by David Meyer
She sank her palms into the mud until they struck a firm surface. Then she curled her outstretched legs beneath her. Pushing upward, she lifted her torso off the ground.
“Welcome back.” The hipster’s voice, soft and frazzled, rang softly in the damp, still air.
Her head rotated to the right. The hipster sat on his rear, knees propped up and arms circled loosely around them. “Where …?” She sputtered, choking out more mud. “Where …?”
“If you’re asking about the saber, I don’t have a clue. If you’re asking about the others, well, that’s easy enough.”
Following his waving hand, Mills twisted her neck to the left. Brian Toland lay on his back, staring sullenly at the sky. Mud coated his gray beard. More mud was smeared across the lenses of his thick glasses.
A few feet away, Tricia Elliott lay in a crumpled heap with knees close to her chest. Grass stains covered her loose-fitting jeans. Her green sweatshirt dripped with muck. Despite her yellow dye-job, all the mud in her hair made her look like a brunette.
“By the way, I’m Travis,” the hipster said. “Travis Renjel.”
“Bailey Mills.”
“I know.” He smiled. “I see your picture everyday.”
Great, she thought. A perv. Guys were sooo predictable. Most wanted to romance her, sweep her off her feet. As if she cared about some stupid flowers or fancy meals. But a decent-sized minority—the perverts—preferred to gross her out, to tell her they stared at her picture when they did … well, themselves. Men—boys, actually—who needed them?
“Wow, I’ve never heard that one before,” she retorted. “You must be a real hit with the ladies.”
His smile faded. “Wait—”
“No, you wait. People like you make me sick. I get it. I’m beautiful. Lots of guys want me. But that doesn’t give you the right to—”
“I’m a reporter.”
She blinked. “What?”
“I’m a journalist with the New Yorker Chronicles.” His smile came back at full wattage. “You know, the paper that practically stalks you.”
She blinked again. “But you said—”
“I said I see your picture everyday. And I do. You’re a fixture in our pages.”
Mills’ face heated up. She gave Renjel another look. Mud splatter covered his unadorned face. Same with his skinny jeans. His t-shirt, the one with the cartoon T-Rex, had been ripped and shredded, giving her a good look at his well-toned abs. “What happened to your glasses?” she asked.
“I ditched them,” he replied.
Her eyes widened.
“Don’t worry.” His smile transformed into a wry grin. “They weren’t exactly prescription.”
She nodded in understanding. “So, you’re a journalist, huh? Then you must know Brian.”
“Don’t insult me,” Toland said. “I’m a writer. Not a journalist.”
“What’s the difference?” Mills asked.
He sat up. Glared at her. “I’m an author, you dolt. I write books. You know. Those things with spines.”
Tricia Elliott stirred. Groggily, she sat up. “What … what happened?”
“We passed out,” Renjel said.
“At the same time?”
Uncomfortable silence greeted her. A few seconds later, Elliott clapped a hand over her mouth. “Randi!” She struggled to stand up. But her knees wobbled and she sank back into the mud.
“Don’t be stupid,” Toland said. “It’s not like you can help her.”
Tears eased out of Elliott’s eyelids as she assumed a sitting position. Carefully, she wiped them away with her palms. “Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod … this isn’t happening … it can’t be happening.”
Mills detected a distinct note in the woman’s tone. “You knew her?”
Elliott managed a nod.
“How?”
“We … we worked together.” Elliott’s shoulders quivered. Lowering her head, she began to sob softly.
A blurting noise, full of force and energy, trumpeted across the clearing. It sounded familiar to Mills, but she couldn’t quite place it.
Toland turned his head, locating the sound. “What the hell was that?”
“Don’t know, but it came from the northwest.” Renjel gained his footing. “I’ll check it out.”
“Wait for me.” Rising unsteadily to her feet, Mills followed Renjel into the ancient forest.
The trees were thick and packed closed together. Coupled with the darkness, her visibility was limited to a few feet at a time. But her sense of touch had no limitations. Each step was like a journey into hell. Her heels ached. The soles of her feet felt like someone had jabbed them full of needles. And her toes hurt so badly, she couldn’t put her full weight on them.
Renjel glided to a tree trunk. Then he worked his way forward. After a short walk, he stopped behind a tall, curving tree. Peeked out.
And froze in place.
Mills stayed back and waited for him to move, to say something. But he just stood there, still as a statue. Finally, she couldn’t take it any longer.
Her sore feet squelched across the muddy terrain as she half-limped, half-ran from tree to tree. Along the way, she glimpsed hints of a field. Tall grass. A gurgling stream. Plenty of flies.
She pulled to a stop behind Renjel. Listened to his rapid and shallow breaths. Then she leaned out.
And saw them.
Six four-legged creatures occupied the clearing. They averaged nine to ten feet in height. Broad tusks curved out from either side of their single-domed heads. Their long trunks, the likely source of the blurting noise, waved in the air. Thick fur covered almost every inch of their bodies.
Mills swallowed thickly as she watched the creatures. They looked a little like elephants. But unlike elephants, these giants didn’t project an aura of gentleness. Instead, they swarmed in a tight gathering, interlocking trunks and using their bodies, heads, and tusks to deliver ferocious strikes upon one another.
Mills winced as she turned her attention to their old scars, their fresh gashes, their bloodstained fur. All six creatures had suffered tremendous battle wounds. And yet, none of them showed even the slightest interest in backing down. Instead, they continued to fight with a frenzied bloodlust that frightened the hell out of her.
“Woolly mammoths,” Renjel said with awe in his voice. “Goddamned woolly mammoths.”
The name triggered a memory in Mills’ head. “They’re extinct, right?”
He nodded. “They vanished from the Americas some 11,000 years ago. Right at the end of the Pleistocene epoch.”
“Isn’t that when sabers supposedly went extinct?”
He exhaled, then nodded again.
She grabbed his arm and gently pulled him away from the field. “Why are they fighting like that?”
“Maybe that’s what they do. Maybe that’s why they died out in the first place. Maybe … I don’t know.” Pausing, he stared hard at the woolly mammoths. “I don’t even know where we are.”
Mills inhaled some damp forest air. It smelled of blood and sweat. But underneath that, she detected a certain freshness. Even fresher than her collection of Morning Forest scented products from Cander Luxuries.
Blocking out the sounds of animal warfare, she heard other noises. Running water, blowing leaves, chirping birds, warbling frogs. It was nature at its most pure, without the constant interference of man.
An idea popped into her brain. It was one she’d been playing with ever since she’d seen the saber. “Maybe we should forget about the where,” she replied tightly. “And start thinking about the when.”
Chapter 19
Date: June 19, 2016, 1:52 p.m.; Location: Hatcher Station, Vallerio Forest, NH
Bullets ripped through the open entranceway, chewing up tattered plastic sheets, metal desks, and computer monitors. Morgan pressed her back against the wall. Although the thick concrete protected her from harm, she couldn’t help but flinch each time the Lab’s guards opened fire.
Swea
t oozed past her eyelashes, turning her vision into a blur of dull, textured colors. Still clutching her rifle in both hands, she wiped her face with the crook of her left arm.
Five hours, she thought. Five hours since Codd and Issova had cracked open the hatch. Five hours since she’d led a small group of scientists into Hatcher’s basement. Five hours since she’d initiated an assault on the Lab’s guard contingent.
She had no desire to kill or be killed. Plus, her side controlled the Warehouse and its small supply of weapons and ammunition. So, she’d implemented a careful attrition strategy, hoping to drain the guards’ resources and force them to surrender. But after five hours and countless bullets, she was starting to rethink things.
What if she’d read the situation wrong? What if the guards were better supplied than her side? What if they were slowly draining her and her fellow scientists of their ammunition and resources?
As the sound of gunfire faded away, Morgan stared at the floor, at the shards of glass and bullet-ridden equipment. The air sizzled with heat and smelled strongly of electricity.
She stood inside the shattered remains of an air shower, which separated the security checkpoint from the Lab. The checkpoint consisted of four metal desks bolted to the floor. The bullet-riddled remains of monitors, iris recognition devices, and other high-tech equipment were strewn between the desks.
On a normal day, Morgan would slip through the hatch and descend the metal ladder to the checkpoint. After clearing security, she’d enter the brightly lit air shower via a heavy glass door. Stainless steel nozzles, lining both sides of the shower as well as the roof, would douse her with high-speed winds. Heavy particles, dust and dirt, would drift downward and be sucked out of the room via vents. Only then could she exit the shower, walk through the entranceway, and enter the much larger Lab.
She peered at her fellow scientists, all eight of them. Three scientists, like her, were situated inside the remains of the air shower. They were hunkered down behind the concrete walls lining either side of the entranceway. The others were farther back, in the checkpoint area, crouched behind pillars, desks, and anything else that could protect them from gunfire.
She waved at the scientists in the checkpoint area. One by one, they darted to the concrete walls, under the protection of cover fire. “We can’t wait any longer,” she whispered. “We have to end this.”
“Agreed.” Amy Carson, an evolutionary geneticist from Toronto, wiped her sweaty hands on her pants before regripping her pistol. “But how?”
“We need to go on the offensive.”
Nervous sighs rang out alongside disgruntled groans.
Morgan held up a hand for silence. “They’re better supplied than we expected,” she said. “For all we know, they’re the ones wearing us down, not the other way around. I say we get in there and force them to surrender. How does that sound?”
“Like a death sentence.” Alexander Gruzinov, a Russian expert in bioinformatics, glanced distastefully at his rifle. “I barely know how to use this thing.”
“Amy and I are experienced shooters. We’ll lay down cover fire while you get into position.”
“What if they don’t surrender?” Theodor Karlfeldt, a Swedish geneticist, arched an eyebrow. “You don’t want us to … you know …?”
“Yes,” Morgan replied. “I do.”
A dark mood spread across the air shower as the others realized what she was asking of them.
Morgan gave each of them a final look. Then she slid along the wall to the entranceway. Carson took up position on the other side.
Morgan snuck a glance at the state-of-the-art Lab. Dozens of stations, some of them occupied by giant silken pods, ringed the room. Large skeletons, arranged on pedestals in museum-like exhibits, were interspersed between the stations. A raised platform, roughly ten feet high, occupied the exact middle of the facility. It was built around a load-bearing pillar, one of many dotting the Lab. This was the command post, used to initiate and monitor experiments. It also served as Hatcher’s communications hub.
Steel filled Morgan’s backbone. Poking her rifle through the entranceway, she squeezed the trigger. The gun reverberated violently in her hands as it spat deadly projectiles into the lab. At the same time, Carson aimed her pistol into the void and squeezed off a couple of well-placed shots.
Crouching down, the other six scientists hustled into the Lab, spreading out and taking cover behind any solid object they could find.
Guards appeared, shifting behind generators, machinery, and the pillars. Despite repeated calls, they showed no interest in surrender.
Soon, guns blazed on both sides. Bodies fell. Gray smoke wafted to the ceiling. Gritting her teeth, Morgan kept up a steady stream of bullets, mowing down guard after guard.
Slowly, the opposing gunfire died out. And two minutes later, Morgan held up a hand. “Ceasefire.”
Carson and the other scientists complied. An eerie silence—punctuated only by shattering glass and crackling electricity, spread over the Lab.
Shifting her gaze, Morgan studied the carnage. It nearly took the air out of her lungs. Three scientists, people she’d worked with for years, lay in heaps upon the floor. Blood poured out of their bodies, mixing with that of the slain guards.
Guilt filled her gloomy soul as she stared at the lost lives, the lost potential. The dead scientists might’ve volunteered their efforts to the battle, but that fact didn’t ease her burden.
She and Carson hurried through the entranceway. Then they circled the room, checking the bodies and searching for holdouts. As she felt for pulses, Morgan’s heart grew heavier and heavier. There were so many faces. Faces of dead guards, faces of dead scientists.
Too many faces.
After circling the room, she returned to the dimly lit platform. Stairs creaked loudly as she mounted a metal staircase. At the top, she stared at familiar desks, covered with sophisticated computers and devices. Then she knelt next to a grizzled, bearded man. She recognized him as one of the Lab’s computer experts. He, along with a small subset of the guard contingent, had been responsible for the Lab’s many systems.
Tentatively, she reached out, checked his pulse. Her heart twitched. He was dead, like all the others.
“Amanda?”
Glancing toward the entranceway, Morgan saw Zlata Issova. “Up here.”
Issova took a few hesitant steps into the Lab with Codd on her heels. Then she halted. Color drained out of her cheeks as she looked at the corpses.
Keeping her eyes off the bodies, Codd walked past Issova, climbed the staircase, and began to check the platform’s equipment.
Morgan watched Issova for a minute. “Zlata?”
Issova shivered, looked up. “Yes?”
“Did you need something?”
She nodded. “About thirty minutes ago, our scanners picked up a bunch of faint activity. Noises, flashing lights, sudden temperature changes, that sort of thing.” She paused. “Here’s the kicker. I have reason to believe the activity originated in Sector 48A.”
Morgan bristled at the mention of 48A. Knowledge of its dark secret flowed through her mind like a raging river. “Are you sure?”
Issova nodded. “Obviously, we don’t have feeds of that area. But the activity showed up in all adjoining sectors, as if seeping out from 48A. Plus, I worked the cameras and spotted some gray smoke coming from that general direction. It could be a forest fire.”
“In this weather? Not a chance.” Morgan tapped a finger against her jaw. “It has to be the Foundation. Do me a favor. Get a team together.”
“To visit 48A? That’s insane.”
“Just do it.”
With an audible sigh, Issova spun around and exited the Lab, taking care to avoid the corpses along the way.
“Amanda?”
Stifling an urge to raise her voice, Morgan swung back to the platform. “What now?”
Codd looked up from a computer, pierced by numerous bullets. Little wisps of smoke curled out of it
s sides. An odd whining noise emanated from within it. “The communications equipment took damage.”
Morgan ground her teeth together. “How much?”
“It’s difficult to say.”
Can’t one stupid thing go right today? Morgan wondered. “What do you need?” she said aloud.
As Codd ticked through a list of necessary tools and materials, Morgan swept her gaze across the platform yet again. She saw the corpse of the grizzled, bearded computer expert. But she failed to take notice of the small computer positioned on the table next to him.
If she had seen it, she would’ve done a double take at its screen. She would’ve leaned in close and realized that the computer expert had triggered two programs and numerous sub-programs while in his death throes approximately thirty minutes earlier. The first program—Apex Predator: Stage I Master Controls—was unknown to her. But the second program—a full expulsion sequence of the 1-Gen and 2-Gen ectogenetic incubators—would’ve caused alarm bells to clang in her head.
She would’ve ordered an immediate evacuation of non-essential personnel from the Lab and security checkpoint. Then she would’ve raced after Issova, praying to every conceivable god that she arrived before the woman had a chance to deploy a team to Sector 48A.
But unfortunately, Morgan, distracted by death and destruction, didn’t see the computer. So, she didn’t know what was coming.
And therefore, she couldn’t stop it.
Chapter 20
Date: June 19, 2016, 1:52 p.m.; Location: Sector 48A, Vallerio Forest, NH
“Keep your eyes peeled.” Adopting a northern course, Caplan walked across the clearing. Despite the obvious danger posed by his surroundings, he felt strangely bold, almost brash. “This place isn’t safe.”
“Wait,” Pearson called out.
Caplan gritted his teeth. Kept his flashlight aimed to the north, but stopped a few inches short of the tree line. “What—?”
Rough hands grabbed him. Whirled him around in a circle. Then a fist slammed into his jaw, rattling his teeth and sending him veering toward the forest.
