Island 731 (36 page)

In a dead sprint from one set of doors to the next, he knew he couldn’t make it. So instead of running, he spun.

Two of the creatures charged along the linoleum, their spindly legs a blur, their tails reaching up and over. The third was airborne. Its eight legs were splayed open, ready to grasp Hawkins’s torso. A pair of mandibles was primed and ready to clamp down. The tail whipped around, aimed for his waist. And the stinger, like some kind of sick phallus, had already emerged and was jutting back and forth in excited anticipation.

Hawkins saw all this in the second it took him to grip the door with both hands and swing it shut as hard as he could. The well-oiled, heavy metal door flew shut and collided with the airborne creature first. The door shook from the impact. Two more less powerful thuds struck the door. Hawkins couldn’t see what had happened, but thought the running pair must have collided with the stalled airborne creature before striking the door.

With his pursuer’s momentum arrested for the moment, Hawkins sprinted to the second door on the right, slipped into the more dimly lit room, and eased the door shut behind him just as the double doors burst open. He waited by the door, hand on the padlock, ready to turn it. But he didn’t dare turn it yet or they’d be trapped inside. Instead, he listened. He could barely hear the tapping of the spider feet outside the room, but they were there, unsure at first, but then scurrying again.

“Hawkins,” Bray whispered.

Hawkins held up his hand, asking for silence. When he could no longer hear the creatures anymore, he locked the door. The deadbolt snapped loudly into place. When he turned around, he found Bray and Blok standing to his right, looking suspiciously at the room’s third occupant: Kam.

But Hawkins immediately saw they had nothing to fear from Kam, one of their two Judases. A knife had been buried in Kam’s abdomen. It was a mortal wound, especially without a real doctor within hundreds of square miles, let alone a surgeon qualified to repair the damage. But Kam wouldn’t die quickly, especially with the knife still wedged in place. Whoever had done this wanted him to suffer. And here on the island, that narrowed the suspects down to one.

“I thought Bennett considered you a brother,” Hawkins said. “Why did he do this?”

As Hawkins asked the question, he glanced around the room and got his answer. There were ten LCD displays and each showed four different live-video feeds. A little more than half of the feeds were from inside the building, focusing on labs, holding rooms, and a few hallways. There were several sweeping views from high points on the island. He could see the farm, the field, the garden, and orchard, a view of the goats from the abandoned laboratory, and an alternate view that showed the old lab itself. There were even a few images of the paths leading through the jungle and of the
Magellan
in the lagoon. Two of the feeds were blacked out.
Probably from the interior of Bennett’s now melted gallery
, Hawkins thought.

“I’m sorry,” Kam said. “I’m not the person you think I am.”

“He’s not a person at all,” Bray said, pointing to Kam’s lower neck.

At first Hawkins thought Kam’s neck had been sliced open, too, but there was no blood. He leaned in close, careful not to bump the knife buried in Kam’s belly. Hawkins realized that this part of Kam’s neck would have always been covered by the tightly buttoned, high-collared polo shirts he wore. The shirt was unbuttoned now and part of the neck exposed. He took hold of the collar and peeled it back, exposing the slit in Kam’s neck, along with two more.

“What the h—” The slits flexed and opened. Hawkins let go of the shirt and stepped back.

“Gills,” Kam said. “And yes, they work.”

“That’s how you survived the storm outside,” Bray said, his voice full of accusation. “And Cahill didn’t.”

“He saw me go outside. Tried to pull me back in, but a wave took us over the side. I tried to save him,” Kam said.

“Not that saving him would have been a mercy,” Bray said. “If you’d saved him, he’d be stuck on this hellish island, too. Or maybe have his guts split open with spider things climbing out. Or maybe have his hands replaced with knives and his eyes plucked out. At least he was
dead
when you guys strung him up by his insides.”

Kam cringed under the verbal attack. “I didn’t do those things. I wouldn’t.”

“But you allowed them to happen,” Blok said. “Sometimes there isn’t much difference.”

Kam’s eyes fell to the floor. He looked weakened, both emotionally and from actual blood loss.

“Enough, guys,” Hawkins said. Had Kam been healthy, there would be hell to pay, but the man was clearly on his way to the next world and right now, he had questions, the first of which was, “What does Bennett want?”

“Entertainment,” Kam said. “He’s bored.”

“He’s a little more than bored,” Bray said.

Hawkins saw Kam’s gills open and close, as though taking a breath. “Is she really your mother?”

Kam winced in pain for a moment and then nodded.

“Wait. What?” Bray said. “Who is his mother?”

“The chimera,” Hawkins said. “The big one.”

Bray rubbed his arm across his forehead, which did little to remove the sheen of sweat reflecting the glow of the security displays. “Holy shit.”

“You mean the thing that took us?” Blok asked. “The one that comes with the horn? That’s your
mother
?”

“Her name is Kaiju. It means ‘strange beast.’ She started as a human embryo. And some of her mind is still human, though it functions at a more primal level than modern man. She was grown inside a woman with one arm—my grandmother, I suppose—who died giving birth. That’s what my father told me, anyway. Who knows if it’s true.”

“What species was she merged with?” Hawkins asked.

“Some are obvious,” Kam replied with a cough. “Her face alone contains bat, goat, tiger, crocodile, and human features. Her tail is chameleon. Her torso and arms are gorilla, as is her heart and much of her inner musculature. One hand is polar bear. The other hand is an oversize aye-aye. The protective carapace on her chest is turtle shell and the spines on her back are porcupine, though they’re also coated with a neurotoxin. But much of her is still human.”

“Including her reproductive systems,” Hawkins said.

“My father, the head of the Unit Seven thirty-one division stationed on this island and chief scientist until his death, tried for years to artificially impregnate Kaiju. But it only worked once.”

“You,” Hawkins said.

Kam nodded. “The idea was that if they could impregnate a chimera, its children might be born with similar traits without needing to be engineered in a lab, which has a very low success rate and is time-consuming and expensive. When I was born, I looked fully human. I was deemed a failure, but allowed to live because my father used his own sperm to impregnate Kaiju. I was his son. The gills and”—Kam took hold of his shirt and lifted it, exposing his belly, which was covered in shiny fish scales—“this didn’t develop until I was a teenager, when my father had long since lost interest in me. He never knew.”

“How did you end up being so different from Bennett?” Hawkins asked. It wasn’t exactly important, but he didn’t understand how Kam had turned out to be merciful and Bennett a psychotic. Because when he thought about it, Bennett was the logical end result of being raised from birth in an environment that had no moral compass or respect for human life.

“His parents both worked for DARPA, but unlike many of the recruits, they were here voluntarily. They led the research together, along with my father. They believed in the work. Maybe even enjoyed the work. But they weren’t like Bennett. They were clinical. Cold, even. But they weren’t sick. Like my father, they took pride in what they saw as progress for their country—blinded to their crimes by patriotism. They were … kind to me, but in the way a master is kind to a pet. Things were different for Bennett.

“He lived in the labs. Spent days and nights there. He’s brilliant, you know. Always has been. And his parents pushed him. So hard. He performed his first operation when he was ten. The subject died on the table. He wept afterward, but not for the patient. He was upset that he’d let his parents down. Over time, his skills increased, but so did his boredom. When my father died, Bennett was just fifteen, but felt he should take his place. Obviously, he was turned down because of his age and the fact that he wasn’t actually employed as a researcher. After that he kept to himself, working on projects few people knew about. While his parents focused on pure research, pushing the limits of what could be done, Bennett focused on
controlling
their creations. Including my mother.”

“He’s using sounds and smells,” Hawkins said. “Different tones in varying sequences act like commands. Three pulses might mean ‘attack.’ Two might mean ‘stop.’ And one horn blast means, what? ‘Kidnap’?”

Kam shook his head no. “My mother can understand limited instructions. He can tell her what to do. The horn just sends her into action. As will the nearly inaudible tones emitted by his handheld remote and small speakers attached to many of the island’s cameras. The horn is meant to intimidate those who hear it, but the tones allow him to act in secret, like when he took the crew who remained behind on the
Magellan.
When he wants someone taken, rather than killed, he marks them with a scent.”

“But why does she obey him?” Bray asked. “Why doesn’t she just crush his skull and be done with it. And what about you? Why not drag his ass beneath the water and let him drown?”

“While Bennett lived in the labs, I spent much of my time in the jungle. The chimeras don’t attack each other. They might fight over territory or mates, but they don’t eat each other. I was free to explore. To dream. It’s why I’m different than him. He wanted to control nature. I wanted to enjoy it. And during those years of exploration, my mother was my only real company. Five years ago, Bennett captured my mother, and me. He operated on both of us. Planted explosives in our chests.”

“Like the ones he used on the staff?” Bray asked.

“Similar. Someone skilled at defusing bombs could have removed those. The ones inside my mother and me would require a highly skilled surgeon and someone to defuse the bomb simultaneously.”

“So they can’t be removed?” Blok asked.

“It’s unlikely,” Kam said. “One is rigged to the other, and both to his body. If his pulse stops, we both die. If we don’t do as he asks, he will detonate the explosive in the other. The small remote he carries? The buttons on the outside trigger the tones, and horn. But it can be slid open. The two buttons inside trigger the explosives.”

“So why not just let him kill her?” Bray said.

Anger flashed in Kam’s eyes. “You see a monster when you look at her, but I see my mother.” He leaned back in the chair, exhausted from the effort. “I couldn’t let her be killed any more than you could your mother. I’m not like Bennett. I couldn’t kill my parents.”

“Is that what happened to Bennett’s parents?” Hawkins asked. “He killed them?”

“They
were
kind to me,” Kam said with regret. “They didn’t deserve it. None of them did.”

Hawkins’s eyes widened. “He sewed them in with the others?”

“They were at the core. He didn’t want to see them.” Tears gathered at the base of Kam’s eyes. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll all be dead soon anyway.”

Hawkins leaned in close. “What are you talking about?”

Kam turned slowly to the bank of monitors. He tapped a button on the keyboard, shifting views and revealing that there were many more cameras on the island than Hawkins first thought. Maybe hundreds.

Kam stopped on a block of four images. Two of the jungle, one of the path leading to the gallery, and one looking out at the ocean. With a push of a button, the ocean view enlarged, filling up the whole screen. The full-color image was crystal clear. “Bennett replaced the outward-looking cameras with high-resolution zoom lenses. So he can see things coming from far away.”

Hawkins leaned in, looking for something, but only saw a few random specs on the screen. “All I see is dust.”

“Not dust,” Kam said. He zoomed in on the image. The specs grew large and blurry, but quickly came into focus, revealing ten ominous-looking helicopters, eight of them Blackhawks that would be carrying soldiers and two attack helicopters outfitted with an array of deadly weapons. “They’re coming.”

44.

The sight should have filled Hawkins with relief. The helicopters could get them away from the island. But he knew the men on those choppers had just one mission.

Liquidation.

Anyone who’d laid eyes on this place was most likely a threat to whoever headed the secret DARPA group that had been running the island since at least the sixties. DARPA as a whole—even if they weren’t aware of the project’s true nature—could be shut down. The agency would probably not recover from what was possibly the worst human rights scandal outside of a war. Worse, if the island and its secrets were revealed to the world, it would be a permanent stain on not just DARPA, but the United States as a whole. Political careers would end. The president would ultimately bear the brunt of the backlash. It would degrade the country’s status in the world. It seemed likely that at least a few other nations had similar secret laboratories—maybe tucked away in the Amazon, or in the wilds of Siberia, or anywhere else hard to reach—but most of those places already had bad reputations. Whoever was on those helicopters knew all that, and they were coming to stop it from happening.

The line of helicopters now looked like a squadron of angry wasps. “We need to get the hell off this island,” Hawkins said.

“You mean with them?” Blok asked, pointing at the screen.

Bray chuckled. “They’re going to kill us.”

“We’re United States citizens,” Blok said.

“Well, you can stick around and see how that goes,” Bray said. “We’ll hightail it to the
Magellan
and get the hell out of Dodge.” He took a small bell from his pocket and gave it a shake. “I’ve got my Get Across the Island Free card.”