Kit heard a noise behind him and turned. It was only Frannie. He wanted to tell her everything, all at once.
"Come look at this amazing stuff. Tell me what you think."
Chapter 82
"THEIR ARROGANCE is absolutely astonishing. Like nothing I could begin to imagine," I said angrily. My eyes were greedily taking in the elaborate line drawings on the walls.
Kit was emptying out a carton of documents onto the floor. He lifted up sheaves of paper to show me what he'd found.
"This box is filled with pictures and diagrams of wings. All kinds of wings. They were designing in here. Do you believe this?"
"More like redesigning," I said, as I leafed through a fistful of the well-wrought line drawings. "Whoever made these drawings is definitely playing God, Kit."
"It's the group from Boston and Cambridge, the outlaws from MIT.
They make their own rules. They always have. Anthony Peyser believes he's above the rest of us and above the law as well. Look at these."
He showed Frannie a half dozen memos to staff. At the bottom of each page was a handwritten A.P... Anthony Peyser.
I had been racking my brain trying to think if anyone I knew in the area might be Dr. Peyser. No one came to mind, and I had met most of the medical doctors and scientists in the area. David knew them all. Where could Peyser be hiding himself? Could this have been his office? Was he the mystery designer?
Kit sat in a desk chair in front of a computer. He was punching letters on the keyboard and a directory of contents had scrolled up.
"I've been calling up a few files at random. I haven't been asked for a password once. The front door is wide open. Why? The keys to the files are hanging on the bulletin board and... Why?"
"Don't ask me. I don't get it either. Not yet."
My eyes fell on a pile of the notebooks he'd spilled onto the floor.
Whoever had made the notes had a brilliant way with a fine-line pen. The drawings were made with a high degree of medical accuracy, but there was art to them as well. Had Dr. Anthony Peyser actually worked in this room? I suspected that he had. A.P. had been here.
I picked up a drawing from the pile before me. It showed a little boy, an infant, with a heart growing outside its chest cavity, a huge heart, I studied it carefully. It illustrated why tissue engineering was so problematic. No one knew how to reliably stop the cellular growth once the process had begun.
But even if that major problem had been solved, it was a hell of a leap from growing organs on lab animals to growing wings on a human child.
And with Max it wasn't just that she had wings. Her entire cardiopulmonary system was avian, and that led me to conclude that she'd been created out of whole cloth.
My mind was churning at about a million miles an hour. I felt I could go stark raving mad at the blink of an eye. The whole world was being turned upside down. Someone had challenged everything we had learned to believe in and accept.
Assume nothing. Question everything. That's what this was about, wasn't it? To evolve life, as man chose to evolve it.
I was considering outrageous possibilities I hadn't dared to imagine before. One winged child could have been a biological accident, but now that I'd seen the other four, I had to accept that there had been a definite intent to create a new kind of being. And, by God or despite Him, someone had actually done it. Someone had succeeded at playing God here.
What had they created?
Chapter 83
KIT CONTINUED TO WORK FURIOUSLY at the desktop. Like many of the younger agents in the Bureau, he was good at it. He liked computers most of the time, and was comfortable around them. He brought up Netscape, then opened it. In the location field, he typed about:global.
Up came all the sites the previous user of the desktop had visited in the past few months. Kit quickly scanned the list. He'd been doing similar detective work on the case before he left Boston.
He honed in on www.nchi.nbm.n.h.goy. It was Genebank, the government-run repository for all known genetic sequences.
He looked for key words in red, indicating a previous user had clicked on them. There were several. He went to " taxonomy." Under " Taxonomy browser, " he clicked " tree." Then he typed in "ayes " in the search field.
Apodidae (swifts), Laridae (gulls), Columbidae (doves), and Hirundinidae (swallows) had all been searched.
The plot thickened.
Kit closed the site and returned to the list about:global. Next, he went into the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory site. He futzed around with a few entries, then tried DSHL publications - Genome Research.
He went into the September 1997 issue, where he became puzzled again. The previous user had called up a paper on Double-Muscle Belgian Blue and Piedmontese Cattle.
Cattle? He stopped typing and thought about the curious entry.
"Frannie. Come here for a second," Kit said without looking away from the screen.
He showed her what he'd been doing, then the last article he found.
"What's all this stuff about cattle somebody from here was checking out?
You understand it?"
"Some," Frannie said. She read the rest of the article, then reread key parts of it. She thought about what she had just absorbed. "Son of a ___"- she finally said. "I think I understand. I'll give you a wild theory, anyway."
Kit nodded and listened.
"The article is about a mutated cow gene. The study actually began twelve years ago. Somebody produced double muscling in the chest of these cows. So here's a theory. Kit, I think this is how they could have made Max's chest muscles large enough to support wings and also carry her weight. This is part of how they made her."
Chapter 84
WE SEARCHED THE COMPUTER FILES for a few more minutes, but found nothing else of interest. So Kit and I continued our tour of the School. The arrogance and amorality of the scientists working here affronted everything I believed in. I wanted to find one of "them" and strangle the person with my bare hands.
I looked at the foreboding metal sign on the locked door before US: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. So of course, Kit kicked it off its hinges.
"Authorization accepted," he said.
We were instantly bombarded with alarms blaring in the room and out in the halls. We walked inside. The rank smell of human waste washed over us like a fetid cloud. The dark of the room was broken by neon-colored tracers flat-lining across unseen video monitors.
I found the light switch and flicked on the overhead lights.
I have been exposed to some really bad things in my years of working with animals: abuse, neglect, occasional cruelty. But I'd never been confronted with anything as horrifying as this. Nothing even came close.
We were inside some kind of pediatric intensive-care ward. It was filled with shiny new life-support equipment, but also a dozen or so small cribs. All the equipment was new and expensive.
I shook my head slowly back and forth. This couldn't be real. I held back tears, but it was hard. I looked at Kit. He had turned pale.
Inside the cribs lay dead and dying children. Everywhere I looked, I saw failure of pulmonary, cardiac, and renal systems. The screeching electronic noise was meant to alert medical personnel of trouble, which was pretty much total. Empty IV bags, stalled ventilators and dialysis machines. Vomit and excrement coated the tiny patients.
I finally screamed. I couldn't stop screaming. Kit reached out and held me. I took long, steadying breaths, until I regained control of myself.
"We have to do something for them," I whispered. "We can't leave them to die like this. I can't do that."
"I know, I know," he whispered back. "We'll do what we can, Frannie."
The room was painted pale yellow, with a border of whimsical cartoon animals running along the top of the walls. The cartoons made it worse - much worse. A flannel board next to a refrigerator held crayoned pictures, and yellow-on-white happy faces were stuck up at random on the walls. The happy faces killed me. Just killed me. I steeled my
self to peer down into the closest crib. Inside, a naked female infant about several months old squirmed and waved her small, perfect hands in the air. The tiny baby had no face, no features at all.
A feeding tube was inserted into her small stomach, but the attached bag was empty. I put my hand gently on the top of her head. The green line of the heart-rate monitor beat faster.
She was aware of me.
"Hello, baby," I whispered. "Hello, sweet little girl-,' I threw open the fridge, then the cabinet doors. I shoved aside bandages and tubes and syringes, but there was no food anywhere.
In mounting despair, I hurried to the next crib. The baby boy inside was already dead and decomposing. He had a head the size of a volleyball and the musculature of a child of four or five.
"You poor, poor thing."
I pulled the plug from the monitor, ripped out the catheter in the little one's head. I covered his face with a blanket.
The third crib held another dead child, a year-old babe with a body shape as ordinary as any little kid on the block - except that his skin was separated in irregular tears. The skin hadn't grown at the same rate as the child.
The child's eyelids were inverted, and the sightless, bulging eyes stared up at me. I couldn't ever begin to imagine the pain he had endured before his death, possibly from sepsis. The fourth crib held year-old twins conjoined at the waist. One had died, and because they shared many organs, the other would be dead soon, too.
I gently put my hand on the living child's cool cheek and the eyes fluttered open.
"Hi, baby. Hi there."
There was nothing I could do for the living twin, nothing anyone could do without medical supplies. I was sobbing now as I went from crib to crib.
A dialysis tube had once been hooked up but was now dangling alongside the crib of a small being with simian features. The child was undernourished, dehydrated, comatose.
Everywhere I looked were deformed, impossible children. If I was right, the most incredible tragedy was that these children had been grown from ordinary human zygotes. They could have been perfectly normal, but they'd been mutated. Human experiments had been performed in this room again and again.
Kit was going from crib to crib, yanking out electrical cords and tubes.
It was the only thing we could do.
Suddenly Max was in the lab beside us. I was afraid for her. I wanted to protect Max from this, but it was too late. Her eyes were sad, but knowing. "They put the babies to sleep," she whispered. "They do it with the rejects, the losers. They do it all the time. Now you know."
They! Whoever they were - I hated them fiercely. My fists were clenched tight at my side.
"We should get out of here right now," Kit said. "They have to come back at least one more time. They can't leave all this to be found."
I looked at Kit. "Or any witnesses."
Chapter 85
MAX, the other children, Kit, and I hurried through the towering fir woods as if we were playing a bizarre game of tag or hide-and-seek. They would be after us soon. We were witnesses to horrible crimes that included murder.
Ironically, the mountains and woods looked so damn pretty. The light was softly dappled. Bluejays and phoebes twittered away. Leaves rustled and fluttered in a lightly pine-scented breeze. But it was as scary as an unexpected trip into Hades. We knew the horrible truth - at least a part of it.
The children were whistling, and I couldn't for the life of me understand why. Max seemed to be leading them and she was doing a good job so far.
I turned to Kit. "Why are they whistling?"
He shook his head. "No idea."
Max screamed. "They're coming! It's Security! Hunters! Trust me on it. Run faster! Get away from here! Everybody run!"
I grabbed the closest child - Wendy - and I carried her down a narrow pathway that led deeper into the woods.
Kit took hold of Icarus, the little blind boy, who was frightened enough to go with him. Kit had his gun out, dark and scary, but also comforting.
"Wendy, look! " Peter called out to his sister. "Look up! " He was rooted to the ground, stunned by the sight of Max flying into the air.
No matter how many times I've watched her fly, I was always struck dumb by the miraculous, indelible sight. I knew how Peter felt, but this was no time for gawking.
I yelled, "Peter! Come here! Right this minute! Move it!"
Still clutching Wendy, I plucked him up, too. They clung to me. They weren't too heavy, but heavy enough.
I found temporary cover in the bushes. Gunfire crackled around us. A dark hole opened n the thick trunk of a nearby tree. I picked up the two small children again and stumbled and ran as fast as I could.
I looked back just in time to see Max drop out of a tree and land on one of the men doing the shooting. He was dressed in brown-and-green camouflage, like many hunters and survivalists in the area. Max fell on the man incredibly hard. From twelve to fifteen feet above, eighty pounds had the impact of a falling safe.
Bone cracked! I heard it. The writhing man screamed in extreme pain.
I had no pity for him.
For a long moment, there was quiet again, but it was almost as scary as the noise and echoing gunshots. How many of them were chasing us?
Where were they?
Then Kit dropped into a shooting crouch. A single shot burst from his semiautomatic. Another guard dropped, as if he were a felled tree. He held his shoulder.
I felt sick. I was a witness. All of us were.
The ground under my hiking boots suddenly bucked. It was a powerful explosion and it shivered every tree and shrub and the forest floor itself.
We were almost knocked off our feet by the shock and concussion.
The air around us seemed to split open. The woods suddenly crackled with heat, then I smelled smoke and my heart sank.
Fire.
With a furious thundering, two deer streaked past us. Birds flew up in black clouds. The woods were suddenly alive with frightened animals, and even more frightened humans.
"The School!" Max screamed. "It's back at the School."
"That was a bomb," Kit yelled to me. "They're getting rid of the evidence. They're burning the place down. Keep moving! Keep going!
There's nothing we can do about it now."
We gathered up the children, kept them moving. We slid and fell and scraped our way down the hillside into a small valley. Then we climbed painfully up the side of a facing hill. Then down the opposite side. We ran until we couldn't run anymore, and then we ran some more.
Five children, two adults - seven witnesses.
Chapter 86
WE FINALLY STOPPED to rest and took cover under a formation of primeval-looking boulders. We were exhausted, wide-eyed, openmouthed, and stunned to silence. Our recent small victory was only a brief respite. We had outrun a couple of Security geeks, but so what?
Five minutes passed - ten minutes - no one came up behind us. Not yet, anyway.
Kit had climbed a high, branched tree to do some quick surveillance.
He shimmied up and down expertly, and I was impressed with his agility.
He was full of surprises.
"I couldn't see anyone following us," he reported. "But that doesn't mean much. They know we've got a long way down with the kids in tow."
Max was at my side, urgently tapping my arm. "I should teach them to fly," she said. "It will be easy for them, Frannie. I have to do it. They'll be safer from the guards. I was."
Night would be coming soon, and I was anxious and frightened for the children. I didn't see how we could all safely make the trip down in darkness. Before today, I'd always thought of the woods as a personal refuge.
No more.
"It's getting dark pretty fast," I said to Max. I didn't want to scare her, but I hoped she would get my point.
"It'll be okay for now," she answered. "There's a moon. Please trust me. I have instincts about these things. Also, we can see better in the dark than you can."
&nb
sp; I was so impressed with Max. It had only been a few days since she'd thrown herself screaming against our net. Now she had assumed responsibility for her small charges. I did trust her judgment, her instincts.
She felt it was time to push the little birds out of the nest. She was probably right about that. It would be a stunning thing to witness.
Firstflight!
Chapter 87
James Patterson - When the Wind Blows Page 20
