James Rollins - The 6th Extinction

She could tell he tried to say this bravely, as if it were a lesson he wanted to show her that he learned, but he looked mournful nonetheless.

He continued across the canopy, trying to draw her with him.

“Why did you help me?” she called out. “Why break the Law of the Jungle for me?”

He stopped and turned. He glanced to her face, then down to his hands, then away again. “You’re pretty. Law of the Jungle.” He shook his head. “Not for you.”

With those sage words, he set out again.

Cutter slammed through the hatch into the sinkhole, trailed by a pair of armed men. He had radioed for two carts to meet him. One held four more armed Macuxi. His sister-in-law stood before the second.

Rahei glowered at him, as if this were all his fault. Though the woman had the cold-bloodedness of a snake, she loved Jori. Only the boy could bring out a measure of warmth in the woman, but that love could also turn savage, transforming her into a lioness defending a cub.

Still, he welcomed that now.

They piled into the electric carts and raced around and around, barely waiting for the gates at each level to fully open, before scraping through to continue onward.

Cutter could not erase the image of his son vanishing into those dark trees, a habitat as dangerous as they could come. What was I thinking stoking his curiosity for the life I’d created?

He knew a part of it was pride, to see the respect and awe in Jori’s young face. It was all the accolades he needed for his hard work and ambition. He had an audience of one and that was enough, especially if it was Jori.

He found his breath growing labored as tension and fear mounted. Rahei must have sensed it and grabbed his knee, fingers digging like daggers, telling him silently to hold it together.

For Jori.

At last they reached the final gate, and the two carts parked on the far side. “Leave the gate open,” Cutter said as he climbed out. “If Jori is hurt, I don’t want to lose a second.”

He left one driver guarding the carts and the gateway. He headed down the ramp with the others, descending deeper into the forest’s depths.

Cupping his mouth, he bellowed his challenge to this harsh world. “Jori! Where are you?”

Kendall sealed the last zipper on his biosafety suit and entered the BSL4 lab. Before Cutter had stormed out, he had warned Kendall to begin his preparations for inserting that destructive code into his engineered shell. More worrisome, Kendall was instructed to expect a sample of Volitox blood before nightfall.

Kendall hadn’t argued. He wanted access again to this quarantined space anyway. He glanced out the window to where Mateo and Ashuu spoke in low voices, their heads bowed together, a brother and a sister consoling each other. The giant loomed over the fragile form of his sister. She sheltered under his strength and support.

Kendall felt bad that he would have to kill them, but he had to reach a phone, some way of sharing with the outside world about the cure to what plagued California, a magnetic frequency that could rip apart his bioengineered organism at the genetic level.

The current chaos with the boy offered him his best chance.

Even Cutter had slipped up, a rarity for the genius.

Kendall patted his pocket, where he had hidden the object he had stolen from a tabletop while everyone was distracted. He crossed to the large refrigerators at the back, opened the doors, and searched the racks of vials. He thanked Cutter for his thorough cataloging and indexing. He quickly found what he needed and grabbed a dozen vials, shoving them into a pocket.

He glanced over his shoulder, making sure Mateo stayed occupied.

Only for another minute or two .

He strode over to one of the medical exam rooms at the rear, the spaces used for studying tissues and gross anatomies of Cutter’s creations. Kendall stepped past the X-ray machine and the PET scanner and entered the copper-lined MRI room.

Magnetic resonance imaging .

The irony did not escape him. Magnetism was the key to saving the world, but it could also lead to Cutter’s downfall.

He stared at the table surrounded by the enclosed ring of giant magnets. They were powerful enough to do great damage when operated by someone improperly trained or careless. Injuries, even deaths, had occurred due to mismanagement of these massive magnets, but they were dangerous for another reason.

He moved over to the quench box on the wall near the door and lifted the spring-loaded cover. The magnets of an MRI were cooled by liquid helium. In case of emergency, the helium could be rapidly vented to power down a magnet, but it was a dangerous proposition in an enclosed space, as in a sealed-up BSL4 lab, especially one buried in the heart of a tepui.

Most hospitals vented this pipe to the outside, but Kendall had already investigated and found that Cutter in his hubris had not bothered to do so.

Kendall leaned out the MRI room and checked on the situation in the main lab. Mateo was alone now, staring straight back at him. It looked like Ashuu had already left.

Kendall met the native’s gaze, then pounded the button.

He dove out the door and flew headlong, sliding across the floor on his belly.

Behind him, a frigid blast exploded with tremendous force as the helium liquid expanded eight-hundred-fold, pushing oxygen ahead of that wave. Windows blew out into the main lab, smashing into Mateo’s face. A chunk of magnet whistled past and struck a row of oxygen tanks in the next room. They exploded, ignited from a spark, and rolled into a fireball, challenging the freezing white cloud of helium erupting out that shattered window.

It was more of a detonation than he had been expecting.

He pushed to his knees, then gained his footing. He stumbled for the exit, choosing to climb out the observation window versus using the air lock.

I think I already broke containment here .

He saw Mateo crumpled on the floor, his face burned by the fireball, his hair singed away. Kendall had to step over him to get past the window, prepared to climb to the main villa above, to find a phone.

Something snagged his leg.

He glanced down to find fingers clamped to his ankle.

Mateo lunged up, his eyes shining out of his blackened flesh.

Kendall tried to escape, but Mateo lifted a broken glass cylinder and plunged it into his side.

“Nymph nest ahead,” Christchurch announced, swinging his DSR rifle and pointing its IR beam along the riverbank.

Dylan called a halt and examined the site with a pair of night-vision binoculars. Twenty yards ahead, a small pool jutted from the main waterway, formed by a dam, not unlike what a pack of beavers might build.

Only this dam was made of bones.

The mud-packed mound of broken skulls, ribs, and other decaying remains rose waist-high, spreading in a curve, dividing the shallow pool from the river. Squirming in that pool and scrabbling over that abattoir were hundreds of gray muscular slugs that ranged from the size of fat thumbs to as long as his forearm. A few scrabbled on the neighboring bank, rooting through the mosses and algal beds.

He watched one of the older nymphs — as they were euphemistically called — bunch itself and leap from the rocky bank, fly across the pool, and dive into an opening in its foul dike, vanishing into its depths.

Dylan shuddered.

The nest was clearly still agitated from the sonic blast that had ended a minute or so ago. Though this tunnel was behind the LRAD, the backwash and echoing acoustics still extended somewhat in this direction. The low-frequency infrasonics had set Dylan’s teeth on edge, like fingernails on a chalkboard.