Z. Apocalypse (15 page)

Josephs smiled as if at some secret joke. ‘It would seem so. Wouldn’t
it?’

Finally the lift lurched to a stop and the doors clanked open onto dim lights and breezeblocks. Adam and Zoe were hauled after Josephs as she walked smartly into a nondescript corridor. A balding man with a wispy beard came into sight at the end of it. ‘I’ve checked the raptors’ life signs,’ he called, in an accent that sounded French, not Russian. ‘They’re dead. All our sentries, dead!’

Josephs nodded as she closed the distance between them. ‘The beast responsible is being recycled.’

Beast, singular
, thought Adam, as the guards stopped their herding, waiting for their mistress to move on.
She can’t have seen Zed then, before he
 . . .

‘Don’t kill Keera,’ Zoe said quietly. ‘Please.’

Josephs spared her the briefest of glances. ‘Have the labs grow new sentries, Mr Thierry.’

Thierry
looked doubtful. ‘There’ll be a delay. We’re at full capacity rearing Z. rexes for the attack on Mongolia.’

‘That takes precedence,’ Josephs agreed.

‘With Russia to their north and China to their south, they’ll join the West in blaming one of them—’

‘Yes. Tensions must continue to rise. Carry on, Mr Thierry.’ Josephs turned from him and resumed her brisk walk. Thierry spared a brief, puzzled
glance at
Adam, Zoe and their captors as they pushed past, but said nothing more.

The breezeblock corridors seemed to stretch on for miles, but Josephs finally stopped beside a set of double doors and swiped a pass card through an electronic reader on the wall. The doors opened stiffly onto a large, shadowy room. As the guards pushed Adam and Zoe inside, a series of strip lights on the ceiling
flickered into life with dazzling brightness.

Adam blinked away his blindness, and with a sick feeling of dread realized the room was some kind of operating theatre. A cushioned table in the centre of the room dangled restraint straps. A huge, rectangular slab of glass and metal hung down from the ceiling above it, like a giant flatbed scanner turned upside down.

And beside the table, Adam saw
a stainless steel trolley with a collection of scalpels and scary-looking instruments. Panicking, he kicked and struggled for release with manic determination. But the men held him fast.

‘Don’t distress yourself, Adam.’ Josephs removed her coat and placed it on a chair. ‘Zoe will be first.’

‘No!’ Zoe shrieked as the guards manhandled her onto the cushioned table and held her down while Josephs
secured the heavy straps over her arms and chest, her thigh and her forehead. ‘Please, don’t!’

‘What are you doing?’ Adam demanded, struggling against the iron grip of his captors.

Josephs ignored him. ‘I’m trying to help you,’ she said to Zoe. ‘This process offers you a chance to live on, free from the prison of your . . . unfortunate body.’

‘It’s not a prison.’ Zoe stared up at her, hatefully.
‘It’s who I am.’

‘“Who you are” is a stew of chemicals and blind chance,’ Josephs retorted. ‘Your life’s been so limited by your physical condition, hasn’t it? But then, we’re all of us trapped in these inefficient bodies, doomed from birth to grow old and decay.’ She crossed to a computer in the corner of the lab and started it up. ‘Or rather, we
were
.’

Adam swallowed hard, staring helplessly
at Zoe. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked quietly.

‘Einstein once said, “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move towards higher levels.” How right he was.’ Josephs turned to face him. ‘Imagine what Einstein could have gone on to achieve if he had never died . . . or if Wagner was still composing today, or Michelangelo still painting.’ She smiled. ‘Now we have perfected
human cloning and mind transference, when an old body wears out it can be replaced with a new one.’

‘So . . . if you’d had my mum’s mind in your computer and her DNA on file . . .’ He stared at
Josephs. ‘You could have made a new one after she died?’

She nodded. ‘We could. But only minds worthy of preserving will go on. Great thinkers, fertile intellects . . . When they have so much left to
give, to let them perish would be a foolish waste.’

‘And I suppose you get to choose who they are . . .’ A sudden realization kicked in Adam’s head. ‘These experts and scientists you’ve kidnapped . . . you’re cloning them too?’

‘Of course.’ Josephs turned back to her computer, and started up some software. The glass slab hanging over Zoe glowed and hummed. Machine parts inside it swept slowly
from one end to the other.

‘What is that thing?’ Zoe said, her voice shaking. ‘What’s it doing?’

‘It’s mapping your entire body – every cell, inside and out.’ Josephs glanced over from the computer. ‘You know, you’re an interesting case, Zoe. It’s possible that your disability has enhanced your empathy with animals; in your heart of hearts, you see yourself like them, less than human.’

‘Shut
up!’ snapped Zoe.

‘It would be easy to cure your Proteus syndrome, but were we to place your mind in another body, would that empathy still flourish?’

‘I said, shut up! Who cares!’

‘Geneflow cares.’ Josephs studied Zoe thoughtfully.
‘I’m sure Adam’s told you how we placed human minds into raptor bodies.’

‘Sick,’ Adam muttered.

‘Essential,’ Josephs countered. ‘Those experiments were simply
a first step. Our final aim has always been to create a new kind of human-reptile hybrid.’ She held up a hand to silence his inevitable protest. ‘Of course, you reject the idea outright. You are a child; you have no concept of how important this research will prove. But the fact is, our hybrids often experience personality changes, unable to accept their new bodies even after . . . “persuasion”.’

‘You mean, you can’t do their thinking for them?’ Adam sneered.

Josephs took the dig seriously. ‘Well, we can train them using Think-Send, but . . . still the problems remain.’ She looked at Zoe. ‘I wonder how
you
would adapt. On the one hand you would be able-bodied, but on the other—’

‘People will always be people however you mess with their heads,’ Zoe insisted. ‘I mean, I’m not some stupid
experiment, I’m— I’m
somebody
.’ There was fear and pleading in her eyes as she gazed up at Josephs. ‘Please. Leave me as I am.’

‘With the global chain of events we’ve set in motion, that’s not even an option. Not for any of us.’ From a drawer beside the computer Josephs removed what looked like a high-tech hairnet studded with
tiny electrodes. She crossed to Zoe and started fitting the net carefully
to the contours of her head.

‘Get off!’ Zoe tried to pull away. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Preparing the neural interface. The sensors in the net will measure and map the pathways of your brain, absorb the codings of your personality, your memories – and build a virtual reconstruction here on our hard drives.’

‘No,’ pleaded Zoe. ‘No . . .’

‘Oh, yes.’ Josephs plucked a long wire from Zoe’s electronic
hairnet and plugged it into what looked like a large metal coffin standing against the wall. A single red light on the coffin’s blank, battered face glowed to acknowledge the connection – and Zoe’s entire body went limp, as if some switch inside her had been suddenly thrown.

‘What have you done?’ Adam whispered.

‘I’ve placed Zoe in a state of sensory deprivation. It is necessary.’

‘How is
any
of this necessary?’

‘A new era is beginning – I know that sounds corny, but it’s true.’ Josephs got up, took something from the steel trolley, and walked towards him. ‘If we are going to reboot human existence, we must wipe out all the obsolete peoples of the world and replace them with our own.’

Adam struggled, but the guards’ grip only tightened. ‘You . . . you’re mad!’

She pushed her face
up close to his. ‘You think the world as it is now is better?’ she hissed. ‘
That
is madness.’

Adam tried to think of something smart to say back – then gasped at a sting in his arm. As Josephs stepped back, he saw that she was holding a hypodermic syringe. ‘What was . . . What are you . . .?’

‘The wheels are already in motion.’ Josephs’ face began to blur and distort as whatever she’d given
him tingled through his bloodstream. ‘And you, Adam, with your Think-Send skills and the ear of the United States military . . .
you
are going to help to bring it about.’

Chapter 16: People Can Change

ADAM WOKE IN
darkness. Memories tumbled back from sleep’s shadows, and with them, fear. He was strapped down over his body and legs; only his arms were free. He tried to touch his temples, but his fingers brushed metal; he was wearing some kind of headset, as if ready to play Ultra-Reality.

Why was I drugged?
Adam scraped his tongue about his dry mouth; questions
whirled through his mind.
Where am I now? How long has it been? Where’s Zoe?
The hiss and whirr of hard drives spoke of computers somewhere close by, and a faint light was stealing in from somewhere. He could just make out a clock on the wall.

It was one thirty p.m. He’d been out for hours.

Adam pawed at the fastenings of the strap around his midriff, but couldn’t loosen it. ‘Zoe?’ he hissed
nervously. ‘Are you there?’

A rough hand clamped down over his lips.

Surprised, Adam tried to scream – then heard a familiar voice, low and hoarse in his ear. ‘Don’t.
Please, Ad, stay quiet.’

Adam couldn’t believe it. He looked up through the dark and saw a faint silhouette. ‘Dad?’

‘I’m so glad to see you, Ad. Now please, they mustn’t hear us.’

Adam nodded his understanding.

‘I didn’t want
to lie to you. They made me.’ His speech was a little slurred and he was wearing a lab coat. ‘You’ll feel woozy for a while. Josephs put you to sleep, but I’ve woken you. I wasn’t supposed to, but . . .’

‘Why did she drug me?’

‘Wait. Let me check there’s no one close by.’ Mr Adlar swept aside a thick dark curtain, which partitioned the couch from the rest of the room like a patient’s bed in
a hospital ward. Adam could now see that the faint light had been coming from three large computer monitors, which were sitting on a long workbench, half buried in wires and circuits and other high-tech clutter. Adam watched, heart in throat, as his father went over to the computers and tapped at a keyboard. A window opened on the main screen, showing a view of the corridors outside.

‘How did
you do that?’ he whispered, his throat sandpaper dry.

Mr Adlar did not turn round, staring at the screen intently. ‘I hacked into the security camera feed
without anyone knowing.’ With the tap of another key the image changed to show the airstrip; a plane had landed, its bundled-up passengers handing luggage to waiting guards. Another tap, and the view switched to the streets above, the concrete
buildings crumbling and stained with decay.

With every tap an unpleasant new view was revealed: there was Mr Thierry in a room crowded with televisions switched to different newsfeeds . . . The Neural Suite where he and Zoe had been taken, now empty . . . A strange cavernous space, piled high with the bodies of cattle and horses; some of the animals were still alive, standing dejected, crushed
in together. With a stammer in his heart, Adam saw a Z. rex dart into the frame – not Zed, it was bigger and dull brown in colour, like the ones sent to Patuxent. It swallowed a whole horse in one bloody bite and, as the surrounding animals scattered, limping feebly, they revealed the giant bulk of a pterosaur lying sprawled on the filthy floor.

No way, that can’t be—?

The picture changed as
his dad clicked on. ‘Dad, wait,’ Adam hissed. ‘Go back!’

But his dad was busy moving the images on. The next view showed the length of another bare corridor, painted white. ‘It’s all right,’ he muttered. ‘They’re not keeping tabs. Must think I’m fully under.’

‘Under what?’ Adam was hardly listening. ‘Dad, go back, please,’ he said desperately. ‘That room with the animals . . .’

‘That’s where
they let the Z. beasts rest between missions.’ Mr Adlar tapped back the other way until he got to the cavernous concrete space again. ‘As you can imagine, they need a lot of feeding. Thierry has to clone livestock by the cartload to meet those things’ appetites.’

‘But, Dad, that’s Keera in there!’

‘The pterosaur, you mean?’

Adam cringed, watching the Z. dactyl twitch as bloody hooves trampled
her body. ‘Of course, the pterosaur!’

‘Must be down for recycling. Some of the creatures develop mental problems. It’s easiest to feed them back to the healthy ones. There’s nothing we can do.’ His back still to Adam, Mr Adlar shook his head. ‘The animals are herded in to be eaten alive, or dropped in through the roof hatch the Z. beasts use to get in and out. Both ways are guarded. If the pterosaur
isn’t dead already, she soon will be.’

‘You’re talking like you don’t even know her.’ A thought filtered through Adam’s muddled brain. ‘Why won’t you look at me?’

Mr Adlar let out a heavy breath. ‘I was never meant to speak to you. Supposed to just come in and give you the treatment like I did the others . . . Like
you’re a stranger.’ He picked up a spent syringe from the workbench. ‘But how
could I not wake you, and talk with you? You’re all I have left. I miss you so much every day, every single day.’

Adam was starting to feel severely creeped out. ‘I don’t get you, Dad. What are you talking about?’

Slowly, hesitantly, Mr Adlar turned to face Adam in the dim light from the monitors. ‘Ad, what’s on the outside doesn’t matter. I . . . I know you might be scared, but I’m just the
same. You must know, you heard me telling you those memories on the phone, I’m . . .’

‘No.’ Adam barely croaked out the word as all reason left his head.

In the eerie glow of the screens, he could see now: This wasn’t his dad. It was a monster. The skin on that careworn, much loved face had turned scaly, reptilian, distorting the features. The whole head was hairless, the ears and nose flattened
to barely more than bumps and ridges in the thick, alien flesh.