Mutation

by Michael McBride

  And where there was light, there was a way out.

  “G-get up,” she whispered, as much to herself as to the others.

  Jade’s hands were shaking so badly she could hardly push herself up from the cold limestone. Her frozen feet felt like they were made of lead, and her trembling legs barely seemed capable of supporting her weight, and yet somehow she managed to stagger away from the water and toward the cavern wall. It was covered with markings. No, carvings. She traced them with her fingertips while her eyes separated the details from the darkness.

  The style was the same as the petroglyphs on the walls of the Iraqi tomb she’d explored virtually back at the Hangar. Men with helmets and beards. Chimeric creatures with the heads of animals, the bodies of humans, and the wings of birds and butterflies. While ancient, they were considerably more modern than the images painted on the walls of the subterranean city they’d just escaped.

  “T-they’re Assyrian,” Evans whispered. “If t-they c-could find a way in h-here—”

  “Then we c-can find a way out,” Anya finished for him.

  Jade frantically smoothed her palms across the stone, praying for anything resembling a ladder or a toe trail, any mechanism by which they could reach the light. While she couldn’t see its source, she could positively feel it drawing her toward it with its promise of survival.

  She clipped her shin on an outcropping and went down hard. Her frozen bones felt like they shattered when she landed on another rocky protrusion. She palpated its contours and gasped in recognition.

  “S-stairs,” she whispered and crawled upward.

  The steps were rough-hewn and uneven, some natural, others chiseled by long-dead hands. They wound steeply upward until they passed through a narrow recess in the wall itself, where they became even steeper, forcing her to stand to ascend them. The passageway constricted to such an extent that she had to turn sideways and duck her head. There was a natural opening in the wall to her left, offering a glimpse of the cavern far below, but she didn’t even look. She was far more interested in the faint aura of light emanating from above her.

  She scrambled up the narrow staircase, stumbled through a short tunnel, and nearly ran headlong into a wall of rock. Cold air flowed through the crevice to her left. She scooted sideways through it and found herself on a ledge halfway up a stone escarpment, a deep valley sprawled below her in the darkness.

  The wind rose with a howl and threatened to pry her from the ledge.

  Jade knelt for balance and waited for the others to catch up with her. She leaned as far as she dared over the edge, but couldn’t see a way down. Their only option was to follow the two-foot-wide trail leading diagonally upward toward the edge of the rock formation, beyond which she could barely see the rounded wall of what appeared to be a man-made structure. Shadows scrabbled on its uppermost edge, flapping their massive wings for balance. She hadn’t even taken her first step toward it when she was accosted by a stench so awful she instinctively clapped her hand over her mouth and nose.

  She recognized it immediately. She’d smelled it twice in Nigeria: at the village where Boko Haram dumped its victims in a mass grave and, later, at the camp where the marauding Islamic army had slaughtered a missionary group. It was a scent she’d never forget as long as she lived, nor any of the memories associated with it.

  It was the smell of death.

  30

  TESS

  The Hangar

  Tess returned to her office with the biggest mug she could find and an entire pot of coffee. Programming the system to reconstruct the data from the ground-penetrating radar and magnetometer at more frequent intervals had taken longer than she’d anticipated, but things were actually progressing faster than expected. The combined data had already produced the first digital elevation model, which was little better than a photograph of television static, although it would gain more and more detail with each subsequent reconstruction. She only hoped Barnett’s team in the field had enough patience to wait it out. While she understood the need for speed, there was only so much she could personally do to expedite the process. That didn’t mean she was going to sit on her hands while the program ran, though.

  It would help if she knew what Evans’s team had found in Göbekli Tepe, assuming they’d found anything at all. If there was nothing there, then the whole theory about the map leading to something of great importance didn’t necessarily fall apart, but it meant they were going to have to check all of the other locations corresponding with the various planets, which would take time they simply didn’t have.

  She sat in the chair behind her desk, poured herself the first of what would likely be several dozen cups of coffee, and speed-dialed Evans. The call went straight to voicemail. She tried Anya and Jade, too, but achieved the exact same result. Considering they were thousands of miles away and in the middle of nowhere, she wasn’t overly surprised. She debated calling Maddox, but figured she’d be heading down to the command center with what she hoped would be useful information in a matter of minutes anyway. While she didn’t like the idea of plowing ahead without some form of confirmation, it was a million times better than doing nothing.

  The map of Giza was still on her primary computer screen. Because it was one of the most famous archeological sites in the world, she was certain the entire area had been studied with every scientific instrument known to man, and was rewarded when her search returned both GPR and magnetometric surveys. In combination, the two produced a grayscale map of the entire city, from the modern aboveground structures to the ancient ones buried underneath up to fifty feet of sand. The resulting three-dimensional digital elevation model always reminded her of scarring on human skin. Terrestrial buildings like the pyramids and contemporary houses appeared white and raised, while those buried beneath the gray earth were as dark as bruises. Where an aerial photograph showed only sand and the general shape of the structures that breached the surface, the digital elevation model revealed the entire buried city as it must have looked five thousand years ago.

  There were hundreds of square and rectangular dwellings surrounding the pyramids, packed tightly into grids separated by archaic roads that now registered as little more than ghostly lines, smudged away by the wind that had ultimately buried them beneath the desert. She recognized the Sphinx facing a pair of large square ruins and a slew of buildings reminiscent of apartment complexes. The contemporary neighborhoods encroached upon the site from all sides, forming a backward C-shape around the pyramids.

  She opened the file containing the scaled image of the constellation of Orion and laid it over the map. The majority of the stars aligned with houses that had been built upon ground containing history the world might now never know. The star corresponding to Rigel—Orion’s left foot—fell upon an area of open desert to the northwest. It almost looked like something was buried beneath the sand. A structure of some kind, roughly the same size as the largest of the pyramids. Its walls were defined by charcoal lines, barely discernible from the surrounding gray sand, easily missed by someone without her experience and highly trained eyes. Only two sides of the construct remained, forming a right angle. She recognized part of a third, which confirmed her assumption that it was built to form a square, but she could tell little beyond that. The sand covering it was a mere shade of white brighter than the surrounding desert, which meant it had some amount of height to it, like a low-lying plateau, possibly little more than a gentle rise.

  Whatever it was, that was where they needed to go.

  Tess saved the image, uploaded it to the working database, and sent it to the printer so she’d have a hard copy to show Maddox. She was just about to grab it when the digital elevation model of La Venta refreshed. Gone was the pixelated black-and-white chaos; in its place was the faint outline of what was once the seat of power for the oldest known civilization in the New World. The pyramid took the form of a gray square with a white peak. The neighboring structures were outlined by ghostly dots. She could easily pick out t
he walls of the acropolis, the basalt columns that defined the plazas, and the massive stone altars and monuments. And there, off to the side, nearly blending into the gray mass of trees, was the dotted outline of a black rectangle, a buried structure right where Zeta Reticuli should be in the constellation Reticulum.

  She sent the image to the printer with the other one, grabbed both, and ran out of her office. Down the hall and the stairs. Her adrenaline kicked in, and she practically flew down the corridor to the command center.

  After nearly getting herself shot bursting onto the bridge unannounced last time, she had the presence of mind to approach at a more measured pace. It also gave her a chance to fix her hair in the reflection from the window of the Arcade, through the tinted surface of which she could see the faint outlines of the drone stations and the operators manning the controls. There was no harm in making herself presentable, just in case they somehow prevented the end of the world.

  She strode confidently onto the bridge, the printouts clasped at her side. This was her moment of triumph. She and she alone had cracked the code. Assuming Evans’s team had solved whatever mystery awaited them at the end of the map, for this first time since this whole mess started, they held the advantage. Slim though it might be.

  Maddox stood with his back to her, his hands clasped behind his back, his deltoids testing the strength of the material of his uniform top. Below him and on the other side of the railing, the information specialists toiled at their stations, flipping through the aerial, satellite, and drone imagery faster than she could keep up with. She recognized the circular ruins of Göbekli Tepe, the modern and ancient buildings juxtaposed at the heart of Giza, and the dense jungle surrounding the buried pyramid at La Venta.

  Tess looked down at the printouts in her hand. While she’d told him about deciphering the second crop circle, she had yet to tell him that the third led to the primitive Olmec site. He obviously could have learned of her accomplishment from Barnett, but she’d only just talked to him and it hadn’t sounded like he was in a position to turn around and start making follow-up calls.

  She again glanced at the live footage from Turkey, where several figures picked their way through the stone temples. There were two cars in the lot and a third parked across the dirt road leading into it, blocking access to the ruins. Granted, it was dark and the resolution was somewhat pixelated, but they all appeared to be wearing black.

  It was already nearing dawn on the other side of the world, and they hadn’t heard from their team in the field. Or at least no one had told her if they had. And there’d certainly been no mention of a second team being dispatched to the site.

  Maddox must have sensed her presence. He stiffened and turned to face her.

  “Dr. Clarke,” he said. “Tell me you have some good news.”

  Tess smiled and prayed her expression looked more genuine than it felt.

  “I wanted to let you know that I cracked the code of the third crop circle. I have my program collating remote sensing data and generating a three-dimensional model as we speak. We ought to have a pretty good idea of what we’re looking for within a matter of hours.”

  “You’re referring to La Venta, correct?”

  “Director Barnett already told you?”

  “Of course,” he said. “We’ve piggybacked on your satellite feed and are in the process of dispatching drones to the site. Everything should be in place by the time his team arrives.” He nodded his head toward the papers in her hand.

  * * *

  “What do you have there?”

  “Oh,” she said. “This is a preliminary reconstruction of the subterranean structures at La Venta. You can’t see very much detail yet, though.”

  He walked toward her and extended his hand. She passed the printouts to him and discreetly watched the main screen over his shoulder while he perused them. None of the black-clad figures looked like Anya, Evans, or Jade, but if they weren’t her teammates, who were they?

  “What’s this other one?” Maddox asked.

  Something inside of her cried out for her to be careful how she answered. It was an irrational reaction, but one she knew better than to ignore.

  “Just an aerial view of Giza, but I can see you’ve already got a handle on that.”

  The image of the screen was centered over the pyramids. The swatch of open desert that corresponded to Rigel wasn’t even in the picture.

  “We have imagery of the site,” he said, “but we still don’t know which structure to target. I was hoping you were here because you’d figured it out.”

  Tess was a terrible liar. He’d be able to see right through her if she so much as tried, so she chose her words carefully.

  “It would help me if I knew what we were looking for,” she said. “What have we heard from the team at Göbekli Tepe?”

  She watched the dark forms swarm the stone ruins over his shoulder. There was an urgency to their movements, an order, almost as though they were searching for something.

  “They found an underground system of caves the size of a small city,” Maddox said. “They’re still in the process of exploring and outside cellular communications range. Updates are infrequent at best, but I anticipate hearing from them soon.”

  It was a reasonable explanation, but it didn’t sit right with her. They knew that satellite archeology was her specialty; even if the satellite over the ruins wasn’t equipped with remote sensing devices, she could have tasked one to their location and produced a detailed map of the hollow spaces within a matter of hours.

  There was no doubt in her mind that he was lying to her.

  She concentrated on controlling her facial expression and tone of voice and prayed that neither betrayed her.

  “Any idea when Kelly and Roche are getting back?”

  “They just boarded a chopper at Fort Detrick,” Maddox said. “They should be here within the hour.”

  “You can recycle those printouts.” She made eye contact and smiled, then turned and headed toward the hallway as nonchalantly as possible. “I’ll have a more detailed DEM by the time they arrive.”

  Tess maintained a steady pace all the way down the corridor and waited until she was inside the stairwell to remove her cell phone from her pocket. Opened her messenger. Selected Roche’s number. Started typing as fast as she could. She didn’t know exactly what to say, but she needed to warn him, and she needed to do so in a way that wouldn’t give her away if her communications were being monitored. Something was definitely wrong here. And if she was correct, it was only a matter of time before—

  The door to the stairwell burst open. Slammed her against the wall. She cried out. Dropped her phone, which clattered to the ground at her feet.

  “It was the live feed that gave it away, wasn’t it?” Maddox said. “No matter. We’ll just have to accelerate our timetable.”

  Tess lunged for her phone, but he caught her by the hair and jerked her backward. Her feet went out from underneath her. She hit the ground. Pulled free. Rolled over, tried to crawl. A blow came to the back of her head and her arms gave out. Her chin rebounded from concrete dotted with the same blood she could taste in her mouth.

  She saw her phone from the corner of her eye. Reached for it. Closed her hand around it and dragged it under her chest. Hoped to God she hit the SEND button in the process. “What do we have here?” he asked. He pulled her arm out from underneath her, pried the phone from her grasp, and read the outgoing message. “When Aldebaran sees red, two-twelfths minus two zeroes equals one. What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Tess smiled and felt the warmth of the blood dripping from the corner of her mouth, where it pooled against her cheek. If anyone could decipher the code, it was Roche.

  The pain in her head metamorphosed into numbness and spread throughout her body. She welcomed the release.

  Maddox dropped the phone in front of her face and crushed it beneath his heel. Grabbed a fistful of her hair and jerked her head backward.

  “Are
you talking about the star Aldebaran?” he shouted. “That name has never once appeared in our research. What does it mean?”

  Her eyes rolled up into her head.

  Maddox released her hair, but the darkness claimed her before her forehead hit the floor.

  31

  ROCHE

  10,000 feet above the

  Pamunkey River Basin, Virginia

  “Can’t this thing go any faster?” Roche shouted into the microphone.

  “Not in this wind.” The pilot’s voice sounded tinny through the headphones. “At least not without spreading flaming wreckage across the valley floor.”

  Everything was finally coming together, but it was happening too quickly. Roche needed to coordinate with his various units, but he couldn’t reach his team at Göbekli Tepe, and all of the incoming lines at the Hangar were being diverted to the message line.

  Something was definitely wrong.

  Whatever semblance of control he’d once maintained was lost; all he could do now was try to make sense of this new information before it was too late. If Kelly was right about the source of the virus, then Evans and his team were in serious danger. Assuming they hadn’t already released it under conditions they had no hope of controlling.

  “Try the Hangar again,” Roche said.

  “Yes, sir,” the copilot said.

  Roche glanced up from the lab results Friden had given to Kelly and caught his reflection in the window. He didn’t think it was possible to look worse than he felt, especially with how his head throbbed in time with the thumping of the rotors, and yet here was proof to the contrary. The world beyond passed in a blur of greens and browns, while the Pamunkey River snaked through golden reeds and flooded marshlands below.

  “I’m telling you,” Kelly said through the headset. “Whether literally or metaphorically, the virus is inside the container the god in the petroglyph is carrying. Between that image and the map tattooed on the dead man, it’s like the ancient Assyrians left a message saying ‘Here’s what you need, and here’s how to get it.’ ”