“Where’s the car taking us?”
Miguel caught her gaze and gave her a nonplussed look. “The old OrnoBio Laboratories.”
2
“OrnoBio?” Ana said. “Name sounds familiar.”
“Yeah,” Miguel replied. “The news streams made a big fuss about them. They produce artificial chicken meat.”
“Ah, right,” Ana said. “Making the animal rights people happy.”
“And ruining the taste of chicken.”
Ana laughed. “I’m pretty sure that’s not what I remember them from.”
“Trust me, their chicken is really bad. That’s why they’re going out of business.”
“No, no, that’s not what I’m talking about.” She wracked her brain to satisfy that nagging itch. She’d definitely heard the name before in a different context. “Probably remember it from my undergrad bio classes.” She’d studied biology and criminal justice in the hopes of eventually joining the ranks of the Bio Unit detectives. They specialized in investigating crimes involving the perversion of life science. Then she recalled one of the courses she’d taken in bioethics. “Got it! Look up Dr. Aaron Kaplan.”
Miguel pulled out his comm card and tapped the name across its touchscreen. He clicked something on the car’s holoscreen, and a holoprojection video displayed in the car’s cabin. The face of a portly man with a white beard rivaling Santa Claus’s appeared.
Dr. Kaplan.
“Jurassic Park is bullshit,” Kaplan said, referring to one of Ana’s most beloved late-twentieth-century movies. “DNA has a finite half-life. Trying to isolate all that crappy, degraded genetic material from an insect embedded in amber and cloning a whole, living dinosaur is just maddeningly unrealistic.”
“Well, duh,” Miguel said. “It’s science fiction. Fiction.”
“But I’ll tell you what,” Kaplan said, inching toward the camera. His eyes seemed to pulsate with an unbridled expression that made Ana wonder if the guy was mad or just passionate. “Dinosaur DNA exists today. Today! Right here, right now. Preserved almost perfectly, and you know where it is? Do you know where it is?”
“No,” Miguel said, a wry grin spreading across his face. “Why don’t you tell us?”
“Chickens.”
Miguel turned off the comm card. A deep guffaw escaped his lips, followed by a long wave of laughter. “Is this guy serious? He’s got to be joking.”
“No,” Ana said. “No, the guy’s deadly serious. You ever heard of Jack Holder? He was a scientist who had his fifteen minutes in, like, 2015, I think.” She strained to remember the case from her bioethics course. “He manipulated chicken embryo DNA so the chicks would exhibit dinosaur-like phenotypes.”
“Uh, how about in English?” Miguel asked.
“He genetically modified chickens to look like dinosaurs.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“No,” Ana countered. “The science actually worked. I mean, he made pretty small changes. Like giving the beak some teeth. Making chicken jaws look more like an alligator’s. But it was a start.”
“And this Kaplan guy tried to continue that research?”
Ana shrugged. “I guess so. Never really got any funding, if I recall, though.”
“So the guy settles for making artificial chicken products instead.”
“Weird, right?”
“Even weirder that there’s a domestic violence call at his laboratory at two in the morning. I bet it’s just one of his artificial chickens getting rowdy or something.”
“Hope so,” Ana said as the patrol car started to slow. Its tires crunched through a layer of blackened snow as it found a parking spot near the curb. A red-brick-faced building stood next to them. No light escaped the heavy black curtains drawn behind its small windows. A holodisplay sign flickered blue with the OrnoBio logo rotating in the air over the building’s front entrance. Ana stepped out of the car and took a final look at the food in the back seat. “Better not take long. Got a lot of people I’d still like to feed tonight.”
“Ever the bleeding heart,” Miguel said. “Look at the front door.”
They walked up to the main entrance. Their security drone hummed after them from where it had been hovering over their car during the drive. A massive steel door pocked with rust stood ominously before them. Several small black nodules protruded from the brick wall.
Cameras, Ana figured.
She knocked on the door. “Police, open up.” She waited a beat, but as expected, didn’t hear a peep from within. She tried once more. “Police, open up!”
Miguel shrugged. “Check around back?”
“Yeah,” Ana said, with one hand over her holster, ready to draw at a moment’s notice. She prowled around the side of the building and into the alley. With a nod, she indicated another entrance hidden in an alcove. “Let’s check it out.”
As she and Miguel approached, something caught her eye. A shadow flowed over her. She spun on her heels to face a man with stinking breath and long scars along the side of his face. His eyes glowed, shifting colors from blue to green to red. The odor of rotting meat wafted over her when he spoke. “I been waiting for you.”
3
The man lurked over Ana like an avalanche waiting to fall. She took a step back. Her fingers wrapped around the grip of her pistol. In her periphery, she saw Miguel adopt a ready stance. His fingers drummed along his holster.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Sorry for the fright. I’m the guy who called you. I was waiting out front, but, uh, had to relieve myself.” The man’s sleeve pulled back as he offered his hand in greeting. Track marks scarred his skin, leaving no doubt as to the origin of his bulk or the strange color-changing irises. He was an enhancer. Ana let his hand hang in the air. She felt a twinge of guilt about ignoring his gesture, but she didn’t know this man or what diseases he might’ve contracted, engineered or otherwise, through his genie use.
“Anyway, I’m Abe Reynolds,” the man said, stuffing his thick hands deep into the pockets of his overcoat. “Live over there.” He nodded toward a rundown apartment complex. It sat on the opposite side of the dilapidated park neighboring the OrnoBio building. Ana knew the complex well from multiple calls she and Miguel had responded to there. “Out for my nightly walk.”
“At two in the morning?” Ana asked.
“I ain’t going to lie. I keep odd hours. Part of my, uh, biology, if you will.”
Ana nodded. She bet if she ran a basic genie assay on this guy, his results would light up like a Christmas tree. He’d test positive for half the street gene mods known to Baltimore PD, including “energy” mods giving him insomnia. But she wasn’t about to bring the guy in if he didn’t look like a threat to anyone but himself.
“So I walk by this place, and I tell you, I heard the strangest screaming. Sounded like a woman got her head chopped off. You follow?”
“I follow.”
“I says to myself I should mind my own business, but you know what? This the last time. I heard those noises before.” His color-changing eyes looked up at the night sky for a moment. “Eh, maybe a week ago. Hell, maybe a couple weeks ago. Anyways, I been hearing these noises a lot.” He leaned in close. His halitosis drifted over Ana, and she fought the urge to cringe and back away. “I really think somebody be hurtin’. I don’t trust this place. Some say it’s haunted. I don’t know about that, but I figure I been ignoring this too long. Time to say something.”
“We appreciate it,” Miguel said.
Ana walked back to the side door and yanked the handle. It didn’t budge. She turned to Abe. “You see anyone enter or leave this place?”
“No, ma’am. Not tonight. Seen a couple of figures using that door on different nights, but not tonight.”
“We’re locked out,” Ana said matter-of-factly to Miguel.
“Sounds like we got reasonable cause from Abe.” Miguel pointed to the drone hovering overhead. “Abe, you mind if we use everything you said here tonight in an
affidavit if we need it?”
“Naw, happy to help, officer.”
“Thanks.” Miguel collected the man’s information and sent him on his way.
Ana tried fiddling with the door again. “No dice. Not going to be easy to get through here.”
“We don’t get in, we don’t get in.” Miguel shrugged. “All we’re working off of is some enhancer’s report. That guy might be hearing things in his head for all we know. Maybe he’s had a few too many neuro genies.”
Ana gave the door a knock. “Police. Open up!” The gesture proved fruitless. “Let’s circle around.”
She led Miguel and the drone around the OrnoBio building. They stopped at an intersection where she took a left toward a small loading bay tight enough to fit a single truck. She spotted a retractable paneled door. “Check it out.”
Miguel curled his fingers under the door and pulled up. The door shook, but didn’t move. “We could use Abe right now. Those muscles might as well be good for something.”
“Let me in there.” Ana tried lifting the door with Miguel. Her quads burned as she strained. A vessel bulged in her forehead. Grunting, they managed to lift it a couple of inches. Her arms started shaking with the effort, and she lost her grip. Miguel removed his quaking hands, and the door crashed down. Wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, Ana let out a long exhalation. “I guess we—”
Then she heard it. A gargling scream. It was muffled, but she definitely heard it. She looked at Miguel. His eyes were wide, and he stood frozen.
“You heard that, too?” Ana asked.
“Abe might not be as crazy as I thought.”
The scream sounded again, this time more agonized. Ana’s pulse raced. She grabbed the bottom lip of the door. Miguel grunted as he helped pull the door up beside her. Her arms started to shake again, but she refused to let go. The door inched up until its counterweight took over, and it slid back over its tracks.
“Police!” Ana said, slipping into the darkness of the loading bay. A clicking, like nails against concrete, sounded to her right, and she spun. She watched a silhouette blend into the shadows and disappear. “Light it up!” she barked at the drone.
The drone whirred and illuminated the bay. She saw nothing but an empty hallway. Again, a distant scream sounded from deep within the building. Pulse pounding in her ears, she ran down the hallway. The drone lit their way. The corridor opened up into a cavernous room filled with huge metal cylinders and a slew of conveyer belts. A sign near the entrance read, “Synthetic Meat Production.”
“Clear the area,” she commanded the drone. The small bot whirred around the room. Its lights probed every dark corner and every piece of manufacturing and laboratory equipment. “Signs of life?”
The drone beeped once and glowed red.
“That’s a negative,” Miguel said.
They heard another tormented scream. Then as soon as it had started, it ceased as if cut off. A deep pit formed in Ana’s stomach. Whatever was going on, she feared they might be too late.
4
Ana sprinted back to the loading bay. Her boots clicked against the tiled floor. Miguel’s rushed footsteps sounded behind her. With no more screams to guide them, she glanced around the bay, looking for any sign they may have missed. Wooden crates and cardboard boxes filled the space. Two large stainless steel refrigerators stood sentinel against one wall, and three loading dollies lay against one another.
“There!” Miguel said, pointing to one of the refrigerators.
At first, Ana didn’t see it. The drone buzzed closer, lighting up the space between the refrigerators. Three crates were stacked between them, but Ana saw the edge of a door peeking over the crates. She pulled the crates back, and they toppled. A quick tug at the door handle showed it was locked.
No surprise there, Ana thought.
“I’m calling backup,” Miguel said. “Maybe we can get someone to take the door down.”
“Go ahead and call,” Ana said. “But we can’t just wait around.”
She inspected the handle. There was no electronic card reader she could hack with her comm card. Just a thick metal handle. “We’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.” She raised her foot and slammed her boot against the handle. The first blow sent her staggering backward, knocked off balance. But after a second and third strike, the handle fell off the door. She slipped two fingers into the hole where the handle had been and tripped the mechanism for the deadbolt. When it clicked, she kicked the door once more, and it swung inward.
Wooden steps spiraled down a brick-lined stairwell. Ana unholstered her pistol and held it before her.
“Move ahead,” she said to the drone. The small bot hovered near enough to guide their passage. She cringed with each creaking footstep. As they plunged deeper, she detected the pungent scent of ammonia, intermingling with an odor that reminded Ana of a petting zoo. Soft clucking and flapping sounds reinforced the notion. The drone paused as they reached the bottom of the stairs, and the stairwell opened up to another room.
No lights hung overheard. Ana heard shuffling and clicking from one corner, but the sounds were quickly overtaken by the noises of chickens disturbed from their sleep. Dozens of wire cages sat along the concrete floor. Hay lined the bottom of each. Ana gulped hard as she stared at the cages’ inhabitants.
“That’s not artificial chicken,” Miguel said.
Ana shook her head and slowly walked through the rows of cages. “So much for OrnoBio supporting animal rights.” Each cage was packed with chickens. The drone buzzed along the ceiling, shedding light over the animals’ cages. The animals stood side by side, barely able to move. Their feathers, at least those that remained, were stained a variety of colors. “Poor things.”
“Chickens don’t sound like people, do they?” Miguel asked.
Ana arched her eyebrow and shot him a look.
“Hey, I’ve hardly been outside of Baltimore. What do you want me to say?”
“Nothing,” Ana said. “Chickens definitely do not scream like people.” She eyed another cage. This one, unlike all the others, was empty. She approached it with her gun still drawn. “Miguel, look at this.”
The drone hovered in circles, its lights beaming across the cage. Miguel knelt next to Ana. The wire cage was torn open, as if it had been slashed by a knife. Blood, still wet and red, pooled beneath the wires and dripped over the hay.
“What the hell?” Ana whispered. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and goosebumps traced down her arms. She stood slowly.
“Backup’s five, maybe ten minutes out,” Miguel said. “We should wait it out.”
Ana shook her head. “No, no way. This is too strange.” She prowled around the broken cage and followed a trail of smeared blood. It looked as though a cat had dragged the chickens out. “Come on.”
She continued along the trail, listening for any disturbance in the chickens’ sleepy clucking. The drone’s light waved back and forth over the concrete floor until they reached another door. The drone paused, humming above the doorframe. Ana wrapped her fingers around the door handle and twisted it slowly. It clicked open. Miguel took a step back and aimed his pistol at the door.
“Ready?” she asked.
“I got your back.”
Ana turned to Miguel and mouthed a countdown.
Three.
Two.
One.
She pushed open the door, and the drone zoomed in. Miguel played his gun over the next room. But before Ana could make sense of their new surroundings, something flew from a metal shelf and crashed into the drone. A chorus of growls and high-pitched roars echoed against the walls. The bot went down, clanging against the floor. Its lights burst, and it let out a dying electronic wail as something tore into it. Ana took a step back, fumbling for a flashlight to ward off the darkness. Miguel yelped in pain. Her fingers wrapped around her flashlight, and she held it up, trying to find Miguel in the shadows. The beam shone over him as he swatted at something
clinging to his face.
“Miguel!” she cried, rushing to him. But before she made it, another creature leapt from one of the shelves and careened straight at her.
5
Claws sunk into her arm, and small serrated teeth bit through her jacket. Fabric and flesh tore. Sharp pain set her nerves on fire. She slammed whatever was attacking her against the wall, and it shrieked, then fell to the floor. The din of Miguel struggling sounded to her right, along with the clatter of growling, scratching, and clanging metal.
Ana swung her flashlight to illuminate him. The white beam shone over Miguel as he flailed. A shudder snuck down Ana’s spine. A chicken-sized animal with brown and green scales was clinging to Miguel’s face, swiping at his skin. Feathers sprouted out the back of its head like a small headdress, and its thin, leathery arms ended in pointed black hooks. Long back legs coursed with muscle. Each had five spindly toes graced with the same black claws, plus one particularly large talon. The creature slashed Miguel’s face with one of those talons. It ripped into his cheek, leaving a deep gash.
Ana grabbed the creature’s whipping tail and yanked. The little monster squealed. She launched it, and it pinwheeled through the air. Its body slammed against an empty cage on a shelf. When the creature crashed to the floor, its limbs twitched, but it didn’t get up. Ana backed against the wall, playing the flashlight over the metal shelves full of wire cages, glass beakers, vials, boxes of syringes, and coils of plastic tubes. Piercing yellow eyes stared back at her from between the myriad of objects. Flashes of green and brown raced past as the creatures took cover from the light. She directed the flashlight across the floor and lit up a tiny ribcage, then an angular skull. A pile of little bones, all the sinew and fleshed chewed off, lay in one corner. White feathers marred by flecks of crimson were spread across the floor.
They’d found out what happened to the missing chickens.
“Miguel, you okay?” Ana managed, warding the creatures back with her flashlight.
The Jurassic Chronicles (Future Chronicles Book 15) Page 2