The Dragon Factory

low-heeled woman’s shoe, dropped coffee cups. Here and there were smears of blood, probably from people fleeing the lobby fight.

The hallway ran forty feet to another set of heavy double doors that stood open. On the far side of the doorway there were three bodies. They were dead but not from gunfire. Their bodies had been ripped open and torn apart. Big red footprints trailed off down the hall.

“More of those whatever-they-weres,” said Bunny.

“The Kid told us to watch out for dogs,” Top reminded him. “He wasn’t screwing around.”

“Not sure if ‘dogs’ is the word that comes to mind here, Top.” Bunny patted his pockets to reassure himself of his spare magazines. He glanced at me. “What the shit have we stepped into, boss?” asked Bunny.

“I don’t know,” I said. “So let’s find that kid and get some goddamned answers.”

Chapter Eighty-Three

The Deck

Sunday, August 29, 3:45 P.M.

Time Left on the Extinction Clock: 68 hours, 15 minutes E.S.T.

Cyrus Jakoby stood wide legged on the observation deck, his hands clasped behind his back. Grief had given way to cold fury.

The Twins had betrayed him.

The Twins had raided the Hive, had tried to steal his secrets.

The thought twisted like a serpent in his heart. It did not matter that he had sent spies and assassins to the Dragon Factory. It was his right to do as he pleased. He had made the Twins. Gene by gene, he had made them. He owned them and they were his to do with as he pleased. It was bad enough that they thought he was insane and laughable, that they believed that all this time they had held him captive here at the Deck. They had sent Drs. Chang, Bannerjee, and Hopewell to “oversee” his work without having the sense to realize that Otto and Cyrus already owned those men. Just as they owned everyone at the Deck. Those employees of the Twins Otto could not bribe were eventually won over by Cyrus’s charisma and the grandeur of his purposes. The only thing the Twins had kept from him had been the Dragon Factory, and they had been so careful to never let anyone who had ever worked on-site at that facility come to the Deck.

The war of secrets had been waged between Cyrus and his children for seven years, and now it had come to this. The Twins had sent hired mercenaries to invade the Hive.

“Bastards,” he snarled to himself. “Ungrateful little bastards.”

It was not merely the affront that tore at him. He had endured-and pretended not to notice-a thousand slights over the years. The Twins always treated him as if he was a pet scorpion-dangerous but contained. He was disappointed in their dimness of vision. No, the real hurt was that an attack on the Hive meant that the Extinction Plan was in serious jeopardy.

And that Cyrus Jakoby could not allow.

Cyrus felt Otto’s presence and turned. The wizened Austrian looked more predatory than usual.

“Well?” Cyrus demanded.

“I’ve sent the orders. We can put two hundred troops on the ground at the Dragon Factory in twenty-four hours.”

“Good. I want the computer records and then I want it burned to the ground.”

Otto cleared his throat. “The Twins have been handling the distribution of the bottled water. We have to make sure that we can account for every copy of their distribution records. That’s paramount, Mr. Cyrus.”

“Then make it happen,” snapped Cyrus with such heat that even Otto took a half step backward. “Then destroy every stick and stone of that place.”

“What about the Twins?”

Cyrus leaned on the rail and stared down at the animals in the zoo for a long time, and Otto let him work it through. There were times when Cyrus could be handled and even pushed, and there were times when that was like reaching into a tiger’s mouth.

“Try to capture them both, Otto,” Cyrus said at last.

“And if we can’t?”

“Then bring me their heads, their hearts, and their hands. Leave the rest to rot.” His voice was barely a whisper.

A passenger pigeon landed on the rail inches from Cyrus’s hand. Cyrus reached for it and picked the bird up gently. The pigeon tilted its head and stared up at Cyrus with one ink black eye.

“We’re doing God’s work,” whispered Cyrus. “Man is such a polluted and corrupted animal. I’d hoped that Hecate and Paris would be the answer, the next step in the evolution from the trash that humanity has become to the ascended level where he needs to be in order to serve God’s will. I can see now that they are not all that I’d hoped.”

“I-”

Cyrus stopped him with a shake of his head. “No, let me talk, Otto. Let me say this.” He stroked the pigeon’s delicate neck. The bird did not struggle to escape but seemed to enjoy the contact. It cooed at Cyrus, who smiled faintly. “Do you know what makes me saddest, Otto?”

“No, Mr. Cyrus.”

“It’s that I don’t think the Twins would ever understand why we’re doing what we’re doing. They see things in terms of product and profit, and they’ve become mired in that mind-set. It actually matters to them; it actually motivates them. They have no grand schemes. Their highest aspirations to date have been to twist genetics in order to make themselves rich. I… I long ago lost my ability to communicate with them.”

“To be fair, sir, you play a role in that-”

“Yes, but they should have seen through it and glimpsed the higher purpose. Just as we glimpsed through the foolishness of politics and war making to see the divine beauty of eugenics. Clarity is a tool, Otto, just as perception is a test. The Twins were bred to have greater intelligence. Their IQs are on a par with Einstein, with da Vinci. With mine. But… where is their Theory of Relativity? Where is their masterpiece? You might say that they’ve done what no one else has done, that they’ve twisted DNA and turned it to their will, but I say, ‘So what?’ They were given the gift of higher intelligence by design. I started them on a higher level and they should have aspired to more than clever toys for rich fools. There’s no higher purpose in anything they’ve done, or anything they’ve imagined, and by that standard they are failures.”

“We could breed them,” offered Otto.

“Mm. Maybe. But that presents its own risks. No, Otto… I think we were both so enamored of their beauty and by their precociousness that we lost sight of our own plans for them. They are not the young gods of our dreams. Of my dreams.” He drew a breath and let out a long sigh. “If they are both taken, then we’ll harvest his sperm and her eggs and enough DNA to begin the next phase. If either or both are killed, then we’ll have to start with the DNA alone and hope that we can use it for gene therapy on the SAMs. I know this is vain, Otto, but we may not live long enough to see the true race of young gods become flesh. It may be two or three generations away, and it may be the SAMs alone who witness it.”

“I know,” said Otto, and he patted Cyrus on the shoulder.

“Of course,” said Cyrus with a flicker of his old mad delight, “at least we will be here to clear the way for the new gods. We will be here to see the mud people-the blacks and Jews and Gypsies and all of those disgusting mongrel races-wiped away. Not just reduced, but gone for good. We will live to see that!”

Otto glanced at his wristwatch. The numbers were matched to the Extinction Clock. He showed the numbers to Cyrus. “Die Vernichtungs Welle.”

The Extinction Wave.

Those words and the numbers on the clock worked a transformation in Cyrus, whose face changed in a heartbeat from clouds of sadness to a sunburst of great joy.

“Nothing can stop it now,” murmured Cyrus.

“Nothing,” agreed Otto.