Kay read through the short, enigmatic email three times.
I have something for you. Open Facebook.
The note had been signed…
Laydeezman
A chill ran up the back of Kay’s legs as she stood, glaring around the open work space. A few of her colleagues were on the phone, others were typing away, immersed in their work. She swore, if this was Ellis playing one of his stupid little pranks, she was ready to pay a visit to HR and have the “Laydeezman’s” derrière tossed to the curb.
Kay went to her phone and the direct message she’d received on the Facebook app. It too was from the same source. Except this one was different.
The public is being lied to. And I have proof.
Kay clicked on the profile. It led her to a page with no picture or identifying information, only a name: Laydeezman.
Normally guys named Laydeezman would send her barely literate messages online like “Yo, sup, sexy lady?” or invitations to join them in lewd and unspeakable sex acts. The urge to ignore the messages was strong. Stronger still was the desire to reply, if only to validate that either Ellis or some other bozo was aiming to have a laugh at her expense.
Kay centered the cursor and began typing. Who is this and why are you wasting my time?
She decided to open the envelope Trish had handed her while she waited. As promised, inside was a single ticket for the New York fashion show. Kay stared down at the intricate design, wondering what outfit she would need to wear to avoid committing a fashion faux pas. God forbid if you happened to be wearing the spring collection in summer. And Kanye’s loathing for reporters was a well-documented fact.
The whole charade was in the process of tying her insides into tight little knots when the reply came back. Actually, it was an attachment without any words.
She could hear the disembodied voice of Lucas De Silva, the flamboyant and overworked IT guy, telling her not to open that attachment. She hovered the cursor over it and paused.
“That’s right, Kay,” his ghost voice sing-songed into her ear. “Move that cursor up to the X and close that browser window. No sudden movements. Just keep it nice and slow.”
Instead, Kay clicked the attachment, banishing Lucas’ apparition from her thoughts. What opened was an image of a man and woman. The picture was too close to see much other than they were standing wearing visitors’ badges. A fresh ping signaled the arrival of a new picture. This time she clicked without any hesitation. The image was almost the same, only this time there was more of it. Suddenly Kay began to grasp what she was looking at. The picture had been taken inside the Oval Office. She downloaded a copy and opened it inside a photo viewer, which she used to zoom in on the visitor tags hanging around the man’s and woman’s necks. Dr. Jack Greer and Dr. Mia Ward. She’d never heard of them. If Laydeezman was trying to pick her up, so far he was doing one hell of a good job.
Then came another soft ping. This time a bunch of strange numbers and symbols showed up.
38°53’15.59” 77°00’26.40”
“What is this?” Kay asked, perplexed.
Grief weeps on history’s shoulder. Be there at 9 p.m. sharp. Follow history’s gaze. There you will find proof I am the real deal.
And with that, Laydeezman was offline. Kay sat staring at the message, wondering what she’d gotten herself into. If it wasn’t that asshole Ellis, could her fiancé Derek be pulling her leg? He was a young investment banker with a promising future. Not exactly the prime candidate to punk someone.
Kay stared at the numbers. They looked like GPS coordinates. Latitude and longitude. She highlighted them from the message she’d been sent and pasted it into Google. Right away a page came up for the Peace Monument right here in D.C. It was a large statue built in 1877 to commemorate sailors killed during the Civil War.
Kay glanced down at her phone. 6:23 P.M. Two and a half hours before nine o’clock. But this was crazy. She wasn’t going to start running around the city on a scavenger hunt. For all she knew, some psycho would be there waiting to murder her… or worse. On the other hand, this Laydeezman character had pictures from inside the White House. Pictures that hadn’t been published. Which meant this Laydeezman character hadn’t simply gone hunting for them online. Her innate sense of curiosity was engaged in a pitched battle with her common sense and already she had a feeling which side was going to win.
Chapter 7
Mia knocked on the door to room 225. They were somewhere outside Richmond on the second floor of a Motel 6. The two-hour drive from Joint Base Andrews meant it was nearly ten o’clock. But she knew this might be her only opportunity.
Behind her stood two FBI agents the government had assigned as part of her security detail. They wore jeans and loose-fitting windbreakers, all part of a rather dismal effort to blend in and appear less conspicuous. She knew next to nothing about them because they had hardly said more than a handful of words since they had met. She had been able to gather that the thinner one named Ramirez had a serious addiction to Doritos and the shorter, stocky one named Chalk always had a toothpick in his mouth and, when he thought no one was looking, he would use his tongue to flip it end over end.
Sven had been another man of few words. A part of the big guy had been shattered by Tom’s death, especially since it had been at Sentinel’s hands. He hadn’t spoken of it, hadn’t needed to. She could tell by the hardened gaze in his eye and how the fingers of his right hand kept knotting up as though they were squeezing the life out of someone. When the Navy helicopter had brought them to Ellington Field, Sven had told her there was something he needed to take care of. That she was in good hands now and that he would see her again soon. After that he had pulled her into a hug that was one part boa constrictor, two parts father figure. Just the same, she was sad to see him go, but hopeful they would meet again soon.
“Who is it?” a voice challenged from the other side of the door.
“Mia Ward,” she replied.
There was a pause before the latch clicked and the door opened. It was a man she didn’t recognize and for a second she wondered if she had the wrong room. Then, over the man’s shoulder, she spotted Paul, sitting on the bed with a remote control in his hand.
“Sven sends his regards,” Mia told the guy at the door.
The man nodded, a former Sentinel agent himself, now working for the other side. “And Tom?”
That sting again as she realized the pain of his loss was still so raw and that it might remain that way for some time. Something about the change in her expression had said it all. “He was one of our top agents,” he said, seeming to shake off the sudden feeling of grief, the way some try to shake off a cold sweat. Almost robotically, he moved past her and the FBI men and stepped outside. Mia turned long enough to see him grip the railing, the muscles in his arms growing taut.
Paul came up from the bed and stood there, not entirely sure if he should hug her or not. Maybe not entirely sure he wanted to.
“I’m glad to see you,” he said, searching for the right words. “Does this mean we can go?”
Her eyes brushed against the tacky carpet at his feet.
“I’m not here to rescue you,” she told him. “There’s a good chance they’ll move you in another day or so.”
Paul pushed the palm of his hand against his temple. “I’m going nuts in here, Mia. Stuck in this room all day. Eating fast food morning, noon and night. And then the parade of strange people who keep coming in to check on Zoey. I don’t know if she’s in a coma, but she’s being fed through a tube and probably needs to be in a proper hospital.”
Mia glanced past Paul to the bed he’d been sitting on and the tiny lump beneath the covers. Between the wall and the bed was an IV stand. She sat down next to her daughter and peeled back the covers. Zoey’s skin was warm to the touch and rosy in color, similar to Grant and so many others affected by Salzburg.
“Hey, honey,” she said, brushing back a patch of her daughter’s hair. “How’s my big girl doing?
”
Zoey’s eyes slowly opened and blinked away the light.
“You remember how I woke you up that one morning singing, ‘Time to make the donuts?’ And you jumped out of bed so excited? It was the jingle from those old Dunkin’ Donuts commercials. I didn’t realize until you started crying that you were too young to know it was just an expression. I guess the real lesson was that sometimes parents say things without thinking. You must have cried for hours and I felt like a bag of crap for putting something in your head that had no business being there in the first place.”
Zoey stared back at her with a blank expression. There didn’t seem to be an ounce of recognition.
It was hard enough seeing her daughter like this. But it somehow seemed so much worse that her little girl didn’t seem to know who she was. “I always hated to see you sad, baby girl, but right about now I’d take sad over this.” Mia fought back the tears threatening to roll over her lids and down her cheeks. The only consolation was being close and stroking her hair, the way she used to do every night putting Zoey to bed.
She took her daughter’s tiny hand and squeezed before staring down. Zoey’s fingers looked thicker than she remembered. Kids grew by leaps and bounds, she knew that, but this wasn’t normal growth, especially from a young girl who’d been eating through a tube. Normally, the body tended to become thinner, in some cases emaciated. The extremities were the first to reveal the tell-tale signs the body wasn’t getting everything it needed. But more than food, exercise was what kept a child lean and muscular. And as with the three hundred and forty days astronaut Mark Kelly had spent aboard the International Space Station, time spent in a zero-G environment would result in a loss of muscle and bone mass. To a greater or lesser degree, patients in a coma or a wheelchair experienced the same thing. Newton’s laws of motion were quite clear—use it or lose it.
Mia stood and yanked back the covers.
The move alarmed Paul. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Zoey’s arms and legs,” she replied. “They look thicker than normal.”
“Of course, we’re taking excellent care of her.”
“I’m sure you are, but this doesn’t look normal, Paul. I need to take a blood sample.”
“Our daughter may be dying and you’re worried about her weight?” Paul’s hands were clasped together, his face a mask of incredulity.
“Stop being ridiculous,” she shouted. “I don’t give a damn about her looks. But people in her situation don’t bulk up like this.” Mia gently squeezed the length of her daughter’s leg. That was when an image of Grant flashed before Mia’s eyes. The robust way he had looked when he showed up at Andrews, when days earlier he had been suffering from a catastrophic hip fracture.
Mia turned to one of the FBI agents. “I need your phone.”
•••
“Dr. Merel Jansson?” Mia asked the receptionist at the Amsterdam Genomics Laboratory.
“I’m sorry, but Dr. Jansson isn’t available right now.”
“Tell her it’s Dr. Mia Ward and that it’s an emergency.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Dr. Jansson is out of the country.”
Mia’s heart sank. The receptionist started to say something about her returning in a week or two.
“Where did she go?”
“I’m not sure I’m at liberty…”
“Lady, very sick people are going to die if you don’t start getting with the program here. Now where is she?”
“India,” the receptionist said, defeated. “She’s at the Kolkata Medical Research Institute.”
“Good, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Mia said before disconnecting. She then used Agent Ramirez’s phone to search the hospital’s phone number and place the call. The runaround this time was more challenging as Mia struggled with the thick Bengali accent. Finally, Dr. Jansson came on the line.
“Mia?”
“Listen, Merel, I don’t have much time. Salzburg is morphing. The 47th chromatid we found is about to get some company.”
Mia told her about Anna’s work decoding the blast wave and the binary code hidden deep inside of it. It was no surprise that the human genome was composed of 23 pairs of chromosomes (46 chromatids). When Salzburg showed up as the 47th, it was easy to pass it off as a rare genetic anomaly. But that was before the alien ship in the Gulf began somehow spreading it to millions of people around the world. The genes present in that first chromatid had been harmful enough—sensitivity to the sun, weak bones, degraded DNA and in some, like her Zoey, cognitive deterioration followed by the inability to communicate. In other words, it was now starting to look as though the human genome was being altered in ways that would quickly lead to the disappearance of our species. Were these advanced beings clearing out the trash in order to make way for themselves or perhaps a more advanced species of their own creation? It was hard not to think so. And with the cracking of the blast wave’s binary signal and the emergence of brand-new symptoms, Mia was growing more and more certain an even deadlier phase of the mutations was about to begin.
“It’s strange you should mention that,” Jansson said, her crisp Dutch accent shining through. “A handful of our subjects here in India are also showing signs of increased bone density. The treatment of Salzburg has become the research institute’s top priority. Since arriving, we’ve pursued a much more aggressive version of the gene therapy you pioneered back in Amsterdam, given that it showed so much promise before. Still, we wondered whether these new symptoms were a sign we had pushed too fast and too hard. Whether the patient’s body was somehow rejecting our attempts at silencing those four genes within Salzburg.”
Mia moved the phone to her other ear as Paul and the FBI agents stood watching with puzzled curiosity. “If we can figure out how Salzburg was introduced into our genome in the first place and how the ship was able to mutate the chromatid remotely, we might learn how to cut it off at the source.”
There was more she wanted to tell Jansson. How they needed to figure this out quickly in case the Greenland ice sheet was hiding yet another ship. Not to mention the two-week countdown before a devastating impact sent the human species into the evolutionary dustbin.
“You said ‘we,’” Jansson replied, confused.
“I’ll be on the next flight,” Mia replied, watching the two FBI agents shaking their heads and waving their hands in front of them. But she wasn’t worried about them. Informing Jack she wasn’t going to be joining them, that was the part she wasn’t looking forward to.
Chapter 8
It was 8:50 P.M. and Kay was parked near the Peace Monument on what felt a hell of a lot like a stakeout. She had pulled over in a roundabout and sat eyeing the nearly forty-foot-tall statue as though it might spring a pair of legs and run away. A handful of tourists, mostly Japanese and Eastern European, stood taking pictures of themselves from selfie sticks. Fading hints of late evening light kissed the sky, silhouetting the Capitol Building in the distance. It would be dark soon and the thought of waiting here after sundown sent shivers up her arms.
She had made up her mind earlier to ignore the Laydeezman’s instructions, that much was true. But then the memory of Rod Lewis’ smoke-charmed voice had echoed in her ear, promising a spot in the newsroom if she could land herself a scoop worthy of the honor. Normally that meant pounding the pavement and beating the proverbial bushes. But the years she’d spent working the lifestyle beat hadn’t exactly gotten her much in the way of inside sources. The closest to that was Vincente Ramirez, a former roommate’s ex-boyfriend who had gone on to work for the FBI. Not a particularly solid connection, she knew, which explained her presence here, parked near the Peace Monument, waiting for nine o’clock to roll around.
She got out of her car, waiting for a gap in the traffic to cross. That group of tourists was gone. Only she and a young couple remained. They were sitting at the far end, sharing a smooch and a case of the giggles.
Kay removed the printout of her conversa
tion with the Laydeezman and scanned over it.
Grief weeps on history’s shoulder.
Two marble figures stood atop the monument’s pedestal, both of them women. One covered her face, weeping. The other held a stylus and stared into the corner of the fountain. If the crier was grief, then the other must be history.
Follow history’s gaze.
Kay did so and saw little more than the fountain’s rippling water. She drew closer, eyeing the area more carefully. That was when she saw the odd shape of something stuck against the fountain’s inner wall, half submerged. Taking one final glance to ensure no one was closing in on her from behind, Kay went over and took a closer look. Sure enough, stuck against that inner wall was a ziplocked bag protecting a light-colored envelope. Her pulse kicked up, drumming a furious beat in her chest as she removed it and hurried back to her car.
She opened the ziplock and removed the envelope. It didn’t weigh much more than a few ounces. She tore it open and found a photograph inside. Removing it, Kay switched on the console light and stared for several minutes.
A knock at her window nearly gave her a heart attack. The picture tumbled to her lap as she turned to see who was bearing down on her. The cop outside looked surprised himself.
“You can’t park here, lady. You’re gonna have to move it along or I’m gonna give you a ticket.”
Kay nodded, still clutching her chest. She then started the vehicle and pulled away. It was only after she arrived home to her apartment in Adams Morgan twenty minutes later that she punched the steering wheel, bruising the knuckles on her right hand.
Extinction Series (The Complete Collection) Page 30