David Dun - The Black Silent

The assailants died. That's why you can't tell anyone."

"The magazines said it happened at home," Haley said.

"It didn't. We were caught by some very bad people. They wanted revenge and information. They were torturing her while I was required to watch. In the process of torturing her they began on me. It was much worse than if they were just torturing me.

"They were cutting their way up my legs. It was a woman who did the cutting; the man with the grudge watched. I remember Anna being tortured, but I can't remember the end.

I do remember that when they were ready to castrate me, they made a mistake. They wanted me to participate in some manner that was… not important. They thought they had broken me and that I would do what they wanted. They said I could save my eyesight and they would let Anna live if she could, if I cooperated in their sick game. I didn't believe them. They were just crazy enough to take that chance with me.

"There were four of them, in all. Three men and a woman. Two of the men who were torturing Anna left the room. Anna was screaming, begging to die. The man and woman loosened one of my hands; they were going to make me participate. I know I surprised them, got my fingers into the woman's eyes. That's all I can remember. They found me wandering, semiconscious, I guess. Everyone was dead, with bullets in them, including Anna."

Sam sank a little deeper into the tub water.

"I must have gotten one of their guns and shot them. I tell myself now that I was saving us from the men, but I had to know it was a small, concrete room. Didn't I know Anna might get hit? Maybe I was willing to risk killing her to end her pain. She was pretty far gone already. Or maybe one of them shot her."

Haley had tears in her eyes, and so did Sam.

"Every night I tell myself that I wasn't trying to hit her," he said, "and every night I end the matter not knowing."

Haley put her hand on his.

"How did you escape?" she finally asked.

"We figured that it took me almost twenty-four hours to get my upper body free of the chains. Then I was able to reach one of the captors to find a key to the leg irons. I have a vivid memory re-created in my dreams of the bodies and the blood. I don't remember seeing Anna, although certainly I did see her body."

"Who were these people?"

"A man named Trotsky. He had been the right hand of a terrorist who killed people for money. I killed Trotsky. Gaudet, his boss the terrorist, is still in prison in France, where he can't be executed because they don't do the death penalty. He's really messed up physically after what some inmates did to him. There are some badass Muslim terrorists in that jail and he has a problem with them about some money he lost. Trotsky had a brother, who was a killer, and a crazy sister, who was even more vengeful than he was.

Together they worked on getting me. I suspect Trotsky's brother took money from some others to kill me as well. The torture was for free."

"I am so sorry," Haley said. "I never could have imagined. I didn't mean to…"

Sam managed a smile. "It's okay."

"It's such a horrible story. Especially for your wife."

"It was much worse living it."

Sam felt a little relief, maybe not as much as he'd hoped. He knew that things now made more sense for Haley. It still did not explain the summer of '94 and the following months. He wasn't sure there was an explanation. There was only an excuse.

"Now you've got to get to work on those papers," he said.

While she began carefully sorting through the soggy papers, Sam let the heat soak into him; other than the immense pain of thawing out all the damaged muscle tissue, it felt good to get warm at last.

It had even felt good to tell someone.

"I'm tired of waiting to hear what the fountain of youth will do for me. And how it will do it and what it will cost me," Sam said. "Imagine the lines."

She looked up for just a moment and smiled, obviously getting his dry humor. Then she went back to her reading. He saw the reflection of her in the water. She seemed completely engrossed, observing everything and saying nothing for fear that she might miss some subtlety in the sopping wet papers.

A moment before he had been sure that he was the object of her interest. Now it was the papers. It was tough losing out like that, he thought, laughing inwardly at his whimsy.

"I'm really interested in this mitochondria stuff."

"You really don't have time to figure it out."

"I'm a scientist. I read this stuff faster."

"Tell me what you see."

"You know the mitochondria are these tiny little things in your cell, like metabolic furnaces, that burn the oxygen you breathe. Each cell has about five hundred of them and it's how you get your energy. All this health-supplement pap that you read about- antioxidants in the pills, in the wine, in the dark chocolate, in the whatever-is supposed to counter what these little bad boys do when they get old. These furnaces get rusty, to borrow a not inappropriate metaphor, and then they produce the escaped oxygen molecules called free radicals that oxidize your body, in particular your DNA. As you age, your DNA doesn't copy itself quite right because of the oxidation. Hence, everybody wants an antioxidant to stop the deterioration of the DNA."

"I got that."

"Eons ago, mitochondria were actually symbiotic, separate organisms living inside the larger cell of the host. So they've got their own DNA, even though they are inside the cells of our body, and each of our cells has its own human genome."

"So we've really got two sets of DNA. One that is ours and one that belongs to our mitochondria," Sam said.

"Yeah. And get this, Ben tantalizingly suggests in a note that human DNA and mitochondria DNA might have something in common:

"We have all read that Arcs are closer to us genetically than are bacteria. What if the Arcs and the mitochondrial DNA and the human genome have something in common?

"You should know that human mitochondria use electrical transference and that they operate at about two hundred millivolts. We believe that mitochondria operating at one hundred fifty millivolts do not lose their oxygen-burning efficiency as rapidly.

Therefore, they age much more slowly. They also produce fewer free radicals when operating at lower voltage. Therefore, the human that has mitochondria operating at one hundred fifty millivolts may suffer less DNA deterioration and live longer.

"We believe that mice on low-calorie diets undergo a change in their mitochondria so that they run at lower voltage. We believe the same is true of mice that have their growth hormone genes suppressed at birth. We all know that these mice live longer than normal mice. Is this making sense? Think this through. I wish I were there to see the light go on behind your eyes.

Regrettably, if you're reading this, my presence is obviously impossible. There is so much more."

"That's pretty fascinating," Sam said.

"It is. The missing link for us now is the nature of the connection between human mitochondrial DNA and Arc DNA. Arcs don't use oxygen. It would be poison to them, in fact. So one wonders how they could have anything to do with us."

"But they don't suffer the DNA deterioration that we do if they can reproduce themselves after thousands of years. And remember what we found in the other note that they had discovered an Arc gene they called Arc Two."

"You are so right," she said.

"I thought I saw something where they are looking for a gene and he thought the answer might be in the Sargasso stew," Sam said.

"What?" She shuffled through the papers. "Yes. Here it is. Apparently they are looking for a gene or, more correctly, a particular Arc with a certain gene. That's strange. They found one gene Arc Two, but are they looking for its source. How could that be? I don't get the Sargasso stew. I'll have to think about that. Something rings a bell, but I can't remember."