Sigma Force 10 - The Sixth Extinction

by James Rollins

  No meat . . . not for Cutter Elwes.

  Kendall had picked at the offering, but he had no appetite, his stomach churned at what this day surely held for him. Cutter intended to make Kendall cooperate, to share his knowledge, but he would refuse.

  At least for as long as I can.

  In the past, few people successfully withstood Cutter, and Kendall doubted that reality had changed. He had envisioned all manner of torture during the night, the fear allowing him little sleep. Any thought of escape—of even throwing himself off this mountain—was dashed by his ever-present shadow.

  Even now Mateo’s hulking form stood guard by the balcony door.

  Trying to steer the conversation away from what was to come, Kendall eyed his escort. “Mateo . . . he’s native to these jungles. As is his sister, your wife. What tribe are they from? Akuntsu? Maybe Yanomami?”

  From his days searching rain forests and jungles for extremophiles, Kendall was familiar with several of the Brazilian indigenous tribes.

  “You look upon them with the eyes of a Westerner,” Cutter scolded. “Each tribe is very distinct, once you’ve lived among them. Mateo and my wife are actually members of the Macuxi tribespeoples. Their tribe is a subgroup local to this region. They’ve lived in these forests for thousands of years, as much a part of nature here as any leaf, flower, or burrowing snake. Their people are also unique in another way.”

  “How?” he asked, hoping to keep the conversation along this track.

  “The tribe demonstrates an unusual number of twin births, both fraternal and identical. In fact, Ashuu was born in triplet grouping. A very unusual one. She has an identical sister—and a fraternal brother, Mateo.”

  Kendall crinkled his brow. Two identical girls and a boy. He had heard of such unusual cases—of women who gave birth to identical twins along with a fraternal third, called a singleton. While births like that did occur naturally, it was more often the result of the use of fertility drugs.

  Kendall lowered his voice, curiosity getting the better of him. “Do you think Mateo being born a singleton . . . could it account for his unusual size?”

  “Possibly. Maybe a genetic anomaly secondary to just a strange triplet configuration. But what I find more fascinating is the tribe’s unusual record of multiple births. It makes me wonder if there isn’t some naturally occurring analog to a fertility drug in the local rain forest, some undiscovered pharmaceutical.”

  It was an interesting proposition. The rain forests were a source of a great number of new drugs, from a cure for malaria to some powerful anticancer medications. And there were surely hundreds of other discoveries still to be made. That is, if the rain forests continued to thrive, instead of being slashed and burned for farmland or cut down by logging companies.

  But this raised another question.

  “You know a lot about this tribe,” Kendall said. Even recruited them into working for you. “So how did you gain that level of cooperation? Especially up here. As I recall, most natives fear these tepui.”

  “Not so the Macuxi. They revere these plateaus as the home of the gods, believing that the ancient tunnels, caves, and sinkholes are passageways to their underworld, where great giants pass on the wisdom of ages.” Cutter stared beyond the balcony toward the lower forest—toward a vast dark sinkhole that was visible in the daylight. “Maybe they were right.”

  Kendall imagined Cutter thought of himself as one of those godlike giants, a keeper of great knowledge.

  Cutter continued. “Did you know my great ancestor, Cuthbert Cary-Elwes, was a Jesuit priest? He lived among the Macuxi for twenty-three years and was greatly loved by these people. He’s still remembered in stories, a part of the tribe’s oral histories.”

  Kendall suspected the calculating and persuasive man seated across from him had used that past to sway these local tribesmen to his cause. Did he marry Ashuu for the same reason, to cement that bond by marrying into the tribe? Kendall knew how fiercely these natives respected both family ties and old obligations, even debts that spanned generations. To survive in the harsh jungle, a society had to be close-knit, to watch each other’s back.

  Cutter stood up abruptly, brushing his palms together. “If you’ve had enough to eat, we should get to work.”

  Kendall had been dreading this, but he forced his legs to push himself up. If nothing else, he intended to learn what Cutter planned—then fight him as fiercely as he could.

  Cutter led him back indoors and over to an elevator cage wrapped in French wrought iron, like something out of an old hotel. Once Kendall and Mateo joined him inside, Cutter pressed the lowermost button.

  Through the bars of the iron door, Kendall watched the floors drop away. They passed through a vast library, then a parlor with a huge fireplace, until finally they reached the ground floor with its cavernous entry hall—but the elevator didn’t stop there.

  It continued descending.

  Walls of rough sandstone passed by outside, closing around them. They were sinking into the core of the tepui, into that labyrinthine world described by Macuxi myth. The cage fell for another twenty long seconds, then dropped into a brightly lit space.

  Kendall’s brain took a few additional snaps of its synapses to make sense of what he was seeing. Gone were any signs of stone walls. Instead, a huge laboratory space opened ahead of him, shining with stainless steel and smooth disinfected, spotless surfaces. A handful of white-smocked workers busied themselves at various stations.

  “Here we are,” Cutter said and led Kendall out. “The true heart of Dark Eden.”

  Kendall stared at the state-of-the-art equipment. Down one wall ran a long series of fume and flood hoods, intermixed with shelves that held autoclaves, centrifuges, pipettes, beakers, graduated cylinders. Along the other wall stood huge steel doors that hid massive refrigerators or freezers. He also spotted the dark glass door of what must be an incubator.

  But the bulk of the central space was made up of rows of workstations, holding multiple genetic analyzers, along with thermal cyclers for performing polymerase chain reactions and DNA synthesizers used to create high-quality oligonucleotides. He also identified equipment for carrying out the latest CRISPR-Cas9 technique for manipulating DNA strands.

  This last scared him the most. It was a new technology, one so innovative that a novice could run it, but powerful enough that several research groups in the United States had already used it to mutate every single gene found in human cells. Some had nicknamed it the evolution machine. The potential abuse of that technology in the wrong hands already worried national security agencies, fearful of what might be released as a consequence, either purposefully or by accident.

  How long has Cutter possessed this technology?

  Kendall didn’t know, but he recognized that this lab far outshone his own in both size and sophistication. Additionally, more rooms branched off from here, expanding Cutter’s research to unknown ends.

  Kendall found it hard to talk, his voice cracking. “What have you been doing, Cutter?”

  “Amazing things . . . free from government regulation and far from oversight. It’s allowed me to reach the farthest fringes of the possible. Though to be humble, I would say I’m actually only five to six years ahead of some of your colleagues. But what I was able to achieve already . . . to create . . .” Cutter faced Kendall. “And you, my dear friend, can teach me much more.”

  Kendall swallowed down his terror. “What do you want from me?”

  “In your lab, you created the perfect eVLP, a hollow shell so small that it can enter any living cell. It’s brilliant work, Kendall.” He shook his head with respect. “You should be proud.”

  At the moment he felt anything but proud.

  “Your creation makes for an ideal Trojan horse,” Cutter said. “Anything could be put inside of it, and nothing could resist it. It’s a flawless genetic delivery system.” A scolding tone entered his voice. “But you engineered that empty shell using an otherworldly genetic blueprint,
from something beyond DNA, didn’t you?”

  Kendall tried to hide any reaction from Cutter’s intense ice-blue scrutiny. Did the bastard know what he and Harrington had discovered in Antarctica? Did he know the origin of the XNA used to engineer that viral shell?

  Kendall decided it was time to take a stand. He straightened his shoulders, refusing to be swayed. “Cutter, I won’t share my technique with you. The method for making that viral shell will die with me.”

  Cutter laughed—which chilled Kendall to the bone.

  “Oh, no need, my friend. One of your young colleagues was kind enough to send me a sample five months ago, and I was able to reverse-engineer it. I’ve mass produced a supply that could last me years.”

  Kendall struggled to keep up with his adversary. “Then . . . then what do you want from me?”

  “It’s more about what I can do for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I want to help you stop the plague that’s sweeping through California. Since you’ve been under my wing, your synthetic organism has spread, breaking out of its initial containment, pushed far and wide by recent flooding. It won’t be long until it’s everywhere, eating its way across your country—and beyond.”

  Kendall had feared such an outcome, but now to hear it come true . . .

  “But there’s no way to kill it,” Kendall admitted in a hushed, frightened voice. “I tried everything.”

  “Ah, that’s because you are locked inside a box.” Cutter tapped his own skull. “Sometimes you must crack that shell of established scientific dogma. Look for new or creative solutions. In fact, I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out yourself by now. It’s been staring you and Professor Harrington in the face this entire time.”

  Cutter’s words left little doubt that he knew about Harrington’s work. With every statement, hope died a little more inside of him.

  “And what do you want in exchange for this cure?” Kendall asked.

  “Only your cooperation, nothing more. While I was able to re-create that clever viral shell of yours, I’ve continued to fail to fill it, to turn that empty shell into a living organism.”

  Kendall understood his frustration. It had taken his team years of trial and error to come up with that process. Afterward, he refined it personally and kept the technique guarded from everyone. But what weakened his knees now was the fear of what Cutter intended to seed into that viral shell, what he planned to unleash upon the world.

  Cutter must have read the trepidation in his eyes and held up a palm. “I swear that what I intend to do will not kill a single human being or creature on this planet.”

  Kendall wanted to doubt his honesty, but he knew Cutter was a man of his word. He had a strange sense of honor in that regard.

  “But if you don’t cooperate, with every passing hour, the situation will grow worse in California. Soon it may grow beyond even my cure to resolve. Help me and you save the world. Refuse and the world will die by your own hands, by your own creation. That will be your legacy.”

  “You swear you have a cure.”

  Cutter kept his palm up, staring him in the eye. “I do, and I’ve tested it. It will work, but like I said, there may be limitations if you wait too long.”

  “And if I cooperate, you’ll give me this cure, let me share it with the proper authorities.”

  “I will. I have no desire to see your creation wreak such havoc. I want to stop it as much as you do.”

  Kendall believed him. Despite his dark turn, Cutter remained an environmentalist. He would not want to see the world die. Still . . .

  “Then why did you sabotage my lab?” Kendall asked, some of the heat reentering his voice. “Why kill everyone, and let that virus loose?”

  Cutter stared at him as though the answer was self-evident.

  Kendall suddenly understood and quailed at the sheer audacity of this man. “You did all of that as simple leverage, didn’t you? To get me to reveal what I know.”

  “See, my dear friend,” Cutter said, turning away. “You’re already thinking outside the box. Now let’s get to work.”

  But after taking a couple of steps, a cell phone rang from a pocket of Cutter’s safari vest. He plucked it out, spoke briefly in what must be the Macuxi language. The only sign of Cutter’s consternation was a single crease that formed in his perfect forehead.

  Once finished, he sighed. “Seems like there is another problem, something that’s followed you down here from California. Somebody has been making inquiries where they shouldn’t be.”

  Kendall felt a flicker of hope, but it died as Cutter shook his head, clearly pushing this new worry behind him.

  “No matter. It’s a simple matter to quash.”

  8:07 A.M.

  “The fool can’t be serious,” Painter said on the phone.

  He paced outside a café near the central district of Boa Vista. The others were inside getting coffee and breakfast. He had already called Kat to gather as much intelligence as she could about Dark Eden’s former founder, a dead man named Cutter Elwes. While he waited for her to call back, he placed a call to the Mountain Warfare Training Center to get an update.

  “It’s gotten bad here,” Lisa said. “Last night’s storm washed contamination well past many of the barriers. We’ve got pockets blooming miles away from the original site, connected by tendrils of die-offs along the drainage routes we weren’t able to successfully block.”

  Painter pictured a cancerous black inkblot seeping in all directions across those mountains.

  “They’ve pulled the quarantine zone back another twenty-five miles in all directions. Yosemite has been emptied out. It’s only a little after five in the morning here, but at daybreak a more thorough search will commence. Depending on what they find, a decision will have to be made. To make matters worse, more inclement weather is expected to hit over the next three days. Storm after storm.”

  Painter had hoped for some break, but that didn’t appear to be the case. Mother Nature seemed determined to confound his efforts.

  Lisa continued. “Fearing that this contagion could get a wider and deeper foothold in California, Lindahl has placed the nuclear option on the table. It’s seriously being considered.”

  Painter suddenly regretted coming here.

  I should’ve known Lindahl would try something stupid like that.

  “How seriously is this option being considered?”

  “Very. Lindahl already has the support of the team that’s been looking for a way to kill the organism. Their consensus is that the firestorm and radiation from a medium-yield blast could be the best hope. Models are being worked up, and worst-case scenarios are being calculated.”

  “What do you think?”

  There was a long hesitation before she responded. “Painter, I don’t know. In some ways, Lindahl is right. Something has to be done, or we’ll reach a critical mass out here and we lose everything. If the blast could be controlled to limit the fallout, it might be worth risking it. If nothing else, such a drastic measure could at least knock this agent back on its heels, buy us more time to come up with a new strategy.”

  Painter still could not believe such an option was their only viable recourse.

  “Or maybe I’m just tired,” Lisa added. “Not thinking straight. Josh has continued to decline. The doctors put him into a medically induced coma in an attempt to control his seizures. And Nikko isn’t doing much better. Like I said, something has to be done.”

  Painter ached to reach through the phone and hold her, reassure her. Instead, he had to put more pressure on her. “Lisa, you have to buy us more time. Keep Lindahl reined in. At least for another twenty-four hours.”

  “If we have that long . . .”

  “We’ll find something,” Painter promised, but his words didn’t come out as convincingly as he had hoped. “If not our team, then Gray’s.”

  “Has Kat heard anything from the others?”

  “No, not yet. But she says the solar storm
is dying down, and satellite communications will hopefully resume later today. So let’s at least try to hold back that nuclear option until we regain contact with Gray.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Me, too.

  He said his good-byes and stepped back to the café door when a bullet clipped his arm and shattered the restaurant window.

  He fell to a knee while more rounds strafed the front of the café. Glass exploded over him as he rolled for cover behind a trash bin.

  He caught a brief glimpse of his team inside, ducking for cover—he also saw three men in black camouflage burst from the kitchen behind them, assault weapons blazing into the morning diners. Across the street, another trio of assailants came charging, rifles smoking.

  Pinned down, Painter had time for only one thought, recognizing the direness of their situation.

  Gray, you’d better be having more luck.

  19

  April 30, 12:09 P.M. GMT

  Queen Maud Land, Antarctica

  “Everybody get aboard the lift!” Harrington shouted, as he rushed to the gondola that hung from its tracks alongside the observation deck of the beseiged Hell’s Cape station. “Now!”

  Gray had a hard time obeying, his gaze fixed to the dark netherworld beyond this glass-enclosed perch. Floodlights along the backside of the steel superstructure illuminated the immediate area below. But even those powerful xenon lamps failed to penetrate very far into that inky, cavernous blackness.

  After fifty yards, the rock floor disappeared into a vast lake. The black surface bubbled and belched a yellowish steam, creating a toxic haze over the water. A higher shelf of wet stone hugged the lake’s right bank. Muddy tread tracks ran from the base of the superstructure out to that natural bridge.

  Gray pictured those smaller CAATs parked in the hangar. He now understood the necessity for amphibious craft in the frozen arctic.

  “Hurry!” Harrington barked.

  The professor had opened the double set of doors that allowed access to the gondola and ducked through them. He crossed to a panel inside and hit a large red button. A siren ignited, blaring loudly, echoing from inside the steel superstructure and beyond.