Callsign: King

15.

Manifold laboratory ship, Indian Ocean

A steel door slammed down like a guillotine blade, blocking the only exit from the laboratory. In the same instant, a magnesium charge inside the containment vessel holding the ape skull flared to life. It flamed hot and fast, incinerating the skull and consuming all the available oxygen in the container, and then just as quickly, burned itself out. Then, the strident wailing of a claxon suddenly filled the room.

“What the hell was that?” Fulbright demanded, spinning Dave around to face him.

“It’s the fail-safe,” Sara supplied before the compliant Manifold researcher could answer. “It’s supposed to keep the rest of the ship safe in the event of an accident in the lab.”

“Not quite,” Dave cut in, his voice quavering. “It does lock down the lab, but it also starts a self-destruct sequence.”

“Self destruct?” Fulbright said. “The lab is going to be destroyed?”

Dave shook his head. “Not just the lab; it’s already contained. We’re not getting out of here. The alarm is to give everyone outside time to abandon ship before…”

“Shit. How long?”

“Five minutes.”

Fulbright checked his wristwatch and clicked on a button, before turning to the commandos. “Get that door open.”

“It’s three inches of solid steel,” Dave protested half-heartedly. “We’re finished.”

“Three inches. Good to know.”

The men from the assault team appeared unfazed by the news of the death sentence. They deftly produced blocks of plastic explosives, along with what appeared to be water bladders for hydration packs, and began taping these to the security gate to form a three-foot square. The process took only a few seconds, during which time Fulbright overturned a stainless steel lab table and pulled Sara behind it. Realizing what he intended, she hastily unplugged the flash-drive and stuffed it in the water-tight bag. The commandos joined them, and as soon as they were all down, one of them shouted: “Fire in the hole.”

The concussion reverberated through the closed room, hammering into Sara’s gut like a punch from a prizefighter, and the smell of high explosives residue made her gums hurt. That she recognized was a manifestation of her SDD.

Fulbright checked his watch before standing up to survey the effects of the breaching charges. “We’ve got three minutes people. Move.”

The shaped explosive charges had done the trick, blasting an opening in the steel gate, large enough for one person at a time to crawl through. Without asking, Fulbright propelled Sara forward, and she hastily pulled herself through the still smoldering hole.

Once outside, Fulbright wasted no time. He grabbed Sara’s elbow and started running back the way they had come, shouting instructions to the rest of the team into his radio. Sara headed for the ladder where she’d left her rebreather, but Fulbright forestalled her.

“No time for that.”

She gaped, uncomprehending, as he raced past their equipment, and moved instead to row of large cylindrical containers mounted along the ship’s superstructure. Moving with what looked like practiced efficiency, Fulbright worked a lever handle, and the cylinder burst from its stays and flew out over the side.

“Jump!”

Sara hesitated, still trying to grasp what was happening. Fulbright didn’t bother with an explanation, but simply grabbed her shoulders and propelled her over the rail. She clutched instinctively for a handhold, but it was too late. Arms flailing, she dropped thirty feet into the warm ocean.

The impact stunned her, knocking the wind from her lungs, but somehow Fulbright was there, hugging her body to his and kicking furiously back to the surface. Everything that followed was a blur.

A resounding thump jolted her back to awareness, and she realized that she was no longer in the water. She jumped, like someone waking from a dream of falling, and saw that she was in some kind of rubber boat. Fulbright was sitting next to her, panting like he’d just finished a marathon. A greenish glow surrounded them, courtesy of a Cyalume chemical light stick.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

Sara tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t take shape, so she simply nodded.

Fulbright took a few more breaths. “Okay, that was close.” He gazed at her thoughtfully. “Did you get anything useful?”

Sara instinctively felt for the waterproof bag with the flash-drive. It was still there, slung over her shoulder. But the mere fact of its presence was no cause for rejoicing. She turned to Fulbright. “I managed to download their research reports,” she said, at length. “I know what they were trying to do, but without a sample of the virus they were working with, the information isn’t much good.”

A noise like the rushing of river rapids made further comment impossible. She craned her head around in time to see the bow of the research vessel, its lower hull shot full of holes from the detonation of Manifold’s self-destruct device-the source of the thump she had heard a moment before-abruptly tilt upward and then slide beneath the surface. The otherwise placid sea roiled with whirlpools of cavitation, but in a matter of seconds, all trace of the research vessel was gone. Three other lifeboats bobbed in the water nearby, but in the darkness it was impossible to tell how many of the commandos had made it off.

Sara sagged back against the vulcanized rubber gunwale, overcome by fatigue as the adrenaline drained from her bloodstream. Several minutes passed before it occurred to her to feel a sense of relief at having survived the ordeal.

Finally, she sat up and elaborated. “That ape skull was from an Australopithecine female.”

“Australia?”

Sara shook her head. “Australopithecus was one of the primate species that eventually evolved into Homo sapiens. It’s one of the fabled ‘missing links’ between apes and humans. The skull contained a retrovirus, which Manifold believed was responsible for the mutation that gave rise to human consciousness.”

“I don’t understand. A virus is responsible for turning apes into humans?”

“It’s more complicated than that, but essentially, yes. Viruses are just strands of genetic material that use our cells to replicate themselves. Certain viruses-retroviruses-actually alter the DNA of the cells that they invade. That’s the basis for gene therapy. It’s theoretically possible to introduce a virus that would rewrite a person’s entire genome. As new cells are created by mitosis, they would all carry the new DNA, and over time, every cell in a person’s body would be produced with the new code. That’s the theory, but in practice, it’s almost impossible. There are just too many cells in the body, and the natural response of the immune system would either fight the virus or kill the host.

“Manifold postulated that such a virus was responsible for adding the section of the genetic code that triggered self-awareness. From what I could gather, their working hypothesis was that an early hominid was exposed to the virus in utero, when the cells were still undifferentiated. That allowed for the mutation to completely alter the embryo’s DNA without triggering an immune response. When the child was born, the mutation would have enabled it to make to quantum leap to a rudimentary form of human consciousness, which it in turn passed on to its offspring. The section of the genetic code supplied by that retrovirus is in every human alive today. It seems that skull belonged to our common great-many times over-grandmother.”

Fulbright’s forehead creased with a frown. “If the virus is what evolved us into humans, how would it be a danger today? How could they use it as a weapon?”

Sara bit her lip thoughtfully. “I think they were trying to figure out a way to switch off that gene. Maybe by a secondary exposure to the virus.”

“Switch it off? That would…what? Turn us all into mindless apes?”

She nodded grimly. “I think that was the general idea.”

Fulbright let out a low whistle. “Can they do it? More importantly, is there a way to develop a vaccine to keep that from happening?”

“They would have had to do the genetic sequencing off-site, using a Cray supercomputer. So even though this lab was destroyed, we have to assume that they have the genome for the virus, and maybe even a viable sample that they can culture. To develop a vaccine, we would also need a sample of the original virus.”

“And where are we going to get that?”

“From the source.” She tapped the bag with the flash-drive. “We need to go where Felice Carter found that skull. We need to get there now. ”