Apex Predator (55 page)

“Our work is important work, it has been from the beginning, but the time is coming when it will not be enough, when simply bringing attention to them won’t be enough. Technology has been our salvation across history. It has been what has kept us alive and what has made it an even playing field with predators that would hunt us without a care in the world. The problem, Mr. Loomis, is that these predators can use it too. They can use it to hunt the way we use it to stay alive. You need to be careful now. You need to understand how big this is and how dangerous it can be for you and your family now.”

Barlow had said something similar, had told him he didn’t yet understand the extent of what he now found himself knee-deep in. He wondered if Leonard had said all of this because he had asked him about Barlow. He wondered whether it was Barlow he was thinking of when he said what he said. There was something that Leonard was trying to explain without having to say it, but Steven was overwhelmed, he had too much to think about and process. He simply nodded and stood up, thanked Leonard for his time and went downstairs to wait for his driver. Once the driver arrived and again led by his security, who had been waiting for him at the outside door of the building, he made his way to the car rushing past the few photographers and reporters that were there waiting for him to come out. He jumped in and gave the driver his destination. When the driver heard where he wanted to go, he actually turned to look at the security agent, who simply shrugged.

They made their way through downtown traffic to the GIC building, where once again they had to make their way through the media stationed outside, although there were not that many at that hour. He was surprised by how much time he had spent at Leonard’s building. Once inside, Steven went to the man sitting at the information desk, who put down the paper he’d been reading and stood up as soon as he realized who it was.

Steven smiled at the man, “Ernie, how’s it going?”

Ernie, a little flustered by the media outside and by the bear of a man accompanying Loomis, gave him a tentative smile back, “Mr. Loomis, I…”

Steven raised his hand and tried to put the man at ease, “How’s Collette and the baby?”

Now a little more confident Ernie’s smile broadened, “Fine, Mr. Loomis, fine. Hey, thanks a lot for the basket, my wife loved all those bath salts and lotions.”

Steven, now standing in front of the massive marble desk Ernie was sitting behind, just nodded, “Don’t mention it. It was just some things Beth thought she might like. Listen, Ernie, I know this is going to sound a bit out of the ordinary, but is there access to the roof of the building?”

Steven knew there was, but he wanted Ernie to feel like he was doing his job, “Jeez, Mr. Loomis, there is, but it’s just for the maintenance folks. You know how it is, they’re afraid some asshole might just decide to take a swan dive.”

Steven nodded and leaned closer to Ernie, gesturing with his hand for him to move closer, and spoke in a low conspiratorial tone, “I know, Ernie, but you’ve seen what it’s like out there. Fucking media everywhere. I just want a few minutes for myself, with no one around, you can understand that, can’t you?”

Ernie nodded thoughtfully.

He had seen the ever-present throngs of reporters and photographers outside, “I can, Mr. Loomis, but I don’t know, you know, it could mean my job.”

Steven looked at him, still leaning over the big desk, “I know, Ernie, and that’s why I’m asking as a favor. I just want to get my head together and just think, and everywhere I go everyone wants to know how I feel and to tell me they understand. And that’s fine, for a while, but a man needs to think sometimes, just think without all the other bullshit. Listen, I’ll only be up there 15 minutes. You can time me if you want. I would really appreciate it, man.”

Ernie thought about it for a minute and then finally smiled, “Alright, you got it, but just 15 minutes, right?” Steven nodded.

Ernie called out to the other security guard on duty who was standing by the elevators, “Hey, Tony, I’m taking fifteen, watch the desk, alright?”

Tony held up a thumbs-up.

Ernie looked down at his console and pushed a couple of buttons, “Alright, the freight elevator goes up to the roof. You’ll need this card to push the button to the roof. Once you get there, the code is 19943 and then the pound sign.”

Steven took the card and walked around the main elevators down a short corridor and found the freight elevator. He pushed the button and waited along with his security for the elevator.

Once the elevator got to the lobby, Steven stepped in and when his security agent went to follow, he put his hand up, “Not this time, Lou, I’m taking this ride alone.”

When the agent started to protest, Steven held up his hand, “Uh-uh, not this time, Lou, my ass, my building, my decision.”

Lou thought about it briefly, nodded and took a position next to the elevator.

Before the door shut, Steven reassured him, “Don’t worry, just need some alone time. I’ll be back in fifteen.”

He made his way to the roof and used the passkey to open the door. In all the time he had been at this office, Steven had never made it up on the roof. He didn’t know what had possessed him to come up here, it just seemed like a good place to come and think and take in the crisp New York air and the sun coming up. He looked over at the railing overlooking Madison Avenue. He walked over to it and looked out over the city. Once he got over the initial vertigo, he enjoyed the view. When he had first gotten to New York, he had wondered what all the fuss was about. People were not very friendly, most were outright rude, and they always seemed to be in a hurry to get someplace. He gripped the railing and took a few deep breaths, trying not to think about anything specific. He marveled at the enormity of the city. Down on Wall Street, fortunes were made and lost in the blink of an eye. People put their trust and their life savings in others’ hands, men who would convince them that what they were doing was safe, and they were often rewarded with the loss of everything they had saved. Nature’s perpetual dynamic of predator and prey was alive and well, even in this completely man-made, technological jungle.

But now he was aware that a different game was afoot and he had become a player in it. He had come upon it by chance and now he knew that he did not yet understand the extent of it. Leonard’s last words and the look on his face had shaken Steven to the core. The man was a researcher, a scientist that looked at everything through the proverbial microscope of science, and he had looked afraid. Nothing Steven had been through, not even the warehouse, had cut through him the way Leonard had. Nobody else he had talked to about this had Leonard’s background, his experience, and even though his interests were scientific, he understood the danger that these things posed to humanity. He understood it not as some experiment gone horribly wrong, but as what he considered to be the next logical step in purely Darwinian evolution.

The reason his visit to Leonard had had this effect on him was the videos he had seen and the conversation they had right before he left. Throughout this entire ordeal, Steven had been thinking about and dealing with adults – Riche, Barlow and even those whose names he did not know. As much as he had learned about this science, as much as he had read about these creatures, he had always envisioned adults. It was difficult to think about everything he was going through in the context of children. Children were innocent. They were at the mercy of those around them, their parents or others charged with taking care of them. So when they later became thieves or rapists or murderers, most of the time one could look back at those who had cared for them and raised them and see why it was that they turned out the way they did. That was how things were supposed to work: children grew to reflect the care and love, or the lack thereof, that they were given when they were growing up.

What Steven had seen today let him know that perhaps that was how
human
children worked, how humanity had evolved over time. He had seen that human babies, babies too young to be affected by the outside world, were born good, with a sense of fairness and altruism that had to be innate because they were too young to be taught. He watched as babies helped a stranger, even at a cost to themselves. But he also saw the other side of that coin. He saw babies observe and calculate and decide that whatever it was the adult was after must have some value. They didn’t know what a pen was or what its value could possibly be, but that didn’t matter, what mattered was that it had a value and therefore they wanted it. Some babies, young toddlers really, had actually used a toy they were playing with to strike the other child and then take the pen. Some showed delight when the other child began crying. It was innocuous enough, there was no grand gesture, nor was there some sort of punishment for those that did not do things correctly. It was the basic scenario of a predator observing its prey, making calculations in how to strike and finally moving in.

It had disturbed the researchers immensely, but, as Leonard had explained, their experiments were to delve into the goodness, the sense of sharing and cooperation that human babies were born with, so they just made a footnote about the other children’s behavior. It had been Leonard who had sifted through all of it and compiled all of the video from the various studies, some from England, some from France and some from Germany, where researchers actually also took an interest in those other children and where Leonard had explained some of the most advanced research on the science that was being done. More than anything else he had witnessed or learned until now, that scared Steven Loomis to the core, because it truly meant that these beings were born that way and no amount of love or nurturing or care was going to change them.

Leonard had also pointed out something subtle that Steven had missed, but which was chilling to watch once he noticed it. In almost every one of those instances, the children doing the preying were much more agile and coordinated than the other child, who was the same age, gender and general size. They moved with more ease, with none of the clumsy struggle of a small toddler getting up and moving. Their pace was more determined and direct. Again it was all very subtle, but after once seeing those minute physical differences over all the studies it was hard to miss. Leonard had hypothesized that, although he had no way to verify it, those children’s cognitive capacity was even more advanced than what they displayed.

The last video he had shown Steven had been of a simple auditory test designed to test the hearing range and capacity of 13 of those children. The sample was far too small to provide workable data, but it was definitely indicative of clear physiological and sensory differences. He had devised a test where children were shown a cardboard screen covering a cupcake, then a bell rang and the screen lifted to show the cupcake several times, and the children were allowed to eat some of the cupcake each time. Then the child was asked to turn around away from the cupcake, and when the bell rang they could turn around and get their treat. This continued with the bell reducing in volume each time until it was completely out of their hearing range and so they did not turn around. Every one of the ‘human’ children stopped hearing the bell within just a few decibels of one another. Some heard it for longer than others, but none could hear it past a certain point.

He did the same thing with the ‘target’ children, as he had dubbed them, and the differences were astounding. Every one of them could hear the bell at a level that none of the other ‘human’ children could. He explained that aside from showing clear sensory abilities the other children did not have, they also, once again, made connections, studied the situation and made the determination that they could get the treat without having to wait to hear the bell. What seemed to concern Leonard the most about all of this was that in every instance these ‘target’ children had parents who loved and doted on them as any parent would with their baby. He theorized that those emotions, the care they might be given, the love and support they would grow up surrounded by, might ultimately teach them how to be better hunters, how to mimic those feelings in order to get whatever they were after.

Leonard looked as scared as he did because he understood better than most the type of threat these beings posed. He had dedicated his life to researching them, but he had done it from behind a figurative glass, not really thinking of them as his neighbor or his mailman or one of his students. And now that Steven had done what he had done, Leonard had no choice but to see them as people he was living among, perhaps much closer than he imagined.

As Leonard had stood to bid him goodbye, there was a sense of urgency in his voice of some sort of timeline looming that Steven didn’t quite understand.

Leonard had said something rather cryptic when he bid Steven goodbye, “Technology, Mr. Loomis, has kept us alive until now, but these beings, these predators know that and they will use it. Psychopaths troll the Internet for victims, but that is not where the true danger lies. My most fervent hope is that the attention you’ve brought to this, to the science, will be enough to warn the world.

“What you’ve done, Mr. Loomis, Steven, is to simply ask the United States legal system to legally define what a human being is. Actually, you’re going to be asking 12 of your peers, ordinary people, to do that. Whatever happens from here, what will not change is that the question has been asked. No matter what the verdict is, the world will keep asking the question, wondering whether this is real or not. I hope that will be enough.”

Steven sensed there was something he was missing, something big just under the surface, but as had been the case many times before, he found he simply could not go deeper, not until his trial was over.

Steven turned his head, taking in the towering skyline, thinking about how New York had a way of growing on you. It had on him. He also thought about other places, other cities, each with their own charm, each with their own peculiarity and each with their own danger. He wasn’t some kind of hero, some kind of savior ready to take on all the villains out there. He was just a man who loved his family and his job and wanted nothing more than to go back to both. But sometimes the fates had other plans, sometimes even when you didn’t want to, you could be pulled into a life you had never imagined.