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  “Now, the project that I want you to lead is the one that will be testing your concept. I’m going to give you lab space and hands to work with you in developing your viewpoints to see if it goes anywhere.”

  “Mister Maxwell! Y-you mean—you want to back the research for the Cipher Break?”

  Clay nodded with a satisfied smile.

  His life was changing so fast; Phillip was becoming unsure if the event he was observing was still reality. He fumbled more, his hands twitching involuntarily. "B-but, Mister Maxwell, I-I just got past being the greenhorn!"

  Clay closed the distance between him and Phillip, slamming his palms on the table and sticking his head out, their faces inches away from each other.

  “Phillip, let me ask you a question,” Clay whispered, even though it sounded more like a hiss to Phillip. “Just how do you think I became the CEO of this company?”

  Most people at the company accepted that Clay Maxwell was simply next in line for the throne with the recent passing of the previous CEO. Of course, this was not the answer that Phillip wanted to present to his boss. After a brief moment of hesitation, Phillip cleared his throat.

  “I believe you gave it your all to get to where you are now,” Phillip answered without breaking eye contact. “Blood, sweat, and tears.”

  Clay's eyes narrowed as he studied the face of his subordinate. He pulled away from Phillip, grunting as he turned his back for a moment.

  “You hesitated.” Clay turned, facing Phillip again. “Are you sure that’s your answer? Or are you trying not to sound bad in front of your boss?”

  Sweat drops began to run down Phillip's neck.

  This guy is too sharp!

  Clay's ability to pick out the most miniscule of details that revealed a person’s true intentions was uncanny.

  Suddenly, Clay sat back down on the edge of the desk as if a wave of exhaustion overtook him without warning. He put a hand over his eyes as he tried to suppress the unannounced headache.

  “Look, I got to this position by taking risks. I could’ve lost everything a few times over before I managed to get where I am. With that said, I encourage you to take some risks and get your hands dirty.”

  Phillip nodded, understanding what his boss was saying.

  “Sir … a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Why are you investing so much in me?”

  Clay cleared his throat. “I have seen enough in this field to understand what you’re saying about Cipher Break. My personal opinion speaking here … What you are saying could be possible.”

  “You believe me, then?” Phillip asked, eyes shining and heart lifting in his chest.

  When Phillip told Jake about his theory, Jake's only reaction was a laugh that lasted about three minutes long. Which was just enough time for Phillip to make an exit from the room. He hung his head in shame for sounding like a zealous fool who dared to think outside of the box. Ever since then, he kept his ideas to himself.

  “I believe in results, but I have faith in your abilities, Phillip.” Clay smiled. “Why do you think I hired you? During the second interview that I sat in on, I could tell there was a lot of potential that you’ve barely tapped into. So, are you ready to dig into what you are truly capable of?”

  Phillip hesitated, mainly because he was basking in the joy of finally being recognized as a person with a new idea instead of being ridiculed as a fool.

  Two weeks after that handshake , Phillip was given access to restricted areas, a new lab space, and workers assigned under him. Per Phillip’s special request, Maxwell made it possible so that Jake would be transferred to the same remote work location with him. Together, they initiated the process of putting the Cipher Break Theory to the test.

  Since Jake was an advanced programmer prior to the job at NanoXLabs, Phillip coordinated with him and a crew of programmers to construct software that worked in conjunction with the microbe constructor from Oscion. The program directed the machine to analyze a microorganism sample and break the components down for analysis. After a week, the program was assembled. Once the code was finalized, the sequencer provided visual representations in the form of strings of colored boxes. Ribonucleotides were lined up and scrolled across the screen until the entire microorganism was thoroughly evaluated and categorized.

  In two weeks, Phillip dissected and cataloged six different strains of the common cold virus with the program. With the data in hand, Phillip went to create a Cipher Break for each of them. Although human trials were prohibited for the time being, animal trials were already underway and looking promising.

  With the advancements in medical technology in the 2030 era, paired with handling the obstacles with this new method, headway was being made at lighting speeds. However, the progress came to a grinding halt when the seventh pathogen was introduced to the lab for analysis.

  2.

  Phillip’s head nearly hit the desk.

  His overworked body was endlessly attempting to shut down. He caught himself at the last moment, the muscles in his neck and back pulling taut. He grunted a couple of times, running his hand through his messy, dark hair again.

  “This shit is going to take me to my grave.” Phillip’s frustration was amassing at an accelerated rate. After sending in the report of six successfully countered viruses, Clay dished out a challenge that Phillip wasn’t prepared for.

  Instead of working with a well-known virus that had decades’ worth of research to reference back to, the CEO introduced a brand-new virus for Phillip to analyze.

  The young man’s newfound pride clouded his judgment. He arrogantly accepted the challenge without thinking about the potential walls he could run into and promised a deadline that was looming in the near horizon.

  “If I can't make this work, my reputation is going to go up in flames. The boss is going to have my skin.” Phillip began to bite what was left of his nails. The money invested into this project had far too many zeroes in the number to only be a flu shot substitution. This project had to yield greater results.

  Glancing at the screen and watching the same unsatisfactory results pop up was starting to drive Phillip mad. The screen was decorated with a matrix of colored rectangles that were zooming from the left to the right side of the screen. It was a complex code that depicted an electronic representation of the tested RNA’s structure.

  Phillip watched the green and blue rectangles zoom by with a glazed-over stare.

  “I’ve broken this down several times … several? Make that at least a hundred times! I damn near memorized the millions lines of code, but the reference point to build the Cipher Break is nowhere!”

  Phillip slid his keyboard aside and slammed his elbows on the table, grabbing at his hair once more. He clenched his teeth as despair settled in.

  No, I can’t get frustrated. I’m just looking at this the wrong way!

  Phillip tried to clear his tired mind. His muscles relaxed as the tension suddenly loosened. He raised his head slowly, his eyes wide with fear.

  “What if—there are pathogens that don't have the reference point for me to create a Cipher Break?”

  This notion was within the realm of possibilities.

  The Cipher Break was such a new concept; there was no telling if it had limitations. Not to mention, the pathogen in question was one that really had no history or research on it.

  Or, maybe Jake’s program has more bugs?

  “No, Jake’s program is good,” Phillip muttered to himself as he picked up the keyboard that he pushed aside, relocating it in front of the display and beginning to type commands with haste.

  “Okay … we potentially have a virus with a genetic makeup that is completely seamless. There are no ‘breaks’ where I can manipulate the structure…” Phillip continued to talk out loud as he observed the colored rectangles flying across the screen.

  RIIING!

  The sudden blaring sound nearly made the young scientist jump out of his chair.

  Phillip no
rmally used the timer to remind him to make a mandatory visit to the outside world for a breath of fresh air and some sunlight exposure. However, this alarm was set up to remind him to complete a different yet equally specific task.

  He set up a small experiment in the other room that could point him in the right direction of solving the daunting job. That was his hope, at any rate.

  Placing his hand on the small glass panel next to the door in the far end of the lab, Phillip watched a line of light travel up to his fingertips, then back down to the bottom of his palm. His name spelled out on the small display accompanied with a small chirp; the door’s locks disengaged.

  This isolated, stand-alone compound was situated in the middle of the Great Basin desert. It was built about a year ago for the purpose of experimentation with live viruses. The Cipher Break Project was the first development to be held at the location. The secluded location was perfect for experimenting with some of the world’s most lethal diseases. It was a fundamental requirement for each building to be airtight. The only way in or out was going through airlock passages with double doors.

  Before he entered, Phil slipped into the HAZMAT suit that hung on a small hook to his left. The corridor connected to another building that was a short distance away. The light leaking from the small window of the door at the far end of the hallway gave just enough visibility to guide Phillip through the dark hallway. The door opened with a hiss before he closed it behind himself.

  Beyond the dissecting tables ahead of him, on the far wall, was a giant rack of cages that held dozens of mice.

  Phillip walked by the cages containing the small rodents that were inoculated with the first six prototype Cipher Break counter viruses. After comparing their symptoms from yesterday, all six rodents appeared to be healthy.

  Phillip exhaled slowly, looking at the small monitors by the cages and writing down the values of the vitals. The young scientist tapped the pen on the small screen. He could hardly contain the joy and excitement when he saw that his idea was bearing fruit. “Maxwell was right. I just needed to see if it works … and believing in myself a little wouldn’t hurt…”

  Still, he couldn’t stop to indulge in self-accomplishment of the previous, successful tests. This was not the reason he came here. Instead, he pushed himself forward.

  As he walked by the seventh cage, Phillip came to a stop. The rat that was injected with the unknown pathogen was kept in this container.

  What the hell?

  The rat was not only dead, it was flipped onto its back and it appeared to have been sucked dry of all body fluids. The hairs on its body were rigid, as if it would crumble to dust should it be touched.

  Phillip released the latch. The unit slid out with a loud hiss. Although he was slightly concerned with the pathogen going airborne in the room, Phillip had the ability to run the vent. A complex air filtration system could vacuum up all the air to sanitize it before releasing it back into the outside world.

  He grabbed the small body with his gloved hand and relocated it to the metal-top table where one of the dissection stations was located. Phillip prepped to remove the skin with a dexterous movement of the scalpel.

  The catch was that there was no peeling of the skin. The underlying subcutaneous layer of hide had wholly bonded to the tissues below it.

  “Weird…” Phillip grunted as he put a little more muscle into the tug. The skin finally tore free. As he removed the pelt from the rest of the body, he noticed that the fur was ripping like paper.

  “The skin appears to have fused with the tissue underneath it. It cannot be removed unless a significant force is applied. When I did apply force, it tore off in shreds instead of peeling.”

  Phillip recalled the conversation with Clay as they concluded their brief discussion addressing the hand-off of the new pathogen to be used for research.

  “A new pathogen? I’ll take the lead on that, sir.” Phillip had nodded with confidence, the one thing he normally didn’t have.

  “Full disclaimer, the place we took that sample from was quite a mess…”

  Phillip blinked, returning to the present.

  “So … the pathogen appears to have completely changed the cellular structure of the host that it occupies,” Phillip began to connect the dots. “Targeting the skin…” Through the one tear in fur that ran down the side of the body, Phillip took a closer look at the exposed ribs.

  Something else was off.

  Phillip’s eyes widened with surprise.

  He quickly began to tear deeper into the rodent. The muscles beneath were shriveled and lime green in color. After a short while, the core of the animal was uncovered. Normally, the center was supposed to be filled with organs that were undergoing the process of decay after death.

  Instead, the core was filled with a lime-green paste.

  No … no!

  Phillip lost his grip, dropping the small corpse onto the table below. The impact of the carcass hitting the surface splattered the lime-green paste in all directions. The scientist quickly dove under the metal table to extract the large jug of sodium hypochlorite. Twisting off the cap and generously dumping the active disinfectant, Phillip ensured the surface contaminants were destroyed. Phillip flipped on the giant ventilation cleaning system, circulating the air through a five-stage purifier.

  Quickly flying into the small isolated shower, Phillip vigorously rinsed off any contaminants that had stuck to his suit. After he was certain he was sterilized, he ran back into the airlock corridor. Phillip hurried back to his desk after tearing off the suit.

  “No! This can’t be happening!” Phillip began to yell.

  His tired eyes were now wide open, adrenaline pumping through his veins. He began to type madly on his keyboard. The rectangles started their ritualistic, mad dash across the screen. Phillip's eyes darted from box to box, looking for one specific piece in the strand of RNA.

  Phillip couldn’t claim that the Cipher Break was one hundred percent his idea. For years, Phillip was avidly following his icon in the medical field: Gentaro Mori, a renowned Japanese doctor of virology. He was an ambitious genius who dared to be untraditional, despite the mocking the conformists would hurl at him.

  Doctor Mori’s “outlandish” ideas spread far and wide in subject, but the two particular concepts that Phillip directed his company’s finances to research were the development of the Cipher Break and to uncover the possibility of a group of pathogens that Doctor Mori labeled as Idenshi o Kaeru. Since Japanese was not Phillip’s first language, he decided to label them as “Alter-gens” for his own convenience.

  Although there was never any evidence proving the existence of Alter-gens that Doctor Gentaro Mori theorized in his published research papers, the man’s words were like religious scripture to Phillip.

  It was Doctor Gentaro Mori’s unconventional theory that helped spark the idea in Phillip that crafting a counter-virus specifically engineered to neutralize the harmful virus in the body without attacking the cells of the body was possible. However, the concept of Alter-gens, a destructive pathogen capable of modifying the cells of a body to the point that it could bring about a complete metamorphosis, was no longer sounding out of reach. The outcome from the seventh rat that was exposed to the unknown pathogen was certainly pointing in that direction.

  Phillip took a deep breath.

  “Complete altering at the cellular level? Could the skin and liquefied organs of that rat prove that the Alter-gens can exist?”

  The rectangles stopped scrolling, a familiar message box appearing to notify the user that the program had no more data to analyze.

  Hold on. How could the software find a sequence it wasn’t initially made to find?

  Phillip clicked on the menu option and began to add a new category to search.

  After rifling around in some of the documents he’d accessed from the archives of Mori’s research, Phillip’s quest to cross-reference began to take place. Once he made a chart to decipher some genetic codes, Phillip
began to type in the chemical composition of the elements that he deduced from Doctor Mori’s published documents as searchable components.

  He took another deep breath, then pressed the “enter field” function.

  After a moment, the code analysis restarted. He sat for a tense five minutes as the shapes whizzed by on the screen. It was the first time in his life that Phillip was hoping he was wrong.

  “Come on … come on! Tell me that I’m way off—!”

  BLEEP!

  A different message box popped up. This was a notification Phillip had never seen before.

  New Compound Found.

  3.

  “N-new compound?” Phillip stammered. He pressed the “next” key. The display zoomed somewhere in the middle of the code. A single yellow box, jammed in between all the other shapes, interrupted the now stationary blue and green pattern that he had seen for weeks.

  Phillip sat up straight as a nervous laugh escaped from him. “This isn’t a virus. This really isn’t a freaking virus!”

  Just outside of the laboratory, several SUVs rolled up to the building, the roaring of the engines dying down as the vehicles were shut off. Several men jumped out, clothed in HAZMAT gear and carrying empty shipping crates. The group of a dozen men marched to the building, using their access to open the air lock.

  SLAM! HISS!

  Phillip let out an audible yelp when the secondary air lock door that came from the hallway was opened noisily. Men clothed in their protective gear came in, slamming down containers and taking everything that was within their reach. Phillip backed away from his station as he observed this unknown crew of men begin to vacate the contents of the lab.

  “Hey!” Phillip suddenly charged one of them, assuming the intruders barged in to steal data.

  Phillip speedily approached a man who was bent over a moment ago to stop the extraction. The man stood up, easily grabbing a hold of Phillip. He picked up the young scientist, slamming him down onto the ground without a moment of hesitation, and for the first time in his life, Phillip experienced the pain and anxiety of having the wind knocked out of him.