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  “What’s she talking about?” Willie asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Lyn waived her off. “I helped work on you, you know. Tell me, how does it taste? As good as I’ve imagined? Better, I’m guessing. I put some of that same work into the food here.” She motioned to the completed domes behind her. “Made it safe to eat, but it lost some of the flavor. Not all of it, mind you. Still the best vegetables I’ve ever had...when I was allowed to eat them...but not the same as the good stuff. Not what you’ve been eating.”

  “Shut-up, lady,” Anne growled, but it was too late.

  “Now, hold on a minute.” Willie gripped her shoulder. “You’ve been eating the ExoGenetic crops? On the outside?”

  A few of the people around them heard his question and perked up. A few more looked terrified and shuffled away.

  “It’s okay.” Lyn dismissed Willie with her hand, but could only keep it up for a second before her strength wavered. She’d been fed and given water, but it would take days of the same before she really started to recover from the mistreatment she’d suffered as one of Mason’s Questionables. “The girl is immune to the effects of RC-714.”

  “Bullshit,” Willie said. “How?”

  “She was made that way. Designed. And when you’re building a person, it’s not impossible to remove all those genes that RC-714 wakes up. Through millennia of evolution, all living things adapt to new environments and evolve, sometimes becoming something stunningly different from where it started. When this happens, the old, now useless adaptations are locked away as junk DNA, never to be accessed again. It’s like partitioning a hard drive and separating old data into an encrypted file. RC-714 removed the encryption. But with Anne...”

  “You wiped the hard drive clean,” Anne said. “But not completely.”

  Lyn looked confused. “How do you mean?”

  “I mean I’ve got my mother’s memories. Some of them anyway. And I know things she knows, but I shouldn’t. And, you all put a thumb drive in the Back. Of. My. Head.” Anne tapped her head with each of the last four words.

  Lyn looked mortified. “I—I had no idea. It doesn’t sound possible.”

  Anne turned the back of her head toward the woman. Pointed to the mole that covered the USB port. Her mother had cut it open five weeks ago, to show Peter, but when it healed, it didn’t heal shut. It was more like a tab of skin that could be opened and closed. So she dug a nail in and lifted the skin flap.

  Willie leaned back, repulsed. “Who does this to their kid?”

  Lyn leaned closer. “But...why?”

  “All of her research is in there,” Anne said. “But I think it’s more than that. I think she made a digital copy of herself. Of her knowledge. Even her memories. And some of them are leaking out.”

  Willie turned away, rubbing his hands through his hair, clearly disturbed by what he’d seen and heard. Lyn turned her eyes down, deep in thought, no doubt pondering the thumb drive’s purpose. While the pair were lost in thought, Anne stood. Without making a sound, she weaved her way past the people now staring at her. She gave them fake smiles and kept on going, heading for the one way out of the dome where Willie couldn’t follow.

  The door connecting the unfinished dome to the finished one led to a functional airlock and decontamination chamber. It was no doubt locked from the inside, the outer access panel turned off, but Anne knew her way around the system as well as anyone. She knelt at the controls and pushed against what looked like a solid metal wall. It shifted in with a clunk.

  Anne glanced back. Lyn was still on another planet. Willie had started to look for her, but was searching in the wrong direction.

  She pulled the panel away, revealing coils of wires and circuitry.

  Where did Mason get all of this? He might have been able to put it all together, but he certainly couldn’t duplicate this technology. There were supposed to be ten biodomes up and down the East Coast. Her mother had marked them on a map at Peter’s request. But Anne guessed at least six of those, maybe more, never got built. Mason had stolen these domes, from the people they’d been intended for. People who could have helped her mother. Without knowing it, he had helped ExoGen’s cause.

  “Hey!” Willie had spotted her and was charging toward her. The old man’s scowl said he meant business.

  Anne flipped a switch that activated the outer door. She left the panel off and punched in a five digit sequence into the keypad.

  “The hell are you doing?” Willie said. And when the door whooshed open, he broke into a jog. “Hey! Kid! I told your brother I’d—”

  Willie’s voice was silenced by the closing door. He thumped his fists against the outer glass, shouting something, but his voice was muffled beyond the point of discernment. And without the five digit override code, he wouldn’t be following her.

  Standing in the first chamber, Anne began shedding clothes. She’d been in the wild far too long for the system to reliably suck up every bit of ExoGenetic material from all the folds of her clothes. She discarded her shoes, pants and shirt, until all she had on was matching white underwear and a tank top. “I look like Ripley,” she muttered, wondered who Ripley was, and then she recalled a movie her mother had seen as a child. The film had terrified young Ella, but didn’t seem all that dissimilar from the world her mother had helped create.

  Anne stepped into the decontamination room, closed the door behind her, and stood still as the turbines did their thing, whipping her body with a tornado of wind, stripping every loose fiber and seed from her body, clothes and hair. When it was done, she stepped inside the familiar confines of a biodome. It smelled lush and delicious. Her mouth watered. But she didn’t linger or even take a snack for the road. She ran barefoot, across the greenhouse, where it attached to the next biodome via a second decontamination chamber.

  Mason hadn’t taken any chances. Even if one dome became contaminated, the others wouldn’t be. Had he been a good man, Hellhole compound would have been an oasis. She repeated the process, over and over until she reached the final decontamination chamber leading to the farmhouse. She entered the chamber, waiting somewhat impatiently for it to run its course, and then stepped out into the farmhouse. To her right was a laundry room, stacked with folded clothing. She ducked into the room and tore through the clothing until she found a pair of blue sweatpants that weren’t obscenely too large. She cinched the drawstring tight and slipped back into the hall. She could hear people moving around on the first and second floors. Hushed voices. The house was supposed to be mostly empty, she thought, glancing into the kitchen for a knife or a frying pan. Then Charlotte walked across the hall, ducking low, a rifle in her hands. They already took the house?

  Commands were hissed across the first floor and repeated upstairs. A moment later, several windows shattered. It sounded like every window at the front of the house. She stepped into the hallway and froze. The front door was open. Jakob was framed by it, standing on the porch, aiming an AK-47 at her mother. No, not at her mother...at the man hiding behind her like a coward.

  Eddie.

  She couldn’t hear what was being said, but she understood the situation. She ducked into the kitchen, found a knife and then tip-toed to the staircase. There were eight people on the first floor, all aiming their weapons outside. That’s a lot of firepower for one man, she thought, then she sprang up the stairs. An unarmed woman standing at the top of the stairs, no doubt positioned to help coordinate, looked surprised by her arrival, but said nothing. Anne had been knocked out and carried away, but they were still on the same team. That, and Anne gave the woman her best, ‘get the fuck out of my way,’ glare, while doing nothing to hide the blade in her hands.

  “How many are out there?” Anne asked.

  The woman shrugged. “Not sure it matters. They’re huge. Starting to think this was a bad idea.”

  Anne ignored the woman’s fear and headed for the bedroom at the front of the house. She stepped inside the room and found Carrie and Shawna, each arme
d with a rifle, pointed out the window. Both women turned when she entered, but said nothing. Anne quickly assessed the pair, moved to Carrie and whispered. “You even shot a rifle before?”

  “Not really.”

  “Not really? That’s pretty much a yes or no question.” Anne wrapped her small hand around the weapon’s barrel. Carrie resisted. Wanted to be part of the fight. Good for her, but bad for the people she was supposed to be covering, which included her brother and mother. “You can give it to me, or I can give you this knife.”

  Carrie glanced at the menacing steak knife. Anne hadn’t directly threatened her, but Carrie read between the lines and lifted her hands away. Anne hefted the big rifle up, leaned her shoulder into it and looked out the window.

  She nearly gasped, but held it in. Kenyon’s companions were just about the last thing Anne expected to see. Riders. Each of them as ugly as Jakob’s mother had become before Peter killed her. And they seemed to be following Kenyon’s lead, waiting for a command.

  She focused on what was being said and nearly laughed when she heard Jakob say, “She also told us about your little dick.”

  Kenyon didn’t like that, but he stayed hidden behind Ella. Hidden from Jakob, she thought, adjusting her aim. But not from me.

  When the hairy beasts beside him revealed they had a sense of humor, laughing at Jakob’s jab, laughing at Kenyon, the man’s face turned red.

  “So, bro,” Jakob said. “Umad?”

  “Little shit!” Kenyon took a step back and raised his weapon toward her mother’s back.

  Anne exhaled.

  Slipped her finger around the trigger.

  Prayed that Carrie had chambered a round.

  And squeezed.

  The rifle bucked hard, punching her shoulder back with the same force Willie had used to knock her unconscious. The boom echoed and faded, giving way to Kenyon’s scream of pain, and then the thunderous roar of modern killing machines. Anne adjusted her rifle’s aim, as the first Apache attack helicopter swung past overhead. It made a tight circle over the compound and then hovered. Then a familiar, blue Black Hawk helicopter flew into view and descended. A soldier clad in black stood in the open side door, manning a machine gun.

  Kenyon leapt to his feet waving his good arm.

  The soldier leaned forward a little, looked surprised, then offered a wave. After speaking to the pilot for a moment, the chopper began to descend, its rotor wash blasting the house, kicking up a cloud of ash and flattening the weaker buildings in the nearby shanty town.

  It took all of Anne’s willpower to not shoot Eddie in the head. But if she did that, then these choppers might open fire, killing everyone in the house and the family she hoped to save.

  Then she realized it wasn’t her family she should be worried about.

  They’re here for me, she thought. And while she wasn’t a coward, and would happily face these odds in a fight, she was beginning to understand that the fate of the human race might just reside in her head. If ExoGen found her...the human race would be replaced by whatever ExoGen was cooking up.

  She ducked back out of the window and turned to the two women. “I need to hide. Now.”

  28

  Eddie Kenyon felt like he’d been dipped in the Jordan River by John the Baptist himself, remade and reborn. But this transformative moment wouldn’t be followed by miracles, parables or his martyrdom. His remaining time on Earth would change mankind’s outcome for the next two thousand years, though. Probably longer. Time would be measured in three epochs: B.C., A.D. and A.C.—After Change.

  Ella refused to see it, covering her vision with moral scruples. And people like the now dead Mason were incapable of seeing it.

  But he could see it, just as clearly as he could see the familiar Apache helicopter swinging into position. The war machine had enough firepower to wipe out every living soul in the Hellhole compound, human or otherwise. And it wasn’t alone. He could hear the second Apache, not far away, and the Black Hawk, which roared into view above the farmhouse. The side door was open. His man, Hutchins, stood behind the machine gun.

  The open door and prepped weapon told him they hadn’t just stumbled on Hellhole. They came here knowing they would find people, and if they came here at all, it meant they knew exactly who they would find. Hutchins was here for Ella and Anne, still trying to complete their mission, so they could return to the safety of ExoGen’s San Francisco facility.

  Kenyon glanced at the limp form of Mason, hanging from the open front door. He offered the dead man his silent thanks for summoning ExoGen to the site, and then waved at the chopper. He smiled when Hutchins responded with a smile and wave. Despite being left for dead, these were still his men.

  And that meant the brazen little shit Peter had spawned would soon meet his maker, along with everyone else in hiding in the farmhouse, including the asshole who put a bullet through his arm. As the chopper descended, sending a whirlwind of ash and debris into the air, Kenyon looked at the wound. It was more than a graze, but the bullet had punched clean through. He’d had worse. Much worse. But the bullet had hit a nerve or tendon, limiting the functionality of his right hand.

  He knelt to pick up his weapon, hoping that no one in the house was stupid enough risk a confrontation with the Apache. When no one fired on him, he grasped the weapon with his left hand. He’d still be able to fire it, but his speed and aim would be diminished until his right arm healed. With two Apaches and a Black Hawk, though, not to mention the hardened men inside them, he could order the deaths of everyone here without pulling a trigger.

  And he wasn’t the only one who knew it.

  “Eddie,” Ella said. “You can let these people live.”

  “I could,” he said, and let that linger.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “We already played that game once,” he said, recalling the last time they had captured Ella and flown away, only to be sent back after her daughter. Eddie’s priority had been Ella, and he’d allowed himself to be duped by her affections, which part of him still believed were genuine. But ExoGen had different priorities. They wanted Anne, and he wouldn’t be allowed to return home without her. “Where’s Anne?”

  “I don’t know,” Ella said, and he actually believed her. If Mason had her locked up inside the house, then she might not really know where the girl was. But the kid would know.

  He turned to Jakob. “Back to square one, Jake.”

  “Go fuck a duck,” Jakob said, but he kept his weapon aimed at the ground.

  “You’ve been around Anne too long,” Kenyon said. “Picked up some of her potty mouth.”

  “You’ve been screwing ExoGens too long,” the kid replied, but he was only pretending to have a set of balls. Kenyon saw right through his bravado. But he did raise a valid point.

  Kenyon observed the Chunta for a moment. They were nervous and confused by the arrival of the choppers. They probably viewed them as ExoGenetic predators, but they might also remember seeing them before. With the arrival of his men, and their modern weapons, the creatures became a liability, and he’d have no problem leaving them, or worse. But for now, he needed their unpredictable nature contained.

  “Chunta,” he said, addressing them all. The hairy females gave him their attention. He pointed at the helicopters. “Friends.” He patted his chest, wincing as he moved his right arm. “My friends. Your friends.”

  They didn’t look convinced, but they didn’t attempt to argue, either.

  “Trust Eddie,” he said, and he nearly backhanded Ella when she laughed. But he controlled himself and gave the nearest female a pat on the arm. She looked him in the eyes, her true thoughts unreadable, or perhaps non-existent. “Trust Eddie.”

  When the female grunted her agreement, he said. “Stay here.” He pointed at the farmhouse, indicating the people hiding within. “Watch them. If they move, kill them.”

  A louder grunt meant she understood. Killing was second nature to the monsters he’d lived among for more th
an a month. But that dark time in his life would soon be a memory he could let go.

  The chopper landed a safe distance away. Hutchins stepped out from the side door, a second man now manning the gun. But Hutchins didn’t approach. Wasn’t about to put himself at risk. He could see the weapons still sticking out of the windows. Could see the Chunta bobbing and anxious, and was probably confounded by the fact that the monsters weren’t simply tearing into every human being around.

  Kenyon pointed his rifle at Ella and motioned toward the Black Hawk with it. “Let’s go have a chat with our old friends, eh?” He smiled at Jakob. “And you, enjoy the last few minutes of your life. Too bad, dad’s not here to share in the fun.”

  “Eddie,” Ella said. “Don’t be a dick.”

  Eddie chuckled. He missed Ella’s straight forward nature. And even if she didn’t love him, she was going to be with him. They would ring in the A.C. together. And if they could find Anne, who was undoubtedly nearby, Ella would do whatever he asked. No one was more precious to her than her daughter.

  “Hey, I’m just having a good time. If I were being a dick, the kid would be dead already.” And he really did want to kill the kid. The problem was that if Ella didn’t know where Anne was, and Peter was M.I.A., or perhaps already dead in the swamps, then Jakob might be the only person who knew where Anne was hiding. And if they didn’t find her soon, the girl was bold enough, and probably skilled enough, to head out into the wild on her own, never to be found. “Now move it.”

  He followed Ella toward the chopper, appreciating the sway of her hips in the flowing white skirt. She’d cleaned up well under Mason’s brief care. Eddie still didn’t appreciate the shaved head look, but it would grow out. And really, any look Ella tried would be better than the Chunta punta he’d experienced.

  Granted, not all of it had been bad. He’d gotten to know a more primal side of himself, but it was comparable to finding the virtues in a fruitcake. A starving man might be able to find them palatable, but if an apple pie came along, well, the fruitcake is seen for what it is: an ugly, nasty-tasting brick that people were willing to buy once a year, but not eat.