The 6th Extinction (Sigma Force 10)

But this raised another question.

“You know a lot about this tribe,” Kendall said. Even recruited them into working for you. “So how did you gain that level of cooperation? Especially up here. As I recall, most natives fear these tepui.”

“Not so the Macuxi. They revere these plateaus as the home of the gods, believing that the ancient tunnels, caves, and sinkholes are passageways to their underworld, where great giants pass on the wisdom of ages.” Cutter stared beyond the balcony toward the lower forest—toward a vast dark sinkhole that was visible in the daylight. “Maybe they were right.”

Kendall imagined Cutter thought of himself as one of those godlike giants, a keeper of great knowledge.

Cutter continued. “Did you know my great ancestor, Cuthbert Cary-Elwes, was a Jesuit priest? He lived among the Macuxi for twenty-three years and was greatly loved by these people. He’s still remembered in stories, a part of the tribe’s oral histories.”

Kendall suspected the calculating and persuasive man seated across from him had used that past to sway these local tribesmen to his cause. Did he marry Ashuu for the same reason, to cement that bond by marrying into the tribe? Kendall knew how fiercely these natives respected both family ties and old obligations, even debts that spanned generations. To survive in the harsh jungle, a society had to be close-knit, to watch each other’s back.

Cutter stood up abruptly, brushing his palms together. “If you’ve had enough to eat, we should get to work.”

Kendall had been dreading this, but he forced his legs to push himself up. If nothing else, he intended to learn what Cutter planned—then fight him as fiercely as he could.

Cutter led him back indoors and over to an elevator cage wrapped in French wrought iron, like something out of an old hotel. Once Kendall and Mateo joined him inside, Cutter pressed the lowermost button.

Through the bars of the iron door, Kendall watched the floors drop away. They passed through a vast library, then a parlor with a huge fireplace, until finally they reached the ground floor with its cavernous entry hall—but the elevator didn’t stop there.

It continued descending.

Walls of rough sandstone passed by outside, closing around them. They were sinking into the core of the tepui, into that labyrinthine world described by Macuxi myth. The cage fell for another twenty long seconds, then dropped into a brightly lit space.

Kendall’s brain took a few additional snaps of its synapses to make sense of what he was seeing. Gone were any signs of stone walls. Instead, a huge laboratory space opened ahead of him, shining with stainless steel and smooth disinfected, spotless surfaces. A handful of white-smocked workers busied themselves at various stations.

“Here we are,” Cutter said and led Kendall out. “The true heart of Dark Eden.”

Kendall stared at the state-of-the-art equipment. Down one wall ran a long series of fume and flood hoods, intermixed with shelves that held autoclaves, centrifuges, pipettes, beakers, graduated cylinders. Along the other wall stood huge steel doors that hid massive refrigerators or freezers. He also spotted the dark glass door of what must be an incubator.

But the bulk of the central space was made up of rows of workstations, holding multiple genetic analyzers, along with thermal cyclers for performing polymerase chain reactions and DNA synthesizers used to create high-quality oligonucleotides. He also identified equipment for carrying out the latest CRISPR-Cas9 technique for manipulating DNA strands.

This last scared him the most. It was a new technology, one so innovative that a novice could run it, but powerful enough that several research groups in the United States had already used it to mutate every single gene found in human cells. Some had nicknamed it the evolution machine. The potential abuse of that technology in the wrong hands already worried national security agencies, fearful of what might be released as a consequence, either purposefully or by accident.

How long has Cutter possessed this technology?

Kendall didn’t know, but he recognized that this lab far outshone his own in both size and sophistication. Additionally, more rooms branched off from here, expanding Cutter’s research to unknown ends.

Kendall found it hard to talk, his voice cracking. “What have you been doing, Cutter?”

“Amazing things . . . free from government regulation and far from oversight. It’s allowed me to reach the farthest fringes of the possible. Though to be humble, I would say I’m actually only five to six years ahead of some of your colleagues. But what I was able to achieve already . . . to create . . .” Cutter faced Kendall. “And you, my dear friend, can teach me much more.”

Kendall swallowed down his terror. “What do you want from me?”

“In your lab, you created the perfect eVLP, a hollow shell so small that it can enter any living cell. It’s brilliant work, Kendall.” He shook his head with respect. “You should be proud.”

At the moment he felt anything but proud.

“Your creation makes for an ideal Trojan horse,” Cutter said. “Anything could be put inside of it, and nothing could resist it. It’s a flawless genetic delivery system.” A scolding tone entered his voice. “But you engineered that empty shell using an otherworldly genetic blueprint, from something beyond DNA, didn’t you?”

Kendall tried to hide any reaction from Cutter’s intense ice-blue scrutiny. Did the bastard know what he and Harrington had discovered in Antarctica? Did he know the origin of the XNA used to engineer that viral shell?

Kendall decided it was time to take a stand. He straightened his shoulders, refusing to be swayed. “Cutter, I won’t share my technique with you. The method for making that viral shell will die with me.”

Cutter laughed—which chilled Kendall to the bone.

“Oh, no need, my friend. One of your young colleagues was kind enough to send me a sample five months ago, and I was able to reverse-engineer it. I’ve mass produced a supply that could last me years.”

Kendall struggled to keep up with his adversary. “Then . . . then what do you want from me?”

“It’s more about what I can do for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want to help you stop the plague that’s sweeping through California. Since you’ve been under my wing, your synthetic organism has spread, breaking out of its initial containment, pushed far and wide by recent flooding. It won’t be long until it’s everywhere, eating its way across your country—and beyond.”