Cracking the Code

I clicked in the title box for this post, and as often happens Chrome supplied a list of things I've typed before. It seemed pretty random, pulling in previous blog post titles and search queries. One of them was "Cracking the Code," so I decided to keep it and write something that fit it.

I don't think I've ever chosen a title before I've written something; usually it's one of the last things I think up. Not sure how it'll work, but here goes...

***

Her computer recognized a few of the sequences—mostly cuttlefish genes to do with pigmentation and camouflage. Cyen knew that already, though. It was the other sequences, the ones spliced and diced so many times the computer couldn't match them to anything in the genetic database, that interested her. Those were what made the gen mod work. Those were what would make her the money she needed.

She sighed and rubbed her eyes. And yet every buyer she'd talked to hadn't been interested. The patch was useless without the specimen, they said. Never mind that there was enough information here to fuel years of research, or that its mere existence was proof of the Chameleon project.

A rat skittered by her foot, and Cyen yelped. Fucking things. It disappeared into the darkness of the abandoned warehouse, and she pulled up her knees to her chest. Rain dripped through the ceiling somewhere, a steady rhythm, and she closed her eyes against her temporary home.

Those clandestine meetings with company and crime syndicate representatives who told her a specimen was "essential" rose up to the surface. It wasn't the failure that bothered her, or the fact she'd had one in her grasp and let it slip away. It was simply that word. Specimen.

Every time she heard them speak in such clinical terms, she remembered the man she'd left behind in her gen tat parlour, trapped in the DNA resequencer as the government stormed the building. Telling herself there had been no way to help him, that he would have died if she'd tried to take him out before the process was complete, didn't help any more.

She could have done something.

***

Hm, so it has turned into a brief continuation of a very old story. Makes me wonder if I should go back and edit it...