Sigma Force 10 - The Sixth Extinction Page 19

  But long ago, these hundreds of mesas had once been connected together into a single giant sandstone massif. As the continents broke apart and shifted, that ancient massif fragmented into pieces, where rain and wind eroded the broken blocks into this collection of scattered plateaus, lonely sentinels of another time.

  Though Kendall had never visited any of these tepuis, he knew about them from his research into unusual forms of life. The tepuis were some of earth’s oldest formations, going back to Precambrian times, older than most fossils. These islands in the sky, isolated for ages, were home to species found only atop their summits, animals and plants unique unto themselves. Due to the remoteness of the region and the sheer cliffs, many of the plateaus had never been walked by man. They represented some of the least-explored areas on the planet, remaining unpolluted and pure.

  The helicopter climbed higher, buffeted by stronger winds, and swept toward the mountain—which from a bird’s-eye view looked dark and forbidding, untouched by man.

  As they crested the plateau, the surface of the tepui wasn’t as flat as it appeared from a distance. A large central pond dominated the summit, reflecting their navigation lights. Along its southern bank, storm-flooded waters spilled down to a lower section of the plateau, a shelf covered by a dense, stunted forest, a mockery of the rich life far below. North of the pond spread a labyrinth of rock, sculpted by wind and rain into chasms, caves, and a forest of unearthly pillars, all of it covered by a spongy dark-green moss or a gelatinous-looking algae. But between the cracks, he spotted flourishes of orchids and flowering bromeliads, a magical garden bathed by the mists.

  The helicopter lowered for a landing on a flat section of stone near the pond, its lights sweeping the plateau. Only then did Kendall see signs of human occupation. Built within one of the larger caves—filling it completely like an overflowing cornucopia—was a magnificent stone home with balconies, gables, even a hothouse conservatory. The home’s surfaces were all painted shades of dark green to match its surroundings.

  He also noted a neighboring corral, which held a couple of Arabian horses, alongside a parked row of golf carts, which looked distinctly out of place, though the vehicles were also painted green. Beyond the house, a handful of tall wind turbines blended perfectly with the stone pillars.

  Someone plainly wants to keep a low profile.

  That someone stood nearby, under an umbrella.

  Once the skids touched down, Kendall’s guard opened the cabin door and hopped out. He kept his tall height bowed from the blades overhead. A handful of men stood nearby with camouflage netting in hand, ready to hide the aircraft after it shut down. The group shared the same dark complexion and round faces as the guard and pilot. Likely they were all from the same native tribe.

  Knowing he had no choice, Kendall climbed out into the misty drizzle. He shivered at the clammy coldness at this elevation, a distinct difference from the swelter of rain forest below. He stepped toward the man who the world believed had died eleven years ago.

  “Cutter Elwes. For a dead man, you are looking well.”

  In fact, Cutter appeared better than the last time the two had spoken. It had been ages ago, at a synthetic biology conference in Nice. Then Cutter had been red-faced, full of youthful fury at the poor reception his paper had received from Kendall’s colleagues.

  But what had he expected?

  Now the man appeared fit, relaxed, a calm purposefulness to his blue-steel gaze under dark black hair. He was dressed in crisp linen pants and a white shirt, with a beige safari vest on top.

  “And you, my dear friend, look tired . . . and wet.” Cutter held out his own umbrella.

  Angry, Kendall ignored the offering.

  Cutter voiced no offense and returned the umbrella to above his own head. He turned, clearly expecting Kendall to follow, which he did.

  Where else am I going to go?

  “I imagine you’ve had a hard trip getting here,” Cutter said. “It’s late and Mateo here will see you to your bed. There is a cold dinner, along with hot coffee—decaffeinated, of course—waiting for you on the nightstand. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

  Kendall stepped faster, drawing abreast of his host, trailed by his hulking escort. “You killed . . . murdered so many people. My friends, colleagues. If you expect me to cooperate after all you’ve done . . .”

  Cutter dismissed this concern with a wave. “We’ll hash out the details in the morning.”

  They reached the four-story home and passed through double doors into a cavernous entry hall. It was floored in hand-scraped planks of Brazilian mahogany, the ceiling arched high, the walls decorated in French tapestries. If Kendall hadn’t known about the Elwes family wealth, he would have suspected as much from the many millions it must have cost to build this home in secret.

  Kendall searched around, knowing that there must be more to this place. Cutter’s passion had never been about finance or the accumulation of wealth. His passion had always been about the planet. He had started as a dedicated environmentalist, using family money to fund many conservation causes. But the man was also brilliant, with a Mensa score that pushed him beyond genius. Though Cutter was French on his father’s side, he had studied at both Cambridge and Oxford. The latter was where his mother was educated and where Kendall had first met Cutter.

  After the man graduated, he took that big brain of his and bottomless wealth and started a grassroots movement to democratize science with the establishment of teaching labs around the world, many delving into the early fringes of genetic engineering and DNA synthesis. He quickly became the proverbial king of the biopunk community, those heady entrepreneurs who were hacking their way into genetic code with delightful abandon.

  He also nurtured a great following by fiercely advocating for an overhaul to environmental policy. Over time, he made extremist groups like Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Army seem conservative in comparison. People were drawn to his iconoclastic personality, his uncompromising purpose. He supported civil disobedience and dramatic protests.

  But then everything changed.

  He studied Cutter’s back, noting how he slightly favored his right side. While on a mission to thwart poachers in the Serengeti, Cutter was mauled by an African lion, one of the very creatures he had sought to protect. He had almost died—did die, at least for a minute on the operating table. His recovery had been long and painful.

  Most people would have taken such a horrible, disfiguring event as a reason to turn their back on their causes, but instead, Cutter only became that much more dedicated. It was as if by surviving the raw fury of that lion—that literal representation of nature’s tooth and claw—he had somehow been infused with even more passion. But it also changed him. While he remained an environmentalist, his fervor became driven by a more nihilistic philosophy. He founded a new group, one of like-minded individuals, called Dark Eden, whose goal was no longer conservation, but to accept that the world was falling apart and to prepare for it, to perhaps even help it along, to look beyond the current mass extinction to a new genesis, a new Eden.

  Over a short period of time, his actions became more radicalized, his followers manic. Eventually he was convicted in absentia on multiple charges, by multiple countries, and was forced to flee underground. It was while running from authorities that he suffered his plane crash.

  Though now it was plain that his death had been a ruse all along, part of a greater plan for Dark Eden.

  But what did he intend?

  Cutter led him to an impressive stone staircase that swept upward. A woman descended toward them, dressed in a simple white shift that showed off the beauty of her burnished skin as it did her curves.

  Cutter’s voice softened. “Ah, Kendall, let me introduce you to the mother of my children.” He held out a hand and helped her off the last step. “This is Ashuu.”

  The woman gave a small bow of her head, then turned her full attention upon Cutter, her dark eyes almost glowing in the lamplig
ht. Her voice was a silky whisper. “Tu fait une promesse à ton fils.”

  Kendall translated the French.

  You made a promise to your son.

  “I know, my dear. As soon as I get our guest settled, I’ll see to him.”

  She tenderly touched Cutter’s cheek with the back of her soft hand, then nodded to Mateo. “Bienvenue, mon frère.”

  She then turned and headed back up the stairs.

  Kendall frowned and stared back at Mateo.

  Frère.

  Brother.

  Kendall searched the scarred countenance of the giant shadowing him. From the woman’s sheer beauty, he would never have fathomed that these two were brother and sister, but now brought to his attention, he could see a vague family resemblance.

  Cutter touched Kendall’s elbow and pointed to the back of the hall. “Mateo will take you to your room. I’ll see you in the morning. I have important business of my own to attend to before I retire.” He shrugged with his usual rakish charm. “As my dear wife reminded me . . . une promesse est une promesse.”

  A promise is a promise.

  Cutter followed Ashuu up the stairs.

  As Mateo roughly grabbed Kendall’s shoulder and manhandled him away, he kept his eyes on Cutter’s back, picturing the scars that had so radically transformed the man—both inside and out.

  Why did you bring me here?

  He suspected the answer already.

  And it terrified him.

  11:56 P.M.

  Small fingers clutched Cutter’s hand as he descended the steps carved into the sandstone floor of the tunnel.

  “Papa, we must hurry.”

  Cutter smiled as his son dragged him faster, with the heedless abandon that only came with youth. At only ten, Jori found wonder in everything, his raw curiosity shining from every inch of his handsome face. He had his mother’s soft features and mocha skin, but his eyes were his father’s, shining a clear blue. Many a local witch doctor had touched the boy’s face, staring into those eyes, and declared him special. One Macuxi elder described his son the best: This one was born to see the world only through cloudless skies.

  That was Jori.

  His blue gaze was always open for the next wonder.

  It was what drove the pair of them for this midnight hike through the subterranean tunnels. They were headed to the living biosphere he had established on the tepui—or rather inside it.

  Most of these sandstone summits were riddled with old caves and tunnels, formed as the soft rock was worn away by eons of rain and running water. It was said the cavern systems found here were the oldest in the world. So it was only appropriate that these ancient passageways had become the forges for what was to come.

  The bare bulbs running along the tunnel roof revealed a steel door ahead, blocking the way forward. Cutter stepped to the electronic deadbolt and used a keycard from around his neck to unlock it. With a quiet whirring, a trio of wrist-thick bolts wound out of the doorframe.

  “Ready?” he asked and checked his watch.

  Three minutes before midnight.

  Perfect.

  Jori nodded, bouncing a bit on the balls of his feet.

  Cutter hauled open the door to another world—the next world.

  He led his son onto the landing outside the hatch. Overhead a light misty drizzle fell out of the sky and down into the depths of the massive sinkhole before him. Their overlook jutted fifteen feet below the lip of that cylindrical hole. A corkscrewing wide ledge ran along the sinkhole’s inside walls, skimming from the plateau summit all the way to the base of the tepui. The hole was massive, three hundred meters across, but it was still a third smaller than its cousin, the giant sinkhole at the Sarisariñama tepui in Venezuela.

  Still, this smaller confined ecosystem served his purposes beautifully.

  The hole acted as an island within an island.

  It was these same tepuis that inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write The Lost World, populating these islands among the clouds with the living remnants of a prehistoric past, a violent world of dinosaurs and pterodactyls. To Cutter, the reality was more thrilling than any Victorian fantasy. For him, each tabletop was a Galápagos in the sky, an evolutionary pressure cooker, where each species struggled to survive in unique ways.

  He stepped to the wall, festooned with a riotous growth of vegetation, dripping with dampness, soaked in mists. He gently pointed to a small flower with white petals. Its tendril-like leaves were covered by tiny stalks, each tipped with a glistening sticky drop.

  “Can you name this one, Jori?”

  He sighed. “That’s easy, Papa. That’s a sundew. Dro . . . dro . . .”

  Cutter smiled and finished for the boy. “Drosera.”

  He nodded vigorously. “They catch ants and bugs and eat them.”

  “That’s right.”

  Such plants were the foot soldiers in an evolutionary war up here, evolving distinctive survival strategies to compensate for the lack of nutrients and scarce soil found atop these tepuis, becoming carnivorous in order to live. And it wasn’t just sundews, but also bladderworts, pitcher plants, even some bromeliad species had developed a taste for insects on this island in the sky.

  “Nature is the ultimate innovator,” he mumbled.

  But sometimes nature needs a hand.

  As midnight struck, a soft phosphorescence bloomed along the walls, flowing from the top toward the dark bottom.

  Jori clapped his hands. This is what his son had come to see.

  Cutter had engineered the glowing gene of a jellyfish into the DNA of a ubiquitous species of orchid that grew upon this tepui, including instilling a circadian rhythm to its glow cycle. Besides the pure beauty of it, the design offered illumination at night for the workers who tended to this unnatural garden.

  Not that my creations need much nurturing at this point.

  “Look, Papa! A frog!”

  Jori went to touch the black-skinned amphibian as it clung to a vine.

  “No, no . . .” Cutter warned and pulled the boy’s hand back.

  He could understand his son mistaking this sinkhole denizen for its common cousin up top, a frog unique to this tepui. The native species found above, Oreophrynella, could not hop or swim, but had developed opposable toes for a better grip on the slippery rock surfaces.

  But the specimen here was not native.

  “Remember,” Cutter warned his son, “down here, we must be careful.”

  This frog had a potent neurotoxin engineered into the glandular structure of its skin. He had culled the sequence of genes from the Australian stonefish, the most venomous species in the world. One touch and a painful death would soon follow.

  The frog had few enemies—at least in the natural world.

  Disturbed by their voices, it skittered farther up the vine. The motion drew the attention of another predator. From under a leaf, diaphanous wings spread to the width of an open hand. The leaf fluttered free of its hold on the stem, revealing its clever bit of mimicry.

  It was part of the Phylliidae family, sometimes called walking leaves.

  Only this creation didn’t walk.

  Its wings fluttered through the mists, its tiny legs scrabbling at the air as it fell silently toward the frog.

  “Papa, stop it!” Jori must have sensed what was about to happen. His son had a boyish affinity for frogs. He even kept a large terrarium in his bedroom, holding a collection of several species.

  Jori moved to swat at the gently fluttering wings, but Cutter caught his wrist—not that the modified insect would do anything worse than sting the boy, but here was another teachable moment.

  “Jori, what did we learn about the Law of the Jungle, about prey and predator? What’s that called?”

  He hung his head and mumbled to his toes. “Survival of the fittest.”

  He smiled and gave his son’s hair a tussle. “Good boy.”

  Landing on the frog’s back, the insect sank its sharp legs through the toxic skin and bega
n to feed. As son and father watched, those pale outstretched wings slowly turned rosy with fresh blood.

  “It’s pretty,” Jori said.

  No, it’s nature.

  Beauty was simply another way Mother Nature survived, whether it be the sweet-smelling flower that drew the bee, or the wings of a butterfly that confused a hunter. All of the natural world had one goal: to survive, to pass its genes on to the next generation.

  Cutter stepped to the edge of the landing and stared down that mile-long drop to the bottom. Every tens of meters the ecosystem changed. Near the top of the sinkhole, it was clammy and cold; down at the bottom, hot and tropical. The gradient in between allowed for the creation of test zones, unique ecological niches, to challenge his works in progress. Each level was color coded, running from lighter shades above to darker below, each separated by biological and physical barriers.

  Black was the deepest and most deadly.

  Even under the glow of the orchids, he could barely make out the dark humid jungle that grew along the bottom, its loam enriched by the detritus that rained down from above. That patch of isolated rain forest made a perfect hothouse furnace—where his greatest creations took shelter, growing stronger, learning to survive on their own.

  The native tribes of this region feared these mist-shrouded tepuis, claiming dangerous spirits lurked here.

  How true that was now.

  Only these new spirits were his creations, designed for what was to come. He stood at the edge, looking across the expanse of the sinkhole.

  Here was a new Galápagos for a new world.

  One beyond the tyranny of humankind.

  THIRD

  HELLSCAPE

  Σ

  17

  April 30, 10:34 A.M. GMT

  Queen Maud Land, Antarctica

  “Where’s the damned sun?” Kowalski groaned.

  Gray understood the big man’s frustration. He stood in the pilothouse of the massive treaded vehicle and studied the landscape beyond its tall windows. Though it was midmorning, it was pitch-black outside. With the moon already down, bright stars twinkled coldly across a cloudless sky. Occasional ethereal waves of brilliance rolled across the starscape, in hues of emerald and crimson, amid splashes of electric blue.