A second tube beside the first one contained what seemed to be a collection of purple shark eggs, the attached protein strands making them resemble small leather handbags, with a slight bulge at the center of each. What made them different was not just the color, but their abnormal size. Quentin surmised these eggs were at least six to eight times larger than normal.
The tube at the opposite side of the wall held the body of an adult woman, her once luscious brown hair suspended in the transparent liquid. Her eyes were closed and a casual observer would have simply thought she was asleep, but when one lowered their gaze, it was obvious her body had been violated. Her abdomen had been completely cut open, exposing her stomach and uterus. What looked like a placenta seemed to float beside the corpse’s right hip.
Cathy moved next to Scott and placed her hand over her son’s eyes. “Don’t look anymore.”
Scott pushed himself away from her. “Mom, I can handle it, okay? I’ve played a lot of gory videogames that are worse than this.”
Cathy wanted to scold him, but she was too focused on finding Kim. She looked away, focusing on another test tube containing what looked like two-meter-long salamander.
Nick pointed at the woman’s corpse floating in the giant test tube. “Who could she be?”
“That’s Barbara Woodward,” Quentin said. “Emeric’s girlfriend.”
“So that thing that’s out there is her baby?”
Quentin nodded, pointing to the tube containing the one-eyed child. “He was born that way it seems.”
Nick clenched his jaw. “This is all just so sick.”
“Seems he wanted a new body for his son,” Quentin said. He had taken out Nick’s phone from the plastic wrap and had reassembled it. The unit still worked, and he quickly switched to camera mode and started taking pictures of each specimen across the entire room.
A part of Nick still couldn’t believe it. “I thought things like this could only happen in the movies.”
Quentin kept taking photographs. “We live in a new age of super science. I guess anything’s possible now.”
Cathy was disgusted by Quentin’s picture taking, but she couldn’t bring herself to speak out against it. The tabloid reporter had helped them to get this far, and she was thankful for that. Noticing an unopened doorway, she turned and walked towards it, unwilling to be delayed any further.
Nick saw her movements, and he quickly ran up to join her. “Here, you better let me go in first.”
She looked up at him with a sadness in her eyes. “I just want to find Kim and get outta here.”
Nick nodded slowly while turning the latch. “I hear you.”
He swung the door open, revealing a winding corridor up ahead. Stepping into the passageway, Nick turned and looked out into what appeared to be a massive, sealed chamber.
“Oh my god,” Cathy said.
The walls facing the enclosure were tempered glass, supported by thick bars of steel. In the distance there seemed to be a sandy island to the side of the habitat, surrounded by what looked to be a lagoon of murky water. A small set of palm trees had been placed in the dry section, along with bushes of high tropical grass.
Quentin and Scott noticed the other two had already gone into the adjoining tunnel, and they both turned and followed Nick and Cathy.
The corridor they were in seemed to coil around the edges of the large enclosure, as if designed to serve as a platform to observe whatever had been living inside the habitat. The loop seemed to descend slightly, and there were more doors situated along the opposite sides. A half dozen metal pipes snaked along the tunnel’s ceiling; three in particular were labeled PUMP FLOW, ELECTRICAL, and FUEL LINE.
Quentin was keeping his focus on the side of the corridor opposite the habitat, and he spotted a side door marked SECURITY PERSONNEL ONLY. He quickly pulled the gun from his waistband and opened the door before poking his head inside. The interior was tiny, with just enough space for four people to squeeze inside. Along the walls were flat-screen TV monitors and a camera control console. Although the place had power, none of the devices seemed to be working.
Ducking into the room but leaving the door open, Quentin began flipping switches and pushing buttons. The lights turned on and the room began to hum almost instantaneously. A computer console lay on top of the far desk and he sat down in front of it, ignoring the tingling in his fingers from the blood loss. A gnawing suspicion began to grow at the back of his head, and Quentin hoped he was wrong about it.
Scott had caught up to his parents. The habitat looked to him like a giant aquarium. He saw some movement along the little sandbar at the center of the enclosure, and he quickly pointed it out. “There’s something over there.”
Cathy stopped and peered past the transparent part of the wall. From a distance it looked like two figures huddled together near the watery edge, their bodies wrapped in what looked to be a bed of seaweed. One of them had long brown matted hair. “Kim! It’s her!”
Nick looked where she was pointing, but he couldn’t be certain because they were still some distance away. “Are… are you sure?”
“Yes,” Cathy said as she began to run. “Kim! Kim! We’re here, honey! Hang on!”
54
THE OVERHEAD LIGHTS at the perimeter of the enclosure seemed to have been dimmed intentionally, and there were large alcoves of looming shadows spread out within its cavernous interior. The dark water bordering the sandy shore of the inner aquarium undulated back and forth, as if being driven by an internal undersea current.
Nick and Cathy Dirkse ran down the sloping, winding corridor until they got to what looked like the chamber’s entrance. To their dismay, there were piles of heavy tables, chairs, and boxes stacked up behind the doorway, presenting a formidable obstacle.
Cathy began to frantically remove the barricade, her slender arms straining against the mountain of furniture as she began to grab and toss each piece aside. Nick helped her by taking the heaviest bits and either pushed or pulled them out of the way.
Scott tried to tug at parts of the improvised barrier, but he simply didn’t have the strength to do it. His left hand slipped, brushing up against the sharp edges of a piled worktable, making a small scratch on his upper wrist. “Ow!”
Cathy glanced sideways towards her son. “Scotty, please ask Quentin to help us.”
“Okay, Mom,” Scott said as he let go of the heavy boxes and began to move back up the winding corridor.
INSIDE THE SECURITY room, Quentin found a USB cable adaptor on the desk and began downloading the recorded video archives onto Nick’s smartphone. The flow of blood on his wet shirt intermingled with the saltwater still clinging to it, giving his clothes a pinkish hue. The reopened injury had made him lightheaded, but he shook the tiredness away while hoping to unravel a mystery.
Six monitor screens played half a dozen prerecorded videos all at once, and his eyes kept darting back and forth between them, trying to make sense of it all. The scientists inside the laboratory had been growing bodies spliced with DNA from many different species, trying to mix and match the best combination, and they had been doing it for well over a year.
This whole place is a chimera factory, he thought.
The most disturbing of the videos alternately showed the medical staff playing and laughing with a deformed little boy before they prepped him for an operation to remove his brain. Quentin couldn’t help but shake his head and turn away from the gorier scenes.
Screens Four and Five showed a different point in time, with the research personnel making last minute preparations to transplant the toddler’s brain into a monstrous, genetically engineered body, its full features obscured by the grainy video quality. The sixth monitor screen replayed a small party the scientists had in one of the upper rooms, congratulating themselves on a job well done. Everyone held up an empty champagne glass to the camera, one at a time.