The GODD Chip (The Unity of Four Book 1)

by K Patrick Donoghue

  She looked up to see RJ peering out the window again. No doubt he could hear the sounds of other children playing in the village square.

  “RJ, pay attention. Define gutation.”

  With his gaze still locked on the window, he said, “Messed-up genes.”

  “Be more specific. What you described is a mutation. What makes a gutation different from a mutation?”

  The boy turned to look at her. “Geez, Natti. You think I don’t know? I am a gutant. You’re one too. So are most of the children in the village.”

  “Then it should be an easy question to answer, right?”

  RJ sat back and folded his arms across his chest. “Gutants are freaks. Kids like us whose great grandparents fooled around with their babies’ DNA. They replaced genes they didn’t like with ones they did. But they fooled around too much, and the genes they changed began to break. That’s what gutations are…broken replacement genes.”

  His answer was not a textbook description of gutations, but it was close enough for Natti. “Good. Now, when do gutations begin to appear in a person?”

  “When kids start to turn into adults.”

  “Right. And why is that?”

  “Because that’s when the hormones that change us from kids into adults start messing up our DNA.”

  “Very good, RJ. You said that very well.”

  “Now, how is a gutant different than a jakali?”

  “Jakalis have a whole bunch of gutations instead of just a couple.”

  RJ’s answer was partially correct but not completely accurate. Jakali Syndrome occurred in teens with twelve specific gutations, not just a whole bunch. And the average gutant typically had more than a couple of gutations.

  Gutants might develop benign conditions, like permanently losing all their body hair as teens, or breaking out in reddish splotches like Natti, or other skin maladies that never went away. Further along the spectrum of severity, they might stop growing or begin to demonstrate learning impairments. Or they might develop early-onset cancers, arthritis or other chronic conditions. Their immunity to certain diseases might falter, and so on. The list of possible gutations was limited only by the number of synthetic replacement genes in a child’s DNA.

  RJ’s answer missed another key point. Until all twelve of the specific gutations of a jakali occurred, kids diagnosed as pre-jakalis were technically considered gutants.

  “You can do better than that, RJ. That’s a sloppy answer.”

  “Come on, Natti. Give me a break.” RJ asked. “I want to go outside and play. It will be dark soon. Can’t we stop now?”

  Natti looked at the long shadow of the window panes stretching across the floor. She was inclined to continue the quiz but realized RJ had spent the morning working in the garage and then studying with her for most of the afternoon and it was clear his attention span was waning. “Yeah, I guess that’s all right. We can finish up tomorrow.”

  As RJ bolted out of his seat and ran for the cottage door, Natti called after him. “Just make sure you come home before the sunset bell. You hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  He slammed the door on his way out, leaving Natti to clean up. As she limped across the living room to pick up his books and stow his school supplies, Natti listened to the chatter and laughter of the children outside. Closing her eyes, she sat down on the sofa and soaked in the happy sounds.

  Natti smiled as she recalled playing in the schoolyard with her friends. Back then, she had loved to play on the swings most of all. She remembered the rush of wind through her hair and the thrill of soaring high into the air.

  Reaching up, she stroked the bubbled skin on her mostly bald head and sighed. How long has it been since I was on a swing? Two years? Three? I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a swing set in the internment camp or quarantine center. So, it had to have been before I was sent away. She slid her hand down and touched the puffy scars on her face. It seems so long ago.

  After uttering another sigh, Natti opened her eyes and pushed off the sofa. Stop torturing yourself, girl. There’s nothing you can do about it. What’s done is done. Now, get moving, it’s gonna rain tonight. I can feel it in my leg. As she rubbed the mangled limb, she finished her thought. And that means everything has to be buttoned up before the jakalis attack.

  Somewhere in the Nahanni Mountains

  The Northlands (Old Canada)

  Caelan Horn aimed his binoculars at the cave entrance and watched his hunting androids sneak closer to the opening. Satisfied with their progress, he zoomed out and panned the field glasses to the left. On the ridgeline, his snipers were in position, ready to fire upon any living creature the hunt-droids flushed out. When it came to jakalis, Caelan never took chances.

  Many compared them to zombies of old holovids, but jakalis were not sloth-like nor did they stagger around in a half-conscious haze. Despite their physical maladies, jakalis were quick, strong and agile, especially when on a rampage. They were also hyper-alert, their black eyes constantly scanning their environment for prey. And they were vicious, relentless attackers — both the males and the females.

  But Caelan could understand the connection people made between jakalis and zombies when just considering their physical appearance. Gaunt and hunched over, jakali bodies were coated with a slick of oil that oozed from their pores. Beneath the oil, their skin was mottled with dark-colored blemishes and scaly to the touch. Many were bald or in the process of losing their hair.

  Constant muscle spasms wracked their bodies and contorted their facial expressions, the latter preventing them from producing sounds beyond grunts and snarls. Whether those sounds were shouts of anger, cries of pain or both, Caelan didn’t know. He only knew jakalis grunted and snarled a lot.

  He had been hunting the trail of this particular jakali pack for three days, ever since he’d been hired to recover villagers snatched by jakalis during a raid on an Alaskon fishing village near the border with the Northlands. At first, it had been easy to follow the jakalis, as their trail had been marked by the blood of their prey.

  Then, as the human devils moved into the mountains, the bodies of their victims — some complete, others torn into parts during their fits of rage — began to appear at intervals. If not for nightfall, Caelan and his hunting squad would have closed in on them the previous day, but there was no way he would have risked taking on jakalis at night. During the daytime, they were easy to spot at a distance but, at night, only their heat signatures gave them away. And those signatures were hard to detect in the rocky terrain of the mountains.

  Unfortunately, that decision had allowed the jakalis to skitter into the mountains where their trail had become harder to follow, especially after the jakalis had tossed away the remains of their last unwanted Alaskons.

  Thankfully, their oily slicks had a pungent, nauseating odor. Everything they touched reeked of it, from the branches they brushed up against, to the ground they stepped on and the rocks they climbed. If there had only been one or two of them, the mountain winds would have cleaned the air of their stench overnight, but nature couldn't mask their odor so quickly when they traveled in larger groups.

  “Steady, lads,” Caelan whispered, “wait until Devo gives us a count.”

  It was silly talking to robots in this way, but sometimes Caelan forgot his Makoas were machines. Decades of investment into technology to “humanize” androids had made them nearly indistinguishable from living, breathing homo sapiens.

  No one was interested in machines following them around everywhere, but if the androids looked, sounded, felt and acted like real humans, well, then it made their omnipresence in twenty-second-century society less creepy.

  Out here in the wilderness, however, creepy or not, androids like Caelan’s Makoas were an absolute necessity. The upper reaches of the Northlands had become the latest dumping ground for jakalis cast out of Alaskon, Pacifica and Carapach, and no man, not even an experienced bounty hunter like Caelan, was capable of taking on packs of ja
kalis alone.

  He felt a vibration from his earbud radio. A message from Elvis, Caelan’s lead hunter-android, played in his ear. “All in position. Requesting permission to insert Devo.”

  “Permission granted.”

  Even with binoculars, Caelan would not have been able to see Devo. But that was a good thing. Amid the legions of real flies and other insects that infested the jakalis’ cave, the nano drone would go unnoticed.

  With its camera and surveillance sensors, Devo would zoom into the cave and provide Caelan and his contingent of Makoas with a video and data feed of the cave layout and its occupants. Lowering his computer goggles into place, Caelan said a quick prayer and girded for the scene Devo would relay.

  In Caelan’s experience, the inside of a jakali cave was more disgusting than the worst gutant internment camp. The floor was typically slimy, strewn with debris and excrement and speckled with the blood of their victims. For jakalis always kept a few live humans with them, just in case the urge to beat, defile or kill flared up while the jakalis rested. In a pinch, they were even known to eat them.

  Caelan’s goggle screen switched to night vision as Devo flew into the cave. Amid the black background, he saw swirls of small green lights flitting about. As he had expected, the cave was infested with flying insects.

  Devo moved deeper into the opening, and Caelan spotted six sleeping jakalis sprawled across the floor. He grimaced when he saw the jakalis had hollowed out a pit near the back wall. In it, there were at least two Alaskons, possibly three. They were huddled so close together, it was difficult to confirm their number.

  “Elvis,” Caelan said, “we need Devo to get us a better look at the Alaskons in the pit…close in for facial recognition.”

  When it came time to flush out the jakalis, Caelan wanted to make sure they did not shoot at the Alaskons. Given their likely condition, they would look very similar to the jakalis — coated in blood and jakali oil, their hair matted and little to no clothing covering their bodies. The Alaskons would also be just as frightened as the jakalis by the bright lights and echoing booms of Caelan’s flash grenades, and they would spill out of the cave with the same panic as the jakalis.

  “Facial recon data acquired,” replied Elvis.

  “Good. Keep Devo close to the Alaskons, just in case.” Caelan removed his goggles and blinked several times to adjust his eyes to sunlight. Pressing his hand against his earbud, he said, “It’s your show from here, Elvis. Make us proud, lad.”

  Caelan picked up the binoculars and trained them on the cave opening. There was no audible chatter between the Makoas in his earbud to tell him when the raid would begin; his androids communicated with each other through radio signals.

  He saw a blur of motion cross the black maw of the cave before a blinding flash of light blocked his view of the hillside. The accompanying boom of the grenade followed two seconds later. From his ridgeline perch two hundred yards away, Caelan saw a second flash and then smoke began to pour out of the cave accompanied by the high-pitched screeches of the roused jakalis. To his right, Caelan heard the sizzle of a laser blast, and on his left the crack of rifle fire. The smoke was too thick for Caelan to see whether the shots hit their intended targets, but the croaking wails of jakalis confirmed some had landed.

  Lowering the binoculars, Caelan reached for his long-laser. In the time it took him to activate and bring the weapon to bear, several more shots and blasts echoed in the small canyon. As the smoke began to dissipate, Caelan saw the legs of a shape darting back and forth on the ledge outside the cave. He aimed his laser-sight at the shape and pressed the guidance tracker. The weapon tugged his arms to the left to follow the legs’ frantic dash in that direction.

  The laser vibrated when the target was locked. Caelan edged his finger toward the trigger. But then the figure fell to the ground, curled into a ball and covered its head. Then he saw Elvis race into view, snatch up the figure and speed away.

  A shriek pierced through the sounds of chaos. Caelan heard a commotion to his right and turned to see Prince, his best sniper, leaping over the ridge. Raising his laser-sight back to his eye, Caelan followed the line of the streaking Prince and spotted a jakali clutching a writhing Alaskon girl against his chest as he scampered down the hillside. When the jakali noticed Prince racing toward him, he stopped and gripped the girl by the neck with both hands. The girl began to flail her arms and legs. Caelan returned his finger to the trigger, locked onto one of the jakali’s legs, and fired.

  The beast crumpled to the ground, releasing the girl. Prince appeared again through the laser-sight, this time standing directly above the jakali. He dispatched it with a blade through its chest and then scooped up the girl.

  Just that quickly, the battle was over. The jakali pack was wiped out and the Alaskons rescued.

  Later, as his androids torched the jakali carcasses and detonated the cave, Caelan tended to the rescued Alaskons — two teenaged girls and one similarly aged boy. Their vacant expressions reflected the horrors they had endured.

  He bathed them in the icy river, bandaged their visible wounds, dressed them in fresh clothes and layered blankets around their shoulders. Caelan offered them food as well, but the catatonic teens seemed not to hear him. They just stared into the distance, clutching the blankets against their shivering bodies.

  Caelan had his doubts about whether the teens would ever recover from their ordeal. He felt the same about the village from which they had been taken. The terror wreaked by the jakalis would become part of all of them, as indelible as the gutated DNA that turned the once-humans into animals.

  CHAPTER 4: SIZING THE ENEMY

  NASF Province Headquarters

  Minneapolis, Lakelands Province, New Atlantia

  The briefing room was packed. Damon Spiers locked eyes with each member of his task force as he finished his introduction. “Bottom line…we haven’t had an opportunity as good as this in over a year. We have to make sure we take advantage of it. That means catching Beacon in the act and capturing as many of them as we can. Understood?”

  As his team members nodded, Damon called on Cassidy Willow to take over the briefing. “Sergeant. Recap the plan.”

  The blond, Steel-class android pushed up from her seat and headed for the lectern as Damon stepped away. In the center of the briefing table was a holonode. At present, it displayed hovering images of the Hearns family. As soon as Cassidy reached the podium, the display switched to the title page of a presentation that read, Operation Clamp.

  “You’ve all received the briefing packs so I only plan to touch on the highlights,” Cassidy said. “To begin, as you all know, Billy Hearns is scheduled to be euthanized in approximately forty-eight hours and Beacon still has not attempted to kidnap him, his mother or his sisters. Based on new information passed to us by Rodrick Hearns this morning, we now believe Beacon plans to stage the kidnapping in two separate operations, one targeting Billy, the other focused on the mother and the girls.

  “According to Mr. Hearns, Mrs. Hearns has announced she will not accompany her husband to the Minneapolis Gene Center for Billy’s euthanization. Instead, she intends to spend Monday evening with her daughters at a church near the family home in suburban Chicago, where they plan to hold a private candlelight vigil for Billy. As you can see on the map on the next screen, that church is a few blocks from Lake Michigan, the most likely escape route to smuggle the Hearns females out of New Atlantia.”

  One of the officers across the table from Damon raised a hand. “Excuse me, Sgt. Willow. Why is the boy being euthanized in Minneapolis instead of the Chicago GC?”

  “Chicago had a rogue-virus scare late last week,” Cassidy said. “The center is shut down until the Department of Health certifies the facility is germ-free.”

  “I see…that’s rather convenient, isn’t it?” replied the officer.

  “We’re on the same page, Fenner,” said Damon. “The rogue scare was likely a Beacon hoax, part of their smuggling plan. They want th
at boy in Minneapolis. It’s so close to our border with Carapach, they can get him out of New Atlantia much faster and with less risk than if they traveled up Lake Michigan and backtracked across Wisconsin or fled into the Northlands.”

  Another hand went up. “But, sir, following that logic, why wouldn’t Beacon want the whole family together in Minneapolis? Splitting their operation increases their risks.”

  Cassidy answered before Damon could speak. “Yes, but it also complicates our ability to disrupt their plans.”

  “That’s right,” said Damon. “Whether Beacon knows we’re aware of their plans or not, they want to make it tough for anyone to intervene, particularly the Billy Hearns part of the operation. And make no mistake about it, people. He’s the prize they are after. In fact, it wouldn’t shock me to find out the Chicago part of the operation is bogus, a hoax to draw attention away from Minneapolis.”

  “Why is that, Major?” posed a third officer. “I mean, what’s so special about the kid?”

  “Good question, Schwartz. The genetic crimes division has just finished analyzing his DNA profile. Turns out Billy is pretty unique. Cassidy, continue. Educate them.”

  “Yes, sir.” Cassidy looked around the room as she spoke. “As you all know, Jakali Syndrome results from the gutation of twelve specific genes. But not all twelve gutations happen at one time, nor do they occur in the same order in all children. JS can arise from 1.3 million different combinations of the twelve gutations. However, ninety-two percent of jakalis arise from just seventy-eight of those combinations. Even though Billy has only developed four of the twelve JS gutations thus far, the order in which his specific gutations have occurred already makes him an extreme outlier.”

  “Okay, so he’s an outlier. Why’s that such a big deal?” Schwartz asked.

  “Unknown at this point, but GCD considers it significant,” said Cassidy.

  For a brief stretch, the room was quiet. Then, Schwartz posed another question. “How’d Beacon find out about the kid’s DNA?”