The 6th Extinction

by James Rollins

  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.

  “What about it?” Cutter asked.

  “I did something similar,” Kendall admitted. “Using the CRISPR technique, I was able to clip out sections of old viral DNA and replace them with foreign pieces of XNA. It is that exact sequence of XNA genes—and no other—that acts like a key to unlock the shell.”

  “Giving life to your creation.” Cutter smiled. “That’s why I kept failing. I didn’t have that key.”

  And I hope you never get it.

  “I should’ve thought of it myself,” Cutter said. “That viral capsid, that perfect shell . . . you engineered its unusual configuration by producing proteins from XNA genes. So naturally to insert genetic material into that shell, it might take a specific sequence of XNA markers for the shell to accept it.”

  “A key to match the lock,” Kendall said. “That was my breakthrough.”

  Or at least part of it.

  “Ingenious, Kendall. You impress me.”

  “So if you’re satisfied, can you share more details about the cure?”

  It was Kendall’s only hope. If he could figure out the solution on his own, then maybe he wouldn’t have to give that bastard the recipe for arming the viral capsid.

  “Fair enough,” Cutter agreed. “First, you may remember how I mentioned earlier that the solution to annihilating your creation—to neutralizing it—was staring you and Harrington in the face all along. Like your solution with the key, it’s all about XNA.”

  “How so?”

  “What you sadly have failed to ask yourselves is why that exotic shadow biosphere has remained encapsulated in Antarctica for millennia, especially when there is an entire world out there almost defenseless against its aggressive and unique nature.”

  “What’s the answer?”

  “You hand me the key, and I’ll give you that answer . . . and the method to turn it to your advantage in California.”

  Kendall didn’t press the matter, knowing that was as much as he would get out of the man.

  Cutter swung away again. “I’ll leave you to your work. We have a guest arriving soon to whom I wish to speak.” He glanced back at Kendall. “But I’ll expect results when I get back. Trust me when I say, you don’t want to disappoint me.”

  Kendall watched him leave through the room’s air lock. In the main lab beyond, the hulking figure of Mateo stood guard, making sure Kendall stayed put.

  With no other choice, Kendall began his study of Cutter’s
unique piece of genetic code, the very material he wanted to insert into Kendall’s perfect genetic delivery system.

  But what was it? What was its purpose?

  If I could discover that, I might find a way to stop him.

  And if nothing else, working on this code would put off the moment when he must eventually tell Cutter the truth: that the key he wanted so badly was out of his reach. Kendall could not reproduce it here. To engineer that key, he would first need the lymphocytes from a singular species in that biosphere. Its XNA was so unique that it couldn’t be synthesized in any lab. It required a living sample to build that key.

  But how long can I keep that secret?

  For now all he could do was delay for as long as possible.

  But to what end? he wondered. Who can help me?

  11:55 A.M.

  Painter stood on a remote tarmac of the Boa Vista international airport under the blaze of the midday sun. He shaded his eyes with his good arm, watching the skies. His other arm rested in a sling, his wound freshly rebandaged.

  The airport lay only two miles outside the city and shared its facilities with Base Aérea de Boa Vista, the local contingent of the Brazilian Air Force. This corner of the grounds was rarely used, as evident from the weeds growing in the cracks in the blacktop. There was no runway, only a parking lot lined by a ramshackle row of old hangars and outbuildings, long gone to seed.

  The current air base had moved to more modern facilities on the airport’s far side. But this location served Painter’s needs, as it was far from regular traffic and out of sight of most eyes. A small group of Brazilian airmen guarded the entrance to this area, keeping the curious away.

  Drake paced impatiently behind him, while his teammates, Malcolm and Schmitt, lounged in the shade of one of the hangars.

  “Here they come,” Painter said, spotting a silver-gray aircraft cutting across that achingly blue sky.

  “What took them so goddamned long?” Drake griped.

  Painter didn’t answer, knowing it was frustration that had trimmed the Marine’s fuse so short. Drake clearly felt responsible for Jenna’s kidnapping, having abandoned her inside that café. Not that it was his fault, but saying so made no difference. The Marine had an uncompromising code of honor. Still, Painter suspected the true source of Drake’s anxiety was more personal than professional in nature. He and Jenna had grown close during this trial by fire.

  Drake joined him, shading his eyes against the sun’s glare.

  Across the sky, the blip raced toward them. The plane had flown in from the USS Harry S. Truman, a Nimitz-class supercarrier conducting exercises in the South Atlantic.

  As Painter watched, the aircraft’s twin props swung from vertical to horizontal, slowing the plane and transforming it into a helicopter. The craft was similar to its larger brother, the MV-22 Osprey, that had ferried Painter from the coast of California to the Marine base in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This aircraft was the new Bell V-280 Valor, sometimes called the Son of Osprey because of its smaller, sleeker design. It functioned mainly as a scout plane and could race at close to three hundred knots, covering a range of eight hundred nautical miles.

  Perfect for where they needed to go.

  The Valor hovered overhead and began to lower. Painter and Drake retreated across the cracked tarmac—or more accurately they were pushed back by the rotor wash from the twin props. The Valor landed as delicately as a mosquito on a bare arm. The noise was not as loud as would be expected, due to the stealth technology incorporated into the design, which muffled the engine’s roar.

  The side hatch opened.

  True to her word, Kat had sent them additional men; another trio of Marines hopped out, dressed in body armor and helmets. Drake and his teammates greeted their comrades, clasping forearms in a brotherly fashion.

  The swarthy leader of the support team strode up to Painter. “Heard you had some trouble, sir,” he said with a slight Hispanic accent. “I’m Sergeant Suarez.” He waved his arm to the two men flanking him, a muscular black Marine with eyes of steel and a red-haired mountain of a man. “Lance Corporals Abramson and Henckel.”

  Painter shook each soldier’s hand. “Thanks for your help.”

  Suarez faced the aircraft. “The Valor’s a great little bird. It’ll be a tight squeeze aboard her, but we’ll manage.” The sergeant looked up at the blazing sun. “Hot one today, isn’t it?”

  He nodded.

  And it’ll likely get even hotter . . . in more ways than one.

  24

  April 30, 4:03 P.M. GMT

  Queen Maud Land, Antarctica

  Gray stood in the front cab of the massive snow cruiser, leaning on the back of the driver’s seat. The wide windshield offered a panoramic view of the passing terrain of the cavernous Coliseum. For the past hour, they had been slowly traversing the heart of this stone delta, working their way through the petrified forest that towered all around.

  Presently the cruiser skirted along the edge of a large lake, so wide the far side could not be discerned, even under the blaze of the cruiser’s six headlamps, each the size of a manhole cover. Their path was lit brightly enough that they no longer needed their night-vision goggles.

  Fringing the lake grew tall corpse-white reeds, crowned by waving, glowing filaments. Only these plants—or maybe they were animals—would rise on stilted legs and wade farther away as they neared. Stella said the bioluminescent bulbs of the reeds would attract insect life, snaring the unwary in those acidic tendrils.

  And it wasn’t only these reeds that avoided the cruiser.

  Their blazing passage drew the attention of life down here, but the sheer size and the loud rumbling roar of its engines seemed to intimidate most predators or scatter the more timid species.

  Kowalski manned the wheel. Normally riding shotgun with the big man in any vehicle was an unnerving experience, but Kowalski had the most history with driving semis and plainly had some mad skills with the cruiser, already proving his adept talent at maneuvering the monstrous rig through this harsh terrain. The guy might not have much luck with the ladies, but his affinity for engines certainly made up for it.

  Clenching the stub of a smoldering cigar in his teeth, Kowalski concentrated on working the gears as he rode the cruiser over a fall of boulders, tipping its fifty-foot-long bulk sideways as the gargantuan tires chewed through the rockfall.

  “Careful,” Gray warned.

  “Don’t need a backseat driver,” Kowalski grumbled. “Go find out how much farther we have to go. Forget miles per gallon . . . this thing gets yards per gallon. We’ll be running on fumes before much longer.”

  To prove it, he tapped a thick finger on a gauge, showing it approaching an ominous red line.

  Not good.

  While life down here mostly ignored the cruiser, its lumbering passage stirred up everything in its wake, making it even riskier now to leave its shelter.

  As the vehicle climbed free of the boulder pile, Gray left Kowalski to his driving and ducked down a short ladder into the main hold of the rig. The lower space had once been split into two floors, but apparently someone had gutted it long ago into this one big cabin. Still, the original bench seats lined both sides, leading to a rear ramp that could be dropped open to allow troops to bail out the back.

  He found Stella and Jason sitting close together, talking softly, discussing what sounded like a biology lesson. He crossed to Harrington, who sat sullenly across the cabin, his elbows resting on his knees, his head hanging.

  “Professor,” Gray said, “we’re running low on diesel. How much farther is this Back Door substation?”

  Harrington lifted his face, his complexion wan and tired, his eyes glassy with anxiety. It looked like he had aged decades during the journey from Hell’s Cape. “Not far. The Back Door is at the opposite end of the Coliseum. Can’t miss it.”

  Something screeched loudly, then struck the top of the cruiser. Claws dragged along the roof—before falling away again.

>   We’d better reach it soon.

  Harrington cast a worried glance toward his daughter—then leaned over, clutched Gray’s knee, and whispered with some heat. “If something goes wrong, you’ll get her out of here.”

  “I’ll do my best,” he promised.

  His words seemed to offer Harrington little solace. To distract the man, he sat next to him.

  Gray motioned to indicate the bulk of the cruiser. “So what was Admiral Byrd doing down here?”

  “I think he came looking for a secret Nazi sub base—and found this place instead. All I can say for sure is that he arrived in Antarctica in 1946, a year after the end of World War II. He was accompanied by thirteen ships, over twenty aircraft, and almost five thousand men.”

  “Five thousand . . . why that many?”

  “It was called Operation Highjump. The official story was that Highjump was a polar training exercise, coupled with a mission to map the continent, but most of his expedition’s objectives were kept top secret. It led later to a series of atomic blasts down here. I think the bigwigs who oversaw Byrd’s expedition had been trying to bottle this place up. It’s said that Byrd was never really the same after that expedition, that he was a changed man, more reclusive, sickly. Some blamed it on the time he spent alone on the ice years before, but I wonder if it wasn’t this place.”

  One only had to stare at Harrington’s haunted, scared eyes to understand what he meant.

  “Maybe we should never have found these caverns again,” the professor said. “Maybe we should have heeded Darwin’s wisdom to keep this secret buried and untouched.”

  Kowalski hollered from up front. “Better come see this!”

  The urgency in his voice drew them all to their feet. They piled up into the front cab. Harrington dropped heavily into the passenger seat.

  Past the windshield, a vast swampland blocked the way ahead, flowing with streams, pools, and a scatter of waterfalls. The great petrified forest behind them dwindled down to a handful of lonely sentinels out there. Overhead, stalactites pointed down from the roof.

  Across this swampland spread vast fields of the phosphorescent reeds, lighting even the darkness beyond the reach of their headlamps. Strange creatures moved everywhere across this macabre field. Wading birds took off on leathery wings, fleeing the arrival of the growling, smoking beast of a cruiser. Lumbering shadows slumped through the reeds, their presence only discernible by their passage. Along the banks, other creatures slithered, hopped, or crawled out of their way. All the while, screams, caterwauls, and piping songs pierced their steel cocoon, as if life down here continually challenged this noisy trespasser into their midst.