They spent the rest of the afternoon in the bed, licking the ice cream, which Delphine confirmed really was another unforgettable experience, and later they ordered pizza and fed each other, laughing, kissing, caressing and giving each other summaries of their lives.

Later the topic changed to the murder and the thread of somebody chasing after Delphine too and they discussed the options they had to find out what really happened in that fateful night.

Cosima retrieved her laptop from her bag and they checked their mails.

"Let me try to login to the company system," Delphine proposed. "Maybe we could find a hint on the 'poison' that killed Aldous. I am sure it wasn't just some toxic substance but a custom genetic modification applied with a special virus as carrier, like we use it for the body modifications or treatments DYAD prepares."

"I agree," Cosima said. "The culprit could probably have to do with these DYAD plans. What if Proletheans found out what Aldous was working on..."

"Oui. Or somebody who hated him."

"Like me?"

"Yes. You killed him to get his wife into your bed," Delphine grinned.

"Or like you. When we met that night you were fuming mad with Leekie."

Meanwhile Delphine had logged into the DYAD company portal and tried to access the project repository. "Merde!," she grumbled. "I am locked out. Without the security certificate I haven't access to the directories from your laptop. And I left mine in the hotel."

"Not good," Cosima thought. "Any other machine we could borrow? What about your cousin? You mentioned she was working for DYAD too?"

"But not in one of the operational department. She is working in the marketing team."

"Does she know somebody from the IT department who can send us the certificate?"

"You don't know our security policy," Delphine sighed.

"Any other idea?"

"Non. Except one. But it might be a risk."

"What is it?"

"If we had access to Aldous' laptop," Delphine explained. "He didn't take it with him for the weekend. So it is in his office at home."

"And we know of his weakness for weak passwords," Cosima grinned.

"Then let's go."

"Yeah. Let's visit the Leekies!"

They finally left the bedroom. Delphine searched through Danielle's wardrobe, choosing a pretty set of lace lingerie and a cute summer dress with floral print. "You're beautiful," Cosima complimented her. She had chosen one of her favorite black leggings with a dark red top and her ankle boots.

It already started to get dark when they headed to the car. Cosima was driving again and Delphine gave her directions.

"Next street right and we're almost there," she said.

When they turned into the street they quickly scanned the cars in the parking lot.

"Shit," Cosima saw the suspicious car parking in the drive first. "Cops are still waiting for us."

"Oui. Not sure if these are cops though. Don't stop here. Turn to the left over there. We'll take the backdoor then."

Cosima followed her directions and the left the car in a back road. Delphine led them through a walkway all around the block until they entered a large garden through a wooden gate.

"Wow," Cosima commented. "The Leekies seem to have a nice gardening style."

"I will tell Paul, our gardener," Delphine smiled.

They sneaked through the garden and stepped down the stairs to the basement entrance without a sound. The metal door was locked, but Delphine retrieved a key from beneath a stone in one of the flower beds.

"Take my hand," she whispered. "We can't risk to making a noise or switch on the light."

It took them several minutes to creep through the darkness, up a steep staircase until they finally entered a room, that seemed to be Leekie's office.

Delphine fumbled in the darkness and after a silent click the low light of a laptop screen filled the room with a little light.

"Please enter your user ID and password," the system prompted.

aleekie

"And the password?"

delphine

Access Denied.

"Merde. Looks like he changed his pattern."

"Next attempt." Cosima lifted the laptop to retrieve a little yellow post-it attached to the bottom of the computer.

324b21

"Wow I never would have guessed that..." But they were finally logged in.

"Maybe we shouldn't login to the wireless LAN," Cosima hesitated. "Let's take the machine and get out of here." They closed the cover and took out the cables, packing everything together in the laptop bag.

"Give me a minute," Delphine whispered. "Let me grab a few things."

Two minutes later she was back with a backpack and they slipped out through the darkness of the stairs and out of the house.


When they came back to the apartment there was no discussion how to proceed. The sat down on the couch in the living room, closely cuddled together, Leekie's laptop on their knees.

"Ok let us set up a proxy to access using the web the Tor network," Cosima proposed and opened the settings dialog. "We don't want to be found, right?"

"Oui, ma chérie," Delphine grinned. "I don't want to share you with these killers."

"Okies. We can now switch on the network."

Delphine took the mouse cursor with the track pad, opened the browser and opened the entry page of the DYAD company network.

Moments later they were connected to the internal project repository.

"Much better," Delphine smiled and pulled Cosima closer.

"Great," Cosima answered. "And now? I mean, what exactly are we searching for?"

"Let's start with the projects Aldous was working on. Something that was worth to kill for."

"Like your body hair modification?"

Delphine blushed and pushed Cosima. "You're cheeky."

"You mentioned a research project about aging. Where would you search for the info about it?"

"There is a project directory," Delphine explained and opened an input form with a few clicks through the big menu. "Now let's enter a few words to search for and restrict the query on proposals, pre-project researches and internal memos. Voila."

A list of matching entries appeared after a few seconds. They quickly scrolled through them until a highlighted entry was visible. 'Project HGPS' it read.

"I remember the project," Delphine explained. "A seven year old girl with Hutchinson–Gilford progeria syndrome. She aged about approximately thirty years in something like three months. When we had the cure ready she looked like forty, but we could stop the progeria and saved her life."

"Hmmm. That has a lot of potential," Cosima answered. "If you would analyze the single genetic commands we would understand how aging works."

"And mess around with it. Just like Aldous proposed." Delphine summarized what both women were thinking. She opened a folder with several files to show Cosima. "Look inside that folder. We always have four of these sequences. These are binary files which are encoded with 2 bit words to define the nucleotides C, G, A and T."

"Yes, that's similar to what we do," Cosima confirmed. "How do these four sequences relate to each other?"

"The first one is the ID sequence," Delphine explained. "It is used by the carrier virus to select the chromosomes and location to be altered. To avoid the risk of random infection it usually contains a sequence which is unique to the subject to be cured."

"The second one is the BAD sequence. It contains the genetic sequence we identified as source of the health problems and is to be replaced by the GOOD sequence to cure it. The carrier virus is spreading all over the subject's organism searching for ID sequences and replacing the BAD ones with the GOOD sequences. Both sequences must have the same length in order to avoid damage."

"Obvs."

"And finally we have the DYAD sequence which simply is a marker indicating that the chromosome set has been changed. The carrier virus never touches these and as soon as no more unchanged chromosomes can be found, the virus no longer propagates and the cure is complete."

"How long does it usually take?"

"Not longer than 2 hours usually," Delphine answered. "But most of the changes are achieved within the first 20 minutes. We tried different versions of the carrier virus. One of the first versions was spreading a lot faster, but if could lead to a shock. Believe me, the carrier virus is a really powerful machine and we have a lot of possibilities to program its behavior."

"Wow that is really impressing."

"It is."

"But one thing I don't understand," Cosima thoughtfully added. "If that marker sequence is already there, there wouldn't be a way to apply a second cure to the same subject. Like you cured a small defect of protruding ears, and later you find the subject is ill with cancer and needs another cure."

"Hmmm oui," Delphine nodded. "We are aware of the problem. Any idea how to solve it?"

"Why not organize the marker sequence like a directory," Cosima proposed. "Like a table of contents. Or the release notes of a software program."

"That's it," Delphine responded enthusiastically. "We should work on that concept very soon."

She yawned.

"But not tonight," Cosima grinned. "Let's call it a night and tomorrow is another day. I think we are a good deal closer to solve our riddle."