Carter appraised the opening in the cliff face. She shook her head and muttered, “Caves. I can’t seem to get away from them.”
“I know what you mean,” Pierce said. “For what it’s worth, this one is nicer than most. Although…” He dipped a hand into his pocket and took out a pair of bronze medallions adorned with the emblem of the Herculean Society. He passed one each to Carter and Lazarus. “You’ll need to wear these. Keep them visible at all times.”
Lazarus stared at his medallion for several seconds. Pierce braced himself for a deluge of questions, but if the big man had any, he did not voice them. Instead, he looped the pendant chain around his neck, and then lifted the heaviest of the cargo boxes into his arms.
Pierce led the way into the ancient Neanderthal dwelling and up to the concealed entrance to the citadel. While Lazarus shuttled containers into the hidden cavern, Carter began inspecting the Nemean Lion’s impervious skin. Pierce checked in with Dourado, as he had done every half-hour since learning about Fiona’s and Gallo’s disappearances more than twelve hours earlier.
The answer was the same this time as it was in each of the previous instances. “Nothing yet. I’ll call as soon as I know something.”
Pierce sagged back in his chair, frustrated. While he had been on the move, traveling back from Liberia, he had at least been able to console himself with the illusion of progress. Now that he had reached his destination, he was confronted with the realization that there was nowhere to go next. Worse, the citadel was a reminder of his own failure to protect the people he loved. If he had taken Gallo and Fiona with him to Liberia, or insisted they remain in the cave…
If, if, if.
Carter’s voice pulled him out of his self-pitying reflection. “You weren’t kidding about how tough this thing is.”
He glanced over and saw her struggling with the Lion skin. “The Lion’s own claws were the only thing Hercules found that could cut through it.”
“Hercules didn’t have a diamond-tipped scalpel,” she replied, holding up the tool she had used to remove a tiny slice of the preserved hide. “There’s no magic at work here, Dr. Pierce. Just things that we don’t understand yet.”
“Will you be able to extract any viable DNA from it?”
“I think so. I’m curious about one thing, though. How exactly will this help you find your friends?”
The question stung. “Honestly, I don’t know if it will. Kenner believes these chimeras originate from a specific source. I was hoping that you might be able to isolate whatever factor is responsible. A genetic footprint, if you will. A chemical agent or something like that. But that was before. Now…?” He shrugged.
“Well, you might be on to something. I don’t know about chemical agents, but identifying the genetic contributors may give us a geographical ballpark.”
“How so?”
She gestured to the skin. “For starters, this isn’t a lion.”
“I know. It’s a chimera. A lion and something else.”
She shook her head. “Actually, I don’t think it’s a chimera either. Not in the genetic sense at least. I think it’s actually a transgenic hybrid.”
“What’s the difference?”
“In biology, a chimera is an organism that has two or more distinctive cellular populations. A bone marrow transplant or tree grafting creates a chimera because the recipient now has two distinctive cell populations. Two different sets of DNA, coexisting in the same body. If you graft a lemon branch onto a lime tree, it doesn’t become a new organism. Just a lime tree that also gives you lemons. A hybrid is a combination of genetic material from two different sources, but it has only one cellular population—one set of DNA.”
“Like a mule.”
“Right. A mule doesn’t have horse DNA in some of its cells and donkey DNA in others. It only has mule DNA. With gene splicing, we can combine nucleotides from vastly different species to create transgenic hybrids. And I think that’s what this is.”
Pierce was not sure the semantic distinction mattered, but Carter’s expertise was the reason he had recruited her. “Okay. So it’s a hybrid of a lion and something else. Something that gives it nearly indestructible skin and fur. Is there anything like that in the natural world?”
She shrugged. “You’ve probably heard about how spider silk is stronger than steel wire, ounce for ounce. Nature has produced a lot of amazing things.”
“Why did you say it’s not a lion?”
“I’ve seen a lot of lions over the past couple of years, and this isn’t one. Not an African lion, at least.”