“I got him!” she gasped out. “I really got him!”
Joey, Kase, and Miranda poked their heads around the sides of the door, their eyes all wide.
Joey whistled. “Out cold. Nice hit, Canada.”
“What are you doing?” I asked, exasperated. “He was about to tell us his name!”
Avani lowered her frying pan, her eyes still wide and energized, as if she were on a sugar rush. “We saw him walking outside and followed him here. I thought he might be dangerous, so I—I whacked him.”
“Is he dead?” asked Miranda.
At that, Avani let out a whimper. “I didn’t mean to hit him that hard!”
“It’s okay,” I said, kneeling down and peering at the man’s face. “He’s still breathing.”
Grimacing, Avani quickly set the pan on the counter and wiped her hands on her shirt.
“We must have missed him when we searched the compound,” I said. “Maybe he was out in the bush.”
“Do you think he’s alone?” Miranda asked.
Sam picked up the frying pan with a grunt. “Let’s wake him up and ask him.”
Joey had a bottle of water in his hand, and he poured water on the man’s face until he came to, spluttering and coughing. Immediately he jerked up into a sitting position and scrambled backward. His skin was so pale that I could see the fine network of veins in his neck and hands.
“My glasses . . .” he groaned, his bloodshot eyes squinting at me.
I found the dropped glasses and pushed them toward him. After he pulled them on, he blinked around at us. “You’re just a bunch of kids!”
“Kids with a whole lot of questions,” I said. “For starters, who are you?”
He eyed us mistrustfully and touched a hand to the back of his head. “What did you hit me with?” he asked, hissing through his teeth. “God Almighty, that hurts!”
“Who are you?”
His hand dropped to scratch the back of his neck. “I’m Monaghan. Dr. Carl Monaghan. I wasn’t going to hurt you.”
“Do you know where my dad is? Are you with the guys who shot at him?”
“What? I don’t know what you’re talking about. You kids better get out of here!”
“Why?”
“Because—because this is private property! Highly off-limits!”
“Is there anyone else here?” asked Sam.
Dr. Monaghan’s eyes shifted to him, and his hand moved to his wrist, scratching. He was starting to make me itch just by watching him. He must have noticed me staring, because he looked down at his hands and suddenly clenched them into fists.
“Listen here, kids, they’ll be back any minute, and you don’t want to be here when they arrive.”
“Who? Abramo?” I asked.
He grimaced. “How do you know that name? And what are you doing out here in the middle of the desert?”
“Semidesert,” whispered Avani. She still stood framed in the doorway, with the other three looking over her shoulders.
“My father, Dr. Ty Carmichael, disappeared three days ago,” I said. “He’d heard reports of poachers in the area and went out looking for them, along with our friend Theo. Theo—he’s dead. Shot. My dad’s missing.”
Dr. Monaghan’s expression had gone vacant, and though he was looking right at me, I suspected he wasn’t seeing me at all. “Carmichael, you say?”
“Yes—do you know him?”
“No, no . . .” He was scratching his wrist again. The sound was infuriating.
“Look,” said Miranda, her voice shaking. “Have you got a phone or what? I need to call my parents.”
“And the police,” said Avani.
“And my lawyer,” added Kase.
“What?” From the way Dr. Monaghan’s eyes roved restlessly, I wondered if he was sick or feverish. “No, no, haven’t got a phone. That was the first thing they destroyed—our phones and radios. Smashed them all, after Naveen tried to call for help.”
“Naveen? Is he the one . . . in the menagerie?”
Dr. Monaghan blanched even further, his skin nearly gray. “You went in the menagerie? Did you touch anything?”
“No, believe me, we got out of there fast as we could. What happened to those animals, Dr. Monaghan? What happened to the lion?”
“You saw Androcles?”
So our silver nightmare had a name. “He chased us until we fell through the ground into one of the reservoirs. We swam until we found your pipe and climbed it to this place.”
Dr. Monaghan sighed. He looked around at each of us thoughtfully, then shook his head and motioned for Avani and the others to come inside. “Hurry. It isn’t safe.” Once they were all inside, stepping around him with mistrustful looks, he shut the door and leaned against it, his hand gingerly nursing the back of his head. “I told Strauss we needed to stop drilling. ‘We’ve gone too deep,’ I told her. But did she listen?” He snorted. “Does she ever?” Sighing again, the doctor moved his hand into his pocket, as if fingering something inside. I tensed, wondering if it could be a gun. “It’s probably too late, anyway. The lion’s escaped, God knows what it’s infected. You lot, probably.”
“Is it some kind of disease?” asked Avani.
“Not a disease,” said the doctor. “Lindy called it a virus. That’s closer to the truth, I suppose, but it’s more than that. More complicated.”
“But it’s metal,” Avani said. She slipped into the room, stepping around Dr. Monaghan in order to face him. “Metal can poison someone but not infect them. Not like a virus. It’s inorganic.”
“Not anymore,” he replied.
Avani looked alarmed. “What does that mean?”
“Can someone please explain what’s going on?” Joey said. “I am so lost right now. And I totally slept through, like, all of my chemistry classes, so you have to speak in kindergarten terms.”
“He’s saying he discovered some kind of metal that’s . . . well, that’s alive.”
“I didn’t discover it,” he said. “I created it.”
We digested this in silence, until Kase said, “This is the part where we all laugh, right? Because that is absolutely insane.”
“Why are you telling us all this?” I asked him, my suspicion too strong to ignore. “Why aren’t you calling your friends, telling them where we are? Shouldn’t you be trying to, I don’t know, shoot us?”
“Hey, genius, don’t give him any ideas!” Joey protested.
Dr. Monaghan met my gaze levelly. “Because they’re not my friends. And because I have to tell someone. They destroyed all my means of communicating with the outside. You are the only chance I have of warning the world. If I tell you what happened here, will you swear to do your best to tell the authorities? The government, Interpol, the UN—they must all be warned!”
I studied him more closely, and if he was lying, I was unable to read it in his eyes. “We’ll do our best. Tell us what happened.”
“Like, for instance,” said Avani, “how you created a virus made of living metal.”
“And why,” I added.
“Don’t you see?” Dr. Monaghan replied. “Inorganic life! The secret of the origins of the universe! Life on other planets! This discovery makes almost anything possible.”
“First Frankenstein the lion,” said Joey. “Now aliens?”
“You mean Frankenstein’s monster the lion,” said Avani. And then she graciously added, “Common mistake.”
“How can something inorganic be alive?” I asked. “Aren’t those things mutually exclusive?”
It was Avani who answered. I suspected she was already several steps ahead of the rest of us in understanding what Dr. Monaghan was hinting at. “Depends on your definition of alive. If it can reproduce, isn’t that alive? If it has some sort of metabolism, or if it fights other life-forms for its own survival . .
.”
Dr. Monaghan fixed his gaze on Avani. “Clever.”
“What I don’t understand,” she replied, returning his look with equal intensity, “is how it affects organic animals. It would be like people being infected with rust, or a computer getting the flu.”
“Unless the life-form in question invaded like the Trojans, hidden beneath a mask, slipping through the body’s defense system,” said Dr. Monaghan.
“How?” Avani whispered.
“Ah, see, that was the trick. At first, we thought we’d just created a new life-form—and well, we had, you see.” From his pocket he pulled out a small glass vial. I flinched, still half expecting a gun, but when I saw what was in the vial, I didn’t relax. It contained a small quantity of what looked like mercury, flowing like water as he swirled it around. We all watched it as if hypnotized. “You’ve already said it yourself—the basic criteria of life: Metalcium is inorganic, and yet it self-replicates. It has a kind of metabolism. It adapts to changes in its environment. We created life, however basic, however simple. Just little cells of metal at first, but I began to wonder. . . . What more could it do? I was on the brink of something, I knew it. It was when we began adding lead that its true potential was realized.”
“That’s its Trojan horse,” said Avani. “Lead!” She turned to the rest us, who sat blinking and clueless. “People get lead poisoning because the body mistakes lead for calcium, letting it slip through the immune system. He’s saying this Metalcium stuff works the same way—sneaking into an organism’s system by hiding behind a mask of lead.”
“I sure hope there’s not a quiz on this later,” said Joey, “because I have no idea what’s coming out of your mouth right now.”
“It doesn’t just use lead as camouflage,” said Dr. Monaghan. “It evolved on its own and began to copy DNA from the host organism. It can essentially create inorganic copies of organic cells. It’s like . . . hm, it’s like comparing a clay sculpture of a man to an actual man—but in this case, the clay can sculpt itself.”
“And what on Earth about this is a good thing?” I asked. “Why would you create something like that at all?”
“Don’t you see what we could do with it? We cut the tails off mice, gave them an injection of Metalcium—and the tails grew back made of silver and pretty much indestructible. Metalcium heals itself. Cut the metal tail off, it grows back again. Imagine it! Prosthetics is just the tip of the iceberg! Why we—”
“Why here?” I said. He gave me an annoyed look for interrupting his monologue. “Why are you in the middle of the Kalahari?”
His reply was hurried and impatient. “For one, this is a remote location in a country where fewer questions are asked. It’s safer for us, way out here where there are no neighbors. Second, there are large deposits of tungsten below us and since my employer already owns a controlling interest in a few diamond mines in the region, it was easy to use them as a cover operation. We drill for tungsten and the other minerals we need to experiment with, and if anyone asks questions, we show them diamonds from one of the other mines.”
So they really were experimenting illegally. I’d hoped that the government might know what was going on, but if what Dr. Monaghan said was true, then no wonder his “employer” was so desperate to cover up the real purpose behind this place. Their drilling would have been the cause of the fault line we’d stepped on and fallen through.
“But it went wrong,” I prompted.
His expression rearranged into a look of defeat. “About six months ago. The Metalcium began attacking its hosts instead of healing them. It’s like it was learning, getting smarter, evolving in a way we’d never dreamed. It healed the wounds, but it didn’t stop there. The Metalcium decided that all the organic cells were defective and began killing the original ones and replacing them. It starts with the skin and hair, and then it goes for the brain. At that point, the infected subjects began to go insane. You’ve seen them—the silver animals, part organic, part inorganic. Chimeras, we call them.”
While the rest of us gaped at him with horror, Joey asked, “Wait—you mean, like, a lion with an eagle’s head and a snake’s tail, that, like, breathes fire and crap?”
Avani shook her head. “That’s only in mythology. In biology, a chimera is any organism that’s a blend of different genetic sources or tissues. Dr. Monaghan, why didn’t you stop the research then and there, or look for a cure, or tell the authorities, or—or something? Once you saw it turn against its hosts, shouldn’t you have stopped it before it got out of hand?”
“I did,” he said flatly. “As difficult as it was, I knew we had to stop. It had to be destroyed—all of it—or we could unleash the greatest plague Earth has ever known. But you must understand, at that point, it was out of my control. The biotech corporation I work for refused to end the project. They wanted us to find a way to control the Metalcium, to explore all of its potential. I could have walked away, sure, but the research would have gone on without me.”
He made a small, pained noise in the back of his throat. “I fought them, I did. They threatened to have me removed from the project, which I didn’t want. Lindy, you see, my assistant . . . she was like a daughter to me. I couldn’t leave her, couldn’t leave the others to face it alone. It was my fault that it ever existed in the first place. I’m not much of a scientist if I don’t take responsibility for my own creations. We took greater precautions. We minimized every risk. . . . But it wasn’t enough.
“Lindy was the first to get infected, and the rest soon followed.” He cast a pained look at the door that held the infected scientists, then dropped his gaze to his hands. “A week ago, we were all fine. Then in the space of a few days . . . Too late.” His voice had dropped to a hollow whisper. “Too late.”
“Dr. Monaghan,” said Sam softly, “could we be infected?”
“Did you touch them?” Dr. Monaghan asked. “Did you touch the animals?”
“No,” I said. “But we were in the room with them.”
“It’s transferred by touch—direct skin-to-skin contact. It seems to only affect mammals—insects and birds and such are immune . . . for now. Who knows what it will evolve into? If you’re infected, you’ll soon know. It starts as an itch, you see. . . .” He began scratching his neck again, and his chin and his cheeks. “An awful, maddening itch all over your body, like a great invisible rash. Don’t scratch—that just makes it worse. Don’t scratch, and you can last four, maybe five days. I was doing so well up till now. But the others, Lindy and Ian and Vera, they scratched and they went quickly, silver from head to toe, and at last they went crazy. Completely wild. Don’t scratch, I told them. But did they listen? Well, what does it matter now? I’m almost done for. When Abramo and his men get back they’ll just shoot me anyway. God! You don’t know how much I’ve wanted to scratch!”
Before our horrified eyes, the skin beneath his nails began to peel off, as if it were a thin mask made of hot wax. Strips and flakes of it hung from his cheekbones, and beneath the gaping tatters, there was a smooth, shiny patina of silvery metal. When he pulled his hand away, his cheek hung in loose strips and strands from his jaw, some of the pieces falling away to the floor. The remaining metal of his cheek was so smooth that I could see my own reflection in it. I recoiled in horror.
Miranda turned away, retching, her hands fumbling on Kase’s chest. We all stared aghast as Dr. Monaghan lowered his hand and stared at me with eyes already tinged with silver around the edges, his left cheek covered with the sheen of Metalcium. Now I knew why he’d looked so pale; his skin was dying, killed by the infection of living metal cells he had created himself. When he scratched, the dead skin came loose and was replaced by a skin of toxic metal.
Bile surged in my throat, but I fought it down.
I held out a hand, keeping a good three feet between us. “Tell us how to help you.”
He shook his head and blinked as if try
ing to clear his mind. The skin hanging from his face stretched, pulling more off with it. I winced and looked away, my stomach clenching. It was like the face of a living corpse.
“I thought . . . I thought if I could find some way to save them, to find an antidote, but I haven’t got any time. Not now.” He glanced aside as if deeply ashamed. “I couldn’t save them, and now Abramo will come back and kill them. He gave me three days, three days to find a cure, three days to save them and myself, but time is up. It’s day three, and my pathetic attempts . . . Well.” He waved silver-tinged fingers at the counter of vials and computers. “Useless. I found nothing. It would take years to find a cure, if one even exists. I told Abramo we had to burn everything, the infected animals, the ones that escaped, before it spread. But it’s too late. He’s more concerned with covering this up than actually fixing it. He dropped everything here and took off when the lion escaped—I suppose that’s when he found your father instead. It’s only a matter of time before they find him. They can’t afford loose ends.”
I shut my eyes briefly, trying to steady my whirling thoughts. Dad knows how to survive out here. If anyone can disappear into the bush, it’s him. But doubt was a crippling poison, and I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out against it.
“We need to get out of here,” said Sam. “If he’s right about his time being up, then they could show up any minute.”
I nodded, but I still had a few lingering questions. I asked hoarsely, “Who are ‘they’?”
He grimaced, and the next thing he said was so soft, I had to strain to hear it. “Corpus.”
“Is that the company funding your research? The ones who forced you to make Metalcium and now want to destroy everything?”
Dr. Monaghan nodded, glancing around nervously as if they might be listening.
“And they aren’t messing around. They sent their best. He arrived three days ago, after Lindy called to tell them what had happened—that we were infected. Tony Abramo. ‘The Custodian,’ we used to call him, back when I worked at headquarters. Because they always sent him out to clean up the messes.” He made a sound that might have been intended as a laugh, but it came out as more of a choke. “Never imagined he’d come cleaning up after me.”
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