Jonathan Maberry - The Dragon Factory

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bunny nudge Top and then the two of them share a look. I must have had quite an expression on my face. I turned away and hoisted my poker face on.

There was a bing! in my earbud and then Church’s voice said, “Cowboy. Our spotters are seeing some activity around the island. Over two dozen small commercial fishing craft have closed on Dogfish Cay and launched boats.”

“What the hell? Don’t tell me the Navy’s jumped the gun on this.” “No,” he said. “They’re not ours.”

“Then who the hell are they?”

“Unknown at this time.”

“Russians?”

“Possible, but there are a lot of them. Early estimates put the number at over one hundred.”

“Christ. Any word from Grace? Do we have the trigger device?”

“She reported in just before I called you. She does not yet have the device. This situation is still fragile.”

Shit.

“Okay… keep all of the backup on standby. I’m seven minutes from my drop. I’ll get back to you with intel as soon as I’m on the ground.”

The Warehouse, Baltimore, Maryland

Tuesday, August 31, 2:21 A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 33 hours, 39 minutes

Rudy Sanchez unscrewed the top of the bottle of ginger ale and poured a glass for the Kid. There was a plate of sandwiches that the boy hadn’t touched and an open pack of cookies from which one had been taken, nibbled, and set aside. The boy looked briefly at the soda and then turned his head away and continued to stare at his own reflection in the big mirror that covered one wall.

“You couldn’t sleep?” Rudy asked.

The boy shook his head.

“You probably have a lot of questions. About what’s going to happen. About your own future.”

A shrug.

“SAM…?”

“That’s not my name.”

“Sorry. Do you prefer to be called Eighty-two? No? Is there another name you’d prefer? You have a choice. You can pick any name you want.”

“That guy Joe called me Kid.”

“Do you like that? Would you like people to call you that?”

A shrug.

“Tell me what you’d like.”

The boy slowly turned his head and studied Rudy. He was a good-looking boy, but at the moment his eyes held a reptilian coldness. The brown of his irises was so dark that his eyes looked black, the surfaces strangely reflective.

“Why do you care?” said the boy.

“I care because you’re a teenager and from what Joe’s told me you’ve been in a troubling situation.”

The boy snorted. “ ‘Troubling.’ ”

“Is there another word you’d prefer?”

“I don’t know what to call it, mister.”

Rudy said, “I also care because you’re a good person.”

“How do you know?” The boy’s tone was mocking, accusatory.

“You took a great risk to warn us about the Extinction Wave.”

“How do you know I wasn’t just trying to save myself?”

“Is that the case? Did you take all of those risks to send those two videos and the map just to save yourself? You took great risks to help other people. That’s very brave.”

“Oh, please…”

“And it’s heroic.”

“You’re crazy.”

“No,” said Rudy. “Do you know what bravery is?”

“I guess.”

“Tell me.”

“People say that being brave is when you do something even when you’re afraid.”

Rudy nodded. “I imagine that you were afraid. You were probably very afraid, and yet you took a risk to send us this information.”

The boy said nothing.

“Why did you do it?”

“That’s a stupid question.”

“Is it?”

“It’s stupid because I had to do it.”

“Why did you have to do it?”

The boy said nothing. His dark eyes were wet.

“Why did you have to do it?” Rudy asked again.

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because I’m afraid.”

“What are you afraid of?”

Tears filled the boy’s eyes and he turned away again. He sat for a long time staring at his reflection. The lights were low and that side of the room was in shadows. It distorted the boy’s reflection, made him look older, as if the mirror was actually a window through which the boy could see his future self. A tear broke and rolled down one of his cheeks.

“I’m afraid I’m going to go to Hell,” said the boy.

Rudy paused. “Hell? Why do you think that? Why would you go to Hell?”

“Because,” said the boy quietly, “I’m evil.”

The Chamber of Myth

Tuesday, August 31, 2:22 A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 33 hours, 38 minutes E.S.T.

Hecate and Paris stood there, surrounded by the wonders they had created, and both of them felt as if the world had been pulled out from under them.

“Mengele?” Paris whispered. “I don’t…” He shook his head, unable to finish.

“You still don’t get it, do you?” said Cyrus, his eyes glittering. “Everything I’ve done has been toward one end. To purify the world. Tomorrow I’ll send a coded message to operatives all over the world. Some will release the bottled water; others will release pathogens into the water supplies; others will send computer viruses out that will crash the CDC and other organizations. In one coordinated movement a process will be set into motion that cannot be stopped. Nothing on earth can prevent the spread of the pathogen once released into the populations of the mud people.”

“ ‘Mud people,’ ” Hecate murmured. She looked dazed, her eyes glazed.

“Why?” asked Paris. “Why do… this?”

“To complete the work Otto and I began more than half a century ago. Otto, you see, is a nickname from his boyhood. His real name, his birth name, is Eduard Wirths. He was the Chief Medical Officer of the entire camp. He was my boss,” Cyrus said with a laugh.

“Well, only for a while,” said Otto. To the Twins he added, “Your father was and is brilliant. When he came to the camps as a young captain I was immediately entranced by his vision, by his insights. Every day we would work on the prisoners in the camps and then we’d talk late into the evening, reviewing our research, excited by the directions it was taking, by the possibilities it presented. We were doing the work that would make the dream of eugenics practical. But even then we knew that the science at our disposal was not adequate to the tasks. So we planned. We built a network of scientists and supporters who would continue the work long after Hitler’s war was over. Even in the early days your father and I knew that the war would never be won by Germany. But it didn’t matter. Our plan for the New Order of humanity was so much bigger than the aspirations of a single nation.”

“We knew what we had to do,” said Cyrus, taking up the thread of the story. “We hired spies to keep tabs on everyone who was doing work that would support our cause. Not just Germans, but Russians, and Americans. Even Jews. Anyone who was doing progressive research. When the war started going badly we had our friend Heinrich Haeckel smuggle copies of all of the research out of the country. Unfortunately, Haeckel suffered several strokes and was unable to communicate to us the location of the materials. Even then, though, we did not stop, did not falter. We built the Cabal-a network of scientists, spies, and assassins unlike anything the world had ever seen. Even today there are arms of the Cabal in every country, in every government. Your patron, Sunderland… his brother is a member of the Cabal; so is the man you called Hans Brucker, the man you hired to lead your hunts. Brucker is a product of our cloning program, along with many others who share his unique skill set.”