The 6th Extinction (38 page)

Where could I go?

Even if she tried to run, these tribesmen knew this jungle far better than she did and she’d be quickly recaptured.

At the rain forest’s edge, she inhaled the perfume of the jungle, trying to push down her terror. A breeze stirred leaves, bringing the scent of forest blossoms, damp soil, and green life. As a park ranger, she found it hard to ignore the raw beauty here and the miracle of life in all its myriad forms: from the towering trees leading up to the thick emerald canopy, to the whispering passage of a troop of monkeys through the lower branches, even the parade of ants up the bark of her shade tree. She had read how the naturalist E. O. Wilson had counted over two hundred species of ants on a single rain forest tree. It seemed life was determined to fill every nook and niche in this resplendent Eden.

Something larger stirred closer at hand in the jungle, stepping free of the shadows only yards away, startling her.

The ebony-haired woman strode forward, as bare-chested as the men. Her only clothes were a pair of dark brown shorts that blended with her skin. She carried a bow over one arm, with a quiver of arrows strung across her back. Over her shoulders, she balanced the limp body of a fawn. It had a gray head and black legs, with fur of reddish brown. Large black eyes stared glossily out at its former home.

She passed by Jenna without even a glance.

The woman had only been out in the forest for fifteen minutes. She dumped the carcass near the hammocks, leaving it for the two natives who must live at this refueling station. For the woman, it looked like the hunt had not been for meat or skin, but only for the personal sport.

Jenna noted how the men avoided staring at the woman, even though her breasts—which were quite spectacular—were exposed.

The woman slipped back into the blouse hanging from a branch and spoke to the pilot in a low, relaxed voice. Her dark eyes flicked to Jenna, then back to the man before her. The pilot nodded, yelled at the pair of natives, and waved for them to clear their gear out of the way.

Apparently it was time to go.

Minutes later, Jenna was back in her seat in the rear cabin. The rotors spun up to a roar and the helicopter leaped skyward, breaking free of the jungle and out in the blaze of the midday sun. Tilting its nose slightly down, the helicopter sped over that endless expanse of green canopy.

She stared ahead.

A dark shadow rose near the horizon, still a long ways off.

Is that where we’re headed?

She had no way of knowing. All she knew for sure was that whatever waited for her at the end of this trek would not be pleasant. She closed her eyes and leaned back, girding herself against what was to come, missing her usual source of strength and resilience.

Nikko . . .

But her partner had his own battle to fight.

8:40
A
.
M
. PDT
Sierra Nevada Mountains, CA

Lisa wheeled the gurney toward the air lock that led out of her in vivo lab. The one surviving rat stirred in its test cage, coming forward to watch her pass, its pink nose twitching.

Sorry, I can only save one passenger on this sinking ship
.

Nikko lay on his side on the cushioned stretcher, barely breathing after the light sedation. His left front leg was splinted stiffly out, hooked to IV lines running to two bags: One contained fluids infused with a cocktail of antivirals and the other held platelet-rich plasma. The bags rested on the cushion next to the dog, waiting to be re-hung on poles.

Nikko’s stretcher was a patient containment transport gurney, sealed tightly under a clear hood with its own oxygen supply, flowing from tanks secured on the underside.

She pushed the gurney into the air lock, waited for the pressure to equilibrate, then as the green light flashed, she nodded to the figure outside. Edmund Dent hauled open the air lock door on his side and helped her draw the gurney into the small conference room at the center of the BSL4 labs.

“We must hurry,” Edmund said. “Don’t have much time.”

She knew this, too.

Lindahl and his cronies had all gone to oversee the arrival of the nuclear device to the mountain base, taking with him the entire team of nuclear and radiation scientists. For a brief window, the lab was mostly empty. The researchers still present were colleagues of Edmund, who had agreed to turn a blind eye to their current actions. They had all met Jenna, knew about her kidnapping and Lindahl’s plan to irradiate the dog.

Still, who knew how long that silence will last under pressure?

Edmund helped manhandle the containment gurney to the main decontamination air lock. A Marine stood guard on the far side. Edmund lifted an arm as the guard turned, as if what they were doing was totally normal.

Lisa entered the air lock alone, leaving Edmund behind to help cover for her. In her wake, he was going to sabotage the air lock into her lab, to delay Lindahl for as long as possible from discovering Nikko had gone missing.

The decontamination process started. Sprays bathed her suit and the outer shell of the gurney, followed by ultraviolet radiation, then another round of spraying and air drying. The entire process took an agonizing twenty minutes.

The Marine outside would glance in her direction every now and then. Lisa avoided eye contact.

Finally the light flashed green, allowing her out. In the anteroom beyond the air lock, she shed out of her containment suit. Sweat pasted her clothes into every bodily crevice, mostly from the heat inside her sealed suit, but also from fear of discovery. She grabbed the gurney’s handles and, with some effort, wheeled it out into the main hangar.

“Ready?” the guard asked.

She nodded. “Thanks.”

Corporal Sarah Jessup—an auburn-haired Marine in a perfectly pressed uniform—had been assigned as Painter’s personal aide. She had come with the highest praise from the base commander.

“You didn’t have to do this,” Lisa said as the two of them whisked Nikko through the cavernous space.

The woman shrugged. “I’m not breaking any rules. Director Crowe was assigned to be my direct superior. He verbally approved your actions. So I’m following orders like any good Marine.” Still, she smiled softly back at Lisa. “Besides, I have a chocolate Lab at home. If anyone ever tried to hurt Belle, they’d sorely regret it.”

Lisa took a deep steadying breath, thankful for the corporal’s cooperation. If Jessup had not agreed and had not arranged to cover this guard shift, stealing Nikko out of the lab would have been impossible.

The corporal had facilitated matters in one other way.

“I set up the temporary quarantine area per your instructions,” Jessup said. “In a place few would think to look.”

“Where’s that?”

Again that soft smile. “Back room of the base chapel. The chaplain has agreed to keep our cover, to deflect any inquiries.”

“You got a priest to lie for us.”

Her smile widened. “Don’t worry, he’s Episcopalian—and my boyfriend. Plus he loves Belle as much as I do . . . which he’d better or I’d never consider marrying him. Belle and I are a package deal.”

Lisa heard the young love in the corporal’s voice, reminding her of her own postponed nuptials. Missing Painter more acutely, she tamped down an ache in her heart.

She let Corporal Jessup lead the way, knowing this escapade would only buy them so much time. Eventually someone would talk or Nikko’s hiding place would be discovered. Even barring that, the larger nuclear threat loomed over all.

With another storm due to hit after midnight, Lindahl had set a timetable for detonation as early as nightfall.

She pictured a fiery mushroom cloud blooming over these mountains.

Despair settled over her. Someone had to find a way to stop all of this before it was too late.

But who . . . and most important, how?

11:43
A
.
M
. AMT
Roraima, Brazil

For the past two hours, Kendall had labored under the intense scrutiny of Cutter Elwes inside his facility’s BSL4 lab. Both of them were encased in bright white biosafety suits with yellow air hoses coiling up to the wall.

Kendall held up two vials and read the labels.

25UG OF CRISPR CAS9-D10A NICKASE MRNA
1UG OF CRISPR CAS9-D10A NICKASE PLASMID

The small glass ampules contained the essential ingredients for editing genes. With these tools, a researcher could precisely break the double strands of DNA at specific target sites, allowing changes to be introduced. These specific vials were used mostly for transgenic applications: for inserting a foreign gene—called a transgene—into another organism’s genetic code.

Like adding
new
wings to a bullet ant.

Cutter had plainly been playing God for some time, mixing foreign genes into established species. The act itself was not that shocking. The technology had been around for close to a decade, used to create transgenic creatures in labs all around the world. From bacteria to mice to even a colony of glow-in-the-dark cats. In fact, Cutter’s work here was not all that advanced, especially considering he had access to the latest MAGE and CAGE processes, techniques that could introduce
hundreds
of mutational changes at once.

Unfortunately, while Cutter’s creations were monstrous, Kendall didn’t have the moral high ground to truly malign his work. At Mono Lake, Kendall had used the contents of these same vials to design his synthetic virus. His creation had also been the result of transgenic engineering. Only the transgenes he inserted were even more
foreign
, coming from one of the XNA species found in the shadow biosphere beneath Antarctica.

That last detail was critical to his success at Mono Lake. It led to the breakthrough that allowed him to finally crack the key to turning an empty viral shell into a living, multiplying organism.

God, help me . . . I can’t let Cutter know how I did it
.

Cutter returned from the tall refrigerators at the rear of the lab. Through the glass windows, the rows of test tubes and vials glowed. It was the genetic library for his creations—both those in the past and what he wanted to create in the future.

He returned now with two glass tubes, each half full of cloudy solution.

“In my right hand,” he said, lifting that arm, “is the eVLP you engineered. Your perfect empty shell.”

Kendall had already seen proof of Cutter’s claim, spending the first hour in the lab examining his data, making sure the man had indeed recreated the exact same protein shell.

Cutter raised the other tube. “And this is
my
creation, a prion-sized piece of unique genetic code.”

So this is what the bastard wants to seed into my shell
.

Cutter’s use of the word
prion
was worrisome. Prions were infectious proteins responsible for such maladies as mad cow disease in bovines and Creutzfeldt-Jakob in humans. The clinical symptoms of such infections were invariably neurological in nature, usually affecting the brain. Worst of all, these diseases were incurable and often fatal.

Cutter lifted the vials higher. “Now you must show me how to combine our work.
Your
shell and
my
genetic code.” He put the two tubes into one hand and passed them to Kendall.

He reluctantly accepted them. “What does your code do?”

Cutter chided him with a wave of a gloved finger, then pointed to the workstation. “First you show me proof of concept. Show me that your success in California wasn’t a fluke.”

From this statement, Kendall could tell how galling it must be for Cutter to come begging for his help. Rather than accept that someone had accomplished what he could not, he would rather dismiss Kendall’s accomplishment as dumb luck or a fluke. As much as Cutter had been changed after his mauling by a lion, his conceit remained perfectly intact.

“It will still take some time,” Kendall stalled. “I’ll need a complete DNA analysis of your code to find a way to insert it into the shell.”

“It’s already stored on the computer at your station.”

“I’d like to do a complete analysis myself.”

Suspicion lowered Cutter’s left eyebrow. “Why repeat what’s already been done?”

“It’s a necessary part of my procedure. I’ll likely have to alter your code, add a key sequence to unlock that shell.”

At least that much was true.

Perhaps recognizing the logic of his statement, Cutter sighed and nodded. “Then get to work.”

Before the man could turn away, Kendall stopped him. “I’ve agreed to cooperate. Can’t you tell me how to stop the contagion in California?”

Before it’s too late
.

Cutter looked like he was actually considering this request. Finally, his eyes settled on Kendall. “I’ll give you part of the solution, if you tell me more about how this
key
unlocks your shell. I have to say that intrigues me enough to perhaps show a little goodwill.”

Kendall licked his dry lips, knowing he had to tiptoe carefully. He had to give Cutter enough information to be believed—the man was no fool—but not enough to show his hand completely.

Kendall cleared his throat. “Are you familiar with the media attention given to the Scripps Research Institute back in May 2014? After they announced the creation of a living, replicating colony of bacteria that contained new letters of the genetic alphabet?”

Cutter squinted in thought. “You’re referring to them inserting artificial nucleotide bases into a bacterium’s DNA.”

He nodded. It was groundbreaking work. All of life’s diversity on this planet—from slime mold to human beings—was based on a simple genetic alphabet of only four letters: A, C, G, and T. It was from the jumbling of those four letters that the riotous bounty of species arose on earth. But for the first time, the researchers at Scripps engineered a living bacterium with
two
additional letters in its genetic code: naming them X and Y.