Altar of Eden

by James Rollins

  Malik scowled. “Is that bloody necessary?” he scolded. His words had a British lilt to them, but the accent was plainly Middle Eastern. He waved to Lorna. “Join me over here, Dr. Polk.”

  Duncan accompanied her to the workstation while Connor hung back.

  Up close, Malik appeared older than she originally estimated. Though his dark skin was unlined and his thick hair salted with gray, he had to be in his late fifties. He still wore the same surgical scrubs from before, but he had donned a starched white lab coat that reached to mid-thigh.

  He motioned her to a chair. “I must apologize for dragging you into all of this.”

  She remained standing. Duncan grabbed her shoulder hard, guided her to the chair, and pushed her into it.

  Malik’s frown deepened, but he kept silent.

  “Ask your questions,” Duncan said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Malik sighed. “For the sake of the security of our intellectual property rights, I must ask what you and your colleagues in New Orleans learned from the specimens in your possession.”

  Lorna could not look them in the eye. Her gaze dropped to the equipment around her. She took in the labels: PureLink Genomic digestion buffer, Novex zymogram gel kits, a Spotlight hybridizer. Behind Malik stood a stack of two incubators and an inverted microscope station with two micromanipulator controls for viewing and working with embryo dishes.

  She recognized the setup as an in vitro fertilization lab.

  Was this the origin of all the bloodshed and horror?

  She lifted her face, only to have the back of a hand strike her hard across the mouth. Blood flew from her lips. The knot behind her ear rang with the impact, echoing the pain of the blow.

  Tears welled in her eyes—less from pain than fury.

  “That’s enough!” Malik said.

  Duncan ignored him and loomed over her. “Answer his questions or there will be worse.”

  Lorna saw the promise in his eyes.

  Malik began again, but Lorna cut him off, wiping the blood from her split lip. She had already decided not to withhold any information. What was the use?

  “We found additional chromosomes in all the animals,” she started. “And we discovered the structural changes in the brain. A network of magnetite crystals.”

  “Impressive,” Malik said. “Considering how little time you had with the specimens.”

  “What else?” Duncan asked, the threat plain in his voice.

  She didn’t hold back. “And we learned that the animals were somehow able to link up neurologically. And we came to believe this networking enhanced their intellectual capacity.”

  Malik nodded, confirming what was conjecture before.

  “That’s as far as we got,” Lorna said.

  “Who else knows about what you learned?” Duncan pressed.

  Lorna guessed this was coming. It was the only reason she’d been dragged here, the only reason she was still alive. To discover if the information had leaked out of ACRES. Her only hope of staying alive was to shadow the truth.

  “I can’t say for sure,” she said. “But we regularly back data up to an off-site server. It’s done automatically.”

  Malik looked at Duncan.

  A half scowl twisted the commando’s lips. “Shouldn’t matter. At least not immediately. With everyone dead, it will buy us a window of time to clean this up.”

  “We’ll still need it purged as soon as possible,” Malik said. “Mr. Bennett will insist on it.”

  “Where’s the backup stored?” Duncan asked her.

  “I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. ACRES contracted with an outfit in Baton Rouge.

  Duncan lifted his hand again, ready to test her veracity.

  Needing to be convincing, she cowered back and protected her face. “All I know is the name. Southern Compu-Safe. But they have servers throughout Louisiana.”

  She didn’t know if that last bit was true, but if this bastard believed the data was bottled up at one site, he’d just order the facility blown up. In that scenario, she would not be needed. To live, she had to remain useful.

  Duncan lowered his hand, momentarily believing her. His gaze went long as he weighed his options.

  She had to direct those options as best she could. She continued, talking rapidly, allowing the terror buried deep inside her to shine out. “The only way to access the stored data is through a series of security clearances. An employee ID password, followed by a series of challenge questions unique to each employee. But I have no idea how to gain access remotely.”

  This last bit was true.

  Duncan seemed not to hear her. His gaze remained fixed in that thousand-mile stare.

  Malik spoke up. “How long would it take to get a secure satellite uplink to this Compu-Safe? One that can’t be traced back to us.”

  Duncan spoke in a monotone. “At least four hours.” He glared at Lorna. “But it will only take a few calls to confirm if Dr. Polk is telling us the truth.”

  Lorna wanted to shrink from that gaze, but she held firm.

  “Then it seems we’ll have her company for a bit longer,” Malik said. “Which is just as well. I’d like to pick her brain concerning the trouble we’ve been experiencing in the field of late.”

  “She doesn’t need to know about that,” Duncan said.

  “It never hurts to have a fresh perspective on a problem. And what can it hurt?” Malik lifted an eyebrow toward the commando. “That is, unless you’re worried about the security here. If you’re afraid she might escape.”

  Duncan’s face darkened.

  Lorna found herself warming to the doctor.

  Until his next words.

  “Besides, Dr. Polk and I will have plenty of time to talk as I prepare her.”

  Something about that statement sent a chill through her. Even Duncan looked momentarily disgusted.

  “Prepare for what?” Lorna asked.

  Malik crossed and patted her on the shoulder reassuringly. “A minor procedure. While we have you here, it seemed a shame to waste an opportunity to freshen our genetic stock supply.”

  “What do you mean?” Lorna’s stomach clenched around a knot of worry. She flashed to the body on the surgical table.

  Malik patted her shoulder a final time and stepped from her side.

  “Fear not. We’re just going to harvest a few of your eggs.”

  Chapter 42

  Lorna held back tears as the technician stepped away, carrying vials of her blood in color-coded tubes. Nervous sweat dampened her body. She rubbed a finger along the bandage taped to the tender crux of her elbow.

  The medical ward looked like a gynecologist’s office from hell. A battery of ultrasound and surgical equipment surrounded her. The exam table she sat on reclined and had stirrups—but there was no padding, no attempt at comfort. It was all cold stainless steel. But most disturbing of all were the thick leather straps meant to secure a patient.

  It confirmed her suspicions that most of the human subjects here were forced to cooperate, likely obtained from modern-day slavers, a booming business in the Caribbean. A shudder passed through her as she wondered how many women had been strapped here, forced to endure unimaginable violations.

  Finally, her guard Connor came forward. “Let’s go.”

  She didn’t resist. She allowed herself to be manhandled off the table and toward the exit. It hurt to walk. Besides drawing blood, the technician had collected a painful bone-marrow biopsy from her hip. She felt the ache with each step, but she knew the worst was yet to come. The preoperative tests were to evaluate hormone levels, along with a genetic assay.

  Pending those results, the stirrups and straps awaited her.

  Connor kept hold of her elbow and marched her from the room and through a door into an adjoining office. Dr. Malik sat behind the desk, writing in a chart. Behind him rose a bookshelf crammed with texts and journals. From the ragged and dog-eared look to the research library, the volumes weren’t for show. Malik
closed the chart as she was shoved into the room. He had a small pair of reading glasses perched on his thin nose and stared over them at Lorna.

  “Please have a seat,” he said and waved to a chair. His focus shifted to her bodyguard. “Sergeant Reed, that will be all for now. I’ll summon you when we’re done.”

  Connor didn’t move and seemed ready to set down roots. “Commander Kent said I should stay with the prisoner.”

  Duncan had given those orders before leaving to investigate her claims about a backup of their research at Compu-Safe.

  Malik let out a long sigh. “That won’t be necessary, but if it would make you happy, you can stand guard at the door.”

  Connor scowled, looking ready to argue. His fingers tightened on her elbow.

  Malik waved dismissively at the guard. “Outside the door, if you don’t mind. Buried down here, there are no windows. Our guest won’t be going anywhere. My office is as good as any jail cell.”

  Connor’s scowl deepened, but his fingers released their clamp. Lorna suspected his grip would leave bruises, maybe even fingerprints. He stepped back. “I’ll be right outside the door.”

  Malik seemed to have already dismissed him. His gaze focused on Lorna. “Dr. Polk, please have a seat. We have much to discuss. Some of which I suspect you’ll find illuminating.”

  Lorna was happy to accept his offer. After all that had happened and the ache in her hip, she didn’t trust her legs. She sank into the seat and gazed around the rest of the office. To the left, the wall was covered with various LCD monitors, centered on a larger fifty-inch plasma screen. Most were dark, though four showed various views of the subterranean facility, including the gynecology room.

  He must have been watching it all.

  Disgusted, she turned away.

  Diplomas and awards covered the other wall. Lorna studied them, anything to help her understand the man behind the desk. Many of the mounted certificates were in foreign languages, including several in Arabic. She recognized one in French—Université Pierre et Marie Curie—and beneath it a credential from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. This last was the largest research organization in France.

  No matter his ethics, Dr. Malik was no crackpot.

  “We should have your tests completed within the hour,” the man said and leaned forward. “Let me explain what will happen from here. Just so there’s no anxiety.”

  Lorna couldn’t tell if the man was being purposely dense about her situation or particularly cruel.

  He continued: “After the tests, we’ll design a genetically specific combination of Lupron and Menopur, along with an experimental follicle-stimulating hormone. Normally it takes days before the ovary will be fit for harvesting eggs. But with the technique I’ve developed, it will require only a couple of hours. So we have time to talk.”

  Lorna finally found her voice. “What are you planning on doing with my eggs?”

  “Trust me, they will be put to good use. We’ll use them for a new embryo hybridization project we’re about to start.”

  “What sort of embryos?” Lorna pictured the body on the table.

  “That’s not an easy question to answer. And before we get to that, I must first be honest with you. I’ve reviewed your file.”

  My file?

  “With your background and experience in genetics and breeding, I could find good use for you here at my lab. It would be a waste to discard such a valuable researcher out of hand. And if you remain cooperative, there’s no reason you couldn’t remain on the island.”

  “As a prisoner.”

  “I’d prefer the word colleague,” Malik said. “And it’s far better than the alternative. Perhaps if you better understood our methodologies and goals, you’d have fewer qualms.”

  She wasn’t so sure about that, but she saw no reason not to hear the man out. The longer he was talking, the longer she remained alive.

  “Go on,” she said, wanting to know anyway. “What exactly are you all doing here?”

  Malik settled back, as if satisfied with this concession—or maybe he merely liked to have someone to talk to. “What are we doing? To even begin to answer that, we’ll have to go back to the very beginning. Are you familiar with the book of Genesis?”

  Lorna struggled past this odd non sequitur. “As in the Bible?”

  A nod. “ ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ ”

  Lorna didn’t know what to make of this statement.

  A twinkle entered Malik’s eye. “Excuse my bit of hubris. I must be overly affected by our supreme benefactor, Bryce Bennett. He’s a deeply religious man. It’s one of the quotes he often spouts in regard to our work here—and one of the reasons he chose this island for his facility. Lost Eden Cay.” Malik smiled inwardly and shook his head. “Truly, how could he not locate it here?”

  “I don’t understand. What does all this have to do with your genetic experiments?”

  “All in good time. First let me start with my definition of the grand beginning. The scientific basis of all creation. Bennett has his Word of God. I have something entirely rooted in the scientific method.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Are you familiar with fractals?”

  Again Lorna was taken aback by the non sequitur. What is this guy talking about? Still, at the same time, she recalled hearing that word before. Her brother had used it in reference to the pattern of magnetite crystals found in the dissected feline brain. She knew something about fractals, but nothing beyond the basics—and definitely not how fractals were involved here.

  She merely shook her head, wanting to hear what the researcher had to say.

  “Ah, well, by definition, fractals are jagged, irregular geometric forms generated by a repeated pattern of that same shape. Or in other words, they’re large shapes that can be broken down into smaller and smaller versions of itself.”

  Lorna frowned. She remembered Jon Greer’s description of the magnetite nodes in the animals’ brains, how the matrix was made up of smaller and smaller crystals.

  “I see you’re confused. Let me show you what I mean,” Malik said and tapped at his computer keyboard. To Lorna’s right, one of the monitors bloomed to life. “All geometric shapes can be defined by a single algorithm or mathematical equation. Here’s a rather simple one.”

  It was just an ordinary triangle.

  Malik tapped again. “But if you have the computer multiply it several times, adding one to another, it grows to this.”

  On the screen, several of the triangles—positioned at various angles and on different planes—now formed a complex polygon. She shrugged, unimpressed.

  “I know,” Malik conceded. “Not much to look at, but let’s have the computer take that same triangle and repeat it a hundred thousand times, shrinking some, enlarging others, changing inclination, but basically just repeating the same triangle over and over again. Here is what you get.”

  Lorna’s eyes widened. “It’s forming a mountain range.”

  “Exactly. A landscape composed of millions of repetitions of the same shape. In this case, triangles. This is how computers today generate such detailed backgrounds in movies and video games. Just countless repetitions of the same basic algorithm or fractal to produce a more complex one.”

  “But what does all this have to do with—”

  Malik cut her off. “Because this phenomenon isn’t just found in mountains and coastlines. It’s found throughout the natural world. Take a tree, for example. If you look at the branching of any tree, it’s just a repetition of the same basic pattern, unique to that species of tree.”

  On the screen, she watched a simple shape appear: a single line with two branching offshoots, forming a Y Then more and more Y shapes branched out from the first and multiplied into a fully dimensional tree.

  “This same fractal basis of the natural world is found everywhere. From the structure of galaxies down to the tiniest snowflake, from the flow
of ocean currents up to the shape of clouds in the sky. It’s all around us and in us.”

  “In us?”

  “Fractals make up our bodies. They can be found in the growth of blood vessels, the pattern of alveoli in our lungs, the shape of our kidneys, even the branching of the dendrites in our brain. But it’s so much more than that. When you look deeper, they’re even in the way our bodies function. It’s been shown that fractals define how we walk, the beating pattern of our hearts, the rates of respiration of our lungs. Likewise, scientists are now using fractal science to evaluate brain function, studying the fractal pattern hidden within EEGs. And they found it.”

  Malik must have noted the look on her face and smiled. “That’s right. Some neurophysiologists are even coming to believe that the evolution of intelligence grew from fractals. That intelligence came about because of the repetitious growth of a smaller constant. In other words, there might be a fundamental fractal of intelligence, a primary seed from which all intelligence grew. Similar to that sprouting tree I just showed you. Can you imagine if we could harness that fractal, learn to control that power?”

  Lorna thought back on the animals from the trawler and their strange intelligence. “That’s what you’ve been experimenting on. You’re looking for that fractal?”

  “Exactly. And we’re close to a breakthrough.”

  Lorna heard the raw desire in his voice.

  Before Malik could explain further, a quiet knock on the door drew their attention around. The lab technician who had drawn her blood entered. He was a stick insect of a man, all legs and arms, with a receding hairline that made his features look squashed beneath that high forehead.

  Loathing swelled at the sight of him, along with fear.

  Were they already done with her tests?

  “What is it, Edward?”

  “Dr. Malik, I wanted to let you know that I’ve completed the scan on the subject.” His tiny eyes flicked to her, then away again. “Both blood and marrow. I find no evidence of contamination.”