Cain by James Byron Huggins Read Free Book Online Page A

-concentrates muscle cells. Plus, to make him strong enough to rip a car door off its hinges, we inserted anabolic steroid reserve cells inside his thorax and upper arms."
    Ben looked glumly away. "Damn," he muttered, "just when you thought it couldn't get any worse."
    Soloman expressed nothing. "All right, Maggie," he replied, softening a bit. "Explain to me why he's so fast."
    She ran a hand through her hair; Soloman saw faint beads of sweat on her forehead. "That was fundamentally a chemical alteration," she said. "Sodium and potassium and magnesium regulate the speed of synapses.What we did with him was simply increase the chemical levels until there was virtually no waiting period."
    "But you never tested him, right?"
    "No, we never had a chance."
    "Then give me your best guess," Soloman concentrated. "How fast is he? What're his limitations?"
    Her face froze as she gazed to the side, calculating. "He doesn't have cheetah speed. But maybe ... a lion." She leaned back. "It would be eyes, hands, everything. He's probably at the level of someone when they touch a hot stove. Their hand is moving even before their nerves have identified why. It only lasts a tenth of a second with normal people, but Cain is at that speed constantly. He moves so fast that even he wouldn't know what he was doing if we hadn't modified his central nervous system with electrical enhancements. Of course, we had to provide a niobium-titanium skull shield to protect his brain from the overflow of magnesium and potassium that might have caused cerebral edema. The skull shield also protects his brain against traumatic impact."
    She leaned forward, jaw tight. "Understand me, Soloman; Cain does have a weakness: it's the original Marburg virus. If you could reinsert the missing DNA strands in the HyMar virus hosted in his system, it would promote him to full-blown hemorrhagic fever in seconds. In other words it would take away his power on a molecular level."
    Soloman almost laughed. "Well, Maggie, I don't think Cain is going to sit still while I give him an injection of the Marburg virus. And I'm not going to take a shot at him. What happens if I miss? What happens if the original Marburg is released in this ecosystem?"
    She was silent, pursing her lips.
    "If Marburg were inserted into this environment it would become an airborne disease a hundred times more infectious than the common cold." Her words were slow, as if she were thinking of the very real possibility. "Within two hours it would kill anyone who contracted it. On a geometric curve it would wipe out a city with the population and density of New York within twenty-four hours. Within forty-eight hours it would be in another half-dozen states and within a week there would be nothing living on this continent. A month after that, if it crosses the ocean on flights before this nation is quarantined, it could conceivably kill everything on the face of the earth."
    General Hawken's hand was trembling violently as he raised his cigar for a vicious drag. He cursed aloud as he expelled the smoke, massaging a sweat-slick forehead.
    Soloman took a deep breath. "I see. Well, then, let's move on. Does Cain have any other weaknesses?"
    "Yes. There's one. And you might be able to exploit it if you're very, very careful."
    Ben spat out a piece of tobacco. "Doc," he growled, "we passed 'careful' about five hundred miles back."
    "What is Cain's other weakness?" Soloman asked.
    Pain shut her eyes before she clenched her teeth.
    "It ... it came out of a severe miscalculation," she answered. "The takeover of Cain's DNA by the HyMar virus led to something we didn't want to do. And I want you to know that I consider what we did a very, very tragic mistake. It was something we did only because we thought Cain would only be turned loose in times of war. And in that scenario the enemy would have been the only one ... the only one consumed ."
    Soloman 's eyes narrowed. Her face was so tragic that Ben just bowed his head and