by David Meyer
“We were flying here when the Blare—”
“Blare?”
“That weird phenomena three hours ago.” He searched her face, but saw no sign of recognition. “You didn’t experience it?”
She shook her head.
“Consider yourself lucky. It sounded like blaring horns. The air got hot and thick. I felt these sharp pinpricks of ice. This weird glow covered everything. And then I passed out. When I woke up, I was surrounded by wreckage and dead bodies.”
“Oh my God, the 1-Gens.” Her eyes widened. “The full expulsion sequence must’ve created some kind of, I don’t know, weird energy.”
“The 1-Gens?”
“Never mind.” She paused. “So, you came here after the crash?”
“Where else was I going to go?”
A long pause followed. Finally, Morgan sighed. “What did Corbotch tell you about us?”
“Can I just …?” Prepping for another blow, Caplan slowly swiveled his head. But this time, Morgan didn’t strike him. Emboldened, he twisted all the way around on his knees and gave her a good look.
A tattered lab coat, soaked with blood on one side, covered her gaunt, sweaty frame. Underneath it, he saw hints of a tight crimson shirt and black yoga pants. “You’re hurt,” he said.
She aimed her pistol between his eyes. “I can still shoot.”
“Let me help you.”
“Not a chance. Now, answer the question.”
Caplan sighed. “It’s like I told you. He said terrorists seized Hatcher and a bunch of dignitaries. You and the others were in danger.”
“So, he lied.” She exhaled. “Typical James.”
Thoughts of Tony swirled inside Caplan’s head. He still didn’t know what was going on. Nor did he understand her motives. But one thing was certain.
It was time to start making things right.
“It’s no lie,” he replied. “Tell me something. Did you have to hack your way through that hatch to enter the Lab?”
Her eyes glittered with suspicion. “What’s your point?”
“And when you entered the shaft, did you feel a rush of air?”
“Of course. It happens every time the hatch is opened. That’s part of how we keep the Lab free of contaminants.” Her gaze narrowed. “What’s this got to do with anything?”
“Everything. The hack triggered a gas switch. So, that wasn’t air you released into the shaft.” He paused. “It was HA-78.”
“HA-78?”
“James told me all about it. But don’t worry. He gave me enough antibiotics for everyone. They’re in my backpack along with a whole mess of syringes.”
She stared at him.
“Once his people took out the terrorists, he wanted me to distribute the treatments to all of you. Of course, he never realized you were the terrorists. You’ll have to explain that one to me.” Caplan paused. “But not now. We only have until five o’clock. After that, people start dying.”
“Let me get this straight. You came here to stop us. But now, you want to help us?”
“Just distribute the antibiotics. Then we’ll sit down and figure this out.”
Morgan paced to the door. Cracked it open and leaned her head out. Occasionally glancing at Caplan, she chatted quietly with someone in the Heptagon. Then she took hold of a small cooler and turned back to the Galley. “Is this it?” she asked.
His eyes brightened at the sight of the familiar container. “The syringes are inside. You just have to—”
She opened the cooler and turned it upside down. Syringes and vials plunged to the ground. The syringes bounced harmlessly against the beige vinyl flooring. But the vials shattered upon impact, spilling liquid everywhere.
Caplan gaped at the vials, then at her. “Are you crazy?” he said. “Do you know what you just did?”
“Yes.” Her eyes were dark, unreadable. “I spilled water.”
“No.” A cloud of confusion passed over his brain. “Those vials held antibiotics.”
“Not according to the people who just analyzed them.” She sighed. “This isn’t a BSL-4 lab, Zach. Not even close. There are no deadly biological agents on the premises.”
“But James said—”
“James lied to you. He must’ve told you that story so you’d agree to lead his people here. But don’t feel bad about it. He lied to all of us too. That’s why we took over Hatcher. We’re going to stop him, expose him.” She extended a hand to Caplan. He took it and she helped him to his feet. “Or die trying.”
Chapter 38
Date: June 19, 2016, 4:37 p.m.; Location: Hatcher Station, Vallerio Forest, NH
There’s your life lesson for the day, Caplan thought. Never trust a guy who fakes his own kidnapping.
Pain exploded inside Caplan as he dragged his exhausted body across the room. Aches ripped through his back and shoulders, his calves and thighs. It felt like he’d played a few games of pinball … from inside the machine.
Amanda Morgan made her way to the nearest table. Her eyes glassed over as she eased her body into a metal chair and began to pull off her lab coat.
Caplan frowned. “Hey, are you alright?”
The tattered and bloodied lab coat fell to the floor. She lifted her crimson t-shirt a few inches, exposing some blood-soaked bandages. “I’ll live,” she replied in a faint voice.
“That doesn’t look so good.” Shifting course, he doubled back to the door. “I’ll get the doc.”
“No, no.” She nodded to her right. “Check the cabinets. There should be first-aid kits in one of them.”
Caplan grabbed one of the battery-powered lamps and hurried to a stretch of countertop. It held drink-serving machines—coffee, espresso, soda—along with several large sinks, interspersed by paper cups, lids, sugar packets, straws, and other items. Underneath, he saw a series of unmarked cabinets.
Quickly, he filtered through the cabinets, taking a few first-aid kits along with some spare linens. Then he filled a paper cup with water from the sink, helped himself to a straw, and returned to the table.
Morgan held out her hand, fingers relaxed but wrist cocked. “I’ll take it from here.”
Caplan placed the lamp and items on the table. Then he opened the first-aid kits and pulled out some large bandages. “Yeah, because you’ve done such a good job of taking care of yourself.”
“I’ll have you know—”
“Just shut up and sit still.”
Morgan moaned as Caplan peeled off the bandages. Underneath, he saw a deep wound zigzagging across her smooth skin. He poured a bit of water on her waist, clearing away the blood. Then he watched as more blood slowly oozed out of the gash.
He grabbed a saltshaker from the table and twisted off the top. Then he dumped the contents into the cup.
Morgan cast him a wide-eyed look. “Uh, on second thought, maybe you should get Dr. Adnan.”
“What’s wrong?” Using the straw, Caplan stirred the salt into the water. Then he poured the mixture onto a fresh linen, completely saturating the cloth. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Do you really want me to—?”
Caplan pressed the saturated cloth against her wound.
Her teeth ground together. “Ahh!”
“Does that hurt?”
“What do you think?”
“I think it’s better than bleeding to death.” For the next three minutes, Caplan held the cloth against her waist, occasionally lifting it to take a look at the gash. Then he repeated the process with a separate linen, also soaked in salt water. Afterward, he studied her skin. “You could probably use a few stitches. But at least it’s stopped bleeding. Plus, the salt should act as a disinfectant.”
Eyes still glassy, she gazed at her waist. “Where …?”
“It’s just an old home remedy.” He grinned wistfully. “Courtesy of Grandma Caplan.”
Morgan saw the look in his face. “When she’d die?”
“Almost ten years ago.” He got some fresh water and poured it over
the wound. Then he patted it dry and rebandaged it.
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
“About what?”
Tony Morgan’s face flashed before his eyes. “More like who.”
Her warm gaze chilled over. She pulled her tee back over the wound and started to stand up. But Caplan grabbed her shoulders and pushed her firmly back into the seat.
“I need to get out there,” she protested.
“Do you want to start bleeding all over again?” He cocked an eyebrow. “I didn’t think so.”
She crossed her arms. Looked away.
Caplan wanted to tell her about Tony, about how the man had really died. And he needed to apologize for freezing up, for not helping Tony escape those vicious creatures. But he knew it wasn’t the right place or the right time. So, he switched gears. “What happened here?” he asked. “Why are you doing all this?”
She snorted like he was some comedian. Not a great comedian. But still, a comedian. “I don’t know where to begin.”
“At the beginning?
“Always the wise ass.” She exhaled. “The Vallerio Forest, as you probably remember, is a rewilding sanctuary. Over the years, James Corbotch and his minions at the Vallerio Foundation have gathered an array of megafauna—elephants, lions, and others—within its boundaries. Those megafauna roam millions of acres as they please, held back only by the exterior fences.”
Caplan recalled his conversation with Corbotch aboard the helicopter. “Go on.”
“Obviously, rewilding isn’t just some lark. It has a purpose. The last 60,000 years saw thirty-three genera of North American megafauna, keystone species, and apex predators go extinct. At least fifteen of those genera—and possibly more—died out some 11,000 years ago. They left behind a severely damaged food chain. To this day, that food chain continues to unravel, driving countless plant and animal species to extinction.”
“You’re talking about the … the …” He snapped his fingers. “… the Holocene extinction.”
“That’s right. Or the sixth extinction, if you prefer. Theoretically, rewilding will put an end to all the deaths. Patch up the top of the food chain and everything else will fall into line. There’s just one problem.” She took a deep breath. “It doesn’t work.”
Caplan arched an eyebrow.
“Thousands of years ago, American mastodons, Columbian mammoths, woolly mammoths, and imperial mammoths roamed North America. Since those species no longer exist, James tried to fill their place with proxies. For example, he used Asian elephants in place of mammoths. He placed the elephants into open grassland, reminiscent of the landscape occupied by mammoths during the Pleistocene epoch. Then he sat back, and waited for the Vallerio to respond. But the soil didn’t regenerate as expected. The forest continued to spread into non-forest areas. The elephants started to die. And so on. So, he went back to the drawing board.”
“And?”
“And he came to a realization. The elephants were the problem. Simply put, they couldn’t fully fill the gap left behind by mammoths. So, that left him with two options.” Gingerly, she touched her waist and winced. “First, he could wait for the situation to reach a new equilibrium. But his inner circle calculated that could take years. And besides, the elephants were dying too quickly to get a foothold. So, he chose the second option.”
“Which was?”
“He’d forget the proxies and instead, use the real deal.”
“I can see one major flaw in that idea.” Caplan grinned. “In case you forgot, mammoths are dead.”
“That’s why he hired me.” She inhaled a mouthful of air. “To bring them back to life.”
Chapter 39
Date: June 19, 2016, 4:49 p.m.; Location: Hatcher Station, Vallerio Forest, NH
“Come again?” Caplan held a hand to his ear. “Because it sounded like you said you’d brought dead creatures back to life.”
If she heard the incredulity in his voice, she didn’t let on. “It took years of painstaking work to revive saber-toothed cats and woolly mammoths. Since then, things have moved very fast.”
Zombie mammoths was Caplan’s first thought followed by: Someone should really make that into a movie. But he knew that wasn’t what she meant. Morgan and her fellow brainiacs hadn’t raised the dead. Instead, they’d breathed new life into long-extinct species.
“Speechless, huh?” Morgan arched an eyebrow. “That’s a first.”
“I just, well … how come you never told me about this?”
“All Research employees are required to sign strict non-disclosures with stiff penalties for non-compliance.” A hint of a smile crossed her lips. “We always wondered how much the rest of you knew about our work. Didn’t you ever wonder why Hatcher employed so many geneticists and biologists?”
“Not really,” he admitted. “So, that creature in the Lab … that was one of yours?”
She nodded. “It’s an Arctodus simus, or short-faced bear. It’s one of the largest mammalian carnivores to ever walk on land and one of our 2-Gen prototypes. The fossil record is a bit sketchy, but we think the species died out about 11,000 years ago.”
“How’d you do it? How’d you bring the dead back to life?”
“It would take hours to explain the entire process for each animal. But here’s the basic gist for how we created our first woolly mammoth. James, acting through the Foundation, sent teams across the globe in search of frozen soft tissue samples. We used those tissues for a massively parallel genomic study to fully sequence the woolly mammoth’s DNA. Afterward, we extracted the egg cell from a female Asian elephant and replaced its nucleus with one we'd created using our sequence.”
“I see,” Caplan replied thoughtfully. “You induced the cell into dividing and then inserted it back into the elephant. That elephant carried the cell to term and—presto chango—you had yourself a baby woolly mammoth.”
“I wish it were that easy. We tried that method on seven separate eggs, but none of the calves survived birth. Someone—I forget who—finally figured out the problem. We were trying to grow a woolly mammoth inside the fetal environment of an Asian elephant. That’s like trying to grow a Neanderthal baby inside a person.”
“Thanks.” Caplan made a face. “That thought should feed my nightmares for at least a month.”
Her eyes flashed.
“Wait a second,” he said slowly. “Did you actually do that? Did you grow little bundles of Neanderthal joy?”
“Not us, no.” She brushed her hair back. “Anyway we needed a womb that could accommodate the needs of a woolly mammoth. And since nature couldn’t provide one for us, we turned to science.”
“You made your own wombs.” A thought occurred to him. “Those silk pod things?”
“We call them ectogenetic incubators. But yes, those are artificial wombs. Each one is specifically designed to meet the needs of a particular species. It took months of extensive research and planning to build them.” She exhaled. “The one you cut open held a Megalonyx jeffersonii, also known as a giant ground sloth. They once ranged over much of North and Central America. They were largely forgotten until Thomas Jefferson used their fossils to support his completeness of nature theory.”
“His what?”
“Jefferson didn’t believe in evolution. As part of that, he didn’t believe species could go extinct via natural means. When bones of a Megalonyx jeffersonii came to his attention, he argued they belonged to an unknown species of lion. If that lion could be found, he thought it would help support his theory.”
“Let me guess. Old T.J. wound up with egg on his face.”
“Smart ass.” Despite her words, Morgan smiled a bit. “T.J. might’ve been wrong, but his work helped to kickstart the study of vertebrate paleontology in this country.”
Caplan rubbed his jaw. “How large do giant ground sloths get?”
“They max out at about ten feet from end-to-end. At that size, they tip the scales at roughly a ton.”
�
��But that one we saw—”
“—had already reached full-size. Yes, I know.” She shrugged. “Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to grow baby woolly mammoths, baby ground sloths, and the like. We needed full-size ones. Ones we could insert into the wild as soon as possible.”
Caplan’s gaze narrowed. “What’s the rush?”
“It took thousands of years, but the loss of megafauna during the Pleistocene epoch has finally caught up to us. Ecosystems across the globe are in a state of near-collapse. According to studies conducted by the Vallerio Foundation, we’ve got twenty to thirty years to turn things around. Otherwise, the Sixth extinction will go full tilt. And if it’s anything like the previous five, at least seventy percent of all species—and that includes humans, by the way—will die out.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“Believe me, I wish it weren’t. But the research says otherwise.”
“This doesn’t make sense,” Caplan said. “If we need those extinct mammals so badly, then why are you trying to shut this place down?”
“We’re not trying to shut it down. We’re trying to shut the Foundation—specifically, James Corbotch—down.”
“But why? He built this place. Without him, your little de-extinction program wouldn’t even exist.”
“That might be true. But it doesn’t excuse his crimes.”
“What crimes?”
“Those incubators you saw in the Lab are classified 2-Gen, or second generation. The preceding generation of animals, 1-Gen, was born into this world with unexpected genetic mutations. Mutations that left them ultra-violent and, well, bloodthirsty. All they did was kill each other, making them completely useless for our purposes. We decided to destroy the surviving animals, along with the unopened incubators. James agreed with our decision. But secretly, he took them to an uncharted area of the Vallerio.”
Caplan recalled the clandestine fence. He recalled Tony Morgan slipping beneath it and dying at the hands of vicious animals. He remembered the strange wolf, the other silk pods, and how unknown animals had killed the survivors from the Blaze. At long last, everything made sense. “Sector 48A?” he asked.
