Altar Of Eden

Chapter 37

For once in her life, Lorna had no fear of flying. She stared at the sweep of sunlit blue water below the small plane. The sea stretched to the horizon in all directions, interrupted by a scatter of islands to the south. She felt no anxiety as the plane sped due south: no sweating palms, no palpitating heart.

She only felt numb.

Like a looped film reel, she kept picturing Jack’s truck exploding, followed a heartbeat later by ACRES disappearing into a hellish fireball.

All dead…

While she should fear for her own life at the moment, she felt nothing, hollowed out and empty. Even the pounding in her head seemed a distant thing. A goose-egg-size knot had grown behind her left ear. A vague ringing persisted on that side.

Tinnitus, she diagnosed, secondary to the injury.

They’d offered her a minimal amount of medical care, but mostly they’d been on the move. Her kidnappers had driven her to a clearing in the bayou. As the sun rose a helicopter had flown her to a waiting ship anchored beyond the barrier islands in the Gulf of Mexico, then she’d been transferred onto a seaplane. They’d been in the air for over three hours, heading as near as she could tell into the western Caribbean, possibly toward Cuba.

She turned from the window as the man who had captured her ducked out of the cockpit into the main cabin. The plane sat six passengers and was luxuriously appointed in leather with mahogany accents. Whoever was financing this operation had deep financial pockets.

The man with the scarred face joined her and her two guards. He had showered aboard the ship, and his hair was fixed by gel into a greasy look. She studied the scars over his face and neck as if reading a map. He’d been attacked by some animal. Maybe a lion from the severity of his old injuries. He had never introduced himself, but she had heard one of the men call him Duncan.

He didn’t acknowledge her as he sat down next to a muscular man with a leathery face and red hair scalped into a military cut. He’d been assigned to watch over her. Not that there was much for him to do. Her hands were cuffed, but at least in her lap now. She had not offered any resistance. She was at their mercy, and so far they hadn’t treated her too roughly.

She figured she’d learn more by being compliant than by screaming and thrashing. Still, as Duncan joined them, that hollowness inside her began to fill with a burning vitriol. It dripped like bile into her heart and spread.

The bastard sat down, ignoring her. He turned to the redheaded commando. “Still no word from Daughtery. He should have reported in by now.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“When we get to the island, roust up some eyes and ears in New Orleans. I want to know what happened back there after we left.”

“Yes, sir. But you know Daughtery. Always a bit of a loose cannon. Probably ended up in the French Quarter. Got himself drunk on Bourbon Street and is sleeping it off with some whore.”

“If so, I’ll cut off his left nut the next time I see him.”

“Might not make a difference. To rein him in, you’ll have to cut ’em both off.”

Duncan acknowledged this by raising one eyebrow, as if seriously considering this option. He finally leaned back but looked little placated. His hard eyes gazed somewhere beyond the cabin of the seaplane.

She kept a sidelong watch on him, not trusting him.

He must have sensed her attention. Without moving a muscle, his gaze hardened on her.

With a sigh, he leaned forward. She noted the slack on the left side of his face, likely nerve damage. He reached to a pocket and slipped out a roll of tropical-flavored Life Savers and offered her one.

She shook her head.

He shrugged, popped one in his mouth, and sighed. “You impress me, Dr. Polk.”

She tried not to flinch at the use of her name. She had no ID on her. He must have noted some reaction. His lips thinned to a ghost of a satisfied smile. He had purposely used her name to unsettle her.

It had worked.

He continued: “By my estimation, you alone took out at least three of my men.”

She heard no anger in his voice, no threat of revenge.

“Impressive,” he said. “And smart. I hope you’ll prove as smart once we reach the island. My superiors and I will have some questions for you. Cooperation will be rewarded.”

And if she didn’t cooperate, the threat was plain in his eyes.

Instead of further unsettling her, the intimidation only helped center her. She spoke for the first time. There was no use begging for her life. She knew it was forfeit. Instead, she wanted answers for the bloodshed and death.

“What’s behind all this?” she asked. She tried to sound confident, but she had to struggle not to let a quaver enter her voice. “The genetic changes in the animals, all you’ve done to cover it up… what are you all doing out here?”

Duncan took her questions in stride. A part of her hoped he’d refuse to answer, but he showed no reluctance in responding, which unnerved her more than his threat a moment ago. If she had any question of surviving this ordeal, it was dashed by his candor.

“We call it the Babylon Project.”

Babylon?

He read the confusion in her face. “Named for where it all began. In a word, we’re involved in biowarfare. Or more specifically, I should say bioweapon systems. As you’ll soon see, what you stumbled upon is merely a scratch on the surface of larger ambitions. When we’re done, the way wars are fought will be forever changed.”

For the first time, true fear filtered through to her. This was no mere smuggling operation tied to a clandestine research project. It was much bigger.

Before more could be explained, the pilot came over the radio, cutting them off. “We’ll be landing in five minutes. Everyone buckle up.”

Lorna turned to the window again. The seaplane dipped toward the set of islands she had noted before. Most appeared to be sandbars supporting a tree or two. The grouping formed a gentle arc centered on a larger wooded island shaped like a dumbbell. They looked to be two islands that had fused together long ago by a bridge of sand and mangrove forest.

The seaplane dove toward the western half of the island. A deep cove scooped out an arc of white sand. Beyond the beach, a whitewashed villa climbed in a series of stacked tiers up a steep forested hill. A series of blue pools spilled from one level to the next. As the seaplane banked and angled for a descent into the cove, she got a bird’s-eye view of the island’s eastern half. It appeared deserted and untamed.

Thousands of such small islands and cays dotted the Caribbean. Many were privately owned and shifted national allegiances as easily and as often as one changed hairstyles. If someone wanted to set up a private research facility-one that was isolated and beyond the rules and regulations of modern society-here was a perfect place to do it.

The seaplane swept cleanly into the cove and dipped to the water. Fountains sprayed from the twin floats as the craft landed and glided toward a stone pier. Ahead, white sand sparkled against the blue water. Palms and mangroves shadowed the interior. A flutter of native doves took wing from the dense forest, disturbed by their approach.

It appeared to be paradise-but she knew it held a darker secret, a black heart kept out of direct view.

Lorna let out the breath she’d been holding.

She turned from the window to find Duncan studying her.

He lifted an arm toward the island. His eyes danced with amusement. The irony of his next words were not lost on her.

“Welcome to Eden, Dr. Polk.”

Chapter 38

Jack had returned to his workplace, towing the others with him. He had everyone sequestered in the computer lab of the New Orleans Border Patrol station house.

The red brick facility had a long history, going back to the twenties, when the agency’s main goal was to capture deserting crewmen and Prohibition-era smugglers bringing rum in from the Caribbean. But times had changed. As part of Homeland Security now, the station housed one of the most advanced surveillance and computer units in the country, employed to protect the borders against terrorists and their weapons.

As Jack paced the secure room, he rubbed his temples, trying to hold his head from splitting apart. Since he’d arrived here, his skin had begun to burn with a fever, and an ache smoldered deep in his bones, ready to catch fire. He had dry-swallowed three aspirins and waited for them to kick in. He didn’t have time to be sick-and this tension wasn’t helping.

“How long do we need to stay here?” Zoë asked.

Jack lowered his hands from his head. “No more than a day.”

By that time Lorna’s fate would be sealed. It would no longer be necessary to maintain the ruse that everyone had perished at ACRES. The first emergency response helicopter had arrived on scene a quarter hour after Jack had found Burt in the woods. He had been relieved to see the CPB emblem on the chopper’s side. The station’s helicopters were often first-responders.

Jack had waved the chopper down. He knew the pilot well and quickly explained the necessity to keep their fate under wraps. Afterward, Jack coordinated with law enforcement to maintain that blanket. Morning news shows were already reporting on the tragedy and the lack of survivors. Shortly after that, the local NBC affiliate received an e-mail claiming the firebombing was the work of a new animal-rights terrorist group.

It was surely bogus, likely planted by whoever orchestrated the assault. Still, it served Jack equally well. The terrorist angle had the news organizations chasing their own tails. No one questioned the lack of witnesses or survivors.

Afterward, Jack had moved everyone here.

Including Burt and the animals from the trawler.

Randy slouched in an office chair, his eyes closed, with Burt curled at his feet. The other animals were recovering from mild tranquilizers. Dr. Greer had removed their tracking tags under local anesthesia. The tags rested on a nearby table, secured in a copper Faraday cage to prevent them from being tracked. All except one that was being analyzed by a computer forensics expert brought in from the local FBI office. With magnifying glasses fixed to his face, he had deactivated the tag.

He also confirmed Jack’s earlier suspicion. “This isn’t commercial grade. I’d say military or paramilitary. Either way, someone with money.”

As they waited for further details, Carlton joined Jack, cradling a mug of coffee in his hands. “If your man is right, it confirms a suspicion.”

“What’s that?” Jack asked, glad for the diversion.

“All that’s happened. This is beyond a simple corporation sidestepping rules and regulations regarding animal research. This has the fingerprints of something larger. Possibly with government backing.”

“As in our government?”

Carlton looked upon him as if he were a naive child. “Underground projects are financed all the time by the U.S. government, including grants from DARPA, the Defense Department’s research-and-development agency. But you should know that over the past few years, rumors have persisted in the scientific community of projects so black that people disappear into them and are never seen again.”

“And you think we stumbled onto one of them?”

Carlton sighed. “I don’t know. But there’s another worrisome trend. In regard to private defense contractors. I assume with your military background that you’re familiar with Blackwater?”

Jack nodded.

Blackwater was a private corporate security force contracted by the U.S. government to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. Basically they were mercenaries. Jack had worked alongside several members of Black-water in Iraq. He had no beef with any of them, though there was a certain level of resentment among U.S. troops. Both armies fought in the same terrain, but the Blackwater mercenaries were both better equipped and better paid. In fact, most were former soldiers recruited after leaving the service. Even Jack had been approached and considered it.

Then the scandals broke out about Blackwater: testimonials of secret assassination programs, weapons smuggling, massacres of civilians, even the deaths of federal witnesses.

In the end, Jack had opted to protect the homeland here.

“Why bring up Blackwater?” he asked.

“Because the corporation earned over a billion dollars in government contracts since 2000. And they’re only one of six hundred such firms operating in the two theaters of war.”

“I’m well aware,” he growled, urging the man to get to the point.

“Then what you might not know is that such contracting is no longer limited to just paramilitary firms-the scientific community has also been co-opted. Hundreds of research groups have hopped on the bandwagon. Large and small. And from what I’ve heard, the competition is not only fierce-but also cutthroat.”

Jack hadn’t known about this detail. He pictured the animals, the assault force, the brutality.

“With such vast sums of money involved,” Carlton continued, “the scandals of Blackwater are spreading like a virus through these scientific communities. Accusations of corporate espionage, vandalism, outsourcing of research to third-world countries to avoid regulations. The list goes on and on.”

Jack understood the doctor’s concern. Such a description certainly fit with all that had happened.

A door swung open behind him. Lorna’s brother had returned from the medical ward. His arm was in a plaster cast from hand to elbow. His gaze was glassy from painkillers.

Randy stirred and opened one eye toward Kyle. “Great,” he mumbled under his breath. “So one of the Polks has rejoined us. Guess that means someone’s gonna try to kill me again.”

Kyle scowled at Randy. “What’re you talking about?”

Jack stepped between them. His head pounded. He didn’t need any more aggravation, especially from Randy. Whatever wall had dropped between the two brothers out in the woods had risen back up in the light of day.

“Randy, just keep your mouth shut for once.”

His brother glowered and crossed his arms. “I’m just saying, whenever Menards and Polks mix, someone in our family gets killed-or nearly killed in my case.”

Kyle’s face went a deep red. “So then what about my sister? You and your brother are here swilling coffee and stuffing your faces with doughnuts while she’s still in danger.”

“There’re doughnuts?” Randy asked, sitting straighter.

Kyle shook his head and turned his wrath on Jack. He lifted his arm. “I’m all fixed up. So what are we going to do about Lorna? You said you had a way of finding her.”

“Calm down. I do… or hope I do.” He glanced over to the computer forensics expert.

“How?” Kyle pressed. His voice lost its angry edge and took on a more plaintive tone.

Jack picked up the Faraday cage holding the surgically removed tags. “With these.”

When the power had been cut off at ACRES, Jack had been examining one of the tags. As the lights blacked out, he had pocketed it for safekeeping, wanting to examine it in more detail later. But when he abandoned Lorna in her office, he did more than just leave her with the tranquilizer rifle.

“I planted one of these tags on Lorna. In her pocket.”

The tension in Kyle’s face softened with hope.

“My God,” Zoë mumbled. “You think we can use it to track her?”

“That’s what I’m counting on.”

The forensic expert must have heard their talk. “I think I can make it work,” he called over. “It’s definitely a form of GPS technology. If all the tags use this same technology, I should be able to find her. Though it might take a while. I’ll have to hunt satellite by satellite.” He swung around to face them. “It would be faster if I had some general idea where to begin looking.”

Jack contemplated all he’d learned from Carlton and his own suspicions. “Mexico, or somewhere off the coast,” he guessed. “Maybe the Caribbean. They wouldn’t be too far. But definitely south of the U.S. border.”

Carlton nodded his agreement.

Kyle sagged again. “That’s a lot of territory to cover. I should know. The oil company I’m contracted with has platforms up and down the Gulf Coast.”

“That’s good to hear,” Jack said. “Because if I’m right, we may need to use one of those rigs as a base of operations.”

Kyle glanced to him. His eyes lost some of their glaze, calculating and taking strength from the fact that he could be useful. Still, his main concern remained, and he mumbled it aloud.

“Is she still alive?”

Chapter 39

Lorna marched down the dock toward the villa. Behind her, the man named Connor gripped a pistol in his hand, but he didn’t even bother pointing it at her.

What was the use? Where could she go?

They’d even taken her cuffs off.

Rubbing her wrists, she followed behind Duncan. The scarred man led the way toward a covered breezeway at the end of the dock. The air was fragrant with sea salt and the cinnamon scent of the mangrove forest. She noted a few beach chairs out on the sand and a row of yellow sea kayaks. It looked like any other island resort.

Until you looked closer.

At the edge of the beach, shadowed by the palms, stood men in camouflage gear with shouldered rifles. Up higher, an elaborate antenna-and-dish array covered the villa’s roof, far more than necessary for phone and satellite television service. There was also an eerie silence here. No reggae music, no laughter, only the gentle wash of waves on the beach.

The atmosphere felt charged, as if a storm were brewing.

Maybe it was the tension in the face of the guard who met them at the breezeway. She noted a flicker of fear in his eyes as he pulled Duncan aside for a private conversation.

Waiting, Lorna stood on the dock under the baking midday sun. The ringing in her ear had disappeared, but the motion of turning her neck to scout her surroundings triggered a stab of pain from the goose egg at the back of her skull. Still, if she hadn’t stopped, she might have missed it.

A blue tarp lay spread at the far end of the beach.

It looked like it covered some beach craft, except she saw Duncan glance that way, too. Only then did she notice the black stain running from the tarp to the water, like a trail of oil. But Lorna knew it wasn’t oil.

Focused, she noted a pale white shape sticking out from under the sheet.

A human hand.

Duncan rejoined them. He faced Connor. “They had another infiltration last night. It swam in. Killed Polaski. Wounded Garcia before it was shot.”

“How could it have caught them off guard? What about the tracking tags?”

“I don’t know. I’m off to talk to Malik about that. He left word for me to join him in the lab.”

Connor pointed a thumb at Lorna. “What about her?”

Duncan shrugged. “Bring her along. Lock her up in one of the holding pens down there until I’m ready for her.”

They set off again, passing down the breezeway and across an expansive patio. The lounge chairs and teak tables were empty, except for a pair of dark-skinned men wearing lab smocks. One smoked a cigarette listlessly, holding the filter toward his palm in a European fashion. His companion sat with his head in his hands.

The villa’s main floor was all windows that faced the cove. Heavy hurricane shutters had been closed over them, giving the place a barricaded feel. Passing through a pair of tall French doors, the interior was gloomy, but plainly luxurious: ivory damask curtains, furniture constructed from rough-hewn mahogany and rosewood, probably harvested locally, and limestone-tiled floors. All the hues were muted, with splashes of vibrancy from animal-print pillows and an occasional painting on the wall.

Duncan led them through the front pavilion and down a long hallway. When the doors and windows were open, the hallway must serve as an extension of the breezeway, carrying the tropical sea breezes deeper into the house. To either side of the main hall opened various rooms, including a kitchen where a trio of cooks prepared a meal.

The smell of baking bread and a simmering garlic stew stirred her stomach, reminding her of how long it had been since she’d had anything to eat. But they didn’t stop for a snack. They headed straight back to where the hall ended at a library study.

It looked like something out of the British Museum, a tantalizing mix of leather-bound books and collected artifacts: conch shells, antique seafaring tools, including a sextant and windlass from a sailing ship. One wall displayed massive plates of fossilized seabeds, snapshots of an ancient world populated by trilobites, prehistoric fish, and sea fans.

A bear of a man met Duncan there, rising from a seat by a cold fireplace. He had been staring out a set of open windows. The man wore hiking pants and boots, along with a loose camo jacket. He appeared to be in his early sixties but remained well muscled, with salt-and-pepper hair and a face that sun and wind had polished to a tanned smoothness. He had the stamp of ex-military, probably navy from the sailing cap resting on the arm of his chair. But he carried himself with some sense of affluence, too.

Lorna guessed the man owned the villa. In fact, he seemed as much a part of this room as any of the artifacts.

He crossed and shook Duncan’s hand, swallowing the scarred man’s palm and fingers in his paw.

“Sir,” Duncan said, biting back his surprise. “I hadn’t expected you to be here. I thought you’d still be at the Ironcreek presentation in D.C.”

“Not much reason after losing our cargo.”

The older man glanced at Lorna. His only reaction was a deepening of a crease between his eyes. Then he ignored her. She sensed he didn’t give women much shrift. She had met her share of such men.

“I flew in this morning,” the big man explained. “Just in time for the commotion here.”

Duncan sighed through his nose. “I was just heading down to talk to Dr. Malik about the incident.”

“He’s waiting for you.” The man lifted an arm to the wall of books and artifacts. “We’ll talk afterward.”

“Yes, sir.”

A section of the bookshelves slid open to reveal that the main hall continued past the library-and into the side of the mountain.

Lorna’s heart beat faster. Connor nudged her toward the opening. She had no choice but to follow Duncan into the buried section of the complex.

The door sealed behind her with a dread finality.

Will I ever see the sun again?

Connor spoke, stepping closer to Duncan in a conspiratorial way. “What’s Bryce Bennett doing here?”

Duncan’s voice was a black glower. “Malik must have been keeping our boss informed about the problems here. I told him not to bother the boss, but that just proves you can’t trust a raghead. Not even one on our side.”

Duncan continued down a short passageway. It dumped into a large circular work space, broken into stations, with additional rooms and passageways radiating deeper underground. White-smocked technicians worked at various stations. Some glanced at her-then quickly away again. It seemed the villa was a front for this underground complex, the perfect facade to hide what lay beneath it.

As she entered, she looked around. Much of the main room was nearly a match to Dr. Metoyer’s genetics lab, only tenfold larger and better equipped. It housed an extensive array of thermocyclers, gel boxes, hybridization ovens, incubators, even a LI-COR 4300 DNA analyzer. There were also a bay of clean hoods and banks of shakers and centrifuges, and at the back, a full electron microscope suite and microarray facility.

There was nothing this lab didn’t have-and couldn’t do.

The scientist in her grew jealous, while another part paled at how much all this must cost. And what it implied. Someone had spent a fortune to hide this lab beyond U.S. jurisdiction and control.

Duncan led her across the room and down another hall.

“Take Dr. Polk to one of the holding pens in back,” he ordered as he ducked through a side door. “I need to have a word with Dr. Malik.”

Connor poked her in the back to keep her moving. As she continued a hall window opened on her left and revealed a view into a surgical suite. It was sparsely furnished with a stainless-steel table and overhead halogens on a dual swing arm.

A middle-aged man dressed in scrubs stood in the room. From his swarthy complexion and thick black hair, he looked Arabic or maybe Egyptian.

Duncan stepped into the room through another door. From the storm clouds building on the man’s brow, he was not happy.

Lorna slowed, mostly because of what lay on the table.

Connor didn’t press her. He was staring, too.

“How did this specimen get all the way over to our side of the island?” Duncan said, jumping straight in with no pleasantries. “I thought you were constantly monitoring them.”

“We were,” the man said, irritated, matching the other’s heated tone.

It had to be Dr. Malik. Lorna guessed he was the scientific head of this facility, while Duncan ran security. The two had clearly locked horns in the past.

Malik pointed to the table. “The other specimens must have cut the tag out of this one. With something sharp. Maybe a stone ax. Let me show you.”

The doctor stepped to the side, allowing Lorna to see fully for the first time what lay on the table. She covered her mouth in shock. Blocked by Malik, all she had seen before were legs and a lower torso. From the fur and small body, she had assumed it was an orangutan or some other great ape.

But as Malik moved out of the way, she knew she was wrong.

The arms were less furred, and the chest bore a clear set of bullet holes. But it was the face and head that made her gasp out loud. Matted, coarse hair framed a bare face with a protuberant jaw and maxilla, but not as prominent as an ape. It was flatter. Also the eyes were larger, rounder, the forehead taller and ridged.

Lorna had seen pictures of early man, of hominid species like Australopithecus or Homo habilis. The resemblance was unmistakable. What lay on the table was no ape.

She remembered the throwback traits seen in the animals from the trawler, a turning back of the evolutionary clock. Her vision darkened with the implication of what lay on the table. They weren’t just researching with animals.

She turned to Connor and couldn’t keep the disgust or horror from her voice. “You’ve been experimenting on humans.”

Chapter 40

Jack stood in the office of his sector chief, Bernard Paxton. It had been Paxton who had handpicked Jack a year ago to lead the Special Response Team-though at the moment, he looked like he might be regretting that decision.

Paxton stood on the opposite side of his desk. He was in full dress uniform after speaking to the press all morning: navy blue slacks with black piping and matching shirt. He’d oiled his dark hair and even donned his ceremonial “Ike” jacket, but he left it unbuttoned and loose as he leaned over the desk.

A detailed map of the Gulf of Mexico was spread on the table.

Paxton tapped a finger on the map. “That’s where you picked up Dr. Polk’s signal? From the tracker you planted on her?”

Jack nodded. “Those are the coordinates. Lost Eden Cay. Somewhere in that cluster of islands.”

Paxton heard the hesitation in his voice. “But you can’t be absolutely certain.”

“We only caught a few seconds of signal-then lost it.”

Jack bunched a fist as he stood stiff-backed. The FBI consultant had finally picked up a signal off a military GPS 2R-9 satellite orbiting twelve thousand miles over the Gulf. The reading had seemed solid, strong enough to pinpoint a location about a hundred miles off the coast of Cuba. Then the reading had simply vanished.

“You lost the signal and never picked it up again?” his boss asked.

“Her kidnappers might have taken her inside. Somewhere blocked from satellite pickup. Or, according to the FBI guy, the kidnappers might be employing some form of local electronic jamming equipment, keeping the island locked down.”

Jack refrained from voicing one other possibility. He pictured Lorna’s body being dumped overboard into the ocean. That would also block the signal.

Paxton sighed, expressively loud. “Then that’s unfortunate. This set of islands flies the Nicaraguan flag. We can’t go storming their beach based on a ghost of a contact that we can’t replicate.”

“Sir…”

Paxton held up a hand. “It’s beyond our jurisdiction. I can open diplomatic channels, begin a dialogue, but it’ll take a day at least.”

A day we don’t have, Jack thought and swore silently. He fought to keep in control. He wanted to pound on the desk, scream at his boss, demand an immediate response, but such an outburst would do more harm than good. He didn’t want to get kicked off this case.

“Let me work my magic,” his boss continued. “Give me a few hours to make some calls. In the meantime, have that FBI agent keep tracking that signal. If we can solidify that trace, it would help my case. In the meantime, Jack, get some rest. You look like shit.”

Jack felt like it, too, but didn’t say so. His head pounded. His throat burned as a fever took hold. He had no time to coddle a flu or cold. Aspirin and antihistamines would keep him propped up at least for another day.

After that, it wouldn’t matter.

“Grab a cot out back and take a nap,” Paxton said. “That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir,” he said and turned in frustration back toward the office door.

“Jack,” his boss called. “I’ll do everything I can.”

He nodded, knowing the man would. He headed back down to the computer room to give the others the bad news. Reaching the basement facility, he took a moment to compose himself, then entered. Faces turned hopefully in his direction. At the moment the only ones here were those who had survived the assault at ACRES.

Kyle stood up from a stool. “When are they heading out to find Lorna?”

Jack didn’t answer.

Randy read his brother’s expression and understood. “Motherfuckers… we’re not going.”

Kyle glanced to Randy, then back to Jack. He visibly paled and sank back to his seat. The kid checked his watch. It had been five hours and twenty-two minutes since the rescue helicopter had found them in the woods. They all knew time was running out for Lorna-if it hadn’t already.

A fire grew inside Jack, stoked as much by fever as by frustration. He read the despair in the others’ expressions and refused to give in to it.

To hell with it.

He closed the door behind him and pointed an arm at his brother. “Randy, get off your ass and call the Thibodeaux brothers. Tell ’em we’re going hunting again.”

Randy stood up, a question forming on his lips.

Before it could be asked, Jack swung his arm to Lorna’s brother. “Kyle, you said you could get us on one of those oil platforms if we wanted.”

Kyle nodded and stood back up. “Not a problem. When?”

“Now.”

Jack swiftly ran logistics through his burning mind. He knew a pilot and at least two of his Special Response teammates who could keep their mouths shut and would do what was asked of them. That should be enough. In fact, the smaller the strike force, the better. They had to get in under their radar and secure Lorna before anyone knew better.

Carlton stood with Zoë and Greer. The head of ACRES understood what was not being spoken aloud. “The animals are about to be transported to the New Orleans Zoo’s veterinary hospital. We’ll go with them and keep our heads down. And we’ll continue researching what we can over there.”

Zoë nodded. “Paul…” Her voice cracked around her husband’s name. “He backed up our data to an off-site server. We’ll be able to pick up where we left off.”

Carlton placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We’ll update you if we learn anything that will help.”

Jack gazed at the expectant faces staring back at him.

“Then let’s get moving.”

Chapter 41

Standing in the holding pen, Lorna now knew what a pit bull on death row must feel like. Under the glare of stark bare bulbs, she studied her confinement. The rest of the subterranean laboratory had been as sleek and antiseptic as a modern hospital.

Not here.

The cell floors had been cut out of native rock and trenched to help wash down urine and feces. The walls were damp cement blocks, sealed by a chain-link gate. She stood in more of a dog run than a prison cell.

Without even a stool to sit on, Lorna paced the ten-foot-by-four enclosure. Another dozen identical runs ran the length of the low-roofed room. All of them were empty, but she could imagine the usual inhabitants. She ran a hand along the wall, felt the scratches in the cement. She remembered the dead body on the surgical table. From the high forehead and flat face, it had to have once been human, but like the animals from the trawler, it had reverted to some earlier form, a genetic throwback to a prehistoric form.

But to what end?

Duncan’s description returned to her: bioweapon systems.

She had no explanation of what that meant but now knew with cold certainty that this outfit had moved beyond animal research into human experimentation. And isolated out here, who would question it or even know about it? It wouldn’t even be that hard to find test subjects. The Caribbean area was rife with human trafficking. In poor countries like Haiti, people were regularly sold into slavery, sometimes by their own relatives. Authorities in the region knew about such trafficking, but they would look the other way for the right price.

She heard a door open across the room. Voices reached her.

“I put her over here.”

“Bring her out.” She recognized Duncan from his raspy, harsh voice. “Malik wants to attend her interrogation. It seems her background as a veterinarian has intrigued Dr. Raghead.”

Lorna absorbed his words. Her hands went instantly damp. She moved away from the chained gate as the two men stepped into view.

Her bodyguard unlocked the gate with a key. Duncan stood back with his arms crossed. “C’mon,” the man named Connor ordered. He didn’t even bother with his holstered sidearm.

Lorna took a deep shuddering breath. It took all her strength to obey. She didn’t want to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the cell. For the moment she had no recourse but to cooperate.

Duncan fixed her with that dead gaze of his, his face a frozen mask of scar tissue and barely suppressed anger. Without a word, he turned and led them out of the kennel and back down to the main lab. Only now the circular room was empty. Except for Dr. Malik. He stood at one of the genetic workstations and turned as they approached.

Lorna hesitated at the threshold. Connor shoved her from behind. She stumbled into the room, close to falling on her face.

Malik scowled. “Is that bloody necessary?” he scolded. His words had a British lilt to them, but the accent was plainly Middle Eastern. He waved to Lorna. “Join me over here, Dr. Polk.”

Duncan accompanied her to the workstation while Connor hung back.

Up close, Malik appeared older than she originally estimated. Though his dark skin was unlined and his thick hair salted with gray, he had to be in his late fifties. He still wore the same surgical scrubs from before, but he had donned a starched white lab coat that reached to mid-thigh.

He motioned her to a chair. “I must apologize for dragging you into all of this.”

She remained standing. Duncan grabbed her shoulder hard, guided her to the chair, and pushed her into it.

Malik’s frown deepened, but he kept silent.

“Ask your questions,” Duncan said. “Let’s get this over with.”

Malik sighed. “For the sake of the security of our intellectual property rights, I must ask what you and your colleagues in New Orleans learned from the specimens in your possession.”

Lorna could not look them in the eye. Her gaze dropped to the equipment around her. She took in the labels: PureLink Genomic digestion buffer, Novex zymogram gel kits, a Spotlight hybridizer. Behind Malik stood a stack of two incubators and an inverted microscope station with two micromanipulator controls for viewing and working with embryo dishes.

She recognized the setup as an in vitro fertilization lab.

Was this the origin of all the bloodshed and horror?

She lifted her face, only to have the back of a hand strike her hard across the mouth. Blood flew from her lips. The knot behind her ear rang with the impact, echoing the pain of the blow.

Tears welled in her eyes-less from pain than fury.

“That’s enough!” Malik said.

Duncan ignored him and loomed over her. “Answer his questions or there will be worse.”

Lorna saw the promise in his eyes.

Malik began again, but Lorna cut him off, wiping the blood from her split lip. She had already decided not to withhold any information. What was the use?

“We found additional chromosomes in all the animals,” she started. “And we discovered the structural changes in the brain. A network of magnetite crystals.”

“Impressive,” Malik said. “Considering how little time you had with the specimens.”

“What else?” Duncan asked, the threat plain in his voice.

She didn’t hold back. “And we learned that the animals were somehow able to link up neurologically. And we came to believe this networking enhanced their intellectual capacity.”

Malik nodded, confirming what was conjecture before.

“That’s as far as we got,” Lorna said.

“Who else knows about what you learned?” Duncan pressed.

Lorna guessed this was coming. It was the only reason she’d been dragged here, the only reason she was still alive. To discover if the information had leaked out of ACRES. Her only hope of staying alive was to shadow the truth.

“I can’t say for sure,” she said. “But we regularly back data up to an off-site server. It’s done automatically.”

Malik looked at Duncan.

A half scowl twisted the commando’s lips. “Shouldn’t matter. At least not immediately. With everyone dead, it will buy us a window of time to clean this up.”

“We’ll still need it purged as soon as possible,” Malik said. “Mr. Bennett will insist on it.”

“Where’s the backup stored?” Duncan asked her.

“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. ACRES contracted with an outfit in Baton Rouge.

Duncan lifted his hand again, ready to test her veracity.

Needing to be convincing, she cowered back and protected her face. “All I know is the name. Southern Compu-Safe. But they have servers throughout Louisiana.”

She didn’t know if that last bit was true, but if this bastard believed the data was bottled up at one site, he’d just order the facility blown up. In that scenario, she would not be needed. To live, she had to remain useful.

Duncan lowered his hand, momentarily believing her. His gaze went long as he weighed his options.

She had to direct those options as best she could. She continued, talking rapidly, allowing the terror buried deep inside her to shine out. “The only way to access the stored data is through a series of security clearances. An employee ID password, followed by a series of challenge questions unique to each employee. But I have no idea how to gain access remotely.”

This last bit was true.

Duncan seemed not to hear her. His gaze remained fixed in that thousand-mile stare.

Malik spoke up. “How long would it take to get a secure satellite uplink to this Compu-Safe? One that can’t be traced back to us.”

Duncan spoke in a monotone. “At least four hours.” He glared at Lorna. “But it will only take a few calls to confirm if Dr. Polk is telling us the truth.”

Lorna wanted to shrink from that gaze, but she held firm.

“Then it seems we’ll have her company for a bit longer,” Malik said. “Which is just as well. I’d like to pick her brain concerning the trouble we’ve been experiencing in the field of late.”

“She doesn’t need to know about that,” Duncan said.

“It never hurts to have a fresh perspective on a problem. And what can it hurt?” Malik lifted an eyebrow toward the commando. “That is, unless you’re worried about the security here. If you’re afraid she might escape.”

Duncan’s face darkened.

Lorna found herself warming to the doctor.

Until his next words.

“Besides, Dr. Polk and I will have plenty of time to talk as I prepare her.”

Something about that statement sent a chill through her. Even Duncan looked momentarily disgusted.

“Prepare for what?” Lorna asked.

Malik crossed and patted her on the shoulder reassuringly. “A minor procedure. While we have you here, it seemed a shame to waste an opportunity to freshen our genetic stock supply.”

“What do you mean?” Lorna’s stomach clenched around a knot of worry. She flashed to the body on the surgical table.

Malik patted her shoulder a final time and stepped from her side.

“Fear not. We’re just going to harvest a few of your eggs.”

Chapter 42

Lorna held back tears as the technician stepped away, carrying vials of her blood in color-coded tubes. Nervous sweat dampened her body. She rubbed a finger along the bandage taped to the tender crux of her elbow.

The medical ward looked like a gynecologist’s office from hell. A battery of ultrasound and surgical equipment surrounded her. The exam table she sat on reclined and had stirrups-but there was no padding, no attempt at comfort. It was all cold stainless steel. But most disturbing of all were the thick leather straps meant to secure a patient.

It confirmed her suspicions that most of the human subjects here were forced to cooperate, likely obtained from modern-day slavers, a booming business in the Caribbean. A shudder passed through her as she wondered how many women had been strapped here, forced to endure unimaginable violations.

Finally, her guard Connor came forward. “Let’s go.”

She didn’t resist. She allowed herself to be manhandled off the table and toward the exit. It hurt to walk. Besides drawing blood, the technician had collected a painful bone-marrow biopsy from her hip. She felt the ache with each step, but she knew the worst was yet to come. The preoperative tests were to evaluate hormone levels, along with a genetic assay.

Pending those results, the stirrups and straps awaited her.

Connor kept hold of her elbow and marched her from the room and through a door into an adjoining office. Dr. Malik sat behind the desk, writing in a chart. Behind him rose a bookshelf crammed with texts and journals. From the ragged and dog-eared look to the research library, the volumes weren’t for show. Malik closed the chart as she was shoved into the room. He had a small pair of reading glasses perched on his thin nose and stared over them at Lorna.

“Please have a seat,” he said and waved to a chair. His focus shifted to her bodyguard. “Sergeant Reed, that will be all for now. I’ll summon you when we’re done.”

Connor didn’t move and seemed ready to set down roots. “Commander Kent said I should stay with the prisoner.”

Duncan had given those orders before leaving to investigate her claims about a backup of their research at Compu-Safe.

Malik let out a long sigh. “That won’t be necessary, but if it would make you happy, you can stand guard at the door.”

Connor scowled, looking ready to argue. His fingers tightened on her elbow.

Malik waved dismissively at the guard. “Outside the door, if you don’t mind. Buried down here, there are no windows. Our guest won’t be going anywhere. My office is as good as any jail cell.”

Connor’s scowl deepened, but his fingers released their clamp. Lorna suspected his grip would leave bruises, maybe even fingerprints. He stepped back. “I’ll be right outside the door.”

Malik seemed to have already dismissed him. His gaze focused on Lorna. “Dr. Polk, please have a seat. We have much to discuss. Some of which I suspect you’ll find illuminating.”

Lorna was happy to accept his offer. After all that had happened and the ache in her hip, she didn’t trust her legs. She sank into the seat and gazed around the rest of the office. To the left, the wall was covered with various LCD monitors, centered on a larger fifty-inch plasma screen. Most were dark, though four showed various views of the subterranean facility, including the gynecology room.

He must have been watching it all.

Disgusted, she turned away.

Diplomas and awards covered the other wall. Lorna studied them, anything to help her understand the man behind the desk. Many of the mounted certificates were in foreign languages, including several in Arabic. She recognized one in French-Université Pierre et Marie Curie-and beneath it a credential from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. This last was the largest research organization in France.

No matter his ethics, Dr. Malik was no crackpot.

“We should have your tests completed within the hour,” the man said and leaned forward. “Let me explain what will happen from here. Just so there’s no anxiety.”

Lorna couldn’t tell if the man was being purposely dense about her situation or particularly cruel.

He continued: “After the tests, we’ll design a genetically specific combination of Lupron and Menopur, along with an experimental follicle-stimulating hormone. Normally it takes days before the ovary will be fit for harvesting eggs. But with the technique I’ve developed, it will require only a couple of hours. So we have time to talk.”

Lorna finally found her voice. “What are you planning on doing with my eggs?”

“Trust me, they will be put to good use. We’ll use them for a new embryo hybridization project we’re about to start.”

“What sort of embryos?” Lorna pictured the body on the table.

“That’s not an easy question to answer. And before we get to that, I must first be honest with you. I’ve reviewed your file.”

My file?

“With your background and experience in genetics and breeding, I could find good use for you here at my lab. It would be a waste to discard such a valuable researcher out of hand. And if you remain cooperative, there’s no reason you couldn’t remain on the island.”

“As a prisoner.”

“I’d prefer the word colleague,” Malik said. “And it’s far better than the alternative. Perhaps if you better understood our methodologies and goals, you’d have fewer qualms.”

She wasn’t so sure about that, but she saw no reason not to hear the man out. The longer he was talking, the longer she remained alive.

“Go on,” she said, wanting to know anyway. “What exactly are you all doing here?”

Malik settled back, as if satisfied with this concession-or maybe he merely liked to have someone to talk to. “What are we doing? To even begin to answer that, we’ll have to go back to the very beginning. Are you familiar with the book of Genesis?”

Lorna struggled past this odd non sequitur. “As in the Bible?”

A nod. “ ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ ”

Lorna didn’t know what to make of this statement.

A twinkle entered Malik’s eye. “Excuse my bit of hubris. I must be overly affected by our supreme benefactor, Bryce Bennett. He’s a deeply religious man. It’s one of the quotes he often spouts in regard to our work here-and one of the reasons he chose this island for his facility. Lost Eden Cay.” Malik smiled inwardly and shook his head. “Truly, how could he not locate it here?”

“I don’t understand. What does all this have to do with your genetic experiments?”

“All in good time. First let me start with my definition of the grand beginning. The scientific basis of all creation. Bennett has his Word of God. I have something entirely rooted in the scientific method.”

“And what is that?”

“Are you familiar with fractals?”

Again Lorna was taken aback by the non sequitur. What is this guy talking about? Still, at the same time, she recalled hearing that word before. Her brother had used it in reference to the pattern of magnetite crystals found in the dissected feline brain. She knew something about fractals, but nothing beyond the basics-and definitely not how fractals were involved here.

She merely shook her head, wanting to hear what the researcher had to say.

“Ah, well, by definition, fractals are jagged, irregular geometric forms generated by a repeated pattern of that same shape. Or in other words, they’re large shapes that can be broken down into smaller and smaller versions of itself.”

Lorna frowned. She remembered Jon Greer’s description of the magnetite nodes in the animals’ brains, how the matrix was made up of smaller and smaller crystals.

“I see you’re confused. Let me show you what I mean,” Malik said and tapped at his computer keyboard. To Lorna’s right, one of the monitors bloomed to life. “All geometric shapes can be defined by a single algorithm or mathematical equation. Here’s a rather simple one.”

It was just an ordinary triangle.

Malik tapped again. “But if you have the computer multiply it several times, adding one to another, it grows to this.”

On the screen, several of the triangles-positioned at various angles and on different planes-now formed a complex polygon. She shrugged, unimpressed.

“I know,” Malik conceded. “Not much to look at, but let’s have the computer take that same triangle and repeat it a hundred thousand times, shrinking some, enlarging others, changing inclination, but basically just repeating the same triangle over and over again. Here is what you get.”

Lorna’s eyes widened. “It’s forming a mountain range.”

“Exactly. A landscape composed of millions of repetitions of the same shape. In this case, triangles. This is how computers today generate such detailed backgrounds in movies and video games. Just countless repetitions of the same basic algorithm or fractal to produce a more complex one.”

“But what does all this have to do with-”

Malik cut her off. “Because this phenomenon isn’t just found in mountains and coastlines. It’s found throughout the natural world. Take a tree, for example. If you look at the branching of any tree, it’s just a repetition of the same basic pattern, unique to that species of tree.”

On the screen, she watched a simple shape appear: a single line with two branching offshoots, forming a Y Then more and more Y shapes branched out from the first and multiplied into a fully dimensional tree.

“This same fractal basis of the natural world is found everywhere. From the structure of galaxies down to the tiniest snowflake, from the flow of ocean currents up to the shape of clouds in the sky. It’s all around us and in us.”

“In us?”

“Fractals make up our bodies. They can be found in the growth of blood vessels, the pattern of alveoli in our lungs, the shape of our kidneys, even the branching of the dendrites in our brain. But it’s so much more than that. When you look deeper, they’re even in the way our bodies function. It’s been shown that fractals define how we walk, the beating pattern of our hearts, the rates of respiration of our lungs. Likewise, scientists are now using fractal science to evaluate brain function, studying the fractal pattern hidden within EEGs. And they found it.”

Malik must have noted the look on her face and smiled. “That’s right. Some neurophysiologists are even coming to believe that the evolution of intelligence grew from fractals. That intelligence came about because of the repetitious growth of a smaller constant. In other words, there might be a fundamental fractal of intelligence, a primary seed from which all intelligence grew. Similar to that sprouting tree I just showed you. Can you imagine if we could harness that fractal, learn to control that power?”

Lorna thought back on the animals from the trawler and their strange intelligence. “That’s what you’ve been experimenting on. You’re looking for that fractal?”

“Exactly. And we’re close to a breakthrough.”

Lorna heard the raw desire in his voice.

Before Malik could explain further, a quiet knock on the door drew their attention around. The lab technician who had drawn her blood entered. He was a stick insect of a man, all legs and arms, with a receding hairline that made his features look squashed beneath that high forehead.

Loathing swelled at the sight of him, along with fear.

Were they already done with her tests?

“What is it, Edward?”

“Dr. Malik, I wanted to let you know that I’ve completed the scan on the subject.” His tiny eyes flicked to her, then away again. “Both blood and marrow. I find no evidence of contamination.”

“Very good. How long until the hormone levels are back from the lab.”

“Half an hour.”

“Thank you.”

The man bowed his way back out of the office.

Malik folded his fingers atop his desk. “That’s good news. There should be no reason your eggs won’t be perfectly suited for the next phase of our experiments.”

Lorna shied away from that reality and asked a question that was nagging her following the technician’s pronouncement. “What contamination were you searching for in my blood?”

“Ah, yes, well, with your exposure to the test subjects, we needed to make sure you weren’t exposed to a nasty blood-borne protein that the subjects produce. A side effect of their alteration, I’m afraid. One we don’t quite understand. A self-replicating protein that’s produced in their blood but is toxic to us.”

“Toxic?”

“That’s correct. The proteins appear to be benign in our altered specimens, but once transmitted to others, it triggers flulike symptoms. The protein spreads through the blood like a wildfire and crosses the blood-brain barrier. Once there, it hyperexcites the neurons to a dangerous extreme. Initially the excitement produces an amazing but temporary heightening of senses. Quite astounding actually. Better eyesight, smell, taste, touch. Across the board. Initially we researched a way to use this effect to enhance soldiers in the field. But in the end we had to give up.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Unfortunately hyperexcitement of the neurons quickly burned out a subject’s brain. No way to avoid it or cure it. Everyone infected died within forty-eight hours of exposure.”

Chapter 43

Jack’s head pounded with each thrum of the chopper’s rotors. The bright sunlight reflecting off the Gulf below didn’t help. Even sunglasses did little to dull the stabbing brilliance.

Seated beside the pilot, he closed his eyes. Queasiness churned through him. He normally never experienced vertigo or motion sickness, but at the moment his stomach repeated every roll and lift of the helicopter. He pressed his damp palms against his knees. He swallowed back bile.

“Almost there,” the pilot reported through the headphones.

Jack opened his eyes and spotted the oil platform ahead. It looked like a rusted black dinosaur struggling out of a tar pit. The bull’s-eye was painted on the helipad. Drill crews scurried like ants below.

Lorna’s brother pushed forward from the backseat and leaned between Jack and the pilot. Jack twisted to face Kyle. The kid shared the passenger cabin with Randy and two of Jack’s men: Mack Higgins and Bruce Kim.

Mack looked like the brand of truck he’d been named after. He was massively framed with a shaved head and prominent forehead that looked like the hood of a semi. At the moment he chewed on the stub of a cigar, unlit, as he studied the oil rig below.

His partner was a wiry Korean-American with lanky black hair that shadowed his dark eyes. With his olive complexion and boyish appearance, he looked like Bruce Lee’s younger brother-and was just as good a fighter.

Jack had handpicked the pair and left his second-in-command, Scott Nester, to cover their asses back in New Orleans. Scott would also keep Jack abreast of any official response from Sector Chief Paxton. But otherwise, they were on their own out here.

Almost.

“Randy just heard from his friends,” Kyle said. “Their boat is already heading south.”

Jack nodded. That would be the Thibodeaux brothers. The pair had borrowed a private charter boat from one of their cousins, normally used for deep-sea fishing in the Gulf. Once at the oil rig, the team in the chopper would split up. Jack would head out in a seaplane with his men, while Randy and Kyle would take the helicopter and meet the Thibodeaux brothers’ boat.

The planned assault on the Lost Eden Cay would be a coordinated two-prong attack at dusk. Jack had studied nautical and satellite maps of the arc of islands. He had them both folded under his left thigh. He had planned on studying them again on the way out to the rig, but his pounding head and churning stomach discouraged it.

The plan was not a complicated one: get in, find Lorna, get out.

According to the satellite maps, the main villa lay on the western side of the island. As the sun set Jack and his men would lead an amphibious assault on the far side, where it would be darker, where eyes would be less likely to be watching. From a mile out, his team would do a sea-drop in scuba gear, their weapons in dry sacks. They would use personal tow scooters to swiftly propel themselves underwater to the island’s eastern shore and head overland from there.

To hide their beach landing, Randy and the others would limp their charter boat into the villa’s cove on the other side of the island, to draw attention away from Jack’s team. The Thibodeauxs had a cache of weapons, including rocket-propelled grenade launchers, loaded aboard the boat.

Jack hadn’t bothered to ask how the Thibodeauxs had acquired such a mass of weaponry. He knew better than to inquire. The Thibodeaux family claimed roots that reached back to the eighteenth century, to a bloodline of Caribbean pirates that plagued the islands. And according to some stories, the Thibodeaux clan hadn’t entirely shed their notorious past.

So Jack didn’t care how the brothers obtained this cache of firepower, but he was glad they had. The charter boat would stand by out in the cove, feigning a blown engine, smoke pouring from the engine compartment, ready to come in guns blazing to aid in Jack’s assault if necessary.

But one detail remained unknown.

Was Lorna still alive?

With all the flurry of preparations, Jack had kept himself distracted from his fears for her. But on the ride here, with nothing to divert his attention, a fire built in his gut. While it had only been a day since they first met at the trawler, she had found a place in his heart. Maybe it was their shared past, but it felt like more than that.

He pictured her sea blue eyes, her sandy blond hair, bleached white by the sun at the tips. He recalled the way she chewed her lower lip when concentrating. The rare smile that broke through her serious demeanor like a flash of sunlight on a cloudy day. These memories and others popped like flashbulbs in his head. But he also remembered her from another lifetime: across a dark parking lot, on her back, shadows falling on her amid harsh laughter.

He had saved her back then-but he’d also failed her just as much.

With that last memory, a sudden fierceness choked through him, blinding him and pushing back the nausea. It was a ferocity that he’d never felt before in his life. He’d experienced fierce firefights and bloody ambushes in Iraq, but as he pictured Lorna a deep and primal well of savagery burned through him. He wanted to gnash things with his teeth, to grind bone, to rip things with his bare hands.

All to protect her-not as a boy any longer, but as a man.

Blind to all else, he jumped as the skids of the chopper struck the rig’s helipad. He hadn’t even noted their descent. Doors popped open, and the others piled out.

Jack remained a moment in his seat. He let the blood flow through him, felt it crest, then recede. He finally shouldered open the door and joined the others.

He didn’t dismiss what he had felt, but he also would not let it rule him. He had a job to do. But a part of him also shied away from looking too intimately at the source behind that rage, to the tender emotion buried deep that had ignited it.

Now was not the time.

Not until she was safe.

Chapter 44

Lorna stood with Dr. Malik before one of the wall monitors. On the screen rotated a three-dimensional scan of a brain. It reminded her of the MRI done on Igor’s brain. After all the bloodshed and fire, that seemed a lifetime ago. She tried to concentrate on Malik’s explanation, but a pall of grief and defeat weighed her down. The doctor’s words sounded hollow and distant.

“Here is the best image we could muster of the brain anomaly found in the test subjects.”

Malik pointed a finger at the five nodes on the screen, colored a distinct blue to distinguish them from the surrounding gray cerebral tissue. The number and pattern of the nodes were identical to those discovered during Igor’s MRI back at her lab. But Malik’s scan had much better resolution. Not only did the nodes stand out crisply, but so did the fine branching of magnetite crystals that connected the nodes together.

As it rotated, the pattern looked to have the same crystalline structure and shape as a snowflake.

“Are you familiar with fractal antennas?” Malik asked.

Lorna fought through her despair to answer. It took her an extra beat to croak out a “No.”

“Do you own a cell phone?”

The strange question pierced the fog in her head. Curiosity focused her sharper. “Of course.”

“Then you already own a fractal antenna. In the last decade, scientists have learned that antenna arrays patterned after fractals have an amazing ability to broadcast along a wider range of frequencies with a greater strength-to-size ratio. This breakthrough allowed manufacturers to shrink antennas down to microscopic sizes, yet still function like antennas a hundredfold larger. It’s revolutionized the industry. That’s the power hidden within fractals.”

Malik pointed to the screen. “And that’s what we’re looking at here. A fractal antenna grown from natural magnetite crystals in the brain.”

Lorna studied the snowflakelike pattern and remembered her own crude analogy to a satellite dish. She also recalled the strange synchronization of EEGs. “And it’s this fractal antenna that allows the animals to link up neurologically.”

“Exactly. The pattern of magnetic crystallization seen here is definitely fractal in nature. The entire neural matrix is made up of the repetition of the same basic crystal shape.”

“Like the triangle multiplying into a mountain.”

Malik nodded. “But this is only the tip of that mountain. Initially this scan was the best we could discern using standard techniques. Such methods only allowed us to look so far. Even zooming down with an electron microscope only revealed a crystal made up of hundreds of even tinier crystals. It was like with those Russian nesting dolls. Every time you thought you’d reached the smallest crystal, it would open up to reveal even smaller versions of itself inside. It went on and on- stretching beyond our ability to detect.”

Malik’s voice cracked with frustration. Lorna remembered the raw desire in the researcher’s eyes as he described his search for a fundamental fractal that was the root of all intelligence.

“No matter how hard we looked, the primary fractal kept retreating out of reach, growing smaller and smaller, eventually disappearing beyond where we could scan, down a spooky hole no one dared follow.”

Lorna pictured the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland bounding down his rabbit hole.

“And though we weren’t able to go down that hole, I could guess what was down there.”

Lorna’s interest piqued sharper. “What?”

“The strange world of quantum physics. Following fractals smaller and smaller, it eventually leads to the subatomic world. In fact, some physicists now believe that the science of fractals could explain away some of the spookiness of quantum theory. Such things like nonlocality and entanglement, how a subatomic particle can be at two places at once, how light behaves both like a wave and a particle. When you get that small, things get weird. But fractals may hold the answer to explaining it all.”

Lorna didn’t see where this was going. Her impatience must have been plain to read.

“So let me show you what I learned myself from that research. Something practical, yet amazing. I scanned this same brain again, but this time, not looking for crystals, but for the magnetic energy produced by those crystals. Though I might not be able to see the physical crystals, I could still measure the electromagnetic signature from those invisible crystals.”

“Like the light from distant stars,” Lorna said.

Malik’s eyes widened, caught by surprise. “Yes, a perfect analogy. Though we can’t see a sun or a planet, we can detect the light that reaches us.”

“So you repeated the scan looking for energy instead of crystals.”

“I did. And this is what I found.”

He pointed a remote control at the screen and pressed a button. The blue snowflake suddenly bloomed outward, becoming a cerulean storm within the specimen’s skull.

Lorna gasped and covered her mouth in shock. “It’s everywhere…”

Malik smiled, proud of his discovery. “Each node is like the seed of a fractal tree. The crystals spread outward into branches, then into tinier stems, and on and on.”

Lorna pictured the fractal tree she had been shown earlier, how a single Y grew into a three-dimensional tree. The crystals were doing the same in the brain, spreading outward while growing tinier and tinier at the same time until they were no longer visible with any scanning tool, but they could still be detected by the electromagnetic radiation coming off the hidden crystals, energy rising out of the subatomic world.

Malik waved her back to her seat by his desk. “So I’ve shown you how far down this fractal puzzle burrows. How it roots down into the quantum world. So now let’s consider the opposite: how far this fractal tree stretches outward. You already know these specimens are capable of linking up, of networking together.”

She nodded and understood where he was going. “You believe by linking together that same fractal tree is branching out further into the world.”

“Correct. The fractal tree is growing beyond the confines of a single skull. And growing stronger.”

Lorna remembered Igor reciting the mathematical constant pi.

“Which begs the question where will it end? If it can spread nearly infinitely down into the subatomic world, can it spread infinitely outward. If so, what might be the result? What level of supreme intelligence might be created?”

In her mind’s eye, Lorna pictured the roots of this fractal tree disappearing into the world of quantum energy, feeding on that infinite source of power. Yet she also pictured those tree branches expanding ever outward. Maybe it was the earlier biblical analogies that had started this discussion that drew one last comparison from her.

“It’s almost like the Tree of Knowledge. From the book of Genesis.”

Malik gave a dismissive snort. “Now you’re sounding like Mr. Bennett.”

Her voice grew firmer, drawing strength from certainty, fearful of what manner of intelligence would be born from this experiment. It made her go cold.

“You have to stop what you’re doing,” she said.

Malik sighed as he sank into his desk chair, plainly disappointed. “As a fellow scientist, I had hoped you’d be more open-minded.”

She was saved further admonishment by a knock on the door. The genetics technician stepped again into the room, bearing aloft a steel tray holding three large syringes.

Malik brightened again. “Ah, Edward, are the hormonal tests completed?”

“Yes, Doctor. And I have the drug cocktail prepared for the subject.”

Malik’s gaze shifted back to her. “Then it seems we must continue our discussion a little later, Dr. Polk. See if I can’t persuade you to look at this more rationally versus leaning on the Bible. But I guess that’s expected when you’re working on an island named Eden.”

Lorna placed a hand on her belly, fearing what was to come. Behind the technician appeared the familiar bulk of her bodyguard. Connor must have read the panic in her face. A hand settled to his holstered sidearm, discouraging any fight from her.

“After your injections,” Malik said, “you’ll want to lie down for at least a half hour. I’m afraid what’s to come will not be pleasant. Accelerating the follicle stimulation of your ovaries can be a bit”-he chose his next word carefully-“taxing!”

Lorna’s fear sharpened into a knife in her gut.

“Afterward we’ll talk again. We’ll have a couple of hours before your ovarian tissue will be ready for harvesting. Before that’s done, I’ll show you what we intend to do with your eggs.”

He waved her off. With no choice, Lorna stood up. It took an extra moment for her blood to follow. Her vision darkened at the edges.

Connor came forward and grabbed her elbow impatiently.

As she was hauled away she got one last look at the monitors on the wall. The brain scan continued to rotate on the screen, showing the magnetic storm raging within that skull.

Despite her terror about what was in store for her, a part of her went cold and determined at the sight-and its implication. God had banished man from the Garden of Eden for daring to trespass upon the Tree of Knowledge.

But what if man learned to grow his own Tree?

Where might it end?

She didn’t know the answer. She knew only one thing for certain.

Someone had to stop them.

Chapter 45

“Bon Dieu. You don’t look so good, little brother.”

Jack couldn’t argue with Randy’s assessment. He felt like someone had poured molten lead into his joints while leaving his skin to alternately burn or go damp with a cold sweat. He had drugged himself with some nondrowsy TheraFlu and hoped it would be enough to sustain him for another twenty-four hours.

“I’ll be fine,” he said to Randy, as much as to himself.

His brother stood a few yards from a small A-Star helicopter as it warmed up its engine, rotors whirling up to full speed. The roaring whine cut like a rusty hacksaw into his skull. The chopper would be airlifting Randy and Kyle over to the Thibodeauxs’ boat, currently steaming toward Lost Eden Cay.

Off to the side, Kyle stood with his arms crossed, anxious to get moving, one fingernail digging into his plaster cast, like a dog worrying a bone. He had wanted to join Jack’s assault team, to go directly after his sister, but his broken wrist precluded him from accompanying them. Not that Jack would have let Kyle anyway. He needed men he could trust, men with military training in covert operations.

Still, Kyle looked ready to claw his cast off and join Jack’s men. Mack Higgins and Bruce Kim waited a couple decks below, down by the wellhead with the drill crew. Even farther down, a seaplane floated at the foot of the offshore platform, ready to fly the assault team over to the island and dump them and their gear a mile offshore.

“You have the timetable?” Jack asked Randy.

His brother tapped a finger against his skull. “Mais oui. It’s all in here.”

Jack didn’t like the sound of that. He’d just spent the past half hour going over the assault plan in the office of the rig’s geologist. For this to work, each group would have to act in perfect synchronization.

Kyle stepped forward and cast a scowl in Randy’s direction. “Don’t worry. I have it all written down. We’ll wait for your signal before approaching the island.”

Jack nodded, glad at least that someone good with numbers was going to be aboard the Thibodeauxs’ boat. He had full confidence in Randy and his friends when it came to a down-and-dirty bar fight, but as to sticking to timetables, Cajuns seldom wore wristwatches.

Randy merely shrugged. “Whatever. We’ll be where we need to be.”

“And I’ll make sure they are,” Kyle added.

Now it was Randy’s turn to glower. “Je vais passer une calotte,” he threatened under his breath.

There was definitely no love lost between these two men. Jack hoped that old anger-buried deep between their two families-didn’t boil up into a problem for this mission.

“Just get on board the chopper,” Jack said. “I’ll touch base by radio when we’re in the air.”

The two men turned to the helicopter. They kept a wary distance from each other as they walked away.

Jack dismissed them from his mind and headed for the stairs that led down from the elevated helipad. He wanted to be out of direct earshot when the helicopter took off. His head pounded with each rising beat of the rotors as he climbed down the steep stairs. Finally sheltered from the rotorwash, he was assaulted again by the smell of oil and axle grease from the rig. The farther down he went, the worse it got, until he swore he could taste grease on the back of his tongue.

Fighting down a gag, he stopped on a landing that fronted the open Gulf. A fresh breeze blew in his face. He sucked down a few cold gulps to clear his head. As he did so the A-Star helicopter lifted off overhead and flew over the waters.

He watched the chopper swing south-then his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Now what? He pulled it out and checked the caller ID. He didn’t recognize the number, except it was a New Orleans area code. Unsure who it was, he answered it brusquely.

A familiar voice responded, as calm and gentle as if this were an invitation to high tea. “Agent Menard… I’m glad I could still reach you.”

“Dr. Metoyer?” Jack let both his surprise and impatience ring out.

“I know you must be in a hurry,” Carlton Metoyer said, “but I believe I have information that may have a bearing on your mission.”

Jack stepped back into the freshening breeze off the Gulf to listen. “What is it?”

“It’s about what was done to the animals. With all that happened back at the lab, we never had time to review our DNA analysis on that extra chromosome found in those animals.”

Jack recalled that Lorna had mentioned something about an extra chromosome. She believed it was the cause of the strange mutation in the animals.

“Once we got settled at the Audubon Zoo here, Zoë and I had a chance to run through those results. The chromosome proved to bear some shocking characteristics. Something you should know about.”

“Go ahead. But I’m pressed for time.”

“Of course, Agent Menard. Let me get to the point. I don’t know how familiar you are with genetic code, specifically with junk DNA?”

Jack sighed, earning a flare of his stabbing headache. “Biology was not my strong suit, Doctor.”

“No worries. This is Biology 101. As I’m sure you already know, DNA is a vast storehouse of genetic information. The human code is three billion letters long. But what you must understand is that only a very small percentage of DNA-three percent-is actually functional. The other ninety-seven percent is genetic garbage, basically baggage we’ve accumulated and been carrying around for millennia.”

“So why are we dragging it along?”

“Good question. Recent studies now suggest that not all junk DNA is pure garbage. Researchers have noted that specific regions of junk DNA match base pair for base pair with old viral code.”

Jack checked his watch, not sure where this was going.

Carlton continued: “There are two theories of why we carry around this ancient viral code. One scientific camp says it’s there to protect us against a new viral attack, basically genetic memory lying in wait until it’s needed again. The other camp says it’s merely old viral code that became absorbed into our DNA over the course of millennia. Literally the baggage of evolution. I’ve come to believe maybe it’s both. Especially as these bits of viral code can be found in DNA across animal species, from the lowliest burrowing mole to us humans. It’s like we’re carrying these identical chunks from some ancient source and keeping it for some future reason.”

Jack heard an edge of excitement enter the doctor’s voice. “What’s the point here, Doctor?”

“Yes, of course. I’m rambling. We’ve been studying the genetic code of that foreign chromosome, and Zoë had the brilliant idea to compare the sequence to various data banks, including the Human Genome Project. Within an hour, we had a hit.”

“What do you mean?”

“The genetic code of the extra chromosome. We found the exact same code already buried in our junk DNA-and not just ours but most animals’.”

“What?”

“The extra chromosome in these test subjects matches a set of old viral codes locked in all animal DNA, including our own.”

“Okay, but what does all that mean?”

“It means that animal kind-at least vertebrates-might have been exposed to this extra code before. Sometime in our evolutionary past. We dealt with it, and it became an inert part of our genome. Only now we’ve encountered it again. In active form.”

“Active?”

“I’ll let Zoë explain. She has the better grasp on this.”

Before Jack could object, the phone was fumbled and a new voice spoke. “Hi, Jack. Sorry to bother you.”

“How are you holding up, Zoë?”

“Okay. I just need to keep busy, to be useful.”

His ear picked up the strain, the tears hidden behind her words. It drew an ache from his heart, echoing his fear for Lorna. “Tell me what you learned, Zoë.”

Her voice grew firmer, moving away from that well of grief. “Before we left ACRES, my husband, Paul, had been studying the DNA, highlighting certain sequences of code, what we call genetic markers. It was plain what he suspected. The markers were unmistakable.”

“Unmistakable of what?” Jack asked.

“The markers clearly suggest this foreign chromosome is viral in origin.”

“Viral? Wait. Are you saying the chromosome is a virus?”

“We’re coming to believe so. Most viruses invade a cell’s nucleus, then hijack the host’s DNA by meshing with it in some manner. It’s why so many pieces of viral code make up our junk DNA. Only this virus doesn’t only hijack a host’s DNA. It became its own chromosome.”

Again Jack felt a sweeping chill. He began to get an inkling of why Carlton had called.

“We assumed someone had been genetically engineering these animals,” Zoë continued, “that they were taking foreign genetic material and artificially inserting it into these animals. The same way we can insert a glowing gene of a jellyfish into a mouse egg and breed mice that can glow. But it was an assumption we jumped to prematurely. After these results, it’s possible that the animals might have been merely exposed to this virus, infected with it. They then passed the genetic code to their offspring, who were born with these strange changes.”

Jack now understood why he’d been called. He stared across the empty Gulf waters. No wonder the kidnappers chose an isolated island for their experiments.

“This virus,” he said. “You think it might be contagious?”

“It could be. We don’t know. We’ve already put the animals here in strict quarantine. But we thought you should know before you reached the island. To take precautions.”

“Thanks. We’ll do that.” Jack was suddenly all too conscious of his flu symptoms, but he didn’t have time to worry about it. He had a job to do.

The tromping of boots on the steel stairs drew his attention away from the Gulf. Mack Higgins climbed up to the landing. He still chewed on the stump of a cold cigar. His eyes widened at finding Jack there.

“Just a second, Zoë.” Jack lowered the phone and nodded to Mack. “What is it?”

“Pilot says we’re all fueled up.”

Jack nodded and lifted the phone again. “Is that all you have, Zoë?”

“Only one last thing.” There was a long pause. Her voice came back brittle with anger and hurt. “Find Lorna. Bring her home. And make those bastards who killed Paul pay.”

“I promise, Zoë. On both counts.” He hung up. Lowering the phone, he faced Mack. “We set to go?”

“Pilot needs another ten minutes to run a final preflight check, then we’ll have the thumbs-up. But you should know. I just got off the horn with Jimmy back at the station. Paxton’s blowing a gasket over there. Knows we’re AWOL and off the grid.”

Jack grimaced. It was bad news, but not unexpected. Paxton was no fool. Jack’s venture threatened to get them all canned, if not tossed into prison.

“It’s not too late for you and Bruce to head back,” he offered.

Mack grinned rakishly around his cigar. “What would be the fun of that?”

Jack clapped him on the shoulder in thanks and motioned him back toward the stairs. “What about word from the FBI agent? Any sign of Dr. Polk’s GPS signal?”

Mack’s demeanor darkened. “Not a blip or a ping out there, boss.”

Jack swore inwardly. If only he had more proof that Lorna was out there… not just for Paxton, but for himself, too. As he headed down the stairs doubt began to fray the edges of his resolve. What if she wasn’t even on the island? Or what if she was already dead? He swallowed back those fears. They would do him no good.

She had to be alive-and somehow he knew that to be true. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t in bad trouble. And unfortunately he felt that just as strongly, and that fear grew with every passing minute.

“We still bugging out of here in ten?” Mack asked.

Jack shook his head. “No. We’re out of here now.”

Chapter 46

Lorna must have passed out. One minute she was heaving bile into a bucket beside the treatment table, and the next she was on her back on the same table. Smelling salts passed under her nose. The ammonia smell felt like a kick to the face. She batted away the technician’s hand.

What are they doing to me?

The ovary-stimulating drugs had been injected intravenously. Nausea swept through her even before the last needle had slipped out of her vein. She fought it for a full ten minutes, but eventually her stomach gave out. They must have expected that side effect and kept an emesis pan bedside. She filled it three times until she was left dry-heaving.

As the smelling salts brought her back around she struggled to sit up. The room spun.

“I’d lie down,” a voice said beside her.

She turned and recognized the broad-shouldered gentleman from the villa’s study. Seated next to her, he still wore the same hiking pants and khaki vest. This was Bryce Bennett, the man behind the operations here. Up close, he appeared even larger. His tanned face looked like fine-grained leather, his blue eyes like pale ice.

He waved the technician out of the room.

“I had chemotherapy for lymphoid cancer ten years ago,” Bryce said, leaning forward. “Got it from exposure during my years as a submariner. Back when soldiers were still watching atomic tests from the sidelines. So I know what you’re feeling right about now. But you’ll get your sea legs back in a few more minutes. At least the other women did.”

Lorna stared around. She was momentarily alone in the treatment room with the man. Not that she could do anything. She felt as weak as a newborn with pneumonia. But with each breath, she did feel her head clearing.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. She meant it to mean why had the big man bothered to come down here. But the single question encompassed so much more. Why were they putting her through this? What was the purpose of all of this?

He took her question literally. “I came here after speaking with Dr. Malik. Something you said intrigued me. I thought we could share a few minutes before they’re ready to continue the procedure.”

“What about?”

“About Eden.”

She didn’t know what to make of that and remained silent.

Bennett sighed and leaned back in his chair. She noted a silver crucifix pinned to his jacket’s lapel. It flashed as he shifted back into his seat.

“But let’s start at the beginning. I started this project because of a paper produced by the chief scientific advisers of the Pentagon, a group calling themselves the JASONs.”

He lifted an eyebrow at her to see if she’d heard of them.

She merely kept her face blank, giving him nothing.

“Ten years ago, the JASONs fiercely advocated for the military to invest greater resources into what they all called Human Performance Modification. They were concerned that our enemies were getting the upper hand. Foreign powers were already doing pharmaceutical research into performance enhancement. Such drugs could produce troops who were smarter, stronger, and better able to handle the rigors of war. You can imagine the alarm bells that raised among the Pentagon top brass.”

Bennett chuckled at the thought. “The advisers went on to warn the brass that the U.S. was falling way behind, and as a matter of national security, they recommended two things: to increase research funding and to monitor those foreign studies abroad. And believe me, following this report, money flowed-and it flowed in all directions. One of my competitors in the defense contracting business is already actively testing drugs as a way to improve memory and cognitive performance in troops.”

Lorna began to understand where this was headed. She pictured the brain scan back in Malik’s office. She also recalled the description Duncan had used for the project: bioweapon systems.

“Following those guidelines, money also went into monitoring other projects abroad. It was during a coordinated attempt to co-opt foreign researchers as moles that we were approached by Dr. Malik.”

A door opened behind Bennett. As if summoned by his name, Malik swept into the treatment room. At his heels followed the chief of security. Duncan was red in the face, making his scars stand out more prominently.

From their demeanors, it was plain they’d been arguing.

Bennett turned to them. “What’s wrong?”

Duncan spoke first. “We’ve lost one of the cameras in the compound.”

“It might just be a mechanical glitch,” Malik quickly added.

“Or it could be one of his creatures took out the camera. If they were smart enough to cut out the tracking device in order to sneak over here and kill one of my men, then they’re smart enough to knock out a camouflaged camera.”

“What about the other cameras?” Bennett asked. “What are they showing?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Malik insisted. “Their activity appears routine. No sign of any hyperaggression. I still say such outbursts are isolated aberrations and can be eradicated.”

“And I say we go in with assault rifles and purge the place.”

Bennett held up a hand. “That would set us years behind. Duncan, have the security doubled at the gate between the two islands and send an armed team to check on that camera. We’ll decide what to do from there.”

Lorna listened to this exchange in silence. Back in vet school, she’d learned that it was better to keep quiet and let the client do most of the talking. More information came out that way.

But Duncan didn’t fail to note her presence. He glared at her as if this were all her fault. “Sir, I also heard word from our computer tech. It looks like the New Orleans facility does indeed contract with Compu-Safe to back up their computers. There’s a good chance their data was saved to an outside server. We’re still tracking where that might be.”

“Keep looking,” Bennett growled. “We can’t risk losing our technological advantage.”

“Yes, sir.” Duncan headed away again.

Lorna was glad to see him go.

Bennett turned his attention to Malik. “Doctor, you’ve arrived at an opportune time. I was just going over how the Babylon Project got started, how you sensed the winds were changing and threw your hat on our side of the ring.”

“Yes. Such a change also allowed me to continue my research, only this time with sufficient funding.”

“We call that a win-win situation,” Bennett said.

“Indeed.”

Bennett faced Lorna. “Do you know why we call our work here the Babylon Project?”

She shook her head.

“Because it started in the biblical region of Babylon. Dr. Malik was already under way with his project twenty years ago, a secret weapons project hidden beneath the Baghdad Zoo. He was doing biowarfare research with a virus he discovered in a small Kurdish village in the mountains near Turkey. You may have heard of Saddam destroying Kurdish villages back in 1988. During that attack, he bombarded this village, too, and many others with mustard gas and Sarin nerve agent. He also bleached the local wells. All to cover up what they found there.”

“What did they find?” Lorna asked hoarsely, her throat sore.

Malik answered. “All the children in the village had been born strangely regressed during the prior year.”

Lorna pictured the hominids and could guess what the doctor meant by regressed.

“The children were kept hidden by the superstitious villagers, believing their lands to be cursed. This certainty also grew after similar genetic abnormalities appeared in the village’s goats and camels. Eventually word spread, especially when the adult villagers began to get sick, succumbing to strange fevers that left them hypersensitive to light and noise.”

Lorna recalled Malik describing a toxic protein.

“I was called in to investigate. I did DNA tests and found all the children bore a chromosomal defect.”

“An extra chromosome.”

“That’s right. But it wasn’t a chromosome. It was an invader. A virus that injected its own DNA into a cell nucleus and took up residence there.”

Lorna finally sat up. This time the room only spun a little. The nausea was also quickly receding, though a cramping ache had begun to throb in her lower back, likely rising from her drug-assaulted ovaries.

“A virus?” she asked.

“That’s right. And from what we’ve been able to tell of its evolutionary origin, we’ve encountered it before.”

As proof, Malik went on to describe how remnants of this code still existed in our DNA, buried and dormant, just a fragment of junk DNA.

“In fact, this ancient exposure may be why all animal species carry some level of magnetite crystals in their brain. Like broken pieces of a mirror stuck in our head, a remnant left behind from this previous encounter millennia ago.”

Malik continued: “But these villagers exposed themselves anew, along with their livestock, when they dug a new well, far deeper than they’d ever gone due to a decade-long drought. Once the water was flowing, they quickly contaminated themselves and their livestock with this virus.”

She understood. “And this virus inserted its DNA, spreading through their cells.”

“It seems to concentrate in very active cells. Lymph, gastrointestinal cells, bone marrow. But also germ cells in ovaries and testicles.”

“And in doing so, it passed its DNA to their offspring.”

“Exactly right. But in the cells of adult animals, it remained dormant, inactive. It only switched on inside a fertilized egg. The virus began to express itself as the embryo grew, changing the architecture of the brain to meet its ends. In early embryonic development, it triggered the brain to form those magnetite deposits, and then it grew in a fractal manner in tandem with the developing brain.”

Lorna pictured again that fractal tree, spreading ever outward.

“The viral DNA also continues to produce proteins as an offspring grows. We believe the protein acts as a neurostimulator, basically keeping the neurons more excited, generating additional energy to power and maintain this fractal antenna. But it’s this same protein that kills those who don’t have the neurological capacity to handle it, those who don’t have this magnetic architecture in their brains. Truly insidious when you think about it.”

“How do you mean?” Lorna asked.

“Maybe this deadly feature also serves an evolutionary advantage. A way for the new generation to wipe out the old.”

Lorna went cold at this possibility.

“Either way,” Malik said, “we do know another effect of these proteins. Under electron microscopy, we studied the rest of the host’s DNA. Specifically we examined the region of our junk DNA that corresponded to the virus’s genetic code. This region was puffy and unbundled, suggesting active transcription and translation.”

“And what does that mean?” Bennett asked, scrunching his brow.

Lorna knew the answer. Her stomach churned-but not from the injected drugs this time.

Malik explained. “Such an appearance suggests that ancient region of DNA had become active again. In other words, what was junk was no longer junk.”

“How could that happen?” Lorna pressed.

“I could go into detail about messenger RNA, reverse transcriptase, but suffice it to say that these proteins stimulated and awakened this ancient DNA. I believe that awakening this old code is one of the reasons these animals end up being genetic throwbacks. That by turning on the DNA carried in the genome for millennia, it somehow also dredged up each animal’s genetic past, reawakening evolutionary features locked for millennia within that junk DNA.”

“Like some sort of genetic trade-off,” Lorna said.

Malik crinkled his brow at her, not understanding.

She laid it out. “The virus triggers a leap forward neurologically, but to balance it out, there’s also a corresponding evolutionary leap backward.”

Malik’s eyebrows rose on his forehead. “I’d never considered that.” Bennett nodded. “Hassan, maybe you were right about Dr. Polk. She might bring a fresh outlook to your problem.”

“I agree.”

They both faced her.

“If you’re feeling settled enough to walk,” Bennett said, “it’s time you truly got a taste of Eden. And the serpent that plagues us.”

Chapter 47

Lorna followed Malik back to his office. Her legs wobbled with each step, and she came close to falling on her face after first sliding off the exam table. Bennett caught her and offered her his arm. She hated to take it, but the only other choice was to be carried there.

At least moving helped clear her head.

By the time she reached the chair in front of his desk, she felt strong enough to let go of Bennett’s arm and move to the seat. The burning ache in her lower back had also dulled to a low throb. She sank to the chair as Malik took a remote and pointed it at the wall of screens.

“This is a live high-definition camera feed from the habitat we set up on the neighboring island. The animal reserve is connected to ours by a land bridge, but we’ve set up an electric fence between the two islands and maintain around-the-clock guards. The other island is a perfect test field for evaluating how this new intelligence manifests in a real-world setting.”

The center plasma monitor bloomed to life. The clarity was such that it looked more like a window into another world-and perhaps it was. The view opened into a clearing in a primeval forest. Crude, palm-thatched huts circled the edges, and in the center, a fire pit glowed with embers.

A pair of naked figures crouched near the pit. They were the size of large children, naked but covered mostly in fur. The male rose to his feet as if sensing their observation. He searched around. His nose was broad and flat, his forehead high and prominent, shadowing his eyes. His jaw protruded, looking like it had been crudely sculpted, halfway between ape and man.

Despite her weakness, Lorna rose again to her feet, fascinated despite her personal repugnance concerning the research here. She recognized the creature. Here was a living example of the body she’d seen earlier. A hominid-like version of early man. As if wary, the male helped the female to her feet. Her breasts hung heavy. She held a hand to her belly, which bulged.

“She’s pregnant,” Lorna said, surprised.

“Due any day,” Malik agreed. “We’re lucky to catch a view of the female. She normally stays hidden and only comes out at night.”

“I named her Eve,” Bennett said with a vague note of fatherly pride in his voice.

Malik rolled his eyes a bit at the conceit of his choice of names. “She’s the first of them to conceive in the wild. We’ve normally orchestrated all breeding via artificial insemination in the lab. We’re very curious what sort of offspring she’ll give birth to.”

“How old is she?”

“The male is eight, the female seven.”

The shock must have been plain on Lorna’s face.

“The specimens mature at a very fast rate,” Malik explained.

Behind the figures, a large dark shape crept out of the shadowy forest. It kept low to the ground, padding on wide paws, tail straight back, ears laid flat. It stalked toward the unsuspecting figures. It was an ebony-furred version of the saber-toothed jaguar killed in the bayou. A juvenile, from the looks of it. Still, this youngster had to weigh over a hundred pounds, most of it muscle. Its eyes squinted toward the two targets-then in an explosion of muscle, it charged at them.

Lorna took a step back in horror.

The male suddenly swung around. The cat skidded to a stop and promptly rolled onto its back, baring its throat and wiggling happily on the ground. The female bent down, one hand supporting her lower back, and rubbed the cat’s chin. A tender smile suffused her face. Her features were a more softly sculpted version of the male’s. The cat’s tail swished in contentment.

Bennett stepped to Lorna’s side. “ ‘And so the lion shall lie down with the lamb…’ ”

Malik explained less philosophically. “They’re all bonded. The habitat was established a year ago. At first there were a few deaths, but over time, the specimens established and grew into an interconnected family of sorts, connected, we suppose, by their mental affinity, sharing at a level we cannot comprehend.”

Lorna heard the longing in his voice-not out of any desire to experience it, but more out of a desire to understand and harness it.

As she watched, another three figures entered the clearing. One carried a crude spear, the other two hauled a small pig between them.

“We stock the island with deer and pigs,” Bennett said. “To keep them fed.”

“They also have wild-growing coconut and mango trees and a freshwater spring,” Malik added. “But other than that and the makeshift shelters, we’ve left them to fend for themselves. To see how they adapt, to coexist, and use their strange intelligence to solve problems. We set up weekly challenges and tests and evaluate their performances.”

Behind the trio of hunters, a pack of a dozen dogs burst out of the forest. Lean, with bushy tails and sharp ears, they looked like miniature wolves, each the size of a cocker spaniel. The dogs swept into the clearing, but rather than moving like a tumbling, riotous pack, there was a strange coordination to their movement. They gave the clearing one full run, then swept eerily to a standstill, dropping simultaneously to their haunches, like a flock of birds settling to a perch.

Another handful of hominids appeared from the huts, drawn out by the commotion. Lorna counted.

At least ten.

“It many ways,” Bennett said, “this place truly is Eden. All God’s creatures-great and small-living in harmony.”

Malik had a less biblical take on the matter. “What we’re seeing is a demonstration of fractal intelligence, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We believe the group has developed a hivelike intelligence, where the individuals in the habitat act like one living unit. It may be why they haven’t developed the ability to speak. They each know the others’ thoughts.”

“And perhaps that’s the way the world once was,” Bennett said. “Before we were cast from Eden.”

Rather than dismiss the biblical analogies this time, Malik nodded. “Mr. Bennett might be right. Perhaps what we’re looking at is the source of the mythology of an earlier earthly paradise, the proverbial Garden of Eden. Various versions of that story persist in cultures around the world. Why is that? Perhaps it rises from some race memory of such a prior union. Just as we still carry magnetite crystals in our brain-fractured pieces of this old neural network-maybe we do somehow recall this earlier paradise.”

“And maybe it’s more than just memory,” Lorna said, finding herself inadvertently caught up in the wonder of what she was seeing.

Malik turned to her for elaboration.

She nodded to the screen. “For the past decade, animal researchers and human psychologists have been exploring the human-animal bond-the strange and deep affinity humans have for animals. No one really knows the source of this affinity. We do know it goes beyond mere affection or need for companionship. New studies show the human body physically responds to the presence of animals in a positive manner.”

“What do you mean by positive?” Bennett asked.

She offered some examples. “People who own animals have lower cholesterol levels and a lessened risk of heart disease. Just petting a cat causes an immediate drop in blood pressure. Bringing companion animals into hospitals and hospices accelerates healing times and boosts immune responses in patients. Yet it remains a mystery why we have this bodily reaction.”

She pointed to the screen. “Maybe that is the answer. Maybe more than just a race memory of Eden resides in us. Maybe our bodies physically remember it, too. Memory locked in both mind and body.”

“That’s an intriguing view, Dr. Polk. And you may be right. Perhaps there remains some weak connection, some residual vibration from the fragments of magnetite crystals that persist, connecting us all together.” Malik sighed and frowned at the figures on the monitor. “Still, it’s the body part that has been plaguing us here.”

She understood, putting the details together in her head. “The genetic throwbacks,” she said to Malik, then turned to Bennett. “You mentioned the Pentagon’s interest in the performance enhancement of humans. You still haven’t gotten it right. With such mutational throw-backs, you can’t bring your research forward.”

Bennett nodded. “That’s right.”

“It’s the Holy Grail of our research,” Malik said. “A human birth without turning back the evolutionary clock.”

“Does the Pentagon even know you’re doing these human studies?”

Bennett shrugged. “They know not to look too closely. It’s why we shipped only animals on the trawler, to demonstrate our progress in order for our funding to continue flowing. We’re so close to fully realizing our goal. Can you imagine if we could tap into this resource? Soldiers who are not only smarter, but with unit cohesion like no other army.”

“But that isn’t our only obstacle,” Malik said. He stared grimly as the hunters tossed the pig onto the hot coals of the fire pit. “It seems our Eden has its serpent, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let me show you.”

Malik pointed his remote at the other monitors that surrounded the plasma screen. Image after image appeared. Most were pictures of bloody wounds sustained by various men and women, some in white lab coats, others in worker’s coveralls or khaki uniforms. But one screen played a video, filmed at night, hued in shades of silver. A shape-one of the hominids-bounded down a dark beach and leaped upon a guard smoking a cigarette. It tore at the man’s throat with tooth and nail. The savagery was shocking. Even after the guard was down, the creature continued to claw at the man’s face, ripping away a chunk of his cheek.

“That happened last night,” Bennett said.

“Bouts of hyperaggression,” Malik explained. “They flare up with no warning, no provocation, no explicable reason. One of them might appear gentle one day but would suddenly attack a technician the next. It’s one of the reasons we decided to isolate the colony to the far island. They were growing too dangerous to keep here. Our head of security would have preferred to destroy them, but there is still so much we can learn by studying them. From a safe distance.”

She pictured Duncan’s map of scars. “Is that what happened to his face? Was he attacked?”

“Duncan?” Bennett shook his head. “He was injured much earlier, back when we were first salvaging specimens. Got badly mauled. Spent a week in a coma and countless hours under a surgeon’s knife just to get back some semblance of a face.”

No wonder the bastard hates them so much, she thought.

Bennett continued: “But that’s the nature of the beast. I personally believe our aggression problem here at Eden arises because our test subjects have an unnatural connection to wild animals. Such contact defiles God’s plan. Corrupts what little bit of humanity remains in them. If we could purge that, we’d be better off.”

“And I can’t discount that,” Malik added. “There remains a feral edge to them that we can’t tame. Maybe it does rise from this merging of animal and man. To that end, we’ve restricted our next phase of research to human studies only. It’s why we need plenty of fresh genetic material.”

Lorna didn’t like the sound of that. The ache in her ovaries reminded her where they would harvest the new genetic material.

“But we’d appreciate hearing any insight you might have in regard to the serpent in our midst,” Malik said. “Mr. Bennett and I have already discussed utilizing your talents.”

Lorna suddenly sensed all this was some sort of test, a practical exam of her usefulness. To survive, she had to prove herself. If she failed at any point, her life was forfeit.

“Perhaps it would be best if you showed what we’re working on now,” Bennett said.

In other words, part two of her exam was about to begin.

Lorna eyed the center monitor. The village was covering the pig with leaves and stones. She watched a version of Igor up in a tree, cutting down palm fronds with his beak. The sight of the featherless parrot reminded her of all she’d lost, of the hopelessness of her situation.

Something in the forest must have made a noise. Suddenly all eyes-dog, cat, bird, man-snapped in that direction, shifting like a single organism. The entire habitat froze in place. They all seemed to be staring directly at the camera, straight at her.

Her body went cold.

Malik placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. As if that contact broke some spell, the village snapped out of its fixed focus and resumed their coordinated effort. But Lorna could not shake the menacing intensity of that attention.

“Don’t worry,” Malik said. “You won’t have anything to do with them. That place is off limits. Isolated to their habitat, they’ve become progressively insular, dangerous to anyone outside their interconnected family. It would be suicide to step foot in there.”

Despite the danger posed, she could not stop staring at the screen. Still, she understood the security issue. Having been involved with the New Orleans Zoo, she knew the obstacles and challenges when it came to safely housing wild animals, especially predators.

She was glad someone was keeping a close eye on that place.

Chapter 48

Duncan stood on the stretch of sand that connected the two islands. He sucked on a cherry Life Savers, but not even the sweetness could dispel the bitter taste at the back of his throat. He hated to put his men at needless risk, especially when Malik couldn’t recognize a failure when it was biting him in the ass.

Across the sand, a trio of his commandos approached the forest on the far side. They were armed with XM8 lightweight assault rifles outfitted with 40mm grenade launchers.

Duncan wasn’t taking any chances.

He never did.

Malik had thought him overly paranoid when he designed the security measures to isolate the other island. A twelve-foot electric fence split the land bridge in half. Coils of concertina barbwire topped the gate and rolled out into the water. He’d also mined the seabed to either side with antipersonnel charges that would explode and shred the shallows with razor-sharp flechettes. Additionally, he’d tagged all the beasts over there and monitored their movements around the clock. There should have been no accidents, no surprises, certainly no deaths.

Duncan had seen the body on the beach. The man’s face was gone, stripped to the bone. Staring at the mutilation, he had flashbacks about his own attack-and that only stoked his anger to a hot fire. Even his own men gave him a wide berth, seeing something in his face that scared them.

And he was okay with that. He wanted his men to remain wary.

Across the way, the trio of men vanished into the forest. Duncan listened to their chatter. He didn’t have to be down at the beach, but he felt it was his duty. He wanted to be here in case there was trouble. He never sent his men into a firestorm that he wasn’t willing to follow them into. It was why his men respected him, were loyal to him.

He listened to the men’s chatter over the radio in his ear. They kept their talk to a minimum, but he wasn’t satisfied. He touched his throat mike.

“Keep silent out there. Hand signals only. Sound out if there’s trouble.”

He got confirmation from all three.

He resumed his pacing as he waited. Each minute dragged. His jaw muscles began to ache.

Finally, a new voice spoke in his ear. “Commander Kent, the team is about to enter the blacked-out zone.” The speaker was posted back at the villa’s security nest, monitoring all the camera feeds. “I’ll lose them from here, but I’ll keep tracking their ID tags.”

“Understood. Keep me updated.”

Duncan kept his gaze fixed on the forested hill across the way. During his engineering of the compound, he had installed an additional precaution in case of emergency. He had sowed the island with napalm bombs. With a press of a button, he could burn the other island down to the dirt. At the moment he was tempted to do that.

Fry the whole place. Be done with it.

The security technician spoke again in his ear. “The team has reached the tree blind where the broken camera was posted.”

Impatient, Duncan pressed his throat mike to open a channel to his team. “Report in. What’s going on out there? What did you find?”

The voice came back in a wary whisper. “Camera’s trashed. Looks like someone took a rock to it. Smashed it to bits.”

So he’d been right all along.

A mechanical glitch, my ass.

Duncan planned on laying into Malik once he got back to the villa. But that could wait. He didn’t want his men out there any longer than necessary.

“Replace the camera,” he ordered. “And hump your asses back here double time.”

“Will do.”

Before he could even sign off, the security nest cut in. “Commander Kent, I’m receiving a distress call from a commercial charter boat. They’re reporting an engine fire.”

He closed his eyes and sighed heavily.

Like I need this now…

He spoke into his radio. “Where are they?”

“The beach patrol says the boat’s about half a klick from the cove, blowing black smoke. How do you want me to respond?”

Duncan didn’t like this. Warning bells rang in his head. He wanted to check this out himself.

“Hold tight before responding to the boat. I’ll be right up.”

“Aye, sir.”

Duncan stared at the dark forest beyond the gate. The others should be heading back by now. The security nest could continue monitoring their status until they were safe.

He turned his back on other island and headed up the stone stairs toward the villa. He wanted to see this foundering boat for himself. By maritime law, they could not ban the ship from seeking shelter. To do so would only draw attention to the island.

Still, that didn’t mean he had to roll out the welcome mat.

He touched his mike again. “Tell the beach patrol to keep heavy watch on that boat until I get there. And order the gun battery in the crow’s nest to maintain a fix on that target.”

During the construction of the villa, he’d had a M242 Bush-master cannon built into a bunker atop the highest floor of the villa. It fired two hundred rounds a minute with the velocity to shred through armor. Might seem like overkill, but it was a reasonable precaution considering that the seas around here continued to be hounded by modern-day pirates, raiders who attacked small islands, pillaged unsuspecting estates, and slaughtered or kidnapped anyone unlucky enough to be around.

Duncan refused to be caught by surprise. If whoever was out there wanted to make trouble, he’d make them regret it.

Chapter 49

Five meters underwater, Jack sped above a line of reefs into the island’s shallows. His fingers gripped the handles of a portable Mako underwater scooter and powered toward the shoreline. He adjusted the pitch of the unit’s propeller to keep him a foot above the seabed.

To either side, Mack and Bruce paced him, zipping through the shallow waters. They all wore black neoprene wet suits. Each of them hauled oilskin dry sacks holding clothes and weapons. M4 carbines and H &K double-action pistols. Jack had also packed his Remington 870 shotgun.

He didn’t hold out any hope that such firepower was sufficient for a full-out frontal assault. The weapons were meant as a last resort. This mission’s success or failure hinged less on firepower than on stealth. To that end, Jack had coordinated with the Thibodeauxs’ boat. The others should have raised a distress signal by now, drawing attention to the far side of the island while Jack’s team snuck in the back door. As an added precaution, he had studied the satellite maps and opted to make land-fall on the wooded island to the north. With the villa on the southern island, this smaller island would be less likely to be watched.

Or so he hoped.

Jack slowed his scooter as the seabed rose under him. Twenty yards off the beach, he powered the propeller off and let the scooter drop to the sand below. He carefully floated to the surface and peeked his mask above the surf to scan the shoreline. A thin strand of beach fringed a dark wall of forest, mostly palms and mangrove trees near the water with Caribbean pines and walnuts up higher. With the sun setting on the far side of the island, the woods were thick with shadows.

He watched for a long minute for any sign of movement.

All seemed quiet.

Mack and Bruce joined him, hovering to either side. He shed his air tanks, weight belt, and swim fins. Holding his breath, he grabbed his dry sack, then signaled for the others to follow. With a kick of his legs, he propelled himself toward shore, staying underwater for as long as possible. Finally, with sand rasping the belly of his wet suit, he surged up and lunged for the beach.

In seven steps, he was out of the water and into the shadows of the woods. Bruce followed next, his lithe shape barely making a splash. He dove over the sand and rolled into the shadows on the right, not even leaving a footprint. On the other hand, Mack stormed the beach like an amphibious landing craft. He lunged out of the water and pounded low across the sand, hitting the woods to the left.

Once under shelter, they kept silent. Beyond their hiding places, the waves slowly washed away most evidence of their landfall.

Jack shivered as he waited. Now that he was no longer moving, his skull began to ache again. The smells of the forest filled his head: moldy leaf rot, wet sand, some spicy-scented flower. His feverish eyes burned, making even the shadows seem too bright. All his senses stretched outward, wary for any sign that their landing had been spotted.

But no alarm sounded. No shouts rose.

Satisfied, he motioned for the others to get ready. They stripped out of their wet suits and into rough duty uniforms in green and black. Weapons were freed; radios fixed to ears and throats.

Once outfitted, Jack lifted an arm and dropped it like an ax in the direction of the land bridge that separated the two islands. The bridge lay not far from the villa. Using the cover of this island should allow them to creep almost to the doorstep of the place.

From there, they would need information. He planned to ambush one of the outlying guards, to interrogate the man under threat of great bodily harm-a threat that would be realized if the man didn’t cooperate. Jack had no time for subtlety. He intended to find out if Lorna was here, and if so, where she was being kept.

Jack again felt that bone-deep surge of fierceness. His vision narrowed as he headed into the dappled forest. His men moved silently to either side.

No matter where Lorna was, he would find her.

LORNA STOOD BEFORE a closed door. It read authorized personnel only. Malik swiped his ID card. Bennett stood behind her. They were accompanied by Lorna’s assigned bodyguard, the redheaded Connor, who wore his usual hard scowl.

The guard posted himself at the door as the lock disengaged and Lorna and the two men entered a nondescript anteroom. A second door led into the next room, but it couldn’t be opened until the first door was closed.

Like an air lock.

Malik turned to Lorna. “What you’re about to see may seem callous at first glance-but it is necessary.”

“In order to maintain their purity,” Bennett added.

Malik gave a half shrug. “Or in other words, to isolate variables. To strip any possibility that contact with animal minds is contributing to the psychotic breaks demonstrated by the first generation of specimens. To that end, let me show you the second generation of our research.”

Lorna suddenly quailed against stepping across that threshold, fearful of discovering what new horrors lay hidden here. Malik opened the doorway-and Lorna was shocked to hear childish laughter, accompanied by the clapping of small hands. Music also wafted out. The theme song from Sesame Street.

The incongruity of laughter in this house of pain set her teeth on edge. Fear grew sharper inside her.

“Come with me,” Malik said and led her inside.

Lorna had no choice but to follow, trailed by Bennett.

Malik continued his dialogue, sounding vaguely nervous, maybe even embarrassed. “Though they’re isolated here, we treat them very well.”

Lorna stepped into what could pass for an ordinary dayroom in any preschool. A chalkboard covered one wall. Beanbag chairs dotted the floor in a rainbow of colors. Crayon drawings decorated a corkboard, and in a corner, a plasma television showed a furry puppet conversing with Big Bird.

But it was the children in the room who drew Lorna’s full attention. Dozens of children sat on chairs or sprawled on rugs, raptly staring at the television screen. Each looked around the same age, or at least the same size. They stood no taller than her waist, but these were not toddling babies. Their fully developed features suggested maturity beyond their size. And from the downy fluff on cheeks and limbs, they were clearly related to the inhabitants on the other island. But rather than being naked, the children wore matching blue jumpers.

“How old are they?” Lorna whispered, choked by shock.

“From sixteen months to two years,” Malik answered.

As she stepped farther into the room one child turned toward her, then the others all swung to face her. It reminded her of the synchronization witnessed on the camera. Like a flock of birds startled into sudden flight or a school of fish turning on a dime.

She remembered Malik’s term: a hivelike intelligence.

Was that the source of this behavior? She knew flocking was still poorly understood. Some scientists wondered if there might not be some electromagnetic connection between birds in a flock or fish in a school, to get them to act so perfectly in unison. But the latest consensus seemed to suggest that each individual was responding to microsignals from its neighbors and responding in a preprogrammed fashion.

Looking at the behavior here, Lorna wondered if it might not be a combination of both.

The faces eventually swung back to the screen as a new song began to play on the television.

“They’re innocents,” Bennett said. “Kept isolated here from any corruption, bonding only among their own kind.”

Malik nodded. “We’re monitoring their IQ scores with nonverbal tests and watching for any signs of aggression. So far, their IQ levels are rising every week. And they’ve demonstrated no aggression. But that might be too early to judge. Aggression really only manifested after puberty with the others. Still, we’re hopeful.”

“What are you going to do with them?” Lorna asked, fearful of the answer.

“As fast as they mature, we’ll be collecting eggs from the older females in another six months. They’ll be nearing sexual maturity by then.”

Lorna went cold, contemplating such a violation of these little ones.

“From those eggs, we’re going to attempt to destroy the active sections of junk DNA that seems to be triggering these throwbacks, to try to breed it out of the next generation.” Malik rubbed his hands as if anxious to proceed. “We’re so close to a breakthrough that could change the world.”

Bennett nodded. “That’s why we could use your help.”

Malik concurred. “Your expertise with the breeding of exotic animals and handling genetic material is perfectly suited to aid us in the last leg of our work.”

The subtext was plain: it was an offer she couldn’t refuse. Not if she wanted to live. But how could she agree? These were not exotic animals close to extinction. In fact, they weren’t animals at all.

One of the children, a little girl, wandered from her beanbag and lifted her arms up in a universal gesture. Lorna leaned down and picked her up. The child was heavier than she expected, thicker boned, but her tiny hand lifted, and the girl began to suckle a thumb. Her small head settled to Lorna’s shoulder while bright eyes followed the alphabet lesson on the television.

(… brought to you by the letter W…)

Lorna could feel the child visibly relaxing. A slight tremble in her small body quieted with each breath. Lorna sensed the deprivation of these children, the lack of warm contact. It raised a question in her mind.

She glanced to Malik. “What happened to this child’s mother? To all their parents?”

Malik sought to assuage her. “You’ve seen them. They’re housed at the habitat. When we populated the other island, we separated the youngest specimens here. We’ve built this nursery with copper wiring in the walls to confine this group’s neural network to this handful of rooms, to isolate them from contamination while their brains are still pliable.”

Lorna pictured the violence caught on video, of one of the hominids attacking a guard. By Malik’s own admission, these weren’t dumb animals. Though they didn’t have the power of speech, they were plainly highly intelligent, communicating among themselves in ways no one could fully understand.

She began to suspect the reason for such an attack, for such savagery.

She was carrying it in her arms.

Maternal instinct was strong in most animals. In a communal setting, that instinct would be magnified. The loss of each child would be felt by the whole. Such abuse could drive them into a maddened state. Combine that with heightened intelligence-growing every week, according to Malik-the danger posed by the compound’s inhabitants would intensify.

No wonder the security measures were so strict.

Heaven help anyone who set foot over there.

FIVE MINUTES AFTER hitting the beach, Jack led his team through a grove of pines. He had quickly sought higher ground, but continued to parallel the beach as he circled toward the land bridge. In his head, he kept his position by fixing the sun’s position, the angle and direction of shadows.

Still, he wanted to getter a better lay of the land.

Spying a limestone outcropping that might suit his need, he lifted a fist.

Mack and Bruce dropped into shadows to either side, rifles fixed to their shoulders. Jack clambered up the rocky boulder. Sunlight dappled its surface. For the first time, he had a good view across the island, all the way to the cove on the western side. He noted a white speck out there. It trailed black smoke against the setting sun. He hoped Randy and the Thibodeauxs had enough smoke canisters to maintain their ruse.

He turned his attention to the immediate landscape below. He spotted the spit of sand connecting this island to the other. A glint of steel concerned him. It looked like some barricade split the bridge. The structure hadn’t been on any of his satellite maps, but the surveys had been old and the detail poor.

He frowned at the barricade but knew he had no other recourse. He would face that challenge when he reached it. Still, its presence nagged at him.

Why construct a barricade between the two islands?

Frustrated, he backed to the edge of the boulder, intending to hop down-when a stuttering spat of rifle fire erupted, exceptionally loud. From his perch, he spotted a flock of doves explode out of the forest, taking flight halfway between his post and the bridge.

He crouched, expecting the foliage to shred around him, believing he’d been spotted. But a moment later, the rifle fire turned into bloody screams. They rang out brightly through the air.

Then the screaming cut off with a note of finality. Silence followed, as if the forest were holding its breath.

Jack slipped off the boulder and back down into the shadows, keeping as quiet as possible. A cold certainty set in. He pictured the barricade. Something else shared this small island with them.

He didn’t know what that might be, but he knew one thing for sure.

He was on the wrong side of that fence.

Chapter 50

Duncan leaned his fists on the curved desk of the monitoring station.

The security nest had been built into a bunker in the hillside. It offered immediate access both to the villa and to the subterranean lab. Behind him, bulletproof windows offered a sweeping view of the cove and the foundering fishing charter as it limped within a pall of smoke into their waters. It was not his most immediate concern. The gun battery atop the villa kept the boat under a tight watch.

Instead, his attention remained fixed to the dark screen.

He listened to the static in his earpiece, straining for any sign of his scouting party. The horrific screams over the radio still echoed in his ears. He couldn’t tell how many throats issued those cries.

Were any of his men still alive?

“Play the tape again,” Duncan said.

The technician seated at the desk manipulated a toggle, and the dark screen fuzzed with a blur of brightness-then stopped on a crisp image of a freshwater spring bubbling out of the side of a forested hill-side. Camera 4A had been positioned near the island’s sole watering hole. It was one of twelve cameras posted at key positions, areas that offered the best vantage for observing the test subjects’ daily routine.

Duncan’s team had managed to install the new unit. The image wobbled as the camera was quickly positioned and secured. He caught a glimpse of an arm waved in front of the camera, testing its function.

Then the hand jerked back, and one of his men sprinted past the camera. His rifle was on his shoulder, his cheek pressed tightly to the stock. Though there was no sound transmitted over the camera feed, the gun rattled and smoked as it was fired. Then the man disappeared out of view.

A moment later, the image cracked and went black.

Duncan straightened, taking in a sharp, deep breath. It was more than his men’s fate that worried him. He stared across the remaining eleven cameras. They displayed various views of the island: a crude latrine, a rocky ledge, a shallow cave, and three cameras alone focused on the main village habitat. It all looked peaceful, except there was not a single sign of any of the inhabitants. Their conspicuous absence left only one conclusion.

“They know about the video cameras,” he mumbled.

All of them.

His mind worried on that implication.

So then why only take out one camera?

The answer was simple enough. The bastards had set a trap intended to lure men to the site. But why? To exact revenge? He didn’t think so. The act was too calculated, too purposeful. He pictured again the rattle of the assault rifle. Another possibility asserted itself and grew more certain as he considered it. The broken camera was not meant to lure men-but weapons.

Duncan shifted to a computer monitor. It displayed a map of the island. Tiny red dots moved in real time across the screen. They represented the tracking tags of the fourteen ape-men and the twenty-three other specimens. But none of those tags had come near the spring at the time of the attack. As he stared at the screen he noted several of the tags remained fixed in place, some in the village huts, two in the cave, the rest in the jungle.

Duncan reached out and counted the number of immobile tags.

… twelve, thirteen, fourteen.

The same number as the ape-men. That couldn’t be a coincidence. There could be only one other explanation.

“They’ve removed their tags,” he said aloud.

“Sir!” The technician jolted and pointed to the live feed from one of the cameras. “You’d better see this.”

Duncan joined him at the monitor. The screen displayed a view of a jungle clearing. As he stared he saw nothing at first. Then a shift of shadows at the edge of the glade drew his eye. Shapes crept through the forest.

Two, maybe three.

He squinted.

Were they the missing inhabitants?

Then one of the shadows slipped into a dappling of sunlight. The figure wore trousers, a camouflage jacket, and carried an assault rifle. At first he thought it might be one of his men, still alive. But the gear was wrong. Duncan knew all of the men who had crossed the bridge into that hellish place. This wasn’t one of them. Someone else was over there.

He weighed the possibilities. Ever since the trouble in Haiti, raiders had been growing bolder in the region. Could that be who they were?

On the monitor, the mysterious party disappeared into the jungle.

“What do you want done?” the technician asked.

Duncan turned to the computer monitor. The chaotic motion of the red blips had stopped. As he stared they began to move again, all of them-converging toward the trespassers like a tightening noose.

His lips thinned with grim satisfaction. The fools had picked the wrong island to land on.

“Sir?”

“Keep monitoring,” Duncan said. “This problem should take care of itself in a few moments.”

But it didn’t address another worry. How the hell did a raiding party get onto that other island in the first place? Duncan swung to the arc of windows overlooking the sea. The smoking boat continued to limp into their cove.

That had to be the answer.

He’d heard of birds that would fake a broken wing to lure a cat away from a nest. The same was going on here. The distressed ship had been used to draw their attention, to get them to drop their guard.

Anger stoked to a burn deep in his chest.

Time to grind that bird under a heel.

“Call up the gunner in the bunker,” Duncan ordered, still staring down at the cove. “Tell him to open fire on that boat.”

Chapter 51

Jack sensed them before he saw them.

He lifted a fist to stop his teammates. Over the course of the trek, he’d grown attuned to the forest: the hushed whisper of a sea breeze through pine needles, the briny scent of loam and salt, the pattern of shadow and sunlight. Then suddenly a change. A quiet crackling rose from the woods all around, like a smoldering fire sweeping down on them. Off the wind, his nose picked up a distinctly musky smell. A flock of small swallows burst through the branches to the left.

Something was out there and closing in.

Jack lowered to a wary crouch and swung up his Remington. He preferred to hunt with a shotgun in woodland conditions. In such tight quarters, the scattering punch of a shotgun served better than the precision of a rifle.

Mack and Bruce took up positions to either side. They kept their backs toward each other, weapons pointed out.

Jack searched the shadows. The rustling went immediately quiet, as if a switch had been thrown. He waited. It would be easy to attribute the noises to an overactive imagination, except that overripe odor remained on the breeze.

A prickling spread down the back of Jack’s neck. He felt eyes upon them-many eyes, studying him as intensely as he watched the forest. As he strained all his senses, his headache flared and his vision tunneled. For a moment a strange static filled his skull, as if his body were a radio tuner straining for a signal.

Then a cracking of branches exploded to the right. For some reason he knew to glance up. A shadow passed overhead and fell heavily down toward Jack and his men. They had to scatter out of the way. It struck the ground in the center of their group.

Blood splattered in all directions.

Jack stared, disgusted and stunned.

A headless corpse lay on the ground. The arms had been ripped off at the sockets, leaving only a torso and legs. Blood continued to ooze from the wounds.

What the hell…

He noted the black khaki camouflage uniform. It was the same gear as the assault team that had attacked ACRES. He turned his attention back toward the shadowy forest. The woods remained dead quiet, so silent he could hear the waves washing the beach off in the distance. The static in his head dulled to a low hum-but as he strained with every sense on fire, the buzz slowly grew in volume.

“Here they come,” Jack whispered to his men.

LORNA CONTINUED TO carry the female child in her arms while Sesame Street played on the dayroom’s television.

“So you think last night’s attack was an attempt to reach the young ones here?” Bennett asked.

Lorna shrugged. “Why else would they attack this island? You said they have plenty of food, water, and shelter. So why swim over during the night and ambush a guard on the beach?”

“You may be right,” Malik said. “But that doesn’t explain the hyper-aggression displayed before we relocated the adults to the other island. This can’t be all about the young ones.”

Both men turned to her. They focused a bit too intensely, as if expecting a solution from her, some insight into their problem. She knew if she failed to impress them, failed to prove her usefulness, her days on the island would come to a swift end.

“These bouts of aggression,” she started. “You said that the attacks came without provocation.”

Malik nodded. “That’s right. Last year an adult specimen was calmly completing an IQ test when suddenly he whipped around and mauled the technician monitoring the test. The specimen was, of course, killed in order to weed out the troublemakers.”

“And nothing provoked that attack?”

“Not that we could judge.”

“What about procedures done elsewhere in your labs? Specifically, painful tests?”

Malik rubbed his chin in thought. “We do examinations all the time. I still don’t understand your point.”

She again pictured the strange flocking behavior she had witnessed earlier. “You said these specimens share a hive mentality? That thoughts are spread across their magnetic network. So why not pain, too? In other words, what one feels they all might feel. If that’s the case, if you provoke one specimen, an entirely different one might lash out in a reflexive reaction.”

Bennett stared at Malik. “Had you considered that possibility?”

“No, but it’s an intriguing angle.” The researcher’s eyes narrowed with contemplation, but he looked unconvinced. “I’ll have to review the records.”

Lorna pressed. “You have to stop thinking of them as individuals. There is only one intelligence out there, spread fractally among the group. They are a single psyche stretched across multiple minds. And for years, you’ve been abusing that psyche, torturing it on multiple fronts.”

She stared at Malik, waiting for him to object to her assessment of his cruelty. His silence spoke volumes.

She continued. “Under such prolonged and sustained abuse, is it any surprise you began to see psychotic breaks? But you’ve been tackling this the wrong way. Trying to weed out this problem by culling only the violent ones. These breaks aren’t arising from individuals in the group, they’re coming from the whole, from the hive mind that you’ve abused to the point of psychosis.”

Bennett and Malik shared a worried look.

“So you’re suggesting the entire hive mind out there might be psychotic,” Malik said, his voice cracking with disappointment. “Driven insane.”

“Maybe even worse.”

“What do you mean worse?” Bennett asked.

“If what Dr. Malik described is true about their IQs, the entity you’ve created out there isn’t just insane-but brilliantly insane. Beyond our comprehension, beyond rehabilitation. Pure rage and madness coupled with cunning and guile.” She shook her head. “You’ve created a monster.”

JACK STARED DOWN the length of his shotgun at the woods. His skull felt as if it were on fire. The corpse behind him reeked of blood and bowel. Why had they tossed it at Jack’s group? As a threat, a distraction? Then why didn’t they just attack?

As he studied the forest he sensed them on all sides. Jack and his men were surrounded, trapped. He again considered the corpse, his mind working fast.

Why throw it here?

Then he suddenly knew. He glanced over to the body, remembering the rattle of automatic fire. It sounded like it had come from more than one gun. Whatever was out there had dispatched the trained soldiers as easily as swatting flies. If they wanted to take out Jack’s team, they could do so just as easily. But instead they threw the body here.

And he knew why.

As a message.

Jack called to Mack and Bruce. “Lower your weapons.”

To demonstrate, he dropped his shotgun from his shoulder, held it at arm’s length, and crouched to set it on the ground.

“Are you nuts, sir?” Mack asked.

“Do it. If you want to live.”

Mack grumbled under his breath but obeyed.

Jack knew the corpse was tossed here as a warning. To show that their lives were forfeit if they didn’t surrender. He also sensed that whatever shared this island knew Jack’s team was different from the commandos.

As the weapons were dropped, shadows shifted, and a shape slipped into view. Much closer than Jack had suspected. Only a couple of meters. Others stirred out there, too. Some larger, some smaller.

“Jack…?” Mack hissed at him.

“Stand down,” he warned.

Mack complied, but he was not happy about it.

The shape moved closer. At first Jack thought it was a large chimpanzee or a small gorilla, but as it stepped into the sunlight it walked upright like a man. No shambling or knuckle dragging. It cocked its head as it came forward. Jack noted an ear was missing, leaving a long jagged scar down one side. This was no surgical wound, but one lost in combat.

As it stepped closer yet again its flattened nostrils flared as it took in Jack’s scent. Naked, the creature was covered in fur-and blood. Though smaller by a couple of feet, its body was heavy-boned and layered with muscles. Jack suspected the creature could rip him apart with its bare hands.

But for the moment there was an uneasy truce.

Large shining eyes stared at him.

Jack noted the intelligence there. But there was no warmth, no welcome. Those eyes remained as cold as a winter star.

Jack’s blood settled into the pit of his stomach as another realization struck him. He remembered Lorna’s description of genetic throwbacks. He knew what faced him was not any animal-but was once a man.

Another of the creatures, his face knotted in a snarl of threat, appeared behind the first. He carried a lightweight assault rifle, likely confiscated from the dead body behind Jack.

To the left, a black-furred tiger shoved into view. Lips rippled back to reveal fangs as long as daggers.

All their gazes fixed on Jack.

The combined focus set his head to aching, his skull bones to vibrating. He had to resist pressing his palms against his ears.

The first creature came forward until he stood directly in front of Jack. He leaned closer and sniffed at his clothes. Hands reached up and gripped Jack’s shirt. Fingers dug in, and the arms jerked wide, ripping open his shirt. Buttons went flying. With Jack’s chest and belly bared, he felt exposed and vulnerable. The bandages that Lorna had dressed over his wounds stood out starkly against his naked skin.

Hands reached again and tore those away, too, taking with it some hair and a bit of scabbing. Jack winced but made no move to shove the other away. Fresh blood dribbled down his stomach.

To the left, Mack swore under his breath, his hands still in the air.

On the right, Bruce remained in a fixed crouch. A pack of small wolves faced his teammates. Jack saw Bruce’s eyes dart toward the weapon on the ground.

“Don’t,” Jack warned between clenched teeth.

Bruce obeyed, but his gaze remained fixed on the rifle, ready to leap at the first provocation. Jack couldn’t let that happen.

The man-beast before Jack cocked his head and leaned close, sniffing at the trails of blood down his chest, taking in long deep breaths. His small head then tilted back, eyes slightly closed, as if tipping that scent deep inside him. Over the creature’s head, Jack noted the others doing the same. Even the cat’s eyes slipped to half-mast, as if taking in his scent.

For a moment a rich smell of blood filled his own nostrils, almost overpowering in its intensity. Then it was gone.

The examiner’s face rose before him. Hands gripped his shoulders and dragged him down until Jack was nose to nose with the beastly form. Jack smelled its fetid body, noted each eyelash, heard the rasp of its breath. Fingers remained clamped on his shoulders. He felt the raw muscular power in that grip.

But it was the eyes that held Jack’s full attention.

Pupils dilated as Jack stared. It was like peering down into a dark well. He sensed that the abyss had no bottom-but it was far from empty. Something strange stared back out at him.

The static in his head ratcheted up to a volume that threatened to crack his skull. It felt like his brain was trying to squeeze out his ears. As he rode a wave of agony his sight suddenly narrowed until he seemed to be hanging over that bottomless abyss.

He was trapped there for a breath-then the beast shoved him away, and Jack stumbled back into a tree. The pressure in his skull receded to a dull throb.

The creature turned and headed away. The other beasts swung like one body and vanished back into the forest.

Jack remained standing, trembling.

What the hell just happened?

The beast who had confronted him glanced back before disappearing. Cold eyes stared at him, then down to the shotgun at his feet. The message was clear.

Mack stumbled over to Jack. “What now, boss?”

He crouched and retrieved his weapon. “We go with them.”

“What?” Bruce asked, aghast. “They’ll tear us to pieces.”

Jack knew his teammate’s warning was not without merit. For the moment he had passed some test of fire here. What that test was he didn’t know-and passing it scared him as much as it relieved him.

But he was also under no delusion. This was no warm welcome. They simply shared a common enemy. Nothing more. He remembered the coldness in that attention and knew that the uneasy truce would last only as long as this war.

After that… it would end.

“Let’s go,” Jack said.

They hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps when a rattling roar rose from the other island. Jack rushed forward to a break in the hillside forest. Through the branches, he got his first view of the villa on the other island.

From a concrete bunker atop it, the black snout of a massive gun smoked and chattered. But it wasn’t aimed toward them. It fired toward the cove, still hidden out of sight behind the shoulder of the other island.

But he could guess the target of that savage barrage.

The Thibodeauxs’ boat.

Chapter 52

Duncan stood before the arc of windows in the security nest. Overhead, the gun battery blasted away from its bunker. The chugging roar of the chain-fed autocannon rattled the bulletproof windows. Down below, rounds chewed across the water toward the smoking boat in the cove.

At the first sign of trouble, the fishing charter had opened throttle and shot toward the beach. Its bow lifted high, pushed out of the water by some powerful engines, more than expected from an ordinary fishing boat. This observation was further supported when the first rounds of the cannon pinged harmlessly off the sides of the boat.

The craft’s hull had to be reinforced with armor plating. Gunrunners and smugglers often disguised assault craft as ordinary fishing boats. The villa’s cannon could pierce light armor, even bring down slow-flying aircraft, but distance and angle fought against them.

Then something strange happened.

From the stern end of the fishing charter, a Zodiac raft dropped into the water. It shot away like a black rocket, riding two pontoons.

The Bushmaster cannon found its main target again and rattled the bow of the fishing boat. The armored craft heaved to the side, skidding sideways through the water, exposing its flanks while protecting the smaller raft. Rounds ricocheted off the hull-then moved higher toward the bridge. Glass shattered from the ship’s windows. Men flattened themselves to the deck.

Out in the water, the Zodiac hightailed it toward the northern edge of the cove. It bounced across the waves as guards along the beach opened fire. Return shots sparked from the raft, accompanied by the smoking trail of a rocket-propelled grenade. It struck the beach and exploded, throwing sand high and shredding a palm tree.

As guards scattered from the beach the pontoon boat continued its flight across the waters, looking like it was trying to circle out and head toward the sandy spit that connected the two islands.

Before Duncan could assess that threat, a greater concern arose.

A man, popping into view atop the bridge of the fishing charter, balanced a long weapon on one shoulder. He knelt down and angled the black tube of a rocket launcher toward the villa.

Motherfuck-

Duncan twisted away from the window as smoke blasted out the back of the weapon. A rocket roared straight at him-or rather at the gun battery above him. Either way, he didn’t want to be here.

He dove toward the door.

LORNA STOOD FROZEN with Malik and Bennett in the nursery ward. The child in her arms clung to the collar of her blouse and trembled violently as gunfire rattled-then a gut-punching blast boomed down to them. Muffled by rock, the explosion still shook the walls.

Everybody held their breath, then the first child began crying. In seconds, it spread like wildfire among the children. A day-care worker-a round-bellied Chinese woman-tried in vain to console the group, but they refused to calm down. The girl in Lorna’s arms buried her tiny face and continued to tremble.

“We’re under attack,” Malik said.

“Stay here.” Bennett moved toward the door, but before he could take two steps, it banged open.

Connor burst into the room and crossed quickly toward them. “Sir, are you okay?”

“What’s going on?”

“Commander Kent radioed down. The boat in the cove opened fire on us. Believes they’re pirates.”

Pirates? Lorna tried to fathom such a thing. She had heard stories from Kyle about roving bands of marauders who plied the Gulf waters and hijacked ships at sea or ransacked homes along the coasts. Even an oil rig in the Gulf had once been attacked.

Bennett continued toward the door. “Take me to Duncan.”

“He said I should keep everyone here.”

“Bullshit. I’m not some child to hide in a hole.”

Malik joined his boss. “If there’s a problem, I need to get back to my lab. Secure our viral samples in case this problem escalates. If we lose those samples, we’ve lost everything.”

Bennett nodded. “Do it.”

Malik waved to the day-care worker in the room. “Come with me. I’ll need a hand.”

Connor made a halfhearted attempt to block them. “Sir.”

Bennett strong-armed the guard out of the way and reached the exit. “Keep Dr. Polk here.” He glanced back to her. “We’ll continue our discussion as soon as this fire is stamped out.”

Malik followed his boss.

Connor stood for a moment, then cursed and stomped off after them. He didn’t even glance back as he secured the door and left Lorna alone.

With the door sealed, the rattle of the raging firefight muffled to a dull popping. Still, she could tell it had begun to escalate. Alarm bells joined the cacophony, along with distant muffled screams.

What was going on?

She didn’t know, but her mind fought for some way to turn this chaos to her advantage. If she could break out, reach a radio, maybe even a boat…

But what then? Even if she could get off the island, what hope was there to escape through pirate-infested waters?

As she held the child the others drew toward her like moths to a flame, needing reassurance, growing quiet. She had to protect them, but was there another way out of here?

With her heart pounding, she hurried to an open door at the rear of the nursery. She popped her head through, seeking some means of escape. Rows of raised cribs lined both sides of a long narrow room. Only these cradles were made of steel and had lids that locked.

Despite the danger, anger stoked inside her. How could anyone be this callous with these innocent children? Large moist eyes stared at her, tracking her as she searched the rooms.

Alone now, she no longer had to mask her emotions. Fear turned to fury. She used it, allowed it to spread like a fire through her belly. She had wilted under panic once before-but never again.

These bastards had stolen everything from her: her life, her brother, her friends, even Jack. This last thought sapped some of her will. If Jack could not stop them, what hope was there for her?

She searched the remainder of her confinement. Other than a small lavatory and bathroom, there was no other exit from the dormitory. She was trapped here. They all were.

Not knowing what else to do, she returned to the center of the room. The children gathered around her. Some clung to her legs, others sucked thumbs, a few softly sobbed. She settled to the floor with them.

A small boy climbed into her lap, joining the girl. The two clung to each other. The pair reminded her of the conjoined capuchin monkeys back at the lab. But she knew these two-the entire group, in fact-were merged at a level beyond mere flesh. More children nestled around her. Every pop and rattle of gunfire trembled through the group like a pebble dropped into a pond.

She did her best to reassure them. She reached out and touched each one. Where contact was made, they seemed to relax. Caramel-brown eyes shone at her. Tiny fingers clung to her, to each other. They smelled warmly of baby powder and sour milk.

Despite her fear and physical discomfort, a trickle of peace spread through her. She couldn’t say where it originated: from herself, from the children. It didn’t matter. The peace inside her was not one of slothful contentment, but of determined resolve, a steadying of her keel.

As panic drained, certainty grew.

“We’ll get out of here,” she promised, as much for her benefit as the children. “We all will.”

But how?

DUNCAN’S HEAD STILL rang from the rocket impact. Blood trickled from one ear and down his neck.

Moments before the blast, he had run out of the security nest and dove into the limestone tunnel that connected the command bunker to the villa. He had managed to slam the door behind him as the rocket struck the gun battery in the upper bunker. Still, the concussion had blown the door off its hinges and tossed him down the tunnel.

With his eyes burning, he fought through the smoke and back into the security nest. Glass crackled underfoot. Half the windows overlooking the bay had shattered into the room. He found the technician in a pool of blood on the floor. Duncan checked for a pulse but failed to find one.

He crossed to one of the broken windows. The chatter of automatic weapons echoed up to him, punctuated by grenade blasts. He spotted the fishing charter in the harbor, half obscured by smoke. The firefight continued to rage between the boat and the beach. It was a hellish barrage. Tracer rounds flashed through the growing smoke. Screams rang out.

Still, he sensed the fishing boat was playing a game of distraction, maintaining a holding pattern out there rather than launching a full frontal assault.

But why?

Duncan turned to the nest of monitors. Most were dark, but a few flickered with grainy images. Movement on one drew his eye. He shifted closer. The screen showed the fence between the two islands.

Also something new.

The black Zodiac raft from earlier had beached itself nearby. A stray round must have shredded one of the pontoons, deflating it. The boat wasn’t going anywhere now. The pirates were lucky to have made it as far as the beach-and luckier still to have missed the flechette mines buried in the seabed alongside the land bridge.

Closer to the camera, five men huddled by the fence. Nearby, two bodies lay on the sand in a growing pool of blood. From the black camouflage jackets, the dead bodies were Duncan’s men.

Anger curled his fingers into fists.

Who the hell were these raiders?

One of the attackers shifted closer to the hidden camera. He momentarily turned his face into full view, shaded by a ball cap. A jolt of recognition shot through Duncan.

That ball cap…

He’d seen it before and its owner. Out on the bayou road. The Cajun in the Chevy truck. Duncan struggled to comprehend how that man could be here. It made no sense. He’d watched the truck dump into the Mississippi. Even if the man had survived the river, why was he here? How had he tracked Duncan to Lost Eden Cay?

Answers slowly sifted through his shock.

The Cajun had mentioned something about a brother being at ACRES. That was why the bastard had been on the road so late, why he had stopped to ask for directions. If that bastard was here now, that meant someone else probably survived the assault on the lab.

Duncan realized he still hadn’t heard from the soldier he had left behind to canvass the area and clean it up. Had he been captured, forced to talk? Duncan knew better than that. His men would never talk.

Regardless, these bastards had found the island.

They would live to regret that.

As his initial shock faded Duncan digested this information. He watched the Cajun tilt his ball cap and stare across the fencerow toward the other island, as if expecting company. Duncan remembered the armed figures caught on camera earlier. Clearly this team was attempting to rendezvous with the other, to join forces for a surgical strike, to sneak in the back door while the firefight raged out front.

But what was their end goal?

It wasn’t a difficult question.

This had all the earmarks of a rescue operation.

Duncan unclipped his radio and called up his second-in-command. “Connor.”

“Sir?” His second spoke rapidly. “Bennett is headed up. I couldn’t stop him.”

Duncan didn’t care. “What about the woman?”

“I’ve got her holed up in the nursery. She’s not going anywhere.”

Not good enough.

“Go in there,” he ordered. “Put a bullet in her head.”

Chapter 53

Lorna sat with the children as muffled gunfire continued. Trapped here, she had to bide her time. She didn’t know which side of the fire-fight she should be rooting for: the devil she knew or the pirates who were attacking.

Suddenly all of the children went tense and glanced toward the dayroom’s main door, as if responding to a signal beyond her senses. They were all on their feet at once, rising like a startled flock of crows.

Their manner set her on edge, their tension contagious.

A loud bang drew Lorna’s attention to the exit. She recognized it as the outer anteroom door slamming shut.

Someone was coming.

The children retreated toward the back. She got caught in the flow of them and followed. Or maybe she was dragged. Small hands clutched her pant legs and drew her with them.

They reached the dark room with its rows of locking cribs. As they passed the threshold Lorna caught a glimpse of the inner anteroom door swinging open. But she didn’t see who entered as she ducked away.

The apprehension of the children continued to keep her heart pounding, her senses sharp.

A voice called out. “Where the hell are you?”

It was Connor. Something in his voice pushed her heart into her throat. Along with exasperation, she heard a distinct threat. The children continued to draw her away, as if they sensed the same, tapping into some empathic connection.

Lorna held her breath and continued with them. But there was nowhere to hide in the nursery, not unless she wanted to cram herself into one of the cribs.

At last, the tide of bodies reached the center of the room, and fingers released her. The children scattered in all directions, moving with surprising speed, obeying a cue beyond her. They ducked behind and under the heavy steel cribs.

Lorna followed their example, seeking what shelter she could. She dropped to a knee behind a crib but kept an eye on the doorway. A couple of children hid under the crib with her. They shifted their tiny bodies next to her, trembling with fear.

Connor crossed past the door’s threshold and headed to check on the bathroom first. She saw his hand drop to a holstered pistol at his waist. His thumb broke the snap securing the gun.

“Don’t make this any more difficult than necessary!” he shouted. “Come out and I’ll make this quick and painless.”

She remained where she was. It was all she could do. There was nowhere else to run.

JACK MOVED THROUGH the forest, heading down the hillside toward the sandbar that connected the two islands. Mack and Bruce continued to flank him. Farther out and ahead, he caught glimpses of shadowy shapes, some small, some large, a living mass flowing downhill, gathering momentum and growing in number. All headed toward the sandbar.

At last the forest broke apart into a scatter of palms and stretches of sand. Light shone brighter here, glinting sharply off the water as the sun sat on the horizon.

A figure detached from the shadows ahead. It was the creature who had confronted Jack earlier, distinguishable by his missing ear and scarred face. An arm pointed toward the open beach.

Jack shifted forward and joined him. He immediately recognized the source of the creature’s distress.

A tall fence wrapped in concertina wire blocked the way ahead. Jack noted a generator on the far side.

Electrified, he wagered.

Movement drew his attention beyond the fence to the other island. Only now did he note the raft beached over there. Figures hid in the shadows on the far side-but were they friend or foe?

There was only one way to find out.

As he stepped into the open he noted smears of crimson across the sand on that side, like bodies had been dragged away. The plan of attack had been for Randy to rendezvous at the land bridge. The Zodiac looked like the one from the Thibodeauxs’ boat, but it had been shot up.

Had anyone survived?

Jack moved from shadow into sunlight, exposing himself. He kept his weapon at his shoulder, wary, ready to leap back. A call shouted at him. “Jack!”

Randy stumbled into view across the way, waving a rifle over his head. Jack lowered his own weapon.

Thank God.

His relief was short-lived. A growling roar rose to the right. A small two-man jet boat tore around the shoulder of the island and shot toward the land bridge. The soldier in the passenger seat stood with an assault rifle balanced on the windshield.

The muzzle flashed, and rounds chewed across the sand toward Jack’s toes. He fled back into the shelter of the forest. Across the fence, Randy did the same.

As Jack ducked away a second jet boat roared in from the other direction, joining its partner. The two boats-one on each side of the land bridge-sped back and forth, sweeping a tight patrol, making it impossible to pass.

As Jack stared at the two sharks out there, he felt his plan falling apart. Someone already knew about this attempted backdoor assault. They were dropping the ax, cutting off access, splitting their teams. The element of surprise was now gone.

That thought raised a new fear.

Lorna’s survival depended on a speedy extraction. Delay meant death. His fingers tightened on his shotgun.

Was he already too late?

LORNA STAYED HIDDEN behind the crib. Fear sharpened her breathing. She heard Connor bang open the door to the bathroom off the dayroom, searching for her.

It wouldn’t be long until he came to check in the nursery.

As she struggled for some recourse a squeal suddenly erupted out in the dayroom, bright with terror.

Connor cursed harshly. “Fucking monkeys…”

Her heart clenched. The bastard must have found one of the children hiding out there. The squeal turned into a cry of pain. Beyond the doorway, Connor appeared again. He held aloft a small boy by his neck. The child struggled and strangled, legs kicking, his mouth frozen open in a cry of pain and panic.

Lorna felt the two children clutched to her side tremble violently, sharing the boy’s terror and pain.

Out in the dayroom, Connor pointed his pistol at the boy’s belly. “Come out now, or I’ll make this monkey suffer for you!”

Stunned by such cruelty, Lorna was too shocked to react.

Connor shifted out of view, still searching for her. “Now or never!”

Lorna couldn’t let the boy die for her. She had to stop this, even if it meant her own life. She began to push up-but small hands gripped hers and held her down. There was an urgency to their attention beyond mere fear of being abandoned.

They moved her hand to the legs of the raised crib. She felt casters at the bottom, wheels to help rearrange the cradles as necessary.

It took her a moment to understand.

She flipped the locks on the casters and moved to the back of the crib. Pushing with her legs, she shouldered into it. It took some effort to get it moving. Constructed of steel-more a cage on wheels-the crib was heavy and unwieldy. Wheels squeaked, but she called out to cover the noise.

“I’m coming! Don’t shoot!”

She dug in with her toes and maneuvered the crib out of its line and got it wheeling down the center of the room toward the door. She fought for more speed. As if sensing her need, small bodies crawled out of hiding and hurried to the crib. Hands grabbed the steel legs and helped her push with surprising strength.

A part of Lorna’s mind struggled to understand. On her own, she would never have thought to use the crib as a battering ram. But fear was a powerful motivator, and necessity the mother of all invention. Run all that through the combined intellect of the frightened children and this means of defense arose.

As they worked together the crib sped even faster.

Connor appeared again, facing the nursery door.

Lorna shot out of the room with her battering ram, pushing with all her strength, a prayer frozen on her lips. Connor’s eyes widened in surprise. Unable to get out of the way, he tossed the boy aside and fired wildly at her.

She ducked as rounds ricocheted off the crib’s steel front. Then the battering ram struck Connor square in the chest. His body went flying, arms wide. He landed on his back, and his pistol skittered across the linoleum floor.

Lorna didn’t stop. She rammed the crib forward, keeping its momentum going and smashed it into Connor yet again. As the front casters hit his sprawled body she heaved up and sent the crib crashing down on top of him.

She dove to the side and retrieved his pistol. It felt heavy and hot, but the weight helped center her. She kept it pointed at Connor, but he wasn’t moving, except for a twitch in one arm.

She searched around.

It took her a moment to realize she was free-and armed.

The children gathered to one side, eyes wide upon her. She read the hope there, along with the residual fear. She couldn’t abandon them.

“Let’s go,” she said and headed toward the door.

The children flocked behind her, trusting her fully.

She prayed it wasn’t misplaced.

Chapter 54

“What’s your plan from here?” Bennett asked.

Good question, Duncan thought. He shook his head, still calculating, struggling to wrap his mind around the strange nature of this assault. He felt control slipping away from him.

Duncan stood with Bennett in front of the bank of monitors in the security nest. Someone had thrown a blanket over the dead technician’s body. Another computer expert was attempting to bring up the other feeds. On the monitor in front of them, Duncan continued to watch video from the camera posted between the islands.

Two jet boats were patrolling either side of the land bridge. Duncan had ordered the boats into position after spotting the Cajun from the bayou. It was lucky he did. Moments ago he had watched a figure appear on the opposite side of the fence, stepping from the forest onto the spit of sand.

The impossibility of it still jarred him.

From the clothing and gear, it had to be one of the men he’d spotted earlier in the forest. Somehow the man had survived his overland route to reach the land bridge. How was that even possible?

An answer came as the computer technician slid out from beneath the console. He wiped his hands as he stood up. “The computer should reboot the tracking software in a moment.”

As promised, a neighboring dark screen went blue, then a map of the other island pixelated into view.

“Give it a second to start picking up the tracking signatures,” the tech added.

As they watched, small red blips began to blink into existence as each tracking tag came online, marking the location of each animal over there. More and more bloomed on screen.

Duncan swore.

Bennett glanced to him, then back to the computer monitor. “That can’t be good.”

Rather than their usual random distribution around the island’s landmarks, all of the blips clustered at the base of the land bridge. The entire menagerie had converged there. Duncan could only think of one reason why.

“They’re going to try to break through the barrier.”

“And you don’t know who that stranger is?” Bennett asked. “The one out there with them.”

“No.” And the man’s survival confounded him. “But he’s got to be working with that group from the Zodiac. I wager this is all a private attempt to rescue Dr. Polk.”

It was the only thing that made sense. Duncan had already explained to Bennett about the Cajun in the ball cap.

“If they had any real government backing,” Duncan continued, “there’d be a stronger response. Warships and helicopters. In some ways, I think this is just a fishing expedition. To see if Dr. Polk is still alive. But who knows how long that will last? A government response could already be mustering.”

“What do you recommend?”

“A scorched-earth policy.”

Bennett’s eyes widened. He glanced to Duncan for clarification.

“If these bastards know about Lost Eden Cay, others will, too. We’ve lost control. We’re now too exposed. We have to accept that reality and deal with it aggressively.”

“How aggressively?”

“We evacuate, burn both islands to the bedrock, kill everyone still out there. Leave no trace. With no trail back to us, we can start again somewhere else. It’ll be a setback, but we won’t be dead in the water.”

Bennett sighed with a note of resignation. He turned to the blasted windows that overlooked the cove and mumbled. “ ‘So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden.’ ”

Duncan pressed him. “Sir?”

Another sigh followed. “I see your point. We don’t have any choice. After all the problems here, a clean start might be good. Malik is already securing the last of our viral samples and all his records. We can be ready and at the helipad in fifteen minutes.”

“Better make that ten,” Duncan warned.

“What about Dr. Polk?”

“I’ve already taken care of that problem.”

Bennett looked resigned, but he’d get over it. Duncan was paid big money to make the hard decisions and carry them out.

“What’s the immediate plan of action?” Bennett asked, changing the subject.

Duncan nodded to the video feed. “To close that back door. To make sure we have no more surprises during our evacuation. I have a team headed down to ambush the group from the Zodiac. The bastards will be pinned down against the fence and the jet boats.”

“What about the other side?”

Duncan stared at the cluster of red blips on the computer monitor. It was time to put an end to Malik’s failed experiment, to raze it to the ground. As a precaution, he’d seeded the entire island with napalm charges. Over a hundred. The resulting firestorm would destroy all life in a matter of minutes. And anyone who tried to escape would be picked off by the sharpshooters in the jet boats.

Reaching to a pocket, Duncan removed a radio transmitter. He’d taken it from his office safe before coming up here. Two buttons glowed on the unit.

One was tuned to the buried charges on the other island.

The second would ignite a pair of massive bombs built into the infrastructure of the villa: one in the upper building, the other in the subterranean lab. With the blast equivalent to forty-four tons of TNT, the bombs would blow the top off the island, literally wiping it from the map.

But that would have to wait.

He flipped the trigger guard over the first button.

Bennett gaped at the transmitter. “What? You’re blowing up the other island now?”

“No time like the present.”

Duncan pressed the button.

That takes care of one problem.

Chapter 55

Jack felt the tremble under his feet. Then the blast hit him, sounding like the earth cracking behind him. He swung around to watch the top of the island blow away in a spiral of smoke and fire. More charges blew in a series.

Boom, boom, boom…

Eruptions of flames chased around the island in a descending spiral, adding to the hellish maelstrom. The firestorm continued to blast its way toward the beach. A tower of black smoke climbed into the sky. Jack smelled the distinct odor of napalm.

They’re torching the place.

Mack shoved next to him. He had to yell to be heard above the continuing detonations. “What now?”

Bruce took matters into his own hands. It was death to remain in the forest. The only escape lay across the land bridge. The man dove out onto the open strand, staying low. He blasted away at one of the jet boats, but the vehicles never stopped moving, swerving and spinning chaotically, making for near-impossible targets. Rounds that reached them merely pinged off their reinforced hulls.

Return fire peppered the shore. Sand exploded around Bruce-then a round hit his shoulder and spun him, blood spraying.

Crap…

A shift in winds blew hot smoke over their position. The stink of napalm burned Jack’s lungs. With no choice, he sprinted out of hiding toward Bruce. His teammate was down on one knee. Bruce shifted his weapon to his good shoulder and continued to fire.

Mack flanked Jack, shooting at the other jet boat.

Behind them, the firestorm swept toward the beach.

Each boom sounded closer.

Across the land bridge, Randy’s group laid down a suppressive salvo, too, recognizing the danger Jack’s team was facing. But they made no headway. Pinned down as they were from both sides, the stretch of sand was impossible to cross. They’d be mowed down before they could even reach the fence.

Jack grabbed Bruce, ready to haul him back.

But back to where?

As he turned, a charge detonated only a handful of yards into the forest. Trees blew high in a column of flame. The blast knocked Jack onto his back, scorching across him. His vision narrowed to a tunnel. He choked on smoke.

Mack barreled into him and rolled him into the water’s edge as gunfire ripped across the sand, nearly taking his head off.

Half in the water, Jack recognized the hard truth.

There was no escape.

FROM THE SECURITY nest, Duncan watched the napalm charges blast along the top of the island and spiral down toward the beach, razing to ash all in their fiery path. In engineering the demolition, he had timed the charges to blow in sequence, to ensure maximum incineration.

He smiled as he watched the trio of men struggle in the sand-trapped between flames and gunfire.

They were doomed.

Bennett stood at his shoulder, but he took a step back. He’d seen enough. “Dear God…”

God had nothing to do with this.

The charges continued to explode into whirlwinds of flame, one after the other, adding to the conflagration, spreading relentlessly toward the water.

As he lorded over the destruction with a deep sense of satisfaction, he noted movement in the forest. Figures darted into view. From their naked shapes, they had to be his missing inhabitants. His smile grew harder. Apparently the forest had grown too hot even for them.

But they’d find no salvation out in the open.

Still, something about their manner jangled a warning. There were only four of them. So where were the others? He leaned closer. What were they up to?

STILL SEATED IN the water, half dazed, Jack noted movement at the edge of the smoky forest. Four figures stepped into the open. They split into pairs and headed to either side.

Each pair hauled a sling of woven palm fronds between them. The slings were weighted down with black metal canisters that looked like small pony kegs. Each pair swung their slings and tossed their cargoes high into the air.

The canisters toppled end over end.

One toward each jet boat.

As they flew, the entire bestial force burst out of the forest and onto the bridge: men and women, massively muscled cats, vicious packs of wolfish dogs. Some creatures Jack couldn’t recognize. One giant loped past him, knuckling on pairs of curved razor-sharp claws. Others followed, streaming past.

Behind the force, the last of the napalm charges reached the beach and exploded in a wall of flames. Jack rolled into the water to keep from burning. Twisting, he watched one of the flying canisters fall toward the jet boat. The nimble craft sped clear.

But accuracy wasn’t necessary.

The canister exploded in midair.

Jack heard a matching blast behind him.

Fiery napalm washed over the sea and flooded the jet boat. Men screamed as they became living torches. Jack swung around to discover the other boat burning, too.

Impressed, Jack sat up in the water. The creatures must have dug up two of the napalm charges near the beach, waited until the timed series of blasts got close enough, then flung the bombs so they’d blow on cue.

But not all of that dark army escaped unscathed.

Lagging behind the others, a tiger burst out of the blasted forest. Its body was on fire, trailing flames as it ran. Blind and enraged, it flew straight at Jack.

He dove under its claws, coming close to getting eviscerated.

The fiery cat splashed deeper into the shallows-then the water exploded under it. The cat’s bulk got tossed high, shredded apart within a column of seawater and blood.

A sting burned Jack’s left arm. A slivered blade protruded from his biceps. He recognized the shrapnel. A flechette. The bastards had mined the waters, too.

Jack yanked out the sliver and hobbled to his feet, weaving and unsteady. They had to keep moving. With an open furnace burning behind him, Jack crossed to his teammates. The back of Mack’s jacket was a charred ruin. Bruce’s left arm dripped blood.

But they were alive.

Jack pointed after the bestial pack. Gunfire erupted there, coming from the trio of assault weapons they carried. Electricity sparked from the fence-then the gate fell open.

At last the way was open.

DUNCAN WENT COLD as he watched the dark army flood across the land bridge. He could not believe what he’d just witnessed. The bastards had taken out his men with his own napalm charges.

Half awed, half horrified, Duncan watched as one of the ape-men raised an assault rifle and fired at the camera.

The monitor went black.

Duncan turned to Bennett.

The older man had gone pale as a ghost. “There’s no stopping them.”

“Makes no difference,” Duncan assured him. “They’ll find no refuge here. We stick to our plan. By the time they force their way through our lines, we’ll be long gone.”

“What do you mean?”

Duncan picked up his transmitter from the table. One button had gone dark, but another still glowed, waiting to explode the massive bombs buried here.

“I’ll set the villa to blow in half an hour,” Duncan said. “That should give you time to collect Malik and get to the helipad. I’ve already alerted the pilot. He should have the rotors spinning by the time you get to the hilltop.”

The older man still looked stunned, but he was no wilting flower. Bennett’s gaze focused again. He nodded.

“Do it.”

Duncan lifted the transmitter. He set the timer for thirty minutes, then flipped up the trigger guard. With his finger hovering over the button, he stared again at Bennett.

One last chance…

As answer, Bennett swung toward the door and headed out.

Satisfied, Duncan pressed the button.

There was no turning back now.

Bennett stopped at the door. “What about you? Are we holding the chopper for you?”

“No. I’m going to make for the seaplane.”

Duncan had one last issue to address. Through the blasted window, the firefight between the fishing charter and the beach continued-but it had devolved into furious spats. He couldn’t risk the boat escaping the coming detonation. It was time for this war to go airborne.

“What about the rest of the island’s personnel?” Bennett asked.

Duncan was glad the two were alone at the moment. He needed all his forces to remain here until the last moment, to keep the beasts at bay long enough for them to make a clean escape.

Bennett continued to stare at him, waiting for an answer.

He gave it to him. “We can always hire more men.”

Chapter 56

Lorna ushered the last of the children through the anteroom that separated the nursery from the main lab complex. It acted like an air lock, requiring three trips to get all of the children through.

Scared while separated, the children required constant consoling and reassurance. She understood their acute distress. According to Malik, the nursery area was shielded with copper wiring in the walls, to insulate the nascent intelligence from contamination. So each time she left a group outside in the hallway and went into the nursery to fetch the next set, the hive bond between them was momentarily broken, severed by the copper shielding. She could only imagine the terror if half her brain were suddenly cut away.

She eventually got them all back together.

United in the hallway, they clustered even more tightly, needing contact, both physical and mental.

Still, they dared not linger any longer than necessary. Lorna removed the pistol from the waist of her pants. She had to find her way back to the main lab, then from there to the villa.

“Hush now. Stay with me.”

She headed down the hall with the children in tow. Wary of the new surroundings, they moved as if on ice, unsure of their footing, not trusting it would support them. Some of them had probably never been outside the nursery.

Still, the group traveled in silence, as if sensing the danger.

She traced her way back as best she could recall. The nursery was buried in the deepest level of the lab complex-to further shield the children with natural rock, but also to limit access only to those with the highest clearance. She was grateful for that.

With the war going on, no one seemed to be here.

At last she reached a familiar set of steps. She held up a hand for the children to wait at the foot of the stairs while she investigated. Moving as silently as possible, she crept up the steps to the landing above.

The passage at the top ran straight past the surgical suite where Lorna had first seen one of the hominids. At the end of the hall should be the main lab.

Muffled voices reached her. Her fingers tightened on the pistol. How many were in the lab? If it was lightly manned, she might be able to force her way through at gunpoint. She would have to try. The only way to reach the villa and escape was through Malik’s lab.

No matter the circumstances, she had to move fast.

She waved the children up to her. “Hurry now.”

The group scurried up the steps and poured into the hall with her-but something went wrong. The first boy up the stairs suddenly winced and clapped his hands over his ears. Then the others froze, too.

She knelt among them. “What’s wrong?”

The children remained in frozen postures of pain and fear.

She didn’t have time for this. She had to get them moving. Bending down, she scooped a small girl out of the group and stood up. Rather than melting into her like before, the girl remained a hard knot in Lorna’s arms.

She had no time to discern the source of their distress. She crossed down the hall with the girl. The others followed, but a low whine escaped them, like steam from an overheated kettle. Hands remained clamped to ears.

What was bothering them?

OUT IN THE woods, Randy held his brother at arm’s length. “Christ, Jack. You’re as hot as a streetcar in July. And you look half dead. No, I take that back. You look full-on dead.”

Jack didn’t argue. His vision remained pinched. His head throbbed with every ragged beat of his heart. But more disturbing was that both of his hands had gone strangely numb.

But at least he’d reached the main island.

And with allies, too, as strange as they may be.

“What’s wrong with them?” Kyle asked.

Lorna’s brother stood a step away with one of the Thibodeaux brothers. T-Bob had come with Randy, while Peeyot remained on the fishing charter. Kyle clutched his cast against his chest. It had been wrapped in duct tape to keep it dry, and he carried a Sig Sauer pistol in his other fist. From the way he held it, he was familiar with the weapon.

Two other men-black Cajun cousins of the Thibodeauxs-also hid in the forest. The pair shouldered shotguns and had hand axes tied to their belts.

All eyes focused on the beasts hidden in the shadows with them.

“Why did they all just stop like that?” Kyle pressed.

Jack stared around. The sun had sunk into the horizon, leaving the woods dark. Firelight from the burning island behind them flickered into the edge of the forest, dancing shadows all about.

Still, he could easily pick out the one he had come to mentally call Scar, the apparent leader of this dark army. The normally animated figure had frozen in place-as had all of them, man and beast.

Moments ago, Jack and Randy’s teams had joined forces in the woods. After dealing with the initial shock from Randy’s men, Jack had wanted to keep moving, to maintain the momentum of their overland assault. But the entire dark army had simply stopped in their tracks, frozen in various positions.

Scar stood with his head cocked as if he were listening to a song only he could hear. The same seemed to be true of the others.

Before Jack could fathom what was going on, Scar suddenly turned to him, studied him with those cold black eyes, then without any signal, his entire group set off again.

Before leaving, Scar acknowledged one other: a fellow man-beast, a one-armed figure who was scarred even worse than their leader. He looked older, and most of his disfigurements were linear, suggesting the scars came from surgical experiments. Jack also noted a saucer of metal strapped to his chest like some thick crude shield.

Scar touched the other’s shoulder. They gazed at each other-then the one-armed figure turned and ran off into the jungle in a different direction.

Without any other explanation, Scar continued up the wooded slope.

Beasts both small and large spread out in a wide swath, covering the hillside. Four cats flanked to either side, a phalanx of wolf-dogs led the way, and the giant slothlike creature loped to one side. Jack also noted for the first time a trio of black foxes the size of Dobermans. These last moved so swiftly they seemed more shadow than substance.

The trio vanished into the woods.

Along with the beasts, a dozen of Scar’s men and women kept pace, carrying crude weapons: spears, cudgels, stone axes. Three of them also bore automatic weapons.

Jack followed behind the group, trusting they knew the way better than he did. But that path would not be easy.

They’d traveled less than thirty yards up the hill when a barrage of gunfire shredded the forest ahead. The muzzle flashes lit up the shadows. Tracer rounds speared through the dark woods.

An ambush.

Bodies got cut down near the front, torn nearly in half.

A round burned past Jack’s ear.

He dropped to a knee, taking shelter behind the trunk of a tree.

A step away, Kyle tackled Randy to the ground-and not a moment too soon. A grazing round tagged the bill of his ball cap and flipped it off his head.

Randy cursed as Kyle rolled off him, but it wasn’t directed at Lorna’s brother. “That was my favorite hat.”

“I’ll buy you a new one if you’ll just shut the hell up,” Kyle said.

Randy glanced over to the kid, as if truly sizing him up for the first time. More rounds tore over their heads. The pair crabbed sideways to a rocky outcropping and took shelter there together.

Jack had lost sight of Mack and Bruce, but a raking spat of return fire from nearby suggested they were okay. Jack lifted his own shotgun, ready to charge up the hill.

Then the screaming started.

Indifferent to their own safety, the dark army hadn’t slowed. They used the dead bodies of those in front as bloody shields and overran the snipers’ positions. Even more disturbing was the eerie silence of their attack.

Gunfire escalated, taking on a panicked note.

A rock came rolling and bouncing down the slope. As it passed Jack’s position he was horrified to see it was a helmeted head.

Then as suddenly as it all started, it was over.

The army flowed onward, drawing Jack and his group in its wake.

“Keep going,” he called out. “Stay with them.”

They moved up through the slaughterhouse. Blood turned the ground to mud. Some soldiers still lived. A few attempted to crawl away, missing legs, dragging entrails.

A frightened soldier leaned against a tree, half his face gone; he pointed a pistol at them and kept squeezing the trigger, but he was out of bullets.

They hurried past him.

After a minute Jack began to stumble and trip, his legs full of lead. His breathing grew ragged and hot. But rather than growing numb to his surroundings, his senses remained strangely sharp.

He smelled the sweet dampness of a flower he brushed against. He heard the crunching snap of pine needles underfoot. Even the twilight forest seemed too bright to his eyes.

Then, after another ten yards, the villa appeared ahead. They took up wary positions at the edge of the woods, and Jack studied their target.

With all of its lower windows sealed behind steel shutters, the villa looked like a fortress under siege. A bunker near the top was a blasted ruin. Teak furniture on the open patios had been chopped to kindling by machine-gun fire from the Thibodeauxs’ boat.

Scar suddenly appeared next to Jack. They eyed each other. Again Jack felt like his skull was splitting in two. Scar reached to Jack and gripped his forearm. The gesture seemed like both a thank-you and a threat.

Jack understood.

They’d both reached their goal.

After this final assault, all bets were off.

Chapter 57

Lorna kept the children lined along one side of the hallway. She edged up to the set of swinging doors that led into the main lab room. Voices reached her.

“How much time is left?”

Lorna recognized Malik’s accent. She also heard the panic in his voice. She used the tip of her pistol to ease open the door and peek through.

Bennett stepped across her view, his back to her. He kept his voice low. “Less than twenty minutes. So hurry up.”

Malik stood by a bank of computers. He was shoving hard drives into a metal suitcase. A portable Dewar flask for transporting cryogenic samples stood next to it.

“What about the rest of my team?” the doctor asked.

“Expendable,” Bennett said, his voice pained. “That’s why I sent everyone out. We keep this evacuation on a need-to-know basis.”

Lorna struggled to understand. Why were they leaving? Why this sudden urgency? She attempted to fold this new reality into her plans of escape. Could she somehow use this to her advantage?

Bennett checked his watch. “Pack up everything and let’s move.”

Malik snapped his briefcase shut, passed it to Bennett, then grabbed the cryogenic bottle from the tabletop. “We have to get these viral samples into a secure lab within twelve hours or risk losing everything.”

“Understood. We’ll make arrangements en route.”

They turned and headed toward a far door, but it was not the one leading into the villa. An Emergency Exit sign glowed over the doorway.

Where did it lead?

As if hearing her question, Malik asked, “The tunnel to the helipad, is it secure?”

“It’s out of the direct line of fire. And the pilot is armed.”

Lorna stayed hidden. For the first time since her arrival here, hope bubbled through her. There’s another way out! If she maintained a safe distance and followed them out this back door, she could take the children into hiding in the woods and wait for this war to end.

But her luck wasn’t holding.

A harsh voice barked behind her. She turned to find a stick figure of a man standing by the entrance to the surgical suite. She recognized the technician, Edward, the one who had drawn her blood, injected her with hormones. She also recognized the rifle pointed at her.

“What are you doing here?” he called out loudly. He eyed the kids and kicked the closest one. “Drop your pistol and move into the lab.”

Lorna had no choice. She let the pistol clatter to the floor. The children came rushing up to her. She backed through the swinging doors into the main lab.

She turned to find Malik and Bennett stopped and staring at her.

“Dr. Polk?” Bennett said, his voice full of surprise, suspiciously so. Lorna noted a flinch of guilt pass over his features.

Malik’s eyes widened upon seeing the clutch of children sticking close to her legs. “What luck.”

Bennett glanced to him.

“I could use a couple of these specimens,” the doctor explained. “They’d be perfect seeds for the new facility.”

Lorna’s stomach sank toward her feet. She’d delivered them straight into the hands of the monster.

Edward pushed into the room behind her. He had confiscated her pistol and pointed it at her. He took in the scene with a glance: the briefcase, the Dewar flask. His eyes flicked up to the emergency exit sign.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

Malik took a step forward, crouching slightly with a hand on his hip. He eyed the remaining children, as if trying to pick out a ripe melon. “I won’t lie to you, Edward. You deserve at least my honesty. The island is going to blow up in about seventeen minutes.”

Edward stumbled forward. The tip of the pistol wavered with his shock. “What?”

Lorna felt equally stunned. She now understood their furtive urgency.

“Don’t worry,” Malik said. “Your work won’t be in vain.”

Edward swung his pistol toward the two men. “Take me with you.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. No room. Especially now. We need these specimens.”

Malik straightened from his crouch. A tiny pearl-handled pistol had appeared in his hand as if by magic. He pointed it at Edward’s face and fired.

The shot was loud, stinging her ears.

Edward fell backward, tipping like an axed tree.

Even Bennett gasped at the cold-blooded murder.

Malik turned to his boss, but he kept his pistol aimed at Lorna. “We could each take one specimen. A breeding pair would trim at least a year off our new start-up.”

Bennett checked his watch, knowing he had no time to argue. He growled, “Pick which ones and let’s go.”

His gaze briefly brushed across Lorna’s. The guilt that had flickered before now shone steadily. Lorna suspected he normally kept himself above such dirty work, purposely diverted his eyes from the bloody reality of this project. But such innocence was no longer possible.

The same couldn’t be said of Malik. Working in the trenches from the start, he was covered in blood up to his elbows. “I’m afraid we’ll have to leave you here, Dr. Polk. You’ll have your freedom for”-he checked his own watch-“another fifteen minutes.”

Malik bent down and grabbed a boy by the arm and dragged him into the air, carrying him like a sack of groceries. “We’ll need a female, too. Take that one.”

He pointed his pistol.

Bennett bent down and gently scooped the child in one arm. His gaze fixed to Lorna. “I’m sorry.”

As they backed away a massive explosion ripped through the space.

The blast lifted her off her feet and tossed her backward. She slid across the floor. A flaming book tumbled past her nose, trailing ash. More debris blasted into the space. She fought to raise up to an elbow.

Children had been blown to the far wall. Bennett and Malik lay sprawled facedown.

Lorna searched around for a weapon.

Edward’s body had rolled against a table. There was no sign of her pistol, but his rifle was still tangled over his shoulder.

If she could reach it-

But Malik was already pushing up off the floor.

Bennett heaved over to his back. He had sheltered the girl with his body and still clung to her.

Lorna began to sidle toward the rifle-when something massive bounded out of the fiery doorway and landed in a crouch. She stared in disbelief at the monstrous tiger. The beast roared, black tongue curled, exposing saber-sharp fangs.

Malik scuttled away like a crab.

Bennett froze in place only yards from the monster.

Lorna recognized the tiger from the video feed on the other island. The psychotic bunch must have broken free of their prison-and plainly had come for revenge. She now understood why Bennett’s group was blowing this place to kingdom come.

More shapes piled in behind the first, pouring out from the short tunnel that connected to the villa. Flames and smoke obscured their shapes, but some walked upright on two legs.

Off to the side, Malik had backed to the emergency exit. He had somehow kept hold of the Dewar cryogenic flask. He hugged it to his chest and dove out into the tunnel.

Bennett was trapped, pinned down by the monstrous army.

One of the hominids came forward. He was missing an ear, and his face was massively scarred. Lorna recognized him from the video feed. He had been the one with the pregnant female, the one Bennett had named Eve.

That would make him Adam, she thought.

He came at Bennett with a long spear.

The man didn’t bother to move or struggle. There was nothing he could do.

Then the children suddenly rushed forward, moving like a flock of starlings protecting a nest. They piled on top of Bennett, joining the girl in his arms and shielding his body with their own.

Adam stood over them. More hominids appeared behind him.

Through the doorway, a heavily muscled shape bulled into the room, knuckling on claws. A giant sloth. They’d gone extinct ages ago. The genetic throwback settled to its haunches. Fur along one flank had been burned to the skin and still smoked.

Its large eyes scanned the room, then joined the others in staring down at the knot of children.

Bennett finally sat up, as confused as Lorna at the behavior of the children. The young ones continued to stand between the monsters and the man.

All their small eyes locked gazes with the elders.

A silent negotiation seemed to be under way.

Then voices echoed from the demolished doorway. Half deafened by the blast, she couldn’t make out the words, only that it sounded like English.

Another figure stepped through the smoke on two legs.

Only it wasn’t a hominid.

Lorna choked on her shock, at the impossibility of it.

She struggled to her feet.

“Jack…?”

Chapter 58

Relief welled through Jack as he heard his name called out. He blinked tears from his stinging eyes and stumbled farther inside the room. It looked like some mad scientist’s workshop. Flaming debris dotted the floor and curled smoke into the room.

Jack squinted, straining-then spotted a figure rising from the floor.

Lorna…

He rushed toward her.

She came at him.

Reaching her, he crushed her in his arms. He took her scent deep into his chest. Her heartbeat pounded against his ribs. Her cheek, tender and soft, nestled against his neck. He needed to make sure she was real and not a feverish delusion. He clung harder to her.

But she broke the embrace too soon, fighting him in desperation. Her face stared up, wide-eyed and full of worry. With his shirt ripped open, she placed a hand against his bare chest. Her palm was ice against his skin.

“You’re burning up.”

He took her hand down and clasped her fingers. “Just a fever. Flu. Doesn’t matter.”

She didn’t look convinced. But for the moment she had a larger fear. Her fingers tightened on his hands.

“Jack, the island. They’ve planted bombs here. Set to blow in another ten minutes or so.”

He tensed, picturing the exploding napalm charges. So it wasn’t just the one island. The bastards were cleaning house and burning all bridges behind them.

“We have to get off this island,” she said.

He took her by the hand and led her back toward the door, but more of Scar’s forces had piled into the room, blocking the way out.

Jack stepped forward and confronted him. He had to get the message across. “We must go!” He waved an arm toward the door. “Now!”

Scar ignored him. His gaze remained fixed upon a cluster of children standing in the room. The brood stared straight back at him in a silent war of wills.

Jack didn’t have time for this.

He stepped between Scar and the children.

Finally, the man’s eyes snapped angrily in Jack’s direction. Agony ripped into Jack’s skull. Gasping, he blacked out and fell to his knees. Fleeting images flashed through his head: a spray of blood, a flash of a scalpel, a cinch of leather straps, a splay of a dissected body.

With each image came a bolt of pain.

Then he felt his body tugged to the side. The pressure in his head popped and drained away. His vision returned.

Lorna knelt beside him. “Are you okay?”

Jack touched his forehead, expecting to feel shattered bone. “I think so.”

He looked up. Scar had returned the full brunt of his black attention upon the group of kids. Jack recognized a hard truth. Whatever truce had existed between them before had ended.

He turned to Lorna. “They’re not going to let us go.”

MALIK WHEEZED AS he ran up the last of the steps. A doorway opened ahead, brighter than the dark tunnel. As he fled toward his salvation he clutched the cryogenic jar tightly to his chest. After Saddam firebombed and bleached the original source, this was the last of the virus supply.

With it, I can start again. With or without Bennett.

From this frozen seed, whole armies could be born.

And it didn’t matter who financed his work. There would always be governments willing to pay the price. If not the United States, then another country. And as a free agent, he could command any price.

Reaching the tunnel’s end, he ducked through to the outside.

The sun had set, but the western skies still glowed a deep orange.

The helipad sat atop the highest point of the hilltop. A circle of asphalt, painted like a yellow bull’s-eye, held back the forest. He sprinted toward it along a crushed stone path. Even from here, he heard the low drone of the helicopter’s engine. As he topped the rise he spotted the rotors spinning.

He reached the asphalt and called for the pilot.

A man in a flight jacket stood on the far side, staring down at the beach. He flicked away a cigarette with a flash of ash, turned, and crossed briskly to the chopper.

Malik met him at the open door.

“Where’s Mr. Bennett?” the pilot asked.

Malik put on his best face of concern and regret. “Dead. Caught in an ambush.”

The pilot glanced toward the tunnel as if wagering if he should confirm the story. Malik made an overly grand motion of checking his watch. “We’re down to less than ten minutes. We either go now or never.”

With a concerned glance at his own wrist, the pilot finally nodded. “Load up. I want to put some distance between us and that blast.”

Malik climbed into the backseat while the pilot settled behind the stick. In seconds, the engine roared, and the blades cut faster through the air. With a lurch of his stomach, the skids lifted off the asphalt.

Simply breaking physical contact with the island calmed Malik’s hammering heart. He cradled the frozen prize in his lap and stared out the window. Trees dropped away under him. The expanse of the sea spread wide with all the promise of the world.

He allowed a smile to form.

The pilot called back, shouting to be heard. “What’s that smell?”

Malik didn’t know what he was talking about. He sniffed deeply, fearing a gas leak or maybe smoke. They didn’t have time for a maintenance check.

“What are you carrying?” the pilot yelled. “Smells like an animal took a dump back there!”

Brought to his attention, Malik finally noted a rank smell. He had failed to distinguish it earlier, too accustomed to the odor. He smelled it all the time down in the labs. It got into your clothes, hair, even your pores.

He sniffed at his shirt.

It was freshly laundered.

As he lifted his head the odor grew stronger. It wasn’t coming off him. Fear swamped over him.

He swung around to the small storage space behind his seat. His heart pounded as he peered over the edge of the seat.

A bestial face stared back at him with a savage leer. The creature had crammed itself into the tight space. It must have climbed aboard when the pilot was out smoking. Malik noted the old surgical scars-but also the disk-shaped object strapped to its chest.

A flechette mine.

A year ago, Duncan had tested the blast effect on a male specimen who had dared to punch one of his men. Malik had seen the body afterward. All the flesh had been shredded off the bone-and according to Duncan, the specimen had lived for a full minute afterward.

Horror filled him.

“No,” Malik begged. “Please…”

As the creature smiled coldly, a hand lifted to the center of the mine and pressed the trigger.

LORNA HEARD A distant explosion. At first, she feared it was the island blowing up. But nothing worse transpired.

We should have at least eight minutes, she estimated.

But what were they going to do with those last minutes?

Standing with Jack, she continued to watch the silent war being waged between the children and their elders. She didn’t understand it, but she suspected the two intelligences-one nascent and pure, the other tortured and broken-fought for dominance. Or maybe it was something less brutal, a probing for compatibility. Having grown apart, maybe a merger wasn’t even possible.

What would it be like to experience this reunion, to see your children again, but be unable to connect at that deeper level?

Finally, some impasse broke. One of the children reached and took hold of Bennett’s hand. The older man stared down at the small form. His face was bloody, his nose broken when he hit the floor.

Moving with that strange flocklike synchronization, the children suddenly stepped forward and openly confronted the larger mass of beasts and men. The young ones looked unnaturally calm, joining hands in a web that Lorna knew went beyond flesh.

Lorna helped Jack to his feet as the mass of children brushed up to her. A small girl extended a tiny hand. Lorna took it, but she kept a grip on Jack’s fingers, too.

Taking a cue from the children, Lorna allowed herself to be led toward the army massed at the door. The one she named Adam stood his ground.

Then a child in the lead-the tiniest boy from the looks of him-reached out toward the scarred figure.

Adam looked down. A mix of grief and agony played across his face. Instead of taking that hand, he danced back as if fearing the boy’s touch.

But for whose safety: his own or the children’s?

Following Adam’s example, the wall of beasts parted and opened a path out of the room. They were being let go… or maybe cast out. Either way, the tiny boy took the lead, and the children headed out, drawing Bennett, Lorna, and Jack with them.

Within a few steps, Lorna found herself back in the villa’s study. It seemed like days since she had last passed through here.

More of the beasts took refuge here. But they allowed the group to pass unmolested. Moving on, Lorna spotted a group of men farther down the hall. One of them broke away and ran toward her.

“Lorna!”

She could not believe it. “Kyle!”

After seeing Jack, she had hoped her brother might still be alive, but she had been afraid to ask, fearing the answer.

Kyle shoved Jack aside to hug her. “Don’t ever do that again.”

She wasn’t sure exactly what that was, but she nodded. “I promise.”

Over Kyle’s shoulder, she watched Jack cross to his own brother. He spoke rapidly, gesturing. Randy stiffened, twisted around, and headed off with the others toward the front door. One of the men already had a radio at his lips.

Jack returned to them, stepping quickly. “T-Bob is radioing for more pontoon boats. They’ll meet us at the beach. We’ll have to hurry if we’re going to outrun the explosion.”

“Explosion?” Kyle asked.

Rather than explaining, Jack swung away. As he turned he lost his balance. She reached for him, but he tilted and crashed headlong to the floor.

“Jack!”

She rushed to him, dropping to her knees. She had known something was wrong. While holding hands, Jack had been trembling, quaking with what appeared to be microseizures. She already feared the worst.

Kyle helped turn him over.

Through his burning skin, she felt tremors rising up, growing worse. His muscles quivered and spasmed. His eyes had rolled back into his head. Whatever last reserve he had been riding had finally given out.

She laid a palm on his cheek. With her touch, his eyes snapped back into view. They focused weakly on her. His lips moved. She leaned closer to hear.

His breath brushed her ear. His words were few.

“Tom’s gone.”

She pulled back, at first not understanding this reference to his younger brother. Then she saw something in Jack’s eyes, something that perhaps had always been there, something she had tried best not to see, dismissing her own feelings as echoes of another boy, another love.

Tom’s gone.

A tear rolled down from the corner of his eyelid. He had wanted to get this out before it was too late. Perhaps to say even more.

“Jack…”

But he was already gone. His eyes glazed as his body lifted up in a backbreaking arc. His limbs contorted into a full-blown seizure.

Lorna sprawled on top of him. “Help hold him down.”

Kyle grabbed his head. Two men ran up in gear that matched Jack’s.

“What can we do?” the larger of the two asked.

Bennett answered from two steps away. “Nothing.” His eyes met hers across Jack’s quaking body. “I’ve seen it before. Too many times. He’s infected.”

Lorna had suspected the same when she first hugged Jack. She remembered Malik’s description of the protein found in the blood and saliva of the genetically altered animals, how it self-replicated, crossed the blood-brain barrier, and burned through the cerebral cortex like a wildfire.

“There’s no hope,” Bennett said.

She wasn’t going to accept that. She stood up and pointed an arm toward the door. “Get him to the boats.”

“What are you going to do?” Kyle asked.

Lorna turned and headed back toward the labs.

Bennett called over to her. “No one ever survived.”

Lorna ran back through the gauntlet of beasts.

Bennett was wrong.

Someone had survived.

Chapter 59

Under a pall of black anger, Duncan hiked toward the isolated deep-water cove. A boathouse sat over the water, and a rocky quay ran out to the moored seaplane, a small Cessna workhorse. The setting sun had turned the cove to hammered bronze.

Far from the fighting, the peace of this small oasis calmed him, helped him put his thoughts and plans in order.

He carried a backpack filled with cash and gold coins that he’d taken from Bennett’s safe. He’d planned on safeguarding it until they were all back in the States.

But those plans had swiftly changed.

As he had trekked over the ridge from the main cove to this smaller one, he had watched Bennett’s helicopter take off from the hilltop. Satisfied that all was secure, Duncan had continued down-then seconds later, a resounding blast had echoed over the island.

He had turned in time to see the chopper tip on its nose, stirring up a cloud of smoke. Debris rained down, trailing fire. Then the helicopter plummeted in a death spiral and crashed back to the hilltop.

The site continued to glow like a warning beacon in the night.

Duncan understood that fiery message.

It was over.

Bennett and Malik should have been aboard that flight, along with all hope for restarting the Babylon Project. He didn’t know why the chopper blew: a grenade, another rocket, or just an unlucky spray of bullets.

It didn’t matter.

Duncan took the new reality in stride. He was a survivor and had the scars to prove it. With over a hundred grand in cash and gold on his back, he’d start over. He had originally planned to use the seaplane to bomb the fishing charter. He even had a satchel bomb slung over his shoulder.

As he reached the rocky shore he let it drop, abandoning it. It no longer mattered if the other boat escaped the coming detonation. He would be long gone before any word reached the outside world.

All that concerned him now was getting the hell off this rock.

He crossed toward the stone quay, picking up his pace.

He still had five minutes. Plenty of time to fly out of the cove and beyond the blast radius. But he didn’t want to cut it too close.

He reached the stone jetty and hurried down it.

But as he neared the boathouse something raised the hairs on his neck. He stopped. As if knowing the trap had been sensed, a sleek shape stalked from behind the boathouse. It stood as tall as his waist. Black fur bristled down its back, ending at a bushy tail. Orange-red eyes glowed at him.

Duncan recognized it as one of the giant foxes from the other island.

Black ghosts, one of his men had named them.

He reached to his belt and pulled out his pistol, refusing to give in to panic. He aimed and fired. But the monster lived up to its nickname and flowed to the side.

Rounds sparked off the stone.

Duncan backed away, but there was no safety in that direction. The island was about to blow. He stopped. His brain urged him to run at the beast, emptying the clip at it. He had to reach the seaplane. But his heart quailed against running at the carnivorous beast.

Sweat beaded, and his hands grew slick.

He had no choice.

Duncan steadied his pistol with both hands, arms straight out. Bunching his legs, he sprinted straight at the monster. He squeezed the trigger again and again.

Some rounds missed, but a few struck home.

A front leg shattered under a bullet, lurching the beast to the side. Another round blasted through its left ear. Yet another struck it square in the chest. The beast toppled over on its side. He didn’t stop firing. He emptied his clip into it.

Duncan continued at full sprint, ready to hurdle the body.

From there, it was only steps to the seaplane.

Then something heavy struck him from behind and sent him crashing headlong into the stones. He took the brunt of the fall on his shoulder by turning at the last moment. A large shadow bounded past him.

Another of the foxes.

He immediately understood their hunting strategy. The first fox had been a decoy, allowing the other to take him down from behind. He stared at his attacker as it loped and turned toward him.

Duncan discarded the one clip and slapped in another.

But he had learned his lesson.

He remembered there had been three foxes on the other island.

He whipped around and found the last fox standing directly behind him, eyes shining. It lunged before he could fire. It bit into his wrist. Bones crunched. The pistol dropped from his fingers.

Duncan punched with his free arm.

But the beast had latched on hard.

The second fox joined the attack, running up and snapping like a bear trap onto his leg. The two monsters then backed in opposite directions, stretching him like a wishbone. His shoulder and hip joints screamed as the ligaments in the sockets tore. They were trying to tear him apart.

Again he was wrong.

A shadow loomed next to him. It was the third fox, still alive. It limped on its three good legs. Blood flowed from the gunshot wounds.

He realized the tug-of-war was not meant to tear his limbs off, but to hold him steady.

The third fox snarled, baring sharp teeth as long as fingers.

No…

It dove into his exposed belly. Teeth ripped through clothes, skin, and muscle. Then burrowed deeper. He felt teeth inside him.

They were going to eat him alive.

But yet again he was wrong.

The fox backed away, withdrawing its muzzle, soaked in blood. But the beast hadn’t come out without a prize. It retreated step-by-step, dragging out a loop of intestine, relentlessly gutting him. Agony and terror welled up.

Duncan finally understood the truth.

There was a horror beyond his worst nightmare.

The foxes hadn’t come to eat him.

They’d come to play.

Chapter 60

Lorna burst out of the villa and sprinted across the patio toward the expanse of beach. She had found what she needed in the lab. Behind her, the strange army of beasts followed, as if drawn by her urgency.

She spotted the others at the water’s edge.

Two Zodiac rafts floated in the shallows. Children were being loaded into the boats while Jack’s two teammates hauled his limp form.

Was he still alive?

She ran faster, knowing time was running out.

As she reached the edge of the beach something snagged her wrist and hauled her around to stop. All that kept her on her feet was the viselike grip on her arm.

The scarred male hominid had hold of her. She tried to yank her arm away, but his grip was iron. He twisted her around. She was ready to scream for help-when a shape stepped from behind a flowering bush. It was another of the hominids. The female. Her breasts were huge, her belly still big. Only she carried an infant in her arms now, a newborn from the look of it. She had swaddled it in a banana leaf.

It was Eve’s child.

The woman had given birth.

The female came to her and held out her baby. Lorna shook her head, not understanding. Eve came closer, pushing the baby into her arms.

“No…”

The male shoved Lorna roughly from behind.

Eve’s eyes pleaded with her.

Lorna finally raised her arms and took the child. Eve turned and hid her face in her mate’s chest. He waved Lorna toward the beach, toward the boats.

They wanted her to take the child.

She backed a step, shifted the tiny baby under one arm. She motioned to them. “Come with us.”

Her plea fell on deaf ears. The pair retreated together, back toward the forest. The other beasts followed.

Lorna stumbled after them. “It’s not safe! Come with me!”

The male turned and snarled at her, making it plain the discussion was over. Eve glanced back before vanishing into the shadows. Tears flowed down her face, but Lorna also read the peace in her expression.

There would be no changing their minds.

“Lorna!” Kyle had spotted her and waved. “Hurry up!”

With no choice, Lorna cradled the child to her bosom and ran for the rafts.

Kyle waited and helped her through the shallows. He frowned at her burden. “Is that a baby?”

Lorna ignored him. She waded over to Jack’s boat. Half the children were there, along with Bennett. She passed the child up to the older man as she climbed into the boat with them.

Bennett lifted a questioning eyebrow.

“Eve’s child,” she explained.

Bennett’s eyes widened as he glanced down at the baby. The other children gathered closer.

The Zodiac’s pilot gunned the outboard engine and tore away from the beach. The other raft followed. The water in the cove was as smooth as glass. The boats took advantage and gathered speed, shooting across the surface.

The fishing charter had already begun steaming away and had almost cleared the cove.

Lorna turned to Jack’s sprawled body. The larger of his two companions sat with his slack form in the bottom of the boat.

“He’s still breathing,” the man growled. “For now.”

She placed a hand on Jack’s shoulder. Even through his clothes, she felt the feverish heat of his body. He continued to quake under her touch, locked in a continual seizure. It was burning him up.

Before she could get a better assessment of his condition, a rumbling shook across the still waters of the cove.

“Hang on!” the pilot yelled.

Lorna turned as the villa blew apart, shattering outward in a massive explosion, most of it vaporizing into a thick black column of smoke. The column pushed high into the sky, glowing at the core with hellish fires. A hot wind washed over them as they raced away.

But it wasn’t over.

A secondary blast erupted, even stronger than the first. The entire top of the hill blew off this time, shoving the smoky column higher, curling it into a fiery mushroom cloud. Debris pounded into the water, some boulders as large as minivans. But the two rafts had fled far enough away. All that reached them was a large swell.

It picked up their boat and sped them even faster out to sea.

Lorna continued to stare as the island burned.

She finally turned to the pilot, fearing for Jack. She had never taken her hand off him. “I need to get him over to that ship.”

What she intended was too dangerous to attempt here.

She prayed it wasn’t already too late.

Bennett stared over at her. “What are you going to do with him? Like I said, no one’s ever survived.”

“Duncan did.”

Bennett was taken aback by her statement.

Lorna needed to talk it through. “You said he was attacked back in Iraq, by one of the earlier incarnations of these altered forms. But he survived. So what made him different?”

Bennett shook his head.

“You told me Duncan’s injuries were so severe that he spent a week in a coma. That’s the difference. This deadly protein hyperexcites the brain. So the only way a brain could protect itself during such an assault was to turn itself off until the infection ran its course. I think that’s why Duncan never got sick.”

Bennett frowned. “Then what are you going to do with Jack.”

Lorna took a deep breath and stared over at the larger boat. Stating it aloud made it seem insane, but she had to face it.

She turned to Jack and answered Bennett’s question.

“I’m going to send him into a medically induced coma.”

Chapter 61

“You’re going to do what to my brother?”

Randy’s voice cracked with disbelief.

Lorna followed Jack’s body down into the ship’s hold. Mack carried him in his arms. His other teammate was receiving first aid for a bullet wound. The captain had offered Lorna the use of his cabin.

Randy dogged her steps. As Jack’s only kin here, she had confided in him. He had a right to know, but from his terrified expression, maybe such honesty wasn’t appreciated.

“I’m going to drug him,” Lorna said. “Send him into a coma and keep him there until a medevac helicopter arrives.”

The ship had already radioed for help, but it would take hours for anyone to reach them. Jack would be dead by then. She had confirmed the prognosis with Bennett. Once the seizures started, patients died within the hour.

It had to be attempted.

Randy reached to his forehead, as if looking to adjust a ball cap that wasn’t there. His eyes shone with worry.

Kyle followed behind him. “My sister knows what she’s doing.”

Randy turned on him. “She’s a vet!”

“And a darned good one!”

They reached the captain’s cabin. Mack manhandled Jack inside.

Out in the hall, Lorna turned to them. “Randy, you should stay out here. I promise I’ll do everything I can to save him.”

Randy faced her, balanced between fury and fear. He lunged at her. She took a startled step back. But he only grabbed her in a bear hug.

“Take care of my little brother,” he whispered in her ear, biting back tears. He straightened. “I know there’s bad blood between our families. But Jack trusts you. So I do, too.”

Lorna nodded.

Kyle took Randy’s shoulder. “Wanna beer while we wait?”

Randy sagged, nodded, and turned with Kyle back toward the stairs.

Lorna joined Mack in the captain’s cabin. The big man had Jack sprawled across the bed.

“Need a hand?” he asked.

“I could use the company,” she said, smiling wanly, not wanting to be alone.

He sank to the bed beside Jack’s head. She placed the drug bottle down on the bedside table. It was labeled sodium thiopental. She had taken it from the Malik’s surgical supplies. It was a common anesthetic used in animals, and considering Malik’s research, she knew the lab would have a supply.

But she intended to do more than just anesthetize Jack with it.

For years, thiopental had also been used by medical doctors to send patients into an induced coma. Though the drug propofol was employed more commonly today, thiopental was still useful in cases of brain trauma or swelling. The drug triggered a marked decrease in neuronal activity, which was the effect Lorna needed most right now.

Jack’s brain was on overdrive.

She had to turn that engine off.

Working quickly, she prepped Jack’s arm and established a tourniquet. Ready, she picked up a syringe that she had preloaded with the thiopental.

She met Mack’s gaze over his body.

“You can do this,” he said.

Swallowing back her fear, she inserted the needle, aspirated blood to make sure she had a good stick, then released the tourniquet.

Slowly she pushed the plunger and sent the man she was growing to love into a coma.

HALF AN HOUR later, Lorna stood on the stern deck of the ship. Mack continued to watch over Jack. She had needed to get some air. At least for a minute. Her body trembled with exhaustion and stress.

Standing by the rail, she took deep breaths and stared out at the dark sea. Stars glistened overhead, but the moon had not yet risen.

The scratch of a match made her jump.

She turned and found Bennett seated on a deck chair. Lost in her own thoughts, she had failed to see him in the dark. He brought the match to his pipe. The tobacco glowed ruddily as he puffed it to life. He stood up and joined her.

“How’s he doing?”

Lorna sighed. “I don’t know. His fever’s dropped. The anesthetic has quieted his spasms. But I don’t know if he’s still even in there. He’s been seizing for a long time.”

Bennett exhaled a stream of smoke. “You’re doing all you can do.”

They stood quietly for a long moment.

She needed to change the subject. “How’s the baby?”

“Sleeping. We found some formula. The captain’s wife has a four-month-old. Lucky for that.” Bennett turned to her. “Eve’s baby is a little girl, by the way.”

“How about the rest of the children?”

“They’re all sleeping in there with her. I think they recognize one of their own and want to welcome her into the fold. Or maybe it’s just plain childish curiosity. Hard to say.”

Silence stretched again, but Bennett was full of questions.

“Why do you think Eve gave her up?” he asked.

Lorna had pondered the same question. She couldn’t say for sure, but she could guess. “I think it’s the same reason they let us go… or rather let the children go.”

“What do you mean?”

“The baby’s pure. It’s neural net is still infantile. I think back at the villa the older ones recognized that the children were equally uncorrupted. In that moment of confrontation, the two hive minds met. One was pure and innocent, while the other had been tortured into psychosis. I think the older hive mind recognized that the younger ones were lost to them, that they could only offer poison and pain.”

She remembered the agony and grief in Adam when one of the little ones had offered his hand.

“So they did the only thing they could,” she said. “As a final gift and sacrifice, they let them go.”

“What about afterward? Do you think they knew they were going to be killed?”

She pictured Eve’s last expression. It had been full of peace and acceptance. “I think they did.”

Bennett spent a long introspective moment with his pipe. He finally got around to the true question that had been troubling him.

“Why did they protect me? It doesn’t make sense. The monsters were going to kill me.”

“You may know that answer better than I.”

He stared at her. Tears glinted in his eyes. He needed some direction. She didn’t know if he deserved it, but she took her example from the kids.

“They protected me, too,” she said. “Though they can’t bond to us as intimately as they can with each other, I think they possess a strong sense of empathy. They sensed something in you worth saving.”

“But what could that be? All that I did… all that I turned a blind eye to… and sometimes not even a blind eye.”

He shook his head.

“I don’t know. I can’t read your heart. But maybe they recognized the possibility of redemption in you. And amid all that bloodshed, they couldn’t let it be destroyed.”

Bennett turned from her. He covered his face with his hands. His shoulders shook.

“What have I done?” he sobbed softly.

“That’s just it. It’s not what you did, but what you have yet to do.”

As those words passed her lips she took them to heart herself. For so long, she’d let her past define her, to isolate her, to keep her trapped in a limbo of her own guilt. No longer. Jack’s last words came back to her.

Tom’s gone.

It was time for her to truly see that, to act on it.

She prayed she still had the chance.

Chapter 62

The uptown campus of Tulane University rose amid clusters of turn-of-the-century mansions, magnolia-shaded parks, and college housing complexes. It was only a short ride on the St. Charles streetcar from Lorna’s Garden District home.

Still, for the past three days, she seldom left the neurology department on the fourth floor of the Tulane Medical Center. She paced the hall outside the room, anxious for the neurologist to finish his exam.

Jack had been airlifted here from the Thibodeauxs’ fishing boat. Lorna had gone with him during that flight, explaining to the doctors about his treatment. She glossed over many details but was honest about his condition.

Half the hospital departments had been through Jack’s room. Once here, he had been switched to a propofol infusion to maintain his coma, his EEG was monitored around the clock, and his body was hooked to a battery of equipment.

But today was critical. The doctors had been weaning him off the infusion all morning, slowly allowing him to wake while closely monitoring his EEG for any sign of continuing seizure activity. So far so good. But a bigger question remained.

What was left of Jack?

The neurologist seemed confident that there was no permanent brain damage, but after such an injury, he could make no guarantees. Jack could remain in a vegetative state or fully recover. But the doctor had warned that the more likely result was somewhere in between.

So they waited.

Randy sat down the hall with Jack’s mother and father. Kyle had gone down to the cafeteria to fetch them all more coffee. None of them had slept. In the trenches these past days, they had all grown closer.

During their vigil, Lorna had finally shared the whole story of that night with Tom, of the loss of her baby, the attempted rape, Jack’s rescue, and its tragic conclusion. Once she started, it had poured out of her. There had been many tears, on all sides, but in the end, just as much healing.

“You were just a child,” his mother had said, taking her hand. “You poor thing. Such a burden to bear all these years.”

The door to the room finally swung open, and a cluster of white coats and nurses flowed out. The neurologist came over. Lorna tried to read some clue from his face. Jack’s family joined her.

“We’ve taken him off the infusion,” the doctor explained with a sigh, “but we’re going to maintain a low-dose benzodiazepine drip as he wakes. We’ll also be monitoring his EEG and vitals.”

“Can we sit with him?” Lorna asked.

The doctor frowned at the large group. “One at a time.” He admonished them with a finger. “And not for too long.”

Lorna turned to the family.

Jack’s mother patted her arm. “You go on in, dear. You’re family now, too. Besides, if my boy wakes, he should see a pretty face first.”

Lorna wanted to argue, but she allowed herself this moment of selfishness.

She hugged Jack’s mother, then hurried through the door. Inside, a nurse stood by a bank of monitoring equipment. Lorna crossed and sat on a bedside chair. She had spent the night in that same seat, holding Jack’s hand, talking to him, praying.

She stared over at his pale face. She watched his chest rise and fall. Lines and tubes ran from under his sheets to machines that beeped and blinked. She leaned forward and took his hand.

“Jack…”

His hand twitched-causing her heart to jump. But was it in recognition or were the seizures starting again? Fearful, hopeful, she stood up, still grasping his hand. She leaned over him and stared down.

His chest rose heavily, then he sighed loudly.

His lids fluttered open, but his eyes remained rolled back.

“Jack,” she whispered down at him. She placed her other palm on his cheek. “Please…”

He blinked slowly-once, twice-then she found him staring back up at her. “Hey,” he whispered groggily.

She squeezed his hand. “Hey yourself.”

A ghost of a smile shadowed his lips. They just stared at each other. His eyes seemed to drink her in. Then his fingers tightened on hers with surprising strength. His expression became a mask of regret.

“What I said before…” he said hoarsely, his voice raw with exhaustion and maybe something more.

She stopped him. She understood the guilt buried in those two words.

Tom’s gone.

It had haunted both their lives, but it was time to free that ghost.

She leaned down, brushed her lips against his, and whispered into his breath. “But we’re here.”

Chapter 63

Three months later, Jack was speeding down the waterway in his cousin’s airboat. The wind whipped his hair. His only companion, Burt, sat in the bow, his tongue lolling, his ears flapping. Jack guided the craft with deft ease and a light touch on the stick. He sat high in the pilot’s chair. The height allowed him to see over rushes, reeds, and bushes.

It felt good to get away from the city, from the station house. He was also tired of needles, rehabilitation appointments, and psychological tests. Besides a residual numbness in his left hand and the need to take a low-dose anticonvulsant tablet once a day, he had fully recovered.

Still, the best therapy of all could be found out here.

As the midday sun glared off the water he took a deep breath of the rich bayou air, heavy and humid, redolent with brackish water, yet sweetened by sedges and summer flowers.

As he raced deeper into the swamplands he again appreciated the stark and primeval beauty of these wide and trackless lands. He watched white-tailed deer bound away from the roar of his boat’s propellers. Alligators slipped deeper into nests. Raccoons and squirrels skittered up trees.

Rounding a bend, he slowed the airboat and let the engine die.

He needed a private moment to collect himself.

He let the boat gently rock as he listened to the life around him. Some considered the swamps to be a desolate and quiet place. That couldn’t be further from the truth. He closed his eyes, taking in the buzz of gnats, the chorus of frogs, the distant bark of a bull gator, and woven throughout it all, birdsong from hundreds of warbling throats.

After the events of last spring, Jack took moments like this to stop and appreciate the wonders around him. It was as if he had new eyes. In fact, all his senses seemed sharper. Not because of any residual effect from his illness, but simply because of his renewed appreciation for life.

This particular moment was especially significant for him.

His life was about to change in ways he couldn’t imagine, and he needed to prepare for it. But he also sensed the pressure of time.

Lorna was waiting for him-secretly summoned out here under mysterious circumstances-and he dared not keep her waiting any longer than necessary. She still had much work to do over at ACRES as the new facility was under construction.

“Better get going,” he said to Burt.

His hound thumped his tail in agreement.

Taking a final deep breath, Jack started up the airboat’s engine and shot down the waterways and channels. It was a maze through here, but he knew the way by heart. Skirting around an island, he reached a channel that ran straight toward a large log home, newly rebuilt after the fires.

He flew straight for the pier, then, at the last moment, angled the craft broadside and raked the bow to a perfect stop alongside the dock. A familiar round shape dressed in coveralls and an LSU ball cap rose from a chair and helped him tie off the airboat.

Burt bounded onto the dock and greeted him like an old friend.

“ ’Bout time you got here, Jack. Your little filly was growing restless. Thought I might have to tie her down.” With a final tug, he cinched the mooring rope to the pier’s stanchion.

“Thanks, Joe. Where is she?”

“Where do you think?” He waved beyond the log home, to the grounds of what was formerly known as Uncle Joe’s Alligator Farm. “She’s off with Stella and the kids.”

LORNA STARED IN amazement at the sight. She never grew tired of it. She stood on the observation deck above the spread of ponds and elevated walkways. A glass of lemonade sweated on the log rail. Below, children ran and played, bounded and jumped. Several hung from trees.

The ponds no longer held any alligators. They’d all been moved, including Elvis, who now was a star attraction at the Audubon Zoo in the city. To support his acquisition, a major marketing campaign was under way. Its slogan could be found emblazoned on billboards, buses, and streetcars all across New Orleans. It was only two words: Elvis Lives!

Stella climbed the steps with the youngest child in her arms. Only three months old, the girl was already walking on her own-though she plainly still liked to be carried.

“Eve is getting heavy,” Stella said, hiking the child higher in her arms.

“I can see that.”

“We’re weaning her off the bottle like you suggested, but she’s fighting it.”

“They always do.” Lorna smiled and nodded below. “I have to say, you’re doing a great job. They all look so happy.”

Stella matched her grin. “Oh, they have their usual scrapes and bruises like any kids, but I’ve never seen a more loving bunch. You should see how they dote on Igor, Bagheera, and the two little monkeys. They keep stuffing them with treats.”

Lorna laughed. She had never doubted the brood would find a good home here, but she was surprised how quickly they had adjusted to their new environment and circumstances.

Before leaving the Thibodeauxs’ boat, Lorna and the others had made a pact to keep the existence of the children secret-at least until they were strong enough and the world ready enough to handle such news. The Thibodeauxs had proved skilled at getting the children through the bayou in secret. No one appeared to be any the wiser, and when it came to keeping things hidden from sight, there was no better place.

Lorna had only confided in two others-Carlton and Zoë-knowing she’d need their help in establishing this secret sanctuary. It had been an easy sell. ACRES had been started to protect and nurture endangered species.

Lorna watched the children play.

Was there any species more endangered, more at risk?

To help matters, the project had the backing of an open checkbook from a silent partner.

After reaching U.S. shores, Bennett had turned himself over to the authorities. He did not hold back, exposing all the crimes done in his name, opening the balance sheets to Ironcreek-but as promised, he had remained silent about the children. He told authorities that the facility on Lost Eden Cay had been a viral lab undergoing human trials, that a weaponized organism had gotten loose, and that it became necessary to burn it all down.

Afterward, Bennett had been moved to a high-security facility while he assisted the Justice Department in rooting out other guilty parties both within the government and out in the private sector. His testimony continued to shake up Washington.

Hopefully for the better.

But Bennett’s largesse didn’t end there. Through the use of dummy corporations and financial channels that made Lorna’s head spin, he secretly financed both the rebuilding of ACRES and the establishment of this secret sanctuary.

Lorna understood the motive behind this generosity.

Bennett had started down a path to his own redemption.

If she ever doubted it, she only had to turn around. At Bennett’s personal request, a message had been carved into the lintel above the new home’s doorway.

MATTHEW 19:14

She had to look up that particular Bible verse. When she did so, it left her smiling. She found it entirely fitting.

Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.

Lorna stared across at the joyful play and youthful innocence. Her smile grew as she took it all in. While this might not be Heaven, it was definitely a little slice of Eden.

Footsteps sounded behind her.

She turned to find Jack crossing toward her, Burt trotting at his side. The shock must have been all over her face. She hadn’t known he was coming.

Stella retreated toward the house with Eve in her arms.

Jack took her place. He was dressed in a crisp black suit, his hair wet and combed back, like he’d just stepped out of the shower-though he still had a day’s worth of stubble over his chin and cheeks.

She was confused. “What are you doing here?”

He lifted his arms to encompass this new Eden. “Where better than here?”

She still didn’t understand. “For what?”

As answer, he dropped to one knee.