Vampire Beach: Legacy (17 page)

‘I memorized it. My father keeps the codes written on his calendar. They change every week.’

‘It’s been seven and a half minutes since the security guy passed,’ Adam said, jogging up to them. ‘Hurry!’

Sienna punched five numbers into the keypad. Nothing happened.

‘When do they change the codes?’ Jason asked. ‘Is it before the weekends?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sienna replied, biting her lip.

‘I hear the guard,’ Adam whispered frantically.

‘Try again,’ Jason told Sienna.

She took a deep breath and slowly punched in the numbers again. There was a soft click as the door unlocked. Jason yanked it open and ushered his friends inside. He pulled it closed again just as the security guard came into view on the lawn outside. They all held their breath, waiting to see if he had spotted them.

‘I don’t think he saw us,’ Jason whispered after a minute.

‘I put the wrong number in the first time,’ Sienna murmured. ‘I hit the three instead of the six.’

‘It doesn’t matter now: we’re in.’ Jason squeezed her arm. ‘Nice job.’

She smiled at him, her expression playful now that the danger had passed. ‘Thanks. Let’s get to the lab. We’ve got to do this quickly and quietly, and just hope none of the security guys hear us.’

Inside the building, the hallways were lit with faint green lights every ten feet. Once Jason’s eyes had adjusted, he found it pretty easy to see where they were going. The part of the building they were in looked just like the science wing at DeVere High: lots of rooms filled with lab tables and standard equipment like microscopes and test tubes. But Sienna led the way past all that, and into another wing.

This area was different. The lighting was the same, but here there was a faint humming sound that pulsed through the air. Jason thought he could actually feel it like a vibration in his body. ‘What is that?’ he asked.

‘Machinery,’ Adam answered, keeping his voice quiet. ‘I had to get an MRI once when I hurt my wrist, and the room it was in felt like this – all magnetized.’

‘He’s right,’ Sienna said. ‘There’s a lot of high-tech stuff down here. All the testing equipment. MRIs, CT scans, PET scans, X-rays . . . plus a few things I don’t even know the names of. We have some toys that other labs don’t have.’

They reached the end of the hallway and went down a flight of stairs. ‘We’re below ground now,’ Sienna whispered. ‘They keep the most sensitive machinery down here because it stays cooler. And here’s the test room we’re looking for.’ She pushed open a heavy door and stepped inside. Jason and Adam followed.

Once the door had closed behind them, it was pitch black. ‘I got this!’ Adam said. Jason heard him fumbling around, then a flashlight beam cut through the darkness. ‘Bet you’re glad I brought these,’ he said, handing a flashlight to Jason and another to Sienna.

‘I am,’ Jason agreed. ‘I don’t think we can risk turning on the lights.’

‘No, but we do have to turn on all the equipment,’ Sienna said. She began punching power buttons, and various sleek black machines sprang to life with low beeping noises.

Jason examined them, baffled. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before,’ he said, peering at a two-foot-square box. It had a single opening on the top that looked like a shallow bowl. ‘Is it a centrifuge?’

‘Kind of,’ Sienna replied.

‘Then what’s this?’ Adam asked. He was staring at a tall, thin machine with a slot in the side. ‘Am I supposed to stick a dollar bill in here?’

Sienna laughed. ‘We’re going to stick a DNA sample in there. I don’t think a dollar bill will help much!’

Adam shook his head, impressed. ‘This is truly beyond. I mean, I’ve been in the police CSI lab, and let me tell you, the Malibu police have serious money compared to most cops. But they have nothing like this stuff.’

‘I’m not sure
anyone
has stuff like this,’ Jason said slowly. ‘Regular research labs . . . do they know about this technology?’

‘Not all of it, no,’ Sienna admitted. ‘The whole point of this center is to work on vampire research. We’ve had a lot of time to develop new technology, and we . . . uh . . . have pretty good funding. It’s a very high-tech place.’

‘High-tech? It’s astronomical-tech!’ Adam exclaimed. ‘I don’t even know what these machines are.’

‘Honestly? Neither do I,’ Sienna told him. ‘But the lab technician was more than happy to show me how they work. He explained all the science, but I was too nervous to pay much attention. I doubt I would’ve understood most of it, anyway. I remember which buttons to push and that’s about it.’

‘How did you get him to talk so much?’ Jason asked.

‘Well, first I told him who my father was. And then I flirted with him,’ Sienna said matter-of-factly.

Jason raised an eyebrow.

‘I smiled at him and acted impressed,’ she clarified. ‘The guy spends half his life in an underground lab with a bunch of computers. It doesn’t take much to make him talk. I think he was just psyched to speak to someone other than himself.’

‘I know just how he feels,’ Adam cracked.

‘Let’s get on with this,’ Jason said. ‘Before we get caught.’

‘OK. I have everything turned on, and I’m telling the main computer to set up the human genetic test for one subject.’ She typed a command into a keyboard set up beneath a flat-screen monitor on the wall.

‘Make it two subjects,’ Jason corrected her. ‘I brought some of my sister’s hair. I figure we may as well test her too. As Aunt Bianca wants her to undergo the transformation too.’

‘OK, let’s see . . . Here it is: multiple subjects,’ Sienna said, clicking on a box on-screen. ‘We’re set. We need to get the samples on slides and put them in the slot.’

‘I am the slide master,’ Adam announced, rummaging in one of the cabinets. He pulled out a box of glass slides and began to lay them out on the counter. ‘Slides, I understand. This DNA-reader-thingie I do
not
understand. Does it have a name?’

‘Not that I know of,’ Sienna said.

‘Then I hereby christen it the DNAbilizer,’ Adam announced. ‘Jason. Hair.’

Jason reached up to pull a strand of his hair out.

‘Wait!’ Adam said. ‘Make sure you get some skin on the end of it. The DNA is in the skin, not the hair.’

Jason obediently pinched his scalp and yanked out some hair. Adam slipped on a plastic glove, took the hair, and began preparing a slide.

Jason reached into his pocket and pulled out Dani’s brush. ‘Can you hold the light for me?’ he asked Sienna. She aimed her flashlight at the brush while Jason pulled out a few strands of hair. He studied the ends. ‘I can’t see well enough to tell if there’s any skin on the ends,’ he said.

Sienna leaned in close to him and examined the hair. ‘Neither can I,’ she said finally. ‘Let’s make slides for a couple of pieces of hair. Hopefully the DNAbilizer will be able to find DNA to read on one of them.’

Jason chose a few strands and handed them to Adam, who put each hair on its own slide.

Then Sienna took the slides and fed them into the slot in the DNAbilizer. Each slide disappeared soundlessly into the machine. Then a series of knocking sounds began, growing faster, then slower, and then starting the entire process again.

‘What’s it doing?’ Adam asked.

‘Performing the test,’ Sienna said. The knocking cycle stopped, the machine now whirring softly.

‘All in that one machine? We don’t have to do anything else?’ Jason asked.

‘The DNAbilizer is actually about five machines in one, based on what the technician told me,’ Sienna said. ‘They like to streamline everything here.’

‘Well, what’s taking so long?’ Adam demanded.

Sienna gaped at him. ‘It’s isolating a single strand of DNA for detailed analysis. How fast do you think that can happen?’

He shrugged. ‘It would probably take a week to get DNA results at the CSI lab. So I’m thinking it should take about three seconds here.’

‘We have advanced technology, not a magic wand,’ Sienna said. ‘It takes a while.’

‘
Shh!
’ Jason hissed. ‘I hear something.’

They fell silent. From out in the hallway came the unmistakable sound of footsteps.

‘Turn off the flashlights,’ Sienna whispered frantically. They all shut off their lights. The computer monitor glowed in the darkness, casting an eerie bluish light over all the black machines.

The door opened.

Wordlessly, Jason grabbed Sienna’s arm and pulled her back into the shadows behind the DNAbilizer. Adam crouched below the counter he’d prepared the slides on.

A security guard stepped into the room, propping the door open with his foot. Some of the green light from the hallway leaked into the darkness. The eerie glow backlit the guard, making him much easier to see – Jason hoped – than he, Sienna, and Adam were in the shadows.

Jason felt Sienna’s hand grasp his, her fingers cold. He looked at her and she gestured with her head toward the monitor. Data had begun scrolling quickly down the screen, numbers changing faster than the eye could follow.

In the doorway, the guard frowned. He reached for the light switches. Jason’s breath caught in his throat: if the lights went on, they’d be discovered for sure!

BEEEEEP
!

The DNAbilizer let out a loud final sound and turned itself off. On the monitor, the numbers vanished and a message flashed up:
DIAGNOSTIC COMPLETE
.

In the doorway, the guard chuckled to himself. ‘Damn machines!’ he muttered, stepping back outside. The door swung shut behind him, and the room returned to darkness. Jason held still, his heart slamming against his ribs. Sienna waited beside him, not moving.

Across the room, Adam slowly crumpled to the floor. ‘Oh, thank God,’ he whispered. ‘I totally froze in the wrong position and got a leg cramp!’

Jason bit back a laugh. He could see Sienna and Adam also struggling not to crack up. The relief of not getting caught was making them all giddy.

‘That was close,’ Sienna said finally. ‘It’s a good thing the DNAbilizer is fast.’ She clicked on her flashlight and crossed over to the keyboard. She typed in a command:
DISPLAY RESULTS
. The monitor went blank. A green light clicked on over the slot in the machine, and one of the slides slid back out. Jason took it. It was his hair, short and blond.

On screen, a report appeared:
SUBJECT
#1.
COMPATIBLE
.

A tingly feeling shot up Jason’s spine. He locked eyes with Sienna.
Compatible.
He could do it. He could become a vampire if he wanted to. He could be with Sienna. Forever.

The green light went on again, and another slide popped out.

Adam grabbed it. ‘Uh-oh,’ he said.

Jason pulled his gaze away from Sienna. ‘What?’

‘Subject number two, incompatible,’ Adam said, gesturing at the monitor, where Jason could read the words for himself.

‘Oh, no,’ Sienna murmured. ‘Dani . . .’

The green light came on again, and a third slide shot out. The monitor added a new line:
SUBJECT
#3.
INCOMPATIBLE
.

‘Wait. What?’ Jason said. ‘What does it mean, subject number three?’

‘We did two slides from the hair on the brush, remember?’ Sienna reminded him. ‘It probably thinks each slide was for a separate person. Here, I can make it give more detailed info. We can check.’ She typed in another command:
DISPLAY DETAILS
. Immediately a long list of numbers appeared under the heading ‘Subject #1’.

‘See? That’s everything about you,’ Sienna told him. ‘The mtDNA markers are displayed in red.’

‘Maybe I should print it out for future reference,’ he murmured.

‘Now here’s Dani,’ she said as the monitor displayed the detailed results for Subject #2. ‘And here’s the mysterious subject number three. It will all be the same data . . .’ Sienna’s voice trailed off. The numbers appearing underneath Subject #3 were
not
the same. They could all see that. The numbers displayed in red were different numbers. Not all of them, but enough to prove that this was not the same person.

‘That’s not Dani,’ Jason said slowly. ‘And it’s not me. The numbers are different.’

‘Maybe somebody else’s hair was in Dani’s brush,’ Sienna suggested. ‘Kristy’s?’

Jason grabbed the hairbrush and began pulling out individual strands. Some were only seven or eight inches long, some were more than a foot long, all were dark.

‘Is there a way to tell if the subjects are related to each other?’ Jason asked Sienna. His stomach was cramping. He had an idea who Subject #3 was, but he really, really wanted to be wrong.

‘I think the number of shared DNA markers indicates that,’ Adam told him.

Sienna toggled back and forth between the results. ‘Well, all three subjects have a lot of markers in common,’ she pointed out.

‘I’m pretty sure that means all three subjects are related,’ Adam said.

Now Jason knew exactly who those hairs belonged to. He knew exactly who the incompatible Subject #3 was. He ran his hand through his hair in agitation.

‘Jason?’ Sienna asked. ‘What is it?’

‘Subject number three,’ he whispered. ‘It’s not Kristy. It’s my Aunt Bianca.’

‘
BUT IT CAN
’
T
be!’ Sienna exclaimed.

Suddenly, a whole lot of things were starting to make sense to Jason. ‘I’m pretty sure it can, actually,’ he replied. ‘She’s been acting totally weird. She plucked out all her eyebrows the other day.’

‘Dang,’ Adam muttered.

‘That doesn’t mean—’ Sienna began.

‘It’s not just that,’ Jason interrupted. ‘It’s the way she’s acting. You saw a little bit of it in the pool house, Sienna. Aunt Bianca has a different personality every thirty seconds.’

Sienna shook her head in disbelief. ‘I don’t want to believe it, but she certainly was acting weird that day.’