“Shut your mouth, young lady, right now. You’re in enough trouble as it is. If any of your story were true, any little part of it, don’t you think the officer would have found something? Some evidence of this awful killing you claim to have seen? So you just shut your mouth before you make things even worse than they already are.”
Alicia realized she was sobbing, tears running down her cheeks, and she had no recollection of when she had started to cry. Her mother’s dismissal of her story was the last straw, a fitting curtain call to this epic nightmare. If Alicia couldn’t even convince her own mother she was telling the truth, what chance did she have with a policeman, whose job description was basically to be skeptical of everyone and everything?
She swiped at her tears with the back of her hand and directed her gaze toward the floor. It was simply impossible to meet the eyes of either person in the room at the moment.
Seemingly satisfied now that she had eviscerated her only child in front of a stranger, Alicia’s mother turned her attention back to the chief. “Please accept our apology, Chief Haviland. May we leave?”
The chief had been sitting upright in his chair, drumming his fingers on his desktop as he watched the exchange between mother and daughter. Now he sat back, crossing his arms and staring at Alicia appraisingly. The silence stretched out like a desert highway, long and flat and endless, and finally she raised her head.
He locked eyes with her, his expression stern, and Alicia had the sudden conviction that he was lying. It was overwhelming and all-consuming. Of course the officer found Eddie’s body. He found Eddie’s car as well, and maybe even the Humvee with the trailer and the wolves and the weird army guys. Of course he found it. He found all of it.
Then she shook her head. That was the exhaustion talking, and the shock and the horror and the fear. What possible reason would the chief of police have for lying about it?
“Yes, you can go,” the cop said. “There will be no charges. This time.”
Alicia’s mother rose without another word. She grabbed Alicia by the elbow and pulled her to her feet.
The chief was still sitting motionless behind his desk as they left his office.
8
Doctor Jason Greeley had been an outsider his whole life. As a young child he’d been fat and gawky, with thick glasses and an unhealthy pallor that came from sitting in his bedroom reading books while other kids were chasing each other around outside in the sun.
Middle school was torture and high school was worse, with bullies seemingly lurking around every corner and even the geeks and stoners looking at him like he had two heads. Jason took the concept of solitude to a new level, and while being alone never bothered him, he would have been lying to himself if he didn’t wonder on occasion, late at night in the darkness of his bedroom, whether he would ever fit in anywhere.
By the time he hit college, and especially afterward in grad school, most of the active bullying had stopped. He still spent virtually all his non-classroom time alone, but the kids—and some adults—who had pushed Jason around and made his early years a living hell, had either lost interest in doing so or were too caught up in living their lives and paying their mortgages and raising their families to worry about a science geek with an IQ higher than any two of them combined.
So Jason had long-since accepted the notion of being an outsider. He had his lab and his research, and over the course of three-decades-plus in the field of neural conditioning had racked up an impressive array of accolades from his peers, the other solitary science geeks who had been bullied their whole lives.
But the fact that he was comfortable with the notion of always being the outsider didn’t necessarily mean he was happy with it. It’s human nature to want to fit in, to be a part of something larger and more significant than oneself, and Jason could not deny that sense of belonging he’d never felt was something he very much desired.
So when he was contacted out of the blue nearly ten years ago with the offer of his own lavishly funded lab inside a classified government research facility, where everything he needed to continue his cutting-edge research would be provided, and where he would have free rein over the direction of that research, Jason Greeley felt like he was finally home, like this was the opportunity for which he had been waiting his whole career.
Never mind that the United States Army would be his employer. Never mind that he would have to leave his home in Cambridge and move to a tiny village dozens of miles from nowhere, working in a facility so secret he couldn’t even describe the nature of his work to his most trusted peers.
Never mind any of that. He had run up against financial roadblocks in his neural conditioning research the previous few years, roadblocks so substantial they prevented any significant further progress. He was assured that would not be the case should he sign on at the Tamerlane Research Facility. The sky would be the limit.
That was what Jason Greeley had been promised, and for a while, everything worked out exactly as he’d hoped. Living in isolation was less than ideal, but Jason had never been one to enjoy the nightlife, even when he was living and studying in Boston, so what difference did that make, really? His research went well, progress coming faster and more fully with the extravagant funding than even he would have dared to dream.
But then Jason began to wonder if maybe his research wasn’t progressing too well. Too quickly.
Project Evaluation Days came early and often, almost always attended by the bland-faced men in the anonymous suits who never failed to make Jason nervous. In the early stages of the Lupin Project, following his brain surgery on the wolf pups, the demonstrations were fairly straightforward, no different from the sorts of things the visitors might be able to observe at any decent animal training facility.
The last few years, however, the project really took off. During these Project Evaluation Days, often the bland-faced men would accompany Jason into the field for first-hand observation, or they would cluster around the big-screen monitors installed on the walls in Jason’s lab to watch the wolf pack remotely.
The demonstrations became ever more elaborate; ever more impressive. Dummies dressed as men and women would be set up in one of the training fields carved out of the thousands of acres of wilderness behind the research facility. Sometimes the dummies were controlled robotically, sometimes not.
Sometimes distractions would be added to complicate the demonstrations, diversions such as wild animals released into the fields as the wolves were being guided remotely through their exercise. It was all with the intention of testing the pack’s ability to remain focused and on-task.
Once the demonstrations were prepped, the wolves would be freed from their cages, often at distances of a half-mile or more away from the target. The pack would disperse into the facility’s vast grounds, most of it unspoiled wilderness, looking exactly like the wild animals they were.
Jason would guide the animals through their exercise remotely, issuing instructions through a wireless headset. Complicated tasks would be completed, exercises that went far beyond circus tricks or typical animal training scenarios. The wolves invariably followed their instructions to the letter, hunting the dummies dressed in human-scented clothing, stalking them and eventually attacking.
The wolves would shred the dummies in a display of relentless savagery before being ordered to stand down by Jason. They would then immediately cease the attack and disperse into the wilderness.
Or the pack would perform intricate maneuvers designed to display their ability to rescue hostages while being controlled remotely from great distances.
These were the demonstrations Jason was most proud of, but invariably the bland-faced men would insist on further exploring the destructive potential of Jason’s work, on expanding the pack’s capability for controlled aggression. The men seemed most interested on those occasions when the dummies were ripped to shreds.
Sometimes Jason would work the animals into a frenzy and then call a halt to the demonstration pr
ematurely, before any damage had been done to the dummies, long before the animals’ natural bloodlust could be sated. The wolves always responded immediately. No matter the circumstances, no matter the point in the demonstration, early or late, their response was always the same: the wolves would stop the attack and disappear into the forest.
Jason knew the displays were impressive. To people unfamiliar with his work, it would be like watching the most highly trained animals in the world carrying out their trainers’ commands quickly and efficiently.
And often lethally.
The difference, of course, was that in Jason’s case, the commands were being issued remotely, from a distance, via radio transmission to receiver chips implanted directly into the animals’ brains. When perfected, the technology’s only limiting factor would be radio range.
His demonstrations in front of the bland-faced men in the anonymous suits were invariably well received, and before long Jason began hearing rumors of real-world plans for his research.
It didn’t take trained a military strategist to envision the types of applications the bland-faced men might be considering. And nearly all of them were applications a natural pacifist like Jason found disturbing.
He had never fully considered the long-term ramifications of conducting classified research inside a secret facility as a contractor for the United States military. Had never worried about those ramifications, partly because he’d never expected the Lupin Project to proceed as swiftly and as successfully as it had, but also because he simply wasn’t wired to consider the real world. He was at home in the lab and a fish out of water anywhere else, so he did what anyone in his situation would do—he spent most of his time and focused most of his energy in the lab.
Now, Jason was forced to face the growing suspicion—the growing certainty, really—that those anonymous-looking bland-faced men observing his demonstrations intended to use the product of his research to further the cause of war, to grow the military-industrial complex Jason so loathed.
Because why else would they be so interested in technology that was truthfully, despite the impressive progress he had made, still in its infancy?
The anonymous-looking CIA or NSA or other alphabet-soup men were going to use his wolves as spies, as assassins, as tools to accomplish regime changes in foreign lands, or for other nefarious purposes, most of which a neophyte like Jason could not even envision.
He realized now that it had been incredibly naïve of him not to consider the army’s end game before signing on at the research facility, not to think through the logical sequence of events that would occur should his research ever bear fruit. But he had been blinded by opportunity, blinded by the shiny new lab and the virtually unlimited research budget and by the equipment and the logistical support and the potential prestige.
But realizing it now and being able to do anything about it were two separate issues. One was irrelevant to the other. It was too late. His hands were tied. He had signed a raft of non-disclosure agreements during the hiring process, ironclad legal documents that went above and beyond typical such paperwork. Jason could of course be subject to civil penalties for breaking the NDAs, but his research involved national security matters, and as such his culpability for breaking them would rise far above civil penalties.
He could be tried for treason.
And if found guilty, could be imprisoned or even executed.
Jason sat at his big walnut desk inside his beautifully appointed office in the northeast corner of his ultra-modern lab and sighed bleakly. He was a prisoner, as surely as was any resident of any maximum-security penitentiary. There were no bars on his cell, he could come and go at the lab as he wished, but he was imprisoned nonetheless. And he had done it all to himself, of his own free will. He had walked right into this cell voluntarily.
He straightened the clutter on his desk—an easy task, since there was almost none—and gazed for a long time across the lab at the wolves to whom he had devoted so much time and effort over the last eight years. They slept peacefully in their indoor/outdoor cage, worn out from their kill, oblivious to the havoc they had wreaked just hours ago.
Then he blinked in confusion. Something was off in the lab. Dr. Jason Greeley was a man to whom clutter was anathema. No experiment was complete until the lab had been cleaned and his equipment sterilized if necessary and then properly stored.
A place for everything and everything in its place.
But from his office he could see a headset out of place. It lay haphazardly on an otherwise empty countertop, as if dropped there and forgotten.
He shook his head. Ran a hand through his hair. Thought back to the last time he had used a headset while working with his wolves. He was virtually certain he had replaced it in its storage locker afterward. And why wouldn’t he be sure? He’d been blessed with a near-eidetic memory.
He rose. Walked around his desk and into the lab. Picked up the headset and stared at it as if maybe it would spring to life and explain itself.
It didn’t.
He padded across the lab to his storage area and opened the locker. Then he placed the headset in its customary location. Shook his head again. This shouldn’t be a big deal, but Jason literally could not recall one other time when he had neglected his equipment so egregiously.
He sighed. It had truly been a long day. On his way back to the office, he stopped next to the wire cage housing his wolf pack and watched the animals sleep. They looked almost like large dogs now. Large, powerful, harmless dogs. If he hadn’t seen for himself the result of their savagery, it would have been easy for Jason to dismiss the damage, to push his concerns regarding his project to the back of his mind. After all, he had been doing exactly that for months now.
But tonight had brought those concerns to the forefront. Tonight had demonstrated to Jason in no uncertain terms that he could no longer afford to ignore the niggling voice in the back of his mind that whispered something was very wrong with his wolves.
They were becoming more aggressive.
More unpredictable.
Harder to control.
They had escaped their run tonight—somehow—and killed a teenage boy, and while Jason had chosen wolves as the subjects of his experimentation precisely because of their genetic predisposition to hunting and their strong social ties as pack animals, a major component of his research had always been to keep that predatory nature tightly in check.
But the last few months he had begun to suspect that control was slipping away.
Now he could no longer ignore those suspicions. Now he had exactly the kind of concrete proof his analytical brain required.
His wolves were devolving.
The Lupin Project was falling apart before his very eyes.
And he had no idea what to do about it.
9
“You want to explain to me just what the hell is going on over there?” New Quebec Police Chief Chris Haviland’s grip on the telephone receiver was so tight that he thought if he wasn’t careful the molded plastic might crack apart in his hands.
He didn’t know if he had ever been this angry.
Or this frightened.
“Who is this?” The voice on the other end of the line didn’t sound angry, or frightened. It only sounded annoyed.
“You know damned well who this is,” Haviland said. He knew he shouldn’t allow the research facility’s director to get under his skin—the man’s name was Colonel Frank Toler, and he was a prick with a superiority complex a mile wide—but he just couldn’t help it.
“Could you please be specific? I’m a busy man, and I don’t have time to play guessing games.”
“This is the police officer who’s about to drive to your facility and place you in handcuffs and charge you with murder.”
“Ah. Thank you. That does help narrow it down. To be honest, I thought I might hear from you tonight. How are you doing, Chief Haviland?”
“How am I doing? Not well, Colonel. At the moment I’m waitin
g for an answer to my question. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I’m afraid I can’t answer a question when I have no idea of the context. ‘What the hell is going on over here?’ Whatever do you mean?”
“So that’s how you want to play it? You’re going to feign innocence? You expect me to believe Tamerlane had nothing to do with the death of an eighteen year old high school student in a mauling by wild wolves just outside the back fence of your facility, when I know for a fact that your geek scientists have been researching wolf training?”
“You really should learn to be less circumspect, Chief Haviland. What exactly are you saying? Has there been an unexplained death?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. Don’t give me the innocent act. You know damned well what I’m saying, but since talking with you is like pissing into the wind, let me spell it out. I just sat in my office and listened to a terrified high school girl describe witnessing her boyfriend being ripped to pieces by a pack of wolves. I dispatched an officer to the scene, and what do you suppose he found?”
“This is your story, Chief. By all means, please tell it.”
“Nothing. He found not a goddamned thing.”
“Well, there you go. Apparently there was nothing to find.”
“Don’t give me that, Frank. We both know what happened out there in those woods. Those damned animals that your scientists have been artificially altering got loose somehow and killed one of my citizens. And not just any citizen, but a kid.”
“Chief, you just said your officer found nothing at the scene. Which is it? Was there a bloody killing at the scene or not?”
“It took the girl a couple of hours to make her way to the station. Your people would have had plenty of time to sanitize the scene, and you know it.”
“Calm down, chief. Mistakes happen occasionally. It’s the nature of research. It’s unavoidable. I’m not saying anything did happen out there behind the facility, mind you. Not saying that at all. But hypothetically speaking, if something had gone down the way you claim, you can rest assured I would do everything in my power to ensure nothing of the sort ever happened again. If you get my meaning.”
The Lupin Project Page 6