Invasive (15 page)

“We did, and it's a real nut-kick. You know the name Archer Stevens?”

She does. Billionaire. Old money. Made
more
money off oil, then had a come-to-Jesus moment about global warming and the conflict in the Middle East and swore off the stuff like an addict in therapy, transitioning his entire financial world to supporting renewable energy, battery storage in particular. In her own parlance, the man went from being a devil to an angel. Whether it was a legitimate transformation or something driven by commercial interests, she has no idea. But now liberals and hippies have his face on posters.

“That body couldn't have belonged to Stevens,” Hannah says. “The age doesn't track.” Nor, frankly, did the fashion sense.

“It was his son,” Ez says.

“Scottie Stevens,” Hollis says.

“His son?” Hannah thinks of the shoes. The vest. The jeans. Kid was rich. Makes sense. “You talk to the father?”

“That's where it gets weirder: the father's gone off the radar.”

“How do you mean?”

“Nobody will say it, but the guy's in the wind. When Archer Stevens takes a piss, the world knows about it because his people let the world know about it. He's as public as they come. And he hasn't been seen or heard from in a week. Rumor is that the paparazzo bastards who hang around outside his various homes and hot spots haven't seen him come in or out.”

“What do we know about him?” The wind kicks up over the ocean—the sun is hot, but the air bites with cold teeth, and Hannah can't help but shiver. Everything suddenly feels claustrophobic. She answers that question herself: “Archer Stevens is one of Einar's competitors in the energy market.”

“That is correct.”

They tell her the same things she already knows, then Hollis adds some personal details: “Archer Stevens. Age sixty-one. He's had a few sexual harassment claims dog him, but he bought his way out like they all do. Only one child: Scottie Stevens. Age 26. Archer's single now: he divorced his wife, Eileen, four years back and, thanks to an ironclad prenup, got to keep most of his fortune. By all reports, he's an egomaniac in person but becoming something of a corporate culture hero. Rumors say he might try to go for a turn in politics as a result.”

“You talk to the ex-wife?”

“She was prickly about him. Hasn't seen him. Said he sometimes talked about breaking away and going off the reservation—‘taking some time for himself,' he called it—but he never did it. There's something else, though.”

“What?”

Hollis says, “Stevens sits on the board of directors of a lot of companies. It's public, but not that public, and most of the culture hero stuff going around about him tends to ignore this. One of the boards Archer Stevens sits on? You know BHW? Blackhearts Worldwide?”

“Private military contractors. PMCs.”

“Right. He's on their board with a couple of ex-VPs from other companies, an NRA lobbyist, one of our shittier attorney generals, and so on.”

Problem with all of this is, how many of these bits are puzzle pieces that fit, or pieces that don't belong? She turns around. Makes sure nobody is out here with her. She feels eyes burning the back of her neck like sniper scopes. “You think Einar did this to him? Or did he do this to Einar?”

“Maybe this is how billionaires wage war on each other.”

She tries to draw the narrative. “Stevens was just into clean energy, right? No genetic anything?”

“That's what we thought,” Hollis says.

Ez adds, “Another one of those companies Hollis mentioned? He
sits on the board of Mar-Gene as an angel investor. He's got money wrapped up there.
Lots
of money. He's a player in this space, just not a
noisy
one like Einar is.”

“Mar-Gene is mostly plants, right? No bugs or other insects?”

“On the record, no. But entomology isn't a big community, Hannah. We've heard whispers that they've been whipping up some kind of terminator bugs: like Arca's mosquitoes, but for common crop pests. Borers and weevils and the like. One generation breeds in, and the next generation dies off.”

“Archer didn't kill his own child. So that would mean Einar killed the boy to undercut a competitor.” Her throat tightens at the thought:
I just slept with a man who may be a narcissistic corporate killer.
“Real talk. Is that even his speed? It seems . . . extreme. I don't get a read on him like that.”

Neither Hollis or Ez can answer that, and they say as much.

Hannah hesitates, thinks out loud. “You need to check Scottie Stevens's phone. See if anything at all ties to this narrative.”

“We don't know where it is.”

Hannah shakes her head. She has to remember: Hollis is way behind the times, technologically speaking. Time to remind him of the reality. “Hollis, you have to sync up with the realities of modern tech. If Scottie had a newer phone—and a rich kid like that isn't running around with some clamshell ringy-dingy from 2005—then most of what he did probably kicked automatically to cloud servers. You've got his real fingerprint; now find his digital one.”

Hollis says: “Hannah, this is why I love you. Old dinosaurs like me need young mammals like you.”

“You need to get me paid better, then.”

“We'll talk about that when you get back. Meanwhile, keep on looking. If something's going on there, you're the only eyes I got on the ground. If Einar wasn't Einar, I could probably pull the trigger now and get people on-site to tear that place apart. But we try that, we'll be hamstrung by lawyers soon as we step out of the gate. I need more. And you need to get it for me.”

“Storm is rolling in. They're sending me away this afternoon.”

“Then you better keep looking quick.”

“I will.”

Ez says, “Hannah? Stay safe out there.”

“It's fine,” she says. “I'm safe. I'm good. Thanks.” But suddenly she's not so sure. She's got a sucking feeling in her gut, like a black hole has formed inside her stomach and is drawing all of her toward it.
I'm making mistakes out here. I'm getting sloppy.
And now time is ticking down. “Talk to you soon.”

After they hang up, the satphone sits in her hand. Heavy and inert. Uncertainty courses through her. Did Einar really do this? It doesn't track. He's a man with a lot to lose. And a lot to build. This murder is petty, deranged, small. One dead son of a rival billionaire, stripped of skin and eaten by genetically modified ants? That's not something a philanthropist and billionaire benefactor does.

That's something a serial killer would do.

But then, maybe Einar is hiding in plain sight. Maybe he
is
a serial killer. What an amazing cover that would be. A man protected by industry, commerce, innovation, and all the money that comes with it. He does good things, yet he also uses that power to express the sick desire to destroy other people in the most egregious, demented way possible. A sociopath, a psychopath, a diseased lunatic clothed in the raiment of the wealthy and the benevolent.

Her thumb finds the buttons on the satphone and she plugs in the number to her parents' house. She doesn't expect them to answer, but then—

“Is that you, Hannah?”

“Hi, Mom.”

“You're still out there, aren't you.” Not a question. An accusation.

“I am. On the island.”

“The Internet says there's weather headed your way.”
The Internet says.
One of her mother's favorite sayings. Connecting online is the one guilty grid-based pleasure her parents have. They
manufacture their own power, water, and food, but the Internet—and the phone line on which Hannah is speaking right now—still forms a tenuous thread connecting them to the Almighty Grid. They get it from satellite, and Hannah helped them set it up so that their web surfing is almost entirely anonymous. Using private search engines like Anonymouse, installing software like Hider-Bot, turning on two-stage identification, never entering in credit card information (not that her parents have credit cards).

Mom is addicted to the Internet, and Hannah knows why: It gives her all the bad news she so hungrily desires. All the threats about jihadists and commies and comets and water shortages, all the fearmongering about race wars and GMO corn and this or that president coming in with armed troops to take your guns away—she feeds off it the way a tick sucks blood. She doesn't believe
all
of it. But she takes it all in anyway.

(Mom almost unplugged from the Internet last year when the hackers took that passenger plane down. She told Hannah: “I read on the ConWar forums that it wasn't hackers at all, but an artificial intelligence from Iran. It was a state-sponsored terror attack, Hannah.” Where people get this stuff, Hannah doesn't know. Mom disconnected for a little while, and then three weeks later was back again, drinking from the fire hose.)

“It's a storm,” Hannah says. “I'm getting off-island before it hits.”

“It's a tropical storm.”

“I know. I'll be fine.”

A hesitation. “I hope so, Hannah. We miss you.” Three words. A rare showing of affection from her mother. Strained-sounding, but present nonetheless. Hannah appreciates them, even though she knows that, as with most things her mother says, they come with an unpaid, unseen cost. Subtext underneath the text.

“I miss you, too.” And she does. Sometimes.

“Is everything okay?” Mom asks.

A popular question, and she knows what it means. Hannah does the reassurance tango: “Everything is good, Mom. The world
is still spinning. No nukes, no biological disasters, no terrorist bioweapons—”

“No, sweetheart. I mean with you. You sound on edge.”

“I'll be okay. I'll be coming home soon.”

“I hope so. You need to get here and see your father. We love you.”

Why is Mom being so sweet? Hannah wants to suspect ulterior motives but cannot imagine what they would be. “Love you, too, Mom. Tell Dad the same.”

“I will.”

Hannah sits, puts on her running shoes. Time to pay another visit to Special Projects. It's time to get answers. Will may know who else in the world is capable of designing such a creature. Einar may know what this kind of thing would cost and who would be capable of paying the price. And if either of them is guilty, then she hopes like hell she will see it on their faces. A flinch, a twitch, a microadjustment of the muscles. Men lie. But lies are rarely perfect. Even if the words line up in a tidy row, they still skew crooked.

She gets up off the bunk. She's about to step out of the room when Ajay Bhatnagar steps in from the hall. He quickly closes the door behind him.

“Ajay—” she starts to say, but then he perforates her personal space. Suddenly she sees him as a threat. He's tall. Looks like a hatchet about to fall. He's not in a lab coat, and his black T-shirt shows off ropy muscles. Hannah's hands coil into fists.

“I looked at the samples,” he says, almost in a whisper. “The ants. I got one of the carcasses from Dr. Mercado. The files, too, from Dr. Choi.”

“Okay,” Hannah says, not sure where this is going. He steps farther into the room.

She takes a step back.

He notices. It seems to shake him a little. “I'm here to help,” he says. “You did not hear this from me.”

“So far I'm not hearing anything from you.”

“I looked at the genetic composition of your ants. They're elegant little monsters. I've only just opened the code, and already I see inside it what could be genes from marauder ants, harvesters, leaf-cutters. Someone of great skill crafted this creature. An artist.”

“Who could be such an artist?”

“Around the world? Not many. A small list, to be sure.”

He hesitates again. Something he's not saying. “What is it, Dr. Bhatnagar? I am short on time and long on a desire to get this done.”

“I found genes in there that we engineered. At Arca.”

“I know. The marker genes.”

“Yes. But others, too.
Pogonomyrmex badius.
The Florida harvester ant—the one we have here? We've changed it. Subtly. Nothing so dramatic as the ants you found in that cabin. The gene that governs the length of the hair that runs along the body: We modified that gene for longer length of hair. To assist in pollination. That modification is present in the ant you brought us. Inert, but there.” He flinches, like this wounds him to admit: “I designed that gene.”

Hannah stands there, staring at him. Trying not to tremble. This is it. This is the start of what she needs. She has to call Hollis, has to convince Ajay to make a written statement—okay, no, what he told her isn't exactly a smoking gun, but it's the first firm, committed connection between the dead body and what's going on here at Arca. Her mind is a jumble of priorities and she has to focus hard and line them all up in the proper order. All her ducks in a row. (Or all the little ants . . .)