The Mendel Paradox (Harvey Bennett Thrillers Book 9)

by Nick Thacker

  “Between that mammal out there and this one right here,” Ben finished. “A brain transplant between two humans. The ‘third transference.’”

  56

  Eliza

  She nodded, the full realization of the moment hitting her hard. She walked over to an armchair in the corner of the room and sat down on the edge of it, holding her chin with her elbows on her knees. “Ben, Lars Tennyson is trying to transplant the brain of his young sister into that woman out there. Alina.”

  Ben continued along with the brainstorm. “And that silverback gorilla we saw running around out there — the reason it seems to recognize some people — the reason it killed them — is that it wasn’t really a gorilla at all, was it? Or at least not just a gorilla.”

  She shook her head. "No, I don't think it was. I didn't know it was possible, but then again this work, the stuff Canavero's been doing — I knew what he was capable of. And he's been working on this very thing for years.

  “I think that silverback represented the second phase, or transference, or whatever Canavero called it. The TR-2 of these trials. It was a successful test. To see if a human brain could exist in the body of another mammal.” She paused. “And it seems like it can. I mean, can you imagine? It’s effectively another creature altogether.”

  “My God,” Ben said. “The ethical and moral questions alone are incredible. Insurmountable, probably. Which is why this whole operation was moved here and kept out of sight. They couldn’t let anyone outside of EKG — hell, outside of this specific division probably — know about what they were doing here. Even Lars’ grandfather probably has little idea of what’s actually going on behind the scenes.”

  Eliza stood up again, now pacing. The chill in the air was about to cause her breath to condense and form smoky air, and she wanted to keep her blood pumping. The temperature seemed to be dropping faster now, since they had opened the door. She wondered if by shutting themselves inside this room, they could postpone the inevitable temperature drop a bit longer, but she knew it was probably pointless. The cold would seep in, eventually reaching them.

  Alina lay on the table next to her, and she knew now that the thing terrorizing the countryside near Grindelwald hadn’t been an ape, nor had it been some brutal half-ape, half-human experiment.

  The terrorists had been human all along — the girl, Alina, had been nabbed by guards, likely wearing the Grayson logo but existing on EKG’s payroll. They had taken her to be a pawn in Dr. Canavero’s game, to play host to his last, sickening experiment.

  Eliza saw the IV drip in the girl’s arm and wondered if she was on the same sort of saline solution that Alina had been placed on. Something that would allow her blood to cool enough for the impending operation.

  The doctors and scientists here had to have been close when the gorilla had escaped. Canavero hadn’t lowered the temperature in here just to kill Eliza and Ben — he had done it because he was almost ready to perform the operation. He probably wanted to find Lars Tennyson and the rest of his team, to get them back on board before he started, but Eliza had a feeling that they were very close to being able to successfully pull it off.

  Having the gorilla escape had been a stroke of luck for Alina, but the situation also could make the whole disaster worse — it would be a PR nightmare if the public found out, and it would likely spell death for the entire company, but that meant Lars and Canavero would want to begin work in here sooner rather than later.

  If there was any way the doctor could pull this off with a skeleton crew, while the guards brought the gorilla down outside, Eliza had a feeling he would.

  “Ben, we need to get her out of here. Both of them. We need to —“

  “Eliza, there’s no way. They’re on some sort of medical IV drip thing, just like Canavero said. We can’t just pull out all the stuff that’s keeping this girl alive. She’ll die within minutes.”

  “But Alina isn’t in a coma. We might be able to get her awake if I can figure out how to undo Canavero’s weird saline mixture.”

  “Can you do that? What do you need to pull it off — and how much time?”

  “As long as they’re cycling it through her bloodstream, we might be able to get lucky and just take her off the feed. It will take some time for her blood to warm up and begin pumping regular cells through it again, but I can’t perform a full transfusion even if I had a few pints of fresh blood of her type. If that’s what it requires, there isn’t really anything I can do for her. And as far as time goes, I have a feeling we’ll need more of it than what we’ve got left.”

  Ben nodded, no doubt understanding the dire situation they were in. He took one huge stride over to the bedside and yanked the girl’s blanket off of her. She didn’t stir.

  He tossed it to Eliza.

  “What are you doing? She’s —“

  “Wrap it around you. If she’s in a coma and she’s got that stuff running through her blood, she won’t be needing this anyway. We’ll need warmth far more than her, trust me.”

  He then flew over to the small closet and pulled on the doors, sliding one of them to the right. Inside were stacks of blankets and bedsheets, likely there for the nursing staff for replenishment. He removed three blankets from the top of a stack and threw a second one to Eliza. The remaining two he wrapped around himself.

  “I was in Antarctica,” he said. “It’s remarkable how cold the human body can get and still live. But that doesn’t mean it’s any fun.”

  “Got it,” Eliza said.

  "Besides, as you said, he doesn't need it to be ice-cold in here. Just cold enough to ensure the damage he'll do through the surgery is repairable. Maybe high thirties. Nothing we can't survive with a bit of help."

  “Okay,” she said, throwing the blankets around her shoulders and shivering into them. She was already starting to feel warmer. Her body heat would circulate inside the wrapping she now donned, but it wouldn’t protect them forever. They still needed a plan. “What do we do now?”

  Ben motioned toward the door. “Time to see if you can get that girl out there to wake up and move on her own. If there’s any way we can at least get her functioning, there’s a chance we can get her to the hospital back in Grindelwald.”

  “Right,” Eliza said, making her way toward the door. “What are you going to do?”

  Ben looked past her, at the banks of computers. “I’m going to see if I can call for help.”

  57

  Ben

  In this day and age, where there was a computer, there was an internet connection.

  At least that’s what Ben hoped. He was far from a computer expert, but he could navigate his way around one when he needed to. And he desperately needed to now. Their phones had died hours ago, and while he could spend this time searching through the surgical suite for a phone charger, he had a feeling EKG would have something in place to block incoming and outgoing cellular signals.

  Ben sidled up to one of the workstations at a table near Eliza and the young woman on the table in front of her. He wrapped the blankets tighter around his body, knowing that his ears would start to feel coldest in a few minutes, but also knowing that there was still a large stack of blankets and comforters in the closet in the other room if they needed them.

  He shook the mouse, waking up the computer just as he’d done earlier. So far, no password prompts. He was used to his Mac at home in Alaska, but Julie was a PC user, so she’d given him a brief crash course on where things were on a Windows-based machine a year ago, which had actually been a poorly hidden attempt to make fun of him.

  He almost smiled at the thought of it. He’d always seen himself like somewhat of an ape when it came to computers. Now, after seeing what they’d seen here at EKG, he’d have to adapt that analogy. Some of these apes were probably already better than he was with a computer.

  His eyes darted around the desktop. If need be, he could open the Start menu and find a browser, but there were usually links on the desktop for that sort of thing as
well. He didn’t see anything at first, but there was one icon in particular that jumped out at him.

  He examined it for a moment, trying to understand what it meant. After a few seconds, he turned his attention back to finding the browser. He did after a few more seconds, then double-clicked the icon to open a web client.

  Come on. Connect, please, he thought. He watched the multicolored globe spin as the page queued.

  Finally, a search box appeared onscreen.

  "Yes," he mumbled. He clicked in the URL bar at the top of the screen and began typing in an address. He hoped to use a web-based messaging client to reach Julie, or, worst case, email. He hoped she was at a computer now.

  He pressed the Return key on the keyboard and waited.

  Almost immediately, a dialog window appeared. ERROR 403: Forbidden. You do not have access to external websites.

  “Dammit,” he whispered.

  “How’s it going over there?” Eliza asked.

  Ben shook his head. “Not good. They’ve got the network locked down. Unless you know how to do fancy router stuff, we’re hosed.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Definitely out of my wheelhouse.”

  “Yeah, I figured.” He knew Julie would have been able to bypass the security in about a minute or two, and it was ironic that she was the very person he had been trying to hail. I’m never going anywhere without you again, Jules. He sighed, then looked up at Eliza, hunched over the girl on the table. “What about you?”

  She made a face of concern. “Hard to tell without some monitoring instruments. I’m almost positive she’s fine to move — there aren’t any drips going into her that seem to be critical, and she’s not on any respirator or any sort of maintenance machinery. But I could be wrong.”

  “What’s your gut feeling?” Ben asked.

  “My gut says to pull her off this IV line and see what happens. If it causes any sort of massive failure, I should be able to reattach it with enough time to keep her alive.”

  Ben was about to give his blessing when Eliza popped off the tube from the back of the inserted needle. A bit of clear liquid splashed over her hand and the table, but she let it fall to the side.

  They waited for twenty seconds. Nothing happened.

  “That’s… good news?”

  “I believe so,” Eliza said. “Could be the cold in here keeping her in stasis, but I think we’d be safe to move her if she doesn’t come to on her own. Still, we need to get her medical attention right away.”

  “Well, I’m not sure we’ve got any of that available. How long can we wait?”

  “If we move now, we can get to the local hospital. But we’ll have to find a vehicle. There’s no way we can carry her all the —“

  “Then that’s the mission.”

  “Ben, we —“

  “We have to save her life, Eliza,” Ben said. His voice was calm, but he heard his words beginning to clip. He was stressed, ready to be done. Keep it together, man. You’re almost out of the weeds. “We have to get her professional help. If there’s anything we can salvage from this, it’s her.”

  “There’s a lot we can salvage, Ben,” she snapped back. “All of this — the experiments, Canavero, that comatose girl in there, the chimps — everything here should be part of our case.”

  Ben shook his head. "It's triage now. We have to decide what to take and what to leave behind. We can still pack a few of the hard drives with our gear, but this girl will die without our help. That girl in the other room — Tennyson's sister — she’s going to be fine without us. Hell, she’s been fine without us for years. And we know Tennyson won’t let anything happen to her.”

  Even as he said the words, they struck him as odd. Tennyson won’t let anything happen to her. It was the man’s younger sister, a woman he’d kept alive far longer than most people would.

  He knew with just a single glance around this place that Tennyson had to be deranged, but he hadn't understood the extent of it until now. Ben considered the angles, the options, that Tennyson was probably facing. He had shut the division down to protect his own reputation, but more importantly, because it was the only way to keep his sister alive.

  The man had to keep moving forward. He had to keep his sister here, attended to by Canavero and a skeleton crew of staffers. He had to rid the area of the escaped experiment, or it would all come crashing down.

  “Ben,” Eliza said. “What are you thinking about? Whatever our decision is, we need to act now, before —“

  Before she could finish the sentence, the airlock’s outer door slid open. The sound was muted in the inner chamber, but Ben and Eliza had both heard it.

  Ben gripped his rifle and brought it up to his face. He peered through the scope and aimed it in the direction of the still-closed inner door. If it opened…

  He was prepared to take the shot, to protect themselves.

  Ben squinted and tried to get a better view of the figures that had entered the airlock.

  Canavero. Two formless shapes. Likely more guards. Each was holding a weapon shaped like the small subcompacts they’d seen downstairs.

  And next to Canavero, leaning on a cane for support, was a man Ben almost didn’t recognize.

  Bloodied, bent, and watching him with one eye, the other bruised shut. He wore a look of pure menace, the rage and contempt surging through him with an energy Ben could feel through the glass.

  It was the man who had been with Elias, out in the meadow. One of the three men whom the gorilla had smashed aside like nothing. This man had been lying in the field, facedown, when Ben had spoken with Elias Ziegler.

  Ben knew immediately who it was, but it was Eliza who spoke his name first.

  “Lars Tennyson,” she said, softly.

  58

  Lars

  Lars Tennyson felt his nostrils flare as he looked through the glass at the two figures standing in the lab. In his lab. He clenched and unclenched his free fist, careful to keep the other planted firmly on the smooth, rounded section of the cane.

  He’d needed a cane to help him walk, his right leg having been bruised and nearly broken by the beast outside. As it turned out, his replica office had a cane that his grandfather had used long ago after a surgery. The old man didn’t need it anymore, and Lars had asked for it as a gift many years ago, before he’d even considered building an exact copy of the man’s office.

  After returning to the building and gaining access, he’d marched toward his back-corner office, through what appeared to be the remnants of a brief scuffle and firefight. Ceiling tile chunks had fallen around a lump on the floor, which had ended up being one of Lars’ security team, a woman whose name he’d never bothered to remember and who he barely recognized.

  He examined the area quickly, looking for more threats, but instead finding a second guard leaning up against a wall, a hand holding the back of his head. This man — Darren, or Darrel, he wasn't sure which — he did recognize as one of the men who patrolled during the night shift when Lars did most of his work. The guard had filled him in on the fight, telling him that a man and woman — the same man and woman who Lars had seen out on EKG's property trying to gain entry — had overtaken them and killed the woman.

  Lars didn't care about death, or this man's health, only that these two intruders were still in his building. The guard seemed to think they'd gone upstairs, but he hadn't been sure. Without asking more questions, Lars headed upstairs.

  He met Canavero in the stairwell.

  The kind doctor had offered to help Lars up the stairs and into the hallway, where they’d stopped for a moment so Canavero could fill him in on the details of what had transpired.

  Canavero had, apparently, locked the intruders inside the surgical lab at the back of the containment room.

  With his sister still inside.

  Lars was fuming, but he hadn’t yet decided where his wrath would be directed. Toward Canavero, the brilliant scientist who had idiotically left Lars’ prized possession in the hands of t
hese two intruders? Or the intruders themselves, who were on some half-baked mission to bring everything he’d ever worked on to a crashing halt?

  He wasn’t sure.

  But there was time to dole out punishment. First, he needed to regain control.

  After Dietrich’s bloody death in the field, after Lars had run away from the massive silverback — Jonas, they’d called him in the lab, before the transference surgery — Lars had waited in the woods, out of sight.

  He’d watched as the gorilla had ripped apart the only person on earth who seemed to care for Lars. It hurt to watch, but Lars had summoned all his remaining strength and courage to watch until the gruesome end without calling attention to himself. He knew he could grieve later — there was still work to be done.

  Dietrich was dead. The hunter was dead — the newcomer, one of the intruders, had run up to him and had a chat before the man perished — and now Lars was alone. The gorilla, Jonas, was still barely alive, having suffered numerous critical wounds, but he’d pulled himself toward the fence line surrounding EKG’s building.

  Lars had put three bullets through the gorilla’s head, then checked for his pulse to make sure the job was finally done.

  The cost had been high, but Lars had never been worried about the cost.

  Now, standing in his airlock, looking into his laboratory, watching the intruders stare back at him, he was beginning to feel the need to let out some of his anger in a productive way.

  “Open the door,” he said quietly.

  One of his guards nearest the door seemed shocked. “But sir, that man in there is armed. Assault rifle, aimed directly toward —“

  ‘Open the door!” Lars screamed. He felt the spittle at the corner of his mouth fly away and toward the floor. He sneered at the guard, and saw Canavero’s eyes on him, full of surprise.

  “Mr. Tennyson, it would probably be best to engage them in conversation first. We can get a feel for what we are dealing with here, and how best to —“