Island 731

Several impacts shook the door a moment later, but they stopped within seconds.

Hawkins pushed himself up and Bray’s bone saw came into focus beneath him. Another inch and the blade could have carved through his face. He rolled away from Bray and found a feminine hand extended toward him. For a moment, he thought it was Joliet, but then saw how long the fingers were. The woman leaned forward. Her aquiline face gave her the appearance of a hawk about to attack. But she wasn’t angry. She was terrified. He took the woman’s hand and got to his feet.

There were four more strangers in the room—two men, three women total—all dressed similarly in tan slacks and white buttoned shirts, which were stained with sweat and blood. The room was like a small cafeteria, with several long, benched tables, a kitchen area, and cabinets lining the walls. The space was modern, lit by recessed ceiling bulbs and air-conditioned. It felt as though they’d been transported from a tropical hellhole to an office building in Anywhere, USA.

Hawkins turned to Blok, who stood at the door, looking through the small, rectangular window. “What are they doing?”

“Just standing there,” Blok said. “Three of them.”

“Just three?” Bray asked.

Blok craned his head back and forth, looking down the length of the hallway in both directions. “Just three.”

“Where are the rest of you?” the woman asked impatiently.

“The rest of us?” Hawkins replied.

“You mean our friends who gave birth to those spider-turtles?” Bray said. “Or do you mean the big guy your boss turned into a walking Ginsu knife?”

“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.”

Bray’s face turned red with anger. “That’s the same fucking language the Japanese used. Anything is justified when you put it under the umbrella of defending the homeland. This can’t be an official program.”

“It’s not,” Green said. “Like all government agencies, DARPA has some black operations that no one is supposed to know about. But even the most top-secret projects find their way into the DARPA rumor mill. Scientists are naturally curious, and like to talk about their work. We were good about keeping things from the public, but not so good about keeping secrets from each other. As long as everyone in the loop had the security clearance, no one complained. We were all on the same team and shared the same goals. The thing is, despite the work here being my area of expertise, I never heard about this island. Not once. And I was friends with the DARPA director. She’s a good woman. A moral woman. There’s no way she knew about this place. I’d be surprised if any of the current DARPA leadership knows about what goes on here, if they even know about the island at all. Whoever started the program set it up so that it could operate autonomously while still having access to DARPA’s workforce for recruitment. I don’t know who that was, but at the time, there was a lot of postwar and cold war paranoia.”

“If the Russians are working on it, we better, too,” Bray said.

“Right,” Green said. “So the project was put under DARPA’s umbrella, but somehow shielded from oversight and allowed to evolve on its own. By the time I got here, it was a very dark place.” She sighed and shook her head. “Look, DARPA is a good agency. We want to change the world, but for the better. This island… the things done here… the things I’ve done here… are against everything DARPA stands for.”

“If you’re so against the biological warfare defense program, why are you here?” Bray asked.

“We were all recruited from other biological programs,” she said. “It was presented as a dream post. Tropical island. Cutting-edge research. The only downside is that we couldn’t talk about our work, publish our work, or quit until the project was complete.”

“But you didn’t know the program had been in operation since World War Two?” Hawkins said.

She shook her head. “Or that it wouldn’t conclude within our lifetimes. And none of us knew what the job really was until we got here.”

“And then it was too late,” one of the men said.

“They would have killed you,” Hawkins said.

Green nodded. “They killed some.” She frowned. “Not all of us are that strong.”

Hawkins sheathed his machete. “Now that we’re playing nice, I’m going to ask again: Who are you waiting