Argent Glass

Chapter 35 - Consign - Jordan

Jordan slammed open the door of the lab. She saw her mom jump as the door banged against the wall. The other scientists stopped what they were doing to look at her.

"Jordan!" she shouted rushing to her. She continued in a lower tone, "What the hell is going on? Everyone is talking about how you brought in the guys that Pierce shot."

Jordan ignored her and pulled out the memory card from her pocket. "Mom! I need you to look at this."

"You can't just come barging in here like this. Tell me what's going on. What were you doing in the desert? Do you know those guys? You know what? It doesn't matter. I can't talk about this right now. I'm sure you have community chores to finish, and you need to go. We can speak about this tonight." She was walking toward the door to the lab.

"No, mom. You need to look at this," Jordan said firmly. "Right now."

"What is that?" Mandy took the microchip and held it to the light.

"It's a memory card with information about your research." She turned to the scientists and shouted, "You all need to stop your research today! Right now!"

"Jordan, stop it!" She yanked on Jordan's arm to pull her around to face her. "I'm in the middle of–"

"Mom, please. I wouldn't ask you to do this if it wasn't really important. Jinho found some information on this memory card and you need to look at it."

"Fine. Ten minutes." She waved to one of the scientists still staring and said, "I'm taking a ten-minute break. I'll be in my office."

She and Jordan walked into her office. The light came up slowly as she closed the door behind Jordan and sat down at her desk. Jordan looked out the window into the lab. Everyone kept shooting glances at the office but were otherwise quietly going back to work.

"They need to stop working," Jordan said.

Mandy looked for a place on her computer to put the memory card. "There's no slot for this."

Jordan turned from the glass. "Where's your phone?"

Mandy opened the top drawer of her desk and shuffled items around. She found it deep in the back and handed it to Jordan who removed the back and swapped memory cards.

"Cable?"

Mandy shrugged and dug around in the drawer again. "Ha!"

Jordan plugged the phone into the computer and Mandy typed on the keyboard. The keys clicked loudly in the silence.

"Jinho said to look for something called 'Argent Summary.' He wasn't sure what it all meant but he thought it was about the research being done here in the dome."

"I don't see it here." She clicked around with the mouse and opened a search bar. She did a search. "Here it is. It's a letter from someone named Dr. Carlos Carrel."

Her eyes skimmed the document. Jordan walked to the front of the desk and sat down to watch her face. As Mandy continued reading, her body stiffened and her eyes grew wider. She reached inside her desk and slipped on a pair of reading glasses without taking her eyes from the screen.

Jordan thought she looked pretty. She had never thought about her mother this way, but she was a pretty woman with serious brown eyes and short brown hair. She appeared younger, almost more like a sister than a mom, when she didn't know someone was looking.

"This can't be right," she mumbled. She scrolled the document and continued to read silently to herself. The mouse clicked away rapidly as more documents were opened. "I don't understand. This is my research. These are the markers that I developed. But this isn't mine. And this. My god."

Jordan's heart did a somersault as she watched the horror wash over her mother's face. She slumped into the chair and waited for her to finish reading so her mom could tell her it was all a mistake. That Jinho read it wrong.

After ten minutes, she realized her mom had forgotten she was in the room and she shifted in her seat to relieve the tension in her spine. Mandy looked up.

"It's about the vegetables we're growing. Maverick BioScience has genetic engineers making modified plants."

Jordan nodded. She had heard as much from Jinho. "GMOs, you mean."

Mandy flinched. Her voice was flat as she continued. "Yes, GMOs. They've modified the plants in a way that...well, we thought we were creating plants that wouldn't require fertilizers or pesticides, but they have us designing plants that can make people sick and die. The symptoms mimic ALS. This man, Dr. Carrel, worked at Central Labs. He was–"

"He was the guy Pierce shot and killed in the desert." Jordan stopped. Realization dawned in her eyes. Mandy was staring at her. "He...he must have put his memory card in Andrew's phone before...before Pierce...shot him."

Mandy digested the words. "Dr. Carrel's wife died from ALS. Only, he noticed it wasn't really ALS. The markers for ALS weren't all there. He was finding other markers that didn't fit."

She shuffled the open documents on the screen and skimmed them. "She was sick for a very short time...and, oh, this is so sad. She was pregnant. Her medical history shows a previous ectopic pregnancy. This must have been their second try."

Jordan felt a lump form in her throat as her mother went on talking and reading the files. "They told us we were working on modifications to plants that could be used to feed overpopulated third world countries...but this...this shows we were making plants that would be used to manipulate smaller segments of the population...We're engineering plants to kill people..."

Jordan felt the air leave her body. Dizziness washed through her. "Mom–"

"It's in the tomatoes and the corn. The beans. The–"

"Mom." Jordan vomited into the waste bin.

Her mother raced to her side and pulled her hair from her face. "Jordan? Are you okay?"

"I...I don't know," she stuttered. "It's in the food here? In the dome? The plants we're growing in the greenhouse?"

"Yes, there are shipping manifests that show the containers that left this location. They–"

"I've been eating the vegetables."

"What? You and Jinho have been–"

"No. Me. I've been eating them. Jinho would never break the rules."

"Oh my god."

Jordan started crying.

"Oh sweetie, don't cry. I think it's okay. We can figure this out. Don't cry."

A low tone filled the room. Mandy frowned. "A perimeter seal?"

"I don't want to die," Jordan cried.

"Sweetie, you're not going to–"

The lights went out.

Jordan blinked to banish the dark. Her mother clutched her tighter, and Jordan had to pull her hand away to retrieve the flashlight. A beam of light bounced around the room when she hit the switch.

"What the hell is going on?" her mother said. "Flash that over here."

The room was silent except for the swish of clothing as Mandy walked to the light switch and flipped it on and off. A ghostly apparition of one of the engineers appeared at her door, and she jumped back in fright before springing forward to open it. "Is everyone okay? Jordan, bring the light. Does anyone else have a light? Don't we have emergency lighting in this place? What is going on?"