Replica

by Bill Clem

  That was why he was so angry with Tibek. He should have known the dangers when he found he couldn’t control the growth. It was insanity to sit back and allow them to evolve on their own. He knew from the start the whole project was unpredictable.

  A recent inquiry to one of the foremost researchers on Thylacine biology had gone unanswered. Carlson suspected his request for information was ignored due to the method he was forced to use. He had to use an alias and an anonymous email address for this task, a protocol strictly demanded at GenSys. The secrecy of the lab was somewhat of a double-edged sword for Carlson. It made obtaining information from the outside world difficult at best.

  To make matters worse, every time Carlson even hinted of temporarily suspending operations until they determined what the DNA flaws actually were, Frank Tibek threatened to have Carlson sent back to the states. A threat Carlson ignored, since he was the only one on the project who actually knew how to sequence DNA correctly. However, Tibek being GenSys’s field man, along with the Prince’s demand for immediate results, left Carlson with no choice but to go along with the accelerated program, no matter the consequences.

  And consequences there would be. They had succeeded in cloning a Thylacine fetus. Nevertheless, bringing that species to adulthood was another thing all together. Carlson slumped into his desk and dropped his head into his hands.

  What have I done?

  Part Four

  Revelation

  Thirty-Two

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT, WHILE THE OTHERS slept, Jack Baker heard the staccato sounds of a helicopter passing over the island. He grabbed a handful of wet leaves and tossed them on the fire, frantically trying to create smoke to attract attention. But the chopper sounds soon faded and the night was still again.

  He decided to make his way down the trail they had walked earlier that day. Suddenly, Baker heard a rustling. In the faint moonlight, he could make out the outline of a figure running through the clearing on the right.

  “Hello. Is there someone there?” a voice called out.

  Baker stiffened. “Yes, who is it?”

  “My name is Michael Whiting.”

  Baker was stunned when the man approached—he was a dead ringer for Rip Van Winkle. “How long have you been here?” Baker asked.

  “Three years.”

  “But how—“

  “I’ve been hiding from them.”

  “Them?”

  “You haven’t seen them? Or heard them at night?”

  “I’ve heard something,” Baker admitted.

  “What you’ve heard, Mr.—“

  “Baker. Jack Baker.”

  “Mr. Baker, what you heard are monsters. Monsters I helped to create.”

  Baker was stunned. That was not the response he had been expecting. “What do you mean, monsters? What the hell are those things out there?”

  “A better question is what were they supposed to be?”

  Baker stood waiting. “You said you created them?”

  “Thylacinus cynocephalus, otherwise known as the Thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger was a wolf-like creature with jaws the size of a textbook. It had stripes across its back; and the legs were formed exactly like a kangaroo. They were vicious and would eat almost anything.

  When the humans began moving into their habitat in the late 1880s to 1910s, they left them alone. Soon though, livestock began to disappear, and they thought the cause was the Thylacines. The farmers began to shoot them, and when sheep were introduced to the region, the toll went up. Soon, the government was paying one pound per Thylacine scalp, a good amount in those days. It was not until 1936 that they became protected. The last known tiger died later that year in a New York zoo. The cause of the Thylacine's death was a caretaker, named Benjamin, who simply forgot to close the door. The Thylacine crept out, and being exposed, died.

  Since 1936, they’ve found no conclusive evidence of a Thylacine. However, the incidence of reported Thylacine sightings has continued. Most sightings occur at night, in the north of the State, in or near areas where suitable habitat is still available. Although the species is now considered 'probably extinct', these sightings provided some hope that the Thylacine may still exist.”

  Jack cut in, “That’s great, Mr. Whiting—”

  “It’s Dr. Whiting.”

  “Doctor Whiting, I appreciate a good lecture. I teach at a college in the States myself. Could you just get to the point?”

  “Please let me explain it my way, that way I don’t have to repeat myself.”

  Jack threw up his hands and sat on a large flat rock.

  Dr. Whiting continued, his way, “There have been hundreds of sightings since 1936, most of which have been clear cases of mis-identification. However, a detailed study of sightings between 1934 and 1980 concluded that of a total of three hundred sightings, just under half could be considered possible actual sightings. Nonetheless, all sightings have remained inconclusive; there has yet to be verified contact. Of the number of searches for the animal, none have been successful in proving the continued existence of the animal.”

  Baker’s eyes glazed over.

  Whiting sighed. “I see I’ve lost you, but the real story came after their extinction. You see, there’s a lab on this island.”

  “A lab?” Baker repeated.

  “Yes, a lab. We can talk about that later. Right now, we need to get out of here.”

  “Can you get me to that lab?” Baker asked.

  Whiting nodded. “I guarantee it.”

  Thirty-Three

  * * *

  ELLEN WATCHED THE LAST GROUP of guards leave the viralology lab, keys jingling, their voices loud in the corridor. She locked the door and leaned against it, exhaling.

  Had she done the right thing, telling Carlson what she’d found? She had no real evidence of anything except those things. She was sure Tibek could explain them away, as he did every other time she inquired about something amiss. Especially now, when the stakes were so high. The prince was expecting results. Soon.

  She grabbed a heavy metal chair and propped it underneath the doorknob, jamming it in place until she was sure no one could get in, even with a key. If she had to explain blocking the door, she could always say she was spooked by noises she heard after the guards had left. The fact was the guards only made routine patrols to this part of the facility every four hours. They were more concerned with guarding the perimeter.

  She would have plenty of time to work undisturbed.

  Ellen hastened to the storage area contiguous with the lab. Here liquid nitrogen tanks were arranged on shelves, numbered and catagorized.

  Her heart beating with anxiety, Ellen read the label of each tank until she found the one she wanted:

  Thylacine embryo

  Specimans 1-6

  R. Tibek

  The metal cylinder’s chrome lid had a pressure release valve attached. She put her hand on the latch and hesitated. Intuition told her what she would find, but she had to force herself to raise the hood.

  Slowly she looked down. At first, the frozen mist blocked her view as it floated out of the storage container and spilled silently to the floor. Then it cleared and she saw the specimen container. Ellen unscrewed it, pulling it up and removing the stainless steel specimen case.

  She found herself breathing hard. Ever since she was a young girl, this was what she wanted, to be a scientist. The advancement of human knowledge had always been something she cherished. It wasn’t a selfish endeavor, but something to help others.

  How naïve she had been.

  Since coming to work for GenSys, she had learned a hard lesson fast: Not all scientists are created equal. At least at this company, she found each one more corrupt than the next. Except for Peter Carlson. He was sincere. At least that was her hope. She had entrusted him and now she’d have to wait and see.

  Ellen placed the stainless steel case on the counter. The cool nitrogen mist swirled about her legs as if it were alive. One by one, she opened
the specimen trays.

  Impossible!

  For a moment, Ellen supported herself by leaning against the freezer, staring at the empty trays, not able to believe what her eyes were clearly telling her. She found it hard to breathe. Staggering backwards, she fell into a lab chair.

  The Thylacine embryos were all gone.

  Thirty-Four

  * * *

  BY LATE AFTERNOON THE NEXt day, the dark clouds had returned. The group had followed an ancient trail of unknown origin, barely an ally through the brush. Whiting brought them to a clearing and stopped.

  “I think we should stop here for the day.”

  Baker looked at the others. “I agree. There are some good vines here to lash together a shelter. Looks like more rain tonight. Everyone okay with that?”

  “Suits me,” Tracy Mills said, plopping on the ground.

  Hammond just nodded. He’d been unusually quiet all day. Baker noticed the Captain seemed preoccupied. With all the responsibility he felt, Jack could see why.

  “Something wrong, Captain?”

  “Wrong? Yeah, something is wrong, Baker. Here we are in the middle of God knows where, castaways on this fucking deserted island, and we have Rip Van Winkle and the man who led five people to their death at Mt. Everest three years ago guiding us.”

  Whiting’s head shot up. “I beg your—“

  Hammond faced the three of them. “That’s right. Our illustrious jungle guide, Mr. Jack Baker, was a mountaineering guide for some adventure company. He goes up to Everest with ten people, but guess what? He only comes back with five. The way I read it, he abandoned them to save his own ass.”

  Tracy Mills’ mouth was agape. “How do you know—“

  “How do I know it’s the same guy? Tracy, you’ve flown with me enough to know what a news junkie I am. It took me awhile to place him, but I knew I knew him from somewhere. But don’t take my word for it. Why don’t you ask him?”

  Tracy lowered her head, not wanting to look in his eyes. “Jack. Is that true?”

  Jack could feel the others’ eyes penetrating him. “Yes. I’m afraid it is. But not like the great Captain Hammond tells it.”

  “Well, why don’t you explain it then, hot shot?” Hammond fired back.

  “I don’t owe you an explanation, Hammond. I don’t owe you anything. I didn’t put us on this god-forsaken island.” Baker turned and walked off.

  Thirty-Five

  * * *

  THE JUNGLE AROUND HIM SEEMED to echo with the hollow voices of distant memories. Jack tried to block them out.

  Forget them, he willed himself. He tried hard to forget, but it always seemed there was someone or something to remind him. You could have done better, the voices whispered. Sitting alone on the rock, he felt himself reeling backward into a time tunnel.

  Jack Baker and his team had pushed through the Balcony, at 27,500 feet, to the Hillary Step, at 28,800 feet. The Hillary Step, a seventy-foot rock step, is named after Sir Edmond Hillary who, in 1953, along with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, became the first to summit Everest. The Hillary Step, which is climbed with fixed ropes, often becomes a bottleneck, as only one climber can climb at a time. The margin of safety is razor-thin on a mountain like Mount Everest. Many hazards, such as thundering avalanches, freak storms, and hidden crevasses, are beyond a climber's control.

  Once the climbers ascend the Hillary Step, they slowly and laboriously proceed to the summit at 29,028 feet. The Everest summit sits at the top of the world. Though not the closest place to the sun due to the earth's curve, it is the highest peak on earth. Due to the decreased air pressure, the summit contains less than one-third the oxygen as at sea level. If dropped off on the summit directly from sea level (impossible in reality), a person would die within minutes from the decreased oxygen level.

  Baker and his nine climbers were in a region known as The Death Zone. Above that altitude, not only could human life not be sustained, it deteriorated with terrifying rapidity. Even using supplementary oxygen, no one can remain in the Death Zone for very long. Climbers who venture into this zone cannot escape the potentially deadly effects of oxygen deprivation; they can only attempt to minimize and control what breathing the thin air at high altitudes does to their bodies.

  That day, Baker’s group stalled because of one climber’s faulty oxygen canister. The man was inexperienced and Baker could see he was in rough shape. “Just a little farther,” he told him. Baker gave the climber his oxygen, and then addressed the others.

  “I’m going ahead and set some ropes for us. Stay put until I signal for you.”

  He would later remember telling the media. "There was absolutely no noise, it was very disturbing. We only had time to swerve to the right before being mowed down.”

  And mowed down they were.

  The accident occurred when a huge storm blew in and a wind shear snapped an ice pillar, breaking the ropes on the area of the peak known as Bottleneck, just below the summit. As the gigantic chunk of ice flew by Baker, he unsnapped his carabiner to keep from being swept away. “Look out,” he screamed to the team below. But it was too late.

  Baker spotted the first two men gazing toward the top until the clouds perpetually swirling around Everest engulfed them.

  Then they vanished.

  Even more frightening was seeing the huge chunk of ice strike the other team members with unimaginable force, nearly dismembering two of them. It dragged them all down the mountain a thousand feet and into a crevice where they were pancaked atop one another. Two of them didn’t survive.

  In all, five people had died and authorities accused Baker of compromising his clients' safety to achieve his own ambitions. Baker, they said, reached the summit of the world's highest peak before his clients, rather than waiting to assist them, and endangered them by making the final exhausting climb without the aid of bottled oxygen. Many who knew Baker and had climbed with him for years attempted to rebut the criticism, saying he did not use oxygen because of his personal climbing ethics and he climbed ahead of his clients to set ropes for them. They also sited the fact that he went out into the storm that night from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. There was a lateral blow of snow, and little visibility. He made two forays out into 60- to 70-mile-an-hour winds in sub-zero temperatures. This, they said, “was not about his heroism, he cared deeply about those climbers.”

  Baker’s mind was in shock when he finally got off the mountain, replaying slowly through the events of the last hours of the storm. After they helicoptered him out, they took him to a hospital in Islamabad where he stayed for a week before returning home. That was the last trip the adventurer would ever take....

  That was three years ago. Now the reluctant hero found himself right back in the same position under a different set of circumstances.

  Hammond is right, he thought. He shouldn’t be responsible for leading them off this island.

  Thirty-Six

  * * *

  A HEMISPHERE AWAY, A COURIER driving a non-descript white van stopped in front of Gem Biotech in Rockville, Maryland. Having escorted the package all the way from mainland Australia, the courier was red-eyed and weary from the seven-teen-hour flight.

  When he arrived in the lab and handed the package over to an official at the company, there was little exchange of words.

  As he paused at the door, before leaving, he did say one thing.

  “Be careful.”

  Thirty-Seven

  * * *

  “JACK.” TRACY MILLS’ VOICE BECKONED. “Jack, it’s all right. It wasn’t your fault.”

  Jack stood, Tracy’s voice pulling him from his painful reverie. The two men had followed her.

  Hammond was silent for a moment, and then looked at Baker.

  “I’m sorry, Jack. I spoke out of turn.”

  Whiting inhaled silently. “It seems to me, and please forgive me if I am speaking out of turn, I have to say I think you owe Mr. Baker a debt of gratitude. For if you only knew what you were dealing with, the mere fact that he
got you this far is indeed a miracle.”

  Hammond swung his attention to the doctor. “And just what are we dealing with, Dr. Whiting?” he asked.

  After they set up camp, Hammond and Whiting sat by the fire roasting some grubs they’d scavenged from a dead tree stump.

  “So let me sum up what we have so far,” Hammond said. “This GenSys was doing research in immunobiology until three years ago. Then they’re purchased by this Prince somebody—“

  “Prince Habib.”

  “Yes, whoever. Anyway, at that point they hire you and some other scientists to resurrect a....”

  “Thylacine,” Whiting filled in.

  “Right, a Thylacine. So you are bringing this thing back because it’s supposed to be some miracle cure for everything. However, before it’s finished, you find some flaws. Flaws that cause awful mutations. When you bring it to their attention, they have you killed... or at least they thought they did. Meanwhile, the things grow at an unprecedented rate, escape from the lab, and proliferate on this island. I have to say that seems rather hard to believe, Dr. Whiting. I mean, I like a good science fiction yarn as much as the next guy, but come on. If that really happened, why didn’t you notify the authorities when you discovered these mutations?”

  Whiting stopped chewing for a moment. “Let me ask you a question, Captain Hammond. If you were the authorities and I came to you with this story, what would you say?”

  Hammond nodded. “I see your point. Still, how did you survive your assassination attempt and yet, make them think you’re dead?”

  “I had some of the formula with me when they dumped me on the island. I put it on my wounds. When I regained consciousness, they were healed.”

  Whiting pulled up his shirt. Four round scars were scattered across his abdomen. “Believe me now?”