Breeders (20 page)

He knew he needed a more diverse test base, but this was all that he had, so he had to make use of it as best he could. He sure as hell wasn’t going to bring in subjects from the outside; that would be unethical.

He knew he had to talk to Wattana about his findings soon. He was afraid. The man was brilliant, but he had an aggressive streak, something that had started to rub off on Petzer as well. Take what you want at all costs, no matter what the consequences were. They were pioneers in their fields, so they were allowed to bend the rules, almost like they were demigods. They had the right.

He sighed. The nagging feeling didn’t want to go away.

Wattana smiled. “Due to a previous escape attempt, we had surveillance cameras fitted. We were following your every move.”

Neil glanced sidelong at Alexa.

“Cuff them,” he ordered the guards.

The guards bound their hands behind their backs with zip ties.

“Follow me for the grand tour,” Dr. Wattana said. Alexa and Neil followed the doctor, the five armed guards forming the rear of the procession, their weapons raised to Alexa and Neil’s backs.

They entered a wide passageway with thick wooden doors on either side, stretching down the passageway as far as Alexa could see. It was dimly lit, and the floor was shiny and clean, just as the one inside the tunnel had been. Metal grids lined the sides of the passage. Alexa had once seen something similar in a horse stable. It allowed the stables to be cleaned more easily; the water and muck could be washed away into the drainage area below the grids.

The doors were numbered with what looked like reflective tape, like the kind you stick on your car. Above the number was a small window with metal bars. They were grimy and dirty.

And then Alexa started noticing the smell. It was awful. Sweat and bodily fluids mixed together to form a vile stench. They walked past a guard who was cleaning a cell with a garden hose and a broom, and Alexa peeked inside.
 

In the cell, a young girl, probably fourteen, sat in a corner. She looked Asian. Alexa saw no bed or toilet or sink. The girl was sitting on straw, trying to prop herself up against the wall. In the opposite corner was a plastic bucket. She was dirty, her hair matted and knotted, pieces of straw sticking out of her hair. Her skin was scabbed and her lips chapped. And then she started to moan, the most horrendous wail escaping her mouth. She stuck out her arms toward Alexa.

The guard turned the hose on the girl. “Shut up,
fok
.”

All hell broke loose. The moaning started in the other cells as well, a deep, guttural sound, a plea for help that coalesced into a high-pitched cry. Alexa covered her ears.

One of the guards hit a baton against the door. “Shut up, man. Bloody animals.”

The crying became softer then petered out to silence, a few sobs and sniffles all that could be heard.

They followed behind the doctor at a quick pace. He hadn’t shown any reaction to the cries, he simply increased his speed. They slowed down when they approached cell number one hundred, then they turned left and entered a sterile-looking white door. They entered another passageway with doors on the right. Next to these doors was a sink and a towel and signs that indicated the numbers of the cells, “100-150,” “151-200,” all the way up to 500.

At the end of the passage, large double doors swung open, and they walked through what looked like a large mess hall, except there were no tables or chairs or cutlery. On the floor were a bunch of painted diagonal lines, stretching from one end of the mess hall to the other. Numbers were painted next to the lines about half a meter apart. Next to the numbers lay a plastic plate with a banana leaf on top. Five girls were sweeping the hall then laying the plates and leaves on the floor. They averted their eyes when Wattana walked past but looked up at Alexa in awe.
 

Once they reached the far side of the hall, Wattana swiped a card over a card-scanning device next to the door and ushered Alexa and Neil inside. Three guards followed them inside, the other two remained outside.

The office looked like something out of a vintage colonial photograph. A large mahogany desk stood to one side, and two leather couches partitioned the room off into a sitting area. A pipe and a box of cigars lay on top of a coffee table, and yesterday’s newspaper was tossed on one of the couches. Animal trophies hung on the wall: zebra, kudu, and eland. Above the desk was a magnificent African water buffalo, the horns at least a meter wide.

“Sit,” Wattana ordered.

“Could you please remove the cuff, it’s very tight,” Alexa asked.

The guard gave a derisive snort. “Kak.”

“Where are we?” Neil asked.

“Welcome to my research laboratory,” Wattana said, waving his arms. “At the moment we’re inside Mueller’s Dam. We call this the research wing.”

“The dam’s empty?” Neil asked with a frown. “But what about the water supply to the surrounding towns?”

Wattana smiled. “It has been empty for years, since the early sixties, as a matter of fact.”

“What type of a place is this exactly?” Alexa asked, looking around.

Wattana chuckled. “Kennels.”

“Kennels?”

“Breeding kennels for some of the most advanced genetically-engineered human tissue available to mankind.” He sat on the large desk. “We plant fertilized ova into the girls; they then act as surrogate moms to supply us with the human tissue we need to do our stem cell research.”

“So you’re breeding with humans?” Neil asked, disgusted.

“Not exactly, Mr. Allen. We clone our breeders, and then the breeders produce the cytoblasts that we need. Unfortunately, the breeders have a high mortality rate, so we need to clone new ones every couple of months or so.” He sat on a couch across from them, casually resting his arm on the back. “Without a program such as this, it would take us years to perfect the research. We’ve accomplished what many scientists have tried to do in a tenth of the time.”

“But you’re abusing young girls to do this!” Alexa shouted.

Wattana smiled disdainfully, like he was addressing a young child. “You’re processing this in the wrong way, Captain. These girls aren’t human. They’re clones. They’re all sisters, bred and raised for one single purpose, and that is to reproduce the stem cells that we need.”

He stood up and leaned closer to Alexa. “We need a thousand subjects to ensure that the genetic material doesn’t mutate, you know, to keep it diversified but still pure.” He looked down at Neil. “But these girls aren’t just any clone; they are derived from a very unique genetic template.”

“And who would that be?”

The doctor waved the question away with a dismissive hand. “Let me first give you some background; hopefully you will not judge me as harshly afterward. Our research isn’t new. We’ve known about the potential of stem cells since the early 1930s. When America decided to bomb Hiroshima, a very talented doctor called Ikuma Wattana decided to start experimenting with stem cells to cure all the hundreds of thousands of people that got hurt in the blast or suffered from radiation poisoning.” He folded his arms behind his back and started pacing the room, like he was delivering a lecture. “It was an awful time, you must understand. Children were born with defects, cancers, and tumors.” He turned to face them. “I reiterate, embryonic stem cells were the only cure.”

Alexa snorted. “This guy, Ikuma Wattana, was he family of yours?”

Wattana nodded. “My grandfather. I am simply continuing the excellent work that my grandfather and then my father have done. We are descendants of a very famous family of surgeons. The Wattana clan treated emperors and kings throughout the centuries.” He smiled and then winked. “You could say we were preordained to do this work.”
 

He frowned at Alexa, tsk-tsking. “I see you do not approve.” He waved his hand. “Be that as it may. My grandfather helped Mengele do experiments on the Jews. We needed test subjects, so we chose the Jews with their inferior genetic makeup.”

“Screw you,” Alexa spat.

Wattana smiled. “Did I hit a nerve, Captain?” He watched her for a moment—assessing her, Alexa thought—then continued. “So we gassed the ones that we couldn’t use, that were either too old or too young to reproduce. And all the boys, of course, we had no use for them. We concentrated our experiments on the young women; they could produce the cytoblasts that we needed.”
 

“You’re sick,” Neil growled, struggling against his cuffs.

Wattana faced him. “No, Sergeant. What is sick is that America has halted research into the only biotechnology that could stop human suffering—a cure for all disease, cancer, AIDS. Think about it.”

Alexa snorted. “By torturing kids.”

Wattana closed his eyes then sighed. “Like I said, you shouldn’t think of them as human, Captain. They’re animals. That’s all. We call them ‘breeders.’”

Neil was fuming. “How can you allow these children to suffer like this?”

“The breeders?” Wattana asked. “They’re clones, get that into your thick skull. They’re not human. They’re lab rats. I do admit that they contain some of the most perfect genetic material available to humankind, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re clones.”

“Clones of who?”

“Myself,” Wattana said.

“But they’re all female,” Neil said.

“Yes, only females can have babies.”

“So who’s the mom?”

Wattana smiled at Neil and chuckled. “Oh, that would be my sister, Mitsu.”

Bruce assembled the soldiers in the hotel room around him. “All right, men, I’m expecting a close-quarters battle. What weaponry do you guys have?”

The men opened and fished through their duffle bags, retrieving an assortment of weapons and dumping them on the table.

They were a bit of a scraggly bunch, except for Latorre. Two French special forces, Lieutenants Bellard and Roux, and the guy from Mossad. But they looked keen and ready to go.

Latorre pulled three rifles from a large black bag and clattered them onto the table. “I have an HK G36 and a couple of M4s.”

“OK, dump the G36, let’s take the M4s. They’ll be better in a CQB.” Bruce looked around the room. “Who’s the explosives expert?”

A short guy with day-old stubble raised his hand then saluted. “Me, sir. Captain Max Rizak, sir.”
 

Bruce studied the soldier. He wasn’t wearing army fatigues; he was dressed in loose-fitting jeans and a polo shirt. “You’re still on active duty, Captain?”

“If you call signing leave forms and making sure the mess has enough stock, I guess so, Colonel.”

Bruce chuckled. “You ready for some action, Captain?”

The man nodded. “Always, Colonel.”

“All right, Rizak, I’m going to need a couple hundred ounces of plastic explosives; we’re not going in quietly. It’s going to be quick: search, extract, retreat.”

“Affirmative, sir.”

Bruce looked at the eager faces surrounding him. ”You ready, men?”

They answered in one voice. “Affirmative, Colonel.”

“All right then, let’s go.”

“So why did you kill Alida?” Neil asked. He wanted to keep the man talking, buy them some time. Bruce would be here sooner rather than later, you could bet your bottom dollar on that.

Wattana paced the room. He had a nervous energy, never sitting still. “She was getting too close, snooping around up in the mountains. When Eight One Three escaped, we knew there would be problems.” He took a sip of coffee from a polystyrene cup.

“But why make it look as if she was offered on an altar?”

He held the cup to his lips for a moment then chuckled. “As a matter of fact, she was offered on an altar, but that wasn’t me. That was my sister, Mitsu.” He shook his head and thought for a while. “She has some serious issues, that girl.”

Alexa looked perplexed. “She killed her own daughter?”

Wattana closed his eyes and shook his head. He seemed irritable, like he was explaining a very difficult concept to a bunch of six-year-olds. “More like her own sister. Alida, or Six Four One, as we usually refer to her, was destined to become a breeder as well. But Mitsu became lonely. Eben was always away on official duties. That oaf didn’t know what a gem he had in Mitsu. So we decided to give Six Four One to her. She raised the child as her own so that she could have some company.”

Neil snorted. “Like a puppy dog.”

Wattana ignored the comment.

“So Alida was Mitsu’s sister?” Alexa asked.

Another sigh. “Genetically, yes.” He spoke faster, more excitedly. “Look, Mitsu gets bored easily. We gave her some defunct breeders to play with. She likes slicing them up on that altar and offering them to who knows what. She probably wanted to become a doctor like her older brother, but girls weren’t allowed to go to university in our family. So this was the next best thing for her.” He shrugged.

Neil saw Alexa gape. This was one sick bastard. She shook her head, like she was trying to clear her thoughts. “Why run fiber-optic and power cables in the pipes above ground?”

Wattana turned to her. “Ah, you saw that. It connects the data centers of the research wing to the testing wing. You will notice, Captain, that we do not have any wires or glass in the plant or anything that the girls could use to hurt themselves with. They do tend to try to kill themselves, often, so we like to make it as difficult as possible.” He seemed deep in thought, looking down at the table, rapping it rhythmically with his fingers.
 
“Unfortunately, it also leaves us at risk to our competitors who try to hack into the lines and sabotage the power, but it’s a small price we’re willing to pay to keep the girls alive.”