Cain (5 page)

"Cain's strength was developed through the use of the Sulijuki Forest virus. It's taken from the western forests of Uganda." Her mouth tightened as she collected her thoughts. "To truly grasp this phenomenon, you have to understand that Cain was a freak of nature even before we altered his chromosomes."

"Why?"

"It's not in his file, but he had an exceedingly rare XYY coding."

"What's that?"

"That's what's known in science as the 'superman' trait," she said. "It's almost impossible for a male to possess two of the same chromosomes, but Cain did. That's why he was so strong in life, and the main reason he was selected for this experiment. But with the Sulijuki Forest virus we managed to denature a part of the second Y chromosome and bond it strand-sight onto chromosome 14, which hyper
-concentrates muscle cells. Plus, to make him strong enough to rip a car door off its hinges, we inserted anabolic steroid reserve cells inside his thorax and upper arms."

Ben looked glumly away. "Damn," he muttered, "just when you thought it couldn't get any worse."

Soloman expressed nothing. "All right, Maggie," he replied, softening a bit. "Explain to me why he's so fast."

She ran a hand through her hair;
Soloman saw faint beads of sweat on her forehead. "That was fundamentally a chemical alteration," she said. "Sodium and potassium and magnesium regulate the speed of synapses.What we did with him was simply increase the chemical levels until there was virtually no waiting period."

"But you never tested him, right?"

"No, we never had a chance."

"Then give me your best guess,"
Soloman concentrated. "How fast is he? What're his limitations?"

Her face froze as she gazed to the side, calculating. "He doesn't have
cheetah speed. But maybe ... a lion." She leaned back. "It would be eyes, hands, everything. He's probably at the level of someone when they touch a hot stove. Their hand is moving even before their nerves have identified why. It only lasts a tenth of a second with normal people, but Cain is at that speed constantly. He moves so fast that even he wouldn't know what he was doing if we hadn't modified his central nervous system with electrical enhancements. Of course, we had to provide a niobium-titanium skull shield to protect his brain from the overflow of magnesium and potassium that might have caused cerebral edema. The skull shield also protects his brain against traumatic impact."

She leaned forward, jaw tight. "Understand me,
Soloman; Cain does have a weakness: it's the original Marburg virus. If you could reinsert the missing DNA strands in the HyMar virus hosted in his system, it would promote him to full-blown hemorrhagic fever in seconds. In other words it would take away his power on a molecular level."

Soloman
almost laughed. "Well, Maggie, I don't think Cain is going to sit still while I give him an injection of the Marburg virus. And I'm not going to take a shot at him. What happens if I miss? What happens if the original Marburg is released in this ecosystem?"

She was silent, pursing her lips.

"If Marburg were inserted into this environment it would become an airborne disease a hundred times more infectious than the common cold." Her words were slow, as if she were thinking of the very real possibility. "Within two hours it would kill anyone who contracted it. On a geometric curve it would wipe out a city with the population and density of New York within twenty-four hours. Within forty-eight hours it would be in another half-dozen states and within a week there would be nothing living on this continent. A month after that, if it crosses the ocean on flights before this nation is quarantined, it could conceivably kill everything on the face of the earth."

General Hawken's hand was trembling violently as he raised his cigar for a vicious drag. He cursed aloud as he expelled the smoke, massaging a sweat-slick forehead.

Soloman took a deep breath. "I see. Well, then, let's move on. Does Cain have any other weaknesses?"

"Yes. There's one. And you might be able to exploit it if you're very, very careful."

Ben spat out a piece of tobacco. "Doc," he growled, "we passed 'careful' about five hundred miles back."

"What is Cain's other weakness?"
Soloman asked.

Pain shut her eyes before she clenched her teeth.

"It ... it came out of a severe miscalculation," she answered. "The takeover of Cain's DNA by the HyMar virus led to something we didn't want to do. And I want you to know that I consider what we did a very, very tragic mistake. It was something we did only because we thought Cain would only be turned loose in times of war. And in that scenario the enemy would have been the only one ... the only one
consumed
."

Soloman
's eyes narrowed. Her face was so tragic that Ben just bowed his head and shut his eyes, as if he knew something horrible was about to be said.

"We never anticipated it," she said more softly. "We never anticipated that Cain's DNA would be so heavily damaged by the virus. We thought there would be a backflow, a point where the damaged DNA would recover. But it never did. His ribosomal RNA went into a downward spiral that we couldn't reverse, so we had to find a way to replace it in a battlefield situation. And we came up with a method but
... but ..."

"What are you saying, Maggie?"

She sighed. "I'm saying that Cain has to constantly replenish his human DNA. I'm saying that he has to—" She caught her breath, grimacing. "Dear God, forgive me ... but ... but Cain has to have fresh ... He has to have fresh human blood every day. And if, for some reason, he can't get fresh blood, he'll starve."

The guilt in her voice was tragic but
Soloman revealed no shock, somehow knew.

"How does Cain get blood, Maggie?" he asked coldly.

"We modified him for it."

"How?"

She closed her eyes, bowing her head.

"With fangs."

***

An indestructible vault that not even the giant could have torn from the
wall was opened and the priest collapsed to the ground, trembling. Deep beneath the cathedral, in the Secret Archives of the cathedral, they were surrounded by ancient texts, artifacts, letters, and long-hidden documents. It was a place of dark secrets, hidden power.

"I need the documents that give ownership to the
Castle of Calistro in England," the giant murmured, staggering. He studied the shelves a long time, confused, for there was no filing system in the archives. Documents and testimonies were laid one upon the other, no numbering, no lettering to mark the sides. It was a wall of white and yellowed parchment in every direction, everything hidden in plain sight.

The giant stood poised in the room and his brow hardened, anger making the red eyes narrow and menacing as Father Lanester stared up,
enraptured by the solemn stance.

"What is your name?" the priest asked, regretfully remembering the
admonition to never, never ... no,
never
engage them in conversation! But at the words the man simply looked down, a faint smile.

"Cain," he said. "My name is Cain."

"Cain," the priest repeated. "The first murderer."

"And the last," Cain said coldly. "Now, where is the document I seek, priest? Where is
my
document?" His face twisted in a bolt of savage pain. "I ... cannot remember."

With a groan he fell to his knees, clutching his head. So close to him, the priest stared, mesmerized at the gigantic suffering that burned in the imperial face. It was the kind of pain that could drive a man insane, but the priest knew in his heart that this was no man.

"Tell me," the giant mumbled, falling heavily on a hand, holding his head with the other. "Tell me ... quickly!"

Inspired by desperate hope the priest shouted, "No!
... No! I won't tell you!"

A slow shake of the horrific head and the giant reached out to set
tle his clawed left hand on the priest's knee. "Foolish . . . foolish mortal," he moaned, head bowed. "What makes you think you can contend ... with a god?"

The taloned hand closed to crush the bones of the leg to powder. Blood spiraled from ruptured skin to spray ancient documents. After the priest's hideous, rhythmic screams no longer reverberated from the walls of the subterranean chamber, the giant gazed at him again. He was breathing heavily, as if he were on the verge of death.

"Where ... is the document?"

The priest pointed with a high-pitched scream. "There! On the shelf! Take it! Take it! Take . . .
Ahhhh ..."

Staggering, Cain rose only to fall heavily against the shelves. He reached up, fumbling, pulling a handful of documents that fell to the floor. Roughly he rummaged, searching until he lifted a thick, ancient, leather-bound document, holding it in his unbloodied hand. He swayed as he turned to the horrified priest of St. Michael's, still sprawled in blood.

Grimacing in pain, Cain walked forward, strength failing until he stood over Father Lanester, staring down with eyes as dead-opaque as those of a leopard crouching before a kill.

A violent fear overcame the priest's pain. For there was no pain here, no, not here. Here was the place where fear died. Here was the place of horror, of oncoming death. Then he screamed for the last time in his life as Cain's mouth gaped and fangs violen
tly exploded from his upper and lower ridge, fangs as sharp and savage as a saber-toothed tiger's.

With a godlike hand Cain reached down, lifting the priest cleanly from the floor. The giant's eyes glowed blood-red as he held him close, whispering over the glistening white tusks.

"Time to feed."

***

"It's all right, Maggie," Soloman said, waiting. "I'm a soldier, and I know what it's like. We both do our jobs. But right now we have to figure out how to stop this monster. Are you able to continue?"

She wiped her face, focusing almost immediately. Obviously, despite the guilt she felt, she possessed remarkable intelligence and control. "I'm ... fine, Colonel." She nodded to Ben. "I'm just fine. Let's get on with it."

Soloman's eyes softened in respect. "Good. Thank you." He took a moment. "All right, why do we have only ten days before this HyMar virus becomes contagious? You said it wouldn't cause hemorrhagic fever."

"The HyMar won't cause the fever in Cain,
Soloman, but it's still mutating. That's what viruses do. That's all they do. I'd hoped that I altered the DL-3 and DL-4 strands to make it nonpathogenic, but I think I failed."

"Why do you think that?"

Sighing, she seemed to be tiring quickly.

"Because, when I was completing
blood work on Cain a couple days ago I saw the virus undergoing silent mutations, or mutations that reveal no phenotypic effects. The mutagens that are still building up in the cell vacuoles are causing a concentration differential to accent pathogenesis. And very soon it's going to achieve a threshold effect."

Soloman
blinked. "What's a threshold effect?"

"That's the point where a virus becomes lethal. It's
... like this: a Ping-Pong ball going five miles an hour doesn't hurt you. Even if it's going fifty miles an hour it probably won't hurt you. But at some specific point, at maybe eighty or a hundred miles an hour, that Ping-Pong ball reaches a level where it can kill you. HyMar is the same way. There will be a level where the HyMar cytoplasm and mutagens acquire enough host cells to promote the virus to a T-4 bacteriophage. And at that point it will become the most deadly organism this planet has ever seen."

"And then?"

"And then," she answered, eyes flashing, "Cain will be a walking bubonic plague. Anyone who has atmosphere-to-atmosphere contact with him will instantly contract it. And the virus itself will be more resilient than any other Class Four organism ever seen, capable of surviving on a nonorganic surface for as long as two months. Anyone can catch it and they in turn will infect anyone who has atmospheric contact."

Finally,
Soloman shook his head and rose.

"All right," he said. "We're too tired to deal with this now. Let's hit the rack. We'll start again at 0500 but we'll eat chow in here because we've got a lot to do. We've got to find some means of locating this thing."

"Yeah," Ben growled. "Like yesterday."

Maggie wearily wiped sweat from her forehead. "Thank you. That
... that
stupid
F-14 flight really took it out of me – fool of a pilot." She leaned on the table as she stood. "I threw up so many times I lost count. Vomit was ... everywhere."

Soloman
smiled, understanding, before he turned to the general. "Have you secured billeting for her, Ben?"

"Huh?" Ben stared a moment. "There's no need for that, Sol. She's been living on and off the base for more than three months." He took a drag, released it slowly. "You're forgetting, son, that everything was done right here at White Sands, down in J-3. She only had to fly back because she was helping design emergency search-and-destroy procedures for the Seals. When she's here, she lives in the house of an 06 who's been reassigned to Quantico."