No More Purple

When dawn came, Dexter Mann was still racing westward along Interstate 8. As the night paled and feathery clouds turned pink then magenta, he began watching the rearview mirror again. The green Ford pickup was still back there, still tracking him.

He had been on the run for four days now. After the fiasco in the Harvard lab, Dex had jogged back to his apartment and started packing. In ten minutes he’d gathered food items and clothing. With his mentor now dead, face dipped in acid, all their important scientific research stolen, Dex knew he wasn’t safe. Whoever had killed Professor Waterford would soon be coming after him.

Dex had loaded up his ancient Subaru and driven south out of Cambridge, hugging the coast, stopping only for gas and quick, carb-laden fuel. The ocean was green and garbage-ridden. D.C. was in flames, gray smoke billowing miles into the atmosphere. Raleigh and Durham were both under siege.

The first night he made it to Atlanta. He slept four hours behind the steering wheel along a dirt lane, drunk with exhaustion. Four hours was all he’d needed to recuperate.

With his new enhanced abilities, courtesy of the Harvard GEMA experiments, Dex’s body was as tough as any Navy Seal’s. He was stronger, both physically and mentally. His hair had grown noticeably thicker overnight, his muscles stronger, his abs now sculpted despite his lifelong junk-food addiction. With his new cat-quick reflexes he could catch a buzzing fly between two fingers. But that wasn’t all. In the last few days of Phase 2, as other test subjects began expiring, Dex had started to experience psychic abilities.

He first sensed the driver of the green pickup yesterday, on his way through Oklahoma City. The sky had grown dark and stormy. Emergency sirens blared and loudspeakers broadcasted hurricane warnings to war-weary residents: Gather supplies. Get below ground.

Dex couldn’t read the truck driver’s thoughts, exactly, but his emotions broadcasted loud and clear. Fear. Betrayal. Greed. Dex felt the intensity of all those complex feelings directed like a heat missile on the back of his skull.

He regretted a lot of things. As Craig Waterford’s right-hand man in the GEMA experiments, Dex was partially responsible for the deaths. The insanity. The debilitating headaches and other nasty side-effects. Waterford’s decision to inject them all with animal DNA had delivered unexpected results, some good, most bad. But they’d been up against a wall, and they’d believed in the purity of their ultimate agenda: to create a race of superhumans able to survive the fast-approaching environmental apocalypse.

Dex only found out later that Waterford had never gotten proper permission to run the experiments. And although Dex was only the post-doc assistant on the project, the others saw him as partner in crime. In the end, as civil war broke out and things in the lab began unraveling, Dex instinctively knew he would become a target.

And now here he was, approaching the California border with a killer on his tail.

At the checkpoint, they were looking for weapons and drugs. So far California’s bid for independence had been refused, and tensions at the border were high.

Dex was forced to reduce speed. The collection of empty foam drink cups rustled on the back seat every time he touched the brakes. There were sixteen vehicles ahead of him. Only five between his Subaru and the green truck. As the distance between cars narrowed, Dex studied the figure behind the wheel. With his new keen eyesight he noticed several things. Strawberry-blond hair. Calculating blue eyes. Big hands that gripped the steering wheel of the Ford as if resisting the urge to yank it from the driveshaft and reshape it into a figure eight.

It was Zack Griffin.

Zack had been the lone MIT student on the GEMA project. They’d injected him with elephant DNA and Waterford’s secret ‘sauce’. And while most of the students were vocal about their results, Zack remained close-lipped. At first they suspected him of being an industrial spy, but later realized he was just an arrogant loner. During that last meeting, as the surviving test subjects hurled insults at Waterford and called him ‘Dr. Moreau’, Zack stood at the back of the lab, freckled arms crossed over his big chest, surveying the chaos with a hint of smile on his lips.

Zack had disappeared right after the murder. At first Dex thought maybe something bad had happened to him, too. But things were beginning to clarify. Zack had killed Professor Waterford, stolen the research, and now he was coming after Dex.

Beyond the border checkpoint was barren wasteland all the way to San Diego. Dex accelerated gradually, putting distance between himself and the green truck. Soon the border station disappeared. With his new sixth sense, Dex intuited Zack’s impotent rage at being stuck behind the line of cars still waiting to be searched.

We need to talk.

The words telegraphed with unmistakable clarity to Dex’s mind. Did Zack have some sort of telepathy, courtesy of the experiments? The same way Dex now seemed able to read minds? How was any of this possible?

Dex recalled something from his senior year in college. His biochemistry teacher had been lecturing on the ‘more purple’ gene. It was a set of experiments from the 1990s in which scientists decided to make petunias even more purple by injecting them with the gene for pigment coloration. Instead, the petunias bloomed white. The takeaway was that if you tamper with genes, sometimes the host organism responds by going in a completely opposite direction. Add too much purple, and petunias say no more purple.

Add too much animal DNA and humans say no more animal.

Was it possible that the second round of experiments pumped so much mystery DNA soup into the test subjects that their bodies rebelled? Instead of taking on more animal traits, their nervous systems freaked out? Went into self-preservation mode?

It was like those MK Ultra experiments from the 1950s, where prisoners were given LSD and suddenly all sorts of psychic abilities started cropping up. In the case of the GEMA experiments, their bodies’ response to the stress of repeated animal DNA injections was to come up with something mankind had never seen before.

Pull over. Or you’ll regret what you did to me.

Dex already did.

After another hour of driving, just past Ocotillo, California, gas running low, Dex caught sight of the green truck in the rearview mirror again. Zack was gaining on him.

Dex hung right onto a narrow dirt road. Old Highway 80, the sign read. Bladder burning, he floored the gas, bumping over the ruts, hoping Zack hadn’t seen him make the turn. A few minutes later he realized he’d made a terrible mistake. His Subaru was churning up a cloud of dust that would be easy to follow.

Pull over.

Instead of running out of gas on the heavily traversed I-8, where he might be able to hitch a ride, Dex was going to burn out in the middle of this godforsaken desert. In the rearview, he caught sight of Zack’s truck perhaps a mile behind him, coming fast. The truck was most likely a four-wheel drive, infinitely more suited to this terrain than Dex’s tiny Subaru.

RVs and trailers occupied the dry riverbed. End-of-worlders seeking to live out their remaining years away from the reach of an Orwellian government that had begun to resemble the nefarious Party in 1984. Doomsdayers who saw conspiracy every time the wind changed. Conscientious objectors who opposed the war and deserters who were dog-tired of it. Oldtimers who watched the polluted sky and saw it for what it was: proof the earth was dying.

Dex’s old Subaru made it to the Painted Desert before sputtering to a stop at the base of a pink shale mountain banded in deep lavender. He got out of the car, urinated in the dirt, and waited for his nemesis to arrive.

It didn’t take long. Within a couple of minutes the green truck appeared around the bend in the road and screeched to a halt behind the Subaru. Zack sprang from the driver’s side door like a demented jack-in-the-box.

“You stole the GEMA research,” Dex said, coming at Zack with his fists. “You killed Waterford.”

Zack laughed. “Took you long enough, genius.”

“You must be insane, following me like this.” Dex pummeled Zack’s belly, an assault that would have laid him out before the new enhancements. Now Zack’s abdominal muscles were like armored plates, and they took the pounding with surprising ease.

“I don’t want to fight, Dex. Listen to me. I have a proposition.”

“You’re a murderer.”

“Waterford deserved to die.”

Zack started to defend himself now, landing a few good punches of his own. He was impressively strong, swinging with a lazy grace that infuriated Dex. They traded solid blows, fists to flesh. Then, as Dex’s ears rang and his vision began to blur, he delivered an uppercut to Zack’s jaw, sending an arc of blood spattering over the painted rocks in an eerily beautiful pattern.

“Just listen to me,” Zack hissed, spitting blood. “Sure, I hold you responsible for the deaths. The insanity.” He rested his big hands on his knees, heaving. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

Barely listening, Dex came at him again, and Zack danced away. Dex jogged forward to plant a knee in Zack’s groin.

“Oof.”

In two more moves Dex had him on the ground, face in the dirt. He knelt over Zack, grinding his knee into his back, and growled. “You’re not the only one suffering here, man. We’re both freaks now. Or haven’t you figured that out yet?”

“You’re surprisingly daft for a scientist. Waterford should have picked someone with a little more backbone. He should have picked me.” Zack struggled like a trapped salmon beneath Dex’s weight. “Did you know I applied for that internship?”

It was taking all of Dex’s energy to keep Zack down. “Look, I have a lot of regrets. But neither of us can change what happened to us. We’re freaks now. But—”

Zack laughed. “Freaks?”

“You need to stop this. Destroy GEMA. Waterford was wrong. I was wrong. We don’t need to change the course of human evolution. It’s not our prerogative. We can’t play God like that. The human race is beautiful just the way it is.”

Zack made a sound of disgust. “I think you’re mistaken about my intentions, friend. Yes, I stole your precious research. But I’m not going to use it to change everyone. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the population doesn’t deserve what I’m going to create in my new lab. They’re the sheep in this equation. Waterford’s biggest mistake was that he thought GEMA would work on everyone. It didn’t. You saw what happened.”

Dex froze. “So you’re going to handpick super soldiers? Use them to win the war?”

“Super soldiers?” Zack shook his head. “The military will never get their dirty paws on my improved technology. I’m not doing this to save humanity, Dex. Humanity can kiss off, for all I care.”

Dex ground Zack’s face into the dirt, muscles straining. He couldn’t keep Zack down for much longer—but it was suddenly vital that he know. “What’s your plan then? What are you going to do?”

The sun had sunk below the horizon while they fought, and now Dex could barely see the back of Zack’s head. But their minds touched, and Dex knew that Zack was grinning into the dirt.

“We,” Zack said, “are going to carve out our own spot at the top of the dogpile. No need to fight—people will be kneeling at our feet for a taste of what we can give them.”

Suddenly Dex saw the future as if it were etched into the hardpan beneath them. Zack’s warped vision, broadcast across their telepathic connection.

In the coming months, Zack would cultivate a group of elites. People who would contribute intellectually, physically, and financially to his new project. Movers and shakers from around the globe who would join his movement in order to capitalize on all the political chaos. People willing to be experimented upon in order to gain ultimate power over others.

Join me, Zack telegraphed without moving his lips. That’s what I came here to say. With our combined scientific expertise we can accomplish anything. I’ll make you a leader among the new Evolved. You deserve a place among us, Dex. You’re one of us already.

“What will you promise these people?” Dex asked, fearing the answer. “And what are you going to get out of it?”

Zack laughed. Dex rolled off him and stood, heaving, waiting for a response.

That’s the best part of my plan. Zack got to his feet. Despite the blood on his mouth, the pebbles embedded in his cheek, he seemed unfazed. His blue eyes burned with a fanatical intensity. They’re going to pay me a lot of money for these enhancements. Buckets. And in exchange, I’m going to turn them into gods.

As Zack turned toward his truck, Dex contemplated going after him. He owed it to the world he loved to stop this lunatic. But Zack was already revving the engine before Dex could come to a decision.

Give me a call when you come to your senses, Zack telegraphed as he sped away. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.