The Dragon Factory

by Jonathan Maberry

  “But there were no pathogens in the water!” Paris said.

  “No. The pathogens are being released into lakes, streams, and reservoirs worldwide. The bottled water contains the gene for the disease. Drink a bottle of water . . . even brew a cup of tea with it . . . and specific ethnic groups and subgroups will develop the genetic disorder. Within a few weeks they will be vulnerable to infection from the pathogens in the regular drinking water. Or from exposure to anyone who has become infected. No one would think to look in the bottled water for the genes because no one can do gene therapy with bottled water.”

  “No one except us,” said Otto. “Funny thing is . . . it wasn’t as hard as we thought.”

  “But why?” demanded Hecate. “This is monstrous!”

  “It’s God’s will,” said Cyrus. “It’s the beginning of a New Order that will purify the world by removing the polluted races. Blacks and Jews and Gypsies and—”

  “Are you fucking crazy?” demanded Paris. “What kind of Nazi bullshit is this?”

  Cyrus’s smile grew and grew. “Nazi. Now . . . the moron shows a spark of intelligence by choosing exactly the right word.”

  Hecate looked confused. “Wait . . . you’re a Nazi? Since when?”

  “Since always, my pet. Since the very beginning.”

  “Since the beginning of what?”

  “Since the beginning of Nationalsozialismus,” Cyrus said, letting his German accent seep through. “Since the beginning of National Socialism in Germany. For me personally, I first embraced the ideals while working in the reserve medical corps of the Fifth SS Panzergrenadier Division Wiking. But it wasn’t until I met Otto at Auschwitz that I discovered the full potential of the party ideals.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” snapped Paris. “That’s World War Two crap. You weren’t even born then. . . .”

  Otto and Cyrus laughed out loud. “Idiot boy,” said Cyrus, “I was older than you when I came to work at Auschwitz. I was older than you when I made a name for myself that the world will never forget.”

  Paris shook his head, unable to grasp any of this.

  “Father . . . you’re rambling,” said Hecate. “You were born in 1946.”

  “No,” he said, wagging his finger back and forth, “Cyrus Jakoby was born in 1946. As were a dozen other cover names in six countries. But I was born in 1911.”

  “That’s impossible!” said Paris.

  Cyrus looked around. “We stand here in the midst of unicorns and flying dragons and you tell me antiaging gene therapy is impossible? Otto and I have been tampering with those genes for years. Granted there are . . . ,” he gestured vaguely to his head, “. . . the occasional psychological side effects, but we’re managing those.”

  “But . . . but . . . ,” Hecate began. “If Cyrus Jakoby is an alias . . . then who are you?”

  Otto said, “He’s a man you should be on your knees worshiping. Your father is the boldest, most innovative medical researcher of this or any generation.”

  The Twins stared at him, and even Veder’s eyes flickered with genuine interest.

  Cyrus touched his face. “Under all of this reconstructive surgery, beneath the changes I’ve made with gene therapy to change my hair color and eye color . . . beyond the façade,” he said, “I am the former Chief Medical Officer of the infirmary at Auschwitz-Birkenau. I am der weisse Engel—the ‘white angel’ that the Jews came to fear more than God or the Devil.”

  He smiled a demon’s smile.

  “I am Josef Mengele.”

  Chapter One Hundred Eight

  The Dragon Factory

  Twenty minutes ago

  The guard never heard a sound. He strolled back and forth along the footpath between the docks and the main building. He chewed peppermint gum and glanced now and again at the stars. Patrol duty was boring. Except for the night when the hit came in, the months of his service at the Dragon Factory were a huge ho-hum, and he’d been off-shift that night. The hit team had been taken out by a Stinger dog and one of the Berserkers.

  The guard hated the Berserkers. Those ugly goons got all the perks. Everyone thought they were so cool. Fucking transgenic ape assholes.

  He spit out his gum and began to turn to pace back to the dock.

  He never heard a sound, never felt anything more than a quick burn across his throat when Grace Courtland came up behind him and slit his throat from ear to ear.

  GRACE DROPPED THE corpse and two of her men dragged it into the bushes away from the light from the tiki-torches.

  She ran like a dark breeze along the edge of the path. Grace sheathed her knife and drew a silenced .22, and as she rounded the corner she saw two guards—one bending forward to light his cigarette from the lighter held in the cupped hands of the second. Grace shot them both in the head, two shots each.

  The path ended at the front of the building where two immense men stood guarding the tall glass doors. There was too much light from inside the building for a stealthy approach. Grace signaled to Redman, her second in command. She indicated the guards and gave a double twitch of her trigger finger. Redman waved another operative forward and they flattened out on either side of the path and flipped night vision over the scopes of their sniper rifles. Both rifles had sound suppressors. It would drop the foot-pounds of impact, but at this distance the loss of impact would be minimal.

  Redman fired a split second before Fayed. Two shots, two kills. The big guards slammed against the glass doors and fell.

  Grace Courtland smiled a cold killer’s smile and ran forward.

  FIFTY YARDS BEHIND her another group of shadows broke away from the wall of darkness under the trees. They were heading to the far side of the compound and did not see Grace and Alpha Team take out the guards or enter the building. Even if he had, the team leader, a harsh-faced man named Boris Ivenko, would have thought that he was seeing one of the many teams of Spetsnaz that were invading the island from every side.

  Chapter One Hundred Nine

  In flight

  Sixteen minutes ago

  “Eight minutes to drop, Captain,” called the pilot.

  About damn time, I thought.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bunny nudge Top and then the two of them share a look. I must have had quite an expression on my face. I turned away and hoisted my poker face on.

  There was a bing! in my earbud and then Church’s voice said, “Cowboy. Our spotters are seeing some activity around the island. Over two dozen small commercial fishing craft have closed on Dogfish Cay and launched boats.”

  “What the hell? Don’t tell me the Navy’s jumped the gun on this.” “No,” he said. “They’re not ours.”

  “Then who the hell are they?”

  “Unknown at this time.”

  “Russians?”

  “Possible, but there are a lot of them. Early estimates put the number at over one hundred.”

  “Christ. Any word from Grace? Do we have the trigger device?”

  “She reported in just before I called you. She does not yet have the device. This situation is still fragile.”

  Shit.

  “Okay . . . keep all of the backup on standby. I’m seven minutes from my drop. I’ll get back to you with intel as soon as I’m on the ground.”

  Chapter One Hundred Ten

  The Warehouse, Baltimore, Maryland

  Tuesday, August 31, 2:21 A.M.

  Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 33 hours, 39 minutes

  Rudy Sanchez unscrewed the top of the bottle of ginger ale and poured a glass for the Kid. There was a plate of sandwiches that the boy hadn’t touched and an open pack of cookies from which one had been taken, nibbled, and set aside. The boy looked briefly at the soda and then turned his head away and continued to stare at his own reflection in the big mirror that covered one wall.

  “You couldn’t sleep?” Rudy asked.

  The boy shook his head.

  “You probably have a lot of questions. About what’s going to
happen. About your own future.”

  A shrug.

  “SAM . . . ?”

  “That’s not my name.”

  “Sorry. Do you prefer to be called Eighty-two? No? Is there another name you’d prefer? You have a choice. You can pick any name you want.”

  “That guy Joe called me Kid.”

  “Do you like that? Would you like people to call you that?”

  A shrug.

  “Tell me what you’d like.”

  The boy slowly turned his head and studied Rudy. He was a good-looking boy, but at the moment his eyes held a reptilian coldness. The brown of his irises was so dark that his eyes looked black, the surfaces strangely reflective.

  “Why do you care?” said the boy.

  “I care because you’re a teenager and from what Joe’s told me you’ve been in a troubling situation.”

  The boy snorted. “ ‘Troubling.’ ”

  “Is there another word you’d prefer?”

  “I don’t know what to call it, mister.”

  Rudy said, “I also care because you’re a good person.”

  “How do you know?” The boy’s tone was mocking, accusatory.

  “You took a great risk to warn us about the Extinction Wave.”

  “How do you know I wasn’t just trying to save myself?”

  “Is that the case? Did you take all of those risks to send those two videos and the map just to save yourself? You took great risks to help other people. That’s very brave.”

  “Oh, please . . .”

  “And it’s heroic.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “No,” said Rudy. “Do you know what bravery is?”

  “I guess.”

  “Tell me.”

  “People say that being brave is when you do something even when you’re afraid.”

  Rudy nodded. “I imagine that you were afraid. You were probably very afraid, and yet you took a risk to send us this information.”

  The boy said nothing.

  “Why did you do it?”

  “That’s a stupid question.”

  “Is it?”

  “It’s stupid because I had to do it.”

  “Why did you have to do it?”

  The boy said nothing. His dark eyes were wet.

  “Why did you have to do it?” Rudy asked again.

  “Because.”

  “Because why?”

  “Because I’m afraid.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  Tears filled the boy’s eyes and he turned away again. He sat for a long time staring at his reflection. The lights were low and that side of the room was in shadows. It distorted the boy’s reflection, made him look older, as if the mirror was actually a window through which the boy could see his future self. A tear broke and rolled down one of his cheeks.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to go to Hell,” said the boy.

  Rudy paused. “Hell? Why do you think that? Why would you go to Hell?”

  “Because,” said the boy quietly, “I’m evil.”

  Chapter One Hundred Eleven

  The Chamber of Myth

  Tuesday, August 31, 2:22 A.M.

  Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 33 hours, 38 minutes E.S.T.

  Hecate and Paris stood there, surrounded by the wonders they had created, and both of them felt as if the world had been pulled out from under them.

  “Mengele?” Paris whispered. “I don’t . . .” He shook his head, unable to finish.

  “You still don’t get it, do you?” said Cyrus, his eyes glittering. “Everything I’ve done has been toward one end. To purify the world. Tomorrow I’ll send a coded message to operatives all over the world. Some will release the bottled water; others will release pathogens into the water supplies; others will send computer viruses out that will crash the CDC and other organizations. In one coordinated movement a process will be set into motion that cannot be stopped. Nothing on earth can prevent the spread of the pathogen once released into the populations of the mud people.”

  “ ‘Mud people,’ ” Hecate murmured. She looked dazed, her eyes glazed.

  “Why?” asked Paris. “Why do . . . this?”

  “To complete the work Otto and I began more than half a century ago. Otto, you see, is a nickname from his boyhood. His real name, his birth name, is Eduard Wirths. He was the Chief Medical Officer of the entire camp. He was my boss,” Cyrus said with a laugh.

  “Well, only for a while,” said Otto. To the Twins he added, “Your father was and is brilliant. When he came to the camps as a young captain I was immediately entranced by his vision, by his insights. Every day we would work on the prisoners in the camps and then we’d talk late into the evening, reviewing our research, excited by the directions it was taking, by the possibilities it presented. We were doing the work that would make the dream of eugenics practical. But even then we knew that the science at our disposal was not adequate to the tasks. So we planned. We built a network of scientists and supporters who would continue the work long after Hitler’s war was over. Even in the early days your father and I knew that the war would never be won by Germany. But it didn’t matter. Our plan for the New Order of humanity was so much bigger than the aspirations of a single nation.”

  “We knew what we had to do,” said Cyrus, taking up the thread of the story. “We hired spies to keep tabs on everyone who was doing work that would support our cause. Not just Germans, but Russians, and Americans. Even Jews. Anyone who was doing progressive research. When the war started going badly we had our friend Heinrich Haeckel smuggle copies of all of the research out of the country. Unfortunately, Haeckel suffered several strokes and was unable to communicate to us the location of the materials. Even then, though, we did not stop, did not falter. We built the Cabal—a network of scientists, spies, and assassins unlike anything the world had ever seen. Even today there are arms of the Cabal in every country, in every government. Your patron, Sunderland . . . his brother is a member of the Cabal; so is the man you called Hans Brucker, the man you hired to lead your hunts. Brucker is a product of our cloning program, along with many others who share his unique skill set.”

  Here Cyrus flicked a glance at Conrad Veder, but Veder missed it. He was watching Tonton, who had been very slowly edging toward a security phone mounted on the wall. If the big man took two more steps, Veder would shoot him.

  Paris shook his head. “This is all . . . too much. Why do this? What could you possibly gain from killing so many people?”

  “Change,” said Cyrus. “The Extinction Wave will ultimately eliminate all nonwhites. All of them. And the whites who survive will have to fight for the right to dominate and rebuild the world.”

  “You’re a fucking madman!” yelled Paris. “Both of you. You want to kill millions of people?”

  “No, Paris,” said Cyrus, “not millions. Billions. We’ve already killed millions.”

  “What . . . what do you mean?”

  “The Extinction Wave is not our first attempt,” said Otto. “If you count the attempts that yielded only moderate results, this is our tenth phase. Phase six was our biggest success.”

  “This will be much, much bigger,” said Cyrus.

  “What was phase six?” asked Hecate.

  Otto smiled like a vulture. “Your father took a disease that had presented in several chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys and reengineered it to work on humans. He released it into certain test populations in the late 1970s. It didn’t catch on as fast as we liked, but it gained a lot of traction in the eighties.”

  Paris paled. “God . . . you’re talking about AIDS.”

  “HIV,” Otto corrected, “but yes. It was introduced to homosexuals in the United States and Canada and then to the general population of Africa. It’s been quite effective.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “You keep saying that,” said Cyrus. “And while I admit that I do have some ‘moments,’ if you call me insane again I’ll have your hands cut off.”
<
br />   “Why didn’t you tell us this before?” asked Hecate.

  Cyrus shrugged. “I was waiting to see how you matured. We wanted to see if you had the qualities we hoped you’d have. The qualities we tried to build into you.”

  Hecate’s lips parted as his words sank in. “We’re part of your experiment, aren’t we?”

  “Everything I do serves the New Order.”

  Paris gagged. His eyes were wide and fever bright as understanding sank in.

  Hecate looked at the white purity of her hand. “The story has always been that we were special. Cosmic children . . . all of that stuff. But we’re just part of a breeding program to make superior beings.”

  “To make superior white beings,” corrected Otto. “Let’s keep perspective.”

  Paris whirled and threw up into the bushes. The winged serpent on the tree branch hissed and flew away.

  “I always said he had no stomach,” Cyrus said to Otto, who inclined his head. “We knew fifteen years ago that you were weak, Paris. You were the evidence that breeding programs would not be the answer. Even with the genetic manipulation to give you extra strength and intelligence, you’re still weak. That’s why the SAMs are so important.”

  “ ‘SAMs’?” echoed Hecate. “The boy that looks like you, the one at the Deck. I’m sure I saw another one that looked just like him. Are they your sons?”

  “No. Children have proven to be such a disappointment.”

  “Then . . . what?”

  “He’s me,” said Cyrus. “That’s why I call him SAM. That’s why I call all of them SAM. SAM. It’s an acronym.”

  Hecate shook her head.

  “SAM. Same As Me.”

  She got it now and her eyes widened. “They’re . . . clones?”

  “Yes,” said Cyrus. “And I have a lot of them. A whole family of them. Clones with transgenic enhancements. Superior beings. They will be the fathers of the new race, the race that will emerge from the chaos after the Extinction Wave has cleansed the world.”