Altar of Eden (24 page)

“
Bon Dieu.
You don’t look so good, little brother.”

Jack couldn’t argue with Randy’s assessment. He felt like someone had poured molten lead into his joints while leaving his skin to alternately burn or go damp with a cold sweat. He had drugged himself with some nondrowsy TheraFlu and hoped it would be enough to sustain him for another twenty-four hours.

“I’ll be fine,” he said to Randy, as much as to himself.

His brother stood a few yards from a small A-Star helicopter as it warmed up its engine, rotors whirling up to full speed. The roaring whine cut like a rusty hacksaw into his skull. The chopper would be airlifting Randy and Kyle over to the Thibodeauxs’ boat, currently steaming toward Lost Eden Cay.

Off to the side, Kyle stood with his arms crossed, anxious to get moving, one fingernail digging into his plaster cast, like a dog worrying a bone. He had wanted to join Jack’s assault team, to go directly after his sister, but his broken wrist precluded him from accompanying them. Not that Jack would have let Kyle anyway. He needed men he could trust, men with military training in covert operations.

Still, Kyle looked ready to claw his cast off and join Jack’s men. Mack Higgins and Bruce Kim waited a couple decks below, down by the wellhead with the drill crew. Even farther down, a seaplane floated at the foot of the offshore platform, ready to fly the assault team over to the island and dump them and their gear a mile offshore.

“You have the timetable?” Jack asked Randy.

His brother tapped a finger against his skull. “
Mais oui.
It’s all in here.”

Jack didn’t like the sound of that. He’d just spent the past half hour going over the assault plan in the office of the rig’s geologist. For this to work, each group would have to act in perfect synchronization.

Kyle stepped forward and cast a scowl in Randy’s direction. “Don’t worry. I have it all written down. We’ll wait for your signal before approaching the island.”

Jack nodded, glad at least that someone good with numbers was going to be aboard the Thibodeauxs’ boat. He had full confidence in Randy and his friends when it came to a down-and-dirty bar fight, but as to sticking to timetables, Cajuns seldom wore wristwatches.

Randy merely shrugged. “Whatever. We’ll be where we need to be.”

“And I’ll make sure they are,” Kyle added.

Now it was Randy’s turn to glower.
“Je vais passer une calotte,”
he threatened under his breath.

There was definitely no love lost between these two men. Jack hoped that old anger—buried deep between their two families—didn’t boil up into a problem for this mission.

“Just get on board the chopper,” Jack said. “I’ll touch base by radio when we’re in the air.”

The two men turned to the helicopter. They kept a wary distance from each other as they walked away.

Jack dismissed them from his mind and headed for the stairs that led down from the elevated helipad. He wanted to be out of direct earshot when the helicopter took off. His head pounded with each rising beat of the rotors as he climbed down the steep stairs. Finally sheltered from the rotorwash, he was assaulted again by the smell of oil and axle grease from the rig. The farther down he went, the worse it got, until he swore he could taste grease on the back of his tongue.

Fighting down a gag, he stopped on a landing that fronted the open Gulf. A fresh breeze blew in his face. He sucked down a few cold gulps to clear his head. As he did so the A-Star helicopter lifted off overhead and flew over the waters.

He watched the chopper swing south—then his cell phone vibrated in his pocket.
Now what?
He pulled it out and checked the caller ID. He didn’t recognize the number, except it was a New Orleans area code. Unsure who it was, he answered it brusquely.

A familiar voice responded, as calm and gentle as if this were an invitation to high tea. “Agent Menard . . . I’m glad I could still reach you.”

“Dr. Metoyer?” Jack let both his surprise and impatience ring out.

“I know you must be in a hurry,” Carlton Metoyer said, “but I believe I have information that may have a bearing on your mission.”

Jack stepped back into the freshening breeze off the Gulf to listen. “What is it?”

“It’s about what was done to the animals. With all that happened back at the lab, we never had time to review our DNA analysis on that extra chromosome found in those animals.”

Jack recalled that Lorna had mentioned something about an extra chromosome. She believed it was the cause of the strange mutation in the animals.

“Once we got settled at the Audubon Zoo here, Zoë and I had a chance to run through those results. The chromosome proved to bear some shocking characteristics. Something you should know about.”

“Go ahead. But I’m pressed for time.”

“Of course, Agent Menard. Let me get to the point. I don’t know how familiar you are with genetic code, specifically with
junk
DNA?”

Jack sighed, earning a flare of his stabbing headache. “Biology was not my strong suit, Doctor.”

“No worries. This is Biology 101. As I’m sure you already know, DNA is a vast storehouse of genetic information. The human code is three billion letters long. But what you must understand is that only a very small percentage of DNA—three percent—is actually functional. The other ninety-seven percent is genetic garbage, basically baggage we’ve accumulated and been carrying around for millennia.”

“So why are we dragging it along?”

“Good question. Recent studies now suggest that not all junk DNA is pure garbage. Researchers have noted that specific regions of junk DNA match base pair for base pair with old viral code.”

Jack checked his watch, not sure where this was going.

Carlton continued: “There are two theories of why we carry around this ancient viral code. One scientific camp says it’s there to protect us against a new viral attack, basically genetic memory lying in wait until it’s needed again. The other camp says it’s merely old viral code that became absorbed into our DNA over the course of millennia. Literally the baggage of evolution. I’ve come to believe maybe it’s both. Especially as these bits of viral code can be found in DNA across animal species, from the lowliest burrowing mole to us humans. It’s like we’re carrying these identical chunks from some ancient source and keeping it for some future reason.”

Jack heard an edge of excitement enter the doctor’s voice. “What’s the point here, Doctor?”

“Yes, of course. I’m rambling. We’ve been studying the genetic code of that foreign chromosome, and Zoë had the brilliant idea to compare the sequence to various data banks, including the Human Genome Project. Within an hour, we had a hit.”

“What do you mean?”

“The genetic code of the extra chromosome. We found the exact same code already buried in our junk DNA—and not just ours but most animals’.”

“What?”

“The extra chromosome in these test subjects matches a set of old viral codes locked in
all
animal DNA, including our own.”

“Okay, but what does all that mean?”

“It means that animal kind—at least vertebrates—might have been exposed to this extra code before. Sometime in our evolutionary past. We dealt with it, and it became an inert part of our genome. Only now we’ve encountered it again. In
active
form.”

“Active?”

“I’ll let Zoë explain. She has the better grasp on this.”

Before Jack could object, the phone was fumbled and a new voice spoke. “Hi, Jack. Sorry to bother you.”

“How are you holding up, Zoë?”

“Okay. I just need to keep busy, to be useful.”

His ear picked up the strain, the tears hidden behind her words. It drew an ache from his heart, echoing his fear for Lorna. “Tell me what you learned, Zoë.”

Her voice grew firmer, moving away from that well of grief. “Before we left ACRES, my husband, Paul, had been studying the DNA, highlighting certain sequences of code, what we call genetic markers. It was plain what he suspected. The markers were unmistakable.”

“Unmistakable of what?” Jack asked.

“The markers clearly suggest this foreign chromosome is viral in origin.”

“Viral? Wait. Are you saying the chromosome is a
virus
?”

“We’re coming to believe so. Most viruses invade a cell’s nucleus, then hijack the host’s DNA by meshing with it in some manner. It’s why so many pieces of viral code make up our junk DNA. Only this virus doesn’t only hijack a host’s DNA. It became its own chromosome.”

Again Jack felt a sweeping chill. He began to get an inkling of why Carlton had called.

“We assumed someone had been genetically engineering these animals,” Zoë continued, “that they were taking foreign genetic material and artificially inserting it into these animals. The same way we can insert a glowing gene of a jellyfish into a mouse egg and breed mice that can glow. But it was an assumption we jumped to prematurely. After these results, it’s possible that the animals might have been merely exposed to this virus,
infected
with it. They then passed the genetic code to their offspring, who were born with these strange changes.”

Jack now understood why he’d been called. He stared across the empty Gulf waters. No wonder the kidnappers chose an isolated island for their experiments.

“This virus,” he said. “You think it might be contagious?”

“It could be. We don’t know. We’ve already put the animals here in strict quarantine. But we thought you should know before you reached the island. To take precautions.”

“Thanks. We’ll do that.” Jack was suddenly all too conscious of his flu symptoms, but he didn’t have time to worry about it. He had a job to do.

The tromping of boots on the steel stairs drew his attention away from the Gulf. Mack Higgins climbed up to the landing. He still chewed on the stump of a cold cigar. His eyes widened at finding Jack there.

“Just a second, Zoë.” Jack lowered the phone and nodded to Mack. “What is it?”

“Pilot says we’re all fueled up.”

Jack nodded and lifted the phone again. “Is that all you have, Zoë?”

“Only one last thing.” There was a long pause. Her voice came back brittle with anger and hurt. “Find Lorna. Bring her home. And make those bastards who killed Paul pay.”

“I promise, Zoë. On both counts.” He hung up. Lowering the phone, he faced Mack. “We set to go?”

“Pilot needs another ten minutes to run a final preflight check, then we’ll have the thumbs-up. But you should know. I just got off the horn with Jimmy back at the station. Paxton’s blowing a gasket over there. Knows we’re AWOL and off the grid.”

Jack grimaced. It was bad news, but not unexpected. Paxton was no fool. Jack’s venture threatened to get them all canned, if not tossed into prison.

“It’s not too late for you and Bruce to head back,” he offered.

Mack grinned rakishly around his cigar. “What would be the fun of that?”

Jack clapped him on the shoulder in thanks and motioned him back toward the stairs. “What about word from the FBI agent? Any sign of Dr. Polk’s GPS signal?”

Mack’s demeanor darkened. “Not a blip or a ping out there, boss.”

Jack swore inwardly. If only he had more proof that Lorna was out there . . . not just for Paxton, but for himself, too. As he headed down the stairs doubt began to fray the edges of his resolve. What if she wasn’t even on the island? Or what if she was already dead? He swallowed back those fears. They would do him no good.

She had to be alive—and somehow he knew that to be true. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t in bad trouble. And unfortunately he felt that just as strongly, and that fear grew with every passing minute.

“We still bugging out of here in ten?” Mack asked.

Jack shook his head. “No. We’re out of here now.”

Lorna must have passed out. One minute she was heaving bile into a bucket beside the treatment table, and the next she was on her back on the same table. Smelling salts passed under her nose. The ammonia smell felt like a kick to the face. She batted away the technician’s hand.

What are they doing to me?

The ovary-stimulating drugs had been injected intravenously. Nausea swept through her even before the last needle had slipped out of her vein. She fought it for a full ten minutes, but eventually her stomach gave out. They must have expected that side effect and kept an emesis pan bedside. She filled it three times until she was left dry-heaving.

As the smelling salts brought her back around she struggled to sit up. The room spun.

“I’d lie down,” a voice said beside her.

She turned and recognized the broad-shouldered gentleman from the villa’s study. Seated next to her, he still wore the same hiking pants and khaki vest. This was Bryce Bennett, the man behind the operations here. Up close, he appeared even larger. His tanned face looked like fine-grained leather, his blue eyes like pale ice.

He waved the technician out of the room.

“I had chemotherapy for lymphoid cancer ten years ago,” Bryce said, leaning forward. “Got it from exposure during my years as a submariner. Back when soldiers were still watching atomic tests from the sidelines. So I know what you’re feeling right about now. But you’ll get your sea legs back in a few more minutes. At least the other women did.”

Lorna stared around. She was momentarily alone in the treatment room with the man. Not that she could do anything. She felt as weak as a newborn with pneumonia. But with each breath, she did feel her head clearing.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. She meant it to mean
why
had the big man bothered to come down here. But the single question encompassed so much more. Why were they putting her through this? What was the purpose of all of this?

He took her question literally. “I came here after speaking with Dr. Malik. Something you said intrigued me. I thought we could share a few minutes before they’re ready to continue the procedure.”

“What about?”

“About Eden.”

She didn’t know what to make of that and remained silent.

Bennett sighed and leaned back in his chair. She noted a silver crucifix pinned to his jacket’s lapel. It flashed as he shifted back into his seat.

“But let’s start at the beginning. I started this project because of a paper produced by the chief scientific advisers of the Pentagon, a group calling themselves the JASONs.”

He lifted an eyebrow at her to see if she’d heard of them.

She merely kept her face blank, giving him nothing.

“Ten years ago, the JASONs fiercely advocated for the military to invest greater resources into what they all called
Human Performance Modification.
They were concerned that our enemies were getting the upper hand. Foreign powers were already doing pharmaceutical research into performance enhancement. Such drugs could produce troops who were smarter, stronger, and better able to handle the rigors of war. You can imagine the alarm bells that raised among the Pentagon top brass.”

Bennett chuckled at the thought. “The advisers went on to warn the brass that the U.S. was falling way behind, and as a matter of national security, they recommended two things: to increase research funding and to monitor those foreign studies abroad. And believe me, following this report, money flowed—and it flowed in all directions. One of my competitors in the defense contracting business is already actively testing drugs as a way to improve memory and cognitive performance in troops.”

Lorna began to understand where this was headed. She pictured the brain scan back in Malik’s office. She also recalled the description Duncan had used for the project:
bioweapon systems.

“Following those guidelines, money also went into monitoring other projects abroad. It was during a coordinated attempt to co-opt foreign researchers as moles that we were approached by Dr. Malik.”

A door opened behind Bennett. As if summoned by his name, Malik swept into the treatment room. At his heels followed the chief of security. Duncan was red in the face, making his scars stand out more prominently.

From their demeanors, it was plain they’d been arguing.

Bennett turned to them. “What’s wrong?”

Duncan spoke first. “We’ve lost one of the cameras in the compound.”

“It might just be a mechanical glitch,” Malik quickly added.

“Or it could be one of his creatures took out the camera. If they were smart enough to cut out the tracking device in order to sneak over here and kill one of my men, then they’re smart enough to knock out a camouflaged camera.”

“What about the other cameras?” Bennett asked. “What are they showing?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Malik insisted. “Their activity appears routine. No sign of any hyperaggression. I still say such outbursts are isolated aberrations and can be eradicated.”

“And I say we go in with assault rifles and purge the place.”

Bennett held up a hand. “That would set us years behind. Duncan, have the security doubled at the gate between the two islands and send an armed team to check on that camera. We’ll decide what to do from there.”

Lorna listened to this exchange in silence. Back in vet school, she’d learned that it was better to keep quiet and let the client do most of the talking. More information came out that way.

But Duncan didn’t fail to note her presence. He glared at her as if this were all her fault. “Sir, I also heard word from our computer tech. It looks like the New Orleans facility does indeed contract with Compu-Safe to back up their computers. There’s a good chance their data was saved to an outside server. We’re still tracking where that might be.”

“Keep looking,” Bennett growled. “We can’t risk losing our technological advantage.”

“Yes, sir.” Duncan headed away again.

Lorna was glad to see him go.

Bennett turned his attention to Malik. “Doctor, you’ve arrived at an opportune time. I was just going over how the Babylon Project got started, how you sensed the winds were changing and threw your hat on our side of the ring.”

“Yes. Such a change also allowed me to continue my research, only this time with sufficient funding.”

“We call that a win-win situation,” Bennett said.

“Indeed.”

Bennett faced Lorna. “Do you know why we call our work here the Babylon Project?”

She shook her head.

“Because it started in the biblical region of Babylon. Dr. Malik was already under way with his project twenty years ago, a secret weapons project hidden beneath the Baghdad Zoo. He was doing biowarfare research with a virus he discovered in a small Kurdish village in the mountains near Turkey. You may have heard of Saddam destroying Kurdish villages back in 1988. During that attack, he bombarded this village, too, and many others with mustard gas and Sarin nerve agent. He also bleached the local wells. All to cover up what they found there.”

“What did they find?” Lorna asked hoarsely, her throat sore.

Malik answered. “All the children in the village had been born strangely
regressed
during the prior year.”

Lorna pictured the hominids and could guess what the doctor meant by
regressed.

“The children were kept hidden by the superstitious villagers, believing their lands to be cursed. This certainty also grew after similar genetic abnormalities appeared in the village’s goats and camels. Eventually word spread, especially when the adult villagers began to get sick, succumbing to strange fevers that left them hypersensitive to light and noise.”

Lorna recalled Malik describing a toxic protein.

“I was called in to investigate. I did DNA tests and found all the children bore a chromosomal defect.”

“An extra chromosome.”

“That’s right. But it wasn’t a chromosome. It was an invader. A virus that injected its own DNA into a cell nucleus and took up residence there.”

Lorna finally sat up. This time the room only spun a little. The nausea was also quickly receding, though a cramping ache had begun to throb in her lower back, likely rising from her drug-assaulted ovaries.

“A virus?” she asked.

“That’s right. And from what we’ve been able to tell of its evolutionary origin, we’ve encountered it before.”

As proof, Malik went on to describe how remnants of this code still existed in our DNA, buried and dormant, just a fragment of junk DNA.

“In fact, this ancient exposure may be why all animal species carry some level of magnetite crystals in their brain. Like broken pieces of a mirror stuck in our head, a remnant left behind from this previous encounter millennia ago.”

Malik continued: “But these villagers exposed themselves anew, along with their livestock, when they dug a new well, far deeper than they’d ever gone due to a decade-long drought. Once the water was flowing, they quickly contaminated themselves and their livestock with this virus.”

She understood. “And this virus inserted its DNA, spreading through their cells.”

“It seems to concentrate in very active cells. Lymph, gastrointestinal cells, bone marrow. But also germ cells in ovaries and testicles.”

“And in doing so, it passed its DNA to their offspring.”

“Exactly right. But in the cells of adult animals, it remained dormant, inactive. It only switched
on
inside a fertilized egg. The virus began to express itself as the embryo grew, changing the architecture of the brain to meet its ends. In early embryonic development, it triggered the brain to form those magnetite deposits, and then it grew in a fractal manner in tandem with the developing brain.”

Lorna pictured again that fractal tree, spreading ever outward.

“The viral DNA also continues to produce proteins as an offspring grows. We believe the protein acts as a neurostimulator, basically keeping the neurons more excited, generating additional energy to power and maintain this fractal antenna. But it’s this same protein that kills those who don’t have the neurological capacity to handle it, those who don’t have this magnetic architecture in their brains. Truly insidious when you think about it.”

“How do you mean?” Lorna asked.

“Maybe this deadly feature also serves an evolutionary advantage. A way for the new generation to wipe out the old.”

Lorna went cold at this possibility.

“Either way,” Malik said, “we
do
know another effect of these proteins. Under electron microscopy, we studied the rest of the host’s DNA. Specifically we examined the region of our junk DNA that corresponded to the virus’s genetic code. This region was puffy and unbundled, suggesting active transcription and translation.”

“And what does that mean?” Bennett asked, scrunching his brow.

Lorna knew the answer. Her stomach churned—but not from the injected drugs this time.

Malik explained. “Such an appearance suggests that ancient region of DNA had become active again. In other words, what was junk was no longer junk.”

“How could that happen?” Lorna pressed.

“I could go into detail about messenger RNA, reverse transcriptase, but suffice it to say that these proteins stimulated and awakened this ancient DNA. I believe that awakening this old code is one of the reasons these animals end up being genetic throwbacks. That by turning on the DNA carried in the genome for millennia, it somehow also dredged up each animal’s genetic past, reawakening evolutionary features locked for millennia within that junk DNA.”

“Like some sort of genetic trade-off,” Lorna said.

Malik crinkled his brow at her, not understanding.

She laid it out. “The virus triggers a leap
forward
neurologically, but to balance it out, there’s also a corresponding evolutionary leap
backward
.”

Malik’s eyebrows rose on his forehead. “I’d never considered that.” Bennett nodded. “Hassan, maybe you were right about Dr. Polk. She might bring a fresh outlook to your problem.”

“I agree.”

They both faced her.

“If you’re feeling settled enough to walk,” Bennett said, “it’s time you truly got a taste of Eden. And the serpent that plagues us.”