“Computer, replay the video and freeze at the moment the Federal agent steps over the body.”
On top of the agent’s head is a pair of night vision goggles.
“Computer, what’s the most likely reason the camera stopped recording?”
“The camera stopped recording due to a power failure,” the pleasant voice replies.
“Shut off the power!” I yell.
Everyone looks at me.
“They’re locating the big houses through the power they’re stealing.”
The team scrambles to start turning off individual devices, but I see Albert run out the door toward the escape tunnels. He’s heading for the main power switch. He reaches it a minute later and everything goes dark, followed by emergency lighting switching on automatically.
“Do we have enough battery power to send a message to all the remaining houses?” I ask, and Cindi confirms that we do.
“Tell them that the big houses are being found via their power usage, and they should shut down until they can find alternate power sources, or are using power disguised as being legitimately drawn from the grid.”
“Of course,” James says, as we stand in the dim light. “Even though power is free, every house and business has a meter that detects how much electricity each property is using in order to help the system run more efficiently. If you start accounting for all of the authorized uses, eventually you’ll see the unauthorized drains. The big houses use enough power to become visible, but they’ll never find the small houses that way. There’s too much noise and rounding error. We should be able to run a few lights and computers without being detected.”
But how did they know that Four was organized by houses, and that they all use escape tunnels? Is there a spy inside Four?
“A couple of computers per house still effectively blinds us,” Geoff says.
“The first time I traveled back in time, I ended up mute when the chips in my neck exploded,” I say. “I always thought my strength was my voice; but when I lost it, I found that God had silenced me so that - for once in my life - I would shut up and listen. The strength of Bethany House has always been to lie quietly and watch. Maybe it will take being blinded in order to finally see,” I say.
Geoff and the others don’t look inspired by my speech. If anything, they look deflated. The pattern of their lives has always been to overcome problems using superior technology, and they can’t see beyond it.
Lost Sheep.
*****
James has always been an organizer; so Martha assigns him to monitor energy use, while Toby and Blake organize team members to watch the woods for signs of intruders. James allows two computers to come back online - as long as there are no lights running. One computer is dedicated to monitoring government communications for any indications Bethany House has been found, and it quickly becomes apparent that it hasn’t.
In all, eight houses were found before the rest went dark. Through regular news, we find out that at least one hundred buildings were raided. Most were people who were simply using large amounts of power, such as an elderly lady with a very large - but uninsulated - hot tub in Maine; and a man in Idaho who insisted on keeping his twenty eight pet alligators warm at all times.
Most of the Four network appears to be hobbling along, just like us. We see lights flash from red to green for a short period, while a house downloads information, and then returns to red. It reminds me of Colorado prairie dogs who stick their heads up to look for danger and dive back into their holes at even a hint of trouble. A few stay green all of the time. Those are the small houses, and houses that are disguised as ordinary homes or businesses.
The loss of power is funny and novel for about one day. Brill finds candles and allows us to charge headlamps at Capon Springs, but the number of toes stubbed in the dark quickly causes moods to turn sour. The staff of Bethany is accustomed to working on multiple screens at a time, and being reduced to taking turns on a shared computer leaves them squabbling like children over each second they’re allotted.
Geoff is using his time on the shared computer, when I walk into the command center and hear him arguing with Zip.
“You don’t need to get Martha,” Zip says. “I’m sending a recorded message to all remaining houses. Just make sure the entire Bethany staff sees it.”
“We’re recording this. Give us the live version,” I say, as I walk up behind Geoff.
“Fine. They say you’re good at solving puzzles; so I’m sure you’ve already arrived at the same conclusion anyway. Four is dead in the water, and we’re all going to be literally dead if we don’t take action and get our hands on the vaccine to protect us from the plague. I’m calling on all members of Four to arm themselves and head for McIntosh.”
“What’s your plan?” I ask.
“Half of your old friends from the cult hunter Corps are there. We plan to wipe them out.”
“The town is full of unarmed pilgrims. If you attack, the Corps will slaughter them.”
“I already have half a brigade on the inside,” Zip says. “The cult hunters are drooling for the chance to massacre Christians, but they’re the ones who are walking into a trap. I should thank you, Cephas. You provided the perfect bait.”
“Michael,” I conclude.
“Did you think he’d have reached McIntosh without help? We provided plenty of kind strangers along the way to give him rides and food, and send video feeds to keep him in the news. We’d never have lured so many cult hunters into one place without him.”
“How does killing hundreds of cult hunters get you vaccine?”
“I said I have half a brigade in McIntosh. The other half will capture one of the vaccine facilities. With half of his guard dogs dead, Henry won’t be able to stop us.”
“A vaccine facility? We searched around the clock and came up empty. How’d you find it?” I ask.
“I have friends who have friends.”
“You’re playing right into his hands,” I say. “He’ll paint Christians as a violent cult that needs to be destroyed once and for all.”
“Luckily for me, Cephas, the winners write the history books.”
*****
We replay the exchange with Zip to the entire staff; then everyone leaves to decide for themselves what they want to do next.
I’m not surprised, an hour later, when Geoff calls a staff meeting to talk about our situation.
“Four, in general, and Bethany House, in particular, can no longer function in any meaningful way,” Geoff says. “Even the smaller houses have started to give up. I hate to be the one to say it, but it’s time to abandon Bethany House.”
The group looks to me - but I say nothing; so James picks up the conversation next.
“Cephas, nobody wants to say it out loud, because nobody wants to disappoint you; but without technology, we have nothing left. We’re even running out of food.”
So my status has gone from ‘rock star’ to ‘rock bottom?’ Good. That means the timing is about right.
“What does food even matter?” Blake asks. “Without the vaccine, we’re all dead in a couple of months anyway.”
One by one, I look at the grim faces of the group. In their hearts and minds they’re already beaten. Martha breaks the silence.
“Cephas, you have to say something,” she says.
“I have no wisdom of my own; so I’ll ask you all the question that Jesus asked two millennia ago - ‘For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’”
Their faces soften somewhat, but only for a moment.
“I’ve killed once before in my life. I may not have the solution to this puzzle, but joining Zip and killing cult hunters isn’t the solution either.”
Geoff’s ears heard what I said, but he isn’t listening with his heart. My question came from the Word, but he’s still too focused on the world.
“Look around you, Cephas. Our base and our network are empty shells. I just want to live my life free to pray and draw closer to the Lord. I’ve never wanted to kill anyone either; but maybe sometimes it really does come down to a choice of us versus them. My decision is made. I’m going to McIntosh to fight.”
Geoff stands, as do Blake and twenty others, and begin to file from the room. Geoff’s twin, James, remains seated, along with almost a dozen others.
“James? Cindi?” Geoff says to his siblings from the doorway.
James is usually the more stoic of the twins, so when he has something to say people listen. At first it doesn’t appear that he can even find the will to speak; but he manages - with his voice cracking at the effort.
“Geoff, do you remember when we were twelve and we first heard about the Four movement? Do you remember how we said we’d been called by God to do important things in His name? I always thought we’d been called together. I thought we’d stand side-by-side, always defending each other like brothers until the end. Until now. I can’t come with you. My place is here. At least for now.”
Cindi nods her head in agreement. She’s staying.
Geoff can’t believe it.
“Isn’t blood thicker than water?” he asks.
“Yes, it is,” I say. “The complete saying is: ‘The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.’ They’re not betraying you, Geoff. Like you, they’re doing what they feel the Lord has called upon them to do.”
“Stay then,” Geoff says. “If you think that’s what the Lord has called you to do, stay here and die in the dark.”
*****
The next day, Martha, James, Cindi and I watch from the end of the east escape tunnel as Geoff and the others melt into the woods in twos and threes, on their way to join Zip.
I turn to Cindi.
“How’s work coming on the vaccine sample?”
“We’re working on a very complex virus in a cave, in the dark. We’re weeks from fully understanding it, and months from production.”
“Then I’m glad we have our best people on it.”
My face betrays what I’m thinking.
“I know it’s not fast enough, but it’s the best we can do. Maybe we can save a few people. Maybe it’ll be enough to let us start again.”
Cindi and James walk back into the tunnel, leaving me alone with Martha.
“The wolf descended and the flock is scattered,” I say.
*****
The few of us left at Bethany House will be hanging by a thread. We gave most of our food stores to those who chose to leave, and without electricity, we’ll spend both days and nights in the cold and dark, as Cindi and Amelia work on analyzing the vaccine sample. The others use their ample free time to train, and I wonder how many are still thinking of leaving to join Zip’s assault teams.
After a week, Cindi calls a meeting of the remaining staff.
“The good news is that we can replicate the vaccine,” Cindi says. “The bad news is that it’ll take even longer than we originally thought.”
Henry wiped out over a million people in Indonesia just to prove the power of the toxin. Time is not on our side…
“I know it’s being used for a gruesome purpose; but the technology is fascinating,” Cindi says. “The toxin itself is similar to what was used in the Final Holy War: a small chemical agent combined with a highly specific DNA targeting agent. Together they were harmless; but when they bound with a very specific target DNA, the toxin was released, causing damage to most of the major systems in the body in a way that mimics a disease rather than a poison.”
“The new toxin is different, Amelia adds. “It has a non-specific targeting agent; so it will affect any human body it enters. The clever part, this time, is the vaccine. It employs a completely synthetic virus to deliver a gene therapy. It’s much smaller than naturally occurring viruses - so small, in fact, that it can enter and leave cells without damaging them. Most naturally occurring viruses simply deliver their own nucleic acids into the nucleus of a cell and force the cell to make new copies of the virus until the cell bursts open. This one uses the cell to replicate itself, but it also rewrites the host human DNA to create a new synthetic enzyme specifically designed to quickly break down the toxin, and thus save your life if you’re exposed.”
As their technical briefing moves into the specifics, I start to zone out. Science has never been my thing; but the real reason I can’t focus is that my mind is troubled by the one possibility this puzzle is presenting - a possibility I’d rather not think about until I see more pieces.
“Blah, blah, pass through cell membranes; blah, blah, attach to phosphate backbone in DNA,” is all I hear Cindi say.
“Blah, blah, DNA binding; blah, blah, virus coat protein and transport,” Amelia says.
My vision is getting hazy around the edges. I just want to put my head down and sleep.
“Blah, blah, adenine and protein folding; blah, blah, glutamine and active site.”
Maybe I could pretend I need to use the bathroom, and not come back?
“Blah, blah, compete protein code and structure; blah, blah, blah.” Amelia flashes information onto the screen.
I try to focus my vision on the screen. The three-dimensional structure of the protein looks pretty much like a blob, and I try to make a picture out of it, like you can when you look at clouds; but even that proves impossible. The protein sequence is just a string of letters.
“Any questions?” asks Cindi.
It’s music to my ears. Maybe the meeting is almost over. Some of the others ask what I’m sure are very insightful technical questions. Cindi looks to me.
“Cephas? You look a little bewildered. Any questions?”
“I’m sorry, but you weren’t speaking in any of the languages I know - and that definitely isn’t written in any language I know.”
I point to the DNA and protein sequences displayed on the screen.
“It’s grade school science,” Cindi says. “These are three-letter codes for amino acids. String the amino acids together and they make a protein. Fold the protein into its proper shape, and it does whatever job it’s meant to do.”
Maybe if I just ask something, the meeting will end.
“Then why is the DNA longer than the protein?”
Cindi rolls her eyes over the fact that I don’t understand such things, so Amelia points to the structure and explains.
“This three-letter code in the DNA is called a stop codon. It tells you that the protein stops here. This extra DNA tail doesn’t code for anything, it’s probably an artifact from when the DNA was first synthesized. As a matter of fact, they should have gone back and cut it off, because it seems to be getting in the way of proper splicing into the host DNA.”
My smile drops, and everyone instantly picks up on it.
“Did you say the bit on the end is called the ‘tail’?” I ask.
Jocie said that when Henry was drunk, he would say the word “tail” and laugh hysterically.
“Yeah. So?”
“What do those tail codons code for?” I ask.
“I just told you. They don’t code for anything. They’re after the stop codon; so they aren’t part of the protein.”
“Humor me.”
“Okay,” Cindi replies.
She brings the amino acids onto the screen.
“The tail is made up of thirty-three bases in the DNA, which would code for eleven amino acids. If they were translated, the code would read: Threonine-Tyrosine-Cysteine-Glutamine-Leucine-Glutamate-Glutamine-Asparagine-Alanine-Arginine-Aspartate.”
I stare intently at the screen as I try to find some kind of pattern.
“Cephas, it’s just some junk DNA. Why are you so interested?” Martha asks.
I continue to stare intently at the screen. Henry found these codes funny, and there must be a reason. The others start to whisper, and even giggle, about my fascination over DNA that doesn’t code for anything.
“Is there any other way to express amino acids?”
“Sure,” Cindi says. “Computer, restate the sequence after the stop codon in single letter code.”
The scientists don’t see it right away, but I gasp when the code comes up on the screen. The code reads:
T-Y-C-Q-L-E-Q-N-A-R-D
“Tyco Leonard,” I say. “Henry’s grandfather.”
“There isn’t an amino acid that uses “O” as its abbreviation; so a “Q” was used in its place,” Amelia says.
“What’s it mean?” William asks.
“Henry put his grandfather’s name into the gene therapy. If you want to live, you get his family name written into your very DNA. No wonder he laughed so hard about the tail. He’s created the ultimate family legacy.”
We all sit in stunned silence for a moment.
“You said that we needed proof of who’s behind this. I’d say you have it,” James says.
“Henry doesn’t care. He wanted us to find this. Most leading atheists have read the Bible because quoting the Bible, in order to criticize it, gives them an appearance of authority. He’s daring Christians to not take the vaccine. He’s not content to kill just Christians living off the grid. He wants us all.”
“I don’t get it. How’s a harmless little snip of junk DNA daring us to not take the vaccine?” William asks.
I look at William.
“What you call a harmless snip of DNA is what others may call “the mark of the beast.”