Frank nodded. “True. Dr. Ngoy gave me the virus genome already. Let me try something using the software I developed.”
His fingers flew over the keys and trackpads. Windows opened and closed. One half of the screen scrolled with streams of nucleobases, sections of which occasionally flashed in crimson or blue. He worked in silence for ten minutes—then sat back with a shake of his head.
“That makes even less sense,” he muttered.
By now, his stocky assistant, Monk, had joined them. “Frank, why do you look like someone tap-danced on your grave?”
“The new genes in the cheetah.” He looked back at them. “They’re not in the virus at all.”
Charlotte frowned. “How can that be?”
“I did find bits and pieces of code that make up those genes, but they’re scattered throughout the viral genome. They’re not intact. It’s almost like the Omnivirus has all the basic ingredients for those new genes—the flour, the sugar, the yeast—and somehow baked up those new ones on its own, combined those disparate parts to form genes specifically suited for the cheetah.”
“Can viruses do that?” Monk asked.
“Maybe. I don’t know, but a few years ago, researchers in France discovered that another giant virus—Mimivirus—had evolved its own CRISPR-like technique to defend itself.”
“CRISPR?” Charlotte had heard of that tool. Geneticists used it to edit genomes. It was so precise that it could clip out a single nucleobase in a DNA code and replace it with another. “A virus could do that? Do its own gene-editing?”
“That one could. In fact, the CRISPR technique was first identified in bacteria. It was how scientists developed this method in the first place. They copied it from a bacterium.”
Monk had gone pale. “So, you’re thinking this Omnivirus is running its own gene-editing machine shop?”
“Like I said before, I wouldn’t put anything past a virus when it came to its survival.” Frank rubbed a knuckle between his eyebrows, as if working out a headache. “Especially with giant viruses. We still know so little about them. Take the Yaravirus. That giant was discovered in 2003. To this day, not a single gene in that species is recognizable. They’re totally alien to anything that scientists have mapped so far.”
“Which is true for much of the Omnivirus’s DNA, too,” Monk reminded them.
Charlotte considered this and took into account Frank’s earlier description. “Maybe they’re not even genes,” she said.
Frank frowned but nodded for her to continue. “What are you getting at?”
“Maybe the Omnivirus’s entire genome—or at least, its vast majority—is really just a giant pantry for those ingredients, a storehouse of raw genetic material waiting to be used.”
Frank sat straighter. “Which it then cobbles together and engineers to suit its purpose.”
“But what is that purpose?” Monk asked. “What is it trying to do?”
“There’s little I understand about this virus, but I can answer that.” Frank turned to them. “It wants to survive, to rid the world of threats to its existence. It certainly seems capable of turning the natural world into a more savage and deadly state.”
“While weakening us by turning us dull and somnolent.” Charlotte looked out across the beds of the medical ward.
“And maybe it does that on purpose,” Frank said. “There are certainly other examples of pathogens that create a weird dynamic between predator and prey. Take the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma. It infects cats, but when it gets passed onto their prey, namely rodents, it has a strange neurological effect on them. It makes those rats and mice more docile, less fearful of predators, making them easier prey for cats.”
“You’re thinking something like that might be going on here,” Monk said.
“Maybe those prion spikes the virus excretes were purposefully designed to shut down animals with higher intelligences, those with bigger brains, species that might pose the greatest risks to the virus’s survival. While at the same time, making all other animals more dangerous.”
Monk nodded. “Creating the perfect storm for wiping out a species that might pose the greatest threat.”
“Namely us,” Charlotte added.
With night setting in, she heard the howls and cries from the nocturnal jungle.
It’s as if all of Nature is about to turn against us.
Frank seemed to have the same worry. “I can’t begin to fathom how this dynamic came about,” he said. “But Mother Nature always seeks an equilibrium, to return to a balance when it becomes unsettled. It often does this through ecological and evolutionary changes, but also through population control.”
He stressed the latter with a strong look at them.
“We’ve seen it before,” Frank continued. “It was our intrusion into stable environments—building roads through jungles, deforestation projects—that released the world’s greatest plagues upon the world. Malaria, yellow fever, Ebola. Even HIV came from these very jungles in the Congo, going back to the earliest cases in the 1920s, where it first appeared, spreading along historic trade routes.”
“In other words,” Monk said, “don’t mess with Mother Nature.”
Frank nodded. “Or she’ll bite you in the ass.”
Charlotte stared out at the ward. She couldn’t discount this possibility as to the origin of this virus, but she sensed they were missing an important piece of this puzzle. She suspected they would never discover it here. If there was an answer, it was out there in the jungle.
“For now,” she said, “maybe we’d better concentrate on finding a way of helping the people here—and throughout the Congo. First thing we need to do is find a cure, and if not that, at least some treatment.”
Monk shifted closer, his voice a breathless whisper. “No. The first thing we need to do is find a way off this island.”
Charlotte knew he was right. She had little faith in Ngoy and his team, and even less when it came to their boss, Nolan De Coster. She looked over at Frank’s assistant and noted the hard glint in his eyes. His facade of subservience had vanished, replaced by a steely determination. She sensed a lethality to him, as if she were standing next to a caged lion.
She suddenly knew he was no mere assistant.
Who the hell is this guy?
8:28 P.M.
Tucker lay sprawled in a nest of ferns at the edge a small colonial outpost. He studied the cluster of dilapidated buildings with rusted tin roofs and vine-encrusted stone walls. They all centered on the steeple of a white-washed church. It would be easy to dismiss the place from the air. There were probably a hundred old towns like this, abandoned and swallowed by the jungle.
Only this outpost had been recently refurbished, or at least some of the outbuildings had, like the two-story colonial guesthouse next to the church. Then there was the newer pier that jutted into the river on the far side from Tucker’s position.
After making landfall, he and Kane had scouted a full circle around the place. They had to move slowly, avoiding patrols, listening for the telltale whirring and clomping of the Q-UGVs. The patrols moved in pairs, either two men, or a guard and one of those robotic dogs. The enemy had made no effort at hiding their passage, often talking, joking, laughing. Their lack of furtiveness suggested they had no fear of a covert attack. They were likely guarding against something noisier, either a raid by one of the local militias or an attack by guerrillas.