“Eight,” Hawkins cautioned, “you don’t know that they—”
“Look at their clothes,” Bray said, taking a step away from the woman. “They’re wearing uniforms. They’re employees. The ones that Bennett didn’t turn into a living blob.”
“It’s not them,” one of the men whispered to another.
Bray pointed to a line of lab coats hanging by the door. There were five. “One for each of them.” He took a lab coat off the hook and inspected it.
“You’re not here for us, are you?” the woman asked.
“What’s your name?” Hawkins asked.
“Doctor Celia Green,” the woman replied.
“Well, Doctor Green, we are not here for you. We were captured. We’ve lost a lot of people, but we’re getting our friends back and getting the hell off this island. If you’re willing to fight, you can come along. If you can’t keep up, you’re on your own.”
She crossed her arms. “We’ll wait.”
“For who?” Hawkins asked.
When she didn’t answer, Hawkins drew his machete slowly. “Listen, lady, we’ve just watched three of our friends give birth to those monsters outside the door. The things that have happened on this island are reprehensible, and I’m not just talking about what Bennett is doing.”
“Doctor Celia Green,” Bray said, holding up a name-tagged lab coat.
“You were conducting human experimentation long before Bennett staged his coup,” Hawkins said.
“We had no choice,” one of the men said, his voice booming with the defensive passion of a man who knows he’s about to be judged for his actions.
“Always a choice,” Hawkins said.
“They would have killed us,” a woman said through her tears.
“They’re still going to,” Hawkins said.
“What do you mean?” Green asked.
“Who are you waiting for?”
She didn’t answer.
“Son of a bitch,” Bray said. He held up an ID card he’d taken from the lab coat pocket. He handed it to Hawkins. It showed a picture of Green, perhaps five years old, looking young and innocent.
“Ignore the information,” Bray said. “Look at the logo.”
Hawkins noticed a strange glimmer when he shifted the card. The logo was holographic. He turned it in the light and saw an oblong globe with five bold letters written across it: DARPA.
“Darpa?” Hawkins asked.
“Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,” Bray said. “They were founded in 1958, in the wake of Sputnik, and worked on high-tech R and D for the U.S. military. They’re the guys who gave us stealth technology, the Internet, and the M16. But they have their hands in all the sciences; robotic, cyber, electronics, energy, weapons, space, and the most relevant—biology. In 2010, they started a research program to eliminate, and I quote, ‘the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.’ That sounds pretty damn close to playing God, right? The end goal is to create organic, living, intelligent life that can live indefinitely. And in case you’re worried about these new life forms rebelling against their creators, they’re engineering loyalty into their DNA and giving them kill switches. That’s the bright and cheery future of modern warfare—silicon soldiers. They called the whole thing BioDesign.”
Green looked surprised. “How did you know about that?”
“I was researching the subject for my next book, but it wasn’t hard to find. BioDesign is the kind of scary shit DARPA puts in the budget,” Bray explained. “The whole world knows about BioDesign. And that’s because it’s benign compared to what you’re doing.” Bray stepped up to the woman. “What’s the catchphrase you use to justify what you do here? ‘Combat performance’? ‘Biomedical research’?”
Green’s eyes fell to the floor. “Biological warfare defense.”