The 6th Extinction (Sigma Force 10)

“What’s this about?” Gray asked as he joined her.

Without wasting a breath, she turned and headed back into Sigma’s communication center. He followed her into the circular room, banked on all sides by monitors and computer stations. Normally two or three technicians manned this hub, and when an operation was in full swing, there could be twice that number. But at this late hour, only a single figure awaited them: Kat’s main analyst, Jason Carter.

The young man sat at a station, typing furiously. He was dressed in black jeans and a Boston Red Sox T-shirt. His flax-blond hair was cowlicked and disheveled, like he’d just woken up, but more likely, the exhaustion on his face was from not having slept at all. Though only twenty-two, the kid was whip-smart, especially when it came to anything with a circuit board. According to Painter, Jason had been kicked out of the Navy for breaking into DoD servers with nothing more than a BlackBerry and a jury-rigged iPad. After that incident, Kat had personally recruited him, taking him under her wing.

Kat spoke to Gray. “A little over an hour ago, a military research base out in California had some sort of disaster. There was a frantic mayday.”

She touched Jason’s shoulder.

He tapped a key. An audio feed immediately began to play. It was a woman’s voice, stiff but plainly winded, struggling to maintain composure.

“This is sierra, victor, whiskey. There’s been a breach. Fail-safe initiated. No matter the outcome: Kill us . . . kill us all.”

Kat continued. “We’ve identified the caller as Dr. Irene McIntire, chief systems analyst for the base.”

On the computer screen, an image of a middle-aged woman in a lab coat appeared, smiling for the camera. Her eyes twinkled with excitement. Gray tried to balance this image with the frantic voice he’d just heard.

“What were they working on?” Gray asked.

Jason interrupted, cupping a Bluetooth headphone more firmly to his ear. “They’ve arrived. Coming down now.”

“That’s what I’m hoping to find out,” Kat said, answering Gray’s question. “All I know is the research station must have been dealing with something hazardous, something that required drastic action to stop. Satellite imagery showed an explosion. Lots of smoke.”

Jason brought up those photos, too, flipping through them rapidly. Though the images were gray-scaled and grainy, Gray could easily make out the flash of fire, the billow of an oily black cloud.

“We still can’t see through the smoke to evaluate the current status of the base,” Kat said. “But there’s been no further communication.”

“They must have razed the place.”

“It would seem that way at the moment. Painter is looking into matters out west, tapping into local resources. He’s tasked me with discovering more details about the base’s operations.” Kat turned to Gray, her eyes worried. “I already learned that the site is managed by DARPA.”

He failed to hide his surprise. DARPA was the defense department that oversaw Sigma’s operations—though knowledge of this group’s existence was restricted to only a few key people, those with the highest security clearance. But he shouldn’t have been so shocked to learn this base was tied to DARPA. The military’s research and development agency had hundreds of facilities spread through several divisions and across the breadth of the country. Most of them operated with minimal oversight, running independently, tapping into the most unique minds and talents out there. The details of each operation were on a need-to-know basis.

And apparently we didn’t need to know about this.

“There were over thirty men and women at that base when things went sour,” Kat said. From the stiffness in her shoulders and hard set to her lips, she was furious.

Gray couldn’t blame her as he stared at the monitor and the billowing black cloud. “Do you know which specific DARPA division was running that place?”

“BTO. The Biological Technologies Office. It’s a relatively new division. Their mission statement is to explore the intersection between biology and the physical sciences.”

Gray frowned. His own expertise for Sigma straddled that same line. It was dangerous territory, encompassing everything from genetic engineering to synthetic biology.

Voices echoed down the hall, coming from the direction of the elevator. Gray glanced over his shoulder.

“After getting Painter’s permission,” Kat explained, “I asked the director of the BTO—Dr. Lucius Raffee—to join us here to help troubleshoot the situation.”

As the new party drew closer, their voices expressed tension at this midnight summons.

Two men appeared at the entrance to the communication hub. The first man was a stranger, a distinguished black man dressed in a knee-length coat over an Armani suit. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair and a neat goatee.

“Dr. Raffee,” Kat said, stepping forward and shaking his hand. “Thank you for coming.”

“It was not like your man offered me much choice. I was just leaving a performance of La Bohème at the Kennedy Center when I was accosted.”

The doctor’s escort, Monk Kokkalis, pushed into the room. He was a bulldog of a man with a shaved head and the muscular build of a linebacker. The man cocked an eyebrow toward Gray as if to say catch a load of this guy. He then stepped over and lightly kissed his wife’s cheek.

Monk whispered faintly to Kat. “Honey, I’m home.”

Dr. Raffee glanced between the two, trying to comprehend them as a couple. Gray understood the man’s confusion. They made a striking, if odd, pair.

“I assume my husband filled you in on the situation in California,” Kat said.

“He did.” Dr. Raffee sighed heavily. “But I’m afraid there’s little concrete information I can offer you concerning what went wrong . . . or even the exact nature of the work that might have resulted in such drastic countermeasures at that base. I’ve telephoned several of my key people to follow up. Hopefully, we’ll hear from them shortly. All I know at the moment is that the head researcher was Dr. Kendall Hess, a specialist in astrobiology with an emphasis on investigating shadow biospheres.”

Kat frowned. “Shadow biospheres?”

He waved a hand dismissively. “He was searching for radically different forms of life, specifically those that employed unusual biochemical or molecular processes to function.”

Gray had some familiarity on the subject. “Like organisms that use RNA instead of DNA.”