Pixie Hazard by Archibald Bradford (top young adult novels .txt) 📕

But if you know to look for them they aren’t hard to find, just time consuming.”

“He got a pair of them in his kneecaps or something?”

“No. Don’t interrupt me. The dermal scan was clean, but then my patient told me some things about his medical history and this Professor Calvin that made me twitchy. So I opted to start from the ground up and ran a full gene analysis. That’s when I found something.”

She turned the monitor of her console so that everyone could see.

“That’s a whole lot of ones and zeroes. Binary porn?” Eniella joked.

“It’s data, encrypted data. Hardcoded into the structure of his DNA. They’ve done it in the past with synthetic DNA but found it cost-prohibitive and therefore a dead end, technologically speaking. I’ve read a handful of papers on using mammalian subjects, but they were all theoretical on account of ethics being a thing.”

“So he isn’t just some fall-guy, he’s how the professor was planning on stealing from Outerlight?”

Billy shook her head.

“He is what was stolen from Outerlight. Like I said, this tech has existed for years, but the key here is that his DNA is rewritable. That’s what makes him so special. With the right equipment and some of his genetic material to act as a baseline, we could upload roughly one hundred and fifty zetabytes into him.”

“Is that a lot of bites?” Bunny whispered to Maria.

But it was Eniella that answered her.

“Assuming Billy isn’t full of shit, the entirety of the Pixie’s databank could fit inside of him several times over.”

Bunny blinked.

“So is that a lot of bites?” She repeated.

Eniella put her arm around the cat-girl and squeezed her close.

“Do you know what a byte is, mi chiquita?”

The K’or-Macka opened her mouth, seemingly to respond, but instead she turned into the hug and set her teeth on the swell of Eniella’s right breast and gave her a gentle nip through her shirt.

“Mierda! Not that kind of bite!”

Despite the sudden levity in the hall, the trio in the infirmary were dour-faced.

“Can I be... cured?” Bryan asked with wide eyes.

Billy sucked air between her teeth sharply as she thought long and hard about the question.

“Maybe.” She admitted finally; “But I have no idea where to even start, this really isn’t my area, and there’s only so much I can do just with reading other people’s theories on the datanet.”

“Is he in any danger?” Maria asked from the hall, ignoring the impromptu make out session that was taking place beside her as Bunny and Eniella lost interest in Bryan’s condition.

Though Bryan flinched at hearing Maria’s voice again, the doctor’s response was as immediate as it was emphatic.

“Absolutely not. He is completely healthy. Gene editing has been used for centuries to prevent certain defects from developing in the womb, though this is definitely breaking new grounds for the technology.”

“This happened before I was born?”

She nodded as she put the monitor back where it was.

“Ideally it would have been while you were still an embryo, but this kind of mod is so far beyond anything I’ve ever seen that I can’t guarantee that. My guess is the project really kicked into gear once you were old enough to have genetic material to spare, I would surmise that’s why the injections started when you were ten. Also because experimenting on infants is kind of a no-no in the medical community.”

Her dry attempt at humour fell on deaf ears though and she furrowed her brow at the sudden tear rolling down Bryan’s cheek.

“Am I even human?” He whispered.

She reached out and flicked his ear hard to forestall some kind of existential spiral, causing him to flinch and yelp.

“As human as any of us. This Calvin prick just modded your DNA, he didn’t cross you with a chinchilla.”

“How much is this tech worth?” Eva asked suddenly.

She earned some hard glares for the question, but Donnie nodded as Eva had hit the nail on the head as far as she was concerned.

Billy let out a deep breath while she considered the question, staring at the ceiling as she ran the numbers.

“Given the timeframe and investment from Outerlight? Billions, maybe tens of billions. Hard to say, you’d need a very specific buyer first.”

“And someone who was okay with owning people.” Maria said with a rather pointed glare at Eva.

“I’m not saying we sell him.” The redhead snapped; “But if we know what he’s worth then we’ll know how badly people are going to come after him and would you two take that shit to your bunks already?!”

The make-out session between Eniella and Bunny had gotten well-past heated; the K’or-Macka’s purring sounding like a jacked up pepper grinder as the pink-haired woman groped at both of her breasts and feasted on the nape of her neck.

“Knock it off. All of you.” Donnie ordered; “I’ve heard enough. Billy, you still want to talk to the kid?”

“Yes, there are some more tests that-”

“Fine. When you are finished with that I’d like you to upload some of those ones and zeroes to tac-ops so Eniella can see about decrypting them. Maybe that will give us some answers. The rest of you, go do whatever it is you should be doing and leave the doc and her patient in peace.”

Billy muttered something about Donnie being the only one in the room who shouldn’t be, but the skipper missed it.

After taking a moment to straighten out her clothes, Eniella delicately rolled one of Bunny’s ears between her fingers.

“Raincheck for you and me Bunny-boo.”

“There’s no rain in space.” The K’or-Macka said breathlessly; “And how would you check?”

“Okay, now you’re doing it on purpose.”

Donnie ignored them as she pushed past them into the hall, then turned to see Maria looking longingly at Bryan.

Her eyes