Chimera by Michael McBride

Author:Michael McBride [McBride, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-09-13T04:00:00+00:00

31

20,000 Feet Above the Northeast Greenland Ice Sheet

77.823372, -40.064935

Now

“We’ll land on the glacier right here,” Waller says. The head of the NeXgen contingent points at the screen of his laptop, which displays satellite imagery demonstrating a faint linear demarcation vaguely resembling a runway on the ice sheet southwest of Academy Station. He switches to a detailed floorplan of the interior. “Your job will be to secure the station. There are two levels, each of which is ring-shaped, with rooms on both sides of a central hallway. The innermost rooms surround the engineering core, while the outer rooms have exterior access via a wall of windows, several of which appear to have been broken. Once we control the station, and assuming the scientists are no longer inside, you are free to take this vehicle and search for them.”

“What about the four of you?” Cameron asks, glancing through the window of the SUSV at Kato, Grant, and Silver, who stand outside the door, talking quietly among themselves.

“We will no longer be your concern.”

“So make sure there’s nothing inside that building that can hurt you and then get the hell out of your way so you can do . . . whatever it is you intend to do . . . without any witnesses.”

“Something to that effect.”

Waller offers a smarmy smile that Cameron barely resists knocking off his face.

“I’ve seen Dr. Stone’s emergency broadcast and the security footage from inside the cafeteria,” Cameron says. “Now, I might not be the smartest person in any room, but when I think about the video logs of Dr. Rantanen making a test strip disappear and using a static charge to reanimate a dead fish, those strange distortions of pixels start to make me nervous. We haven’t been able to qualify their source, let alone identify the figure they conceal, nor have we detected any forces, hostile or otherwise, within a hundred miles of the station. And we’re sure as hell not equipped to handle an unknown biological agent we haven’t the slightest idea how to contain. I need to know that I’m not leading my men into a situation we have no hope of controlling.”

Waller offers a subtle nod to Kato, who climbs into the vehicle and once more takes the seat beside his superior.

“Perhaps it’s time we briefed the senior master sergeant on our little project,” Waller says.

Kato takes his cue, opens his laptop, and turns the screen so that Cameron can see it.

“Project Araneidae is a joint venture between NeXgen Biotechnology and the Department of Defense,” he says, flipping through photographs taken in a massive warehouse resembling a fish hatchery. There are rows upon rows of rectangular pools filled with water in shades ranging from green to reddish-purple. Equipment of all shapes and sizes surrounds them. Dr. Rantanen is in several of the pictures, although hers is the only familiar face among the dozens of men and women in lab coats. She appears deferential in most of them, as though she’s merely a bit player.

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