Free City Under the Moon by Hugh Sterbakov

meet moon.
    The effect was… humbling.
    Photocatalytic reactions in the virus caused a cascade of effects, many of which they couldn’t yet track. The result, however, was profound: rapid shifts in the host’s DNA.
    The alterations were located in sequences known as “junk DNA,” so-called because they had no apparent function. Junk DNA were thought to be evolutionary artifacts, scars on the human genome caused by millions of factors over thousands of generations.
    Junk DNA sequences weren’t implicitly benign, however. Any of them might contain undiscovered homeoboxes , the master switches used by cells as instruction manuals to build the body. Flipping one of these switches might result in mutagenesis, or the creation of genetic mutations.
    Mutations could materialize as subtle inter-species discrepancies, like height, weight or skin color. Or, in theory, they could manifest major organism transformations. Applied mutagenesis might someday replace human parts with those of a bird or a plant… or even take leaps through the evolutionary chain. One team in Canada was attempting to devolve chickens into “Chickenosaursus Rex.”
    “I can’t wait to see what happens when the virus catalyzes inside her body,” Richard said.
    Jessica was at a loss for words. “This is—”
    “We don’t know what this is.”
    But at the same moment, someone behind him had a different answer: “Dangerous.”

    Eight
    FBI New York Division Headquarters
    Jacob K. Javits Federal Office Building
    26 Federal Plaza, Manhattan
    December 31
    10:42 a.m.
    TV crews had set up camp in front of 26 Fed. Turned out that a half-naked woman photobombing the morning news had caught the media’s attention.
    Tildascow hopped out of her taxi a block away from the office. Counterterrorism work necessitated anonymity, so media attention wouldn’t do.
    A couple of male reporters took notice as she approached an unmarked entrance. The blond curls tended to draw the eyes of men. But she was forgotten like a deflowered prom queen when an FDNY ambulance turned the corner, siren and lights blazing. The red and white truck slogged through the congregation and into the underground parking structure. Security staved off the press as they strained for a peek at the mystery passenger.
    That would be Tildascow’s appointment.
    She took the discretionary stairs to the lobby, where flustered NYPD plainclothes were grousing at a liaison. The Holly Cooke case had a stratospheric profile after it was advertised on live TV, so politically, the cops had to fight for access even if they knew it wouldn’t come. Tildascow would’ve liked to include them, but she had no time for diplomacy.
    She ignored the escalating argument and swiped her access card at an unmarked door. It unlocked with a buzz, letting her into a sterile hallway that served as an access point to sensitive facilities. On her left was “the cage,” where confiscated materials were catalogued and stored. Across the hall was the server station, a massive temperature-regulated facility housing backups for the regional government virtual private network servers. She’d spent a week in this room reconstructing the tracks of a deft Taliban hacker. Farther down the hall was a vault containing the most substantial armory in Manhattan.
    A door with a keypad lock led to a security portal granting access to the holding cells. She descended into the humid sub-basement, taupe tile under sickly seventies-era lights, and arrived at an iron-on-brick gate where she displayed her badge to a camera.
    Beyond the bars, she could see a flurry of CDC EIS officers in banana-colored biohazard suits. Seemed like overkill, but that was probably smarter than underkill. She was greeted at the gate by a guard and a banana, who insisted she wear one herself.
    Arguing would just slow things down. The alcohol-and-plastic stench of the thing wasn’t as bad as the fact that it weighed a ton.
    An EIS Officer escorted her onto the medical