“Wait a minute.” Queen held up her hand. “Moonlight is just reflected sunlight. If it’s nothing more than a certain wavelength of light causing this, it should happen in sunlight as well.”
“The moon is not a perfect mirror. It reflects unevenly, due to absorption of certain wavelengths. We believe that something in the full spectrum of sunlight serves to balance out the wavelengths that initiate the creation of the myofibroblasts, and suppresses the reaction.”
“What about the hair growth? Some of these people really look like werewolves.” Queen inclined her head toward the monitors.
“The reaction stimulates the rapid growth of vellus hair, the fine hair that grows all over our bodies beginning in childhood. We assume it is a side effect of the fibroblasts’ metabolic functions. With our limited budget, we have focused on the strength and speed effects. Excess body hair is not a hindrance, so we have not studied it.”
“Are all these people related to Subject Alpha?” Queen reminded herself that these were not merely beasts, but human victims of Manifold Genetics.
“Oh no. We have very few of those subjects. These are people in whom we have been able to replicate the condition, and even stimulate it through the use of artificial light.” He saw the fire in Queen’s eyes and hurried on, hands raised in a defensive posture. “Please understand, we are not kidnappers pulling people off the streets to perform experiments on them. The first subjects, those from Subject Alpha’s genetic pool, were volunteers who hoped we could find a cure. They were well-paid. Since then, all our subjects have been prisoners: murderers, rapists, the lowest of the low. Darius, our director, secured them for us.”
“Did you snatch a boy from the streets tonight? A dark-haired kid about eighteen?”
“I don’t think so. Understand, I do not secure the subjects. Darius sees to that.”
Queen didn’t like it. Even if the guy was telling the truth, who was he to turn human beings into raving beasts?
“I’m assuming Manifold isn’t interested in turning people into werewolves. You must have promised them you could produce super-strong, super-fast soldiers.”
“We are almost there,” Slifko said. “The subjects, however, lose their minds during the transformation, and become crazed, much like the oborots, or werewolves, of legend. After regression, some of the madness remains. The more frequently they transform, the more they lose of themselves when they are in their normal state. After enough transformations, the person is reduced to an animal-like state. When we can eliminate those problems, we will have succeeded.” He shook his head. “If Darius did not waste precious funding on his so-called defense systems, our progress would be much more rapid.”
“Those defense systems wouldn’t involve turning carnival rides into killing machines, would they?”
Slifko nodded. “Darius is not a scientist. I am told he is former military, and his assignment here is a punishment for something he did that upset Richard Ridley. I do not know much about the man, but I know he is not quite right in the head. I sometimes think he wants us to succeed so that he himself can enjoy the benefits. He often wonders aloud what a group of elite soldiers with the oborot’s strength and speed could do.”
Queen thought of the experiments Manifold had performed using the DNA of the hydra in hopes of producing soldiers whose bodies could heal any wound. Just like this situation, Manifold had not found a way to control the accompanying madness. She imagined what would happen if the flaws in both experiments were corrected. Regenerating soldiers were bad enough, but regenerating soldiers with superhuman strength and speed? It was unthinkable.
“Have there been many escapes?”
“Occasionally, but we have always managed to kill or recapture them. We do not know how the escapes happen, though.”
“Air vent,” Queen said. “I followed one back inside.”
Slifko frowned. “That is impossible! We would have noticed the missing vent cover!”
“Do your cameras point at the ceiling?”
“No.” Slifko shook his head. “But when we feed them or come in to conduct research, surely we would notice a vent cover lying on the ground.”
“Maybe they remove the cover at the beginning of the transformation, when they’re mostly human, and replace it after regression. You can’t watch every cell closely all night long.”
“Why not escape, then? That would be crazy.”
“They are crazy, Doctor. Your experiments drove them insane.”
Slifko hung his head. “You sound like my colleague, Doctor Danilchuk. She no longer supported what we do here.”
“What happened to her?”
“Darius would not let her leave. When she vowed to go in spite of him, he…” Slifko’s eyes drifted to the monitors on the wall.
“He turned her into a test subject? Unbelievable.” Shaking her head, Queen looked away from Slifko and noticed that the upload was finished. She reached down to retrieve her thumb drive.