“Stop!” Ana rushed the human shape. As she caught up, she saw the person, a girl, maybe in her teens, was wearing a paper surgical gown. Her hair had been shaved, and there was a cut along the back of her head. “We’re here to help!”
The girl froze and spun. Her eyes were wide, and her lips were blue. An unhealthy pallor spread from her face to her limbs. She was shivering uncontrollably.
“Help?” she asked in barely a whisper.
“Yes, help.” Ana took off her torn jacket and immediately placed it over the girl. “Are you hurt?”
“Hurt?” she asked. Ana could already tell the girl was suffering from shock. “I don’t know. What about them?”
“Who?” Ana asked. “What about who?”
“Them. The others. The ones I was with.” Pure terror seemed to pulsate from her eyes. “They brought us here and put us in that room.”
In her mind, Ana saw the empty prison-cell-like room. “We didn’t see anyone else.”
“Oh,” the girl said. “They took them first, anyway.”
Ana ushered the girl out of the massive walk-in cooler, and Miguel shut the door behind them.
“Who are you talking about?” Ana said.
The girl met Ana’s gaze for the first time. “The men. They were the ones that promised they’d let us out. They took everyone out, one at a time, and I was last.” Then the girl looked back at the door to the cooler. “I hid there from the dinosaur.” More shivers erupted through her flesh. “Did you see it?”
“It’s dead,” Ana said, guiding the girl through the wreckage of the surgical room.
“I didn’t mean to let it out. But I wanted to get away. I wanted out of here. And I ran into that glass thing it was in. Then one of the men tried to hit me. He missed, you know?” the girl asked, although Ana didn’t know. “He hit the glass. And it broke. And the thing came out, running around. Hungry. Breaking into the other dinosaur’s cages. The smaller ones. You saw them?”
This time Ana did know them. The girl’s nonsensical words were growing louder and more frantic. “We need to be a little quieter, okay? You’re in shock right now. That’s why things might feel a little weird. But we’re going to get you out of here.” Something still nagged at Ana. Something the girl had said. “How many other men were there?”
They trudged back through the hall toward the lab.
“Two men,” the girl said.
“Two?” Ana asked, meeting Miguel’s gaze. He spun, watching behind them, ensuring no one was following.
“Well, maybe really one,” the girl said. “And something else.”
“Something else?” Ana couldn’t keep the confusion out of her voice. The soft tapping of nails on a tiled floor interrupted her thoughts, and she pushed herself in front of the girl. “Stay between me and Miguel, got it?”
She didn’t wait for a reply as she pushed forward to the lab. The clicking grew louder until one of the chicken-sized dinosaurs dashed through the door. Ana leveled her pistol at the monster, but it raced by her. More followed. They no longer looked as fierce as they’d been in the storage room. Instead, she saw something wilder than hunger in their eyes as they sprinted.
Fear.
9
A guttural roar boomed through the hall. Heavy, stomping footsteps followed. A monstrous shape careened from the lab. It had a human head but wore no shirt, revealing a muscular chest covered in green, leathery flesh. Its eyes flickered gold, caught in Ana’s flashlight beam. The light reflected off a mouthful of gleaming sharp teeth and crooked claws that jutted from the thing’s fingers. Despite the abominable mutations, a fleeting sense of recognition sparked in Ana at the sight of the monster’s face.
But she didn’t have time to ruminate on it.
She tugged the girl out of the monstrosity’s path. He barreled past. Miguel juked at the last second, and the monster crashed into the wall. Cinderblocks cracked, and dust shook from the ceiling.
“Let’s go!” Ana yelled. She grabbed the girl’s shoulder and dragged her along. They ran into the lab filled with all the dinosaurs slumbering in their womb-like vats. The monstrous man had recovered, and stood at the doorway.
Miguel took out his pistol. “Don’t move!”
“You will not take this away from me!” the mutated man yelled. He charged Miguel with his arms spread wide and his claws outstretched.
A salvo of gunfire escaped Miguel’s pistol. The shots were almost deafening in the concrete-walled room. Each of the four rounds slammed against his bulk and sent small shockwaves through his thick, leathery flesh. Ana watched in horror as his chest seemed to absorb the impacts like body armor. Miguel fired over and over. The slide locked back on his pistol. Empty.
The raging man pounced, his claws flashing before him. Miguel dove and rolled along the floor. The man tried to course-correct, but was carried by his own momentum. His massive shoulder crashed against one of the vats, and a spider web of cracks formed in the glass. Blue liquid started to seep from the fractures.
Miguel scrambled to his feet, and Ana let go of the girl. She whipped out her handgun and caught the scaled man in her sights. As Miguel ran between the vats, Ana fired on the mutant’s legs in an attempt to immobilize him. Two rounds pinged off the concrete floor. Another cracked into wall, sending a shower of dust pluming. The man turned at her and let out another ear-splitting roar. She adjusted her aim and fired at his legs again.
But he was moving too fast. Her shots went wide as he dodged and weaved through the vats. Rounds ricocheted off the metal pipes feeding the vats. Miguel had reloaded and sent a torrent of lead into the monster’s flank. He slowed, peering at Ana, then Miguel.
“You should never have come here,” he bellowed.
Ana grabbed a spare magazine. Adrenaline tore through her like wildfire. Her fingers quaked, but she managed to jam the mag into her pistol. The monster broke out into a full sprint again, straight at Ana.
“Get ready to run,” Ana said to the girl.
The girl nodded, her whole body shaking. Ana didn’t waver. She squeezed the trigger in rapid succession. This time, she didn’t fire on the monster. Rounds plugged into a vat. Cracks spread through the glass until it shattered. Blue liquid rushed across the floor, spilling the ostrich-sized dino. Ana aimed at another vat and sent a volley of glass-shattering rounds into it. Again, glass fragments, liquid, and a dinosaur rushed across the floor. The charging man had no time to stop. He tripped over one of the dinosaurs. He managed to maintain his balance, but the slick liquid subverted his efforts. A dull thud sounded when he crashed on his back over the other spilled dinosaur.
“What have you done?” the man roared as he started to stand. He turned to Ana. “I’ll kill you!”
Miguel followed Ana’s example and sent rounds flying into nearby vats. More water and flopping dinosaurs slopped out. The first couple that had fallen began to rouse from their hibernation. They clumsily stood, their yellow eyes searching the room. They honed in on the nearest threat: the mutated man.
“Run!” Ana yelled. She grabbed the girl’s hand and sprinted past the vats and into the storage room. Miguel was fast on her heels. She looked back as more of the ostrich-sized dinosaurs surrounded the mutant. Each gazed at him hungrily. They coiled and growled as they surrounded him. She saw a strange emotion cross the man’s reptilian face. Not fear. Not anger. But sorrow. As if he was watching a loved one die.
She slammed the storage room door shut. She knew the crazed man could barge through it. He evidently already had once. But at least it was one more thing between her and that monstrosity. Her legs continued to pump, her muscles burning. They continued past the chicken coops and pushed up the stairs. She could hear Miguel and the girl breathing heavily, but they didn’t stop. The terrifying screams and roars and yells coming from below urged them on.
Soon they were back to the loading dock, then outside, running through the alley. Flashes of blue and red lights met them as they ran to the sidewalk. There, the girl collap
sed again. Miguel paused, his hands on his knees, his chest heaving. Ana fought to catch her breath and aimed her pistol back down the alley. She heard a roar escape the muffled confines of the hellish laboratory. Then silence.
Officers swarmed their location. Paramedics rushed to the girl, to Miguel, to her. She answered their questions, but her mind wasn’t there. Not after everything they’d just witnessed. Not after the mutated man they’d seen. She realized then where she recognized the man’s face. She had wondered at first if he were a victim of grotesque experimentation, like the girl was supposed to be. Like the bodies in the cooler had been.
But she knew that the man hadn’t been a victim. He’d chosen that path. He’d been the brains behind the operation. He was—or had been—Dr. Aaron Kaplan.
Miguel seemed to understand now too. Sweat dripped down his forehead. There was a bruise, already turning purple, along the side of his face, and the deep gash was covered in some healing spray the paramedics had administered. He spit on the ground.
“Jurassic Park is bullshit, huh?” he said with a sardonic grin, quoting Kaplan. “That was bullshit.” Miguel’s grin disappeared, and he put his face in his palms. “Christ.”
His attempt at gallows humor had failed to shake the images still haunting Ana’s mind. She stood silent, still absorbing everything they’d endured. The man, for whatever strange reason, had become so fascinated by the dinosaurs he’d created, he’d decided to become one. He’d isolated select genes and experimented on unwitting humans first. And now she and Miguel had pitted him against his creations. The SWAT forces now lining up outside the loading dock would soon find out whether man or beast had won the battle.
There would no doubt be a lengthy investigation into how this man, running a seemingly legitimate company, had used Baltimore to conceal this macabre underground endeavor. Ana glanced at a wailing ambulance that took the girl away. Undoubtedly part of that investigation would be determining where Kaplan had obtained his human subjects.
A shiver crept through her flesh. In time, the true depths of Kaplan’s cruelty toward humans and animals would be revealed. She knew the revelations would be shocking and gruesome. Dread bubbled within her. But it wasn’t solely for what they’d turn up in the Kaplan case.
More concerning to her was how Kaplan had gotten away with it all in the first place. After all, if he’d been able to reverse engineer dinosaurs from birds, then turn people into reptilian monsters, what else lurked under Baltimore’s streets?
“You going to be okay?” Miguel asked her.
“Me? Sure, I guess.”
“What about the girl?”
“Maybe, in time.” Ana gazed up, past the OrnoBio lab building. “But I have a feeling this city won’t be.”
A Word from Anthony J Melchiorri
Ana Dellaporta first appeared as a minor character in my Black Market DNA series. Her involvement in the series grew with each book. She quickly adopted a starring role as an important protagonist. She had grit, wit, and a dogged determination to solve the nastiest biotech crimes. I decided she deserved more than sharing the spotlight with the other characters of near-future Baltimore, and I wanted to explore her life before the events in the Black Market DNA series, so I first gave Ana her own story in Fatal Injection.
When I was initially approached to write a story for The Jurassic Chronicles, the world Ana inhabited already had the crucial elements of the story I wanted to tell: action, crime, the dark side of genetic engineering, and the twisted biohackers that just might reverse engineer a dinosaur into existence. It wasn’t hard to hatch “Fatal Mutation” from those elements.
As Ana and Miguel mentioned, there really are scientists who are working on the manipulation of chicken DNA to give chicks physical, dinosaur-like traits, evoking their ancestral origins.
As a scientist myself (currently developing cell therapies to help people rather than dinosaurs), I love blending my passions in biology, engineering, and technology with action-oriented, suspense-filled works. I hope I succeeded and you enjoyed reading “Fatal Mutation” as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
You can find out more about me and my works at: http://anthonyjmelchiorri.com
If you’d like, you can sign up to my mailing list to hear more about recent releases and snag a free copy of Fatal Injection, Ana’s first solo story: http://bit.ly/ajmlist
Noble Savage
by Terry Maggert
DR. ARTURO PERES was no sprinter, but his feet moved in a blur as he streaked through the pine forest like an Olympic athlete. His fear was so total he felt nothing of pain from the branches that whipped him to a bloody ruin as he ploughed heedlessly through any and all obstacles, his lungs working like a bellows. Fear drove him beyond normal human ability, a fact he might have found interesting had he not been running for his actual life. Even his sample vest felt lighter than air as he paid no heed to the dense mineral fragments banging rhythmically into his ribs with each stride. The vidstream from a button cam on his uniform would display a smear of green and brown during his headlong dash. The Point team would slow it down to glean details, but only if he survived long enough to return from what he thought was the early Cretaceous.
With a sliding heave, he propelled his middle-aged bulk in a graceful arc, clearing the final incline as he began to hurtle downward toward the Point. The inflatable struts gleamed like a beacon of hope as he slipped, righted himself, then fell again into a wild tumble that began to batter him even further, one punishing impact at a time. A distant scream told him that the last of his mission team had met their end; there was a mewling cry and then only his heart banging away in his ears. From five to one in less than ten minutes. This place is death.
Through the low conifers, the dim reflection of metal told him he was close. Covered with the fragrant branches, the Time Transfer Slip Point, simply called the Point, rested six feet in the air on three flexible Mylar composite balloons. Made with a bright steel deck and open-air construct, the device was an unremarkable square that housed little technology other than a series of lockers filled with rations, gear, and sampling equipment. At a glance, one would never think that two major wars had been fought over the Point, let alone countless brushfires, suicide attacks, and cyberwars of such subtlety that there was nothing more complex than a padlock to be seen on the device. The risk of hacking was simply too great, therefore the Point was austere by design. There would be no back door attacks. There was no door to attack—unless the invasion came through time, and that access was held solidly in the ruthless fist of the Point teams. The team motto of “math on one end, metal on the other” explained why the Point’s tech side was housed in a security facility so heavily armored it offered little in the way of hope to interlopers. In every sense, the culmination of the entire time manipulation program was the most valuable thing in all of history. The amount of guns surrounding it confirmed that fact.
Upon discovery of the Point’s existence, every major religion formed an army and launched a frontal assault to claim the device, as did corporations, nations, and individuals who sought control over the most powerful force in the known universe. Designed by the Spaniards, funded by the Americans and Germans, and built by all three, the Point was controlled by a separate extra-constitutional power that recognized no authority in the world save its own.
There had even been a deluge of lawsuits so relentless that the Point Control Board resorted to using selective assassination to quell such attempts at subverting the use of the device. After more than forty deaths, in which the PCB openly admitted to killing opponents, the lawsuits slowed to a trickle. With that legal breathing room, scientists could get down to the business of exploiting time travel in the name of truth, and, if all went well, profit. This was done despite each member of the team knowing full well that money would ultimately decide where and when the insertion teams would travel. Frivolous missions were proposed and discarded by more sober minds, although the temptat
ion of walking Sutter’s Mill before the gold rush or the blue ground of South Africa had been powerful. What human would not want to see the Great Pyramid rise, or discover who built Stonehenge? Such mysteries, while poignant, were not profitable. Even the guarantee of undiscovered resources was no assurance of a mission. Simple access to unharvested wealth was not reason enough to fund and form a team—for that to occur, the potential for profit had to reach such stratospheric heights that all concerned parties would have a piece of the action without fear of losing their position in the hierarchy. Time travel was not cheap. In fact, it required materials and energy on a scale that made the abandoned attempts at asteroid mining into little more than a historical footnote.
After a spate of successful tests, the first human trials began. To the amazement of everyone, the fourth test worked without incident. Each Point traveler took careful video imaging and re-entered the current timestream with no ill effects save a sense of forces far greater than they had imagined possible before their dive into the past. There were no catastrophic hangovers from time paradoxes, and it was concluded that whatever the device was reaching, it could not impact the world in which the Point was a reality.
Arturo thought of none of this as he slammed onto the three-step ladder that led him up and onto the ringing metal deck, even as his legs slipped on the condensation, causing him to crash chest first into a low seat from which he could activate the return sequence. Groggy but unbowed, he rose with a half-turn to sit as his left hand unerringly toggled the Point to life.
I made it. He closed his eyes while fighting the urge to retch after the suicidal pace he’d endured.
The quill dart struck him high in the shoulder as he buckled the seat restraints. Turning to see the source of his pain, his button cam caught the flash of motion, then faded to nothing as a toxin of brutal simplicity began to unzip his flesh in growing concentric rings around the weapon’s point of impact. By the time the return sequence was complete and Arturo arrived in the armored hangar atop the steaming Point device, he was in the throes of horrific death, spitting blood even as petechial hemorrhaging riddled his face like a scarlet roadmap.
The Jurassic Chronicles (Future Chronicles Book 15) Page 4