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We were expecting this. Frankly, I was surprised it had taken this long.

“You can absolutely call your lawyer,” I said. “But first you should know what will happen if you go down this path.”

Nadine said, “We’re prepared to turn you over to China’s Gene Bureau.”

“America doesn’t have an extradition treaty with China,” Soren said.

Nadine leaned forward, her elbows on the table, the black coffee steaming into her face.

“For you,” she said, “we’re going to make an exception. The papers are being drawn up as we speak.”

“They don’t have anything on me.”

“I don’t think evidence and due process mean quite the same thing over there,” she said.

“You know I have dual Norwegian and American citizenship.”

“I don’t care,” I said. I looked at Nadine. “Do you care?”

She pretended to think about it. “No. I don’t think I do.”

Actually, I did care. We would never extradite an American citizen to China, but bluffing criminals is part of the gig.

Soren slouched back in his chair. “Can we have a hypothetical conversation?”

“We love hypothetical conversations,” I said.

“What if I were to write down an address on this notepad?”

“An address for what?”

“For a place where a hypothetical delivery might have been made earlier today.”

“What was delivered? Hypothetically.”

“Mining bacteria.”

Nadine and I exchanged a glance.

I asked, “You made the delivery to the lab itself? Not a random drop location?”

“I didn’t make any delivery,” Soren said. “This is all hypothetical.”

“Of course.”

“But if I had, and if I were to share that address with you, what would happen?”

“Depends on what we hypothetically find at this address.”

“If, hypothetically, you found this gene lab you’ve been hearing about, what would happen to me?”

Nadine said, “You’d be on the next flight to Tokyo.”

“And the China Gene Bureau?”

“As you pointed out,” I said, “we don’t have an extradition treaty with China.”

Soren pulled the pen and pad to his side of the table.



* * *



—

We followed the stealth SWAT vehicle in blackout mode through deserted streets. The address Soren had scribbled down was on the edge of Denver’s gentrified Five Points neighborhood, where at this hour of the night the only things open were a few weed bars.

I rolled down the window.

The October air streaming into my face was more revitalizing than the coffee we’d downed back at the station.

It was late fall in the Rockies.

The air smelled of dead leaves and overripe fruit.

A harvest moon perched above the serrated skyline of the Front Range—yellow and huge.

There should’ve been snow on the highest peaks by now, but it was all dry, moonlit rock above the timberline.

And I was struck again with the awareness that I was alive in strange times. There was a palpable sense of things in decline.

Africa alone had four billion people, most of whom were food insecure and worse. Even here in America, we were still crippled by rolling food shortages, supply-chain disruptions, and labor scarcity. With the cost of meat having skyrocketed, most restaurants that had closed during the Great Starvation never reopened.

We lived in a veritable surveillance state, engaged with screens more than with our loved ones, and the algorithms knew us better than we knew ourselves.

Every passing year, more jobs were lost to automation and artificial intelligence.

Parts of New York City and most of Miami were underwater, and an island of plastic the size of Iceland was floating in the Indian Ocean.

But it wasn’t just humans who’d been affected. There were no more northern white rhinos or South China tigers. The red wolves were gone, along with countless other species.

There were no more glaciers in Glacier National Park.

We had gotten so much right.

And too much wrong.

The future was here, and it was a fucking mess.

“You okay?” Nadine asked.

“Fine.”

“I can pull over if you—”

“Not yet.”

Nadine and I had worked together for almost three years. She’d been an environmental scientist with UNESCO before joining the GPA.

I took out my phone and opened my text chain with Beth. Typed out:

Hi Beth. Heading to the raid. Just wanted to say I love you. Hug Ava for me, and make it a good one. Call you in the morning.



As I pressed send, our radio crackled.

Officer Hart, the SWAT team leader, said, “We’re three minutes out.”

I felt something ratchet down in my gut. The initial push of adrenaline was beginning to prime my system for what was coming.

There were people who were built for this kind of thing. Those who thrived on the rush of storming a warehouse in hazmat body armor in the middle of the night, no idea of the mayhem they were heading into.

I wasn’t one of them. I’m a scientist. Or at least—I once dreamed of being one.