Chimera, p.1
Chimera, page 1
Praise for Michael McBride
“Thrilling entertainment.”
Publishers Weekly on Mutation
“McBride writes with the perfect mixture of suspense and horror that keeps the reader on edge.”
Examiner
“McBride’s style brings to mind both James Rollins and Michael Crichton.”
Sci-Fi & Scary
“Highly recommended for fans of creature horror and the thrillers of Michael Crichton.”
The Horror Review
“Michael McBride literally stunned me with his enigmatic talent and kept me hanging on right up until the end.”
Midwest Book Review
Also By Michael McBride
THE UNIT 51 TRILOGY
Subhuman * Forsaken * Mutation
STANDALONE SCI-FI/HORROR
Ancient Enemy * Burial Ground * Extant
Fearful Symmetry * Innocents Lost
Predatory Instinct * Remains *Subterrestrial
Sunblind * Unidentified * Vector Borne
THE SNOWBLIND SERIES
Snowblind * Snowblind: The Killing Grounds
STANDALONE SUSPENSE THRILLERS
Bloodletting * Condemned * Immun3
The Coyote * The Event
THE EXTINCTION AGENDA SERIES
(Written as Michael Laurence)
The Extinction Agenda
The Annihilation Protocol
The Elimination Threat
Copyright © 2021 by Michael McBride
www.michaelmcbride.net
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission.
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Cover Design by Deranged Doctor Design
Chimera/ Michael McBride – 1st Edition
Contents
Stay Connected
About Chimera
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Stay Connected
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About Chimera
“This is Dr. Mira Stone at Academy Station . . . ”
When the Air National Guard receives an emergency call for help from a remote arctic research station in Greenland, Senior Master Sergeant Dan Cameron is chosen to lead the rescue mission. All he and his team know for sure is that the facility has lost primary power and the integrity of the complex has been compromised.
“Something is in here with us. Six of us are already dead.”
In an attempt to combat climate change, the scientists have genetically engineered an aquatic biofilm capable of generating oxygen and lowering the temperature of the underlying seawater, producing environmental conditions that awaken an organism that has lain dormant beneath the ocean floor for millions of years.
“Academy Station is lost. Do not—I repeat—do not attempt to reclaim—”
By the time Cameron arrives, the scientists have abandoned the smoldering ruins of the station. He discovers their trail leading across the glacier, but theirs aren’t the only tracks he finds. Something inhuman is hunting the survivors and he needs to find them before it does, because the most terrifying thing about the creature is . . .
You’ll never see it coming.
Chimera
For the Woonuses
1
Francis S. Gabreski Air National Guard Base
Westhampton Beach, NY
40.837880, -72.644385
Today
Senior Master Sergeant Dan Cameron strides down the corridor, his mind running through every possible scenario that would have warranted the abrupt termination of his confined space rescue training at the FDNY academy on Randall’s Island and a police escort back to the base. His camouflage fatigues are covered with dirt, and his boots leave dusty prints on the otherwise pristine tile floor. A ring of soot encircles his face where the SCBA mask had been seated over his rugged features, and his chestnut hair is matted from the helmet he’d been wearing a mere twenty minutes ago. His hazel eyes focus upon the door at the end of the hallway, which opens at the sound of his approaching footsteps.
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Andrews emerges and ushers him into a conference room, where Colonel Jack Patrick is already seated at the head of a massive oak table. The commander of the Air National Guard’s 106th Rescue Wing cuts an imposing figure in his dress blues, which he’s donned for the man seated beside him, whose dark, hooded eyes latch onto Cameron as he enters and salutes his superior officer.
“Take a seat,” Patrick says, inclining his chin toward the chair to his right. He swivels the laptop in front of him so that Cameron can see the screen. “We received this footage from the NSF just under an hour ago.”
He taps a key, and the video recording plays. A woman appears, bathed in the red glow of emergency lights. Her ebon hair is wild and tangled. Wide blue eyes stare out from a face that fades in and out of the shadows. Twin lines of mucus glisten from her upper lip. Fractals of ice have formed on the inside of the slanted windows to either side of her, through the cracks in which a wicked wind howls.
A thudding sound erupts from behind her and the woman glances over her shoulder toward a barricaded door. The chairs piled on top of the table braced against it shiver with the impact from the other side.
“This is Dr. Mira Stone at Academy Station,” she says. Clouds of breath plume from her lips and her voice trembles when she speaks. “We’ve lost primary power and the integrity of the complex has been compromised—”
Thud!
The door shudders, scooting the table inward. Its legs screech on the tile.
“Something is in here with us. Six of us are already dead. The rest—”
Crack!
The door bursts open. The woman looks back as the chairs topple to the floor amid splinters of wood from the broken trim. Sparks rain from an electrical conduit in the outer hallway, where the emergency lights stain the darkness.
There’s no one there.
The woman turns to the camera, her eyes frantic.
“We’re going to try to make it across the glacier to Station Nord. Academy Station is lost. Do not—I repeat—do not attempt to reclaim—”
Movement behind her. A wavering of the air, like heat rising from a desert highway.
The woman lunges toward the camera, causing the view to spin wildly and topple to the floor—
The image darkens and the communication ends. Cameron stares at the monitor in silence, trying to figure out precisely what he’s just witnessed.
“Repeated efforts to hail Academy Station have gone unanswered,” the man seated across from him says. He wears a suit that undoubtedly cost more than Cameron makes in a month and a visitor’s badge that reads: Dr. Carter Young, NeXgen Biotechnology. “All systems are offline, so we can’t access them remotely.”
“You need a team to arrange for extraction from Nord?” Cameron says.
“We’re talking about Peary Land in Greenland, the northernmost landmass on the planet,” Patrick says. “The temperature’s currently thirty below and Nord is reporting whiteout conditions. There’s no way they’re reaching it across a hundred miles of open arctic terrain.”
“This will be a search and rescue mission,” Andrews says. The medical group commander wears small round glasses that make his eyes appear too large for his face. “We’ve been in contact with a Canadian Coast Guard cutter on Baffi n Bay and several commercial vessels in the Greenland and Norwegian Seas, but they lack your team’s medical training and experience under these conditions.”
The 103rd Rescue Squadron had performed extensive field exercises in the frozen wastes of Kangerlussuaq, Greenland with the 109th Airlift Wing, which operates the only ski-equipped LC-130 Hercules transport in the entire U.S. military, but they’d never attempted an actual retrieval operation.
“One of our subsidiaries operates a shipping fleet out of Norway,” Dr. Young says. “We could dispatch a SAR team, but even if they set sail right now, you’d still beat them by a good eight hours.”
“We can be airborne in thirty minutes,” Cameron says.
“You’ll be taking a scientific team from NeXgen, as well,” Patrick says. “You’re to locate Academy Station’s personnel and secure the station, where Dr. Young’s team will assume operational command.”
Cameron furrows his brow.
“Are we not extracting the civilians, sir?”
“There are other objectives considered to be of critical importance to national security.”
“At an outpost operated by the National Science Foundation, sir?”
“In conjunction with commercial interests aligned with the Department of Defense.”
Cameron glances across the table at Young, whose expression remains unreadable.
“What were they doing at Academy Station?” he asks, his eyes never leaving those of the lone civilian. “I need to know what kind of situation we’re walking into.”
Young turns to Patrick, who nods and gestures for him to proceed.
“What I’m about to show you is classified top secret,” Young says, swiveling his laptop just far enough that Cameron can see the monitor. “You are not to speak of it outside of this room, not even to your team.”
Cameron didn’t like withholding information from his men, especially concerning an operation where lives hung in the balance and so many variables were outside of their direct control. He’s just about to voice his objections when Young opens a screengrab of Dr. Stone. The barricade has already fallen behind her and she’s just warned them not to attempt to reclaim the station. The civilian contractor had enhanced the resolution, sharpened the detail, and zoomed in over her shoulder, where Cameron had initially detected the hint of movement. What had originally appeared to be a heat mirage was simply a distortion of the background, as though a localized section had been displaced by just a few pixels. If he leaned closer, he could almost imagine it looked like a figure running toward her from behind.
A figure with strikingly human proportions.
2
Academy Station
Greenland
81.906296, -29.744960
Three Months Ago
The red Airbus AS350 helicopter banked around Independence Fjord, offering its passengers a stunning view of the sheer granite escarpments and sparkling whitecaps, which stretched to the distant Arctic Ocean. Exposed rock gave way to hardpacked snow. Academy Glacier rose before them as a great wall of ice, its calving front in a perpetual state of decay. A great concrete dam had been constructed in the mouth of a side-channel, trapping a two-mile-long body of seawater known affectionately as Lake Tranquility. Ice floes drifted through the maze of jagged granite islands breaching its surface, which appeared as black as the sea on the moon after which it was named.
Dr. Mira Stone leaned against the window and looked straight down into it, hoping for a glimpse of the whales she’d heard so much about, but her breath fogged the glass at the least opportune moment. She wiped away the condensation with the sleeve of her parka as the lake once more vanished into the deep canyon, leaving her staring at her reflection, her amber eyes looking back at her from behind the strands of raven-black hair that had come untucked from her ski cap. In that moment, she was again the young girl who’d dared to dream of a better world, not the associate professor of climate science at Northern Arizona University’s School of Earth and Sustainability who feared that even her best efforts to combat global warming would prove to be too little, too late.
The chopper passed over the glacier, its shadow streaking up the sheer face to greet them and chasing them across the seamless ice.
Everything was just as she’d imagined it would be, although never in a million years had she dreamed she’d actually be here. The other passengers appeared every bit as overwhelmed by the magnitude of their surroundings, although in different ways. Dr. Carrie Keyes pressed her freckled face against the opposite window, her auburn hair standing apart from the fur trim of her hood like little wisps of flame, her hands disappearing underneath it in an attempt to hold the cans over her ears. Dr. Rylan Moore sat between them, his face pale, his eyes fixed straight ahead, and his feet tapping a nervous rhythm on the floor. He hadn’t spoken a word since they’d boarded the chopper at the airport in Qaanaaq, little more than a stretch of dirt on the shore of ice-choked Inglefield Fjord, although he’d frequently pressed the back of his gloved hand to his lips as though in an effort to keep something in.
“There it is,” Carrie said through the microphone on her headset.
Mira leaned across Moore’s lap and looked past Carrie as the helicopter circled back toward the fjord. Her heart raced when Academy Station came into view, the sun’s golden rays glinting from its silver metallic surface. It looked like a hexagonal spaceship that had crashed onto the glacier, skidded across the ice, and come to rest hanging over the edge of the granite slope. The leading edge was perched precariously on a network of support posts, its tinted windows offering a view from which she could only imagine witnessing the aurora borealis. Photovoltaic solar arrays lined the slanted roof, from which multicolored prayer flags had been strung, the faded cloth flaring on the breeze. Wind turbines stood from the rugged ridgeline, their long blades turning, driving the power to augment the rows of thermal solar cells ascending the hillside. A radio antenna bristling with satellite dishes stood from the highest crest, quite possibly the tallest structure on the northern end of the continent.
The chopper descended onto the level ground behind the structure, its rotors whipping up a cloud of accumulated snowflakes, which momentarily swallowed it whole. Two silhouettes wearing parkas and balaclavas emerged from the station and tromped toward them, their arms raised to shield their eyes. The engine ramped down with a whine, and the snow settled once more.
Someone opened the door from the outside and cold air rushed into the cabin. Mira flinched as though she’d been struck. She thought she’d been prepared for the cold. The low-thirties hadn’t sounded that bad at all, but when coupled with ninety-some percent humidity, it felt like the exposed skin on her hands and face had instantly turned to ice. She could only imagine how painful it would be come winter, when the temperatures rarely rose above the negative double digits.
A heavyset woman with graying hair and a florid face leaned into the chopper, her breath billowing from her lips.
“Welcome to Academy Station,” she said, her voice surprisingly deep and melodic. “I’m Amy and this here is Elroy, like from The Jetsons. I’d love to say we volunteered to be your welcoming committee, but—truth be told—we drew the short straws, so grab your bags and hurry the heck up. It’s colder than a witch’s tit out here.”
