“First of all, it’s not exactly deadly,” Cutter corrected. “I modified the prion’s genetic structure so it would not be fatal. Like I promised you from the start, no human or animal would be killed as a direct result of my bioorganism.”
“Then what is your goal? Clearly you want to insert your creation into my armored shell, to make your code almost impossible to eradicate. Once encapsulated, it could spread swiftly with no way of stopping it.”
“True. But it was also the small size of your shell that intrigued me, a genetic delivery system tiny enough to pass easily through the blood-brain barrier. To allow these little prion factories ready access to the neurological systems of the infected.”
Kendall could not hide his horror, and even the ranger understood enough to go pale. Prion diseases were already incurable, the damage they wrought permanent. The typical clinical symptoms were generalized dementia and the progressive loss of higher cognitive functions, turning an intelligent person into a vegetable.
He pictured Cutter’s engineered disease spreading throughout the population, as unstoppable as the organism that escaped his lab, leaving a path of neurological destruction in its wake.
Cutter must have read the dismay in his eyes. “Fear not, my friend. Not only did I engineer the prion to be nonfatal, but I also designed it to self-destruct after a certain number of iterations. Thus avoiding complete annihilation of the victim’s brain.”
“Then what’s its purpose?”
“It’s a gift,” Cutter smiled. “It will leave the infected living in a more simple state, one harmonious with nature, permanently free of higher cognitive functions.”
“In other words, reducing us to animals.”
“And the earth will be the better for it,” Cutter said.
“That’s inhuman,” Jenna gasped out, equally horrified.
Cutter turned to her. “You’re a park ranger, Ms. Beck. You should surely understand better than anyone. Being inhuman is human. We are already beasts who feign morality. We need religion, government, and laws to force a level of control over our baser natures. I intend to strip away the disease that is intelligence, to rip away the deception that allows humanity to believe itself mightier and more deserving of this planet.”
Cutter waved an arm to encompass everything. “We burn the forests, we pollute the oceans, we melt the ice caps, we dump carbon dioxide into the air . . . we are the main driving force behind one of the greatest extinctions on this planet. It is a path that will inevitably lead to our own end.”
Kendall tried to argue, but Cutter cut him off.
“Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best. The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. We’re already at that cusp, but what will we leave in the wake of our death throes? A planet polluted to the point where nothing survives?”
The ranger stood up against that rant. “But it’s civilization . . . it’s our innate intelligence that holds the possibility to save ourselves, too, and along with it the planet. While the dinosaurs failed to see that asteroid heading toward them, many of us do see what’s happening and are fighting for change.”
“You share a narrow perspective about civilization, my dear. The dinosaurs reigned for a hundred and eighty-five million years, while modern man has only been around for the past two hundred thousand years. And civilization a mere ten thousand.”
Cutter shook his head for emphasis. “Society is a destructive illusion of control, nothing more. And look what it’s wrought. During this short experiment with civilization, we as a species are already at the precipice of total ecological collapse, one driven by our own hands. Do you truly think in this industrial world of warring nations, of greed-driven politics, that anything will change?”
Jenna sighed loudly. “We must try.”
Cutter snorted. “It will never happen, certainly not in time. The better path? It’s time to uncivilize this world, to halt this ridiculous experiment before nothing of this planet is left.”
“And that’s your plan?” Kendall asked. “To let loose this contagion and strip humanity of its intelligence.”
“I prefer to think of it as curing humankind of the disease called civilization, to leave only the natural animal, leveling the playing field for all. To let the only law of the land be survival of the fittest. The world will be stronger and healthier for it.”
Jenna stared at Cutter, her face full of suspicion. “And what about you?” she asked. “Will you also take this cure?”
Cutter shrugged, but he looked irritated by her question—which made Kendall like her all the more. “Some few must be spared, to oversee this transition.”
“I see,” Jenna said, clearly calling him out on his hypocrisy. “That’s very convenient.”
With his feathers duly ruffled, Cutter faced Kendall. “It’s high time, my friend, that you show me your method for arming your viral shell.”
Kendall took strength from the young woman’s demeanor. “I can’t,” he said honestly.
“Can’t or won’t?” Cutter asked. “I’ve been very patient with you, Kendall, because we were once friends, but there are ways to convince you to cooperate fully.”
Cutter glanced to his wife’s sister. A glint in Rahei’s dark eyes suggested she would invite such a challenge.
“It’s not a matter of refusing you, Cutter—which I would still do if it made any difference, but it doesn’t. It’s a simple matter that the key you want is beyond both of our grasps. I can’t synthesize it. Not here. The XNA sequence necessary to unlock my engineered shell can be found only in nature.”
That nature you love so well.
“Where?”
“You know where, Cutter.”
He nodded, closing his eyes. “Of course . . . Antarctica,” he mumbled. “There must be a particular species from that shadow biosphere, something with a unique genetic code that acts as that key.”
It still disturbed Kendall how quickly this monster’s mind worked.
Cutter opened his eyes. “Which species is it?”
Kendall met that stolid gaze, ready to draw a line in the sand. If Cutter put a mole in his lab, he surely had a person or a team inserted at Harrington’s station. Cutter certainly knew enough details about Hell’s Cape. If that bastard learned the truth, he could obtain the last piece to his horrifying genetic puzzle.