin of an animal stretched over the top.

Taking her camera, she stared at the screen on the back and zoomed in on the droplet. She waited for it to scan and initiate itself. Once it sensed DNA within the view, the green button would light up and processing could begin.

As she waited, her mind wandered again, thinking back to the message update. Wondering what kind of person was waiting for this gene. Were they good people? Rich or poor? These were the usual questions she filtered through. The same questions she knew would never get answers to.

Beep, beep.

The camera notified her it was ready to begin flash sequencing. She pressed the green button and the scanning began. She walked away from the tripod, and sat down on a stool in the side of the hut.

Her eyes were fixated on the shaman. The massive headdress made of colorful flowers, big green leaves, all held together with a sort of fibrous string. It was majestic, and she admired these sorts of people. They had their own world here. So unadulterated and pure. At least she knew when she was done, he would have no recollection, and they could continue on as if nothing ever happened.

Blinking rapidly, Kira was fighting her way through a dense mental fog. As her vision struggled to gain focus, she realized how the hut was now filled with smoke. What she had thought was incense when she walked in was some sort of medicinal or hallucinogenic type plant that the shaman must have lit. The room was one big wavy image and the colors were screaming at her. It hurt to even look.

She glanced down at the camera and noticed it finalized.

Process complete.

The only good thing she had going for her right now was that the shaman was still lying on the ground motionless

She looked down at her hands just a couple inches from her face and realized how bad the situation was getting. The outlines of her fingers which separated them from environment were fading. Her world was beginning to fade seamlessly into her surroundings, no longer feeling distinct and separate. Amidst all of the chaos and confusion, there was a subtle serenity and peacefulness to it. For a brief moment she felt part of something, an integral part to the world and not a forgotten outcast.

She hit
finalize
on the camera and the nucleotides began to appear on the screen. The sequence was being saved and isolated from the genome. Once this process was complete, she could take this back to her room, perform the chemical cleavage in her room and deliver the isolated gene. Mission accomplished. Not so bad after all, assuming she could make it out of this place in one piece.

All of a sudden, the colors were dimming; total darkness was encroaching, consuming her. The colors faded quickly, and her consciousness even quicker.

She knew she had a few more seconds to get out of this hut or risk passing out and being discovered. One could only imagine what a tribe of people would do if they saw their shaman lying unconscious on the floor and a stranger in the room.

Grabbing her gear, she stuffed her things back into the bags, fumbling around like a drunk, and staggered back towards the entrance. She pulled the cloth open a couple of inches and squinted out at the village. As if the village wasn’t impressive before, now it looked like it was flying in midair. The hallucinogens were setting in, the effects growing stronger and stronger.

Kira was now experiencing a complete sensational overload. Each nerve bombarded with more external stimuli than it could process. The rain was deafening, the colors once vibrant were now dead, and she knew time was not a resource she could spare at this moment.

There was no time to wait. She slithered out of the hut and made her way to the back.

Even the wood was beginning to feel different under her feet. It was as if she was weightless. There was no gravity, and she was floating. The tree she needed to get to was right in front of her. She knew it was just a few feet away because not too long ago she made that exact leap. For some reason though, the tree would not stay still. What frightened her was that she didn’t feel any wind blowing around her. The moving tree must have been another illusion created by the shaman’s smoke.

It seemed almost impossible to try and jump and hang onto such an elusive target. Was it safe to assume it was the one in the middle? No, it’s not safe to assume anything when you’re over one hundred feet in the air. She looked down over the small wooden railing, and even in this drug-induced state, her stomach still became queasy just at the site of the drop.

She heard footsteps coming from the other side of the hut. Someone knocked, and then silence.

More knocking.

Finally, she heard the animal skin being pulled across the doorway, and the footsteps had entered the hut. Now they were just ten feet away, separated by a thin wall of straw and leaves. She heard screaming and more footsteps. More footsteps and more footsteps. It was as if every soul that lived up here was headed straight for her direction.

She made sure everything was secure, planted her feet on top of the wooden railing, and jumped, unsure if she would hit the hard tree and latch on, or if she would fly by the tree and crash to her death.

It felt like she was suspended in the air forever. She prepared for the impact and hoped to have the wind knocked out of her because at least that would mean she had made contact with something.

Thud.

The water soaked bark slapped against her chest and the side of her face. She was sure if her cheek had split open, or if it was just the water continuing to pour down. None of that mattered for now, as she focused on hugging the tree with all her might. She dug her fingernails into the bark until she felt them bending backwards as if they might snap off any moment.

Her world finally came to a halt, and she managed to cling on to the tree. Starting to scale the tree downwards, she grabbed a vine and began to wrap it around her forearm, but it was almost impossible to do. Her limbs were beginning to feel numb. Her grasp on the tree felt was weakening, the tree itself felt like it was shrinking between her arms, and there was nothing she could do. With all her might, she grabbed and squeezed the tree, but it didn’t help. 

Peeling her head off the tree, Kira looked out into the rest of the forest, and saw nothingness. She kept blinking, hoping to erase the darkness and replace it with reality, but to no avail. The vine began to slip from her grasp, she no longer felt the tree, and her consciousness seemed to be following suit.

Using every last ounce of energy, she closed her eyes and forgot about everything but that vine. Letting that slip out of her hand would ensure her death. She did her best to tie it in a slip knot, wrap it around her forearm, and quickly tighten it with her left hand. Nowhere near as secure as she would have liked, it would have to do for now. Her entire body had turned numb, and she had to convince herself that she really did tie that vine. It wasn’t a figment of her imagination.

Her vision on its way out, all she could see now was the terrifying distance to the floor of the forest. An unthinkable distance to fall. Definitely not the way she had imagined spending her last moments on Earth. What a lame way to go, falling to her death in the rain forest after being unknowingly drugged by a creepy shaman. Kira always imagined an epic battle with a trained assassin or something of that nature.

Inhaling a hallucinogenic smoke and slipping from a tree was much too forgettable.

The world was gone. Her stomach now in her chest, she had this internal sense of freefalling. Her external senses turned off, the weightlessness inside was all she had to go on. The freefall felt like an eternity, as if she had a parachute attached that was delaying her descent. Expecting to hit the floor at any moment and have her body decay back into the earth, she passed out before it happened.