Subject Z spoke in a deep, resonant voice that seemed to echo from all around it at once.
“Have you come . . . to die?”
Staley shouted and pulled the trigger.
The creature moved in a blur and vanished into the foliage. Bullets pounded the bodies of the animals he was certain were dead, even as they struggled to rise from the ground.
Simmons yelled and fired a fusillade that shredded the vegetation. His war cry metamorphosed into a scream that abruptly ceased as his blood-spattered helmet rolled out from beneath the ferns.
“Fall back!” Staley shouted.
He turned and sprinted into the rainforest. Branches slashed at his face and chest, making it impossible to see. His foot snagged on a root and he went down hard. Pushed himself up from the slick mud, only to fall again.
Gunfire crackled from somewhere ahead of him, but when he looked up, it wasn’t one of his fellow soldiers he saw.
A pair of long, thin legs protruded from the muck, their skin pallid and psoriatic, almost like the scales of a dead trout. The thighs and hips were corded with muscle. He followed the sculpted abdomen over a pair of bare breasts to the head of a stag. The deer’s eyes had been removed, leaving ragged holes through which reptilian eyes with slit pupils stared.
A crashing sound from the underbrush beyond the figure. Koish screamed. His rifle clattered to the ground.
The woman looming over Staley had to be nearly seven feet tall. She reached up with her massive hands, curled her long fingers around the antlers, and lifted the mask from her head.
Staley’s cries echoed through the jungle until, once more, only silence remained.
3
ANYA
The Hangar
The tomb in Mosul had been immediately sealed and the unknown biological agent determined to be “dangerous and exotic,” a classification which meant that no one was taking any chances with it. Anya and Evans, along with every soldier who’d been within a quarter-mile of the scorched school, had been quarantined for seventy-two hours and subjected to a battery of painful and invasive tests, all of which had come back negative. During what Evans liked to call their forced vacation, the necropolis had been converted into a Biohazard Safety Level 4 containment facility and a hard-military cordon enforced at a one-mile radius. They’d been granted permission to return with the appropriate positive-pressure isolation suits, but only long enough to document the site.
In addition to photographing the underground cave from every conceivable angle, they’d used a FARO laser scanner to generate a perfect 3-D representation of each of the caverns, right down to the cobwebs hanging from the ceilings and the petroglyphs chiseled into the stone walls. They’d then sent the data files to one of Unit 51’s computer gurus, who’d spent the last six months converting their work into a virtual reality program that would supposedly allow them to peruse the tombs at their leisure.
Fortunately, they’d been allowed to collect various biological and bone-core samples that had survived the sterilization process, which gave them something to work on in the meantime. Had they known that the entire necropolis would be subsequently “sanitized,” which was apparently the terminology used for obliterated from the face of the planet, they would have been more aggressive in their initial investigation. She understood they couldn’t risk an extremist faction like Al-Qaeda or a hostile state like Iran gaining access to any kind of virulent biological agent, although she couldn’t help but wonder if it wasn’t all part of an elaborate cover-up to make sure that no one found out about the nature of the bodies entombed within.
The Teleportation Room, as it was known, had been constructed on the second sublevel of the Hangar specifically for VR viewing. There were four individual units, each of which featured a circular railing and a treadmill-like floor that moved in any direction to allow the viewer to explore the virtual environment without worrying about harming his or her corporeal form. The headset functioned in tandem with a rotating camera that detected the viewer’s movements, making it possible to incorporate physical investigative techniques like crouching and leaning over objects. Everything about it was intimidating to Anya, like voluntarily plugging herself into the Matrix, until the goggles were on and she was magically transported into the Iraqi caverns.
Anya found herself in the antechamber. She could look down and see the bones protruding from the dirt below her where her feet should have been. The petroglyphs on the walls were even clearer than they had been in person, thanks to the various filters and digital enhancements the designer had applied. To say he’d done an amazing job was an understatement.
She exited the antechamber and passed through the room where the mutated remains lay contorted on the ground. The lab had been able to isolate a portion of the virus’s DNA from bone cores, but the samples had been too degraded by the ravages of time to generate a complete genome. Based on what they could tell, however, the protein sequences were similar to those of hemorrhagic fevers like the Ebola and Marburg viruses. They’d been reluctant to commit beyond that, though. Of course, considering they’d finally discovered something capable of bringing down creatures like Subject Z, she had no doubt they were currently in a frenzy trying to revive and weaponize it.
Anya wanted no part of that. The mere thought of cooking up such nasty pathogens in a lab scared her on a primal level. There were undoubtedly countless similarly horrific primitive organisms frozen in the permafrost, just waiting to be thawed, though, so it was probably only a matter of humanity choosing the method of his demise. Her job was to determine the origin of the corpse entombed in the second chamber. Unlike those in the first, with their elongated craniums, bodily deformations, and clawed appendages, it was humanoid in form, if not dimension.
According to computer models, the man was a quarter-inch shy of seven feet tall. Based on the density of his bone samples, she estimated that his skeleton weighed nearly 150 pounds by itself. Assuming average human muscular proportions, his weight, while he was alive, had to have been at least 300 pounds. She wished she’d been able to run his mummified corpse through a CT scanner to provide a more in-depth analysis, but she was simply going to have to make do.
She felt oddly self-conscious turning sideways to squeeze through the crevice in the virtual wall and stepping over the creature’s carcass. The remains tied to the plinth were so real she couldn’t resist the urge to reach out and touch them, although her arm passed invisibly in front of her and her fingers grazed the safety rail. She leaned over the body and attempted to scrutinize it in the same manner as she would have in the field.
The man’s joints demonstrated advanced cartilaginous wear with deterioration of the bones where they rubbed against each other, despite estimates placing him at somewhere between thirty and forty years old at the time of his death, although any predictive models were based upon Homo sapiens sapiens, which this man, as evidenced by the sequenced portions of his genome, was clearly not. At least not entirely.
Anya spoke into a handheld audio recorder as she walked around the plinth. She hoped that articulation might somehow lead to the epiphany that had eluded her so far.
“The process of mummification has occurred by natural means. There are no incisions in the vicinity of the abdomen to suggest evisceration or surgical excision of any of the organs.” She crouched beside where the subject’s wrists and ankles had been bound to the floor by ropes. “The bindings have eroded through the flesh. Subsequent scoring on the bones themselves implies that the injuries were premortem.”
“He was entombed while he was still alive?”
Anya shrieked and ripped off her goggles. Jade stood in the adjacent unit with the visor on and her arms stretched out in front of her. Anya had been so immersed in the virtual world that she hadn’t heard the other woman enter.
“For the love of God, Jade. You nearly scared me to death.”
She lowered her headset again and was transported right back to the tomb on the other side of the globe.
“Where are you looking?” Jade asked.
“On the right side of the plinth, where the wrist and ankle are bound.”
“Good eye.” It was strange to think that they were both crouching in the same place without being able to see each other. “Although I would be inclined to classify the injuries as perimortem based on the lack of callus formation.”
Anya swelled with pride. Jade was their resident forensic expert and not one to casually offer a compliment, backhanded though it might have been.
“What brings you down here, Jade?”
“I was thinking about the contractures. They’re caused by an attack on the central nervous system and aren’t commonly associated with hemorrhagic fevers. Convulsions and contractures do accompany acute ventricular or meningeal inflammation, though.”
“You don’t agree with the lab’s diagnosis?”
“I’ve studied their work. There are distinct similarities between the virus that killed these subjects and several modern hemorrhagic fevers; they just don’t necessarily align with the physical presentation. Without the full genome, we can only speculate. And that’s what worries me.”
“The speculation?”
“The fact that somewhere out there is a disease capable of overcoming nine of these creatures when we haven’t been able to do that with the most advanced contemporary weapons at our disposal.”
“The virus obviously didn’t survive inside the necropolis or we would have been infected. It must have died with them.”
“But if it didn’t, there’s potentially a virus out there capable of wiping out life as we know it.”
“That’s a pleasant thought.”
“We need to figure out the mode of transmission. If it’s blood-borne, then we can take precautions, but if it’s airborne. . . ?”
She let the question hang between them. Anya fully understood the consequences if it were as transmissible as the common cold.
“This guy here didn’t have it,” Anya said.
“It’s possible he died before the others were entombed in the outer chamber.”
“It’s also possible he possessed an immunity.”
“Or he’d developed the antibodies,” Jade said. “What kind of tests have they run on him?”
“You name it.”
“Have they compared his genome against the sequenced portion of the virus’s?”
“It’s my understanding that they’ve compared it against every species in their database.”
“And the results?”
“Ninety-nine-point-eight percent match with Homo sapiens sapiens. There are similarities in the remaining point-two percent to subspecies like heidelbergensis and antecessor, and archaic Ponginae like Gigantopithecus.”
“But not the virus?”
“Not that I saw in the results.”
“Have you dated the remains?”
“They’re approximately three to four thousand years old,” Anya said.
“What era is that? Sumerian?”
“More likely early Assyrian.”
“And what happened to them?”
“They were conquered by the Babylonians.”
“What about the hieroglyphics?”
“You’d have to ask Cade. Why? What are you thinking?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Jade said. “All I know for sure is that there has to be something we’re missing.”
Anya knew what she meant. This wasn’t a traditional burial by any stretch of the imagination, even by the standards set by the previous discoveries of the tombs containing the remains of creatures like Subject Z, which spent countless hours carving the exact arrangement of the stars in the night sky into the walls and ceiling.
“Have they cultivated any tissue samples?” Jade asked.
“The skin’s so desiccated you couldn’t cultivate a pile of dust.”
“What about the discolorations?”
“What discolorations?”
“Right there,” Jade said, as though Anya could see her in the virtual world. “On his chest.”
Anya leaned over the man’s torso. The skin looked like greasy brown parchment paper wrapped over beef jerky. Jade was right. Some sections were subtly darker than others.
“I need more light,” Anya said. She adjusted the dial on the side of her goggles, which brightened the overall picture, but washed out much of the contrast in the process. “I can’t tell what it is.”
“You saw the body in person, didn’t you?”
“It was even darker than this, and we had people leaning over our shoulders the entire time, telling us to hurry up.”
Anya dimmed the brightness again and used the adjacent dial to sharpen the contrast. The room around her darkened significantly, but the discolorations became just distinct enough that she could tell what they were.
“They’re tattoos,” she said.
“Are you sure it’s not fixed hypostasis or pathologic process?” Jade asked.
“Dial up the contrast as high as it will go and see for yourself.”
Several seconds passed in silence.
“Maybe,” Jade eventually said. “If so, they didn’t use ink.”
“Back then they cut the skin with knives and rubbed charcoal into the wounds.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“That was the case with Ötzi the Iceman, the mummy they found in the Italian Alps in the nineties. His tattoos were so faded they had to use advanced imaging techniques just to differentiate them from his skin.”
“What did they show?”
“The majority were just clusters of parallel lines.”
“Did they determine the significance?”
“There are several theories. Why?”
“Because here we have a man of unknown origin bound to a stone altar in a chamber adjacent to a cavern filled with the mutated bodies of creatures killed by an extremely virulent pathogen. I would imagine that if this man were held captive down there long enough to worry the ropes through his flesh and into the bones of his wrists and ankles, he was probably alive long enough to be tattooed, as well. And if that were the case, then surely whatever design was permanently incorporated into his skin would be of no small significance.”
Anya looked at the remains for several moments before taking off her goggles. When she turned, Jade was looking right at her.
“You just might be right.”
4
TESS
Dr. Theresa Clarke couldn’t get over how close she’d come to dying. It was a crippling sensation that crept up on her and brought her to the verge of tears when she least expected it. There had been a part of her that subconsciously believed she was invincible, or perhaps merely that she would be spared the fate that had befallen so many others. When Director Barnett had shown up at her door to recruit her, he’d laid all of his cards on the table so that if she chose to join his team, she did so with her eyes wide open. She’d understood that people had died where she was going, and yet the event had a historical quality to it, like the echo of a battle long since fought and won. Or maybe the prospect of working with an alien organism had been all she needed to blind herself to the fact that it had been directly responsible for the deaths of more than twenty scientists just like her.
And now it was out there on the loose.
She wasn’t so narcissistic as to believe that any of the events culminating in the escape of Subject Z had been her fault, or even that there had ever been a point where she could have stopped them, but she had willingly taken on the burden of making sure that they captured it before it could inflict any more harm. Each passing day, however, brought her closer to conceding that there was nothing she could do to aid in its capture, despite her best efforts to predict its ultimate destination. There were simply too many variables, and for the life of her, she couldn’t divine the one that would lead them to it.
Motive had to be the key.
Surely there was something it wanted. Otherwise, it could hav
e just vanished into the wilderness and they never would have found it again. It could have easily slaughtered an entire village under the cover of darkness, yet it chose to subsist upon whatever animals it could catch and kill, and rather than creating a veritable army of drones, it had decided to minimize its numbers in an effort to travel largely undetected, which suggested that reaching its final destination was of the utmost importance. What was waiting for it there? Other creatures like itself or something more sinister? All she knew was that whatever it was, their primary imperative was to ensure that it never reached its goal.
And then there was the matter of its traveling companion, which no one seemed to want to talk about. What in the name of God had been inside that sarcophagus? How had Subject Z brought it back from the dead, and for what purpose?
In her previous life, she’d helped refine a system of remote sensing technologies that kicked open countless doors for the burgeoning field of satellite archeology. She’d discovered ancient ruins in some of the most remote regions on the planet, where no humans had ever been known to tread, and beneath the dense jungles that had grown over them. Structures that weren’t even visible to someone standing right on top of them or were buried underneath the silt at the bottom of the sea. Every university had wanted her and every energy exploration company had bid on her services. She could have done anything she wanted with her life, but what had she done instead? She’d turned her satellites outward, toward other planets, and set about demolishing what had once been the most promising of careers. Worse, if given the opportunity, she would do the same thing all over again.
There were four touchscreen monitors mounted behind her desk, all of them larger than her television at home. She’d set up each for a specific purpose. The first showed the digital map of the constellations Subject Z had carved into the walls and ceiling of the cavern that served as its cage, only the actual stars had been subtracted, leaving those that didn’t correspond to the sky on the night of September twenty-first of the previous year. It was among this remainder that she’d discovered the map that led them to Teotihuacan and a brush with Enigma—the heavily armed paramilitary organization that seemed to know far more about the events unfolding around them than they did—which had nearly cost Anya, Jade, and Evans their lives.
Mutation Page 4