He nodded, his tone one of giving fair praise.
“I'd say we've got better than even odds, if he pulls this off.”
Rosa had tried to take the comfort as it was intended.
Shanna was a little more certain.
“All they need is to get a clear signal,” she said. “I can promise you General Rhodes is looking for us.”
Shifting under the mound of makeshift blankets, sacks, and tarps Cameron had wrapped around her, Shanna looked down into the valley.
“And he's not the only one, either.”
Rosa frowned. As far as she could see, there was nothing but empty forestland below, bordered by sheer rock wall.
Shanna seemed to be staring at things unseen.
Rosa wondered if Shanna might be hallucinating as her own natural endorphins corralled around her injury. Her leg was discolored and swelling, and no doubt quite painful.
Even for someone with perfect genetics.
Rosa still wasn't sure how much of what Shanna was telling her she believed.
Scratch that – she believed all of it – she was just having trouble taking it in.
It was whatever Shanna had – whatever odd crackle that seemed to spark at her touch – but Rosa simply had no doubt.
She rooted around in the chopper's medical kit, pulling out a needle, and a bottle of clear-liquid. She turned to Shanna.
“This will help your pain,” she said.
But Shanna shook her head. “I'm fine,” she said.
Rosa frowned. “You're hurting.”
She knew it. She could feel it.
But Shanna waved her off, shuffling closer to the fire.
Rosa knelt beside her.
“Shanna? Is something wrong?”
Shanna shut her eyes.
“Otto,” she said quietly, her voice heavy with regret, even a pang of remorse.
Rosa could feel a pulse of it herself.
“We always had an Otto around,” Shanna said. “When I was little, my father replaced them like gerbils. When one died, he just cloned another. I was eight years old before I realized they weren't all the same one.”
Shanna smiled sadly.
“Otto was what the Area 51 guys used to sell it in the budget. The vocalizations sold it. He became an internal mascot, next to the dead alien.”
“Wait a minute,” Mr. Wilson interjected, “I thought you said the alien was fake.”
“I said the alien autopsy was fake.”
Shanna shook her head.
“It's funny. Otto was like a fake too. A genetically engineered novelty. Barely mentioned to the higher-ups. General Rhodes was probably peripherally aware of his existence, if at all. He was the little lizard wearing hats or wigs in the JPEGs the interoffice Area 51 guys sent each other. I never got one from them without an Otto in it.”
Shanna shifted closer to the fire, pulling the ratty covers tighter.
“He was dismissed as an old experiment. A failure. Even by my father.”
She shrugged, and Rosa actually felt the conflicting angst – uncertain whether she should feel hurt, or bereaved, or betrayed.
Or guilt? Because once there had been love.
“To me, he was my pet,” Shanna said helplessly. “He was my childhood friend. Just like Rex and Congo.”
Rosa glanced around the circle. Mr. Wilson had stopped poking the fire to listen. Bud and Allison settled to a slow rock. Even little Lucas regarded Shanna with a bit of puzzled concern.
Whatever she felt for the little lizard, it hurt.
“It's hard to forget a lifetime,” Shanna said, looking apologetic for the simple fact of it. “Even after everything. It only makes it worse.”
Rosa had worked the inner-cities as a doctor. She'd met more than one mother whose son lay dying from a bullet wound – along with another mother whose son had fired the shot. Sometimes they even killed each other.
So whose grief was more justified or sincere?
Or simply real?
“You know,” Shanna said thoughtfully, “when I was young, my father and I always played What's-Worse?”
Rosa knew that one. “That was a running gag at my house,” she said, smiling at the memory. “It always started with something my mother made for dinner. Or something bad on TV. What's worse? A re-run of Days of Our Lives or the stew your mother made?”
Shanna smiled back. “And it escalated. It always escalated.”
Rosa nodded. It had. At her house, What's-Worse often ended pitting mom's stew against plagues or mythological horrors.
“My father,” Shanna said, “was a scientist. We were splitting atoms. We'd be pitting thermonuclear destruction versus a nationwide pandemic of diarrhea.” Shanna grinned. “I mean we had global tsunamis versus planet-sized asteroids.”
Her grin faded a little.
“There's always something worse.”
The remark hung unexpectedly heavy, and Rosa felt her brief warm memory evaporate in the icy air.
“I wonder,” Shanna said, “if Otto listened.”
Now Rosa felt a touch of goose-flesh.
The chill seemed to blow through the others as well. Both Allison and Bud shivered visibly, Allison unconsciously clutching Lucas tighter. Even Mr. Wilson settled up closer to the fire.
The gusts of wind were becoming shrill and impatient, grabbing at the fire, pulling the licks of flame dangerously close, even as it threatened to snuff them out.
“He always said his name,” Shanna said. “'My name is Otto'. Always in my father's voice. The first words he ever learned.”
She looked thoughtful.
“All of them did it. The very second they hatched. And after that, they all repeated it. Regardless of generation.”
Shanna shrugged. “I was young. I never questioned. All the Area 51 guys tossed it off as a weird little glitch. No one ever imagined what that weird little glitch implied.”
She shook her head. “I never did.”
Then her eyes narrowed.
“But I think,” she said, “my father might have. Right near the end. But by then, it was too late.”
The fire cracked loudly, sending a spark, and Rosa jumped.
A moment later, the spark was answered by a flash of lightning on the far horizon. Two heartbeats followed before the corresponding rumble of thunder.
And somewhere, off in the near distance, something answered.
Mr. Wilson paused over the fire. Allison slowed her steady rock.
“What was that?” Rosa asked, not wanting any kind of answer.
Shanna's eyes were shut, as if listening.
Rosa tried to hear, but now the rising wind brought the first sheets of rain, a curtain of icy sleet that slapped into the cliffside.
Drums of thunder echoed through the canyons.
Overture to the approaching storm.
Chapter 30
Three weeks after the island disaster, Kate was back at her Manhattan apartment.
It was official. There was no Monster Island, and it never sank.
Her freedom was contingent on her clear understanding of that point – a message communicated bluntly from her father, through intermediate government lawyers, because he was still too goddamn mad to even directly speak to her.
As a General's daughter, Kate was afforded privilege. The others were still in custody. Cameron and Maverick hadn't even been given lawyers – not until security debriefing was completed. Which meant until they were damn good and ready.
Kate's own lawyer had actually broken down into helpless laughter over the sheer length of the list of charges.
Suffice to say, everybody was in a lot of trouble.
Except for Shanna, who, to be fair, hadn't actually done anything.
But Gosh-darned if it didn't turn out, her father just loved Shanna.
When they had boarded the Navy vessel, after being fished out of the wrecked Cessna, the ship's captain, an old veteran named Brody, had greeted Kate on deck. Kate's face was well known a
mong officers.
“You've been at it again,” Captain Brody said. “Your father's pissed-off on a national security-level this time.”
“Wait a minute,” Shanna said. “Kate Rhodes? You're General Rhodes' daughter?”
Kate's own brows raised. “You know my father?”
Although, after a second's thought, she realized that was a no-brainer – of course, she did. How could she not?
There was a brief reappraisal as the two women regarded each other.
Kate had grown up with top-level security as part of her daily life – a long-time point of resentment, dating back from when she was just a child and her father was her whole world, and ninety-nine percent of his life was an invisible black hole.
Shanna was one of the shadows that existed in that blank spot. It was like finding out about a half-sister lovechild.
And here she'd thought her father had shut her investigation down just on general principals.
Kate wondered what was it like to live on the other side of all that top-security? Shanna had no doubt grown up on a much tighter leash than even she had. There was, after all, a difference between even a high-security military base, and Area 65,000,000 BC.
And while Shanna was not being charged with anything, she was no more free than Cameron and Maverick. The difference was that instead of a risk, she was an asset.
The government had just lost its head mad scientist, and Shanna was heir-apparent.
Which meant everything Kate had seen on that island would continue to be real.
As far as she knew, all the animals had been killed. The Navy had toured the area with munitions for days. The island itself had been destroyed.
But they still had Shanna. And who knew what they had stashed away in Area 51?
There were stories, Kate was discovering, scattered across the Internet, about not-quite-remote areas that had encountered strange creatures.
Crackpot stuff. Most of it. Except Kate had found her perimeters widened dramatically on what she was prepared to believe.
And there did seem to have been a rash of them just lately – as near as Kate could tell, dating back to an incident on a tropical Pacific cruise-liner. When she searched the source, however, she found the websites scrubbed.
There was also the question of who had sent the e-mails to her in the first place.
Kate was beginning to wonder if it really had been Hinkle himself.
Like maybe there was something happening on that island he wanted the world to see, but for some reason, was afraid to step forward himself?
And what might he have to be afraid of? He was an old man. Kate couldn't confirm his exact age, but he had first started making waves in the sixties. Shanna was young enough to be a granddaughter.
Shanna who, Kate mused, might have been the one Hinkle was really trying to protect.
But from what specifically? The sort of legal/bureaucratical retribution that currently barked at her own heels?
Which begged the question, why send the e-mail at all?
Perhaps that was supposed to protect her.
Or was it that he believed he simply had to take the risk?
Because the elephant in the room was the two-foot lizard that was apparently a lot smarter than his keepers believed.
At least one of the stories she'd found had mentioned a talking lizard – nothing but a headline, and when she searched the story, she found it gone.
Kate was becoming nervous.
She couldn't put her finger on it, but she felt distinctly uneasy, the way animals are supposed to get edgy before an earthquake or some natural disaster.
Not just a military brat, but a General's daughter, Kate was hard-headed. She didn't believe in premonitions, or fortune-telling.
But after meeting Shanna, she certainly believed she could pick up on bad vibes.
Kate had a little secret – something she'd been holding as an ace-in-the-hole, her leverage with any prosecutors the government might send her way – and once she was legally in the clear, she could turn her attention to wrangling Maverick and Cameron out of limbo.
She pulled a small disc from her purse – the video disc she'd pulled from Cameron's camcorder after Hinkle's little walk-through of his lab – up to and including the giant savage rabbit with the glowing green eyes.
Their Navy ship had taken three days to arrive in New York. Kate had it in her possession the whole time. After already being in custody, and having just been pulled out of a crashed sea-plane, no one even thought to search her.
She'd had it stashed behind her compact-mirror, just in case.
It was supposed to be her get-out-of-jail-free card.
If she did what she was thinking of doing with it now, it would be go-to-jail.
It would also effectively destroy any lingering relationship she had with her father.
Kate plugged the disc into her computer.
On her e-mail contact-list alone, she had every major media outlet in the world.
That was the thing about the Internet – the worldwide web – once it was out there, you couldn't get it back.
In a way, it was amazing there were still secrets. It just showed how dark parts of the world could be.
Kate was still not certain it had been Nolan Hinkle who sent that e-mail video. Or why.
She didn't believe in premonitions. But she had a world-class case of the creeps.
Kate wondered if Hinkle had felt those same creeps.
She tapped her keyboard, bringing her screen to life.
As she did so, she noticed she had a message.
A blinking picture of Princess Leia, floating in a hologram.
She tapped it, and the picture spoke.
“Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.”
Then the image blurred to that of Nolan Hinkle standing in his study.
On screen, the image started speaking, but the voice-over continued to be Princess Leia's heart-felt plea, “Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi.”
And then, almost right in her ear, the words finished.
“You're my only hope.”
Kate jumped from her chair with a screech, nearly knocking over her desk as she turned to where a two-foot lizard was standing on her bookcase.
A lizard with big claws.
Otto hissed.
There was a rustling patter and suddenly it was joined by two others.
Kate backed up against her desk. She looked around for something to get in her hands, but she was cornered.
“Help me, Obi Wan,” the little lizards said in chorus.
Kate screamed as they came for her.
Chapter 31
Shanna finally got to see New York.
When it went south on Monster Island, Rhodes had taken steps for both security and science.
One of those steps was a giant gorilla named Congo.
Another was a young man named Cameron, who Shanna had only just met – who had invaded her privacy on her island, and along with his friend, Maverick, now faced some very serious charges.
Kate was fine. Shanna had a feeling she would be.
But Cameron and Maverick currently didn't even exist, sequestered at a secret facility, the Area 51 guys called the 'east-coast shop' – a deceptively tame-looking warehouse lot off the south beach of Brooklyn.
Congo was there too – the only facility large enough to hold him while the chemical's effect ran its course.
Three weeks in and he appeared nearly at full-growth.
He was chained and heavily sedated.
Shanna herself was given a more gilded cage. A workshop in Manhattan – the East Coast shop's downtown office, not far from the Empire State.
Rhodes had done his best to duplicate her lab from the island, and to his credit, were it not for the armed guards at her door, the illusion might have held.
Rhodes had also re-established links to her Area 51-contacts.
Primary among them, Dr. Shriver, who had taken over the clandestine site, was
extremely interested in Hinkle's work on the Food of the Gods.
Shriver had been Rhodes' primary adviser in regards to Nolan Hinkle's research, particularly now, in the absence of Hinkle himself.
At least, until he was comfortable with who Shanna was.
Shanna was just actually learning that herself.
For the first time in her entire life, she was around people. And not just people, but millions of people, all around her.
She still couldn't walk among them, but she could see them from her window.
In a way, it was intimidating, and a small, frightened part of her was actually glad for the lock on her door, giving her an excuse to stay in her own space and hide.
But she could feel them.
And even the handful of uniformed officers, the crew of sailors on the boat, or the odd assistant Shriver sent over – all of it still represented the most contact with her own species Shanna had experienced in her entire life.
Ironic that she actually felt more alone than she ever had before.
Her father was gone. Her whole island home was gone – not just left-behind, but gone. And in a city of millions, just on the other side of a window, the people around her were either virtual or armed keepers.
Shanna had not grown up with the human touch, and as such, had never been truly aware of her gift.
Now that she was in the world, she found she got a little bit of a glow from most people. Usually, it was just a vague sense of mood and temperament – some she felt more strongly than others.
When she had touched Cameron's hand, it was if she'd suddenly known all about him.
Not facts, not where he was born, his favorite color, but the essential him.
Even on her island, Shanna had not completely missed the attention of men. In fact, it had mostly been hard-core military studs, who had certainly made their appreciation for her face and form well-known.
So Shanna knew what she looked like. And even if she hadn't, her online nerd-contacts at Area 51 would have let her know. Among the pictures with Otto in Santa hats at Christmas, were a long line of propositions, should she ever make it state-side.
But with Cameron, all it had taken was a touch.
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