6:28 A.M.
Monk leaned closer to the ant queen in the tube. He knew all about Disease X, a monster that all health experts feared. It was a theoretical disease pathogen that modern science had no preventative or cure against, one capable of spreading rapidly. After the last pandemic, epidemiologists were waiting for that other shoe to fall.
Could this outbreak be it?
He remembered Kat’s concern about the pattern of spread, of a pathogen possibly carried in the wind. If true, that would be a disaster unlike any other.
As Frank explained as much to the group, Monk studied the huge ant. It was as long as his thumb and looked dead. He reached a finger and tapped on the glass tube. The ant squirmed. Legs scratched and antennae waved, proving it yet lived.
Cringing with distaste, Monk closed his fist and withdrew his arm.
The student who had collected the queen noted his attention and sidled up next to him. “If . . . if I may ask,” Benjie said with a clear wince of apology, “when did you lose your hand?”
Monk glanced down to his balled fist. The kid had keen eyes. Few people even noted his prosthesis. “A few years back.”
The hand was a bit of high-tech DARPA engineering, crafted to be nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. Even he forgot about it most of the time. Then again, it was the latest military tech. A small dime-sized microelectrode had been wired into his somatosensory cortex, allowing him to control his new neuroprosthesis by thought alone, even “feel” what it touched. In fact, the lab-grown skin was far more sensitive than his real flesh.
And that wasn’t all.
Monk reached to his wrist and unsnapped the cuff, which was held in place by magnetized contact points. He placed the prosthesis on the safety hood’s tabletop. He willed the hand to lift atop its fingertips and crawl toward the kid. It was a parlor trick that unnerved most people.
Benjie simply leaned closer. “Wireless biofeedback. Neat.”
Monk reattached his prosthesis, both impressed by the young man and slightly disappointed that his trick hadn’t bothered the guy in the least.
Kids these days . . .
Benjie shifted his attention back to his specimens. “Did you know the biomass of the world’s ants is equal to our own? Which means they take up as much of the globe as we do.”
Monk adjusted to this abrupt change in subject. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“And they’re far craftier than most imagine. Take leaf-cutter ants, who act like little farmers. They grow mushrooms by excreting antibiotics that help spread their fungi. And most ant species can navigate the earth by using its magnetic field. In fact, insects have midbrains not unlike our own—especially large queens like this—which gives them a sense of self, including their own complex, emotional world.”
“Insects have emotions?” Monk remembered the short brief that Director Crowe had passed on about the kid. Benjie was at the low end of the autistic spectrum. Monk wondered if that was the source for Benjie’s interest in the emotional world around him.
“That’s right,” Benjie insisted. “Insects have rudimentary emotions. There’s no doubt they have a fear response. And get angry.” The kid glanced over. “Ever shake a hornet’s nest?”
“Point taken.”
“They also display a level of empathy, too.”
“Empathy? Really?”
Monk studied Benjie’s silhouette as the young man squinted at the ant queen. Many people believed that those with ASD lacked empathy, but that wasn’t true. It was more about a difficulty in interpreting emotional responses around them. He imagined it was an ongoing hardship for the kid.
Benjie nodded. “Matabele ants—which are related to these driver ants—will carry their injured off the battlefield after a raid. They then nurse their wounded until they get better. In fact, researchers are coming to believe that such a complex inner world is one of the reasons insects developed such amazing survival strategies.”
Monk sensed the kid was coming to a point.
Benjie touched the tube holding the queen. “So, don’t underestimate them.” He glanced to Monk. “I’m with Dr. Whitaker. They’re all a part of this somehow.”
Monk straightened, recognizing the roundabout way the kid had come to state his case. He glanced over to Dr. Whitaker, who was clearly struggling to do the same—with far more frustration.
From the way he was rubbing at a knot between his brows, Lisa was definitely challenging him. She could wring information out of a rock, if she thought it might help her solve a problem.
Welcome to my world, bub.
6:32 A.M.
Lisa frowned at Frank Whitaker, sensing the man had little tolerance for their interference, especially from strangers, and maybe more so from a woman. He spent too much time speaking at Gray, attending to his questions.
The wildlife veterinarian was clearly sharp, but he had his blind spots, some ingrained prejudices, likely fostered from his years in the army, which was already a boys’ club—not that the academic world was much better. She had been battling such chauvinism since med school. But it was a fight she refused to give up.
It also didn’t help matters that Dr. Whitaker was a field researcher, one accustomed to working solo, with little or no oversight.
Not this time.
She pressed him. “Dr. Whitaker, why are you so convinced we might be dealing with a Disease X scenario here?”
Frank sighed heavily.
She lifted a hand. “I’m not saying we’re not. I’m asking for you to share your insight.”
Frank turned toward the windows and waved past the Congo. “Because of that. The jungle. The world frets about biological warfare, of a weaponized strain being released or escaping a military lab. But rain forests are Mother Nature’s most insidious biolabs. In such environ ments, the competition for resources is intense, with a near-infinite number of species—vertebrate, invertebrate, plant, and microbes—all vying to survive. This struggle fosters an ongoing chemical and biological war, one far more intense than any battlefield. To wage that war, Mother Nature experiments with evolution, playing with bodily shapes and sizes. And that’s only on the surface. It occurs even more intensely at the microscopic level. There she forges her deadliest microbial weaponry. And at some point, Mother Nature will inevitably turn that arsenal on us. And when she does, the weapon she will choose will be a virus.”
“Why a virus?” Lisa asked.
“It’s a numbers game, Dr. Cummings. Viruses are a millionfold more plentiful than all the stars in the universe. Making them the most abundant life-form on the planet. That’s if you can even call them living.”
Gray frowned. “What do you mean?”
Frank focused back on the commander. “Can a bit of replicating DNA or RNA—one that has no energy source and is unable to multiply outside a host—even be classified as living? For many, viruses remain in the gray area between living and nonliving, between chemistry and life. I personally adhere to the opinion of another colleague, who described viruses as a kind of borrowed life, due to their dependency on a host cell. But their numbers are only the least of their threat.”
“Why’s that?” Lisa asked, drawing the man’s attention back. “What’s worse than a threat being everywhere?”
“One that’s constantly changing,” Frank answered. “Besides being so abundant, viruses are the very engines of evolution. They’re Mother Nature’s tiny powerhouses, tools that she uses to drive genetic changes. Viruses mutate at a blistering pace, millions of times faster than we do. They are constantly inventing new genes and spreading them far and wide. Genes that invade their hosts’ DNA and become part of them. Including us. We’re mere products of viral invasions.”
“You, maybe,” Kowalski growled under his breath.