Extinction Crisis Read online

  Jack took in a deep breath. “I was going to mention it. I just don’t know exactly what it was we saw.”

  He played the end of the recording where the creature chased them through the deep foliage. They must have paused and replayed the final bit a hundred times. Grant rose and went to the screen, squinting.

  “Whatever it is, it doesn’t look very friendly if you ask me,” Gabby said, tucking in her chin and grabbing her elbows.

  “Based on the information we were able to obtain,” Anna told them, “I estimate the creature’s height at upwards of twenty-five feet tall and its weight at thirty thousand pounds.”

  “Holy crap!” Dag shouted, jumping up and pacing back and forth. “You got chased by a frickin’ T-Rex, man.”

  “Dr. Gustavsson, I did not know you were a religious man,” Anna said, not trying to be funny. Her confusion grew when the room erupted in laughter.

  “Chalk it up to a lost-in-translation moment, Anna,” Gabby said, smiling at her.

  Anna shook her head as though to say, Humans are a perplexing species. Instead what came out of her mouth was, “Dr. Greer and I also observed what we believe was another independently mobile species.”

  “Those flying red dots?” one of the other scientists present asked.

  “Correct. We nicknamed them wisps. When the creature stopped, it revealed a distinct shape ideal for flight. Here on earth we would refer to such a creature as an insect.”

  “I’m less worried about bugs,” Stark admitted, “than I am with solutions to saving the lives of seven billion people.”

  “Look,” Jack reminded them, “we don’t know what we saw over there or even where that doorway sent us. But here’s what we do know, on the other side of that portal there is more than one lifeform. For all we know, we just got ourselves a ticket to the Atean home world.”

  “You think they’re over there, waiting to meet us?” Gabby asked, breathless.

  “I hope they are,” he replied. “For our sake.”

  Just then the door to the briefing room swung open. When Jack saw who it was, he leapt to his feet.

  “Mia,” he said, shocked and elated all at once.

  Then Jack caught sight of the man she was with, tall and gangly, wearing the kind of smile that was just begging to be punched off his face.

  “Everyone,” she said, “this is Alan Salzburg.”

  Chapter 8

  Kay’s story struck home like a thunderous blow from Thor’s hammer. That the chaos and lawlessness gripping the country was not nearly enough to dull the impact of the disturbing truth she had revealed was an even greater surprise. The calls and emails started flooding in minutes after it had been posted online. To say that it was an exclusive was a colossal understatement. While most news outlets were chasing after the government’s supposedly defunct bunker program, Kay had put one right between the White House’s eyes. The best part? This hadn’t been a hit piece against a Republican or a Democrat. In fact, she wasn’t even sure what party Myers belonged to. Taylor had been a Democrat, but it wasn’t unheard of, even in today’s day and age, to have a member from the other party in your cabinet. Still, some would call political foul. Kay was confident, however, that the facts about the sheer size and scope of the Sentinel conspiracy would speak for themselves.

  Her new office was right outside Ron Lewis’, a piece of prime real estate for any up-and-coming reporter. Not that it mattered to Kay’s father. He didn’t understand why she continued to come to work when time was running out. She had asked him about the brave folks who served the police, the fire department and even the military. Should they throw down their equipment and head home? Certainly some had, but thankfully, the majority had felt a strong enough sense of duty to stay.

  Leaning forward in her office chair, Kay grabbed her cell and called home.

  “Kayza!” Felix exclaimed. “This is your father speaking. Why are you not home?”

  She laughed. “I know who it is, Dad. I called you. I’m working.”

  “Derek and his family are here. Your mother and I are so very excited. There is much to do.”

  Kay was startled. “I thought Derek and his family were heading up to their cabin in the mountains?”

  “There has been a change of plan. Therese spoke with Derek’s mother and convinced her to join us.”

  “Dad, let me speak with Derek.”

  The sound of shuffling and muffled voices.

  “Kay?” her fiancé Derek’s smooth voice asked.

  “What’s going on? I thought you guys were heading out of town and that your mother was going to talk my parents into joining you.”

  “I know, babe, but things got turned around. I never knew your mom was such an eloquent speaker.”

  “There are a lot of things about my mom that are surprising these days.” Kay drew in a heavy breath. “So your folks are holing up at our place?”

  “Not even,” Derek said. She could hear him smiling on the other end of the phone. “Seems we’re all gonna head to the church. Please tell me you’re planning on joining us. I don’t care where we are as long as we’re together.”

  Kay felt a hand close around her heart and squeeze. “I feel the same way.” The thought of abandoning the paper right when the full impact of her story was hitting home stirred something inside of her. There would be interviews on CNN and the other networks, each of them vying for a soundbite they could play in an endless loop. But the truth was, none of that stuff was her strength. Maybe that was a job for folks who were less camera-shy.

  She felt the words on the tip of her tongue and wasn’t sure she’d be able to speak them.

  Go on, you can do it.

  “All right, honey,” she said, hearing herself say the words as though from a great distance. “Let me wrap up here and I’ll come home for good.”

  Derek told her he loved her and they hung up. Kay collapsed onto her desk.

  Was that really so hard?

  Yes. Yes, it had been.

  ***

  Two hours later, after Kay had packed up her things from the office and said her goodbyes, she pulled up to the house in her tired, silver Corolla. Derek’s Mustang was in the driveway, along with her parents’ car. As much as her work had given her purpose and a sense of fulfillment, Kay had to admit the idea of huddling close to the people she loved in these last few days was a welcome one. She took a final wistful look around the neighborhood before going inside. The resemblance to the street she knew growing up was long gone. Several of the houses across the street looked abandoned, their windows storm-shuttered against a hurricane that was already in their midst. She imagined these were folks who had fled from the city, planning to return once the situation returned to normal. Not that anyone really expected that to happen.

  Kay was reaching the front step of her parents’ house when she had a strange sensation, like a duck feather tickling at the back of her neck. She pushed her way inside, expecting to hear the raucous noise of a house filled with joy and laughter. Her father loved to entertain. He was always pushing drinks on his guests and regaling them with comical stories from Kay’s childhood, like the time she found her father’s checkbook at eight years of age and wrote her mother a check for millions of dollars.

  “If I had that sort of money, do you think I would still be living in a house that was falling apart?” he would say, always the same punchline with the exact same delivery. She’d heard it more times than she cared to count and yet it still never got old. But now, walking into that once-vibrant family home, Kay wasn’t hearing anything at all.

  “Hello, Papa?” she called out. “Mama, are you there?” (note for Gary Papa is papaw and mamaw)

  The sound of each creak as she moved throughout the house seemed to grow louder, mirroring her deepening sense of concern. It was only when she reached the kitchen that she knew that something was very wrong. Two of the chairs had been knocked over, along with the bucket her father had placed to catch water dripping from that leaky
pipe he’d never fixed.

  Kay pulled out her phone at once and dialed Derek’s number. It rang three times before she noticed a faint version of his ringtone trickling down from upstairs.

  “Derek?” she shouted, charging up the stairs two at a time, tracking the sound of his ringing phone. She reached the top riser and turned left toward her parents’ bedroom before correcting herself and heading back in the other direction. Finally, she reached the source of the sound and stopped. It was coming from inside the bathroom.

  “Derek,” she called out, more of a pleading whisper now than the panicked cry from a moment ago. She pushed open the door, hoping he would be there, washing his hands, but another part of her was hoping she wouldn’t find him. The bathroom curtains were closed, and the room was dim, but there was more than enough light for her to see the body slumped over the tub and submerged up to its shoulders. Derek’s phone was on the bathroom counter still ringing. It clicked to voicemail and she could hear the faint thread of his voice asking her to leave a message.

  “Oh, no, Derek, no,” she shrieked, breaking free of her paralysis and rushing in. She pulled his head out of the water and dragged him into the hallway by one arm. Her years as a lifeguard had taught her how to save someone who was drowning. But it had been years since she’d gone through the certification. She turned him over onto his side, as autopilot kicked in. She had to get the water out of his lungs. Next, she checked for a pulse and swore when she didn’t find one.

  “Stay with me, Derek!” she cried out, beginning CPR and chest compressions. His lips were so cold they stung. Whenever she blew air into his lungs they made a hissing sound. In the movies, it didn’t take more than a few pumps of a victim’s chest cavity before they were coughing up water and asking what had happened. But this wasn’t happening now and Kay was becoming more and desperate. She grabbed her phone, set it on the floor next to her and dialed the police as she repeated the entire CPR procedure again.

  A busy signal belched back at her.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  That was when she noticed that her hands were soaked in blood. Her head swiveled back toward the bathroom and she saw a trail of it, soaked into the crumpled bathmat and leading into the hallway. She lifted Derek’s shirt and noticed a series of puncture holes in the side of his chest. Derek was far too strong for this to be the work of one person, so whoever had done this had also stabbed him in the ribs with what looked like an icepick. She examined his face and saw bruises. He had clearly put up a fight and paid for it with his life.

  Had Kay been thinking clearly, she might have run from the house the minute she saw the body. The killer could still be here. That was the difference between real life and imagination. But right now Kay wasn’t thinking about danger. She was thinking about the man she loved, the man she’d been ready to marry and how that man was lying before her, dead.

  Slowly, as her mind tried to squeeze past the colossal pain of her loss, another thought began to seep in. This one had to do with her mother and father. She struggled up onto a pair of wobbly legs and checked the rest of the house, not sure her mind could handle the prospect of finding any more bodies. That she was thankfully spared. Only Derek had been left behind. Which led to dozens of questions blossoming before Kay’s tear-streaked eyes. Were they still alive? And if so, where had they been taken?

  Chapter 9

  Mia removed her heavy parka, set it on the bench next to her and rubbed her hands together in anticipation. “I am absolutely starving,” she said as Jack approached with two steaming plates of food. They were in the mess hut at the base camp. Behind them, a hot buffet table was serving beef stew, shepherd’s pie and chicken noodle soup. She had ordered the beef stew while Jack had opted for the soup. The mess hall was filled with three long rows of cafeteria-style tables. Other groups of techs, scientists and military personnel sat eating, others quietly chatting.

  “Is that all you’re gonna have?” she asked, suddenly feeling like a glutton.

  He grinned, tiny dimples forming at his cheeks. “My stomach’s still getting used to traveling across space and time,” he replied, referring to his recent visit to the alien jungle.

  She mirrored his expression. “Still no word on what planet or dimension you went to?”

  He shook his head and then blew on his soup before sliding the spoon in his mouth.

  She laughed. “My daughter Zoey does that.”

  He watched her, perhaps noticing the effort she was putting in to keeping herself together. “How was she when you saw her at the motel outside Richmond?”

  “Not good, but I’ve heard she’s coming around and this time without any relapses. Some patients appear to shrug off the early stages of Salzburg while others linger in the earliest, most devastating effects.”

  Jack set his spoon down and glanced around. “I’ll admit, I was surprised to see you. Pleasantly, mind you, but surprised all the same. But I was downright shocked to see who you arrived with.”

  “You mean Alan?” she replied, almost guiltily.

  “I thought you said he was dead.”

  “So did I. I won’t deny, a big part of me hoped he was.”

  “How did he find you?”

  “Find me?” she said, exasperated. “He’s the one who put me up to this in the first place. Running from country to country, getting chased by gunmen and chasing leads. In Rome, he had me arrested as a pretext for bringing me here. Even told me he was going to have Ollie killed.” Her eyes welled up with tears and she clenched them shut. “President Myers has apparently put him in charge of the entire operation. He wants me to continue my research. That’s what he was after all along, a breakthrough, but he thought I needed incentivizing.”

  “By threatening to have you killed? That makes no sense.”

  “What can I say? He’s a sick man and would probably be in prison somewhere if he wasn’t so brilliant.”

  “I think you give that creep far too much credit.” Jack sipped at his water and felt it tickle his stomach. “What do you think he’s really after?”

  “A cure,” Mia said, hopeful.

  “Oh, come on, you know that’s bullshit. He’s using you, just like he’s always used you.”

  Mia became indignant. “Yeah, well, have you considered the fact that I may be using him too?”

  Jack grew quiet. No, he hadn’t considered that. “Who are the twins you were with?”

  “Sofia and Noemi. They were part of a study Dr. Putelli was conducting. They’re the first reported cases of patients with all eight of the Salzburg genes.”

  “So a third of the population has twenty-four chromosomes while the rest of us are running around with twenty-three. I feel an inferiority complex coming on.”

  Mia grinned. “I don’t blame you. Like so many others, these girls have passed through the earliest gene expression—weak skeletal structure, speechlessness, vulnerability to the sun, among others. Then suddenly, the dominant genes in Salzburg began to kick in.”

  “The ones in the 48th chromatid?”

  “Right. We didn’t know it at the time, but the genes in the 47th chromatid were recessive. In the beginning those were the only ones manifesting. Then as new blast waves kept coming, the 48th chromatid and the dominant genes began to appear.”

  Jack shook his head. “That would certainly explain what we’ve seen in Grant. He went from a frail man in his sixties with blotchy skin to a bronzed triathlete in a matter of days. Not to mention the healing.”

  “Healing?” Mia asked, her curiosity piqued.

  “He was shot twice by the Israelis. Took one in the gut and another in the wrist and within twenty-four hours he was running around like nothing had happened.”

  “That’s a gene in the 48th called MRE11,” Mia told him. “It acts like a janitor in a high-rise apartment complex, running around repairing errors in our DNA.”

  “Yeah, except this janitor’s on coke and working overtime.”

  The corners of
her lips rose as she giggled.

  “It sounds to me from what you’re saying,” Jack observed, “that at least half of these changes aren’t half bad. I’m starting to feel sorry I never came down with Salzburg myself.” He remembered Mia’s daughter and realized he’d stepped out of line. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

  “No it’s okay. You know, Ollie was convinced the Ateans were preparing the human race to become slaves, mining rare and dangerous elements off asteroids, or something along those lines.”

  The thought ricocheted around inside the confines of Jack’s mind. “It does make a certain amount of sense, but when the team discovered the ship in the Gulf, we had a very similar conversation and Gabby brought up a good point. If the Ateans really were after resources, why bother messing with a planet brimming with violent natives when the galaxy is chock full of everything you could possibly need?” Jack paused and picked up his spoon again, stirring his soup in slow circles, watching the liquid become a tiny whirlpool. “I sure do hope he’s wrong.” He glanced up. “Does the fact that the two little girls are twins have any bearing?”

  Mia nodded. “I believe it might. In Kolkata, Dr. Jansson and I realized that women with Salzburg who became pregnant invariably gave birth to twins.”

  “In each case?” Jack asked, surprised.

  “In every one we’ve come across. Sometimes they’re triplets or quadruplets, but these women never give birth to a single infant.”

  “That’s kind of creepy.”

  “Believe me, shivers ran up my arms when we made the connection.”

  “Were you able to tie it to Salzburg?”

  “Anecdotally, yes, but we were never able to draw a clear causal link. My guess is it has something to do with the fourth and final gene in the 48th chromatid. It’s called HOK3 and affects the parahippocampal gyrus in the cerebral cortex. That’s why the twins are here.”

  “Affects the gyrus how?”

  Mia looked away. “I’m not sure yet. But when Ollie and I found the young girls in the asylum—”