The 6th Extinction

11

What’s one more ghost town here in the mountains?

Jenna rode in the back of a military vehicle with Nikko. The husky panted next to her, excited to be home. Their two escorts sat up front: Drake in the passenger seat, Lance Corporal Schmitt behind the wheel again. The group had airlifted by helicopter to Lee Vining’s small airport and was headed through the evacuated town to the ranger’s station.

Usually this early in the morning, the tiny lakeside town bustled with tourists day-tripping from neighboring Yosemite or stirring from the handful of motels stretched along Highway 395. Today, nothing moved down the main drag, except for a lone tumbleweed rolling along the center yellow line, pushed by the growing winds.

While the sun was shining to the east, dark clouds filled the western skies, piling over the Sierra Nevada range, threatening to roll across the basin at any moment. The forecast was for rain and heavy winds. She pictured that deadly wasteland up in the hills and imagined runoff sweeping from the higher elevations to the lake level and beyond.

But it wasn’t the VX gas that had everyone watching the skies. The latest toxicology report showed the potency of that nerve agent had rapidly diminished once in contact with the soil.

Instead, she pictured that blackened wasteland — and what was incubating there.

Thank God, no one is still in town.

The evacuation of Lee Vining — with its population of two hundred or so, not counting tourists — hadn’t taken long. She stared at the yellow sign for Nicely’s Restaurant, advertising a breakfast special that would never be served. A little farther, the Mono Lake Committee Information Center and Bookstore still had the American flag hanging out front, but the place was shuttered up tightly.

Would anyone ever be allowed to return here?

Finally the vehicle turned off the highway and onto Visitor Center Drive. The road wended its way up to the ranger station that overlooked Mono Lake. They didn’t bother stopping at the parking lot and drove right up to the towering glass entrance. The building doubled as a visitors’ center, with interpretive displays, a couple of art galleries, and a tiny theater.

A familiar figure opened the door as they drew to a stop. Bill Howard lifted an arm in greeting. He was dressed in blue jeans and a brown ranger’s shirt and jacket. Despite being in his mid-sixties, he kept his body hard and fit. The only sign of his age was his thinning hair and the sun-crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

She was really glad to see him, but she wasn’t the only one. Nikko hopped out and bounded up to Bill. The dog leaped for a bear hug from her fellow ranger. It was poor discipline, but Nikko only behaved this way with Bill, who more than tolerated it. Then again, Bill had three dogs of his own.

She crossed and hugged Bill just as warmly. “It’s good to see you.”

“Same here, kid. Sounds like you’ve had an exciting couple of days.”

That was the understatement of the year.

Drake climbed out of the vehicle and joined them. “Sir, did you get the information sent by Director Crowe?”

Bill’s back stiffened, going professional. “I did, and I’ve got all the traffic cameras and webcams pulled up. Follow me.”

They crossed through the visitors’ center and into the ranger station proper. The back office was small, with only enough room for a few desks, a row of computers, and a large whiteboard at the back. Jenna saw a long list of vehicles written on the board, along with license numbers, thirty-two of them in total.

Over the past sixteen hours, Painter Crowe had managed to get a full list of personnel working at the mountain research station. He also pulled up their vehicle registrations and any rental car information. It had taken an exasperatingly long time due to the level of security and the multiple government agencies involved — but most of the delay came from the simple fact that yesterday was a Sunday.

Who knew national security could be so dependent on the day of the week?

Bill Howard waved to a line of three computers. “I’ve cued up cameras from here and Mono City, and in case your target slipped past those unseen, I pulled feed from webcams around Tioga Pass headed to Yosemite and down 395.”

“That should cover everything south of the lake,” Jenna explained to Drake.

The gunnery sergeant nodded, satisfied. “Crowe has the sheriff’s department up in Bridgeport searching roads to the north of here. If someone from that base is a saboteur and hightailed it out of there, we should be able to cross-reference the vehicle information with cars passing by one or more of those cameras.”

Jenna pictured the open gates that led to the research station. It would take painstaking effort to check every car against that list, but it had to be done. It was their best lead. That is, if her theory of a fleeing saboteur even held water.

Maybe someone simply forgot to secure that gate.

Only one way to find out.

“Let’s get to work,” Jenna said.

Despite the mind-numbing task before them, she knew better than to complain. Others had it much worse.

“How’s he doing?” Painter asked the nurse.

The woman — a young Marine who was part of the MWTC’s medical staff — snapped off a pair of surgical gloves as she stepped out of the air lock from the quarantined ward. She looked haggard after finishing the night shift, followed by an hour-long decontamination procedure.

She turned to stare through the glass window into the makeshift recovery room. The self-contained BSL4 patient containment unit occupied a corner of a large hangar. The isolation facility had been airlifted from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick and hastily installed in here.

It held a single bed and one patient.

Josh lay there, connected by tubes and wires to a plethora of medical equipment. His skin was pale, his breathing shallow. His left leg — what was left of it — was slung halfway up. A light blanket hid the end of his stump.

Two other figures moved inside — a doctor and nurse — both ensconced in biohazard suits, tethered to the wall by oxygen tubes.

“He’s doing as best as could be expected,” the nurse answered, peeling off a surgical cap to reveal auburn hair cut in a short bob. She was pretty, but worry darkened her features. “According to the doctor, he may need more surgery.”

Painter closed his eyes for a breath. He pictured the fall of the axe, the bloody rush out of the hills, the frustrating time lost moving Josh safely from the forward staging area to here. Surgery had to be done under the same level of isolation, with surgeons suited up and struggling to repair the blunt trauma while wearing bulky gloves. Lisa shared the same blood type as her brother and donated two pints — more than she should have — while crying most of the time.

He knew how hard it had been for Lisa to make that decision in the field. Initially, she had kept her composure, knowing Josh needed a medical doctor at that time, not a sister. But once here, after Josh was taken into surgery, she broke down, nearly collapsing in despair and worry.

He’d tried to get her to take a sedative, to sleep, but she had refused.

Only one thing kept her sane, kept her moving.

Painter stared across the hangar to another cluster of white-walled structures. It was the Level 4 biolab installed by the CDC team. Lisa had been holed up with that group throughout the night. The loss of the leg was not the only concern.

“Has there been any sign of contamination?” Painter pressed the nurse.

She gave a small shake of her head, shrugging her shoulders. “We’re doing regular blood work, monitoring his temperature, watching for some sign of a mounting immune response. Every half hour, we check his body for any outward lesions. It’s all we can do. We still don’t know what to be watching for, or even what we’re dealing with.”

The nurse looked in the direction of the larger suite of BSL4 labs on the far side of the hangar.

Everybody was waiting for more information.

Twenty minutes ago, Painter had heard from a team stationed up by the dead zone. The blight — whatever it was — continued to spread unabated, consuming acres in a matter of hours.

But what the hell was causing it?

He thanked the nurse and headed toward the best place to discover an answer to that question.

Over the past twenty-four hours, Washington had been flying in personnel, mobilizing specialists from multiple disciplines: epidemiologists, virologists, bacteriologists, geneticists, bioengineers, anyone who might help. The entire region had been quarantined to a distance of fifty miles from ground zero. News crews fought for coverage at the edges, setting up camps.

It was becoming a zoo out there.

Distantly a rumble of thunder echoed over the mountains, rattling the steel roof of the hangar.

Even Mother Nature seemed determined to make matters worse.

Painter strode more quickly toward the BSL4 complex.

We need to catch a break… even a small one.

“Look at this,” Jenna called out from her computer.

Drake rolled his chair over from his workstation, bringing with him a musky scent of his masculinity. Bill stretched a kink from his lower back and stepped to join them. Even Nikko lifted his head from the floor, where he’d been working on an old Nylabone she kept in the station to distract him when she worked.

On the screen, she had captured the frozen image of a white Toyota Camry. The footage came from a weather camera along Highway 395, south of town. Unfortunately, the resolution was poor.

She pointed to the whiteboard on the back wall, which included a white Camry on the list of suspect cars. “I can’t make out the license plate, but the driver was going fast.”

She hit the play button and the vehicle in question zoomed down the stretch of highway.

“Seventy to eighty miles per hour,” Bill estimated.

“The car’s a common make and model,” Drake commented skeptically. “Could be someone just heading home.”

“Yeah, but watch as it passes another car in the opposite lane.”

She reversed the footage and clicked through more slowly, frame by frame. In one shot, a minivan crosses its path, traveling the other direction. The headlamps hit the windshield at the right angle to fully illuminate the driver. Again the resolution didn’t allow for much of an identification.

Drake squinted. “Dark blond maybe, medium to long hair. Still a blur.”

“Yeah, but look at what she’s wearing.”

Bill whistled. “Either she likes wearing white suits or that’s a lab coat.”

Jenna turned to the whiteboard. “Which researcher is listed as driving a white Camry?”

Drake rolled his chair over and grabbed his tablet computer from the desk. He scrolled through until he found the matching government employee file. “Says here that it’s Amy Serpry, biologist from Boston, recent hire. Five months ago.”

“How about a picture?”

Drake tapped at the screen, studied it, then turned it to face them. “Blond, hair in a ponytail. Still, it looks pretty long to me.” The Marine gave her a half-smile that made her feel much too warm. “I think this is when we say jackpot.”

Jenna wanted more assurance. “What do we know about her?”

Painter had given them everything he could about each researcher: records, evaluations, their background checks, even any papers published under their name.

Drake scanned through the highlights of her bio. “She’s from France, became an American citizen seven years ago, attended postdoctoral programs at both Oxford and Northwestern.”

No wonder Dr. Hess employed her. Plus from the photo, the woman was quite pretty, an asset that probably never hurts when it comes to getting hired by the boys’ club that was the scientific world.

Drake continued to read in silence, clearly looking for anything that stood out. “Get this,” he finally said. “She was a major figure in a movement that encouraged open access to scientific information. They advocated for more transparency. She even wrote an op-ed piece, supporting a Dutch virologist who had posted online the genetic tricks to make H5N1—the bird flu — more contagious and deadly.”

“She was okay with that being published?” Bill asked.

Drake read for a bit longer. “She was definitely not against it.”

Jenna took in a deep breath. “We should relay this to the sheriff’s department and Director Crowe. That Camry is an ’09 model. Likely equipped with a GPS unit.”

“And with the VIN number,” Bill said, “we should be able to track its location.”

“It’s worth checking out,” Jenna agreed.

Drake stood up and waved for her to follow. “In the meantime, we should get back to the helicopter. Be ready to move once we have a location.”

Jenna felt a measure of pride at being included — not that she would’ve had it any other way.

“Go.” Bill reached for a phone. “I’ll set everything in motion and alert you as soon as I hear something.”

With Nikko in tow, Jenna and Drake hurried out of the office and across the visitors’ center to the front doors. As she exited, a few cold raindrops struck her face.

She studied the skies and didn’t like what she saw.

A spatter of lightning lit the underbellies of a stack of black clouds.

Drake frowned, matching her expression. “We’re running out of time.”

He was right.

Jenna rushed for the waiting vehicle.

Somebody had better come up with some answers — and quick.

Lisa studied the rat in the cage, watching it root in the bedding, pushing its pink nose through the wood shavings. She empathized with the tiny creature, feeling equally trapped and threatened.

The test subject sat in a cage that was divided into two sections separated by a dense HEPA filter. On the opposite side was a black pile of dust — debris from one of the dead plants.

She typed a note into the computer, a challenging task with the thick gloves of her BSL4 suit.

They had run a series of trials with various pore sizes and thicknesses of filters, trying to evaluate the size of the infectious agent. So far this was the only rat that continued to show no signs of contamination. The others were all sick or dying from multi-organ failure.

She struggled not to think about her brother, entombed in the patient containment unit across the hangar.

Hours ago, she had performed a necropsy with a histopathologist on one of the rats in an early stage of infection. Its lungs and heart were the worst afflicted, with petechiae on the alveoli and rhabdomyolysis of the cardiac muscle fibers. Its heart was literally melting away. With initial lesions manifesting so dramatically in the chest, it suggested an airborne mode of transmission.

It was why they started this series of filter tests.

She continued to type.

So definitely not a bacterium.

One of the smallest known bacterial species was Mycoplasma genitalium, which topped off between 200 and 300 nanometers.

“Gotta be a virus,” she mumbled.

But even the tiniest virus known to man was the porcine circovirus, which was 17 nanometers in size. The transmittable particle here was even smaller than that. It was no wonder they were still struggling to get a picture of it, to examine its ultrastructure.

Two hours ago, a CDC technician had finally finished setting up and calibrating a scanning electron microscope inside a neighboring lab in the hangar. Hopefully soon they’d get to confront the adversary face-to-face.

She sighed, wanting to rub the knot of a headache out of her temples, but suited up she could not even brush the few hairs away that were tickling her nose. She had tried blowing them to the side before finally giving up. She knew exhaustion was getting the better of her, but she refused to leave the suite of BSL4 labs that were conducting various stages of research.

The radio crackled in her ear, then the lead epidemiologist, Dr. Grant Parson, spoke. “All researchers are to report to the central conference room for a summary meeting.”

Lisa placed a rubber palm on the plastic cage. “Keep hanging in there, little fella.”

She stood, unhooked her oxygen hose from the wall, and carried it with her through the air lock that led out from the in vivo animal-testing lab to the rest of the complex. Each lab was cordoned off from the other, both compartmentalizing the research and further limiting the chance of an outbreak spreading through the facility.

She stepped into the central hub. Every other hour, the lab’s scientists gathered in the room to compare notes and confer about their progress. To facilitate these meetings, a long table had been set up with additional monitors to aid in teleconferencing with researchers across the United States. A window behind the table looked out into the dark hangar.

She spotted a familiar face out there, standing at the glass.

She lifted an arm toward Painter and pointed to her ear. He wore a radio headpiece and dialed into a private channel.

“How’re you doing?” he asked, resting his hand on the window.

“We’re making slow progress,” she said, though she knew he was asking about her personal status, not an update on the research. She shied away from that and asked a more important question. “How’s Josh?”

She got regular updates from the medical staff, but she wanted to hear it from Painter, from someone who personally knew her brother.

“Still sedated, but he’s holding his own. Josh is tough… and a fighter.”

Painter was certainly right. Her brother tackled mountains, but even he couldn’t battle what couldn’t be seen.

“The good news is that it looks like the surgeons were able to salvage the knee joint,” Painter added. “Should help his recovery and physical therapy afterward.”

She prayed there was an afterward. “What about… is there any sign of infection?”

“No. Everything looks good.”

She took little comfort from this news. Josh’s contact with the agent had been via a break in the skin versus being inhaled. The lack of symptoms could just be due to a longer incubation period from that route of exposure.

A fear continued to nag at her.

Had I gotten his leg off in time?

Dr. Parson spoke up behind her. “Let’s get this meeting started.”

Lisa settled her gloved palm over Painter’s hand on the window. “Keep an eye on him for me.”

Painter nodded.

Lisa turned to join the other researchers. Some sat, others stood, all in their BSL4 suits. Over the next fifteen minutes, the head of each lab module gave an update.

An edaphologist — a soil scientist who studied microorganisms, fungi, and other life hiding in the earth — was the first to report. Anxiety fueled his words.

“I finished a full soils analysis from the dead zone. It’s not just the vegetation and wildlife that’s being killed. To a depth of two feet, I found the samples to be devoid of any life. Bacteria, spores, insects, worms. All dead. The ground had been essentially sterilized.”

Parson let his shock show. “That level of pathogenicity… it’s unheard of.”

Lisa pictured those dark hills, imagining the same shadow penetrating deep underground, leaving no life in its wake as it slowly rolled across the landscape. She had also heard about the inclement weather descending upon the Mono Lake Basin. It was a recipe for an ecological disaster of incalculable proportions.

A bacteriologist spoke up next. “Speaking of pathogenicity, our team has run through a gamut of liquid disinfection traps, seeking some way to sterilize the samples from the field. We’ve tried extremes of alkalinity and acidity. Lye, various bleaches, et cetera. But the samples remain infectious.”

“What about extreme heat?” Lisa asked, remembering Painter’s belief that they might have to scorch those hills to stop the blight from spreading.

The researcher shrugged. “We thought we initially had some success. We burned an infected plant to a fine ash — and at first it seemed to work, but after it cooled, it remained just as infectious. We believe the heat merely put the microbe into some type of spore or cyst-like state.”

“Maybe it takes something hotter,” Lisa said.

“Possibly. But how hot is hot enough? We’ve discussed a nuclear level of heat. But if the fires of an atomic bomb don’t kill it, the blast could scatter and aerosolize the agent for hundreds of miles.”

That was definitely not an option.

“Keep searching,” Parson encouraged.

“It would help if we knew what we were fighting,” the bacteriologist finished, which earned him many nods from his fellow scientists.

Lisa explained her own findings, confirming that they were likely dealing with something viral in nature.

“But it’s exceedingly small,” she said, “smaller than any known virus. We know Dr. Hess was experimenting with extremophiles from around the world, organisms that could thrive in acidic or alkaline environments, even some that could survive in the molten heat found in volcanic vents.”

She looked pointedly at the bacteriologist. “Then to make matters worse, we know Hess was also delving into the very fringes of synthetic biology. His project — Neogenesis — sought to genetically manipulate the DNA of extremophiles in an attempt to help endangered species, to make them hardier and more resistant to environmental changes. In this quest, who knows what monster he created down there?”

Dr. Edmund Dent, a CDC virologist, stood up. “I believe we’ve caught a glimpse of that monster. Under the newly installed electron microscope.”

All eyes turned to him.

“At first we thought it was a technical glitch. What we found seemed too small — unimaginably small — but if Dr. Cummings’s assessment concerning the size of the infectious particle is accurate, then perhaps it’s not a mistake.” Dent glanced to her. “If you’d be willing to join us…”

“Of course. I think we should also bring in a geneticist and bioengineer. Just in case, we—”

A loud klaxon sounded, drawing all their gazes to the window. A blue light flashed in the darkness, spinning in time with the alarm. It came from the patient containment unit.

Panic drew Lisa to her feet.

12

“Hold on tight!” the pilot called out.

The small Twin Otter plane bucked like an untamed stallion as it crossed high over the iceberg-choked Weddell Sea. The winds worsened as they neared the coast.

“These bastarding katabatics are kicking me in the arse!” the pilot explained. “If you’re feeling lurgy, I got airsickness bags back there if you’re going to chunder. Don’t go messin’ my girl up.”

Gray kept a firm hold on the strap webbing of his jump seat. He was belted in tightly along one side of the cabin. At the back, crates of gear and supplies rattled and creaked. He was normally not prone to motion sickness, but this roller coaster of a flight was testing even his mettle.

Jason sat across the cabin, his head lolling, half asleep, plainly unfazed by the turbulence. Apparently he’d had plenty of experience with this storm-swept continent. Instead, the kid seemed more afflicted by the twenty-four hours of long flights to get to the south end of the world.

At least this was their last leg.

Earlier today, just after sunrise — which was noon this side of the world, the beginning of their dark winter — they had flown from the Falkland Islands to the Antarctic Peninsula, landing atop a rocky promontory on Adelaide Island, where the British maintained Rothera Station. That flight had been aboard a large, bright red Dash 7 aircraft, with British Antarctic Survey emblazoned on its side. At Rothera, they had switched to this smaller Twin Otter, similarly painted, and set off across the Weddell Sea toward the Brunt Ice Shelf: a floating hundred-meter-thick sheet that hugged the far coastline in a region of East Antarctica called Coats Land.

As they made their approach, the aircraft’s twin props chopped into the polar airstream — called the katabatic winds — which rolled down from the higher elevations of the inner mountain ranges to roar out to sea.

Their pilot was an older UK airman named Barstow, who clearly had had plenty of arctic experience. He continued his ongoing commentary and tour. “Did you know the name of these winds comes from the Greek word katabaino, which means to go down?”

“Let’s hope that doesn’t happen to us,” a voice grumbled behind him.

Joe Kowalski huddled in the back. His large frame was folded nearly in half to fit into the cramped space. He looked like a shaven-headed gorilla crammed into a sewer pipe. He kept his head ducked from the low roof — not that he hadn’t hit it a few times during the bumpy ride over the Weddell Sea.

Kat had sent the big man along on this mission as additional support and muscle, while voicing another reason, too. Get him out of here. After his breakup with Elizabeth Polk, all he does is mope around these halls.

Gray wondered how Kat could tell the difference. Kowalski was never a beam of sunshine, even on his best days.

Still, Gray hadn’t complained. The guy might not look or sound it, but the former Navy sailor had his own skill set, which mostly involved things that go boom. As Sigma’s demolitions expert, he had proved invaluable in the past. Plus his cantankerous attitude sort of grew on you, like mold on bread. Once you got used to him, he was all right.

Not that I would ever admit that aloud.

“You can see Halley Station up yonder,” Barstow called back. “It’s that big blue centipede sittin’ atop the ice.”

Gray twisted to look out a window as the Twin Otter banked toward a landing.

Directly below, the black seas rode up against cliffs of blue ice, the walls towering as high as a row of forty-story skyscrapers. While the Brunt Ice Shelf appeared like a craggy coastline, it was actually a tongue of ice protruding into the sea, sixty miles across, flowing out from the higher glaciers of Queen Maud Land to the east. It moved at a rate of ten football fields every year, calving into bergs at the end, broken by the warmer waters of the Weddell and by the motion of the tides.

But what drew Gray’s full attention was something perched atop those cliffs. It did indeed look like a centipede. The Halley VI Research Station had been established in 2012, using a unique design of individual steel modules, each colored blue, connected to one another by enclosed walkways. Each pod rested on stilt-like skis with the height controlled by hydraulics.

“That’s the sixth version of Halley,” Barstow said, bobbling the craft in the wind. “The other five were buried in the snow, crushed, and pushed into the sea. That’s why we have everything on skis now. We can tow the station out of deep snow or keep it ahead of the drifting ice.”

Kowalski had his nose to the window. “Then how come it’s so close to that drop now?”

He was right. The eight linked modules, all lined up in a row, sat only a hundred yards from the cliff’s edge.

“Won’t be there much longer. Be movin’ her inland in a couple more weeks. A group of climate eggheads have been doing a yearlong study of melting glaciers, tracking the speed of ice sliding off this bloody continent. They’re just about done here, and the whole lot will be shippin’ out to the other side of Antarctica.” The pilot glanced back to them — which Gray didn’t appreciate as the Twin Otter was in mid-dive toward a landing. “They’re heading over to the Ross Ice Shelf. To McMurdo Station. One of your Yank bases.”

“Eyes on the road,” Kowalski groused from the back, pointing forward for extra emphasis.

As the pilot swung back to his duty, Gray turned to Jason, who had stirred at the jostling and noise. “McMurdo? You still have family there, right?”

“Near there,” Jason said.

“Who’d want to live out here?” Kowalski said. “Freeze your goddamned balls off if you even tried to take a piss.”

Barstow snorted a laugh. “Especially midwinter, mate. Then you’d likely lose your todger, too. Come winter, it’s monkeys out there.”

“Monkeys?” Kowalski asked.

“He means it’s damned cold,” Gray translated.

Jason pointed below. “Why’s that one section of the station in the middle painted red and all the others are blue?”

“It’s our red-light district down here,” Barstow answered, fighting the plane to keep level as the ice rose up toward them. “That section is where all the fun happens. We eat there, raise a few pints on the rare occasion, play snooker, and have tellies for watching movies.”

The Twin Otter landed and slid across a plowed surface that doubled as a runway. The entire craft rattled and thrummed atop its skis, finally coming to a stop not too far from the station.

They all exited. Though bundled deep in thick polar jackets, the winds immediately discovered every gap and loose fold. Each breath was like sucking in liquid nitrogen, while the reflected glare of the sun sitting low on the horizon was blinding off the ice. Sunset was only a half hour away. In another couple of days, it wouldn’t rise or set at all.

The pilot followed them out, but he kept his coat unzipped, his hood down. He turned his craggy face up to the blue skies, as if basking in the last moments of sunlight. “Won’t be this warm for much longer.”

Warm?

Even Gray’s teeth ached from the cold.

“Got to get your tan when you can,” Barstow said and led them toward a set of stairs that climbed up to one of the giant blue modules.

From the ground, the sheer size of the station was impressive. Each pod looked as big as a two-story house and was elevated fifteen yards above the snow-swept ice by four giant hydraulic skis. A full-sized tractor could easily drive under the station, which from the parked John Deere nearby probably occasionally happened.

“Must be how they tow the modules,” Jason said, eyeing the American-built piece of machinery. He then squinted at the ice-encrusted bulk of the station. “Whole setup looks like something out of Star Wars.”

“Right,” Kowalski agreed. “Like on the ice planet Hoth.”

Gray and Jason looked at him.

His perpetual scowl deepened. “I watch movies.”

“This way, gents,” Barstow said, motioning for them to mount the stairs.

As they clomped their way up, knocking snow from their boots, a door opened above and a woman in an unzipped red parka stepped to the top landing to greet them. Her long brunette hair was combed back from her face and secured against the wind in an efficient but still feminine ponytail. Her physique was lithe and muscular, her cheeks wind-burned and tanned. Here was a woman who clearly refused to stay locked inside the station.

“Welcome to the bottom of the world,” she greeted them. “I’m Karen Von Der Bruegge.”

Gray climbed to her and shook her hand. “Thank you for accommodating us, Dr. Von Der Bruegge.”

“Karen is fine. We’re far from formal here.”

Gray had been briefed about this woman who served as both the station’s lead scientist and base commander. At only forty-two, she was already a well-regarded arctic biologist, trained in Cambridge. In the mission’s dossier, Gray had seen her photographs of polar bears in the far north. Now she was on the opposite side of the globe, studying colonies of emperor penguins that nested here.

“Come inside. We’ll get you settled.” She turned and led them through the hatch. “This is the command module, where you’ll find the boot room, communication station, surgery, and my office. But I think you’ll be more comfortable in our recreation area.”

Gray took a look around as she led them through her domain, noting the small surgical suite with a single operating theater. He paused at a door leading into the communication room.

“Dr. Von Der Bruegge… Karen, I’ve been trying to reach the States since we reached Rothera Station over on Adelaide, but I keep failing to get a substantial signal.”

Her brow crinkled. “Your sat phone… it must be using a geosynchronous connection.”

“That’s right.”

“Those work poorly when you cross seventy degrees south of the equator. Which pretty much means all of Antarctica. We use an LEO satellite system here. Low earth orbit.” She pointed to the room. “Feel free to make a call. We can give you some privacy. But I must warn you that we’re in the middle of a solar storm that’s been affecting our systems, too. Very bothersome, but it makes the aurora australis — our southern lights — quite spectacular.”

Gray stepped into the room. “Thank you.”

Karen turned to the others. “I’ll take you to our communal area. I’m guessing you could use some hot coffee and food right about now.”

“I never turn down a free meal,” Kowalski said, sounding less mournful.

As they exited through a hatch into one of the enclosed bridges between the modules, Gray closed the door to the communication room and stepped to the satellite phone. He dialed a secure number for Sigma command and listened to the tonal notes as a scrambled line was connected.

Kat answered immediately. “Did you reach Halley Station?” she asked, not wasting any time.

“Probably shook a few fillings out of my molars, but we’re here safe and sound. We still have to await the arrival of whomever Professor Harrington is sending here. Then maybe we’ll start getting some answers.”

“Hopefully that will happen soon. The news out of California has been growing grimmer over the past couple of hours. A storm front is moving into the area, with the threat of torrential rains and flash floods.”

Gray understood the danger. Any containment of that quarantine zone would be impossible.

As Kat continued, some of her words were lost amid pops of static and digital drops. “You should also know that Lisa’s brother is showing… signs of infection. He had a seizure twenty minutes ago. We’re still trying to determine if it’s secondary to his exposure or a surgical complication. Either way, we need to get… handle on this situation ASAP before all hell breaks loose.”

“How’s Lisa holding up?”

“She’s working around the clock. Driven to find some way of helping her brother. Still, it’s got Painter worried. The only good news is that we may have a possible lead on the saboteur of the base. We’re following up on that right now.”

“Good, and I’ll expedite what I can here. But we still have an hour until Professor Harrington’s contact is due to arrive to ferry us to his location.”

Wherever the hell that was.

Kat’s impatience rang through from a world away. “If only he wasn’t so damned paranoid…”

Gray appreciated her frustration, but he was nagged by another worry: What if Harrington had a good reason to be paranoid?

Back home again…

With the sun close to setting, Jason took advantage of the view. He sat at a table before a two-story bank of triple-glazed windows that looked out across the ice field to the expanse of the Weddell Sea. Massive ships of ice dotted those dark blue waters, sculpted by wind and waves into ethereal shapes that towered high into crests, arches, and jagged blue-white sails.

He had joined Sigma to do good, to keep the nation safe, but he had also hoped to see more of the world. Instead, he spent most of his time buried underground at Sigma command, and now on his first real field assignment…

I get sent home.

He had spent part of his childhood in Antarctica, with his mother and stepfather, who still worked near McMurdo Station on the other side of the continent.

Now I’ve come back full circle.

He sipped dourly from a cup of hot tea, listening to the chatter from the handful of base personnel who shared the recreation area. The red module was broken into two levels. The lower half contained the dining facilities, while a corkscrew staircase led up to a loft that held a small library, a bank of computers, and a conference area. There was even a rock-climbing wall that ran between the two floors.

Directly behind him, a trio of men played pool, speaking in what sounded like Norwegian. Though the site was a UK station, it drew an international group of researchers. According to Dr. Von Der Bruegge, the place normally housed fifty to sixty scientists, but they were downsizing of late as the dark winter months approached. Their numbers had dwindled to twenty, and only a dozen or so people would remain through what would eventually be perpetual night.

Due to this transitional period, the base hummed with activity — both inside and out. Beyond the windows, a pair of Sno-Cats dragged pallets of crates away from the station. But the most amazing sight was of the green John Deere tractor slowly hauling one of the unattached blue modules across the ice. It vanished ghostly into the fog that stuck close to the shelf, defying the higher winds as sunset approached.

The commander had said that over the next week — working 24/7—the station would be disassembled and dragged piecemeal inland, where it would be reassembled for the winter months.

In the sky, another Twin Otter flew low along the edge of the ice shelf, catching the last rays of the sun and looking as if it were coming in for a landing for the night. Rather than the cherry red of the British Antarctic Survey squadron, this one was painted chalk white. It was an unusual paint job for an arctic region, where bright primary colors were preferred in order to better stand out against the ice and snow.

Maybe it’s Professor Harrington’s contact.

Jason half stood, ready to alert Gray. Across the way, Kowalski was at the buffet, piling up a second plate of food, mostly slices of pie from the looks of it.

Then the plane tilted higher, turning away from the plowed airstrip. It looked to be leaving again. It must not be their contact after all, maybe a sightseer. Either way, it was a false alarm

Jason settled back to his chair.

He watched the plane bank on a wingtip. A door opened along its side. He spotted movement within — followed by the suspicious protrusion of a pair of long black tubes.

Fire spat from their ends, trailing smoke.

Rocket launchers.

The first blasts destroyed the lone Twin Otter on the ice. Then the plane swept toward the station.

Jason felt his arm grabbed.

Kowalski yanked him out of his chair. “Time to go, kid.”

Gray ran low down the elevated bridge that connected the command module to the recreation pod. The blasts still echoed in his head. He had just stepped into the enclosed span after finishing his call with Kat — when the first rockets exploded. Through the windows along the bridge, he watched the ruins of the Twin Otter burn.

Ahead, another figure rose from a crouched position in the passageway.

Gray ran up to her. “Karen, are you okay?”

The base commander looked dazed, momentarily stunned. Then her blue eyes focused, going angry rather than scared.

“What the bloody hell?” she blurted out.

“We’re under attack.”

She made to push past him. “We must get out a mayday.”

Gray caught her around the midsection, stopping her. He heard the timbre of the aircraft’s engines growing louder. He dragged her toward the recreation module.

“No time,” he warned.

“But—”

“Trust me.”

Gray didn’t have time to explain, so he rushed her to the end of the bridge, half carrying her. As he reached the far door, it opened before him. Kowalski appeared, filling the threshold. It looked like he had Jason equally in hand.

“Back inside!” Gray yelled.

As Kowalski moved out of the way, Gray charged through and shoved Karen toward his partners. He slammed the door behind him — just as another pair of explosions shook the entire module. Glassware fell from shelves in the dining area, and several of the triangular panes of window cracked into splinters from the concussion.

Gray stared out the porthole window in the door. The far end of the connecting bridge had been blasted away. A crater also smoked in the flank of the command module.

Right where the communication room was located.

Karen had rejoined him, looking over his shoulder.

“They’re isolating us,” Gray explained. “First they took out the plane, eliminating the only way off the ice. Then when I heard the plane coming this way, I knew they would target communications next, to further cut us off from the outside world.”

“Who are they?”

Gray pictured the team that had assaulted DARPA headquarters. The Twin Otter in the sky had been white, a common color for arctic combat operations. He imagined a ground assault was imminent.

“Do you have any weapons?” Gray asked.

Karen turned the opposite direction. “In the caboose. The last module of the station. But we don’t have many.”

He’d take too few versus none.

By now, others had gathered around, including Barstow, along with a handful of frightened-looking researchers.

“How many others are inside the station?” Gray asked, leading them across the dining hall.

Karen surveyed those with them, clearly doing a head count. “This time of year, no more than another five or six, not counting the work crew already outside.”

Gray reached the far side and hauled open the door to the next bridge. “Keep moving! Module by module! All the way to the rear!” He waved everyone through, then ran alongside Karen. “Does the station have an intercom system, a way of dispatching a general alarm?”

She nodded. “Of course. It’ll also radio to anyone out on the ice.”

“Good. Then once we reach the last module, order an evacuation.”

She glanced at him with concern. “With the sun down, the temps outside will drop precipitously.”

“We have no other choice.”

It had grown quiet outside. No further blasts. He pictured the Twin Otter circling to land. He had no doubt an assault team would be offloaded soon. Without any means of communication, they were unable to request help, while the attackers would have all night to search the station or merely set charges and blow each module to hell.

As Gray formulated a plan, his retreating group burst into the next module. It was the station’s living quarters, made up of a series of small bedrooms painted in bright colors. They collected another station member there: a small panicked-looking young man wearing glasses. They continued onward, passing through two more research modules. Both had been packed up and closed down for the winter.

Finally they reached the last car of this icy train. It was clearly a storage space.

“Where are the weapons?” Gray asked.

“Near the back door,” Karen said and tossed a set of keys to Barstow. “Show them.”

While he obeyed, Karen stepped over to an intercom on the wall, quickly tapping in a code. Gray followed Barstow as Karen sounded a general alert, warning any other station members inside to evacuate. To those outside, she instructed them to stay away.

Barstow led them to a locker on the back wall and used Karen’s key to open the double doors. Gray stared at the rows of rifles and handguns, trying not to show his disappointment at the meager number of weapons, but then again, what sort of threat would this base normally face? There were no land-based predators out here, nothing but penguins and some seals. The few rifles and guns were likely meant to deal with any unruly guests of the station — not a full-on assault.

Gray passed around the six Glock 17 pistols and shouldered one of the three assault rifles. It was an L86A2 Light Support Weapon. He passed another to Kowalski and the last to Barstow. To the side, Jason loaded his Glock with experienced skill.

Gray stepped to the window in the last door. Outside, night had fallen on this short day, dropping a blanket of darkness over them. Beyond the hatch, a small platform led to a ladder that descended down to the ice.

“Kowalski and Barstow, once we’re on the ground, we’ll try to discourage the plane from landing. Failing that, we’ll move to a defensible position.” Gray turned to Jason. “You lead the others away. Put as much distance between here and the station as you can.”

The kid nodded. His eyes looked alert, frosted by a healthy fear, but ready to move.

Karen returned, bearing an armload of handheld radios. “Grabbed these, too.”

Gray nodded at her resourcefulness, then took one and pushed it into his parka’s pocket. “Pass the others around.”

Once they were ready, Gray took the lead. He hauled open the hatch to the dark, frigid night. As the first blast of cold hit his face, he suddenly doubted the wisdom of his plan. Death was as certain out on the ice as it was inside the station. They would need to find shelter and fast — somewhere other than here.

But where?

Another blast erupted, shaking the station. The lights flickered once, then died.

Karen spoke behind him. “Must’ve taken out the generators.”

Gray frowned. Had the enemy eavesdropped on Karen’s alert? Had it triggered this new attack? Or was this the assault team’s final salvo to soften and unnerve their targets before landing?

The continuing drone of the Twin Otter reminded him that any further reservations or hesitation would only worsen their odds. Knowing this, he hurried into the cold, pulling on his gloves, and mounted the ladder. He slid most of the way down and waved for the others to follow.

With the butt of his weapon at his shoulder, he used the scope to track the lights of the Twin Otter in the evening sky. It banked on the far side of the station. Then a flash flared from its hull. Another explosion echoed across the ice. A small island of light went dark out there.

“I think that was one of our Sno-Cats,” Karen said, her voice strained with guilt. “I should’ve warned them to go dark.”

Gray noted another Sno-Cat parked on the ice to the right of the station, along with a trio of Ski-Doos. “Can you get those snow machines started fast enough? If you keep the lights off, you’ll be able to cover more ground than on foot.”

She nodded.

“What if the enemy has night-vision?” Jason asked, joining them.

“If they do, they’ll spot us just as easily on foot.” Gray pointed to the thick banks of fog settling to the icy shelf all around the station. “Once you’re moving, make for that cover as quickly as you can. It’s your best chance.”

Jason eyed that refuge doubtfully.

In a hope to better their odds, Gray turned to Kowalski and Barstow. “We’ll buy the others as much time as possible.” He motioned to the opposite side of the station from the parked snow machines. “If we fire from over there, we can keep the enemy’s attention on us.”

Kowalski shrugged. “I guess it’s better than freezing our asses off.”

Barstow also nodded.

With a plan in place, Gray ordered the two groups to split up.

Jason glanced over a shoulder as he led his party off. “One of the Ski-Doos is a three-seater.” He eyed Gray’s team. “I’ll leave it with the engine running. Just in case.”

Gray acknowledged this with a nod, impressed with the kid’s quick thinking.

With the matter settled, Gray led Kowalski and Barstow under the caboose of the station. He heard the snow engines grumble to life on the other side — at first cold and choking, then with more throaty power.

Gray watched the group slowly depart, disappearing into the fog, one after the other.

Satisfied, Gray stepped out from under the shelter of the station, weapon at his shoulder. He followed the Twin Otter in the sky as it turned and swung in his direction, seeming to climb higher as if sensing the hidden snipers below.

Its strange actions worried Gray. Suspicions jangled up his spine.

Why hadn’t it made any effort to land yet?

The plane continued a slow circle, like a hawk above a field. So far, the assault seemed targeted to isolate the base, to keep its occupants pinned down.

But to what end? What are they waiting for?

The answer came a heartbeat later.

A massive explosion — a hundredfold stronger than any of the prior rocket blasts — shook the world. At the far end of the station, a geyser of ice and fire blew high into the night. Then another detonation erupted, much closer, followed by yet another.

Gray and the others were knocked to their knees. He pictured a row of munitions buried deep in the ice. The line of charges must have been planted long ago.

The series of blasts continued on the far side of the station, running from one end to the other.

Gray stared beyond that line, toward the heavy fog bank.

As least the others got clear in time…

As Gray watched, fissures skittered outward, connecting the new craters together and extending yet again. He imagined the ice splitting downward as well, cleaving deep into the shelf of floating ice.

Gray suddenly understood the enemy’s plan.

His stomach knotted into a cold fist.

Confirming his worst fear, a final loud crack erupted, sounding like the earth’s crust shattering beneath them.

Slowly the ice shifted under his knees, tilting away from the new fracture and leaning out toward the dark sea. The buried bombs had succeeded in breaking loose a chunk of the Brunt Ice Shelf, calving a new iceberg — one that included Halley VI atop it.

The entire station shuddered and began to slowly slide across the slanting ice, skating atop its giant skis.

Gray stared upward in disbelief.

Kowalski watched it all, too. “Looks like I won’t be patching things up with my ex after all.”

13

“If you’re going to hide,” Drake said, “this isn’t a bad place to hole up.”

“Let’s hope she’s still here.” Jenna climbed out of the SUV into the morning drizzle. She pulled up her Gore-Tex jacket’s hood and appreciated the majesty that was the famous Ahwahnee Hotel, the crown jewel of Yosemite National Park.

Opened in 1927, the rustic mountain lodge was a masterful mix of Arts and Crafts style and Native American design, famous for its massive sandstone fireplaces, its hand-stenciled wood beams, and for its many stained glass windows. Though a night’s stay was too pricey for Jenna’s salary, she occasionally splurged for a brunch in the resplendent dining room, a three-story-tall space supported by massive sugar pine trestles.

But the main lodge wasn’t their destination this morning.

The four-man Marine team had parked their nondescript vehicle in a back lot. Drake led the way toward the woods bordering the hotel, drawing Jenna and Nikko with him. They were all dressed in civilian gear, made bulkier by the Kevlar body armor under their clothes, and kept their weapons out of sight.

Jenna had her compact .40-caliber Smith & Wesson M&P belted at her waist, hidden by the fall of her jacket, along with a pair of handcuffs hanging on her other hip.

Ten minutes ago, the team had been airlifted by helicopter over the Sierra Nevada range, passing through some rough weather, to reach the Yosemite Valley. The wide meadow next to the Ahwahnee was a common landing spot for rescue choppers in the park, but Drake had feared they might spook their quarry, so he chose a site farther out — landing at nearby Stoneman Meadow.

“Car,” Lance Corporal Schmitt said.

He pointed to a white Toyota Camry with Massachusetts plates. The license number was a match. The vehicle belonged to Amy Serpry.

An hour ago, Painter had expedited a GPS search for a vehicle matching the car’s VIN number. They had discovered it here, in Yosemite Valley, not far from the region of the mountains that had been evacuated and quarantined.

Initially everyone thought the woman had abandoned the car, possibly switching vehicles. An inquiry to the hotel had revealed no record of an Amy Serpry checking in. But a photo was sent to the front desk. It seemed a woman matching her description had booked a room under an alias, arriving with false identification and credit cards.

An undeniable sign of guilt.

But why had the suspect settled here, so close to the border of the quarantine zone? Did she stay in the area to observe the aftermath of her handiwork?

Anger burned in Jenna’s gut, picturing the wasteland, all the dead wildlife. She shied away from remembering the fall of the axe, the screaming. She had held Josh’s shoulders when Drake did what had to be done. Afterward, the gunnery sergeant refused to speak during the return trip, his gaze lost in the hills.

“She must still be here,” Schmitt said, as they filed past her car. “Unless she left in another vehicle from here.”

Let’s hope not. We need answers.

Drake marched in the lead, his face hard and stoic. He clearly wanted more than answers; he wanted payback.

The Toyota was parked near a small path that led back through a stand of Ponderosa pines. The Ahwahnee maintained twenty-four rustic rental cabins, all hidden in the woods. Amy must have booked one of those remote cottages in order to keep a low profile.

The team set off down the path. The scent of pine pitch swelled under the dripping canopy of the forest. At a fork, two of Drake’s men flanked to the right. Steps later, the gunnery sergeant headed with another Marine into the woods to the left. They intended to circle the cabin, to lay a noose around the place.

As the Marines vanished, she and Nikko headed directly for the cottage. The plan was for Jenna to make the first approach. In civilian clothes with a dog at her side, she looked like any other tourist. The goal was to get Amy to let her guard down, to perhaps open the door to a lost hiker.

After a turn in the pathway, a quaint cedar-plank cottage appeared, nestled among the pines. It was painted green to better blend into the forest. A wet stone patio framed a door with two sidelights. The windows were all draped shut, as were the glass panes in the door.

Looks like somebody sure wants her privacy.

Jenna felt no misgivings about striding forward on her own, knowing the Marines had her back. Still, she gave her armored vest a surreptitious tug. Nikko kept to her knee, as if sensing her tension.

As she reached the door, she shook back her hood, ignoring the rain, and plastered on a feigned look of confusion. She knocked firmly, then stepped back.

“Hello,” she called out. “I was wondering if you could tell me how to get to the Ahwahnee’s lobby?”

A faint sound reached her.

So somebody was inside.

She leaned closer, bringing her ear near the door. “Hello!” she tried again, louder this time.

As she listened, she realized the noise was the muffled ringing of a phone. From the tone, it had to be a cell phone.

She took in a breath to call again when somebody responded, hoarse, barely audible.

“… help me…”

Reacting instinctively to the plaintive cry, Jenna pulled out her Smith & Wesson and used the butt of her pistol to smash the side light next to the doorknob. As the window shattered, she yanked the cuff of her jacket lower over her hand, brushed the worst of the glass out of the way, then reached through and tugged on the door latch inside, disengaging the lock.

She heard boots pounding up behind her.

A glance back revealed Drake running her way. “Wait!”

Now unlocked, the door swung open on its own.

Jenna kept sheltered to the side and raised her pistol in both hands. Drake reached her, taking a position on the other side.

A single bedside lamp glowed inside the shadowy room. It revealed a figure in the bed, half covered by a comforter. From the blond hair, it had to be Amy Serpry — but the woman’s face was swollen and blotched, her skin blistering, darkening the edges of her lips. Vomit stained the top of the quilt, while the sheets were tangled as if she had fought within them.

Earlier, Jenna had heard about Josh having a seizure.

She suspected Amy had suffered similarly.

No wonder she hadn’t escaped too far. She must’ve gotten sick and went to ground where she could.

Jenna felt little sympathy for the saboteur, knowing how many had died because of the woman’s actions.

Amy’s head tilted on the pillow, falling in the direction of the door. Her eyes were an opaque white, likely blind. Her mouth opened, as if to again plead for help.

Instead, blood poured forth, swamping the pillow and soaking the mattress. The body sagged in the bed, going slack and still.

Jenna took a step to go to her aid, but Drake blocked her at the threshold with his arm.

“Look at the rug,” he warned.

At first Jenna could make no sense of the small shapes dotting the floor. Then her mind snapped to what she was seeing.

Mice… dead mice.

She had heard stories of the tiny trespassers who often shared these cottages with the hotel guests. A friend of hers from college had stayed in one of these cabins last year. Afterward, all she could talk about was how mice bounded across her bed at night, rooted through her luggage, even deposited a few droppings in her shoes.

To deal with the vermin problem, the hotel maintained an ongoing war, especially after cases of mouse-borne hantavirus broke out in the valley.

But the war inside this cottage was already over.

Or almost over.

A lone mouse hopped feebly across the carpet, its body shaking.

Jenna reacted too slowly, too focused on the horrors inside.

Nikko burst past her, the motion igniting his hunter’s instinct.

“Nikko, no!”

The husky stopped at her command, but he already had the mouse in his teeth. He turned back, his tail dropping, knowing he had done something wrong.

“Nikko…”

The dog dropped the mouse and came sheepishly toward her, his head bowed, his tail tucked.

Drake pushed Jenna back with one arm — then reached and closed the door. What lurked inside that room was something far worse than any hantavirus.

On the opposite side of the door, Nikko whined, pleading to be let out.

Lisa waited inside the air lock for the pressure to stabilize before she could open the inner door that led into the lab complex. Through the walls, she heard the light tin-tinning of raindrops on the metal roof of the cavernous hangar.

It reminded her that time was running short.

According to the local meteorologists, the massive storm front continued to push into the region. As of yet, the dead acres surrounding ground zero remained dry, but it was only a matter of time before those dark skies opened up over the area. A logistical group had been tasked to figure out how far this disease might spread, employing computerized modeling programs to calculate runoff patterns based on topography and local geology.

Their initial reports were harrowing.

Painter was currently teleconferencing with various state and federal officials, trying to stay one step ahead of this disaster. Unfortunately, a new arrival in the middle of the night had proven to be a headache. The technical director from the DTC — the U.S. Army Developmental Test Command — had flown in from Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, which handled the nation’s defense against nuclear, chemical, and biological threats. In the few short hours since the man had arrived, he’d already become a pain in Painter’s ass.

The light above the inner door turned green, and the magnetic lock released with an audible pop of pressure. Lisa stepped through, all too glad to leave the political hassles to Painter. She had a greater challenge that needed her full attention.

She glanced over a shoulder toward the patient containment unit on the hangar’s far side. Josh was resting again, on a diazepam drip. The cause of his brief seizure remained unknown, but she feared it was a possible sign of infection spreading to his central nervous system.

She pictured the thorn sticking out of his leg.

I hope I’m wrong.

But until she knew for sure, she intended to keep working.

“Dr. Cummings, you’re back. Fantastic.”

The voice came through her radio earpiece. She turned and spotted Dr. Edmund Dent, the CDC virologist, on the far side of a window, standing in his lab. He lifted an arm in greeting — then waved for her to come inside.

“Thanks to your work, I think we’ve made some significant progress in isolating the infectious particle,” he radioed to her. “Once we knew to look for something so small, we’ve started to make good headway. But I’d love to get your input on what we’ve found so far.”

“Of course,” she said.

Excited for even a measure of progress, Lisa hurried through the smaller air lock to reach his lab. His section of the BSL4 suite was all shiny with steel hardware: high-speed centrifuges, a mass spectrometer, a Leica ultramicrotome and cryochamber, along with a pair of electron microscopes.

She discovered another suited figure seated at one of the computer stations, bowed over a monitor. She failed to recognize him until he turned. She kept the surprise out of her face as best she could.

It was Dr. Raymond Lindahl, the technical director from the U.S. Army Developmental Test Command. Through his face shield, the man looked to be in his early fifties, with dyed black hair and a matching goatee. Since his arrival, he had been sticking his long nose into all of Painter’s work, making snap judgments, ordering changes when it was in his prerogative to do so — which, frustratingly for Painter, was all too often.

Now it seemed Painter’s pain was about to become her own.

Of course, it was not inappropriate for the man to be here. Lisa had heard about Lindahl’s background as both a geneticist and a bioengineer. He was brilliant in his own right and had the arrogance to go along with it.

“Dr. Dent,” Lindahl said stiffly, “I’m not sure we need Dr. Cummings’s expertise in medicine and physiology here. Her time is better spent with clinical work, concentrating on her animal studies, not at this level of research.”

The virologist did not back down, which made Lisa like him all the more. Edmund was ten years younger than Lindahl and had a bohemian attitude, likely honed from his time spent at Berkeley and Stanford. Though she had never seen the virologist out of his protective suit, she always imagined him in Birkenstocks and a tie-dyed T-shirt.

“It was Lisa’s work that enabled our progress here,” Edmund reminded Lindahl. “And it never hurts to get another pair of eyes on a problem. Besides, when is honey ever made with only one bee in a hive?”

An exasperated sigh escaped Lindahl, but he let the matter drop.

Edmund rolled a chair next to the DTC director. “Lisa, let me catch you up. I mentioned at the earlier meeting that I thought I might have caught a glimpse of the monster in play here. Here’s a transmission electron micrograph of a cross section of alveoli from the lungs of an infected rat.”

Lisa leaned closer, studying the pockets of tiny particles densely packed into the lung’s small air cells.

“Those definitely look like virions — viral particles,” Lisa admitted. “But I’ve never seen anything so small.”

Edmund nodded his head. “I took measurements from some particles budding along infected cardiac muscle fibers. This is from a scanning electron micrograph, offering more of a 3-D view.”

The new picture revealed individual viruses attached to branching muscle bundles and nerves. A scale had been included to offer some measure of size.

“Looks like they’re less than ten nanometers,” Lisa commented. “That’s half the size of the smallest known virus.”

“Which is why I stepped in to help.” Lindahl elbowed Edmund out of the way. “To get a clearer picture, I collated the protein data from the team’s molecular biologist. From that data and using a program I patented, I worked up a three-dimensional representation of the virion’s capsid, its outer shell.”

Lisa studied the spherical modeling of the infectious particle. She was impressed at Lindahl’s skill, almost to the point of accepting his arrogance.

“That’s the outer face of our monster,” Edmund said. “Henry is already in the midst of doing a genetic analysis on what’s hidden inside that shell.”

Dr. Henry Jenkins was a geneticist from Harvard.

“But we can still extrapolate plenty from this capsid,” Lindahl said. “Enough to say this is an artificial construct. Beneath that protein coat, we found carbon graphene fibers — each only two atoms thick — woven in a hexagonal pattern.”

He brought up another image alongside the last one, showing that protein coat removed this time, leaving a tangled webbing behind.

It definitely looked artificial. Lisa pondered the significance of those man-made fibers. Graphene was a remarkably tough material, stronger than spider’s silk.

“It almost looks,” she said, “as if Hess was trying to engineer the equivalent of a Kevlar layer under that shell.”

Lindahl turned to her. “Exactly. Very insightful. This additional substructure could account for the virion’s stability, how it’s proven resistant to bleaches, acids, even fire.”

Yet, none of this answered the bigger question: What’s that tough coat protecting?

Lindahl continued. “It seems Dr. Hess engineered a perfect shell, one that is small enough to penetrate any tissue. Animal, plant, fungus. Its unusual size and nature might explain why it’s so universally pathogenic.”

She nodded, remembering how the organism had sterilized the soil to a depth of two feet.

“But why did Hess create it?” Lisa asked. “What’s its purpose?”

“Are you familiar with eVLPs?” Lindahl asked.

She shook her head.

“We were discussing the subject just before you arrived,” Edmund explained. “It stands for empty virus-like particles. It’s a new field of experimental study, where you strip the DNA out of a virus until only its outer shell remains. There are advantages to this in regards to vaccine production.”

She understood. Those empty particles would stimulate a strong antigenic or protective response without the risk of the vaccine agent making you sick.

“But that’s the least of it,” Lindahl said. “Once you have an empty shell, you can build from there. Add organic or even inorganic compounds, like those graphene fibers.”

“And once you create that shell,” Edmund added, “you can fill it with whatever wonders or horrors you want. In other words, the perfect shell becomes the perfect delivery system.”

Lisa stared again at the face of that monster.

What was hidden inside there?

“And you think Dr. Hess accomplished something like that?” Lisa asked. “That he built this virion from scratch in his lab and put something inside it.”

Lindahl leaned back. “We already have the technology. Way back in 2002, a group of scientists at Stony Brook synthesized a live polio virus from nothing but chemicals and a known genetic blueprint.”

Edmund huffed. “The project was sponsored by the Pentagon.”

Lisa heard the not-so-veiled accusation in his voice. Dr. Hess’s work was funded by the military, too.

Lindahl ignored the implication. “And in 2005, a larger influenza virus was synthesized in another lab. In 2006, the same was accomplished with the Epstein-Barr virus, which has the same number of base pairs as smallpox. But that’s child’s play compared to today. We can now manufacture organisms a hundredfold larger and at a fraction of the cost.” He snorted dismissively. “You can even buy a DNA synthesizer on eBay.”

“So what exactly did Dr. Hess put in there?” Lisa asked.

Before anyone would hazard a guess, Lisa’s radio buzzed. From the reactions of the other two men, they heard it, too.

It was Painter. The urgent stress in his voice quickened her heart. “We just heard word from Yosemite,” he reported. “The suspected saboteur is dead.”

Dead…

Lisa closed her eyes, thinking of Josh. Amy Serpry had been their only lead, the only way to discover more details about Dr. Hess’s work.

“From the initial report,” Painter continued, “she likely died of the same disease we’re battling here. The National Guard, along with an outbreak response team, is en route to lock down the grounds around the Ahwahnee. We also possibly have new exposure victims. Ranger Beck and Gunnery Sergeant Drake. Along with the ranger’s dog.”

Oh, no…

Painter continued with additional instructions and safeguards. The CDC was to set up another quarantine area in the hangar, in time to accept the incoming victims.

Once he was done, Lisa switched to a private channel.

“How badly were they exposed?” she asked.

“Jenna and Drake never stepped inside the cabin, and according to Drake, it was raining with the wind at their backs, so they may be okay.”

“And the dog?”

“He went inside the cabin and snatched up a mouse that may have been sick.”

So the husky likely had mucosal contact with the virion.

She stared again at the monster on the screen.

Poor dog.

14

As ice groaned and cracked beneath him, Gray gaped at the sight of the massive bulk of Halley Station passing overhead. Its giant skis scraped down the slanting surface of ice, beginning the slide toward a tumble into the frigid Weddell Sea.

On the far side of the station, that blasted fracture line still smoked and steamed from the fires of those buried munitions. The chunk of the ice holding the station continued to tilt away from the larger expanse of the Brunt Shelf.

Gray pushed to his feet and yanked the British pilot up. “Move it! Both of you!”

Kowalski gained his legs unsteadily, searching around. “Where?”

“Follow me!”

Gray took off, digging his boots into the snow-swept ice, climbing the ever-steepening slope as the station slid behind him. The surface was rough enough for adequate traction, but a few times, he slipped to a knee or a hand. Using the steel butt of his assault rifle as a crutch, he fought to move faster. They had only seconds to act. He shouldered his way into the fog of steam and smoke billowing down from the blast zone. Visibility dropped to an arm’s length.

He prayed his sense of direction held true.

Another few steps, he let out a breath of relief — but only a small one.

The shape of a Ski-Doo appeared ahead. The rumble of its engine grew louder as he stumbled toward it.

Thank God, Jason had the foresight to leave it warmed up.

Gray reached the three-man Ski-Doo and swung his leg over the seat — but before he could settle into place, Barstow waved him back.

“Who’s the expert here? I’ll drive. You and your buddy ride shotgun.”

Gray didn’t argue, trusting the arctic pilot had more experience than he did with these snow machines. As Kowalski climbed on behind him, Gray pointed over the nose of the Ski-Doo, toward the widening fracture ahead.

“We’ll have to—”

“Got it,” Barstow said and gunned the engine.

Snow and shredded ice shot from behind the rear treads, and the Ski-Doo leaped forward. Their only hope was to try to vault over that gorge and reach the solid ice on the far side. The odds were slim, especially with their vehicle overloaded, but to remain here was certain death.

Gray hunkered lower.

Kowalski swore loudly.

Then Barstow made an abrupt sharp turn, catching Gray by surprise, almost throwing him out of his seat. The back end of the Ski-Doo skidded into a fishtail until the nose was pointed away from the fracture zone. The engine roared louder, and Barstow sped the craft down the steep slope. They cleared the steamy fog and burst into the open. It now looked like they were chasing the slowly sliding station.

Gray yelled, “What’re you—?”

“Let a man drive!”

Barstow hunched over the handlebars, trying to eke out more speed. Gray had no choice but to follow his example.

But they weren’t alone out here.

The only warning was a flicker of navigation lights in the dark skies overhead. The enemy’s Twin Otter sped past — then the ice exploded ahead of them in a fiery blast of rocket fire.

“Bloody hell!” Barstow hollered. “Hold on to your arses, gents!”

The pilot swerved around the smoking crater and sped toward the only shelter. He made another fast turn, casting up a rooster tail of ice and snow — then skidded sideways under the sliding station, passing cleanly between two of the four giant hydraulic skis holding up that module.

Kowalski groaned. “Just tell me when it’s over!”

It wasn’t.

Barstow had lost momentum after his rash maneuver, but he now raced along the underside of Halley VI, expertly keeping them out of direct sight of the Twin Otter. With the station still careening down the slanted shelf, the Ski-Doo regained some of its speed.

By now Gray understood Barstow’s earlier maneuver, why he had done a 180, turning them about-face. There was no way the Ski-Doo — going uphill—could’ve gained enough speed to hurtle over that widening gorge, especially overloaded. But by going downhill, Barstow could gain momentum, transforming the Ski-Doo into a tread-driven rocket.

Only one problem with this plan…

They were running out of ice.

Ahead, the foremost module of this skidding centipede reached the cliff’s edge and fell, twisting free of the remainder of the station, and plunged toward the dark seas far below.

“Time to go, boys!”

Barstow angled away, flying between two of the towering skis and back out into the open. They fled slightly upslope now, racing away from the station as it fell — piece by piece — into the Weddell Sea.

Ahead, their small section of dislodged ice teetered at a steep angle away from the flat expanse of the larger Brunt Ice Shelf. Barstow raced up that tilting chunk of ice, aiming for where the piece broke away from the greater shelf, picking a spot where the gap was the smallest.

He opened full throttle.

But a certain stubborn hawk was not about to lose its prey. The Twin Otter burst out of the smoky steam ahead of them, swooping low, its propellers ripping through the fog. It turned and lifted up on one wingtip, exposing the cabin hatch on that side — along with an assailant holding an RPG launcher to his shoulder.

The enemy was taking no chances.

The next shot would be at nearly point-blank range.

Gray twisted in his seat, elbowing Kowalski back. He freed his rifle and brought it up one-handed, his arm outstretched. He pulled hard on the trigger, strafing in full automatic mode, dumping all thirty rounds in three seconds. He concentrated his first volley on that dark doorway. With a scream, the gunman tumbled out the open hatch. Gray unloaded the rest of his rifle into the lowermost prop as the plane swept past.

“Hold on!” Barstow yelled.

Kowalski knocked Gray low into the seat, piling on top of him.

The Ski-Doo reached the last of the ice — and went airborne.

It flew high off the upraised lip of fractured ice, corkscrewing in midflight. Gray had a clear view down into the gap for a harrowing breath. Then they plummeted and hit the far side crookedly, landing on the edge of one tread.

The snow machine jolted hard and rolled, throwing them all clear.

Gray tumbled across the ice, losing his weapon, hugging his limbs in tight. He finally came to a stop. The Ski-Doo took another few bounces, then came to a rest. The other two men rose from the ice.

Kowalski patted himself, as if confirming he was still alive. “Didn’t exactly stick that landing.”

Barstow joined them, cradling one arm, his face bloody. He glanced over to the broken bulk of the Ski-Doo. “As they say, any landing you can walk away from…”

“They were talking about airplanes,” Kowalski admonished, “not friggin’ snowmobiles.”

The pilot shrugged his good shoulder. “We were flying there for a bit. So it still counts.”

Gray ignored them and searched the skies. He watched a small cluster of lights fall out of the darkness, disappearing beyond the edge of the cliff as the broken-off corner of the Brunt Shelf slid into the sea. He wasn’t positive he’d damaged the Twin Otter enough to make it crash or if the plane was merely limping away. Either way, the enemy could have radioed for additional support.

Gray didn’t want to stick around to find out.

He turned to the Ski-Doo.

Barstow must have read his expression. “Sorry, mate, she’s tits up. Looks like we’ll be walking from here.”

Gray pulled up the hood of his parka, already cold.

Kowalski voiced the question foremost in his own mind. “Where the hell do we go from here?”

“It’s gone… all gone.”

Jason heard the despair in the station commander’s voice — or rather former station commander. He and Karen stood atop a hillock of ice. It was tall enough for them to see beyond the patches of cold fog all the way to the coast. The shattered section of the shelf’s edge remained misty, but there was no mistaking a feature missing from that distant landscape.

The Halley VI Research Station was gone.

Those earlier blasts still filled Jason’s head. While fleeing aboard one of the Ski-Doos, he had watched that coastline shatter away amid flashes of fire and concussive blasts. The shock wave of those detonations had traveled through the ice to his position a kilometer away. It had taken another few agonizing minutes to find a high enough vantage to get a good look at the outcome.

Now they knew.

… all gone.

Karen took a deep breath, shaking off her initial shock. “We should keep going,” she warned, eyeing the thick polar fog.

The temperature seemed to be dropping tens of degrees every minute.

Or maybe it’s hypothermia already settling in, Jason thought.

Thirty yards off, their lone Sno-Cat idled among the cluster of snowmobiles. They had rescued a dozen members of the station, but how long could they stay out here? Caught unprepared, most were poorly dressed for these frigid temperatures, and the group of snow machines would only get them so far on their single tanks of gas. Even the heater on the Sno-Cat wasn’t working. It was why the vehicle had not been in use at the time of the attack.

“We need to find shelter,” Karen said. “But we’re still hundreds of miles from any base or camp. Our best chance is to stay here, hope someone heard those explosions and comes looking. But it could take days.”

“How long can we last out here on our own?”

She snorted. “We’ll be lucky to make it through the night. Sunrise is still another eighteen hours off. And the coming day will be only two hours long.”

Jason considered their options. “If anyone does come looking for us, they’ll have a hard time spotting us in the dark.”

“Maybe we could devise some signal. Siphon some of the petrol from one of the vehicles and ignite it if we hear a plane.”

Jason recognized one clear problem with this plan. “What if it’s not rescuers that come looking for us first?”

Karen hugged her arms around herself. “You’re right,” she mumbled. “Then what do we do?”

“I think I know where we can go.”

Karen lifted both eyebrows, but before she could question him, a squawk rose from her coat. She visibly startled at the sudden noise. She tugged down her parka’s zipper and removed a portable radio, one of the set she had distributed before exiting the station.

“… hear us? Does anyone copy?”

“That’s Gray!” Jason said, struggling past the impossibility of it.

Karen passed Jason the radio.

He pressed the button. “Commander Pierce?”

“Jason, where are you? Are you safe?”

He did his best to explain his situation, while getting a brief description from Gray about his escape from that calving berg of ice. But Gray’s team still remained stranded out there, and like Jason, he feared the enemy might return soon.

“I can take a couple of Ski-Doos and go fetch them,” Karen offered.

He nodded.

She faced him, her expression doubtful. “But, Jason, do you truly know somewhere we can find shelter?”

He stared out across the dark, featureless ice.

I hope so.

Gray shivered inside his jacket and hunched farther over the handlebars of his Ski-Doo. He had a thick wool scarf frozen over the lower half of his face. His gloved fingers felt molded onto the grips by the cold.

He squinted against the wind, his aching eyes fixed to the glow of the Ski-Doo’s headlamp as it tunneled weakly through the swirling fog. He kept his gaze locked onto the snow machine in front of him, driven by Karen Von Der Bruegge. The station commander had arrived an hour ago, dragging a second empty Ski-Doo behind hers. She now carried the injured Barstow on her vehicle, while Kowalski huddled behind Gray.

Gray had to trust that Karen knew where she was going. She seemed to be following the treaded tracks of the group led by Jason. The kid had taken the others deeper into the fog-patched expanse of the Brunt Ice Shelf, retreating from the Weddell Sea — hopefully far enough away that the enemy couldn’t find them.

If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll believe we were all killed.

The Ski-Doo in front suddenly slowed. Distracted in thought, Gray came close to rear-ending the other, but he braked in time to avoid a collision. After another ten yards, the reason for that sudden deceleration appeared out of the gloom.

A massive shadowy silhouette filled the world ahead of them. It looked like a flat-topped mountain rising from the icy plain. As they approached closer, details emerged: the towering skis, the bulk of the blue module, and the lone John Deere tractor.

It was a detached section of the destroyed station.

Earlier, Jason had noted this module being towed into the fog just before the assault broke out. He had hoped that the enemy, focused on the bulk of the Halley VI Research Station, might not have spotted its departure.

Looks like the kid was right.

Though dark, the module looked unmolested. He spotted a Sno-Cat and a scatter of snow machines parked nearby. Karen drove her vehicle up and stopped alongside them. Gray trundled his Ski-Doo next to hers.

A hatch in the rear of the high module opened, and Jason stepped onto the small back deck. He waved them forward to the ladder that led up to him. Gray needed no such encouragement. The steamy breath of warm air from that open hatch was invitation enough.

The group hurried toward the shelter and its promise of heat. The temperature had dropped to thirty below zero, and with the katabatics kicking up more fiercely as the night deepened, the wind chill made the freeze all the more bone numbing.

Gray assisted Barstow up the ladder. The pilot had dislocated his arm when they crashed the Ski-Doo, and while they’d managed to pop it back into place, the limb was still painful and weak. After a bit of effort, everyone got inside.

Gray slammed the hatch against the polar freeze and took a moment to bask in the warmth. His face burned painfully as it thawed. Frostbite was certainly a worry, but at least he could still feel the tip of his nose.

He followed the others into the heart of the module, which appeared to be one of those residential pods, broken into bedrooms, a communal bathroom, and a gymnasium. Everything was decorated in primary colors, designed to compensate for the endless monotony of this frozen world. As his nasal passages continued to thaw, he also smelled the cedar scents from the wall planks, another psychological trick to mitigate for the lack of plants and greenery.

They all gathered in a small central common room, which held a table and chairs. Several of the rescued researchers had already retreated to various bunkrooms, likely shell-shocked and exhausted. Others leaned on walls, wearing dour, worried expressions.

They had full right to look that way.

Jason spoke, “We were able to catch up with the John Deere. Think we spooked the tractor driver as we all piled up on his tail. But at least his path was easy to follow. Once we got here, we fired up the module’s generator.” The kid waved to the smatter of lights. “Unfortunately we have no way to radio out.”

Kowalski clapped Jason on the back. “You found this goddamned place. That’s more than enough to win you a cigar.” Proving himself a man of his word, he pulled a cellophane-wrapped stogie from an inside pocket of his parka and handed it to Jason. He then looked around. “It’s okay to smoke in here, right?”

“Not normally,” Karen said. “But considering the circumstances, I’ll make an exception.”

“Then I could get used to this place.” Kowalski stalked off, perhaps looking for a quiet place to light up.

Gray turned to more practical matters. “What’s the status of food and water?”

“No food in the module,” Jason answered. “Only what the tractor driver brought with him. It was meant to last him several days in case he got stranded, but his reserves are not nearly enough to cover our numbers. Water shouldn’t be a problem, though. We can always melt snow or ice.”

“Then we’ll have to ration what food we have.” Gray turned next to Karen as she sank to a seat, her face wan and tired. “About what happened… those munitions that blew off that chunk of ice must have been buried for some time. How could that be?”

“I can only hazard a guess. The bombs could’ve been drilled into place and frozen over long before the station arrived.”

“Is that possible?”

“It wouldn’t be that hard,” she speculated. “We shifted Halley VI closer to the sea about three months ago, so the climate scientists could complete their study of the accelerating thaw of the continent’s ice sheets. Our move had been mapped out and scheduled a full year in advance, including picking the coordinates for our new location.”

Gray considered this. “So somebody with such foreknowledge could’ve easily laid this trap, ready to destroy the station at a whim.”

“Yes, but it still doesn’t explain why.”

“Perhaps it has something to do with Professor Harrington’s research. Your station acts as the gateway to Queen Maud Land, where the professor’s group set up shop. If somebody wanted to suddenly isolate that secret site, getting rid of Halley VI would be an important first step.”

She looked even more ashen.

He asked, “Do you have any idea what Harrington was working on?”

Karen shook her head. “No, but that doesn’t mean rumors didn’t spread about what was going on out there. Stories ranged from the discovery of a lost Nazi base to the secret testing of nuclear weapons — which was done in this region by your own country, I might add, back in 1958. But all of this is wild conjecture at best.”

Still, whatever the truth was, it was clearly worth killing over.

And likely still is.

He glanced to one of the triangular windows. “We’ll need to post lookouts. All sides of the module. And at least one person patrolling outside, watching the skies.”

Karen stood from the table. “I’ll begin arranging shifts.”

“One other thing,” Jason said before she left. He pointed to a figure in oil-stained coveralls. “Carl says he can stay with the John Deere.”

The man nodded. He must be the tractor driver.

“Its cabin is heated,” Jason added. “Carl can tweak our position to keep the module under the fog flowing down from the coast. It should help hide us.”

Gray admitted it was a solid plan. But how long could they hold out?

And more worrisome: Who would find them first?

As midnight approached, Jason pulled into his parka and gathered his gloves, scarf, and goggles. He was scheduled for the first shift of the new day. They changed patrols on the hour, to avoid anyone standing watch for too long out in the frigid weather.

While he had taken a nap in preparation for his shift, he felt far from rested, nagged by worries.

And I’m certainly not looking forward to the next sixty cold minutes.

Once suited up, he headed to the hatch. He found Joe Kowalski leaning against the frame. He had the smoldering stub of cigar between his back molars, looking like he’d been chewing on it for a while.

“Shouldn’t you be catching some shut-eye?” Jason asked. Sigma’s demolitions expert was scheduled to relieve him at 1 A.M.

“Couldn’t sleep.” He took out his cigar and pointed its glowing tip at Jason. “You be careful out there. From what I hear, Crowe’s got big hopes for you. Don’t go getting yourself killed.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

“That’s just the thing, planning’s got nothing to do with it. It’s the unexpected that’ll bite you in the ass every time. Blindside the hell out of you.”

Jason nodded, recognizing the practical wisdom buried behind those gruff words. He stepped to move past Kowalski, when he noted a small photo clutched in the man’s thick fingers. Before Jason could get more than a glimpse of the woman in the picture, Kowalski tucked the photo away.

As Jason hauled open the door, he wondered if the man’s warning was less about the dangers of a mission and more about the pitfalls of a romantic life.

But such thoughts vanished as the cold struck him like a hard slap to the face. The wind came close to shoving him off the high deck. He half slid his way to the ladder and climbed down. He found one of the researchers sheltered on the leeward side of one of the giant ski towers.

The man crossed, patted Jason on the shoulder, and with a voice quavering from the bitter cold said, “All quiet. If you get too frozen, hop into Carl’s cab to warm up.”

With those few words, the researcher headed up the ladder and toward the promise of a warm bed.

Jason checked his watch.

Only fifty-nine minutes to go.

He slowly paced the station, staying out of the wind as much as possible. He studied the skies, searching for any telltale lights of an approaching plane. All remained dark out there; not even the stars were visible through the ice fog rolling across the shelf from the distant coast. The only light came from the south, a slight yellow glow, marking the John Deere’s location. He used its position like a compass as he made his rounds.

After a while, the howl of the wind seemed to fill his head, rattling around inside his skull. His eyes began to play tricks on him, seeing phantom lights in the gloom. He blinked or rubbed them away.

As he circled yet again, he considered hopping into the tractor’s cabin — not for the warmth, but to escape the monotony of the darkness and the perpetual howl of the katabatic winds. He moved out from under the hulking module and stepped toward that patch of yellow light, only to have a vague glow catch his eyes to the far left, to the west.

He tried blinking away that dull light, only to have it become two eyes shining out of the gloom. Through the roaring in his head, a lower grumbling intruded — accompanied a moment later by the crunch of ice.

It took him another half breath to realize it wasn’t a trick of the night, but something huge, barreling through the winds toward the lone module.

Jason hauled out his radio and brought it to his lips. “I’ve got movement out here. On the ice. A big vehicle approaching from the west.”

“Copy that,” the lookout inside said. The man shouted to others inside the station before returning to the radio. “I’m seeing it now, too!”

Jason moved behind the cover of one of the ski supports, the radio still at his lips. “Tell Carl to douse his lights out there!”

After another couple of seconds, that island of warm light extinguished. The only illumination now came from those twin beams of light that rapidly grew larger and brighter. Jason estimated that what approached was the size of a tank. This particular guess was heightened by the sound of treads grinding across ice.

Jason heard the hatch slam shut above. Then Gray and Kowalski came clambering down the ladder, pistols in hand. Only then did Jason think to remove his own weapon from inside his parka.

“Over here!” Jason called to them.

The two men joined him.

Gray pointed to the other hydraulic towers. “Spread out. Stay hidden. Let them get close. Offload even. Any signs that they’re hostiles, we’ll use the darkness to wage a guerrilla war on the ground. Barstow is on the roof with Karen, armed with our last two rifles, to help cover us from above.”

After getting acknowledgment from Jason about this plan, Gray headed to one pillar, Kowalski another. They ran low, trying not to be seen.

The lumbering vehicle had slowed, its engine changing timbre.

Then it stopped forty yards off.

The winds shifted the fog enough to reveal a strange sight. The arctic machine was the size of a massive tank and looked like one, too. Giant belt treads flanked both sides, each rising taller than an elephant’s back. They supported what appeared to be an armored bus topped by what looked like the wheelhouse of a tugboat.

Lights flared up top, along with shadowy movement from within.

A door opened in that wheelhouse, and a dark figure stepped out onto the open deck that circled the upper structure. A shout cut through the wind’s howl. It was not loud enough to discern any words, but it sounded like a query, a challenge.

Another figure passed something to the one on the deck.

From the sudden increase in volume of the speaker, it must have been a bullhorn. “HELLO! WE INTERCEPTED YOUR RADIO COMMUNICATION EARLIER! WE KNOW ABOUT YOUR TROUBLE!”

The speaker was clearly a woman, British from her accent. She must have eavesdropped on Gray’s earlier radio call to Karen.

“WE FOLLOWED YOUR TRACKS AND CAME TO HELP!”

Gray bellowed from his hiding place, needing no bullhorn to be heard. “Who are you?”

“WE REPRESENT PROFESSOR ALEX HARRINGTON. WE WERE EN ROUTE TO COLLECT A GROUP OF AMERICANS WHEN WE HEARD OF THE ATTACK.”

Jason bit back his shock and considered this possibility. Painter had told them that the professor’s contacts would be flying over to Halley. But after eavesdropping on the station’s attack, had they turned back and come overland instead?

“WE MUST HURRY! IF THE AMERICANS ARE HERE, THEY MUST COME WITH US RIGHT AWAY.”

“And who exactly are you?” Gray pressed, plainly wanting more proof. “What is your name?”

“I’M STELLA… STELLA HARRINGTON.”

Jason took in a sharp breath, recognizing the name from the mission files. The speaker confirmed this in the next breath.

“THE PROFESSOR IS MY FATHER — AND HE’S IN DIRE TROUBLE!”

15

If they poke me with one more damned needle…

Jenna paced the length of her section of the newly expanded patient containment unit. She’d been quarantined here for the past twelve hours.

Inside the hangar, the CDC team had added new pods to the original quarantine hospital. Through a window on one side, she could see Josh, unconscious on his bed. He had suffered two more seizures during the past afternoon, fading in and out of delirium.

From her pod, she watched the young man being subjected to another battery of tests. A nurse held him rolled up one side, while a doctor performed a spinal tap. There remained little doubt Josh had become septicemic with whatever microbe was out there. But from what Jenna had been told, they hadn’t been able to isolate the presence of the infectious virus in any of his tissues or blood as of yet.

They kept taking samples from her, too, looking for the same.

On the other side of her pod—my cell, she thought angrily — another window revealed Sam Drake in the neighboring section. Like her, he was dressed in a hospital gown and looked no happier as he sat in his bed. They had both been thoroughly scrubbed upon arriving here, a humiliating procedure that included having to huff through a pressurized nebulizer that delivered an aerosolized dose of a powerful broad-spectrum antimicrobial. It was a precaution in case they had inhaled any of the infectious particles at the Yosemite cabin — not that the drug had yet to be proven effective.

But better than nothing, I suppose.

Since then, she and Drake had been swabbed, scraped, poked, and had every bodily fluid collected. So far neither of them suffered from any of the clinical symptoms Josh had shown within the first twelve hours: namely a spiked fever and muscle tremors. Because of that, the doctors believed she and Drake might have escaped exposure at that cabin. Still, as an additional precaution, they had to stay quarantined for another day. If they remained asymptomatic, they could be discharged.

Could be being the operative message.

Very little was certain at the moment.

With one exception…

She paced another lap in her cell. Worry kept her moving, agitated, unable to sit or lie down for long. There was a third member of the Yosemite team whose fate was less uncertain.

Nikko.

Her partner had been whisked over to the suite of research labs across the dark hangar. Lisa assured her that he would be well taken care of, that she would keep Nikko kenneled in her own lab. Unfortunately, Nikko was spiking a fever already, accompanied by vomiting and diarrhea.

My poor boy…

Jenna longed to break out of here, to go to him. If only to comfort Nikko, to let him know she loved him. Anger fought with grief, leaving an ache in her chest. She hated to think of him suffering alone, wondering where she was, believing he’d been abandoned. But worst of all, she could not fathom losing him.

“You’re going to wear a rut right through the floor.”

She turned to see Drake at the window, his finger on the intercom button. He smiled softly, sadly, plainly knowing she was hurting.

She crossed and pressed the intercom’s talk button. “If only I could go to him.”

“I know, but Lisa will do everything she can.” Drake’s gaze moved past her shoulder to the window behind her. “Especially since she’s got a personal stake in all this.”

Jenna felt a twinge of guilt. What was the loss of a dog compared to a brother? Maybe she needed to gain a better perspective about all of this, to stay professional. After all, Nikko was just a dog.

But she refused to accept that.

To her, Nikko was just as much of a brother.

“What we can do while we’re waiting,” Drake said, lowering his voice, “is to figure out what we’re all fighting. If we knew what was brewed up in that damned lab, then both Josh and Nikko would have a better chance of surviving.”

Thunder boomed overhead, rattling the hangar, reminding her that it wasn’t just Josh and Nikko who were at risk. The storm had finally reached Mono Basin, and the rain had begun to fall in the highlands beyond. According to Director Crowe, emergency crews were using helicopters to dump piles of sandbags into all of the lower streams and dry creek beds, to try to limit the contagion’s spread.

Not that anyone expected total containment.

Even if the initial sandbagging efforts were effective, how long would those makeshift dams hold? And what if the organism reached the subterranean aquifers that drained throughout the region, contaminating the very water table?

Drake was right.

She kept her thumb on the talk button. “But how can we help find out anything more about that damned microbe? Especially locked up inside here. With the saboteur dead, that was our last direct lead.”

“Then what about indirect?” Drake offered.

Jenna took a deep breath, trying to push back her anxiety and frustration. With the base blown up, with Hess kidnapped and still missing, the trail seemed cold. As far as anyone knew, Hess’s inner circle of researchers was present at the lab at the time of its destruction. Amy Serpry had been their only hope.

With more time, maybe another clue could be found.

But they didn’t have that time.

“Is there something we missed?” Drake asked, plainly racking his own brain.

She reviewed everything in her head: from the initial SOS received by Bill Howard to watching Amy Serpry’s body being airlifted away, sealed in a body bag. Her corpse had become the focus of attention over at the suite of BSL4 labs across the hangar.

Jenna closed her eyes, walking herself through the horrors of the past forty-eight hours. It was hard to believe only two days had passed since that call from Bill Howard.

That call…

She opened her eyes, letting the shock show.

“Jenna?” Drake asked.

“I have to reach Painter Crowe! Now!”

For the moment, Painter had Colonel Bozeman’s office to himself. It was a rare moment of privacy in what had become the command center for emergency operations in the area. In the past two days, a hurricane of political, military, and law enforcement agencies had crashed down upon this area, mostly falling upon Painter’s own head. If an agency had an acronym, they were here, needing to be pacified, directed, or consulted.

As was usual with such matters, it had quickly threatened to become an ineffectual clusterfuck. Luckily, due to past efforts by Sigma, the president had personally intervened and granted Painter emergency authority, tapping him as the top dog here.

But be careful what you wish for…

Painter was still struggling to rein in the various agencies, to get everyone moving as a team. It had left little time for him to think, only react, to put out fires where he could.

So he took advantage of this momentary calm, while knowing this was only the proverbial eye of the hurricane.

I should go down and check on Lisa.

It had been hours since he’d last visited her. Not that talking through a window was the same as holding her. She had looked a ghost of herself even back then. He knew what drove her to such a ragged edge. Josh was getting worse, and there remained no effective treatment on the horizon.

He shoved his chair back, ready to comfort her as best he could — when the door opened. It was the Marine who had been assigned as his aide, a straight-laced young woman in a crisp uniform and cap named Jessup.

“Director Crowe,” she said, “I have Ranger Beck on the line. She said it’s urgent.”

“Patch the call through.”

He had spoken only briefly to Jenna and Drake after they returned from Yosemite. So far, the pair remained in good health and had likely avoided exposure. It was a small bit of good news in an otherwise bad day, especially as there remained no word from Gray’s team in Antarctica, not since he had reached that British ice station. So far Kat was not overly worried, reporting that a massive solar flare was compromising communication across most of the southern hemisphere.

Hopefully they’d hear something from Gray soon.

In the meantime…

He picked up the phone. “Director Crowe here.”

“Sir!” Jenna did sound agitated. “I just remembered something that might be important.”

He sat up straighter. “What is it?”

“Back at the cabin, before I broke in, before I heard Amy’s last plea for help — I heard a cell phone ringing inside. After everything that followed, I forgot to mention it.”

“Are you sure it was a cell and not the cabin telephone?”

“I’m sure. Maybe it was someone checking up on her. An accomplice, someone who hired her. I don’t know.”

“But that makes no sense. We recovered Serpry’s cell phone and personal belongings from the cabin before it was sealed up. Everything was thoroughly examined. I personally reviewed the LUDs pulled from her phone, hoping for some outside connection like you mentioned.”

“And?”

“And there was nothing significant. A few calls to relatives and friends. But more important, there was not a single incoming or outgoing call placed in the past twenty-four hours from that cell phone. Even if she hadn’t picked up, that call attempt would’ve shown up in those line-usage records.”

There was a long pause on the line. “I’m sure it was her cell phone,” Jenna said firmly. “Someone was attempting to reach her.”

Painter had learned a healthy respect for the ranger and took her at her word. “I’ll have a technician look over that phone again.”

If Jenna was right and if those records had somehow been erased or corrupted, such an action had to be significant. It would certainly suggest that last call had been placed by one of Serpry’s cohorts, possibly even by whoever was pulling her strings.

“You may have given us a new lead,” Painter admitted.

“Good. Then if anything turns up, I want to be involved in following it up.”

In the background, he heard a brash voice echo that sentiment, coming from Gunnery Sergeant Drake. “Me, too!”

Painter knew how determined the pair was to help, especially after what had happened to the ranger’s dog.

“Let’s see where this leads first,” he said noncommittally.

“We’re not sick!” Drake yelled in the background. “We’re going! Even if I have to take a scalpel and cut our way out of here.”

Painter understood their determination. He saw the same in Lisa’s eyes each time he visited her. But sometimes all the determination in the world wasn’t enough. Sometimes only one path was left open.

To make hard and difficult choices.

“Dr. Cummings, I believe we should put the dog down.”

Lisa swung toward Dr. Raymond Lindahl. The director from the U.S. Army Developmental Test Command crouched in his biosafety suit before the stainless steel cage that housed the husky.

Nikko lay on his side, breathing shallowly, an IV in place. He had been given a slight sedative to keep him calm, along with antiemetics to control his vomiting and a cocktail of antivirals.

Still, the dog continued to decline.

“He’s suffering,” Lindahl said, straightening to face her. “You’ll be doing him a favor. And at his current level of infection, a necropsy would allow us to get a better understanding of the disease in these early stages. It’s a rare opportunity.”

Lisa kept her voice even, despite the anger seething inside her. “We can learn just as much by monitoring the patient’s clinical signs, to measure his responses to various therapies.”

The man rolled his eyes. “Until we better understand what we’re dealing with, any therapy is just shooting in the dark. It’s a foolish waste of resources and time.”

Lisa stepped between Lindahl and Nikko’s cage.

The director sighed. “I don’t want to have to order you, Dr. Cummings. I thought you’d listen to reason.”

“I don’t take orders from you.”

Lindahl stared her down. “I’ve been given full authority over these labs by military command. Besides, I thought you’d want to do everything humanly possible to help your brother.”

She bristled at his accusation. “There’s nothing human or humane about what you’re proposing.”

“You can’t let sentimentality cloud your professional judgment,” he argued. “Science by necessity must be dispassionate.”

“Until I’m pulled from this lab by security, I won’t let anyone harm my patient.”

The fate of Nikko was interrupted by the hiss of the air lock as it released. They both turned to find the virologist, Edmund Dent, stepping into the lab, accompanied by the team’s geneticist, Dr. Henry Jenkins, a towheaded wunderkind at the young age of twenty-five.

From Edmund’s expression behind his face shield, he had bad news. “I wanted you to hear this in person,” the virologist started. “We have the latest tests on your brother.”

Lisa felt a sinking feeling in her gut, along with a measure of release, suspecting what Edmund had come to tell her. She had been waiting all along for this other shoe to drop.

“While we’re still not finding active viremia in Josh’s blood — which is a good sign — we spun down the latest sample of his cerebrospinal fluid.”

Edmund motioned his companion to her computer station. Henry logged in and brought up Josh’s medical file. Her brother’s picture flashed up on the screen briefly, taken from his driver’s license, his face smiling and wind-burned from a recent mountaineering trip.

Her heart tightened at the sight.

It was quickly replaced with an electron micrograph.

It showed a tight cluster of virions — collected from the sediment of her brother’s CSF after it had been run through the lab’s ultracentrifuge. By now, Lisa had no trouble recognizing the characteristic shape of the enemy.

She had difficulty balancing her brother’s smiling face with the horror showing on the screen now. Tears welled up. She could not speak.

Edmund must have sensed her distress. “We think the progression of Josh’s disease has been so protracted because the virus traveled up a nerve bundle in his leg to reach his central nervous system. Similar to the pathway taken by the rabies virus. It might also explain why we still find no active viral presence in his blood and why it took so long to detect its presence.”

Henry clarified the significance. “When you amputated his leg in the field, the blood loss that followed likely washed any viral particles that had begun to establish in the limb’s circulatory and lymphatic system.”

“But not from the peripheral nerves,” Edmund added. “A few particles must have reached the tibial or perhaps the common peroneal nerve before the amputation. There it took refuge and slowly spread up to his central nervous system.”

She must have looked sickened.

Edmund touched her arm. “Still, this proves your quick actions in the field succeeded in buying your brother some valuable time.”

She knew Edmund was trying to assuage her guilt, but she knew the fundamental truth here.

I should have taken off Josh’s entire leg.

Instead, she had attempted to leave her brother with a functional knee joint, which would allow him better mobility with a prosthetic. As active as her brother was, she had wanted to give him the best chance to return to a full life.

If only I’d adhered to Lindahl’s philosophy from a moment ago…

Out in those fields, she had let sentimentality cloud her professional judgment. And now it might cost Josh his life.

Possibly to distract her, Edmund pointed to the computer screen. “You should know that Henry has also learned a bit more about what makes this engineered monster tick.”

Lisa fought through her despair, knowing it would do Josh no good.

Henry explained. “I’ve been working with the team’s molecular biologist to do a genetic analysis of what lies inside the virion’s synthetic capsid.”

Lisa pictured that spherical protein shell, supported by an underlayment of tough graphene fibers. At the time she had wondered what lay hidden inside that hard exterior.

“We macerated and centrifuged samples of the virus to free the nucleic acids that make up its genetic—”

Lindahl stepped forward, waving impatiently. “We don’t need to know how the sausage is made, Dr. Jenkins. We’re not first-year biology students. Just tell us what you learned.”

Edmund gave the director a scolding frown. “Henry was attempting to explain the difficulty in gaining such knowledge. It bears significance on what he’s discovered.”

“What difficulty?” Lisa asked.

Henry stared at her, looking exceptionally boyish with his thick-rimmed black eyeglasses and his towheaded smooth looks. “Our initial attempts to extract any DNA failed. In fact, using a diphenylamine indicator, we failed to detect any DNA at all. We tried other techniques, too, with no better luck.”

“What about RNA?” Lisa asked.

She knew that viruses fell into two categories: those that used deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA, as their genetic base versus those that used ribonucleic acid, RNA.

“We didn’t find any RNA either,” Henry said.

“That’s impossible.” Lindahl let his irritation ring out. “Then what did you find?”

Henry looked to Edmund, who answered for the more timid geneticist. “He and the molecular biologist found a form of XNA.”

Lisa frowned, not understanding.

Edmund explained, “After successfully extracting nucleic acids from the virion’s tough shell, they discovered no deoxyribose or ribose. Instead they found something foreign making up that genetic backbone.”

“The X stands for xeno,” Henry said. “Meaning alien.”

“But he doesn’t mean extraterrestrial,” Edmund quickly added. “We believe this genetic material was engineered. Scientists have been dabbling with creating exotic types of XNAs for over a decade, demonstrating in their labs that these molecules can replicate and evolve, just like our DNA.”

“But in this virion’s case, what’s different?” Lisa asked. “What’s replaced the deoxyribose or ribose in these genetic molecules?”

Henry chewed his lower lip, then spoke. “We’re still working on that, but so far we’ve detected traces of arsenic and abnormally high levels of iron phosphate.”

Arsenic and iron…

Lisa crinkled her brow, remembering that Dr. Hess had come to Mono Lake because of the discovery of arsenic-loving bacteria in its mud. Was there some connection?

“But what was Hess trying to create with all of this?” Lindahl asked. “What was the purpose of this project?”

Edmund shrugged. “We can only guess. But there’s one significant detail concerning those known XNAs created in various labs. They’ve all proven to be more resistant to degradation.”

In other words, tougher.

“Just like that outer shell,” Lindahl said. “No wonder we can’t destroy the damned thing.”

“At least not yet,” Henry countered. “But if we could get a better handle on what makes up that exotic molecule — basically discover what that X stands for in this XNA — then we might be able to devise not only a viricide to kill the organism, but also a therapeutic regimen for anyone infected by it.”

Lisa pictured Josh across the hangar and allowed herself a measure of hope — but only a small one.

“There’s one other detail about XNAs that might be important,” Edmund added. “It ties to the origin of life. The current research into XNA’s ability to replicate and evolve suggests that a more ancient genetic system may have once existed on this planet, a genetic system older than DNA or RNA, one that predates the modern world.”

Lisa considered this possibility and its implication. “The core of Dr. Hess’s work had to do with engineering our way out of this current mass extinction. Could this experiment with synthetic life have something to do with that? Could he have been seeking to build a hardier ecosystem, one based or supported by XNA, something that could withstand pollution or survive the overheating of the globe?”

“Who knows?” Edmund admitted. “You’ll have to ask him, if we ever find him. But Henry here has one last concern in regards to the problem at hand.”

“What’s that?” Lindahl asked.

Henry faced them. “I don’t think this virion is an artificial construct… at least not entirely.”

“Why do you think that?” Lisa asked.

“To date, no one’s been able to successfully construct a fully functional XNA organism. The number of variables to accomplish that is astronomical. It seems like too much of a scientific leap forward, even for Dr. Hess.”

Lindahl pointed to the monitor and the micrograph still on the screen. “But he succeeded. There’s the proof.”

Henry gave a small shake of his head. “Not necessarily. I think he made that leap by using a template. I think he found something exotic — a living XNA organism — and simply manipulated it into this current form, creating a hybrid of natural and synthetic biology.”

Lisa slowly nodded. “You could be right. Hess had a great interest in extremophiles. Searching the world for the unusual or the bizarre. Maybe he found something.”

Was that why he had been kidnapped?

“And if we could discover what that was,” Edmund added, “then maybe we’d know what that X stands for and could begin to turn the tide on this whole mess.”

Lisa’s radio crackled and Painter came onto her private channel. She was excited to talk to him, to share what she had just learned — both the grim and the hopeful.

“I think we may have another lead,” Painter said before she could speak. “Jenna suggested we take another look at Amy Serpry’s cell phone. It looks like someone went to great lengths and sophistication to erase their communication with Serpry, to clear the local usage details from her service provider. But not everything got washed away completely, not if you know where and how to look deeper.”

“What did you learn?” she asked, stepping away from the others.

Painter explained, “We were able to reconstruct enough of those records to know a call had been placed to her from South America. From the city of Boa Vista, the capital of the northern Brazilian state of Roraima.”

Lisa knelt by Nikko’s cage. The husky lifted his head, his eyes glassy as they rolled in her direction. He thumped his tail once.

That’s a good boy.

“Before that trail gets any colder,” Painter said, “I’m going to lead a team down there to investigate. I’ll keep in contact with Colonel Bozeman, who will be running the show here in my absence.”

Lisa wanted to go with him, to keep close to Painter’s side, but she met the husky’s pained gaze and knew her place was here. She also remembered Lindahl’s warning.

You can’t let sentimentality cloud your professional judgment.

She would not make that mistake again. Still, that didn’t keep her from worrying. As Painter signed off, a question weighed on her.

What or who would be waiting for Painter down in Brazil?

16

Dr. Kendall Hess ducked lower in his seat as another bolt of lightning shattered across the underbellies of the black clouds, lighting the dark forests far below. The thunderclap shook the helicopter, while rain slashed the window canopy of the small aircraft.

In front, the pilot swore in Spanish, fighting through the storm. Kendall’s hulking escort sat in the back cabin with him, looking unperturbed, staring out the window on his side.

Kendall swallowed back his terror and tried to do the same. He pressed his forehead against the window. The flash of lightning had revealed little but the endless expanse of green jungle below. They had been flying southwest over this rain forest for the better part of the day, landing once at a refueling dump, which had been hacked out of the forest and camouflaged with netting.

Wherever they’re taking me, it’s beyond remote.

He despaired at ever seeing the larger world again.

He knew he must be somewhere in South America, likely still north of the equator. But he knew little else. Last night, his kidnappers had landed their Cessna for a final time outside a small town. He was taken to a ramshackle house with a corrugated tin roof and no running water and was allowed to sleep on a mattress on the dirt floor. They’d kept him hooded as they ferried him from the plane so he got no chance to figure out the name of that town. He had heard voices, though, from the streets, speaking in Spanish, some English, but mostly Portuguese.

From that, he guessed he was in Brazil, likely one of its northern states. But they hadn’t stayed long enough for him to determine anything else. At dawn the next day, they transferred him to this small helicopter, which looked weathered and barely airworthy.

Still, it had gotten them this far.

Another burst of chain lightning crackled across the clouds. A dark silhouette appeared near the horizon, rising starkly from the forest, like a black battleship riding a green sea. Kendall shifted higher, trying to get a better view — especially as Mateo stirred, gathering a pack from the floor.

Was that their destination?

As the helicopter droned onward, the rain slowed but the rumbling thunder continued, accompanied by occasional bolts of brilliance, each one revealing more details of the mountain ahead.

And it was a mountain—rising from the forest floor in sheer cliffs, thousands of feet tall. Its flat summit, shrouded in heavy mists, pushed above the lowermost clouds.

Kendall recognized this unusual geological formation. It was unique to this region of South America. Towering blocks of ancient sandstone like this — called tepui — lay scattered across the rain forests and swamps of northern Brazil, extending into Venezuela and Guyana. They numbered over a hundred. The most famous was Mount Roraima, rising almost two miles above the forest floor, with its summit — a flat plateau — spread over ten square miles.

The tepui ahead was much smaller, maybe a quarter of that size.

But long ago, these hundreds of mesas had once been connected together into a single giant sandstone massif. As the continents broke apart and shifted, that ancient massif fragmented into pieces, where rain and wind eroded the broken blocks into this collection of scattered plateaus, lonely sentinels of another time.

Though Kendall had never visited any of these tepuis, he knew about them from his research into unusual forms of life. The tepuis were some of earth’s oldest formations, going back to Precambrian times, older than most fossils. These islands in the sky, isolated for ages, were home to species found only atop their summits, animals and plants unique unto themselves. Due to the remoteness of the region and the sheer cliffs, many of the plateaus had never been walked by man. They represented some of the least-explored areas on the planet, remaining unpolluted and pure.

The helicopter climbed higher, buffeted by stronger winds, and swept toward the mountain — which from a bird’s-eye view looked dark and forbidding, untouched by man.

As they crested the plateau, the surface of the tepui wasn’t as flat as it appeared from a distance. A large central pond dominated the summit, reflecting their navigation lights. Along its southern bank, storm-flooded waters spilled down to a lower section of the plateau, a shelf covered by a dense, stunted forest, a mockery of the rich life far below. North of the pond spread a labyrinth of rock, sculpted by wind and rain into chasms, caves, and a forest of unearthly pillars, all of it covered by a spongy dark-green moss or a gelatinous-looking algae. But between the cracks, he spotted flourishes of orchids and flowering bromeliads, a magical garden bathed by the mists.

The helicopter lowered for a landing on a flat section of stone near the pond, its lights sweeping the plateau. Only then did Kendall see signs of human occupation. Built within one of the larger caves — filling it completely like an overflowing cornucopia — was a magnificent stone home with balconies, gables, even a hothouse conservatory. The home’s surfaces were all painted shades of dark green to match its surroundings.

He also noted a neighboring corral, which held a couple of Arabian horses, alongside a parked row of golf carts, which looked distinctly out of place, though the vehicles were also painted green. Beyond the house, a handful of tall wind turbines blended perfectly with the stone pillars.

Someone plainly wants to keep a low profile.

That someone stood nearby, under an umbrella.

Once the skids touched down, Kendall’s guard opened the cabin door and hopped out. He kept his tall height bowed from the blades overhead. A handful of men stood nearby with camouflage netting in hand, ready to hide the aircraft after it shut down. The group shared the same dark complexion and round faces as the guard and pilot. Likely they were all from the same native tribe.

Knowing he had no choice, Kendall climbed out into the misty drizzle. He shivered at the clammy coldness at this elevation, a distinct difference from the swelter of rain forest below. He stepped toward the man who the world believed had died eleven years ago.

“Cutter Elwes. For a dead man, you are looking well.”

In fact, Cutter appeared better than the last time the two had spoken. It had been ages ago, at a synthetic biology conference in Nice. Then Cutter had been red-faced, full of youthful fury at the poor reception his paper had received from Kendall’s colleagues.

But what had he expected?

Now the man appeared fit, relaxed, a calm purposefulness to his blue-steel gaze under dark black hair. He was dressed in crisp linen pants and a white shirt, with a beige safari vest on top.

“And you, my dear friend, look tired… and wet.” Cutter held out his own umbrella.

Angry, Kendall ignored the offering.

Cutter voiced no offense and returned the umbrella to above his own head. He turned, clearly expecting Kendall to follow, which he did.

Where else am I going to go?

“I imagine you’ve had a hard trip getting here,” Cutter said. “It’s late and Mateo here will see you to your bed. There is a cold dinner, along with hot coffee — decaffeinated, of course — waiting for you on the nightstand. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

Kendall stepped faster, drawing abreast of his host, trailed by his hulking escort. “You killed… murdered so many people. My friends, colleagues. If you expect me to cooperate after all you’ve done…”

Cutter dismissed this concern with a wave. “We’ll hash out the details in the morning.”

They reached the four-story home and passed through double doors into a cavernous entry hall. It was floored in hand-scraped planks of Brazilian mahogany, the ceiling arched high, the walls decorated in French tapestries. If Kendall hadn’t known about the Elwes family wealth, he would have suspected as much from the many millions it must have cost to build this home in secret.

Kendall searched around, knowing that there must be more to this place. Cutter’s passion had never been about finance or the accumulation of wealth. His passion had always been about the planet. He had started as a dedicated environmentalist, using family money to fund many conservation causes. But the man was also brilliant, with a Mensa score that pushed him beyond genius. Though Cutter was French on his father’s side, he had studied at both Cambridge and Oxford. The latter was where his mother was educated and where Kendall had first met Cutter.

After the man graduated, he took that big brain of his and bottomless wealth and started a grassroots movement to democratize science with the establishment of teaching labs around the world, many delving into the early fringes of genetic engineering and DNA synthesis. He quickly became the proverbial king of the biopunk community, those heady entrepreneurs who were hacking their way into genetic code with delightful abandon.

He also nurtured a great following by fiercely advocating for an overhaul to environmental policy. Over time, he made extremist groups like Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Army seem conservative in comparison. People were drawn to his iconoclastic personality, his uncompromising purpose. He supported civil disobedience and dramatic protests.

But then everything changed.

He studied Cutter’s back, noting how he slightly favored his right side. While on a mission to thwart poachers in the Serengeti, Cutter was mauled by an African lion, one of the very creatures he had sought to protect. He had almost died—did die, at least for a minute on the operating table. His recovery had been long and painful.

Most people would have taken such a horrible, disfiguring event as a reason to turn their back on their causes, but instead, Cutter only became that much more dedicated. It was as if by surviving the raw fury of that lion — that literal representation of nature’s tooth and claw — he had somehow been infused with even more passion. But it also changed him. While he remained an environmentalist, his fervor became driven by a more nihilistic philosophy. He founded a new group, one of like-minded individuals, called Dark Eden, whose goal was no longer conservation, but to accept that the world was falling apart and to prepare for it, to perhaps even help it along, to look beyond the current mass extinction to a new genesis, a new Eden.

Over a short period of time, his actions became more radicalized, his followers manic. Eventually he was convicted in absentia on multiple charges, by multiple countries, and was forced to flee underground. It was while running from authorities that he suffered his plane crash.

Though now it was plain that his death had been a ruse all along, part of a greater plan for Dark Eden.

But what did he intend?

Cutter led him to an impressive stone staircase that swept upward. A woman descended toward them, dressed in a simple white shift that showed off the beauty of her burnished skin as it did her curves.

Cutter’s voice softened. “Ah, Kendall, let me introduce you to the mother of my children.” He held out a hand and helped her off the last step. “This is Ashuu.”

The woman gave a small bow of her head, then turned her full attention upon Cutter, her dark eyes almost glowing in the lamplight. Her voice was a silky whisper. “Tu fait une promesse à ton fils.”

Kendall translated the French.

You made a promise to your son.

“I know, my dear. As soon as I get our guest settled, I’ll see to him.”

She tenderly touched Cutter’s cheek with the back of her soft hand, then nodded to Mateo. “Bienvenue, mon frère.”

She then turned and headed back up the stairs.

Kendall frowned and stared back at Mateo.

Frère.

Brother.

Kendall searched the scarred countenance of the giant shadowing him. From the woman’s sheer beauty, he would never have fathomed that these two were brother and sister, but now brought to his attention, he could see a vague family resemblance.

Cutter touched Kendall’s elbow and pointed to the back of the hall. “Mateo will take you to your room. I’ll see you in the morning. I have important business of my own to attend to before I retire.” He shrugged with his usual rakish charm. “As my dear wife reminded me… une promesse est une promesse.”

A promise is a promise.

Cutter followed Ashuu up the stairs.

As Mateo roughly grabbed Kendall’s shoulder and manhandled him away, he kept his eyes on Cutter’s back, picturing the scars that had so radically transformed the man — both inside and out.

Why did you bring me here?

He suspected the answer already.

And it terrified him.

Small fingers clutched Cutter’s hand as he descended the steps carved into the sandstone floor of the tunnel.

“Papa, we must hurry.”

Cutter smiled as his son dragged him faster, with the heedless abandon that only came with youth. At only ten, Jori found wonder in everything, his raw curiosity shining from every inch of his handsome face. He had his mother’s soft features and mocha skin, but his eyes were his father’s, shining a clear blue. Many a local witch doctor had touched the boy’s face, staring into those eyes, and declared him special. One Macuxi elder described his son the best: This one was born to see the world only through cloudless skies.

That was Jori.

His blue gaze was always open for the next wonder.

It was what drove the pair of them for this midnight hike through the subterranean tunnels. They were headed to the living biosphere he had established on the tepui — or rather inside it.

Most of these sandstone summits were riddled with old caves and tunnels, formed as the soft rock was worn away by eons of rain and running water. It was said the cavern systems found here were the oldest in the world. So it was only appropriate that these ancient passageways had become the forges for what was to come.

The bare bulbs running along the tunnel roof revealed a steel door ahead, blocking the way forward. Cutter stepped to the electronic deadbolt and used a keycard from around his neck to unlock it. With a quiet whirring, a trio of wrist-thick bolts wound out of the doorframe.

“Ready?” he asked and checked his watch.

Three minutes before midnight.

Perfect.

Jori nodded, bouncing a bit on the balls of his feet.

Cutter hauled open the door to another world — the next world.

He led his son onto the landing outside the hatch. Overhead a light misty drizzle fell out of the sky and down into the depths of the massive sinkhole before him. Their overlook jutted fifteen feet below the lip of that cylindrical hole. A corkscrewing wide ledge ran along the sinkhole’s inside walls, skimming from the plateau summit all the way to the base of the tepui. The hole was massive, three hundred meters across, but it was still a third smaller than its cousin, the giant sinkhole at the Sarisariñama tepui in Venezuela.

Still, this smaller confined ecosystem served his purposes beautifully.

The hole acted as an island within an island.

It was these same tepuis that inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write The Lost World, populating these islands among the clouds with the living remnants of a prehistoric past, a violent world of dinosaurs and pterodactyls. To Cutter, the reality was more thrilling than any Victorian fantasy. For him, each tabletop was a Galápagos in the sky, an evolutionary pressure cooker, where each species struggled to survive in unique ways.

He stepped to the wall, festooned with a riotous growth of vegetation, dripping with dampness, soaked in mists. He gently pointed to a small flower with white petals. Its tendril-like leaves were covered by tiny stalks, each tipped with a glistening sticky drop.

“Can you name this one, Jori?”

He sighed. “That’s easy, Papa. That’s a sundew. Dro… dro…”

Cutter smiled and finished for the boy. “Drosera.”

He nodded vigorously. “They catch ants and bugs and eat them.”

“That’s right.”

Such plants were the foot soldiers in an evolutionary war up here, evolving distinctive survival strategies to compensate for the lack of nutrients and scarce soil found atop these tepuis, becoming carnivorous in order to live. And it wasn’t just sundews, but also bladderworts, pitcher plants, even some bromeliad species had developed a taste for insects on this island in the sky.

“Nature is the ultimate innovator,” he mumbled.

But sometimes nature needs a hand.

As midnight struck, a soft phosphorescence bloomed along the walls, flowing from the top toward the dark bottom.

Jori clapped his hands. This is what his son had come to see.

Cutter had engineered the glowing gene of a jellyfish into the DNA of a ubiquitous species of orchid that grew upon this tepui, including instilling a circadian rhythm to its glow cycle. Besides the pure beauty of it, the design offered illumination at night for the workers who tended to this unnatural garden.

Not that my creations need much nurturing at this point.

“Look, Papa! A frog!”

Jori went to touch the black-skinned amphibian as it clung to a vine.

“No, no…” Cutter warned and pulled the boy’s hand back.

He could understand his son mistaking this sinkhole denizen for its common cousin up top, a frog unique to this tepui. The native species found above, Oreophrynella, could not hop or swim, but had developed opposable toes for a better grip on the slippery rock surfaces.

But the specimen here was not native.

“Remember,” Cutter warned his son, “down here, we must be careful.”

This frog had a potent neurotoxin engineered into the glandular structure of its skin. He had culled the sequence of genes from the Australian stonefish, the most venomous species in the world. One touch and a painful death would soon follow.

The frog had few enemies — at least in the natural world.

Disturbed by their voices, it skittered farther up the vine. The motion drew the attention of another predator. From under a leaf, diaphanous wings spread to the width of an open hand. The leaf fluttered free of its hold on the stem, revealing its clever bit of mimicry.

It was part of the Phylliidae family, sometimes called walking leaves.

Only this creation didn’t walk.

Its wings fluttered through the mists, its tiny legs scrabbling at the air as it fell silently toward the frog.

“Papa, stop it!” Jori must have sensed what was about to happen. His son had a boyish affinity for frogs. He even kept a large terrarium in his bedroom, holding a collection of several species.

Jori moved to swat at the gently fluttering wings, but Cutter caught his wrist — not that the modified insect would do anything worse than sting the boy, but here was another teachable moment.

“Jori, what did we learn about the Law of the Jungle, about prey and predator? What’s that called?”

He hung his head and mumbled to his toes. “Survival of the fittest.”

He smiled and gave his son’s hair a tussle. “Good boy.”

Landing on the frog’s back, the insect sank its sharp legs through the toxic skin and began to feed. As son and father watched, those pale outstretched wings slowly turned rosy with fresh blood.

“It’s pretty,” Jori said.

No, it’s nature.

Beauty was simply another way Mother Nature survived, whether it be the sweet-smelling flower that drew the bee, or the wings of a butterfly that confused a hunter. All of the natural world had one goal: to survive, to pass its genes on to the next generation.

Cutter stepped to the edge of the landing and stared down that mile-long drop to the bottom. Every tens of meters the ecosystem changed. Near the top of the sinkhole, it was clammy and cold; down at the bottom, hot and tropical. The gradient in between allowed for the creation of test zones, unique ecological niches, to challenge his works in progress. Each level was color coded, running from lighter shades above to darker below, each separated by biological and physical barriers.

Black was the deepest and most deadly.

Even under the glow of the orchids, he could barely make out the dark humid jungle that grew along the bottom, its loam enriched by the detritus that rained down from above. That patch of isolated rain forest made a perfect hothouse furnace — where his greatest creations took shelter, growing stronger, learning to survive on their own.

The native tribes of this region feared these mist-shrouded tepuis, claiming dangerous spirits lurked here.

How true that was now.

Only these new spirits were his creations, designed for what was to come. He stood at the edge, looking across the expanse of the sinkhole.

Here was a new Galápagos for a new world.

One beyond the tyranny of humankind.