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  “Will do!” said Molly. She thought about giving him a mock salute, but since they were both military it would have been a little lame. Instead she just waved as he turned and headed down the ramp.

  Paige came and stood beside her, also watching him leave. “Did you see his muscles?” she exclaimed, as soon as he was halfway down.

  “Shhh…” Molly hushed her quickly.

  She could have sworn his profile was smiling as he turned and walked down the side of the ship.

  Spaceport, Hangar 08771A, Outskirts of Uptarlung

  A few hours later, Joel had returned. In light of the investigation, he decided they needed boots on-planet for when they had an antidote. And if they could isolate the toxin itself before it was released, then so much the better.

  Molly and Joel agreed that she should go back to Gaitune, and leave him and Pieter to implement. This meant that the car needed to be completely unloaded of her supplies… something that Paige wasn’t entirely happy about, but it did make her grateful for not having worn high heels.

  “Okay, you sure you’re going to be okay here on your own?” Molly asked Joel, wondering if she was asking more because she felt anxious about him not being by her side.

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Joel told her. “Are you sure you guys will be okay without the car on Gaitune?”

  Molly waved her hand. “Yeah, totally. We’ll get another one, in fact. We just didn’t think when we were packing things up.”

  Joel chuckled. “It’s okay. I watched my life pass in front of my eyes when I thought of being stranded here, destined only to take taxis in the big city!” he joked with her.

  Molly stepped half a step closer. “So how long until Pieter will be ready to leave?” she asked.

  “Couple of days,” Joel said, looking out at another ship taking off from the launch pad. He scratched the back of his head, and stepped a little further away from Molly. She noticed, and cocked her head.

  He sighed. “You sure you want to have him designing something so specific for the data drops?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “He should be able to handle it. If he fucks up building this new system, we’ll just have to circle back to it later and take another stab at it. In the meantime, Oz and I will have to focus on getting this toxin contained and an antidote developed.”

  Joel swung his arms around a little and then stretched them back behind him, loosening his chest. “How much do you want me to tell him about Garet and The Syndicate?”

  Molly sucked on her lip for a moment, considering. “Well, he’s part of the team, right? He should know it all…”

  “Okay,” Joel tilted his head. “It will also be good for him to see how we work. And you never know. He might even be helpful on this outing.”

  “Outing?” She glared at him. “You’re a fucking moron sometimes.” Molly slapped at the top of his arm. “Just stay safe, you hear?” Her voice weakened a little. For a second it looked like she was going to hug him, before she shut down and took a step back again.

  “Yeah, you too,” he said, scratching the back of his head, the other hand awkwardly on his hip again.

  She turned and jogged up the ramp of the waiting ship.

  Joel stepped well clear of the hangar doors as Crash fired up the engines. Slowly the ship lurched out of the hangar, and onto the airfield road. Once they were well clear of the hangar, Joel headed back in to close up.

  Just as they reached the take off pad, Joel came out, pausing before getting into the car. He waited, watching them lift off.

  He waved, knowing they couldn’t see him. But he wanted to wave them off anyway.

  For nearly a minute he stood watching their ascent.

  “See you soon, ass munchers!” he mumbled under his breath, as the ship disappeared above the clouds. He couldn’t help but feel a twinge of separation. These were his people, he thought. But he had a job to do.

  He got in the car, and pulled up his holo to find some digs for the next few days he was going to be in town.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Gaitune-67, Safe house, Molly’s lab

  After the day-long trip, the remainder of the team arrived back on Gaitune-67. After just a few hours in the rack, Molly was back at work. By the time Paige had joined her, her research was in full swing.

  “What does this do?” Paige asked, idly turning the wheel that would hold the test tubes of samples for processing.

  “Don’t touch it,” said Molly quietly, barely moving her lips, and without even lifting her eyes from her microscope.

  Paige humphed and sat back down at the bench she had just gotten up from.

  “I could help you, if you told me what you were doing,” she protested.

  “How’s your advanced organic chemistry, then?”

  “Er…”

  “Any experience in new genetics?”

  “No.”

  “What about handling toxins that could kill you in a matter of hours, in a horrendously painful death?”

  Paige shook her head, feeling a bit stupid.

  Molly realized that her attempt at snark was probably hurtful. She looked up.

  “Sorry.” She said gently with a little apologetic smile. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just… there’s a lot of pressure on this, and if there was something you could do, I would gladly give it to you… You might be able to help with something later, though.”

  “Kay.” Paige seemed consoled. She leaned on the bench and carried on watching Molly. “Maybe I should start reading up, to understand more of what’s going on.”

  Molly had returned to her samples. “Or even going through some of the information about this case. ‘Go for the immediately practical’ is my motto.” She looked up, just to give Paige the interaction she was probably needing.

  Molly continued talking while preparing another slide. “Sean had said there was a connection between the outbreaks in violent incidents, and this toxin we’re replicating. Maybe you could gather everything there is about that and see if we can work out how they’re getting this toxin out to people.”

  Paige looked brighter. “That, I can do!” she said, pulling up her holo.

  Silence fell on the lab again.

  Molly had commandeered one of the basement areas next to Brock’s workshop as her own lab. The smaller room between the lab and the workshop was the gym. Molly was quietly pleased that she had some of the normal activity around her work area - it would help her fight the isolation that she tended towards.

  Right now, though, Paige was making damn sure that wasn’t an issue.

  Paige looked up again, and Molly, eyes still on the same microscope slide, sighed to herself. She wasn’t used to this much company while she worked.

  “Replicating?”

  “Yheees…” she said slowly.

  “I thought you were developing an antidote?”

  “I will. But the toxin is made up of a blend of strains of the toxin, as it were. So I need to have the right combo to be able to develop an antidote.”

  “Oh.” Paige blinked, not really registering what Molly was explaining.

  “I’m doing it old school. Once we’ve got the right blend, we can run it through a chemical simulator to make sure it matches the specific symptoms and the incubation period of the symptoms in our victims. Then I’ll find the match by tweaking an existing program. Kind of like cooking.” She paused a moment, looking up at the ceiling. “Or quantum loop gravity calculations.”

  Paige nodded slowly.

  She started to say something to Molly, then stopped herself. Quietly, she went back to her research, now understanding that for some reason the information she was searching for was going to be needed in the next phase. For a few moments she had assumed that Molly might have just given her a job to keep her occupied.

  Some time passed, and Molly had been through a series of slides and samples. Paige couldn’t follow exactly what she was doing, but when she finally stood back from the bench and stretched, Paige f
igured it was probably okay to speak to her again.

  “So, how does this all tie in with your thesis?”

  “Oh, I wrote a paper about gene sequencing, and how it could be used to give almost any property to any plant. These samples I’m analyzing are the nectar from the Trachycarpus fortunei plant, commonly known as the Yultok, which we grow all over the place. That was the point of the thesis - to show that anything could be made dangerous when you messed with its genetic makeup. Anyway, the nectars have each been given different properties by the scientists, using the part of the gene responsible for the nectar properties.”

  Paige frowned a little, closing one of the screens she’d been working on. “So you mean you can create any property by re-sequencing the genes?”

  Molly spoke easily while she organized the next stage of tests. “Well, not anything. But we can take certain things and give them different properties. Like one time, I took some tree cells and made them smell of bacon.”

  Paige laughed, her eyes wide. “You’re kidding?”

  Molly smiled, realizing how silly it sounded in the big scheme of things. “No. Crazy, eh? But the standard thing grads liked to do to show off was to make furry creatures glow like sea creatures. Or sea creatures grow fur or feathers. Most of it is pretty nasty stuff, though. I stuck to plants.”

  Paige went quiet, and started searching for something on her holo.

  A few minutes later she spoke again.

  “Did you know that 80% of Estarian nail colors are made from plant based colors?”

  Molly was putting one toxin on ten slides. She stopped midway through without looking up. She knew right away where this was going.

  “No shit?” She kept her head down so Paige couldn’t see she was trying not to smile.

  “Yeah, it’s true,” Paige continued in earnest. “So, potentially, if you weren't in the middle of saving the world, you could mess about with the properties of the plant to give us different types of nail color.”

  “Potentially. If I weren’t in the middle of saving the world.” Molly remained deadpan. “Or, if I had nothing better to do with my life, like repeatedly beating my head against the door that won’t open, just in case the thousandth time, it worked.”

  Paige’s face fell a little. She paused, weighing her options. Molly was applying the second toxin to half of her new samples.

  Paige suddenly looked determined. “Okay, so, what if I did some digging to help you do this ‘realm exploration thing’ you’re so interested in, and, in return, you develop some new nail colors for me?”

  Molly was searching through her test tubes of remaining toxins. She kept scanning as she spoke. “How about you do some digging,” she said, finding what she was looking for, and opening it up. “And I’ll get Oz to find a way of getting you some nail color shipped here?”

  She applied the third sample to two of the first combined toxins and then two of those that had only the first strain on the slide.

  “Nooo!!!! That defeats the purpose!” Paige whined. “I want you to explore making nail stuff that doesn’t exist. Like super hard, unchippable color. Or colors that are neon, or iridescent, or whatever!” She spoke faster and the pitch of her voice increased as her excitement at the possibilities swelled.

  Molly had sealed her first slide and had her eyes looking back down the microscope again. Paige couldn’t even tell if she was listening.

  “Molly…”

  “Yeah?”

  “What do you think?”

  Silence. And then finally…

  “Ugh. Lemme think about it.”

  “OMG! That’s what my mom would say when she really meant no.”

  Molly looked up, now smiling.

  “And that tone is the voice I used to use when I was frustrated with my mom!”

  Paige laughed. “Come on - it will be fun!” she promised.

  “Okay. If we get out of this alive, then yes. Maybe.”

  “No, you can’t say ‘yes, maybe’.”

  “Okay, probably.”

  Paige made a stern face. Molly sighed.

  “Okay, okay. Definitely. When this is over, though.”

  Paige jumped up and down and squealed. “Oh my ancestors… I have to go tell Brock.”

  Molly watched her leave, relieved she hadn’t run over to hug her while she was elbow deep in, probably, some of the deadliest materials in the system.

  She could here the sound of Paige’s high heels clicking down the corridors for a good twenty seconds after she left the room.

  Eyes back to her microscope, she smiled as she saw the exact reaction she’d been looking for.

  Halfway there, she said to herself. Halfway there.

  Erm, Molly.

  Yeah?

  Just something I noticed when I was reviewing your thesis just now…

  Yeah?

  Well, it seems you made two leaps in order to make that process work. I can’t find any reference to these methods before, and applying the principle of the Adjacent Possible, it appears that for you to have written that thesis at that time is impossible.

  Are you saying I didn’t write it?

  No. I’m saying that there is something else going on that even you may not have been aware of.

  Go on.

  Well, I’ve tested your cognitive ability. And it’s high. Off the charts, in fact, when normalized for the general population.

  But… she prompted

  But to have been able to make the skips you made… Have you heard of the concept of the Adjacent Possible?

  Er, nope.

  Well it’s basically the idea that certain things have to happen in order for the next step in the evolution of an organism, a system, an idea, a technology. For instance, life couldn’t have occurred before the cell existed. The cell couldn’t have existed until fatty acids had developed out of the primordial soup and then self-organized into spheres lined with a dual layer of molecules. Once the fatty acids combined to form those bounded spheres a new wing of the Adjacent Possible opens up… because then you have smaller molecules which can flow in, combine and react and then the larger molecules can’t get out. You have an inside and an outside. Cells are one example of the next Adjacent Possible to the existence of the fatty acids.

  Meaning…

  Some of the leaps you made in your paper were outside the bounds of the Adjacent Possible you started from given the technology and awareness available to you at the time. The techniques you developed are like having created cells before the evolution of fatty acids or bounded membranes.

  What are you saying Oz?