Ivan, who’d been looking into the mist, spoke. “There are things in there.”
“How can you see under the tree canopies?” Max asked.
“I can’t. There are things in the mist. Flying things.” He pointed to where a slightly darker grey shadow could barely be seen moving in the clouds of vapor. As Max watched, the image grew more distinct and the shadow became some kind of large bird.
No. The distance was deceiving, not a large bird, but some colossus that should never have been able to remain aloft.
And it was coming straight towards them.
“Run!” Max shouted as the thing came into focus. Leathery wings and huge talons appeared. The group sprinted along the balcony towards a set of stairs leading down, the only cover in sight. Completely exposed, their footsteps clanging on the metal gridwork, they were the perfect targets for an aerial strike.
Ivan decided he wasn’t going to run anymore and turned to face the oncoming bird. He raised his gun and fired several times.
He might as well have spit on the thing for all the damage it did. A talon raked the front of his t-shirt and blood welled. Ivan staggered and clutched at the railing, his face turning pale.
“No!” Max cried. He rushed back to where his soldier stood looking down, the blood creeping over the green shirt. He grabbed the man’s arm and pulled.
While the flying creature circled for another strike, they reached the stairs and descended into a mezzanine formed by the landing between flights. A man lay on his back. His head was gone.
“Well, that explains where at least one of the guards went,” Max said. Then he turned to Ivan. “You okay?”
Ivan was studying a couple of deep gashes on his chest. “Hurts like hell, but it didn’t get past the ribs. It’s going to leave a mark, though.”
“Well, you deserve it for trying to shoot at it with a pistol. What the hell were you thinking?”
Ivan shrugged. “The ones at the lab fell pretty easily.”
“Yeah, we unloaded rifle clips into them.”
“That’s what the dead guy should’ve done,” Ivan said, nodding towards the corpse. “At least I managed to hit the thing.”
Lying beside the headless guard lay the most beautiful sight Max had ever seen—a well-used Kalashnikov AK-47. He bent to pick it up.
“Won’t be much good against any of the big ones,” Selene said.
“I thought you didn’t know what was in here,” Max replied.
The woman shrugged, a beautiful sight. “For someone who claims not to trust me, it seems like you believe everything I say. Could you untie me, at least? I don’t particularly want to stumble and break my nose.”
“If you fall, a broken nose will be the least of your problems.”
Max dropped to one knee and inspected the body. There was nothing remarkable about the guard except that his head was missing and his clothes were drenched in gore. He hadn’t been dead too long—the body was still warm.
The group huddled close, the soldiers trying to get a better look at the dead man, the journalist and her companion not wanting to leave the dubious cover of the landing which, though not armored, at least had a grating between it and the outer world.
Max straightened and turned to them. “We need to look for…”
A crash against the grating interrupted him. Their friend the flying lizard had returned, and was grabbing onto the grid. Bat-like, it clung to the metal with its claws while two hooks on the wings stabilized it. The creature tried to push its beak through holes in the grating several sizes too small for that operation.
“Not the smartest thing on the planet,” Marianne said. “It could come in by the walkway. I wonder how it survived in the wild.”
Marianne’s friend, the short-haired stocky one who’d been almost silent since being rescued, spoke. “It probably didn’t. If they’re recreating dinosaurs using CRISPR editing, they can only select for things like appearance and size. They can’t program in instinct or experience. That’s probably what this simulated jungle is for. To see what they do in the wild, which designs work and which need to be tweaked.”
Selene snorted. “So you’re the smart one? And you work with the pretty one? How cute.”
“Screw you,” the other woman replied, causing Selene even more laughter.
The creature didn’t look like it would be able to reach them, and it didn’t look like it would ever figure out that there was a big hole along the side that led straight to the tasty morsels it desired.
Unfortunately, all of that would be of no importance extremely soon. The metal holding up the grating began to creak and groan, as the enormous weight of the flying lizard told. The grate began buckling out and the monster flapped its wings a couple of times to steady itself. The movement tore even more metal away, and their already dubious cover became worthless.
Max raised the rifle to his shoulder and fired, trying to hit the thing’s tiny head through the openings. He smiled in satisfaction as three bullets smashed into the tiny skull.
It fell backwards, sprawled into the trees below. The grating went with it.
“Okay,” Max said. “We need to move. Any ideas where to go?”
“How about back to the door? Sure, it’s out in the open, but we can hold anything off now that we have a decent gun.”
Max pulled the clip off and grimaced. “We have maybe ten shots. I’d rather try to find an emergency exit or something.”
“Do you have a map?” Selene said.
“Shut up,” Max snapped. “I vote we go down and check the perimeter of the space. There has to be a door in here somewhere, an emergency exit of some kind. What happens if the keypads malfunction? No one would design a building which locks people inside if a glitch happens.”
“Well,” Selene said. “Unless the designers aren’t really concerned about the value of their researchers.”
Max nearly hit her with the butt of the rifle, but held up just in time. It was what she wanted. To prove what, exactly, he didn’t know. But he was absolutely certain she wanted to make him react. Maybe to drive a wedge between him and his troops? Hell, that was easy to counter: he’d let his men take turns hitting her.
A dull thud shook the building, a sound he’d heard infinite times in his military career: an explosion. He placed it at the other side of the enclosure straight across from where they stood.
Ivan grinned. “I vote we go that way,” he said. Then grimaced with the effort of speech.
So they did.
***
At the foot of the stairs, Marianne felt the ground under her feet. Soft, loamy grass. Completely different from the surface they’d been kneeling on, awaiting death just fifteen minutes before. That had been hard dirt, dry and rocky, the grass hardy stuff that had actually survived countless Russian winters. This felt like a moss bed in a rainforest.
They crept slowly behind two of the soldiers, but ahead of the woman who’d captured them. Max brought up the rear. Marianne made space for Ronnie to come up beside her. “Look, I’m sorry I got you into this.”
“It’s not your fault. I was the one who insisted on coming.”
“Yeah, but I should have told you it would be dangerous.”
“You didn’t know,” Ronnie replied.
Marianne took another couple of steps before the guilt grew too strong. “Actually, I did know. I knew we were walking into a hornet’s nest, and I was pretty sure the people who run YekLab work for the Russian military. I let you come along anyway.”
“I pretty much guessed all of that myself,” Ronnie replied. “Except I don’t think this is fully a Russian thing.”
“Because of Grosjean?”
“That and the man in the video who left the meeting through the same door the dinosaur entered. He didn’t look Russian.”
“Poor guy. He was probably one of the first to die.”
Ronnie took a while to answer. “He didn’t look like a guy about to die, either. He looked to me like a guy abo
ut to watch other people die.”
“You got all that from my crappy video?”
“I watch a lot of videos.”
“So what do you think?”
“I think if you ran his picture through a police database, you’ll find some interesting stuff. I’d start with the terrorist organizations.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re the ones with the major bioweapons programs. No one else admits to having them, so when you need to recruit new talent, there aren’t many recruiting options. LinkedIn’s terrorist section is quite small.”
Marianne laughed. “You have a vivid imagination, Ronnie.”
“Five buck says I’m right.”
“Hell, if we get out, I’ll give you the five bucks even if we’re wrong.”
“Why are you so calm?”
“Because this isn’t the first time I’ve gotten involved in something like this. I once had a bunch of Eastern European smugglers chase me all over Greece for the privilege of shooting me.”
“How did you get out of that?”
“I had a really good friend. A bunch of people who turned out to be really good friends, in fact. I’m hoping our soldier boy back there is also a good friend. If not, we might make it out of this and find ourselves in a Russian maximum-security prison.”
Ronnie swallowed. “You’re a famous reporter.”
“Yeah. So someone will send a strongly worded note of protest. Do you think the Russians give a damn about that? Nobody is going to start a war over one journalist, no matter how much we like to pretend otherwise.”
“I think you underestimate how important public opinion and social media is,” Ronnie said.
Marianne bit back her reply. People who gave their opinion on Twitter liked to think that it mattered, liked to believe they were changing the world. What harm was there in letting Ronnie keep her illusions? For her part, Marianne would keep working to make it a non-issue. They needed to get themselves out of this mess and not rely on outside help.
How they would do that, she had no idea. For now, she was following a bunch of Russian commandos towards the site of an explosion. Had anyone asked her if she could think of any situation in which that could be the safest course of action, she would have just laughed.
Shows what she knew.
A concrete walkway followed the contour of the outer wall, and then the dirt started. In some places, it was covered with grass, in others with some kind of bright green lichen. It was soggy everywhere, and squelched underfoot. The vegetation reminded her of the Amazon tours she’d taken while she was down in Brazil. As did the humidity and heat.
Strangely, though, mosquitoes appeared to be absent.
Small blessings were better than none at all.
They walked between the trees and she marveled at the soldiers. They were traversing the same jungle she was, but they did it soundlessly, advancing with a sort of tense readiness that made it look like they could jump through the canopies of the trees or bite the head off a dinosaur without warning.
By comparison, the three much smaller women were making all the noise. Marianne had even had to remove her heels, which she hated to do; the one thing she was always self-conscious about was her height. But sinking into the mud with every step was a good way to destroy an expensive pair.
Every few steps, the French woman would moan for them to untie her hands until Max told her that if she made another sound, he would gag her.
If looks could kill…
The injured soldier, Ivan, was just ahead of her. Blood dripped from his uniform, but when Max spoke to him in Russian, the man just responded something short and reassuring and kept walking.
But Marianne was used to watching people walk. Her first mentor at Update! had been a former runway model who’d taught her to spot which of the girls had a real future by ignoring the face—irrelevant for most models—and concentrating on the way they held themselves and how they walked.
This man walked like someone on his last ounce of energy. Only determination, sheer physical fitness and training were keeping him upright.
She left Ronnie’s side and matched him. “Are you really all right?” she asked him.
The man smiled, a painful gesture, but genuinely grateful “Hurts, but I’ve had worse,” Ivan replied in halting English.
She believed him. He wasn’t looking to be a hero, wasn’t looking to gain sympathy. He was just stating the facts of life. But the front of his shirt and pants were covered in gore. Even if the injury itself wasn’t life-threatening, she wasn’t certain anyone could lose that much blood and not feel it.
But there was little she could do.
The man in front halted suddenly. Ivan put his hand on her shoulder and indicated that she should crouch behind a bush.
A huge creature, much bigger than the one in the lab, stomped past, its head lost among the tree leaves.
But the soldier in the lead wasn’t pointing at the big creature. He was pointing to the right.
Marianne heard it. Something was pushing its way through the underbrush at top speed. The big monster stopped and turned to face it, but the creature coming through burst through the leaves just in front of the soldiers.
Marianne had time to see that it looked like the one she’d run into in the lab before Max opened up on it with the machine gun.
It fell with a whimper and Max winked at her. “Good thing we had practice. Unfortunately, I’ve got maybe three bullets left now.”
Marianne was horrified. The noise had blasted through the jungle. Everything in the area must have been converging on them. “Should we run?”
“No. Wait. Listen.”
Thunder echoed. “What is it?”
“The big one. Running. It is making so much noise that nothing could miss it.”
“This is all wrong,” Ronnie said.
“What is?” Max said.
“The dinosaurs. They shouldn’t be making that much noise. It’s like they’ve never lived in a forest before.”
“I thought that was what they were supposed to be testing in here,” Marianne said.
“I guess it might be, but these things are worse than I expected. I mean even the base genetic material…” She paused. “Oh.”
“What?”
“Well, I just remembered about the Antarctic incident. The monster they took from there was aquatic. If they used that as a base…”
“Antarctica?” Max said, suddenly intense. “What about it?”
“They say a Russian team took some nothosaur eggs from the creatures that attacked the Argentine base in Antarctica. Don’t you guys watch the news?”
Marianne smiled. “Not the kind of news you watch, dear. Deep internet conspiracy stuff isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.”
Ronnie snorted. “Which is why you don’t know what’s going on. Look around you. All of this could have been built easily using the right kind of DNA. And where could a Russian facility have gotten that?”
“From my brother,” Max said. “He was the one they sent. He brought it all back.” He turned to look at the French woman. “And then he conveniently disappeared.” He pulled a pistol out of his holster and aimed it between Selene’s eyes. “Tell me you had nothing to do with it.”
The woman didn’t flinch. “Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t. You should really ask the Director about that kind of thing, though. The real question is whether you could live with yourself shooting an unarmed woman without even knowing if she’s guilty or not.”
“You’re not some innocent child caught in a crossfire, Selene. I suspect I could live with myself quite easily.”
But he put the gun away. “Come on.”
They started out again, but it was immediately apparent that Ivan needed help. He staggered to his feet and would have gone straight back down had Ronnie not rushed in and caught his arm on her shoulder, covering herself in blood in the process.
Max and Ivan spoke in Russian, and it was easy to understand what was
being said: Max insisting that the soldier needed help, the other man waving it off. Finally, one of the other men took Ronnie’s place, supporting the wounded soldier, and they set off.
The jungle was quiet, the men tense. Marianne’s uneasiness had a specific source, and it had little to do with dinosaurs. The place was quiet because there was no wind, no birds in the trees, no insects. It was a lab, sure as if the walls had been painted white and it had been full of glass tubes or the apparatus from Dr. Frankenstein’s workshop. It had been built just detailed enough to test out dinosaur designs, but it didn’t work as a forest.
She wondered if the dinosaurs were fooled.
***
Max burned with anger. The witch-woman wasn’t telling them all she knew and that infuriated him. It was almost as if her twisted sense of revenge for the humiliation of being questioned had overcome everything else and she no longer cared if he splattered her brains all over the mossy floor, just as long as she could watch the rest of them perish as well.
The right thing to do would be to shoot her and leave the body to whatever carrion eaters existed among the thunder lizards. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it even though he knew she deserved it. Even his men would applaud the decision, and the Americans… well, they might pretend squeamishness but when someone makes you kneel on the ground to accept your execution, you don’t really mind if someone shoots them.
But she could tell him about his brother. He was sure of it. That woman had been there.
The real problem was how to make her talk. She would probably enjoy any kind of torture he could dream up. She was sick. Everyone knew that.
They’d reached the halfway point of the enclosure. The explosion had happened just on the other side of a deep valley ahead, and he wondered where everything was. In the first hundred meters they’d run into two creatures and then… nothing. It was almost as if the place was emptying out.
If that were so, they needed to find how they were leaving. Ivan wouldn’t be able to walk much longer… Yuri was already grunting with the effort of keeping them both vertical.
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