Chimera, p.17
Chimera, page 17
“I’ve dedicated my life to saving people with little or no hope for survival,” he says. “I won’t leave those scientists to die, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to send my men into an environment outside of our control without allowing them to choose to do so of their own free will. Should they decide to stay on this plane, you won’t share that information with Colonel Patrick or any other senior officer. That’s the cost of your deception. And I swear to you—right here and now—that if you’ve withheld any information or lied to me about anything, I’ll leave you in that station until you can find another group of suckers to fly halfway around the world to extract you. So this is your last chance to tell me what kind of nightmare we’re walking into, or you’re going in there alone.”
He turns and spears Waller with a glare that could have could have stopped a charging bull. The older man’s face betrays no emotion whatsoever, let alone a hint of the thoughts passing behind his tinted lenses.
“You can expect to encounter an unknown number of hostile actors you’ll be unable to see,” Waller says. “We don’t know if we’re dealing with members of the station’s staff or if the facility has been compromised by agents of governments at odds with our own. The rules of engagement are clearly defined: secure the station at all costs.”
“How are we supposed to shoot someone we can’t see?”
Kato retrieves a case from underneath his seat and opens the hinged lid. Inside are a dozen helmet-mounted optical apparatuses resembling goggles.
“These lenses have both thermal and night-vision imaging capabilities,” Waller says. “The biofilm might be able to conceal a man from visual detection, but it can’t mask his heat signature.”
“Assuming it’s a man.”
“What else could it possibly be?” Kato asks. “You saw those pictures. None of the women in that station could have inflicted that kind of visceral physical damage on her own.”
“In my experience, no one man could have either,” Cameron says. “From the moment this plane touches down until the station is secure, you will do exactly what I say, when I tell you to do it. No questions asked. And if I catch so much as a whiff of you trying to hide anything from me or plotting to undermine my authority, the consequences will be severe. Is that in any way unclear?”
Cameron looks from Waller to Kato and back again, making sure they understand that his threat is not an idle one. He exits the SUSV, slams the door behind him, and shoulders past Grant and Silver without a backward glance. His men see him coming and stand at attention when they recognize the expression on his face. He turns on his microphone and speaks in a tone of command.
“In just over an hour, this plane will land on the northernmost landmass in the world, thousands of miles from the nearest emergency medical center. The surviving men and women of Academy Station are in desperate need of our assistance, but there’s more you need to understand—”
“We know everything we need to know,” Speedy says. “This is what we’ve been trained to do.”
“Where you go, we go,” Bashir says.
Rush and Ryder nod their agreement.
Cameron looks at each of them in turn and sees the firm resolution of men willing to do whatever it takes to save lives, even if it means laying down their own.
He couldn’t be prouder.
“Then I need to bring you up to speed in a hurry,” he says, unlatching the straps securing the tactical cases to the fuselage. “And you’re not going to like what I have to say.”
Ronny steps forward, opens the lid of the nearest case, and removes an M4 carbine from its slot beside the others. He grabs a magazine from the adjacent case and slaps it into the base of the rifle. His eyes sparkle and a smile spreads across his freckled face.
“Lock and load, motherfuckers.”
Cameron smiles, but the expression doesn’t reach his eyes. Deep down, he knows there’s something Waller isn’t telling him.
And he fears it will cost all of them their lives.
32
Academy Station
Greenland
81.906296, -29.744960
72 Hours Ago
Mira sealed her helmet, dialed up the flow of oxygen, and lowered herself into the tank. Her thoughts were racing so fast that she could hardly keep up with them, and even then, nothing seemed to make the slightest bit of sense. All five of the sculpins had been in the aquarium when she’d gone to bed last night, and yet she hadn’t been able to find any of them this morning. Not one. She’d tried every possible combination of lights, and when that hadn’t revealed them, she’d resorted to looking outside of the tank, but she hadn’t found so much as a drop of water on the floor. She’d even tried to get Sammie to help her search, but her partner hadn’t answered her door, no matter how hard she’d knocked.
She passed through the suspended layer of biofilm, which clung to her drysuit in iridescent tatters as she sank toward the bottom, her teeth chattering from the sudden immersion in the cold water. The walls of the tank were nearly covered with webbing in fractal-like designs resembling frost. Strands crisscrossed the interior like laser beams in a booby-trapped corridor, but she tore right through them, leaving the untethered remains drifting in her wake.
The sudden surge in the biofilm’s growth rate was more than a little alarming, especially considering all that had been left of the dead cod she’d cut from it were scales clinging to the underlying bones. It had somehow incorporated the fish’s mass, feeding on it by means she had yet to identify. She was beginning to fear that the biofilm had done the same thing to the sculpins, in which case there could be no more stalling; they’d be forced to take permanent measures to make sure that the chimeras never left the lake. Considering the sun was preparing to set for the next three months and there weren’t enough UV lights in the entire country to cover an area that large, any permanent solution likely meant killing every living organism in the lake and making it uninhabitable for years to come, potentially upsetting the entire local ecosystem and risking the contamination of the fjord—and quite possibly the Arctic Ocean beyond it—in the process.
Mira fell to her hands and knees and combed through the kelp, brushing aside the leaves and pressing on the substrate around their roots, hoping that the sculpins had once more buried themselves in the dirt. She dug up every suspicious lump and searched under every stone. Just as she was about to give up, she scooped away the silt from the base of the largest rock formation and found a small cave. A faint emerald iridescence emanated from within. She put her shoulder into the rugged stone and tipped it back just far enough that she could see into the shadowed warren. A tracery of webbing lined the narrow walls, between which, if she shone her light at just the right angle, she was able to see—
A sculpin streaked out of the hole and struck her facemask. The claw-like tips of its ventral fins latched onto the Plexiglas with such force that they scratched the surface. Its mouth snapped mere inches from her eyes and disgorged a viscous fluid—
Mira instinctively swatted it aside, but it vanished before she could see where it had gone. She directed her flashlight into the hole, which was positively riddled with webbing, so much in fact that there was barely enough room for the bodies of the other four sculpins crammed inside. Their ugly little faces peered from the funnels woven around them, what little she could see of their bodies so desiccated that they looked like they’d been baked in the sun. One of them suddenly wriggled and gasped. Startled, she recoiled and let the rock fall back to the sediment, producing a billowing cloud of silt.
A dark shape appeared in her peripheral vision, slicing through the haze. The sculpin that had attacked her earlier struck at the side of her face. She knocked it away and swam toward the surface, grabbing the platform the moment it was within range and hauling herself out of the water.
Mira felt a sharp pinching sensation on her back, near her shoulder blade. Just beyond her reach.
She threw off her helmet and shed the top half of her drysuit. The fish hung from the neoprene, the sharp tips of bone protruding from its fins embedded in the rubberized fabric.
It twisted and flopped until it freed itself and plummeted down to the floor, where it flipped from one side to the other. Finally, it stilled and lay there helplessly, gulping for air.
Mira scrambled down the ladder, grabbed the empty five-gallon bucket, and scooped up the fish, which beat against the sides with its tailfin as she climbed back up to the platform. She upended the bucket and watched the sculpin vanish into the settling silt.
Heart hammering in her chest, she plopped down on her rear end and ran her trembling fingers through her hair. What in the name of God had just happened? What had the sculpin done to the others of its species, and why had it attacked her? She knew precious little about fish behavior beyond the fact that she’d never seen one act like that before.
Mira climbed down the ladder and finished changing out of her drysuit. The face shield was scratched to hell. Worse, there were amoeboid shapes on the outer surface where the Plexiglas almost looked melted. She made a mental note to examine it more closely when she returned and rushed up the stairs to the residential wing. If Sammie was finally catching up on some sleep, the last thing Mira wanted to do was wake her, but she needed to understand what had just happened. The sculpin’s sudden surge in aggression was hugely unnerving, especially if the chimeras were in any way responsible.
She hesitated outside Sammie’s room before talking herself into knocking. She waited several seconds, and when she didn’t hear anything from the other side, knocked again.
“Sammie?” she called.
There was no answer.
She knocked harder, waited for a reply that never came, and then knocked harder still. Nothing. She checked the knob, which turned easily in her hand. Slowly, she opened the door upon the dark bedroom.
“Sammie?” she said. “Are you all right?”
The overhead fixtures in the hallway cast a pale glow upon the small room, which was considerably colder than the outer hallway. There were books open on the desk and a mess of clothes at the foot of the bed, on top of which Sammie appeared to have cocooned herself within the blankets, drawing them all the way up over her head. Her pale face peeked out from a small gap in the covers, her breath whispering past her parted lips in faint clouds. She furrowed her brow, tugged up the blankets, and, with a soft moan, rolled away from the light.
Mira debated dragging her out of bed. She’d become increasingly frustrated with her working relationship with Sammie, who never seemed to be available when Mira needed her the most. Either she couldn’t be torn away from her microscope, or she was simply too exhausted to be of very much help. The two of them needed to have a serious conversation, but right now, Mira required answers, and it was apparent that Sammie wouldn’t be able to provide any. It wasn’t like she was an expert on marine animal behavior, anyway. Fortunately, Mira knew two people who were, although neither would be excited to see her, especially when they heard what she had to say.
She found Sammie’s thermostat, dialed up the temperature, and struck off toward the dry room once more, willing herself to absorb every last ounce of heated air for the trek ahead. She changed into her parka, snow pants, and boots and struck off across the glacier toward the staircase leading down to the lake. Time passed in a blur as she descended, her mind a chaos of warring thoughts. The wind shifted when she reached the bottom, and she noticed how quickly the sea ice on the lake had expanded, forming rings around the islands and thickening in areas where the sluggish current permitted. It was immensely gratifying to see the proof of the biofilm’s efficacy, but she couldn’t seem to bring herself to enjoy the success while she trudged down the snow-dusted path for an entirely different reason, one that sat like a rock in her gut.
The observation center faded in and out of the blowing snow as she set out across the dam, the exhaust seeping from the vents on its roof swirling on the tempestuous gales. When she finally arrived, her hands were so cold she could barely turn the doorknob. The warmth inside made her face hurt, but she wouldn’t have traded the sensation for anything in the world. She hung her parka beside the other two on the rack, kicked off her boots, and headed across the room in her thermal socks. Voices rose from the stairwell at the back. She followed them all the way down to the observation deck, where two figures sat silhouetted against the viewports, the faint light from their laptops the only illumination in the otherwise dark room.
Jen turned at the sound of her approach.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”
Mira approached and stood at the window between the two marine biologists.
“You mind?” she asked. Aaron gestured for her to take a seat, but he said nothing. The tension radiating from them was palpable. “I need your help.”
Jen scoffed.
“Let me show you something,” she said, storming past Mira and grabbing a flashlight from the sill in front of Aaron. She switched it on and shone the green light through the window. A capillary-like network of iridescent webbing had grown over the glass. “Did you know there’s a whale out there that we haven’t been able to locate in nearly twenty-four hours?” Her voice rose with every word until she was shouting. “Do you even care that it could be sick or dying because of the infernal microbes you released into our lake?”
Mira recalled the narwhal she’d seen lying on the seafloor in the video.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You’re sorry,” Jen snapped, slamming the flashlight down on the sill. “You hear that, Aaron? She’s sorry.”
“Let her speak,” Aaron said.
“Fine. Here’s your chance, Mira. Never mind the fact that we came to you, asking for your help—which you didn’t give, I might add—but please, tell us, what can we do for you?”
“It’s about one of the sculpins in our tank,” Mira said. “I’m not even sure how to say this.” She paused to formulate her thoughts. “It appears to have killed three of the other four sculpins. I found it inside a hollow in the rock formation with their bodies. When I tried to get a closer look, it attacked me.”
“What do you mean, ‘it attacked you’?” Aaron said.
“Just what I said. I leaned closer, and it struck at my face. It even latched onto my drysuit and wouldn’t let go until I was out of the water.”
Aaron shared a glance with Jen. Something unspoken passed between them.
“We’ve noticed certain . . . anomalous . . . behaviors as well,” Jen said.
“Like what?” Mira asked, looking between the two of them.
Jen sat down and swiveled her computer so that Mira could see the screen.
“Like this,” she said, hitting the play button on a paused video.
It took several moments for Mira to understand that she was viewing footage from the vantage of the underwater camera affixed to Jen’s diving helmet. With as dark as the water was, it was impossible to tell if it was day or night, not that there would be any difference in a few days anyway. Through the churning silt, she saw a shadow, which slowly took form as a deep pit at the base of the dam. A beluga whale knifed into view and hurled itself into the hole, thrashing as though in an attempt to burrow underneath the concrete barrier. The camera approached it slowly, its white flank flashing from the heart of the cloud of disturbed sediment. The whale must have sensed it was being filmed. It whirled toward the lens, blood diffusing into the water from the ruin of its bulbous forehead, and sped away from the camera, along the bowed surface of the dam toward where three other beluga whales lay, half-buried underneath the dirt. The moment the camera moved toward them, they scattered into a cloud of silt.
“I recorded this yesterday,” Jen said.
“What am I looking at?” Mira asked.
“Keep watching.”
The camera turned away from the dam and faced the vast expanse of open water leading deeper into the canyon. Jen swam low to the ground, staying below the invisible layer of the biofilm, glancing occasionally upward in its direction as though to make sure she didn’t stray too close to the surface. Curtains of tiny bubbles rose from the seafloor, where jagged rock formations spiked with brittle corals stood sentry over seamless fields of brown kelp.
A dark shape moved in the distance. It was significantly smaller than a whale, maybe the size of a full-grown cod. A fish with a streak of gold on its flank materialized from the shadows. It abruptly changed direction and raced beyond the range of Jen’s light. She swam after it and suddenly stopped. The cod floated at a strange angle, its mouth opening and closing even as its guts spilled out of the gaping wound in its abdomen.
The camera panned away and another carcass drifted into view, bits of flesh diffusing into the water around it. Jen turned and swam in the opposite direction, her arms flailing in front of the camera. A school of tiny silver fish raced past her. The view suddenly tumbled, revealing a jumble of bubbles and alternating glimpses of the seabed and open water.
“Something hit my legs,” Jen said. “It felt like I got punched in the thighs. Even tore my drysuit. But I never saw—”
Thunk.
A heavy object struck the opposite side of the viewport, mere feet away, but by the time they looked, nothing was there.
“We theorize that she was hit by a chunk of sea ice that had been swept under by the current—” Aaron started to say.
“But that’s not the point,” Jen said, interrupting. “Did you see how those belugas were behaving? Or what about the cod? What the hell could take a bite from its belly in the three seconds it was out of my sight? It almost looks like a shark somehow got into the lake.”
“And before you ask . . . no,” Aaron said. “We would have known long before now if there were a shark trapped on this side of the dam.”
Mira furrowed her brow and looked at the screen again.
