Testimony of Mr. J. Stanley

The pine trees sway in the wind, and the sound is like the waves of the sea.

"Gaspar, I need to talk to you."

Stanley was poking open the stacked coals with a spit, but the words made him pause. "I'm listening," he replied, helping a piece of wood with the red-hot tip of the spit. He turned over, revealing the side that was not completely burned, and the flames quickly ate away at the incomplete brown bark.

"Whitehall intends to take over the 'razor' experimental group and turn it into a military laboratory, of course not in the legal sense, in any public documents we will still be an independent private laboratory in order to handle some sensitive experiments Material."

"You mean 'in order to escape supervision'."

"I wouldn't describe it that way."

Only then did Stanley realize that he was still holding the hot iron rod in his hand, and threw it on the floor with a clang, "How sensitive is the material that Whitehall wants to 'process'?"

Jason looked at him without answering.

"My God," Stanley said, standing up, pacing the living room, "The New Observer was right, Whitehall was using IG's hand to create nerve gas in front of everyone's noses."

"Gaspar, research and use are not the same thing."

"Is that what your Whitehall friends told you?"

Jason grabbed his arm and stopped him from pacing, "You need to calm down."

"I've never been so calm." Stanley felt that he needed nicotine, or alcohol, preferably both. "Why did you tell me this?"

"Whitehall cannot directly fund the Razor project for obvious reasons, they need a, so to speak, detour."

"The Foundation," Stanley shook his head, unable to believe what he had just heard, "you need my signature, and you need me to turn a blind eye."

"Listen," Jason sat down on the arm of the sofa, his shoulders slumping wearily, "if the foundation doesn't work this way, Melinda Tucker will use Jim's trust company, whether we like it or not, white I would like to keep control - however limited - within IntelGenes. Consider, Gaspar, that the money will flow in as decentralized anonymous donations, and all you have to do is do nothing. "

"It's a crime."

"This is the rule of the game," Jason spread his hands, "Either quit, or follow the bet, and you can no longer quit."

"Is this a threat?"

"Suggestion," Jason replied gently, "I need you on my side, Gasper."

"As if I had other options."

"We don't have to make this any harder." Jason folded his hands, as if he could crumple the conversation up and hide it, "I never talked to you, if anyone asked' Razor' project group."

6.

"I was flipping through a book in the library of my boarding school, and there was an illustration in it that I had been having nightmares about for days, it was a group of black, hooded figures with no faces, forming a group deep in the woods. One circle. I don't know why there are books like this in the library, maybe it's misplaced and shouldn't be accessible to students. Danny Mather's article on IG reminded me of this image , only this time, I'm one of those dark shadows with no face, and people get terrified when they look at me."

The sky outside the ward was orange, and a crow took off from the treetops.

"Where we were talking, the cabin, I left early the next morning without leaving a note. Jason got what he wanted and dragged me in the same boat. I don't like my new job, but I don't like it. That's all, no yelling. Nobody's plotting 'well, now do something bad' from the start. The first and foremost product of IntelGenes has always been the vaccine, and as of the time I resigned, the country had Sixty percent of newborns get the Red Arrow-VI combination vaccine. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, or, in my case, with concessions."

"Jason gave me access to the 'razor' project database the second week after we went to the cabin, unbeknownst to Ryan. Smart move, if anything goes wrong, I'll be dragged in too, never to be Claims to be ignorant of the development of Apophis. It's an ethyl sulfide-based corrosive agent. The lab sends three or four sealed boxes of rats turned into puddles to destruction every day. .”

"At its peak, IG controlled nearly a ton of finished products, locked in the basement of the R&D center, with two sets of passwords, iris scanning, independent power supply systems, and so on. A snake locked in an iron box finally escaped."

The lawyer stopped writing, "Theft?"

"Depends how you define theft. Jim Follett is a shadowy investor, an arms dealer, a nautical enthusiast, but not a philanthropist. He wrote generous checks and pocketed Jason before IG took shape. , waiting to cash out his investment one day. Jim never loses money, and this time he got Apophis. Do you remember what happened in Aleppo, Miss Gibson?"

"I've read the reports."

"I watched it live, in another ward far from here, watching how people's muscles melted from their bones and their eyeballs dripped like egg whites. 1,227 soldiers and civilians died that day, all because of Jay Sen and Jim Follett."

-

The music that heralded the beginning of the news program came from the car radio: flute, and some kind of percussion instrument, and Stanley turned it up a little.Outside the car windows are the same trees and utility poles, an occasional gap in this wall of trees that flashes the bland facades of factory warehouses or substations.

The headlines were again food contamination, with highly pathogenic E. coli found in a batch of tinned fruit puree that was supposed to be sent to a primary school in Sussex; Stanley wasn't particularly interested in shells falling on the outskirts of the city, and so on.After talking about the ground staff strike at Heathrow Airport and the dog that fell into the water to save someone, the radio host turned to sports.Stanley turned off the radio, slowed down, and stopped in front of the gate post at the end of the trail.

"Can I help you, sir?" A man in a guard uniform leaned his upper body out of the window.

Stanley lowered the window and showed him his visitor's badge.

The guard pressed a button, and the iron door hummed like an insect's wings and swung open inward.Stanley nodded to the gatekeeper and drove into the nursing home grounds, where a sign instructed all visitors to "park in the alternate parking lot."This parking lot is much farther than Stanley imagined, and it will take at least 10 minutes to walk back.The sun in early June should not be underestimated. Stanley took off his coat and put it on his arm, and the sand and gravel clicked on the soles of his shoes.

The shade provided by the reception area in the foyer is cool and dry, and a receptionist reads yesterday's newspaper, the crumpled inside pages of bombed-out houses on the outskirts of Aleppo.Stanley cleared his throat, and the receptionist put down the newspaper and gave him a half-hearted smile.

"Stanley," he gave his last name, "I'm coming to see my father."

The keyboard was clicked, "217, sir, turn left after going up the stairs."

He thanked him, went up the stairs, and walked alone through the echoing corridors.The room he was looking for was near the end, with a door painted blue and no nameplate.Stanley knocked on the door and walked in.

The TV was on, a cricket match was drawing to a close, but John Stanley's attention was not there.He sat on the edge of the bed, facing the palm-sized balcony and the treetops swaying in the wind in the distance.The legs of the folding chair scraped the floor, and his father turned his head. For a few seconds, Stanley worried that he would not recognize him, but his father moved his lips. Half of the cheek seemed to be frozen, and a muscle next to the eyes was twitching constantly, "Gasper."

A sudden anxiety urged Stanley to explain his visit, as if he had to provide a valid reason to be here. "The nurse called me."

"Just a little infection."

"The version they told me sounded more serious."

Father shrugged, moved slowly to the bed, and tucked the pillows behind his back, "Just write a postcard next time."

They're all glued to the TV, counting on it to provide game-changing material.The cricket game was over, the beer commercials, those frothy brews that curved exaggeratedly on a black background, poured into a beaded glass.The ad is cut short before the beer can fill the glass, and the reporter's worried face appears on the screen, covered in sweat, and the camera pans briefly to the helicopter hatch and the gray sky outside before stabilizing and refocusing on the reporter In the face, the noise of the helicopter rotor is deafening.

"We are over Aleppo, a shell landed near the Red Crescent makeshift hospital a few minutes ago, casualties are unknown, we have lost contact with the ground camera team. The Resistance is closing in on the city, and as far as we know— —” The reporter pressed the earphone hard, listened carefully for a while, and nodded to someone outside the camera, “In fact, we have reconnected with the ground reporter Holden Parkinson.”

The camera cuts, the picture shakes more violently, and rubble-strewn streets and burning buildings alternately appear on the TV screen. "The shell hit the hospital directly, we have to assume the worst-" Parkinson's voice said, and the camera panned