The Extinction Code Page 27

  ‘We don’t move, right?’ Lopez whispered. ‘It can’t see us that way?’

  Ethan shook his head. ‘Won’t make a difference even if it were true. It can smell us.’

  Ethan recalled the species from a documentary: Allosaurus. Up to five tonnes in weight, voracious hunter and scavenger and a younger cousin of the infamous Tyrannosaurs Rex. It padded toward them, heavy footfalls thumping down onto the cold, bare rocky floor of the tunnel. Ethan could hear its heavy breathing, huge lungs sucking in air and expelling it, and he began backing up the tunnel.

  ‘Now what?’ Lopez uttered as she aimed at the huge creature.

  Ethan saw her breath condense on the cold air, and then he looked at the Allosaurus looming toward them. Something tripped in his mind and he stopped moving, kept his pistol aimed at the dinosaur’s enormous skull but held his ground.

  Lopez backed past him but shot him an anxious glance. ‘Ethan, move!’

  Ethan felt his legs go rubbery beneath him as the sheer size of the carnivore became apparent, filling the corridor as it moved closer to him, rippling muscle and swinging jowls, those yellowing fangs cruel and stained with old, dried blood.

  ‘Ethan!’

  Ethan stared at the huge mouth and flaring nostrils for a moment longer, and then he lowered his pistol, realizing that the weapon was useless against such a huge creature. The Allosaurus accelerated, lifted its huge head and opened those massive jaws, and with a brief hellish roar it slammed its jaws down on Ethan and clamped them around him.

  And then vanished.

  Ethan could have sworn that he had felt the breeze from the animal passing him as he peered through one half–open eye and saw the empty corridor before them. Lopez, her pistol still gripped tightly in her hands, moved alongside him.

  ‘7–D technology?’ she whispered. ‘Like Hellerman showed us?’

  Ethan, still somewhat shaken, nodded uneasily.

  ‘That’s why there are so many rumors about this island,’ he replied. ‘Garrett’s got carnivores wandering all over it, but none of them were real.’

  ‘How did you know?’ she asked.

  ‘Its breathing,’ he replied. ‘It’s cold enough down here to see human breath, but the dinosaur wasn’t producing any. My guess is that the leopard we saw was also a projection.’

  ‘So Garrett doesn’t have any live dinosaurs,’ Lopez said with relief as she walked up to the main doors. ‘Good to know.’

  The double doors were solid steel, locked in place and with elaborate seals that Ethan assumed contained whatever was within and kept it there. He recalled seeing similar seals at the site in Spitsbergen, designed to prevent external contaminants from getting inside the delicately controlled seed vaults.

  ‘They must be inside,’ Ethan said. ‘These doors will prevent any of Garrett’s plague from reaching them.’

  Lopez frowned as she examined the seals. ‘This doesn’t look right.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Lopez ran her hand up the seals, stepped back and looked at the doors and their overall design.

  ‘They don’t look like they’re set up to keep something out,’ she said finally. ‘They look like they’re designed to keep something in.’

  Ethan scanned the exterior of the doors and with a shock he realized that Lopez was right. The seals that he had seen in Norway had been on the opposite side of the doors at the seed vault.

  ‘Why would he want to keep something inside?’ Ethan asked out loud. ‘That would completely defeat the object of poisoning the rest of the world and…’

  He was about to walk across to a pair of small observation windows alongside the doors when his train of thought slammed to a halt and he stared vacantly at the gigantic doors before them as he considered a new and startling conclusion. He couldn’t believe that it was possible, that even somebody as bold as Garret would even be able to conceive of such a brazen and yet brilliant idea.

  ‘What is it?’ Lopez asked.

  Ethan’s mind could barely begin to form words with which to reply, so staggering was the revelation that had just been fired across the bows of his awareness. The reply came not from his own lips but from behind them.

  ‘He’s just figured it all out.’

  Ethan and Lopez whirled to see Aaron Mitchell standing behind them, his rifle pulled into his shoulder and its wicked barrel trained upon them.

  ‘Figured what out?’ Lopez asked, her voice more than a little strained.

  ‘That this is where it all ends,’ Mitchell replied. ‘This is the Extinction Code.’

  ***

  XL

  Samuel Kruger took a pace toward Garrett, his fists clenched and his jaw aching with fury as he pointed at the scientist.

  ‘What are you talking about?! None of us will ever leave this room alive?! We came here in good faith!’

  Garrett’s smile returned, rather like the one that great white sharks wore, a permanent toothy grimace that preceded their next meal, their eyes black with soulless fury.

  ‘Good faith,’ he echoed softly, his voice carrying remarkably well inside the control room. ‘How can a man of your nature speak of good faith? Was it not you that ordered the murder of Stanley Meyer, a man who had invented a device that would have made fossil fuels redundant overnight and intended to give it away to humanity for free? Then you buried his fusion cage so that it would never see the light of day?’

  Kruger’s eyes flew wide and he stared at Garrett for a moment before he replied.

  ‘The device would have been released eventually,’ he uttered. ‘To hand it over to people for nothing would have been suicide for the world economy.’

  ‘It didn’t do the Internet any harm,’ Garrett replied, ‘when the British scientist Sir Tim Berners–Lee gave us the World Wide Web for free. He could have been a billionaire overnight had he sold the rights, but instead he gave us the information age.’

  ‘The man is a fool,’ spat another of Majestic Twelve’s members.

  ‘The man is a hero,’ Garrett countered calmly, ‘and one of the reasons I got into chemistry in the first place. I wanted to do for medicine what he did for computers and for mankind at large.’

  ‘Don’t lecture us,’ Kruger snarled. ‘We saw what you did in Dubai! You’re as much a killer as all of us, except that you can’t pin a damned thing upon any of us.’

  Garrett smiled again, chillingly calm. ‘What man in Dubai?’

  ‘The man you had thrown from a helicopter!’ Kruger raged. ‘Do you think us all imbeciles?!’

  Garrett pointed behind them. ‘You mean that man there?’

  Kruger whirled and felt the bottom drop out of his world as he saw Professor Martin Beauchamp emerge from a small adjoining office, the same man whom he had last seen tumbling a thousand feet to his death in the Persian Gulf.

  Kruger whirled back to Garrett, his eyes wide as the chemist spoke softly.

  ‘Only true imbeciles would have believed so easily that I would brazenly hurl a man from a helicopter a thousand feet above the water, wouldn’t they?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘Surely you would not fall into such a category, men of status and power like yourselves?’

  ‘What do you want with us, Garrett?!’ Kruger demanded, trying to use bravado to dominate the situation and veil the cold fear crawling like insects beneath his skin.

  ‘I want you to understand,’ Garrett replied. ‘I want you to feel, for the first time perhaps, how powerless you all are. Everything you have become, Majestic Twelve, is built upon the suffering of millions, billions of other people who are no less human than you. But you don’t see them that way, do you? Like politicians, you know that there are too many people with too many problems for you to effectively care for them all at once, so instead you care only for yourselves.’

  One of MJ–12’s oldest members, a former Senator, stepped forward.

  ‘We can give you anything you want,’ he promised. ‘This confrontation is senseless. There is nothing we cannot do if we wo
rk together!’

  ‘Noble sentiments,’ Garrett said. ‘If only you had applied them to the world at large then perhaps it would not have come to this. If the people, bless them all in their streets and towns and cities, were only to come together as one they would hold more power than any politician, than any government. They could bring down corrupt corporations overnight, transform drug–ridden, gang–controlled ghettoes into paradises within days, find answers to the greatest questions in the cosmos as geniuses lost in the masses are found and brought to their proper glory in universities and colleges instead of living in trailer parks or slums.’

  Kruger winced.

  ‘Dreams of Utopia are futile,’ he spat back. ‘We all know that people cannot pull together like that. Mankind’s peace is only ever a prelude and a preparation for war.’

  ‘For some,’ Garrett conceded, ‘but not for most. Evolution, my dear Samuel, is what drives life of all kinds. Those decent people, the majority of our kind, would shut out the evil and the cruel or would embrace those who suffered mental illness and learn to treat them effectively. To be outnumbered is to be outgunned, and with seven billion or so decent people of all races around the world, the minority of those who would do the rest harm would be as nothing compared to the might of a unified human race.’

  ‘This is a waste of time,’ Kruger spat. ‘Let us out of here or I’ll have you shot.’

  ‘Feel free,’ Garrett said as he extended his arms. ‘I have already achieved what I set out to do, so long ago.’

  Kruger frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  Garrett shook his head slowly, tutted. ‘Such ignorance and yet you’re so used to being feted as the elite, the leaders of great corporations and even countries, yet you can’t see what stares you in the face right now. Of all the murders you and your kind have committed, there is one that matters most to me: Montana, 2002.’

  Kruger raised an eyebrow. ‘Aubrey Channing?’

  ‘Aubrey Channing,’ Garrett affirmed. ‘He was killed by MJ–12 over the discovery of some bones in a Badlands valley.’

  ‘Channing was a danger,’ said another of the cabal.

  ‘Channing was doing his job!’ Garrett screamed, his voice unnaturally loud in the confined command center. ‘Channing was learning about history, passing that knowledge onto others, and you had him killed for it! You took my family away from me!’

  Kruger stared at Garrett and the realization hit him square in the face, his voice almost a whisper.

  ‘You’re his son?’

  Garrett nodded. ‘Robert Channing,’ he said, softly now. ‘It didn’t take much effort to fake a suicide and change my name after my parents had both died, given the unnatural way in which my father disappeared. The police did not pursue my case very far, which allowed me to slip away. I somehow knew that he had been murdered and it became my life’s work to find out by whom, and why. Why, Samuel, did you kill a man over nothing more than bones in the desert?’

  Kruger raised his chin.

  ‘We didn’t,’ he replied simply. ‘He was murdered by a man named Dwight Oppenheimer, a Texan oil billionaire who was searching for the secret to immortality and one of our former members. He believed that he could find the secret to immortality inside the bones of extinct species, bacteria of some kind. None of us condoned the killing, but Oppenheimer had lost his way and died himself a few years later pursuing his immortality in New Mexico.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Garrett said, ‘as you will here and now.’

  ‘Killing us will achieve nothing,’ spat the ex–Senator. ‘The world will keep turning just as it always does. Your little fantasy mission will be forgotten, Garrett, and Majestic Twelve will continue on with new men at the helm.’

  ‘Yes, it will,’ Garrett replied.

  Kruger’s eyes narrowed, uncertain of the chemist’s response. ‘You won’t kill us, Garrett, it’s not in you. Besides, if you’re stuck in here with us then you’ll die too.’

  Garrett nodded. ‘If only that were true. You have perhaps a few minutes left before this facility will be annihilated. I would enjoy them, if I were you.’

  Kruger whirled to his escort. ‘Kill him!’

  The escorts aimed and fired instantly. The gunshots were deafeningly loud and Kruger flinched and his hands flew to his ears as four shots blasted Garrett. As the infernal noise died down, Kruger looked up and saw Garrett still standing before them, smiling calmly.

  Kruger rushed up onto the platform and reached out for Garrett. His hand vanished into the projection and reappeared on the other side of Garrett’s neck. The chemist smiled at Kruger, even this close his projection seeming impossibly solid and lifelike.

  ‘Did I forget to mention?’ he intoned, looking Kruger square in the eye. ‘I’m not here at all. Seven–D technology, remarkable stuff, almost indistinguishable from the real thing, y’know?’

  ‘Where are you?!’ Kruger roared.

  ‘Somewhere safe.’

  ‘Let us out of here!’

  Garrett shook his head. ‘Like you let my father live? Like you let Stanley Meyer live? The world could have changed dramatically for the better countless times by now if it were not for people like you, Kruger, and your heinous little band of arrogant, selfish little scumbags hiding behind their money.’

  ‘You’re no better than us!’ another of the cabal shouted. ‘You sold chemicals to corporations for billions, denied the medicine to those that needed it!’

  ‘A means to an end,’ Garrett replied. ‘I assure you that very soon a series of remarkable independent discoveries by scientists in the field will unleash a wave of new medicines onto the market, all of which will be free.’

  ‘You can’t do that!’ yelled another. ‘You’ll collapse the pharmaceutical industry!’

  ‘Oh no,’ Garrett intoned theatrically, ‘wouldn’t that be a shame? Then we’d need individual scientists to independently develop cures and have them distributed for a fair price to all… What a horror.’

  ‘The plague,’ Kruger snapped. ‘You created the plague to destroy mankind!’

  ‘I discovered the plague that my father feared,’ Garrett corrected him, ‘and promptly went about finding the cure. That’s what we’ve been doing out here, far from anybody, so that there was no danger of the infection spreading. As soon as we found the cure we distributed it across the globe, some years ago in fact. There will be no pandemic, gentlemen, for humanity is already immune.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Kruger snapped, ‘the plague is supposed to be incurable!’

  ‘Not true,’ Garrett said. ‘No disease is incurable. Medicine has long sought evidence of cures in the sick, but we took a leaf from scientists inspired to seek cures among the healthy. Resarchers from the Mount Sinai Hospital’s Icahn School of Medicine studied the DNA of some six hundred thousand people, searching for genetic mutations that could damage them. But instead of studying the people who contracted illnesses, they focused in on people who carried the mutations but did not fall ill. Just thirteen individuals were found, but could not be contacted because of clauses in their contracts. We deliberately broke those laws in the interests of science and protecting mankind, and obtained their DNA directly with their consent.’

  Martin Beauchamp stepped forward and spoke softly.

  ‘We joined this information to specimens recovered from a drilling operation by the International Ocean Discovery Program in the Gulf of Mexico that penetrated into the heart of the Chicxulub crater, the remains of the impact site of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. The cores we extracted contained pressurized crystals formed in the impact, but also virgin rock from the heart of the asteroid, and in those specimens we found the virus itself.’

  Garrett smiled to himself, apparently in scientific pride.

  ‘For the first time, an independent investigation used multi–disciplinary science to match an alien virus with human super–DNA, as it’s become known as, and the genetic material held by the Brazilian government of a species c
aptured in Varginha that did not originate on this planet. Those combined resources acted as a sort of Rosetta Stone, enabling us to isolate the virus’s weaknesses and a potential vaccine alike.’

  Kruger stared aghast at Garrett. ‘But Madagascar…’

  ‘A confined outbreak, created on purpose for effect, to convince you of an oncoming apocalypse and bring you here,’ Garrett replied. ‘Had the Malagasy Air Force not intervened at our bequest, we would have easily shut the spread of the disease down with an inoculation program and a similar firebombing of the local area using private aircraft. Few species were lost, especially when compared to the daily loss of biodiversity at the hands of people like yourselves. The needs of the many, and all that. Of course, the disease evolves continuously when subject to treatment in isolation, and eventually defeats the medicine. We found one particularly virulent strain that we could not control, so we kept that one right here. It will be destroyed soon, but not before it’s leaked into this control center.’

  Kruger shook his head in bewilderment, stunned that he and his accomplices could have been so completely blind–sided by this man.

  ‘So you will murder us,’ he said finally, his fury restrained by the helplessness of his situation, ‘cause us to suffer whatever horrible fate it is that your disease creates. But others will take our place and they will hunt you down.’

  ‘No, they won’t,’ Garrett replied, ‘it’s all in hand. And I will murder nobody. The atmosphere in this room is already filling with the plague we’ve been studying, which was once brought here by an asteroid collision. The species of extra–terrestrial that were captured here in Varginha provided useful test subjects, despite Brazil’s mistakes in allowing some of them to escape over the years. Cunning creatures they are really, although poorly adapted to life in our atmosphere. It also turned out that they’re immune to the same plague that could destroy all life on earth, probably picked up due to exposure somewhere in their own evolutionary past on whatever planet they originated. That immunity, a study of human DNA and the growing of living dinosaur bones from stem cells eventually gave us the cure we needed.’ Garrett smiled again, folded his hands before him. ‘There are ten of you, and only three breathing masks with atmospheric filters suitable for protection against ingesting the plague. Those of you who fail to obtain a mask will die very, very slowly. Goodbye Samuel, gentlemen. Think of my father and all of your other victims as you die here in agony.’