Mega 4: Behemoth Island (19 page)

“That really sucks,” Ingrid said.

“Welcome to my world,” Kinsey said. “Now open the hatch and get us out of here.”

Ingrid reached up and hit the emergency release on the hatch above her and the Barracuda was suddenly filling with sea water. Kinsey saw Ingrid panic and she pushed up from her seat and grabbed onto the woman, making sure she didn’t thrash about and hurt herself.

“Stay calm!” Kinsey barked, her mustache rebreather converting the vibrations in her voice box to the com system in their ears. “Let the sub fill with water and the pressure will equalize! Then you can just swim right out!”

Ingrid’s eyes were huge, but she nodded and stopped thrashing. She looked far from relaxed, but at least she wouldn’t hurt herself. Or Kinsey.

Once the Barracuda had filled completely, Kinsey gave Ingrid a hard shove in the small of her back. The tech hesitated, but then moved out of the mini-sub before Kinsey had to shove again. Kinsey was out in seconds then panicked as she realized Ingrid wasn’t anywhere around her.

Then she looked up and wanted to scream.

Ingrid was stroking to the surface, swimming as fast as she could to get to the open air above.

“Dammit!” Kinsey yelled into the com. “What the hell are you thinking?”

Kinsey kicked her legs and pumped her arms, hoping to catch up to the woman, but she was too late. Ingrid broke the surface and Kinsey had no choice but to follow.

“You moron!” Kinsey yelled once her head was above water. “They’ll be looking for us! With the Barracuda sinking, at least we had a chance of them thinking we went down with it!”

“The Barracuda didn’t sink,” Ingrid said. She yanked the mustache free and gasped. “Ow. That is really, really uncomfortable.”

Kinsey yanked hers out as well and glared at Ingrid.

“What the hell do you mean it isn’t sinking?” Kinsey shouted.

“Look,” Ingrid said, nodding away from them.

Kinsey turned her body to see where Ingrid had nodded. She saw the top of the Barracuda, hatch wide open, surface and start to spew water. Then the hatch closed as a metal panel slid into place. The mini-sub submerged once again and was lost from sight.

“Where the hell did it go?” Kinsey asked.

“It’s going back to the B3,” Ingrid said. “Moshi came up with everything. This was really her baby. It self-purges and automatically returns home when damaged. There is a shielded back-up battery that has enough power to get the mini-sub about six miles before it has to stop and wait to recharge.”

“Recharge? How?” Kinsey asked.

“Look around,” Ingrid said. “The Earth’s most powerful engine is all about us. It will let a current push through several small turbines, sort of like power gills, and that will charge the battery enough for another six mile journey until it reaches the B3.”

“So why didn’t we just stay inside?” Kinsey asked.

“Oh, well, it doesn’t work if there are people in it,” Ingrid said. “Too heavy and also the whole point of the mini-sub returning is to know what went wrong and salvage any data collected.”

“Of course,” Kinsey sighed. “Leave it to techs to care about data more than human lives.”

“You guys are pretty good at taking care of yourselves,” Ingrid said, a little bitterly. “But you suck at taking care of equipment. We were only trying to minimize the constant waste of our creations.”

Kinsey was about to argue, but shut up as she realized just how little credit Team Grendel gave the elves. They gave them plenty of shit, but very little credit for the weapons and equipment they made all to keep the Team alive.

“Come on,” Kinsey said, pulling at Ingrid’s shoulder. “We can’t tread here forever.”

“Where are we going?” Ingrid asked.

“You want data? Then let’s go right to the source,” Kinsey said.

She fiddled with her rebreather then strapped it to her belt under the water. She turned and started to swim towards the ship that was getting closer and closer.

“Wait! You want to go towards that ship?” Ingrid cried.

“They’re coming for us anyway,” Kinsey said. “And what better place to get data than straight from the source?”

“They’ll kill us,” Ingrid whimpered.

“I doubt that,” Kinsey said. Or she hoped.

***

“Clones?” Dr. Morganton asked.

“Clones,” the man wearing a copy of Dr. Logan’s body replied. “All of them. There are four male variants and three female variants.”

“And you’re a clone too?” Boris asked. “A living clone? Of Dr. Logan?”

“I am,” Dr. Harris said. “That’s a long story.”

“We’d appreciate hearing it,” Boris said.

“Later,” Ballantine said. “It has nothing to do with the science and everything to do with Dr. Harris’s survival. We’ll leave that to later. Doctor? Tell them why you created the clones.”

“You were having issues stabilizing the specimens,” Boris said before Dr. Harris could speak. “And since each embryo and specimen was slightly different, despite coming from the same original genetic material, you couldn’t isolate the problem. So you created clones of the exact same embryo, hoping to be able to focus on one genetic sample and find the problem.”

“Uh, yes, exactly,” Dr. Harris said.

“That seems like a good solution,” Dr. Morganton said. “So what went wrong?”

“In order to keep up the schedule we needed, we may have forced the growth process slightly,” Dr. Harris said.

“That is why we rejected cloning as a viable option. The instability of rapid growth presented too many of its own problems,” Boris said. “Which I warned against in my notes that I gave to Ballantine and Ballantine should have given to you.”

Ballantine nodded. “I did. I passed them on directly to Dr. Logan as well as Dr. Liu.” He rubbed at his head. “The rapid growth process is why the biospheres have taken over the island, right?”

“Right,” Dr. Harris nodded. “It spread everywhere when Omega exploded.”

“But the rapid growth should not have been viable,” Boris said, shaking his head. “I was clear on that. The cells degenerate too quickly for accurate analysis.”

“Dr. Logan and Dr. Liu thought they could overcome the issues you faced when you attempted cloning,” Dr. Harris said to Boris. “Which they did. To a certain extent.”

“They did?” Boris asked. “How? Because I can hardly believe that. I am an accomplished scientist and have perfected more than my share of procedures. To think that they—”

“By shortening the lifespan of the subjects,” Dr. Harris interrupted. He waited until everyone in the room understood the implications of his statement.

“Oh,” Boris said. “Does that include you?”

“It does,” Dr. Harris said. “As well as the creatures Dr. Liu and her people have become. Except they think they have found a way around it. They haven’t, but that hasn’t stopped the woman from going forward with her butchery.”

“Cannibalism,” Ballantine said. “She thinks if they consume others’ life forces she will extend her lifespan.”

“Yes,” Dr. Harris nodded.

“But that is insane,” Boris said.

“Exactly,” Dr. Harris said. “And that is what you have to understand. The woman is completely insane. So are her people. Shoving their minds into bodies that are not human warped them. It wasn’t easy for me, going from my cerebral structure to Dr. Logan’s. Their cerebral structure isn’t even human. It’s a mix of many species. She thought she could fix all the problems by creating something new. She just made more.”

“Oh, dear,” Boris said. “How many more?”

“What?” Dr. Harris asked.

“How many more clones did she create?” Boris asked.

“No, that’s not what I meant,” Dr. Harris said.

“Oh, I know what you mean,” Boris said. “I certainly do. That didn’t get past me. No, sir. What I want to know is how many human clones she created? Dr. Liu is a smart woman, I have read her work, and insane or not, she would know that eventually she’d run out of a food source. So she must have created more human clones. It would be the only sensible solution. Well, not sensible in that it makes sense from its very concept, but sensible from the viewpoint of a crazy person. True humans would be ideal, but clones may work in a pinch. If you are crazy to think along those lines.”

“Yes, Boris, we have established that she is crazy,” Ballantine said. Ballantine looked at Dr. Harris. “But Omega was destroyed, so she wouldn’t have that option, would she?”

Dr. Harris shifted uncomfortably.

“Doctor?” Ballantine pushed. “Omega was destroyed completely, yes? That is what happened in the explosion. It destroyed the entire facility, right? Changing Dr. Liu and her people into the things they have become. She wouldn’t be able to create human clones, correct?”

“You saw it yourself,” Dr. Morganton said to Ballantine. “You said it was in ruins.”

“I only saw the surface buildings,” Ballantine said. “I didn’t get a chance to see the sub-level. That was going to be Grendel’s next mission once they finished their initial recon and then secured the Alpha facility.”

“Oh, dear,” Boris said. “If the sub-level is still intact then Dr. Liu could not only be creating her own food source, but also an army of creatures like her. Not to mention whatever else her cuckoo brain can think up. It is quite a brain, I must say. Have I mentioned I’ve read her work?”

“Yes, Boris,” Ballantine sighed. He focused all of his attention on Dr. Harris. “Spill it.”

“We tried,” Dr. Harris said. “We truly tried. After I was transferred into this body, and Dr. Logan was gone for good, we knew we couldn’t let the technology fall into Dr. Liu’s hands. I destroyed the transference matrix. Which was much easier to recreate than you would think. It was all a simple matter of—”

“Later,” Ballantine snapped. “Focus on telling me what really happened.”

“We’d lured Dr. Liu and her people to Alpha as a distraction then set the charges to blow up Omega,” Dr. Harris said. “We’d escaped and were deep into the jungle when the charges went off. But I knew the explosion wasn’t big enough. Only half detonated. The ones in the sub-level didn’t go off. She must have gotten to them.”

“How?” Ballantine asked.

“You have to understand that she had been going insane for a lot longer than any of us knew,” Dr. Harris said. “She was highly functional, but far from stable well before the idea of cloning even came up. I think she had an agenda from the beginning.”

Ballantine closed his eyes and steepled his fingers in front of his face. He took a couple of deep breaths then opened his eyes and moved quickly towards Dr. Harris. The man was down on the ground, holding a hand to his chin, with Ballantine standing over him, before anyone could even move.

“Is it all bullshit, Harris? Is everything you have told me and are telling us now, just complete bullshit?” Ballantine shouted. “Because it sounds like bullshit! You had me snowed for a while there, but your timeline isn’t making any sense. I am a man that understands timelines. I have stayed alive for this long because timelines, and timing, are a specialty of mine. Down to a minute. I can calculate a plan down to a minute. I can calculate a million variant scenarios to branch off from a plan if that minute becomes compromised. Your timeline is compromised and I am not liking the variants that are going through my head.”

“Listen, Ballantine, none of us meant for any of this to happen,” Dr. Norris began. A swift kick to his face stopped him.

“NO!” Ballantine said. “I think you did want this to happen! I think you wanted all of this to happen! Who are you? Because you are not Dr. Timothy Harris anymore! Just like that thing on that island isn’t Dr. Ann Liu anymore either! WHO ARE YOU?”

Dr. Norris wiped blood from his nose and started to speak then shook his head. He cautiously stood up, and Ballantine let him. The two men stared at each other and the scared, helpless look that had been in Dr. Norris’s eyes was replaced by something sinister. Something more akin to the look in Ballantine’s eyes.

Ballantine watched him for a moment.

“You aren’t a human clone, are you?” Ballantine asked. “You added something in there so the lifespan could be extended. What did you do? What are you now?”

“We are gods,” Dr. Norris said and grinned. “And there isn’t a fucking thing any of you tiny little ants can do about it.”

Then he picked up Ballantine and tossed the man all the way across the lab.

“I didn’t see that coming,” Boris said and grabbed Dr. Morganton’s arm, yanking her towards the lab’s hatchway. “We should run now!”

“Yes! Run!” Dr. Norris shouted. His form began to change and swell, his muscles thickening and almost doubling in size as his height increased at a rapid rate until his head almost touched the ceiling. “Run! BUT YOU CANNOT HIDE!”

***

Surrounded, Team Grendel looked for the weakest point in the attack and pushed in that direction. Unfortunately for them, it was deeper into the cavernous room.

Croanderthals came at them hard and fast, but Darby, Max, and Mike held them back with their plasma rifles while Thorne, Darren, Shane, and Lucy tried to find a way out of the massive room of tanks.