Covenant (44 page)

WADI AL-JOZ
WEST BANK, PALESTINE

L
ucy lay adrift on a sea of delirium when a voice broke through the silence surrounding her.

“It is time.”

A figure moved into view as she opened her eyes, gray eyes gazing down at her and the white hair glowing in the light. The serene expression on that face chilled her even more than the cold surface upon which she lay.

“Sheviz.”

Damon Sheviz mocked her with an excruciatingly compassionate smile and turned to a bank of monitors.

“What happened to you?” she gasped in despair. “You were a scientist, once.”

“I still am,” Sheviz said without looking at her. “And I am on the verge of the greatest breakthrough in the history of mankind.”

Lucy felt horror caressing her senses like lice crawling under her skin.

“You’re a killer, nothing more. Whatever you’re doing, it’s not worth it.”

Sheviz looked at her seriously.

“The return of the Nephilim to the realm of mankind is my only remaining goal.”

“What’s a Nephilim?”

Sheviz’s face twisted into a grimace. “A pity that you understand so little, but don’t worry, everything is about to become crystal clear. I’ll explain what I’m going to do, and how you’re going to help me.”

“I’ll die before helping you,” Lucy spat.

“The process is simple,” Sheviz said as though he had not heard her last retort. “I will anesthesize you and connect you to this heart-bypass machine. I’ll then begin the process of cooling your core temperature down to around ten degrees Celsius before replacing your entire blood volume with a chilled saline solution.”

Damon Sheviz showed her a small test tube as he went on with delight.

“At the point when you are clinically dead, without a heartbeat or brain function, I will insert this fertilized egg into your ovary. With your body in hypothermic suspension, your immune system’s ability to reject foreign tissue will be hindered sufficiently for the egg to take hold on the lining of your uterus.”

Lucy felt a bolt of nausea lodge deep in her throat.

“Whose fertilized egg?”

Sheviz smiled.

“That of a Nephilim, a fallen angel. The specimen that you found will rise once again, cloned by me and carried by you, and God’s kingdom shall return.”

Lucy blinked, unable to comprehend the madness infecting Sheviz’s mind.

“Those remains are of a species not of this Earth,” she said slowly, carefully. “They’re not of an angel, they’re of an extraterrestrial species that—”

“Pah!” Sheviz sneered. “Only someone poisoned by secularism could be so blind to the truth. This, Lucy, is our history becoming our future. Imagine, the blood of God running in the veins of men once more, this godless age of filth and despair eradicated once and for all.”

Lucy lay back on the gurney, shaking her head. As a scientist she had no fear of dying, for there was nothing to fear in the unknown, only something new to be discovered. Blind faith instead feasted upon the bloated carcass of ignorance, gorged itself on fanaticism and dogma, and Sheviz was its ultimate creation.

“So this is what you did to the others?” Lucy uttered, trying to conceal her revulsion.

“No,” Sheviz said. “They gave their lives to span the ages that have passed since Genesis, to overcome the genetic divide between our ancestors and modern man. They made possible this chimeric linking of man and God, so that our holy covenant may be complete.”

Lucy realized that Sheviz’s mind had truly gone, entirely devoid of any sense of responsibility for the deaths that he had caused.

“You’re insane,” she said softly.

“The word of our Lord was spoken in this very land,” Sheviz insisted, “and science has done nothing but endorse the word of God.”

“How’s that?”

“Our common origin with the Nephilim, the children of God, as recorded in our bloodline. Think about it, Lucy: all of this time we have searched for evidence of God, and all of this time it has run in the veins of a lucky few, the descendants of the inhabitants of the Garden of Eden, of Adam and Eve themselves. How else can such pure blood, O-negative, have appeared without precedent six thousand years ago?”

Lucy spat out a cackling laugh.

“Evolution,” she said in terminal delight. “It’s rare because it’s a line from a common ancestor not diluted by genetic drift and random mutation. There’s nothing godly about it!”

“Evolution by natural selection is impossible,” Sheviz spat. “It is the same as a whirlwind passing through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747—pure chance. Design by God is the only alternative.”

Lucy slowly shook her head.

“It’s nothing to do with chance and everything to do with time. You cite your God as the designer of everything because you say complex life can’t exist without a designer, yet who designed your designer? If everything complex that exists requires a designer, then your theory collapses beneath the weight of its own contradictions: it fails miserably because it cannot explain the origin of your designer, who must be complex to have designed everything in the universe in the first place. Your God, by your own definition, cannot exist.”

Sheviz’s eyes flew wide and spittle flew from his lips as he seethed, too lost now in the throes of fervor to speak. He reached across to a table nearby and produced a syringe tipped with a wicked-looking needle.

“Time for you to make history, my dear,” he intoned. “You will help me because if you don’t, then the experiment might fail and you’ll lose your life. For your own sake, Lucy, let’s work together.”

“Like hell,” Lucy muttered.

“We have cloned the blood of a Nephilim, but it has been rejected by all previous subjects, despite their being universal recipients carrying the AB blood group. Why is this?”

Lucy remained silent, staring at the ceiling. Sheviz smiled coldly.

“Allow me to motivate you further,” he said, and held out a photograph above her head.

Lucy gasped as she saw a black-and-white shot of her mother. Sheviz didn’t give her the chance to speak.

“Your mother, my dear, is in the company of my associates. If you do not comply with my demands, perhaps she will become the next subject of these experiments.”

Hot tears stung Lucy’s eyes.

“Leave her alone,” she hissed.

“Then tell me what I need to know.”

Lucy squeezed her eyes shut, struggling against the tide of despair that washed over her.

“It’s not just about blood groups,” she uttered. “The species you’ve cloned has evolved on a different planet. It isn’t a Nephilim, it’s an alien species and its tissue cannot be grafted onto any species on Earth. There is no way to do it without killing the patient!”

Sheviz slowly shook his head, tutting as he slipped the needle into her arm.

“One more time, Lucy. I want you to imagine this needle slipping into your mother’s body. Now, tell me how to overcome the cellular rejection.”

Lucy swallowed, blinking away tears and with them her resolve.

“You need to induce donor nonresponsiveness using hematopoietic chimerism,” she whispered harshly. “That’s how real scientists have cloned donor cells in the past.”

“Go on,” Sheviz said.

“Introduce the donor stem cells into the bone marrow of the recipient, where they will coexist with the recipient’s stem cells. Bone marrow stem cells give rise to cells of all hematopoietic lineages.”

Sheviz gasped, slapping his forehead with his spare hand.

“Of course,” he uttered. “Through the process of hematopoiesis. We were using leukodepletion of the blood to remove the recipient’s white blood cells to reduce alloimmunization, but it wasn’t enough to prevent immunoshock.”

“Lymphoid progenitor cells are created,” Lucy continued in a whisper of self-loathing, “and move to the thymus where negative selection eliminates the reactive killer T cells. The existence of the donor stem cells in the bone marrow causes donor reactive T cells to be considered native to the body and undergo apoptosis, or programmed cell death. There is no further rejection of the new genetic material.”

Damon Sheviz smiled down at Lucy as she looked away in disgust.

“Congratulations, my dear,” he said, shaking his head. “You’ve solved the mystery of why one of my patients in Washington DC survived: his lineage came from Ethiopia, and there are some tribes living there who originated in the Levant. He was already carrying native T cells, and they protected him long enough for the genetic material we inserted to begin taking effect. Now the next subject will not die from the procedure, but shall be our crowning glory.”

A sudden crackling noise erupted from beyond the darkness of the room, like hailstones hammering on a tin roof. It was a moment before Lucy realized that it was the sound of gunfire coming from outside.

Sheviz withdrew the needle from her arm, and Lucy realized that perhaps someone had finally found her.

WADI AL-JOZ
WEST BANK, PALESTINE

K
eep low and stay behind me,” Ethan said to Griffiths.

The fossil hunter grunted in reply as they hugged the side of a low wall. Aaron Luckov, the sawed-off shotgun cradled in his grasp, led the way.

Even as they were coming within firing distance of the two MACE guards, Ethan saw one of them press his finger to his ear and frown in concentration as he listened to a message presumably coming through an earpiece he was wearing. Ahead, Aaron Luckov moved out to the right as Ethan saw the two guards suddenly reach for their weapons.

“They’ve made us!” Luckov hissed.

Ethan saw the guards turn to face them, both handling machine pistols with military efficiency as a burst of semiautomatic fire shattered the hot morning air. Ethan flinched and ducked aside as from the corner of his eye he saw a parked vehicle’s windshield smashed into a web of cracked glass.

“Aaron, covering fire!”

Luckov popped up from behind the parked car and unloaded two rounds in the general direction of the MACE troops, who leaped desperately down into cover as a hail of buckshot hammered the warehouse doors.

Ethan lunged forward, reaching a low wall no more than twenty feet from the warehouse before he took aim and fired off four rounds at the brickwork behind which the guards had disappeared. Bullets whipped past in response, zipping and twanging as they ricocheted off the car beside him.

“Keep them down!” Ethan shouted to Aaron.

The Israeli popped up again, letting both barrels fly this time before rushing forward and ducking into a narrow alley almost opposite the warehouse. Firing by sections, Ethan and Aaron edged closer to the two men, flanking and pinning them down.

Aaron fired again, causing both guards to remain out of sight. Ethan was about to fire and advance when the doors to the warehouse suddenly burst open and four suited figures rushed out into the sunlight, firing as they moved. Ethan cursed, ducking back down as bullets shattered masonry all around him.

“Balls.”

Griffiths shot Ethan a dirty look.

“Cover Aaron!” Ethan shouted. “Try pulling the trigger!”

Griffiths angrily let fly a half-dozen rounds in the general direction of the warehouse as they began falling back.

“We’re outnumbered.”

Ethan cursed, retreating alongside Griffiths and firing as he went. Aaron Luckov was coming back toward them between bursts of automatic fire when the MACE vehicle appeared behind them, tires screeching as it pulled into the street.

“Enemy rear!”

Luckov’s warning was audible even above the clattering automatic fire.

Ethan whirled, firing off three rounds at the vehicle as it skidded to a halt and a half-dozen MACE troops dispersed from within and took up firing positions on either side of the street.

“We’re surrounded!” Griffiths shouted, his voice high in alarm.

“Stay low!” Ethan countered, shouting out across the street to Luckov. “Where does that alley go?”

Luckov fired a single shot that burst one of the front tires of the MACE vehicle before shaking his head at Ethan. Clearly, there was no escape to be had down the alleyway.