Scorpion by Christian Cantrell (best english novels for beginners txt) 📗

It happened the first time she met Henrietta—the epiphany that Moretti’s secret project is related to the Epoch Index. They are either working on a quantum computer to try to decrypt it, or they’ve already cracked it, and now they are building something unprecedented as a reaction. Either way, Quinn knows that the CIA would not pass up the opportunity to turn the future into the ultimate asset.

15

  DHARMA

THE MERCEDES-BENZ H2-CLASS pulls noiselessly up in front of a two-story white stone structure, and just over seven minutes later, Ranveer is standing in an upstairs bedroom at the side of a naturally finished mahogany crib, having just bypassed the biometric bolt downstairs by cutting it right out of the steel door it was mounted in with a portable, high-precision waterjet and placing it gently in a nearby flowerpot.

He isn’t at all concerned about what he touches, because he is wearing polymer obfuscation gloves. Each glove you pull out of the box promises five forensically distinct, completely randomized fingerprints. Law enforcement hates these things because even when they know obfuscation gloves were used, they still have to run down every single print just to be sure. And they have to keep track of all the fake prints and compare them to all the other fake prints ever collected on the off chance that the same glove gets used for more than one crime, which is exceedingly unlikely since they come in packs of one hundred and only cost around twenty euros (and, as they are manufactured by one of the more modern and progressive crime syndicates currently in operation, they are even available in twelve different skin tones). If you really want to fuck with your pursuers, you can also get little baggies full of hair, skin flakes, saliva, sweat, blood, semen, urine, feces, and even ear wax that you can distribute around your work area in all kinds of creative configurations. They come in two varieties: synthetic (which means they contain randomized DNA) and organic (taken off cadavers or bought off people with either mouths or drug habits to feed). But Ranveer carries no such paraphernalia. While he appreciates the forensic static obfuscation gloves generate, there’s something about the use of biobags and clue-glue that he finds distasteful.

He reaches over to the diaper-changing table beside him and holds down the button on what his specs are telling him is the transmitting end of a one-hundred-channel, 2.4-gigahertz, water- and shock-resistant, fully shielded and redundant baby monitor designed to withstand any contingency this cruel and unpredictable world can possibly throw at it—except for someone intentionally switching it off.

The baby at the bottom of the crib is sleeping with his knees drawn in, his butt up in the air, and his head turned toward Ranveer. His flawless complexion is a radiant, golden-honey brown, and his perfect little black curls lick at his forehead and the tops of his ears. Ranveer can hear a tiny whistle coming from his plump, pursed lips as the infant takes quick, shallow breaths. He has never held a baby before, and he wonders what it would be like, seeing as how so many people seem to enjoy it so much. He even briefly considers lifting the baby out of the crib and rocking him, before dismissing the impulse as an unnecessary risk. Better to get the job done and get out before a paranoid mother subconsciously misses the ambient red rhythm of the LEDs and things really end up messy.

From a compartment in his pouch, Ranveer produces the dark glass vial of hebenon solution and gives it a few quick shakes. If there were a handbook for such things, it would advise that hebenon is best used in circumstances where the subject is in a very deep sleep or a coma. The name comes from the botanical substance Claudius used to murder his own brother in Hamlet, though the modern-day version is decidedly less organic than its Elizabethan predecessor. The three primary ingredients are oxybuprocaine, sulfuric acid, and hydrogen cyanide. A small drop is placed in the ear, where the oxybuprocaine immediately begins to numb any surface it comes into contact with. When the fluid’s passage is obstructed by the eardrum, the sulfuric acid rapidly dispatches with the thin membrane, allowing the solution to continue down into the middle ear via the eustachian tube and then eventually into the throat, where it triggers the reflex to swallow. Once ingested, the hydrogen cyanide halts cellular respiration, which typically kills the victim in approximately sixty seconds, give or take.

Honestly, not a bad way to go, all things considered.

During such moments it is not uncommon for religion to intrude upon Ranveer’s thoughts, and in particular, the four objectives known as purusarthas that just about all Hindus agree guide one toward a rewarding and respectable existence. They are dharma (righteousness and moral values), artha (economic prosperity and financial security), kama (indulgence of the senses, including love), and moksha (freedom and liberation). The purusarthas are not unlike algebra in that there is a specific order of operations, which, if not observed, will yield dramatically different results. The general consensus is that dharma should be prioritized above all others, since one’s moral code dictates how one approaches the other three objectives. But just as all religions that have graduated beyond the autocratic dogma of cult status invite impassioned debate, there are those who disagree. When Ranveer was a boy, he often snuck out of his room at night and sat on the stairs in the dark and listened to his father and his uncle drink Darjeeling tea and argue about the Arthashastra, an ancient Indian text that maintained that artha, not dharma, was to be prioritized above all other objectives. Without prosperity and financial security, the argument went, sensuality and indeed even morality were not possible.

Invariably, Ranveer’s father would react incredulously. “If one were truly to place one’s economic prosperity above one’s morality,” he argued, “just imagine the types