Jeremy Robinson - Island 731

“He’s using sounds and smells,” Hawkins said. “Different tones in varying sequences act like commands. Three pulses might mean ‘attack.’ Two might mean ‘stop.’ And one horn blast means, what? ‘Kidnap’?”

Kam shook his head no. “My mother can understand limited instructions. He can tell her what to do. The horn just sends her into action. As will the nearly inaudible tones emitted by his handheld remote and small speakers attached to many of the island’s cameras. The horn is meant to intimidate those who hear it, but the tones allow him to act in secret, like when he took the crew who remained behind on the Magellan. When he wants someone taken, rather than killed, he marks them with a scent.”

“But why does she obey him?” Bray asked. “Why doesn’t she just crush his skull and be done with it. And what about you? Why not drag his ass beneath the water and let him drown?”

“While Bennett lived in the labs, I spent much of my time in the jungle. The chimeras don’t attack each other. They might fight over territory or mates, but they don’t eat each other. I was free to explore. To dream. It’s why I’m different than him. He wanted to control nature. I wanted to enjoy it. And during those years of exploration, my mother was my only real company. Five years ago, Bennett captured my mother, and me. He operated on both of us. Planted explosives in our chests.”

“Like the ones he used on the staff?” Bray asked.

“Similar. Someone skilled at defusing bombs could have removed those. The ones inside my mother and me would require a highly skilled surgeon and someone to defuse the bomb simultaneously.”

“So they can’t be removed?” Blok asked.

“It’s unlikely,” Kam said. “One is rigged to the other, and both to his body. If his pulse stops, we both die. If we don’t do as he asks, he will detonate the explosive in the other. The small remote he carries? The buttons on the outside trigger the tones, and horn. But it can be slid open. The two buttons inside trigger the explosives.”

“So why not just let him kill her?” Bray said.

Anger flashed in Kam’s eyes. “You see a monster when you look at her, but I see my mother.” He leaned back in the chair, exhausted from the effort. “I couldn’t let her be killed any more than you could your mother. I’m not like Bennett. I couldn’t kill my parents.”

“Is that what happened to Bennett’s parents?” Hawkins asked. “He killed them?”

“They were kind to me,” Kam said with regret. “They didn’t deserve it. None of them did.”

Hawkins’s eyes widened. “He sewed them in with the others?”

“They were at the core. He didn’t want to see them.” Tears gathered at the base of Kam’s eyes. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll all be dead soon anyway.”

Hawkins leaned in close. “What are you talking about?”

Kam turned slowly to the bank of monitors. He tapped a button on the keyboard, shifting views and revealing that there were many more cameras on the island than Hawkins first thought. Maybe hundreds.

Kam stopped on a block of four images. Two of the jungle, one of the path leading to the gallery, and one looking out at the ocean. With a push of a button, the ocean view enlarged, filling up the whole screen. The full-color image was crystal clear. “Bennett replaced the outward-looking cameras with high-resolution zoom lenses. So he can see things coming from far away.”

Hawkins leaned in, looking for something, but only saw a few random specs on the screen. “All I see is dust.”

“Not dust,” Kam said. He zoomed in on the image. The specs grew large and blurry, but quickly came into focus, revealing ten ominous-looking helicopters, eight of them Blackhawks that would be carrying soldiers and two attack helicopters outfitted with an array of deadly weapons. “They’re coming.”

The sight should have filled Hawkins with relief. The helicopters could get them away from the island. But he knew the men on those choppers had just one mission.

Liquidation.

Anyone who’d laid eyes on this place was most likely a threat to whoever headed the secret DARPA group that had been running the island since at least the sixties. DARPA as a whole—even if they weren’t aware of the project’s true nature—could be shut down. The agency would probably not recover from what was possibly the worst human rights scandal outside of a war. Worse, if the island and its secrets were revealed to the world, it would be a permanent stain on not just DARPA, but the United States as a whole. Political careers would end. The president would ultimately bear the brunt of the backlash. It would degrade the country’s status in the world. It seemed likely that at least a few other nations had similar secret laboratories—maybe tucked away in the Amazon, or in the wilds of Siberia, or anywhere else hard to reach—but most of those places already had bad reputations. Whoever was on those helicopters knew all that, and they were coming to stop it from happening.

The line of helicopters now looked like a squadron of angry wasps. “We need to get the hell off this island,” Hawkins said.

“You mean with them?” Blok asked, pointing at the screen.

Bray chuckled. “They’re going to kill us.”

“We’re United States citizens,” Blok said.

“Well, you can stick around and see how that goes,” Bray said. “We’ll hightail it to the Magellan and get the hell out of Dodge.” He took a small bell from his pocket and gave it a shake. “I’ve got my Get Across the Island Free card.”

“Not exactly,” Kam said with a cough. “The bell won’t work on the crocs. Or my mother.”

“Or Bennett’s newest creations,” Hawkins added.

“BFSs.”

Hawkins looked at Bray. What?

Bray shrugged. “‘Big fucking spiders.’ It’s the best I could come up with.”

“There’s one more,” Kam said. He pushed himself up, grunting in pain. “The litter.”

Hawkins knew the term “litter” referred to the young of a species, usually mammals, that gave birth to more than one offspring at a time.

Bray came to the same conclusion as Hawkins, saying, “There are more of those panther savages running around?”

“They’re not savages,” Kam said. “They’re my brothers and sisters. The one you speak of is Lilly. She’s the oldest of them. And the smartest.”

“Lilly,” Hawkins said. “I think I spoke to her.”

“You did?” both Bray and Kam asked.

“Briefly. In the jungle. Back by the old lab. I think I insulted her,” Hawkins said.

Kam nodded. “She is easily upset, but rarely violent.”

Rarely , Hawkins thought. He would have preferred never . “I thought Kaiju had just one child?”

“My mother has perhaps fifty different species combined within her single body. Some of them reptile, some of them amphibian. Both classes contain species capable of saving and preserving sperm for long periods of time. Based on the egg clutches I’ve seen, she has both active human and turtle reproductive systems.” Kam looked Hawkins in the eyes. “She has laid one clutch per year for the past five years. Maybe ninety eggs total, though only five of the children survived their first year, all from the first two litters.”

“Why are you telling us this?” Bray asked.

“I want you to get them off the island.”

Bray threw his hands up in the air, scoffing.

Blok shook his head, whispering, “This is insane.”

“Can they all speak English?” Hawkins asked.

Kam looked proud for a moment. “I taught them myself.”

“And what if Bennett turns them on us?” Bray asked.