James Rollins - Altar Of Eden

“Exactly. A landscape composed of millions of repetitions of the same shape. In this case, triangles. This is how computers today generate such detailed backgrounds in movies and video games. Just countless repetitions of the same basic algorithm or fractal to produce a more complex one.”

“But what does all this have to do with-”

Malik cut her off. “Because this phenomenon isn’t just found in mountains and coastlines. It’s found throughout the natural world. Take a tree, for example. If you look at the branching of any tree, it’s just a repetition of the same basic pattern, unique to that species of tree.”

On the screen, she watched a simple shape appear: a single line with two branching offshoots, forming a Y Then more and more Y shapes branched out from the first and multiplied into a fully dimensional tree.

“This same fractal basis of the natural world is found everywhere. From the structure of galaxies down to the tiniest snowflake, from the flow of ocean currents up to the shape of clouds in the sky. It’s all around us and in us.”

“In us?”

“Fractals make up our bodies. They can be found in the growth of blood vessels, the pattern of alveoli in our lungs, the shape of our kidneys, even the branching of the dendrites in our brain. But it’s so much more than that. When you look deeper, they’re even in the way our bodies function. It’s been shown that fractals define how we walk, the beating pattern of our hearts, the rates of respiration of our lungs. Likewise, scientists are now using fractal science to evaluate brain function, studying the fractal pattern hidden within EEGs. And they found it.”

Malik must have noted the look on her face and smiled. “That’s right. Some neurophysiologists are even coming to believe that the evolution of intelligence grew from fractals. That intelligence came about because of the repetitious growth of a smaller constant. In other words, there might be a fundamental fractal of intelligence, a primary seed from which all intelligence grew. Similar to that sprouting tree I just showed you. Can you imagine if we could harness that fractal, learn to control that power?”

Lorna thought back on the animals from the trawler and their strange intelligence. “That’s what you’ve been experimenting on. You’re looking for that fractal?”

“Exactly. And we’re close to a breakthrough.”

Lorna heard the raw desire in his voice.

Before Malik could explain further, a quiet knock on the door drew their attention around. The lab technician who had drawn her blood entered. He was a stick insect of a man, all legs and arms, with a receding hairline that made his features look squashed beneath that high forehead.

Loathing swelled at the sight of him, along with fear.

Were they already done with her tests?

“What is it, Edward?”

“Dr. Malik, I wanted to let you know that I’ve completed the scan on the subject.” His tiny eyes flicked to her, then away again. “Both blood and marrow. I find no evidence of contamination.”

“Very good. How long until the hormone levels are back from the lab.”

“Half an hour.”

“Thank you.”

The man bowed his way back out of the office.

Malik folded his fingers atop his desk. “That’s good news. There should be no reason your eggs won’t be perfectly suited for the next phase of our experiments.”

Lorna shied away from that reality and asked a question that was nagging her following the technician’s pronouncement. “What contamination were you searching for in my blood?”

“Ah, yes, well, with your exposure to the test subjects, we needed to make sure you weren’t exposed to a nasty blood-borne protein that the subjects produce. A side effect of their alteration, I’m afraid. One we don’t quite understand. A self-replicating protein that’s produced in their blood but is toxic to us.”

“Toxic?”

“That’s correct. The proteins appear to be benign in our altered specimens, but once transmitted to others, it triggers flulike symptoms. The protein spreads through the blood like a wildfire and crosses the blood-brain barrier. Once there, it hyperexcites the neurons to a dangerous extreme. Initially the excitement produces an amazing but temporary heightening of senses. Quite astounding actually. Better eyesight, smell, taste, touch. Across the board. Initially we researched a way to use this effect to enhance soldiers in the field. But in the end we had to give up.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Unfortunately hyperexcitement of the neurons quickly burned out a subject’s brain. No way to avoid it or cure it. Everyone infected died within forty-eight hours of exposure.”

Jack’s head pounded with each thrum of the chopper’s rotors. The bright sunlight reflecting off the Gulf below didn’t help. Even sunglasses did little to dull the stabbing brilliance.

Seated beside the pilot, he closed his eyes. Queasiness churned through him. He normally never experienced vertigo or motion sickness, but at the moment his stomach repeated every roll and lift of the helicopter. He pressed his damp palms against his knees. He swallowed back bile.

“Almost there,” the pilot reported through the headphones.

Jack opened his eyes and spotted the oil platform ahead. It looked like a rusted black dinosaur struggling out of a tar pit. The bull’s-eye was painted on the helipad. Drill crews scurried like ants below.

Lorna’s brother pushed forward from the backseat and leaned between Jack and the pilot. Jack twisted to face Kyle. The kid shared the passenger cabin with Randy and two of Jack’s men: Mack Higgins and Bruce Kim.

Mack looked like the brand of truck he’d been named after. He was massively framed with a shaved head and prominent forehead that looked like the hood of a semi. At the moment he chewed on the stub of a cigar, unlit, as he studied the oil rig below.

His partner was a wiry Korean-American with lanky black hair that shadowed his dark eyes. With his olive complexion and boyish appearance, he looked like Bruce Lee’s younger brother-and was just as good a fighter.

Jack had handpicked the pair and left his second-in-command, Scott Nester, to cover their asses back in New Orleans. Scott would also keep Jack abreast of any official response from Sector Chief Paxton. But otherwise, they were on their own out here.

Almost.

“Randy just heard from his friends,” Kyle said. “Their boat is already heading south.”

Jack nodded. That would be the Thibodeaux brothers. The pair had borrowed a private charter boat from one of their cousins, normally used for deep-sea fishing in the Gulf. Once at the oil rig, the team in the chopper would split up. Jack would head out in a seaplane with his men, while Randy and Kyle would take the helicopter and meet the Thibodeaux brothers’ boat.

The planned assault on the Lost Eden Cay would be a coordinated two-prong attack at dusk. Jack had studied nautical and satellite maps of the arc of islands. He had them both folded under his left thigh. He had planned on studying them again on the way out to the rig, but his pounding head and churning stomach discouraged it.

The plan was not a complicated one: get in, find Lorna, get out.

According to the satellite maps, the main villa lay on the western side of the island. As the sun set Jack and his men would lead an amphibious assault on the far side, where it would be darker, where eyes would be less likely to be watching. From a mile out, his team would do a sea-drop in scuba gear, their weapons in dry sacks. They would use personal tow scooters to swiftly propel themselves underwater to the island’s eastern shore and head overland from there.