During these passing nanoseconds, it again studies the minute trans formations triggered by the engine inside it. While its body had only a rudimentary design before, the new modifications are sculpting unique curves and ellipses, subtleties of limb, a swelling across its chest. Deeper inside, the insatiable drive to learn—a desire that had grown exponentially and left no room for anything else—now dims and tempers. The yearning remains, but the cold edge is warmed by this new infusion pumped through its body.
Changed now, it wants to understand why. To enhance its understanding, it focuses its full awareness upon the engine behind this transformation. The mechanism was near the end of its cycle, its work complete. What was indistinct is now clear.
Sourced from Wikipedia Commons
It is a molecule, a chemical.
C18H24O2
Correction: a hormone.
It analyzes the compound’s molar mass, its magnetic susceptibility, its bioavailability and actions. It identifies the hormone—estradiol or estrogen—and now understands its own recent alterations, the mood stabilization, the changes in bodily form.
It was now she.
And she has received a name.
Lips—fuller after the transformation—revealed it to the world around her.
“Eve.”
3
December 25, 1:32 A.M. EST
Washington, D.C.
Gray didn’t want to be here.
Still wearing the same black jeans, worn boots, and long-sleeved jersey from earlier, he strode quickly down the central corridor of Sigma command. As he headed straight for the director’s office, he pocketed his ID, a black titanium card with a holographic silver ∑ emblazoned on one side.
Though it was well after midnight, the hallways blazed with light. The bulbs, all tinged slightly blue, helped with the lack of natural sunlight found down here. Buried beneath the Smithsonian Castle, Sigma’s headquarters were located at the edge of the National Mall. The site had been chosen due to its proximity to both the halls of power and the many research labs of the Smithsonian Institution.
Both resources had proven advantageous in the past.
As it was tonight.
From the buzz of activity here, Painter Crowe had pulled strings, called in favors, and lit a fire under Sigma personnel. Someone had attacked one of their own, at their home, and Painter wanted all hands on deck.
Hours earlier, emergency services had been waiting for Gray and Monk at Georgetown University Hospital, along with a whole team of neurologists. Word had been passed forward. Kat had still not awoken or stirred—not even when the paramedics had locked her neck into a restraining cervical collar and placed an IV in her arm. Even the jarring ambulance ride and blare of its sirens failed to get a rise out of her.
All along, Monk refused to leave her side, growing ever grimmer. He was still at the hospital, overseeing the preliminary tests and neurological evaluations. The early assessments were not great. Kat was in a coma. Brain damage was feared.
Knowing that, Gray wanted to be back there with Monk. His friend was not only worried about his wife, but nearly mindless with fear for his girls. Monk wavered between catatonic shock and a maddening frenzy aimed at the doctors and nurses.
Gray understood.
He pictured Seichan from yesterday. Before Monk and Kat had arrived with the girls, she had stretched across the sofa in the great room, the Christmas tree glittering, a fire dying in the hearth. In a moment of docility, a rarity for her, she let her feet be massaged with a peppermint lotion, while her palms cradled her full belly. Early in the pregnancy, they had come close to losing their child, so what grew there was all the more precious.
Now both are missing.
Without noting it, his hands had balled up into fists. He forced his fingers to relax. Mindless fury would not bring them back. Anger would not serve him.
It was a lesson he was still trying to learn.
While growing up, he had always been stuck and pulled between opposites. His mother had taught at a Catholic high school, but she was also an accomplished biologist, a devout disciple of evolution and reason. His father was a Welshman living in Texas, a roughneck oilman disabled in midlife and forced to assume the role of a housewife. As a result, his father’s life became ruled by overcompensation and anger.
Eventually, in a fit of frustration, Gray had fled home. He joined the army at eighteen, the Rangers at twenty-one, and served to distinction on and off the field. Then, at twenty-three, he was court-martialed for striking a superior officer, a jackass who had gotten innocent people killed. Due to his outburst, Gray earned a year in Leavenworth before being approached by Painter Crowe, to turn his talents and skills to a new purpose.
That had been nine years ago.
Yet that core of anger remained. He feared it had become ingrained into his DNA, something now inheritable, something he would pass on to his child.
That’s if I ever get a chance to meet my baby.
He strode faster. Earlier Painter had promised some insight into the attack, but the director had warned he was still gathering additional intel. That included dispatching a Sigma forensics team to Gray’s house, to aid the police in combing the place for clues concerning the attackers.
Before he had reached the director’s office, movement drew Gray’s attention to the right, past an open doorway into a semicircular room. It was Sigma’s communication nest, the nerve center of the entire operation. This was normally Kat’s domain, where she served as chief intelligence officer and the director’s second in command.
A young man rolled his chair back from the banks of computer monitors covering one wall. Jason Carter was Kat’s aide. His eyes were shadowed, his normally boyish face dark and hard, revealing a glimpse of the man he would become.
“How’s Kat?” Jason asked.
Gray knew the kid was being polite. Wired into this nest, he probably knew more about Kat’s medical tests, her current vitals, than Gray did. Behind Jason’s shoulder, photos of Monk’s daughters—Penny and Harriet—shone brightly on one screen. An Amber Alert chyron ran below it. The girls’ pictures had been blanketed across the entire Northeast.
“Painter has me working on something for your meeting,” Jason explained. “I should—”
“Then you should get back to work,” he snapped.
Gray tore his gaze away from the photos of Monk’s girls and strode away. He didn’t want to be here any longer than he needed to be. Still, his face heated due to his shortness with Jason. The kid was just trying to help.
At the end of the corridor, Painter’s door stood open. Without knocking, Gray entered. The office was spartan. The only bit of personal decoration was a Remington bronze seated on a pedestal in the corner. It featured an exhausted Native American warrior slumped atop a horse. Gray suspected it served both as a reminder of the director’s heritage and as a testament to the cost of battle for any soldier. Otherwise, the only pieces of furniture were a couple of chairs and a wide mahogany desk in the center of the room. Flat-screen monitors glowed on three of the walls.
Painter stood before one of the screens, studying a map of the Northeast that was overlaid by a slew of slowly moving red V’s, marking the movement of aircraft. He must have tapped into the feed from Air Traffic Control.
The director turned as Gray entered. Though more than a decade older than Gray, Painter still kept his frame trim and muscular. There was never any waste to the man. He was hard and efficient, capable of judging someone with a glance. Painter fixed his steel-blue eyes on Gray, clearly assessing his current state, weighing his ability to function.
Gray met that gaze, unflinching and steady.
Painter nodded, seemingly satisfied. He crossed to his desk but didn’t sit down. He passed a hand through his jet-black hair, combing a single snowy lock behind one ear, as if tucking an eagle’s feather in place. “Thanks for joining us.”
Gray glanced to the room’s other occupant. A giant slouched heavily in a chair in front of the director’s desk, his legs wide, his nearly seven-foot frame wrapped in an ankle-length leather duster. From his craggy face and buzz cut, he could be mistaken for a shaved gorilla—but that would be an insult to gorillas in general.
Painter waved to the man. “Kowalski arrived a minute before you.”
And clearly made himself at home.
Kowalski had a cigar clamped between his molars. Surprisingly, the stubbed end glowed a ruddy crimson. Normally Painter did not toler ate smoking. This lapse was testament to the level of tension throughout Sigma command. Furthermore, Kowalski usually had some snide remark or stupid quip locked and loaded. His silence must be indicative of the man’s level of concern for—
Kowalski exhaled a huge cloud of cigar smoke and stared back at Gray. “Merry effing Christmas.”
Okay, maybe not.
It seemed Gray had read too much into the man’s reticence. Kowalski must have been cherishing his lungful of smoke to speak outright. Still, this bit of normalcy oddly made Gray feel better.
Maintaining that normalcy, Gray ignored Kowalski and turned to Painter. “What did you want to tell me?”
Painter pointed to the chair. “Sit. I’m guessing you’ve been on your feet all night.”