Page 42 of Hollow Trace

Zadie perked up. “Is it, now?” She placed her hands on the keyboard. “Then, let’s see who The Eos Institute is.”

She went to work, scrolling through sites while Gideon did the same on another terminal. The servers all kicked on, that hum gaining strength as the rest of the room fell into silence, as if they were all holding their breath.

A website appeared on the screen, what looked like any regular private medical clinic page.

Zadie clicked through a few tabs, stopping on one outlining their services. “According to their site, The Eos Institute is a luxury, bio-hacking spa where the elite pay fifty grand to sit in freezing nitrogen chambers and get their DNA sequenced so they can theoretically live forever with custom made peptides and other enhancing products.”

Quinn frowned. “What does that even mean?”

Darwin cleared his throat. “It means, it’s the perfect front for developing some kind of TITAN variant. Genomic sequencing requires massive server farms, while creating custom peptides, to allegedly reverse aging, requires a sterile manufacturing lab. Eos is using rich people to legally fund and camouflage the equipment needed to create whatever bastardized enhancement serum is on their patches. All based on my architecture.”

Scout tapped her chin. “Which explains why they had everything shipped to a warehouse. Having semi-trucks pulling into a posh office would draw suspicion. But trucks coming and going from a warehouse wouldn’t get a second look.” Scout shifted in her seat. “So, if this is our mystery woman at work, who is she?”

Zadie glanced over her shoulder. “Already searching the dark web for more answers. Just give me a couple minutes…”

Her voice faded as she whipped through sites and files, moving so fast Scout wasn’t sure how Zadie had time to even read anything. Zadie inhaled sharply, stopping with a photo filling the monitor, the familiar curve of the blonde woman’s jaw spiking Scout’s heart rate.

Quinn surged to his feet. “That’s her.” He looked at Scout when she snagged his hand, gently urging him back to his seat. He all but collapsed into the chair, folding his hands on top of the desk. “Who is she?”

Zadie rearranged a few of the files. “Meet Dr. Emma Pryce. She’s thirty-eight and has been deemed a brilliant, evolutionary geneticist. She won a number of awards right out of med school and was given an insane research grant funding genetic mutation and how it affects endurance and performance in elite athletes. By all accounts, she’s an exceptional scientist.”

“So, what the hell happened? She get tired of experimenting on animals?”

“That’s the problem. She never used animals. She had her license stripped five years ago for unethical genetic experimentation on patients without their consent. After that, she disappeared. Hasn’t been on-grid since.”

Scout leaned back in her chair. “Which is code for Finch found her and offered her a job trying to mutate Darwin’s formula.”

“There’s no digital record of that. Just five years of silence, then her name as CEO of The Eos Institute. Though, it’s hard to find, and it’s definitely not highlighted on their official website.”

Scout snorted. “Can’t have anyone googling her and discovering she’s nuts.” She motioned to the other files behind the photo. “Anything in there mention what she’s doing? I mean, we’re pretty sure she’s testing a new variant, but is it just to see if it can be dosed on a patch? Something else?”

Darwin sighed. “Unfortunately, I think we just uncovered it.” He gestured to Zadie, and a bunch of files appeared on the main monitor a moment later. “These are clinical notes dating back a few months. From just after that UAV crash, when Hackett left. It seems Pryce, via Cobalt Logistics, has participated in three events in various sectors of the province. Two in the Kootenays and that one in Squamish. All with the same sponsor — Axiom Cellular Endurance. As suspected, those patches she’s handing out are low dose versions of her enhancement drug, while the watches are knockoffs of Gideon’s HELIOS, designed to monitor their biometrics. It looks like, even in small doses, most participants experience some form of cellular degradation, but there seems to be a small number of people who don’t react negatively to the microdosing at all. Those are the people she’s looking for.”

“Wait.” Quinn stood again, resting his hip against the desk. “So, Brea can metabolize this drug without it killing her?”

“That’s what Pryce wants to know. Microdosing doesn’t tell the full story, though. At reduced levels, some people might be able to handle the slight buildup of chemicals without having any physical symptoms. Which is why I think our friend Hackett had his men forcing the athletes to perform that trial. Only those patches were likely full strength.”

Quinn’s face paled. “She wanted to weed out the false positives. Find only the outliers.”

“Which explains why some of the runners had such extreme reactions.” Darwin paused for a moment before loading a file then nodded at Zadie, sighing when the stats appeared on the monitor. “These are your sister’s preliminary results. Probably why Pryce wanted the place torched. Even at tactical levels, Brea’s body is completely synthesizing TITAN without any evidence of cellular damage. In fact, she’s thriving. Now, I can’t be sure we have the stats for everyone Pryce has run through these trials, but there’s only one other test subject who’s even remotely okay, though, it looks as if prolonged exposure is finally taking a toll.”

“But, Brea has time. If we get to her soon, there’s a chance she’ll be okay, right?”

Darwin pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I can’t promise anything until after I run some tests on her, but in theory, yes.”

“All I need is a chance.” Quinn looked down at Scout, a hint of hope in his eyes. “How the hell did Pryce even think to test for this? I mean, I get she’s into human experimentation but thinking there might be people who are immune to this drug seems like a stretch when it kills everyone else.”

“According to her transcripts, she started out trying to find both a variant that would have better stability as well as an alternate way to dose her version of TITAN for Ramsey’s men. Those patches and watch we found. But then everything changed when Hackett was sent as her head of security.” Darwin loaded more files and had Zadie put them on the monitor. “It seems Pryce tested Hackett to see how much cellular damage he’d already sustained, possibly to use him as a test subject for the patches, until she discovered he had no degradation. His blood, vitals, and cellular structure are all normal.”

“Hackett’s an outlier?”

“If these results are accurate, yes. He’s probably the first one. Which might explain why he switched sides and is backing Pryce. If she convinced him she was the one who fixed him, got him onto this new variant, removed his death sentence…”

Neve scraped her chair back, twisting to face Darwin. “He’d treat her as some kind of second coming. But is immunity even possible?”

“With any kind of stressor, there’s always a chance there’s a genetic code that’s adaptable. People who don’t get sick from a virus that kills thousands of others. Athletes whose genetics allow them to use more of the oxygen in their blood. It’s just unfortunate that patient zero is also a raging psychopath who was raised by mercenaries.”

Quinn pointed at the screen. “Based on Brea’s stats, can you predict how much time she might have before she could start degrading?”