Free Ancestor by Scott Sigler Page A

backup. After that? Play dumb and wait for Colonel Fischer and his goons to arrive.
    At the computer, a few key taps brought up a private menu. Several prepared programs were ready to go, hidden inside a miles-long stream of archived genetic code. No way it was safe to hide the programs in a ready-to-use format, not with Jian on the island. That woman interacted with computers in a way that defied logic—if hacker programs were just sitting there, Jian would have found them somehow.
    These programs would cause
some
damage. How much damage depended on whether Jian was awake or asleep. She was the only real variable, which meant something had to be done about her or the plan might not work.
    Regardless, tonight it would all be over … one way or another.

NOVEMBER 8: A SHOT & A CHASER
    A
    G
    C
    T
    OVER AND OVER again, the endless chains scrolled across the screen, some segments highlighted in yellow, some in green, some in red, other colors. The
special
language. The
true
language of life. A language that for some reason only she could
really
see, really understand.
    Biological poetry.
    “Jian?”
    She blinked. The poetry changed back to scrolling letters. She was in the bioinformatics lab. She looked up to see Tim standing in front of her desk.
    “Mister Feely,” she said, and as she did she realized that he’d been standing there for several seconds, quietly saying her name over and over. Part of her brain had heard him but hadn’t wanted to come out of that special place.
    “You’re my boss,” he said. “Think maybe you can finally stop calling me
mister?”
    She shook her head. No, she could not do that. Sometimes she tried, tried to say
P. J
. or
Tim
or
Claus
, but it always came out
Mister Colding
or
Mister Feely
or
Doctor Rhumkorrf
.
    Her seven-monitor computer array here was identical to the one in her room. Tim held up a bottle and a medicine cup, reached around the outside monitors to offer them to her. “You forget something?”
    Her meds.
    She looked at the bottle, then at her watch. She was two hours behind on her meds. “Ah. I am sorry.” She took the bottle and plastic cup.
    He walked around the desk to stand next to her chair. “And what are you doing up? You should be in bed. How about you turn in?”
    She shook her head, put the medicine bottle down and started reaching for the fridge under her desk.
    “Got you covered,” Tim said. He pulled a can of Dr Pepper from his lab coat pocket. She smelled alcohol on his breath.
    “Mister Feely, have you been drinking?”
    “Just a shot or two,” he said. “And speaking of shots, the meds are yours, and this can is your chaser. So drink up!”
    Tim made her laugh. He was a good assistant, although not as good as Galina had been. But where Galina had spent most of her time with Erika, Tim made sure Jian took her meds, slept, even ate. Sometimes Jian actually forgot to eat, in the times when the code took over and minutes turned to hours turned to days.
    Jian poured the lithium citrate into the medicine cup, filling it to the five-milliliter line. She drank the medicine, then immediately drained the whole can of Dr Pepper. Carbonation bubbled up in her mouth, chasing away the lithium’s nasty taste. The bad taste was worth it, though, because it made her normal. Made her able to function without seeing …
them
. The medicine let her work.
    She reached for the fridge again, but Tim produced a second can from his other pocket.
    “Got you covered,” he said.
    Jian blushed a little. Tim and P. J. took such good care of her. It almost made this place tolerable despite Rhumkorrf’s pressure and the constant mean comments from that evil bitch Erika.
    “Jian, come on,” Tim said. “We’ve failed the immune test before. Give work a rest for a little bit. We’ll get back to it in the morning.”
    “No, we must work. Did you come up with anything?”
    “Yes,” Tim said. “A bitchin’ new high score in Tetris.”
    “You must be very