The 6th Extinction (Sigma Force 10)

She knew this, too.

Lindahl and his cronies had all gone to oversee the arrival of the nuclear device to the mountain base, taking with him the entire team of nuclear and radiation scientists. For a brief window, the lab was mostly empty. The researchers still present were colleagues of Edmund, who had agreed to turn a blind eye to their current actions. They had all met Jenna, knew about her kidnapping and Lindahl’s plan to irradiate the dog.

Still, who knew how long that silence will last under pressure?

Edmund helped manhandle the containment gurney to the main decontamination air lock. A Marine stood guard on the far side. Edmund lifted an arm as the guard turned, as if what they were doing was totally normal.

Lisa entered the air lock alone, leaving Edmund behind to help cover for her. In her wake, he was going to sabotage the air lock into her lab, to delay Lindahl for as long as possible from discovering Nikko had gone missing.

The decontamination process started. Sprays bathed her suit and the outer shell of the gurney, followed by ultraviolet radiation, then another round of spraying and air drying. The entire process took an agonizing twenty minutes.

The Marine outside would glance in her direction every now and then. Lisa avoided eye contact.

Finally the light flashed green, allowing her out. In the anteroom beyond the air lock, she shed out of her containment suit. Sweat pasted her clothes into every bodily crevice, mostly from the heat inside her sealed suit, but also from fear of discovery. She grabbed the gurney’s handles and, with some effort, wheeled it out into the main hangar.

“Ready?” the guard asked.

She nodded. “Thanks.”

Corporal Sarah Jessup—an auburn-haired Marine in a perfectly pressed uniform—had been assigned as Painter’s personal aide. She had come with the highest praise from the base commander.

“You didn’t have to do this,” Lisa said as the two of them whisked Nikko through the cavernous space.

The woman shrugged. “I’m not breaking any rules. Director Crowe was assigned to be my direct superior. He verbally approved your actions. So I’m following orders like any good Marine.” Still, she smiled softly back at Lisa. “Besides, I have a chocolate Lab at home. If anyone ever tried to hurt Belle, they’d sorely regret it.”

Lisa took a deep steadying breath, thankful for the corporal’s cooperation. If Jessup had not agreed and had not arranged to cover this guard shift, stealing Nikko out of the lab would have been impossible.

The corporal had facilitated matters in one other way.

“I set up the temporary quarantine area per your instructions,” Jessup said. “In a place few would think to look.”

“Where’s that?”

Again that soft smile. “Back room of the base chapel. The chaplain has agreed to keep our cover, to deflect any inquiries.”

“You got a priest to lie for us.”

Her smile widened. “Don’t worry, he’s Episcopalian—and my boyfriend. Plus he loves Belle as much as I do . . . which he’d better or I’d never consider marrying him. Belle and I are a package deal.”

Lisa heard the young love in the corporal’s voice, reminding her of her own postponed nuptials. Missing Painter more acutely, she tamped down an ache in her heart.

She let Corporal Jessup lead the way, knowing this escapade would only buy them so much time. Eventually someone would talk or Nikko’s hiding place would be discovered. Even barring that, the larger nuclear threat loomed over all.

With another storm due to hit after midnight, Lindahl had set a timetable for detonation as early as nightfall.

She pictured a fiery mushroom cloud blooming over these mountains.

Despair settled over her. Someone had to find a way to stop all of this before it was too late.

But who . . . and most important, how?

11:43 A.M. AMT

Roraima, Brazil

For the past two hours, Kendall had labored under the intense scrutiny of Cutter Elwes inside his facility’s BSL4 lab. Both of them were encased in bright white biosafety suits with yellow air hoses coiling up to the wall.

Kendall held up two vials and read the labels.

25UG OF CRISPR CAS9-D10A NICKASE MRNA

1UG OF CRISPR CAS9-D10A NICKASE PLASMID

The small glass ampules contained the essential ingredients for editing genes. With these tools, a researcher could precisely break the double strands of DNA at specific target sites, allowing changes to be introduced. These specific vials were used mostly for transgenic applications: for inserting a foreign gene—called a transgene—into another organism’s genetic code.

Like adding new wings to a bullet ant.

Cutter had plainly been playing God for some time, mixing foreign genes into established species. The act itself was not that shocking. The technology had been around for close to a decade, used to create transgenic creatures in labs all around the world. From bacteria to mice to even a colony of glow-in-the-dark cats. In fact, Cutter’s work here was not all that advanced, especially considering he had access to the latest MAGE and CAGE processes, techniques that could introduce hundreds of mutational changes at once.

Unfortunately, while Cutter’s creations were monstrous, Kendall didn’t have the moral high ground to truly malign his work. At Mono Lake, Kendall had used the contents of these same vials to design his synthetic virus. His creation had also been the result of transgenic engineering. Only the transgenes he inserted were even more foreign, coming from one of the XNA species found in the shadow biosphere beneath Antarctica.

That last detail was critical to his success at Mono Lake. It led to the breakthrough that allowed him to finally crack the key to turning an empty viral shell into a living, multiplying organism.

God, help me . . . I can’t let Cutter know how I did it.

Cutter returned from the tall refrigerators at the rear of the lab. Through the glass windows, the rows of test tubes and vials glowed. It was the genetic library for his creations—both those in the past and what he wanted to create in the future.

He returned now with two glass tubes, each half full of cloudy solution.

“In my right hand,” he said, lifting that arm, “is the eVLP you engineered. Your perfect empty shell.”

Kendall had already seen proof of Cutter’s claim, spending the first hour in the lab examining his data, making sure the man had indeed recreated the exact same protein shell.

Cutter raised the other tube. “And this is my creation, a prion-sized piece of unique genetic code.”

So this is what the bastard wants to seed into my shell.