Midtown Manhattan, 1951. Six months since the rainforest ordeal in Uganda, yet the memory clings to me like a phantom vine.
In my jacket pocket, the embossed telegram crackles against my knuckles. 'Professor Fioretti. We know what you lost. We believe we can help. A car will be waiting. Novus Genetics.'
It arrived three days after I landed in New York, a lifeline I was too broken and desperate to refuse. Now, I'm walking into the lion's den, clinging to the insane hope that they actually know something about Kibo.
Steam bites from sidewalk grates, trolleys clang, neon martini glasses wink above the Copa. Coal exhaust and roasted chestnuts replace Uganda's rot, but my jacket still stinks of jungle mildew.
A lazy jazz tune drifts from a basement bar, mingling with the city's hopeful pulse—postwar scars still echo beneath each languid note.
Across the street a fifty-storey blade of glass and steel rises into low cloud. Blue letters spell Novus Genetics Corporation above revolving doors.
I step inside; the street roar dies under marble vaults. A faint electrical hum needles my teeth. The art-deco directory shows only six tenants. The last reads Steven D'Addario, Chief Executive Officer—37th Floor.
A white-gloved attendant works the lift—thirty-seven buttons, only one lit.
The corridor beyond is lined with frosted glass; ozone and floor-wax sting the air. Mid-corridor, a framed TIME cover—THE WARRIOR GENE? My own face glares back, captioned: FROM RAINFOREST CAGES TO NOBEL SHORT LIST. A cold knot tightens in my stomach.
That, I realize, is how I got their attention. I'm not a fellow scientist to them; I'm a commodity.
But when did I agree to be their poster child?
· · ·
I clear my throat and rap once on a mahogany door stamped Steven D'Addario – CEO.
“Enter.”
Steven D'Addario rises—tall, silver at the temples, eyes sharp as a scalpel. “Professor Benjamin Fioretti.” He offers a hand. “I've waited a long time to meet the man everyone in the journals keeps quoting.”
“Mr. D'Addario. The honor is mine. I have to admit, I've been wondering about the purpose of this meeting.”
“Two reasons. First, to congratulate a future Nobel laureate.” He gives a dry chuckle. “Second, to ask how in heaven's name you found that gene. Let me show you why your work matters.” He pauses at the projector.
On his desk lies an eight-millimetre film canister. He threads it into a projector with the ease of a newsreel operator and darkens the blinds. A chimpanzee appears on-screen, muscle-knotted, hurling a wooden log against the cage bars; shards fly like shrapnel.
“That's Gladiator,” I say. “Alpha male. Took us months to get close enough for a blood sample.”
Next frame: the same brute gently parts an infant's hair, picking thorns with almost maternal focus; the infant squeaks, unafraid.
“We isolated the sequence—four bases. One snip with a tailored phage, and Gladiator went from tyrant to teddy bear. Cortisol levels halved; raids stopped. But inject that same sequence into a subordinate? He'd try to tear the cage apart inside a week.”
“And when that insertion appeared—rarely—in men convicted of murder,” D'Addario murmurs, pausing the reel, “your lab built an inhibitor.”
“Exactly. Behavior tied to four bases. The inhibitor—Calmadrin—is under strict hospital protocol. First psychiatric drug born from ape genetics.”
He holds my gaze, silent, the faint ticking of the mantel clock suddenly loud in the room. “How many sleepless nights before you trusted the change wouldn't unravel the animal?”
“Too many,” I admit, nudging my glasses. “Mendel had peas; I had two-hundred-pound primates and a prayer. We are, after all, 98.7% the same material. And unlike peas, they remember who stuck them with the needles.”
A low whistle. “That caution is precisely why I want you.” He opens a leather folio.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
He lifts a pen-length metal cylinder; a braided cord leads to a shoebox-sized valve-analyzer. The device looks like something from a science fiction pulp, all chrome and blinking lights—nothing like the crude centrifuges back at Anthropoid Labs. With a swift jab he pricks his own thumb, lets one drop fall, and the miniature gauge flares green—proof the gadget works.
“This prototype alone cost more than your entire Uganda expedition,” he says. He taps the glass. “You academics are still debating the theory of the double helix. Here at Novus? We mapped the structure five years ago. We are doing things that the universities won't discover until the 1970s. We aren't just reading the book of life, Benjamin. We are rewriting it.”
“What am I looking at, Mr. D'Addario?”
He leans forward, his eyes gleaming. “It's for the cradles, not the convicts. We find the flaws your research identified in every newborn, and we correct them. We eradicate the disease before it begins.”
The sterilized rhetoric of the Third Reich suddenly feels chillingly close. “You're talking about assembly-line eugenics,” I say, the words tasting like ash.
“I'm talking about the end of violence,” he counters softly. “And that's a task that requires a man of conscience. It requires you.” He places the prototype on the desk between us, leans forward, and fixes me with an intense, unwavering gaze.
“With refinement—and your guidance—why treat the mind after violence erupts, when we can guide the very genes before it begins?”
“Chromosome therapy is still new—one mis-splice and we breed catastrophe,” I warn. “And if you tag every newborn—who draws that line, Steven?”
“I have... connections that can expedite approvals,” he says carefully. “The right people understand the urgency of this work.”
He leans forward, voice lowering. “Remember the Spanish Flu cordons, Benjamin? My mother died nursing Brooklyn's sick. Quarantine felt brutal—yet it saved cities. Genes are no different: fence the carriers, spare the crowd.”
He turns a photo toward me: a toothless boy mid-giggle, frozen forever. His knuckle taps the silver edge—once, twice. The rhythmic tap-tap is the only sound in the sterile office.
Is this D'Addario's boy? Could it be that he too... that he lost his son? The question hangs in the space between us, unbearably heavy. And I don't... I simply don't dare to ask.
“Nature's plague killed fifty million, a force we can't control. But the seventy-five million men killed in the war? That wasn't nature. That was a human choice. And a choice, Professor,” he says, his voice dropping, “is simply a flaw in the design. A design we can correct.”
“And if a charismatic leader waves those numbers like a flag?” I ask.
“With Washington and Langley behind us, we police the misuse. Your chimp protocol, scaled to human blood—same principle, broader canvas.”
“And those already wired for violence?” I ask. “Psychopaths don't vanish because a graph says so.”
“Exactly—habit is harder than heredity. Our gene apparatus is primarily for the next generation—guide the young before biology hardens into destiny. For the adults? We're funding behavioral conditioning. The best psychologists money can buy. Two tools, one objective: fewer Hitlers, more humanity.”
I open my mouth to object again, to insist on more checks, but he leans back, steepling his fingers, his expression utterly calm, as if the eradication of violence were a simple logistical problem.
“You don't understand the scale of what you're proposing,” I say, my voice low. “Think about the logistics. The ‘warrior gene’ is a one-in-a-million needle in the haystack of the general population. If you want to find the needles, you have to go to the one place they all pile up: the penitentiary system. Your subjects wouldn't be volunteers; they'd be psychopaths. Do you really think they'll just... volunteer?”
“Do we give a virus a choice before we eradicate it?” he says.
“They're not a virus, they're men! This is still a democracy, Mr. D'Addario. We can't just engineer an entire generation to your specifications.”
“People always scream about ‘freedom’ when they are terrified of the cure,” he replies coldly. “But look at the numbers, Benjamin. Fifty million dead from a virus. Seventy-five million dead from a war. That is the cost of unrestricted freedom. It is chaos.”
He looks past me, at a ghost in the room, his voice barely a whisper. “It's always a question of which price you are willing to pay, Benjamin. The price of freedom, which brings chaos and random cruelty? Or the price of order, which demands sacrifice?”
He turns from me and glides to the window, pushing it open another inch. The sharp blare of a taxi horn and the distant clang of a trolley suddenly flood the room, a raw, impatient sample of the very chaos he despises. He lets the noise hang in the air for a beat, a faint, knowing smile on his lips.
“Last war, Benjamin... didn't it teach you anything? The evil of man isn't some romantic notion.” He leans forward, his voice a low whisper, “It's a flaw in the code. And I intend to fix it.”
He turns to the window, watching the city below. “But do not make the mistake of thinking the flaw is only in the gutter, Benjamin. The thug in the alley is at least honest; he wants your wallet. The true rot? It wears a tuxedo. It shakes your hand at the gala while hiding a knife in the other. It flies to private islands where the laws of God do not apply. That is the true darkness. And you cannot arrest that kind of rot with a badge.”
I stare at his reflection in the glass, trying to parse the madness in his words. It sounds morbid, almost delusional—a billionaire railing against the very circles he moves in? It feels detached from reality.
But then he turns back to me, and the light hits his face. There is no irony there. His eyes are burning with a terrifying, cold purpose. He believes it, I realize with a jolt. God help us, he truly believes he is the cure.
I run a hand through my hair. The air in the office feels thin, recycled. “Mr. D'Addario... I don't know,” I say, my voice softer than I intended. “The lines here... they feel murky. My work is about understanding and, where possible, healing. Not... redirecting the course of human nature based on a genetic snapshot.”
D'Addario doesn't argue. He just watches me, a flicker of something unreadable in his sharp eyes. “I see,” he says softly. He walks back to the film projector, not with disappointment, but with a new purpose.
“Perhaps your priorities lie elsewhere.” He clicks a small switch on the machine, and a new film begins to play. The footage is sharp, intimate. It's from last Christmas Eve at the reserve. I'm sitting by a small, crackling fire as Kibo, now a powerful young adult, gently fumbles with the brightly colored paper on a small gift I'd wrapped for him. My breath catches.
The image on the screen is so sharp it steals the air from my lungs. The sound of Kibo's breathing, amplified by the projector, feels obscene in this sterile room. A single tear escapes. “Kibo... How do you have all of this?” I whisper, my voice thick.
“We had several documentary crews visit last year... is this from one of them?” I ask.
D'Addario turns the projector off, the sudden darkness making the room feel smaller. He looks at me, and his expression is unreadable.
“The ‘how’ is less important than the ‘why,’ Professor,” he says softly. “We make it our business to understand the assets we believe in.”
“What are you saying? I don't get it,” I ask.
“I have intelligence suggesting Russian syndicates, possibly with ties to the Red Army, are behind this. What happened to your troop wasn't an isolated incident. We're tracking something much larger. Join us, and finding Kibo becomes our top priority.”
I look from his face to the blank projection screen where a ghost of my past life still lingers. He's offering me the one thing in the world I want.
The offer hangs in the air, a perfect, poisoned bait. The Russian words from the jungle—Быстро, быстрее!—flash in my mind. The memory of their unsettling, inhuman movements. “Those things...” I murmur to myself, “they weren't just men. The way they moved, the speed... it was wrong.” D'Addario places a calming hand on my shoulder.
“The chaos of an attack can play tricks on the mind, Professor. What matters is the result.” He looks me straight in the eye, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. “Let's bring Kibo home.”
“Mr. D'Addario, I... I...”
“Is everything ok, Professor? You look a bit pale,” he says.
“I'm fine, it's just...” I say, trailing off as I try to pinpoint the feeling. “There's a... a low hum. Can you hear it? It's making my head feel...”
Blinding light erupts from a crystal prism. Ozone burns. The room tilts. I grip the chair. I glance politely at my watch to excuse myself—but freeze. The second-hand spins and the minute hand has leapt three hours ahead.
“What in—?”
D'Addario stands half-smile, half-worry; the glare swallows him, as if he's part of the light.
“Are you ok, professor?”
“What was that?”
“A fluctuation from Ackerman's coil. We're running high-energy tests upstairs,” he says, his voice utterly calm. He doesn't dismiss the flash; he simply observes me. “Eyes on the real work, Professor.”
The lamp steadies; my watch ticks back to the correct time.
“Let me call my assistant,” he says, pressing a single button on the heavy, black intercom on his desk. “Henry will bring you some water.” The door glides open almost instantly. An immaculate man in a waistcoat—Henry—silently offers me a glass.
My hands tremble as I put down the water glass. The room still feels wrong, like reality hasn't quite snapped back into place. Uganda... the same terrifying lurch.
I need to ask him—demand answers about that coil, about this... distortion. But his eyes are on me, so steady, and the words just... die in my throat.
He's perfectly still. His expression is one of calm, professional concern, yet there's a tension in his shoulders, a rigid control. It's too precise.
The water in the glass visibly shaking. He watches the tremor for a beat, then smoothly changes the subject, as if dismissing my entire physical reaction.
“They say we're all made of the same material,” he says.
“That's my NYT headline,” I say.
“Your headline. Yes. Shared instincts can drown civilizations. Just like Carl Jung said... Help me edit those instincts.”
“If I'm in... We'll need independent review,” I say. “Protocols. Full access.”
“You'll have whatever you ask. Numbers don't lie. And total discretion—tell colleagues only that Novus offered you a post. No details. You have forty-eight hours, Professor. I trust you'll make the wise decision.”
I nod. Anthropoid Labs is home, yet Novus is every geneticist's dream—and a secret I must guard. I rise, the TIME cover under my arm. If four bases can silence a killer instinct, what else can they do? Somewhere between a Ugandan cage and a Manhattan high-rise I may have opened a door no man can close—and Novus is waving me through. Outside, I pause on the curb, heart still pounding with the possibilities he's laid out.
The saxophone riff from a nearby cellar tries to lull me, but it only underscores how distant the Ugandan jungle now feels—like a broken promise too easily forgotten.
If flesh is clay and we hold the kiln, who decides which shapes are ‘fit’? Tyranny may trade epaulettes for lab coats, but it's tyranny all the same.
And somewhere, in a place I can't yet imagine, those masked figures might be doing things to Kibo that make my research look like child's play.
