“I
read some of your poems,” Susan offered as they started down the fifth-floor hallway. As Josh’s features narrowed and tensed, she added,”I liked them. They made me feel like I knew you, at least knew who you are.”
Josh nodded. “That’s why I stopped writing. It made me think about that too much. It made everything hurt. It was easier not to think.” He stopped, but then looked over at her again. “Which was your favorite?”
“The first,” Susan replied without hesitation. “‘The Fires of Midnight.”’
“I remember when I wrote it, how mad I was, how unhappy. Maybe it was the first time I realized how different I really was. I hated everything and everybody. The fires were my rage. I wanted to let it out, to let them burn.” He stopped again. “And they’ve been burning ever since. CLAIR was supposed to put them out and the only thing it did was make them so high and hot that maybe I’ll never be able to put them out. That was Haslanger’s argument, sort of. He’s got a point.”
“The burning will never stop if you stay at Group Six. They’ll make sure of that.”
They reached the door to Josh’s quarters on the fifth floor, just around the corner from Susan’s.
“Can you do it? Can you get me out of here?”
“I don’t know. I think so. I think I’ve got a way. But you’ll have to help.”
“How soon?”
She put the coded plastic slab Fuchs had given her into the proper slot in the door. It whisked open. “The sooner the better. Tomorrow night.”
“That would give me one day in the lab.”
“Yes.”
“I need that.”
“Why?”
“Insurance,” Josh told her.
A
lan Killebrew continued to keep himself busy by rechecking his data, running repeat tests to be sure of his original findings and new ones to expand his understanding of the CLAIR organism.
From the point the Cambridgeside Galleria had tested clean, the assumption had been that, like any parasite, CLAIR died when its host did. But all indications pointed to the fact that it had been lying dormant instead. Denied sustenance, it had gone into a state of indefinite hibernation Killebrew had inadvertently ended.
He returned to his computer console and reran the original program. He had been superimposing molecules of the organism over each other to see if they maintained the same genetic shape when harvested from different areas of the body. His own words filled his ears.
“Except for some slight deviations along the edges consistent with manageable decay, the molecules appear to be identical in all—”
He had stopped when on the screen one of the molecules had begun dividing, expanding well beyond the borders of the one superimposed over it. He had split the computer screen back into two at that point. The molecule on the right, the one he had just harvested from the arteriosclerotic subject’s extremities, continued to grow before his eyes, part of a tissue sample he had sliced off with an electrically heated scalpel, left to smolder beneath it when he had neglected to return the scalpel to its tray.
His next step was to take the temperature of what was left of the sample. It measured 97 degrees by that point, having dropped considerably. The other samples he had been working on were all considerably under that temperature after a much briefer exposure to the heated scalpel. At 97 degrees the sample showed no signs of reanimation. Killebrew increased the temperature in tenth-of a-degree increments. There was no reactivated growth until he reached 98.7, a mere tenth of a degree above human body temperature. At that point CLAIR came back to life and began to grow at an alarming rate, continuing to do so once reanimated even after the temperature dropped below the confirmed threshold.
Body temperature—that was the key!
In transforming itself to be able to survive within the human body, CLAIR had also managed to find a way to survive once its host had expired. The temperature of the body drops almost instantly upon death. To
avoid being starved, CLAIR had taught itself to recognize this and use that drop in temperature to move into a state of dormancy, waiting for the temperature to rise again so it could feed. The organism could not know under normal circumstances that could never have happened. It was merely behaving in a logical manner, devoid of creative thought.
Just like the machine it was, Killebrew reflected.
He spoke as he watched the cells dividing yet again on the screen before him.
“I have now confirmed that accidental exposure to the heat scalpel and the according rise in tissue temperature returned CLAIR to its active state. It’s probable that the organism becomes dormant after its host metabolism expires. I would further theorize, contrary to Dr. Lyle’s original assertions, that CLAIR’s violation of its original programming to expire at temperatures exceeding seventy-eight degrees did not result from exposure to some amino acid found in the mucous membrane linings of the nose and mouth. Instead it was most likely a result of exposure to a protein found in the upper layers of skin the organism encountered as it ingested the bodily fluids of its victims from the outside in.”
Killebrew stopped again and considered the ramifications of his own words.
“Further, because of the transformation brought on by exposure to this protein, the temperatures that would have destroyed CLAIR in its original form become the very means to bring it back to life. I have isolated and contained the organism in a vacuum seal. But if not contained and subjected to extreme heat, the mutated strain would be free to multiply exponentially with no presently known mechanism to impede it. I will continue subjecting the reactivated samples to decreasing temperatures to find out at what temperature growth stops and the organism returns to an inactive state. However, if in this mutated state the organism is no longer subject to the controls of temperature sensitivity—”
Killebrew stopped suddenly, realizing the import of his words, realizing that within Mount Jackson lay the power to destroy mankind.
“I
don’t have you on any of my lists,” the single guard at the front gate of Brookhaven National Labs told Blaine McCracken Thursday afternoon.
“You’re not supposed to. That’s why they call it a surprise inspection.” Blaine made himself pause, hoping it would help make his point. “Just check our credentials again.”
The guard did just that, leaving Blaine to turn to the figure in the seat next to him. Johnny Wareagle had scrunched his legs under the dashboard so that his knees rubbed against the glove compartment. But his head still touched the car’s ceiling; no car had been made with his seven-foot, three-hundred-pound proportions in mind. In the confines of the sedan, Johnny looked stiff and lumbering, a condition that would disappear as soon as he was free to move about outside. Blaine had never met a man who could move faster than Wareagle or accomplish more when he got where he was going.
Sal Belamo had arranged one of the few covers guaranteed to gain them rapid access to Brookhaven. They had the credentials of Environmental Protection Agency inspectors who were responding to increased complaints from neighbors about toxic chemicals found in their ground water. And, assuming someone at Brookhaven did call the EPA to check up on them, they would find that two agents had indeed been dispatched toward that precise end. Sal Belamo was nothing if not thorough.
The guard leaned out the sliding window of his small gatehouse, phone still at his ear. “Someone’s coming down to escort you in. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
Blaine nodded at the guard. He and Johnny didn’t have to wait long. A tan car bearing the same insignia the security guard was wearing on his shirt pulled up on the other side of the open gate. The passenger door opened and a man in a white lab coat climbed out.
“I’m Dr. Childress, chief administrator of Brookhaven,” he said as he approached McCracken’s open window. “I was in a meeting when you first arrived. Otherwise you would have never been kept waiting so long.”
“We’d really like to get started, Doctor,” Blaine said, impatience ringing in his voice. “We’ve got a long afternoon ahead of us.”
“Well, I’m quite happy to say that you’ll be wasting your time. The last inspection team found no suspected release of toxic substances, and neither did the one before that.”
“Tell that to the people who can’t drink their tap water anymore. We’re being thorough for their sakes.”
Childress nodded concedingly. “If you don’t mind leaving your car in the visitor’s lot, we can drive up to the main building together.”
“We’ve got a lot of gear,” Blaine told him.
“Then just follow me” Childress replied and walked back to the tan security vehicle.
C
olonel Fuchs had greeted Joshua Wolfe with the news personally Thursday afternoon, having made him wait through the morning in the hopes the boy might let his guard down in his enthusiasm to get working.
“I’ve reserved labs one and two for you for the rest of the day. I’m sorry it took so long to free them up.”
The boy eyed him emotionlessly. “I’ve got plenty of time.”
“To make your refinements on CLAIR, of course, as per your request relayed to me by Dr. Haslanger.”
Josh accepted the news stoically. “Alone. No one else but me.”
“Dr. Haslanger has asked that he be allowed to—”
“Alone,” the boy repeated.
“On the chance that you require something—”
“Dr. Lyle can get it for me.”
“As you wish.”
“I
t was never completed,” Childress insisted, when McCracken laid out his intentions to inspect the huge discharge pipe running out from Brookhaven’s toxic waste dumping plant he’d spotted on Sal Belamo’s plans. Childress’s words were aimed at Blaine, but he was having trouble taking his eyes off Johnny Wareagle. “Couldn’t get EPA approval for another feed line, as a matter of fact.”
“Not completed by you, anyway,” Blaine returned.
He held McCracken’s stare. “You mean …”
“Look, Mr. Childress—”
“Doctor.”
“Dr. Childress, I can’t get access to Group Six. You know it and I know it. And you and I both know that the groundwater contamination is somehow coming from them. Now, I’ve got a theory here I want you to work with me on. I think they secretly completed your discharge system at the same time they were finishing off construction on your abandoned addition. If I can prove that’s the source of the contamination, I’ll do everything I can to shut Group Six down, including going public, unless they’re willing to cooperate.”
The sincerity in Blaine’s voice seemed to win Childress over. “You’d do that?”
“Somebody’s got to.”
“Why?”
“Because they’ve got to be stopped.”
W
inning the cooperation of Brookhaven’s chief administrator had been an unexpected bonus for McCracken. His plan hadn’t depended on it, although reports made out by Childress obtained by Sal Belamo were scathing when it came to Group Six. The fact that the Pentagon had based them here had set plenty of Brookhaven personnel on edge, a situation exacerbated by repeated reports of leaking toxins Brookhaven was getting blamed for. Further, the unconfirmed reports of human guinea pigs and hideous experiments being performed on animals had increased speculation as to what might be going on within the blacked-out windows of Group Six’s building.
“I’ve never been inside there,” the chief administrator explained. “No one here at Brookhaven has. Our only association with them is passing their … guests onto the premises.”
“I understand.”
Johnny and Blaine carried their heavy equipment duffels down a long hall on the second sublevel of Brookhaven’s waste treatment facility, which led to the access point for the unfinished discharge system for toxic waste. They had spent a good part of Wednesday night and part of today acquiring the equipment and learning how to use it. Of course, it was conceivable all of these efforts would go for naught, that they would find nothing at the end of the discharge pipe Blaine felt certain Group Six was using. If his suspicions were justified, though, he and Johnny would have free passage beneath the complex’s impenetrable grounds and access to what lay within Group Six.
And that was where Blaine expected to find Erich Haslanger. Everything about Harry Lime’s disappearance indicated Haslanger was responsible
and implied Group Six was complicit. It made sense. When The Factory was shut down, Haslanger had maintained Operation Offspring with the help of General Daniel Starr, currently chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the same man who had secured his assignment to Group Six years later. If this indeed lay at the root of what had cost Harry his life, it was going to cost Group Six and Haslanger more.
“None of your predecessors asked to see this part of the complex before,” Childress explained, continuing to lead Johnny and Blaine down a little-used, poorly lit hallway.
“They were going through the motions. I’m not.”
They stopped at a heavy steel door. Childress plugged a code into the keypad and the door slid open. The room beyond smelled moldy with disuse. Nonfunctioning machines and equipment lay stacked on the floor, some of them still in their original crates. Tables and other, specially proportioned bases stood empty.
“This was to have led to a second and more secure dumping point until the EPA shot us down,” Childress explained, leading them inside. “Primary access into the ground would have been right over here, through this hatchway.”
He led them to a hatch slightly more than a yard in diameter. It made Blaine think of the variety found on submarines and just the thought of passing into it made him feel claustrophobic. Childress turned the wheel and pulled open the hatch. Only darkness lay ahead.
“It goes two hundred yards down on a forty-degree angle.”
“Taking it under Group Six’s section of the property.”
“Just barely.”
“We’ll see,” McCracken told him.
”H
e trusts you, Dr. Lyle,” Colonel Fuchs told Susan when they were alone. “We must make that work for us.”
“Whose side do you think I’m on, Colonel?”
“Your own, just like me. I know better than to believe you’re on the boy’s side. You want him for what he can provide you. You want an answer, a cure, before your insides begin to rot away as your parents’ did. It hurts, doesn’t it, having the potential solution to all your problems so close and yet not available? Working with me and Joshua Wolfe can help us both.”
Susan shook her head. “You should really stop and listen to yourself.” “I’m nothing more than a realist, just like you. The molecular technology this boy has mastered holds the potential for individual cell repair—the cure for cancer, Doctor. A worthy endeavor and one I am fully prepared to let the boy undertake once he has produced what we here at Group Six want.”
“You want to save yourself.”
“Something else we hold in common that the boy can achieve for us. But let us dispense with this bickering and face the fact that he must give us what we want. We both know that. This can be simple or it can be difficult, and if it is difficult for us then it will be doubly difficult for your young friend.” Fuchs stopped and eased himself closer to her. “Make him talk, Dr. Lyle. Convince him to give us his original formula for CLAIR.”
“And if I do?”
“You remain as his guardian and overseer, while I secure you a top position in cancer research at the National Institutes of Health. Once you are in place there, I will allow Joshua Wolfe to focus a portion of his energies on developing a cure you will take credit for.”
“What about him?”
“His contribution must remain secret.”
“That’s not what I was asking.”
“He stays here.”
“Indefinitely?”
“As long as I desire, working for both of us, of course. I’m trying to be fair.”
“I’m sure you are and I want to be as well. That’s why I want you to understand something, Colonel: once I’m out of here, if you take any steps, any steps at all, to further complicate this boy’s plight, I won’t stop talking until the entire country knows the whole truth about what goes on in this place.”
Fuchs looked at her for what seemed like a long time before he spoke. “You have become involved with the highest levels of power, Doctor. You would be wise to keep that in mind.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
J
ohnny and Blaine changed into contaminant-proof space suits complete with sophisticated air filtration devices built into the helmet and a fifteenminute emergency supply of oxygen in the event that wasn’t enough. They parted company with Childress and entered the sloping shaft dragging one of the duffels between them. The shaft was too narrow to allow shouldering it, so Johnny pushed it forward from his position just behind Blaine.
The going wasn’t hard. The steel was shiny and cold and easily covered when moving downhill. A pair of powerful flashlights provided their only illumination, Blaine measuring off their progress in his mind.
The discharge shaft ended, Childress had explained, at a second, automated hatchway that provided access to the primary waste pipe extending a half mile down into the earth. If Blaine got there and found a dead end heading toward Group Six, his theory would be disproven and he and Johnny would have no choice but to retrace their steps.
“End of this shaft’s coming up, Indian,” he called behind him to Wareagle. “I think I see the hatch.”
McCracken shined his flashlight farther ahead. The hatch Childress had described leading deeper into the ground was there all right. But that was all. A hard-packed earthen wall lay where he hoped the continuation of the shaft originating at Group Six would have been.
“Looks like the end of the road, Indian.”
“Maybe not, Blainey. Something’s missing.”
McCracken shined the flashlight about them again, focusing on what it wasn’t showing him. “Dust,” he realized.
He slid around the automated hatch and pressed up against the earthen wall. “Hand me a—”
He turned back to Wareagle to find him already holding a hammer. Blaine took it and tapped lightly against the jagged wall, then harder. No pieces coughed dust or broke away. He struck it a few more times as hard as he could. Again there was no dust.
“Gotta give Group Six credit, Indian,” Blaine said, satisfied. “They do damn good work.”
Wareagle edged up alongside and felt the earthen wall with his hand. “Some sort of steel layered with epoxy.” He kept feeling and probing. “No means to activate its controls from this side of the shaft, Blainey.”
“If it’s steel, we can melt it, Indian,” McCracken told him. “Let’s get those torches out and go to work.”
T
hrough the course of the afternoon, Joshua Wolfe might have been alone in the labs, but he did nothing without being watched. Cameras followed his every move, virtually all of which took place within a pair of Group Six’s most advanced laboratories dedicated to genetic and molecular research. Group Six’s research staff could do nothing but look on in awe, scarcely understanding what they were witnessing.