The 6th Extinction (42 page)

Though it had been slightly altered, he still recognized this unique foldable protein. He confirmed it with that same matching program.

My God, Cutter, what are you planning to do?

As if summoned by this thought, the door to the lab opened and Cutter arrived. Two women accompanied him. One was his wife—or at least she appeared to be, but something felt off about her. She had none of the sultry allure of Cutter’s wife, nor was there the unspoken affection he’d formerly witnessed between husband and wife.

Then it dawned on him, remembering the unusual tribal heritage.

This must be his wife’s twin—Mateo’s other sister.

Supporting this assessment, the scarred man’s reaction to the woman was very different from the way he had greeted Ashuu. Mateo would barely meet this sister’s eyes, looking strangely fearful and nervous.

Before he could discern why, the second woman stepped into view. From her clothes and manner, she must be American. Still, there was something oddly familiar about her, like they had met before. But he could not place when or where.

Cutter made introductions. “Kendall, this is my sister-in-law, Rahei. And this lovely young woman at my side is from your own neck of the woods. A California park ranger. Ms. Jenna Beck.”

Kendall blinked in surprise, suddenly remembering. He
had
met this young woman briefly in Lee Vining, over a cup of coffee at Bodie Mike’s. She had been inquiring about his research at the lake. He struggled through his confusion.

What was she doing here now?

From the anger in her face and her stiff stance, she was no accomplice in all of this.

Jenna crossed to his side, touching his elbow in concern. “Are you okay, Dr. Hess?”

He licked his lips, too shocked to know how to even answer that question.

Cutter’s gaze fell upon the computer screen. “Ah, Kendall, I see you’ve accomplished much while I was gone.”

He glanced back to the slowly revolving protein. “That’s some type of
prion
, isn’t it?”

“Very good. It is indeed. In fact, it’s a modified version of the infectious protein that causes Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, an illness that presents with rapidly progressive dementia in humans.”

Jenna looked between the two men. “What are you talking about?”

Kendall didn’t have time to fully explain—not that he understood it all himself. Prions were mere slivers of protein with no genetic code of their own. Once a victim was infected, those proteins damaged other proteins—usually in the brain. As a consequence, prion diseases were usually slow, more difficult to spread.

But not any longer.

Kendall faced Cutter. “You engineered a contagious norovirus, one that could spread rapidly and churn out this deadly prion in great volumes.”

“First of all, it’s not exactly
deadly
,” Cutter corrected. “I modified the prion’s genetic structure so it would not be fatal. Like I promised you from the start, no human or animal would be killed as a direct result of my bioorganism.”

“Then what is your goal? Clearly you want to insert your creation into my armored shell, to make your code almost impossible to eradicate. Once encapsulated, it could spread swiftly with no way of stopping it.”

“True. But it was also the
small
size of your shell that intrigued me, a genetic delivery system tiny enough to pass easily through the blood-brain barrier. To allow these little prion factories ready access to the neurological systems of the infected.”

Kendall could not hide his horror, and even the ranger understood enough to go pale. Prion diseases were already incurable, the damage they wrought permanent. The typical clinical symptoms were generalized dementia and the progressive loss of higher cognitive functions, turning an intelligent person into a vegetable.

He pictured Cutter’s engineered disease spreading throughout the population, as unstoppable as the organism that escaped his lab, leaving a path of neurological destruction in its wake.

Cutter must have read the dismay in his eyes. “Fear not, my friend. Not only did I engineer the prion to be
nonfatal
, but I also designed it to
self-destruct
after a certain number of iterations. Thus avoiding complete annihilation of the victim’s brain.”

“Then what’s its purpose?”

“It’s a gift,” Cutter smiled. “It will leave the infected living in a more simple state, one harmonious with nature, permanently free of higher cognitive functions.”

“In other words, reducing us to animals.”

“And the earth will be the better for it,” Cutter said.

“That’s inhuman,” Jenna gasped out, equally horrified.

Cutter turned to her. “You’re a park ranger, Ms. Beck. You should surely understand better than anyone. Being
inhuman
is human. We are already beasts who feign morality. We need religion, government, and laws to force a level of control over our baser natures. I intend to strip away the disease that is
intelligence
, to rip away the deception that allows humanity to believe itself mightier and more deserving of this planet.”

Cutter waved an arm to encompass everything. “We burn the forests, we pollute the oceans, we melt the ice caps, we dump carbon dioxide into the air . . . we are the main driving force behind one of the greatest extinctions on this planet. It is a path that will inevitably lead to our
own
end.”

Kendall tried to argue, but Cutter cut him off.

“Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best.
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization
. We’re already at that cusp, but what will we leave in the wake of our death throes? A planet polluted to the point where nothing survives?”

The ranger stood up against that rant. “But it’s
civilization
. . . it’s our innate
intelligence
that holds the possibility to save ourselves, too, and along with it the planet. While the dinosaurs failed to see that asteroid heading toward them, many of us do
see
what’s happening and are fighting for change.”

“You share a narrow perspective about civilization, my dear. The dinosaurs reigned for a hundred and eighty-five million years, while modern man has only been around for the past two hundred thousand years. And civilization a mere ten thousand.”

Cutter shook his head for emphasis. “Society is a destructive illusion of control, nothing more. And look what it’s wrought. During this short experiment with
civilization
, we as a species are already at the precipice of total ecological collapse, one driven by our own hands. Do you truly think in this industrial world of warring nations, of greed-driven politics, that anything will change?”

Jenna sighed loudly. “We must try.”

Cutter snorted. “It will never happen, certainly not in time. The better path? It’s time to
uncivilize
this world, to halt this ridiculous experiment before nothing of this planet is left.”

“And that’s your plan?” Kendall asked. “To let loose this contagion and strip humanity of its intelligence.”

“I prefer to think of it as
curing
humankind of the disease called civilization, to leave only the natural animal, leveling the playing field for all. To let the only law of the land be
survival of the fittest
. The world will be stronger and healthier for it.”

Jenna stared at Cutter, her face full of suspicion. “And what about you?” she asked. “Will you also take this
cure
?”

Cutter shrugged, but he looked irritated by her question—which made Kendall like her all the more. “Some few must be spared, to oversee this transition.”

“I see,” Jenna said, clearly calling him out on his hypocrisy. “That’s very convenient.”

With his feathers duly ruffled, Cutter faced Kendall. “It’s high time, my friend, that you show me your method for arming your viral shell.”

Kendall took strength from the young woman’s demeanor. “I can’t,” he said honestly.

“Can’t or won’t?” Cutter asked. “I’ve been very patient with you, Kendall, because we were once friends, but there are ways to convince you to cooperate fully.”

Cutter glanced to his wife’s sister. A glint in Rahei’s dark eyes suggested she would invite such a challenge.

“It’s not a matter of refusing you, Cutter—which I would still do if it made any difference, but it doesn’t. It’s a simple matter that the key you want is beyond both of our grasps. I can’t synthesize it. Not here. The XNA sequence necessary to unlock my engineered shell can be found only in nature.”

That nature you love so well
.

“Where?”

“You know where, Cutter.”

He nodded, closing his eyes. “Of course . . . Antarctica,” he mumbled. “There must be a particular species from that shadow biosphere, something with a unique genetic code that acts as that key.”

It still disturbed Kendall how quickly this monster’s mind worked.

Cutter opened his eyes. “Which species is it?”

Kendall met that stolid gaze, ready to draw a line in the sand. If Cutter put a mole in his lab, he surely had a person or a team inserted at Harrington’s station. Cutter certainly knew enough details about Hell’s Cape. If that bastard learned the truth, he could obtain the last piece to his horrifying genetic puzzle.

That must never happen
.

Cutter read the resolution in his face and gave a sad shake of his head. “So be it. Then we’ll have to do it the hard way.”

Kendall felt his knees shake. He would do his best to hold out against whatever torture would follow.

Cutter turned to Jenna while waving a hand to Rahei. “We’ll start with her and make Kendall watch, so he’ll better understand what’s to come.”

1:00
P
.
M
.

“One hour out!” Suarez called from up front, seated next to the Valor’s pilot.

Painter looked out the window behind his bandaged shoulder. Before lift-off, he had popped a handful of ibuprofen and abandoned his sling, but even this small movement triggered a dagger-stab of pain. He studied the passing terrain, seeing only the green sea below the droning nacelles of the tiltrotor. Somewhere ahead lay their destination, the tepui where the dead man, Cutter Elwes, might have made his home.

And hopefully where we’ll find Jenna and Dr. Hess
.

Time was rapidly running out.

He still had the satellite phone pressed to his ear. “There’s no way to hold Lindahl off?” he asked.

Lisa answered, “The weather patterns have changed in the last hour. And not for the better. The next storm front is moving in faster than originally projected, expected to hit the mountains by midafternoon. The wind speeds and rainfall estimates suggest this storm will be three to four times as fierce as the prior one. Because of that threat, the timetable for the nuclear option has shifted from sundown to noon.”

Noon . . .

He checked his watch and calculated the time difference. That was only two hours from now. And they were still sixty minutes out from reaching the tepui, leaving them almost no time to find Kendall Hess and discover if a non-nuclear option for dealing with the threat existed.

Painter recognized the impossible task before him. He stared at the Marines around him. He was flanked by Sergeant Suarez’s two men: Abramson and Henckel. Across the cabin, Drake conversed in low tones with Malcolm and Schmitt. He took strength from the rugged team accompanying him.

Still . . .

“When are they evacuating the base?” he asked.

“It’s already under way. The National Guard combed the countryside at daybreak, clearing any recalcitrant locals who hadn’t obeyed the mandatory evacuation order. Base personnel are breaking down the labs, moving Josh as I speak.”

“And you and Nikko?”

“I don’t trust Lindahl. I’m going to wait for the last bus out. Sarah . . . Corporal Jessup has prepped a small helicopter to ferry us out of harm’s way.”

“Don’t wait too long,” he warned, fear for her drying out his mouth.

“I won’t. Edmund updates me regularly on the status of the nuclear team who are prepping the device. They’re still doing final calculations. The plan is to lift the bomb via a drone helicopter to a specific altitude for maximum effect across the local mountaintops and valleys. The team is still working on those last details.” Lisa’s voice hardened. “So, Painter, you need to find something . . . if not a cure, at least some hope to delay the inevitable.”

Painter sighed heavily. It was a tall order. Even if he could discover some solution to this threat—some unknown biological counteragent—could it be engineered or employed fast enough to discourage this pending nuclear response?

“I’ll do all I can,” Painter promised.

He said his good-byes and ended the call, resting the phone on his lap.

Drake must have read his face. “Let me guess. The news from home isn’t good.”

He slowly shook his head.

Not good at all
.

With a twinge from his shoulder, he turned to the window, finally noting a distant dark mountain rising near the horizon.

I doubt the situation is any better over there
.

1:05
P
.
M
.

“This may sting,” Cutter Elwes said.

Jenna sat on a chair in the lab, pinned in place by the hulking native, Mateo. It was the same man who had ambushed her at that hilltop ghost town. She recognized him from the purplish scar running down his cheek to his chin. It seemed everything had come full circle.

“Don’t do this,” Kendall said. “Please.”

Cutter straightened, holding a pistol-shaped tool in his hand. She recognized a modified jet injector used for delivering vaccines. Sticking out the top was an inverted vial, holding an amber liquid.

She suspected she wasn’t being threatened by a flu shot.

“Simply tell me the name of the XNA species that is the biological key,” Cutter told Kendall. “And none of this nastiness needs to continue.”