“If you don’t mind me asking,” Queen said, “what the hell took so long?”
“I was indisposed.”
The six people sitting around him, who had been dipped in shit and come out clean, looked at him with dubious eyes. He’d have to do better than that.
Deep Blue sat still for a moment, his thoughts impossible to perceive while his mystery face was hidden from them. He glanced into the cockpit, made sure the pilots weren’t looking, and turned back to the others. “I was infected . . . am infected with Brugada. And I am the reason you were sent on this mission.”
He reached back and pulled his mask up and over his head. A handsome face all of them recognized immediately smiled at them.
President Duncan.
“Holy—,” Rook said.
“I don’t believe it,” Knight whispered.
Sara was more stunned than the rest. “Mr. President,” she said, offering her hand. Out of the six, she was the only one to have met him before, virtually, as she briefed the quarantined White House via video conference.
He shook her hand. “Nice to finally meet you in person.” He turned to King. “I was going to tell you last week. At the barbeque.” He shrugged. “Something came up.”
“Can we get a rain check on that barbeque?” Queen asked.
Duncan smiled. “As far as I’m concerned, you all can have anything you want.”
King leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “A barbeque will do.”
Sara looked over at the Chess Team. She had started to feel like she might have the potential to be like them. And she’d fought her way through the jungle, been captured, beaten, and shot at. She’d bit a man to get the cure to Brugada. She’d fought with mankind’s ancient enemy gone feral, whether from genetic assimilation or hyper-evolution she’d never know. And had no desire to find out. She didn’t want a barbeque, she wanted a million dollars, a yacht, and full-time masseuse. But these five, all they wanted was a cold beer and some ribs. Their commitment to their country, to all of humanity, went beyond anything she could conceive. They’d saved the world and wanted nothing for it. Despite all the failings she saw in them when she first met them, she saw them for what they truly were: heroes.
Epilogue
Siletz Reservation—Oregon
KING SHOOK HIS head as he entered the small town of Siletz. After a six-hour flight to Portland and a two-and-a-half-hour drive in a cramped Chevy Aveo rental, he was really starting to look forward to the long-awaited barbeque at Camp David, scheduled for the following week. The team had been on leave since Vietnam, for six weeks, recovering from battle wounds and debriefing an ungodly number of military and government officials.
Sara and a team from the CDC quickly isolated the herpes virus that triggered the gene alteration responsible for shutting down Brugada. The resulting inoculation—BGS, referred to as the “Bugs” vaccine, which was truly gene therapy—was tested on ten White House staff volunteers whose hearts had already stopped and been kick-started by the implanted cardioverters. They were all eager for a potential cure. A quick echocardiogram showed success and the Bugs vaccine was administered to the rest of the quarantined White House—no blood swapping or rash scratching required. Inoculating the rest of the infected outside the White House had been a logistical nightmare. Many came forward, fueled by fear, and claimed to have the disease. Demanding immediate treatment. While some, never knowing they were infected, fell over dead. But in the end, BGS was mass produced and made a mandatory vaccine. It would take time to inoculate the entire country, but with the outbreak contained, there were no more reported cases. Furthermore, Duncan made sure samples of BGS were sent around the world to all governments and health organizations. Brugada, both new and old strains, would be made obsolete.
When Duncan finally addressed the press, all hell broke loose. Accusations flew. Pundits ranted. A minority of the population demanded his resignation, but with the details of the events surrounding the assassination attempt on his life, national pride and anger toward the offending nation quieted the dissenters.
An investigation by the Vietnamese government (who claimed ignorance) discovered Trung’s hand in the plot to weaponize the disease. His research, samples, and laboratory were incinerated under the watch of a team from the 20th Support Command out of Fort Meade that oversees and eliminates chemical, biological, radioactive, nuclear, and explosives (CBRNE) hazards. The scientists involved faced jail time. And Trung, well, he was buried beneath the ruins of Mount Meru, but only a handful of people knew about the circumstances of his death, or the involvement of Weston, the Nguoi Rung, and the last surviving Neanderthals. Their world would remain a secret, per Rook’s request to Duncan.
King would have been happy to spend the next week relaxing at Fort Bragg with the rest of the team. They were in high spirits and at nearly one hundred percent strength again. They had once again come up against the worst the world had to offer and come out scarred, but alive, and more bonded to each other than before. Except Bishop, of course; he had returned healthier than before—his body free to regenerate without fear of insanity so long as the crystal stayed around his neck. Once they had their long-awaited bar-beque, they would be ready for a mission.
What King regretted most about the past six weeks was not being able to see Sara nearly enough. They had ensconced themselves in hotels on a few occasions, when debriefs brought them together, but time had been short. With life returning to normal, King looked forward to seeing her on a more regular basis. In many ways she was his opposite, but she was smart and witty, and having survived the horrors of Mount Meru, understood him like no other woman could.
But fate, it seemed, would keep them apart for a little while longer. He had received a cryptic e-mail from George Pierce, his lifelong friend, former fiancé of his deceased sister, an archaeologist and a victim of Manifold Genetics, the company who turned Bishop into a self-healing regen. Like Bishop, Pierce had been experimented on, giving him regenerative abilities. The difference between them was that the formula used on Pierce was developed from the DNA of the mythological Hydra. Pierce’s transformation had been physically dramatic—green scales, yellow eyes, sharp claws. But it had also been reversible thanks to an ancient serum used by the historical Hercules to defeat Hydra twenty-five hundred years previous.
King had seen Pierce only once since the dramatic events of the previous year, but their bond was stronger than ever. So when Pierce’s short, but explicit, e-mail appeared in his box, and there was no reply on his home phone or cell, he did the only thing he could do—followed the instructions sent by Pierce:
Jack,
Find Fiona Lane and her grandmother Delores. They need your brand of help. Siletz, Oregon. Quickly. Please.
-George-
King had found their address easily enough, and had booked a flight for the next morning. That morning. It had only been fifteen hours since he’d received Pierce’s e-mail and he hoped he’d been fast enough to help them with whatever problem existed. He knew that Fiona and her grandmother were both members of the Siletz tribe, living on the reservation, but nothing else about them stood out as interesting. Nothing. They were regular Americans doing regular American things. PTA. Girl Scouts. Basketball. Fiona’s parents—Delores’s full-blooded tribal son and a white, cornbread-loving woman from Texas—had been killed in a boating accident when Fiona was two. She’d been raised on the reservation by her grandmother since, and was now ten. What these two needed his help for was anyone’s guess.
King passed a sign that read:
WELCOME TO SILETZ—POPULATION 3,000
King shook his head and thought, George, this better not be a wild-goose chase . . . and I better be home in time for my barbeque.
The road leading into town skirted pines on either side. King rolled down the window, letting the cool, late-September air fill the small car’s cabin. He breathed deep. Then paused.
Smoke.
Just a hint.
And it wasn’t a campfire.
A low cloud of soot billowed across the road and filtered up to the sky. After rolling up his window, King gunned the four-cylinder engine and cut through the smoke. He looked for a road that would lead to the source of the fire, but saw nothing. He didn’t remember any roads close behind him, so he continued on at a fast clip. He rounded a corner atop a hill and saw the small town spread out below.
It was in ruins.
Smoke poured from several buildings.
Downed electrical lines snaked and sparked.
Bodies, so many bodies, filled the streets.
Without hesitation, King tore down the street. He worked his way into town, looking for motion, for someone to talk to, to help. But no one moved. He stopped three times to check bodies, but no one was alive. And their injuries were extensive. He hadn’t seen anything like this since entering Anh Dung. But that was dozens of people.
This was thousands.
What was George involved in?
King jumped back in the car and followed the directions he’d printed out. After passing fifty more dead bodies and several strange piles of what looked like ash, King arrived at the house. It was a small white building with singed vinyl siding and a huge hole where the front door used to be. It looked like a wrecking ball had taken a swing at the residence. King drew his Sig Sauer and headed for the home.
He stood in the doorway, stunned. The hole in the front of the house ran straight through to the back. Something had pierced the building like a .50-caliber bullet through a skull and torn a larger hole right out the back. Debris from the impact had been scattered throughout the small backyard. A yellow, rusted swing set at the back of the yard was toppled and bent. All around it was another large pile of ash, as though whatever had struck the house had come to a stop and burned to dust.
King stepped into the living room and found what remained of Delores. The old woman’s body had been crushed. Given the number of wood and vinyl siding fragments protruding from her body, he guessed she’d been killed by the initial impact of whatever had torn through the house.
Damnit, King thought. If only Pierce had been more specific. Had said an entire town was threatened. He could have had hundreds of boots on the ground in two hours, not one Delta operator in fifteen! He had no idea what had happened to this town, but he believed it could have been stopped. If only he’d known. If only there had been time.
King left the home and headed back to the car. He removed his cell phone and dialed his direct line to Deep Blue, which was very different from his direct line to President Duncan. But he never hit Send. A body caught his eye. A body in the backseat of his car.
He raised his handgun and searched the area. He saw no one. Other than fire, smoke, and live wires, nothing moved.
He opened the door and aimed inside. The body remained motionless, but even if she had been awake, the ten-year-old girl inside the car with lightly tanned skin, dark black pony-tailed hair, and a Dexter’s Laboratory backpack would have posed no threat. A note had been pinned to her T-shirt, but King ignored it, checking for a pulse. It was strong and regular. He gave her a quick visual inspection and felt her limbs for breaks. She seemed unharmed.
King took the note and read it, knowing as he did that the barbeque with the president and a rendezvous with Sara would have to wait.
King—This one is for you. I’ve gone after the rest.
He’d seen the symbol a year previous, in a cave hidden beneath Gibraltar—a cave that had been the hiding place of a secretive and ancient order known as the Herculean Society—and the man they protected.
Alexander Diotrephes.
Hercules.
Table of Contents
COVER
TITLE
COPYRIGHT
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PROLOGUE
DEVOLUTION
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
EVOLUTION
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
REVOLUTION
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
CHAPTER SIXTY
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
EPILOGUE
Instinct Page 35
