Ancestor by Scott Sigler

Author:Scott Sigler
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307589354
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2010-06-21T12:00:00+00:00

NOVEMBER 26: CHECKMATE

Implantation +17 Days

COLDING STARED AT the chessboard and contemplated his next move. He couldn’t screw it up, because he was winning—he was actually beating Jian. No one in the project had ever beaten her. Okay, maybe her brain was still a bit addled from the med shorting, but Colding would take a victory over her any way he could get it.

He had avoided Sara as much as possible in the last two days. After, of course, he’d gone to her room and broken the cameras there. He didn’t quite know how to tell her that Andy “The Asshole” Crosthwaite had a video of her, naked, making love.

He explained his distance by telling Sara that he had to focus on Jian, that he’d been slacking off more than a little on that part of his job. Sara understood. And he wasn’t lying, because he did focus on Jian, monitoring her progress, making sure Rhumkorrf gave the proper dosage. That and playing a lot of chess.

Colding moved his queen’s knight and smiled. “Check.”

Jian stared blankly out the lounge’s picture window. She seemed to have forgotten Colding was even there at all. She looked much better, though—clearly, the proper dosage was working.

“Jian?”

She just sat there, her hands turning a bottle of Dr Pepper over and over until the color was a light brown—the normal dark caramel shade mixed with the white of bubbles seeking escape against the bottle’s pressure. When she finally opened it, Colding thought, the thing would explode.

“Hey, kiddo, pay attention—you’re in check.”

She glanced at the board, then went back to turning the Dr Pepper bottle.

“Jian, talk to me. What’s eating at you?”

She looked at him, her eyes once again focused. “It is too big.”

“I know, it’s okay. Gary Detweiler is getting material for heavy cages. We’ll have them up in a few days. Doc tells me that will keep the animals under control.”

She laughed. “Doctor Rhumkorrf wants to see his name on the cover of Time magazine. He would risk all of us.”

Colding thought of the shorted meds. Jian was more right than she knew. He also thought of the cages, and of a tiny, camera-biting fetus enlarged to two hundred pounds. Or even bigger. Rhumkorrf had assured him everything would be fine, but the man’s statements were questionable at best. If Jian was worried, then Colding was worried. “Why are the fetuses so much bigger than you thought they would be?”

She looked down. The bottle turned faster. “I … I made projections, but … maybe I was not thinking clearly.”

Not thinking clearly. He thought about the timeline. She’d had her breakthrough, created the successful batch right when they left Baffin three weeks ago … two weeks after Rhumkorrf started shorting her meds.

“Jian, I need you to think. You said you coded for a herd animal. Docile, about two hundred pounds adult weight. But it’s not just the size of the ancestors, it’s the aggressive behavior, those … teeth.”

She raised her head, looked him in the eyes. He couldn’t quite read her expression.

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