Ripple (Breakthrough Book 4) Read online

  That kind of retraction would take more humility than she could even imagine.

  All to protect a secret, resting on the bottom of the ocean.

  6

  “What do you think it is?” Caesare asked, peering intently at the screen.

  Borger slowly shook his head from side to side. “I have no idea.”

  Together they watched the video footage again with Caesare in the foreground, next to Lightfoot, one of Captain Emerson’s engineers. The two men floated almost motionlessly underwater, facing the large, smooth gray wall. In the video, Caesare continued to probe the wall’s surface with his black diving glove, watching the illumination appear and linger for a moment before fading away once again. He examined the glove through his mask and rubbed his fingers together. He then turned and presented his glove to the camera. After staring into the lens for several long seconds, Caesare turned back around with an afterthought and silently withdrew a diving knife from the black sheath strapped to his calf.

  The large blade glistened only briefly before Caesare held it up close to the ship. Then something happened. The blade unexpectedly sprang from his fingers and stuck itself to the wall in front of him. It was there that the video froze.

  Borger turned to face Caesare. “What kind of knife is that?”

  “Stainless steel.”

  “I thought stainless steel wasn’t magnetic?”

  “Most knives are. Not enough nickel in them.”

  “Hmm,” Borger mused. “Well, I guess the thing is magnetic then. But that glow––it doesn’t appear to be any kind of bioluminescence. Or film.”

  Caesare nodded his head in agreement. “Nothing came off on the glove.”

  “And we still haven’t found any marks on the thing.”

  “None.”

  “Strange,” Borger muttered, instinctively reaching for a sip of Jolt cola only to find a bare desk top. Disappointed, he reached instead for the keyboard and began typing.

  “Well, this is what we have so far.”

  The frame quickly zoomed out and into place among dozens of others. Combined, they presented a picture similar to a jigsaw puzzle, with most of the pieces still missing. But even without the rest, the parts they had were already intimating at the ship’s overall size and shape.

  “The damn thing is big.”

  “Very,” Borger agreed, nodding. He leaned back, staring at the curvature of the alien hull. It wasn’t as long and straight as they had originally thought. Instead, the edges were a bit rounded. Somewhat like a softly shaped rectangle. And even though most of it hadn’t been thoroughly mapped yet due to all the underwater vegetation, the thing was undeniably huge.

  Caesare ran a hand through his black damp hair, and then dropped it to cover his mouth, pondering. “How could it not be damaged at all?”

  “Exactly. Thousands of years underwater takes a toll on everything. Especially in warm water. Cold preserves things better.”

  “Like the Titanic.”

  “Exactly. And we saw what kind of shape it was in just seventy years later. But this thing, even in warm water, doesn’t look affected at all.”

  “Well, it’s clear we have a lot more mapping to do.”

  Borger nodded again. “Which brings up another strange thing.”

  “No doors.”

  “No anything,” Borger quipped. So far, every piece of the hull had been found to be as smooth and unblemished as the next. They hadn’t found any edges anywhere. Even grooves. Nothing to indicate a door or the slightest separation.

  Borger turned and looked up at Caesare. “There’s something else. Another thing I’ve been thinking about that doesn’t make any sense.”

  Caesare frowned. “You mean other than a glowing alien, magnetic ship…that looks like a giant block?”

  He grinned. “Yeah. But this is more of a logical contradiction.”

  “Hit me.”

  Borger took a breath and tilted his head. “So, we talked before about efficiency and the limitations of making such a long distance trip through space.”

  “That’s right. The reason why this was likely a one-way trip.”

  “Precisely. The amount of energy needed to travel fast enough becomes prohibitive at a certain speed or vehicle size.”

  “And that’s the strange part?”

  “More or less. See, if efficiency is everything, which it is in space travel, then why is the ship so big? The embryos we found hidden in Guyana would only have taken up a fraction of the ship’s capacity. Oversizing it makes the whole propulsion issue very impractical.”

  Caesare nodded. “A one-way trip lets you get here faster, with less. But instead, they brought a big one.”

  “Not just big, a giant one. That’s the contradiction. It just…doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I’m inclined to agree.” Caesare glanced away from the screen to his watch. “It’s time for our call.”

  Borger nodded absently, eyes still fixed on the monitor’s screen.

  ***

  Upon seeing DeeAnn Draper’s face appear on Borger’s second monitor, Steve Caesare slid into the seat next to him. His muscular frame made the old chair look even more fragile than it was. With a loud squeak, he promptly leaned forward and smiled at DeeAnn through the computer camera.

  “Hello, beautiful,” he grinned with his trademark smile.

  DeeAnn narrowed her eyes in response, with a trace of humor. “Hello, Grizzly Adams.”

  Caesare rubbed a hand over his long whiskers, some of which were already showing hints of gray.

  “I hope you guys are at least taking showers,” she chided.

  “Well, some of us are.” Caesare leaned back and motioned sarcastically toward Borger.

  Will Borger glowered. “Not funny.”

  On the screen, an amused DeeAnn changed the subject. “How are things going with the ship?”

  “We have the general dimensions but not much else yet. How about you?”

  She sighed. “Well, we talked to Lee. Which turned out to include a big surprise for all us. I presume John has already told you.”

  “He has. I’m sorry about that. I think retracting is the last thing anyone wanted, even Admiral Langford.”

  DeeAnn nodded with a contemplative expression, and Caesare noted the background of her office behind her. She had decorated. After a moment, DeeAnn changed the subject again. “So, how are things going with Africa?”

  Borger brought up a map on his primary screen. It was a richly colored, high-definition image of the entire African continent. “I’ve got everything downloaded, and the servers are ready. But searching an area this big, pixel by pixel, is going to take a while. To save time, we’ve started narrowing things down using some assumptions from Guyana.”

  “Such as?”

  “High elevation, heavily obscured, and difficult to reach. We might also want to consider a similar latitude.”

  Caesare considered Borger’s last point. “Actually, if they were going to store something for thousands of years, why wouldn’t they have done it near one of the poles, like we did with the Seed Vault?”

  “I think it’s going to depend on the purpose. Very hot and very cold temperatures both introduce their own challenges. A higher elevation would also provide a cooler environment. But even if it is somewhere along the same latitude, it leaves a heck of a lot of land mass to search.”

  “Well, at least it’s a start,” DeeAnn sighed. “Actually, maybe I can help narrow it down a little more. After all, we’re looking for something that could have affected the course of primate evolution, including Homo sapiens. Which means maybe we can find out where by determining when.”

  “And when would that be?” asked Caesare.

  “That’s the million-dollar question,” she replied. “Nobody really knows…exactly. We only have guesses. The earliest fossils of recognizable Homo sapiens appeared about two hundred thousand years ago around the region known today as Ethiopia. But the event couldn’t have taken pla
ce that long ago because our evolutionary paths still weren’t that far away from the other primates. And as similar as primate and human brains are today in complexity, they are still very different in size. So we’re probably looking at an event that happened long after the two species split, but one that still affected them both. So the real question probably isn’t when did our genetic lineage split, but when did we stop being neighbors?”

  Caesare and Borger both looked at each other and then back to DeeAnn on the screen. “And that would be…”

  “About fifty thousand years ago. Maybe even twenty. Much closer to our present, evolutionarily speaking.”

  “And then what?”

  DeeAnn shrugged. According to a group called the Genographic Project, our genetic and paleontological records suggest we moved out, beginning with the colonization of modern day Yemen. The migration then rippled out from there. So my guess is that whatever event might have occurred, it probably did so before that.”

  “So Ethiopia then.”

  “Maybe,” DeeAnn answered hesitantly. “That’s where some of the earliest remains have been found. Other remains have been discovered more recently, like the site near Johannesburg, but they were nonhuman.”

  “Okay. Anything else?”

  “Not really. But I suggest we start our search in the higher elevations. Those locations will have the most in common with the Guyana site. How fast do you think your computer can sift through the data, Will?”

  “Computers,” Will corrected absently. “I’ve got a lot lined up, but when we did this before, the search algorithm was much simpler. We were looking for objects in a large area of ocean so it wasn’t as hard to find things that stood out. It just took time. This time, it’s different. Terrain is much more complicated. At best, I’m guessing we can process maybe a hundred square miles per hour. But we might get lucky. There were stone markers on the mountain in Guyana. If there are similar shapes in Africa, and if part of them are exposed, the servers might be able to pick that up.”

  “But if not?”

  “Then we could be in for a long wait.”

  “Well, let’s hope you two have better luck than I do,” DeeAnn said.

  “The problem,” continued Borger, “is the testing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He looked to Caesare, then to DeeAnn, both visible on his monitor. “This is going to take a lot of tweaking. It’s not just something that we flip on and wait for coordinates to be spit out. We’re going to need to do some benchmarking, followed by verification on more complicated sections of the map.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “I’m not sure. The good news is that there are a lot of companies doing some impressive things with visual imaging.” A wry grin curled the corners of his mouth. “We just need to leverage some of their technology…without them knowing about it.”

  “Sounds right up your alley,” Caesare smiled.

  DeeAnn watched with amusement. “Okay, let me know when you’re closer. I’m going to do a little research of my own.”

  ***

  After the video call had ended, DeeAnn stared at her screen, feeling a slight pang of guilt over something she had said. Or rather had not said. She hadn’t exactly explained everything about the Trio Brain theory. Mostly because it wasn’t relevant. Yet.

  But even more than that, she was working to quell a small but growing nervousness of where this search might lead, and the terrible fear that it might somehow bring them to the last place on Earth she ever wanted to go.

  7

  Both Caesare and Borger were analyzing more of the video when a small window appeared, signaling another incoming call. The display indicated it was coming from the Pathfinder only a short distance away.

  Borger accepted the call, and a window opened, framing the attractive face of Neely Lawton.

  Caesare reacted with another award-winning smile, this one more genuine. “Good morning, Commander Lawton.”

  “Good morning,” she answered. Her hair was pulled back neatly into a bun, highlighting the smooth contours of her face. She noticed Caesare’s tussled wet hair. “I take it you’ve already been down this morning.”

  He grinned. “No rest even for us old guys.”

  She smiled. He was only in his forties. “Do you both have a few minutes? I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Sure, we’re just going over footage. What’s up?”

  She frowned briefly. “This might be a little premature, but I’m beginning to worry.”

  “About what?”

  “About the bacteria.”

  Both men’s faces turned serious. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  Neely blinked before continuing. “The DNA code that this bacterium is carrying was extracted from the plants found on top of the mountain. Similar to the DNA we’ve found here in the sea plants. But the bacteria seem to be acting differently from what I’m observing in the plants themselves.”

  “How so?” Caesare asked.

  “As expected, the plants are repairing themselves at an accelerated rate. And repairing parts of their biologic structure that they shouldn’t normally be able to repair. But they’re doing it more smoothly. As if by design. That’s what was so astonishing when we saw it before. But the bacterium is different. These are replicating even faster. It’s as if once the DNA was infused into the genes of the bacteria, something happened.”

  “I don’t know if the Chinese changed something during their extraction process, even inadvertently. But if they did, it could explain the difference in cellular function. In fact, even if it wasn’t something during extraction, just the transfer from one life form to another could be enough to trigger a modification. Or a mutation. Even a single base pair change could affect DNA behavior.”

  Caesare rubbed a finger against his chin. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “But wouldn’t an acceleration be an improvement?” Borger asked.

  “On the surface, yes. But the question is, at what cost? There’s no free lunch in science. Or in genetics. Ultimately, everything is a tradeoff. Even if you can’t measure it. What worries me most is if a modification occurred just moving this genetic code into a simple bacteria strain, what happens when that code is transferred into another environment? A much more complex environment.”

  Borger looked up from his chair as Caesare finished the thought. “More complex like an animal.”

  On the screen, Neely nodded. “Like a human.” She let that sink in a moment before continuing. “Even if the behavior didn’t change, even if it were exactly the same, going from something as simple as bacteria to a much more intricate genetic system would likely result in some unpredictability.”

  “Assuming it was even observable.”

  “Exactly.”

  Caesare remained still, thinking. “You’re talking about Li Na, the Chinese girl.”

  “I am. She was injected with the DNA directly. And if we already see differences in a small sample, the effects could be magnified in her.”

  “If a modification took place.”

  “Correct.”

  Caesare was frowning, looking for a more obvious possibility. “Is there any chance what you’re seeing in your sample is a fluke or some kind of anomaly?”

  It was a question that Neely had pondered herself. She glanced away from the screen to the large number of Petri dishes nearby. She shook her head. “To be honest, I was hoping it was. But it’s happening with all of them.”

  She continued staring at her samples. Her worry was escalating at the thought of what the bacteria might now be doing inside the young woman’s system. It was still possible nothing would happen, even if some DNA had changed. Neely truly wished that was the case.

  Because if her fears were correct, and given the results of what she’d already witnessed, young Li Na Wei could, in fact, be the equivalent of a genetic tinder box.

  8

  Both men remained silent for almost a full minute a
fter their call with Neely ended. The implications were more than just worrisome. To make matters worse, no one knew where they could find Li Na Wei. Or whether she was even alive.

  It was her father who had injected her with the bacteria, to save her. The last act of a father desperate to help his dying daughter. And he had. At least temporarily. Until a Chinese agent named Qin found her.

  Now Li Na was gone, having escaped certain death from the hands of Qin. And if she was still alive, she was on the run.

  “Well,” sighed Borger, “I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention it.”

  Caesare stared at him, raising an eyebrow.

  “They’re still looking for her.”

  “Who is they?”

  “The Chinese.”

  “You mean Qin?”

  “No. I’m pretty sure Qin is dead. But their Ministry of State Security is still searching for her, using every piece of technology they have. They’re the same group that found her before.”

  “You mean their hackers.”

  Borger nodded.

  “How many?”

  “As far as I can tell, the entire department.”

  Caesare grinned. “And how exactly do you know this?”

  Borger folded his arms with a look of satisfaction. “I’ve been eavesdropping.”

  Eavesdropping was putting it mildly. The Chinese MSS-sponsored hackers were not a group to be trifled with. They were arguably the best in the world and part of one of the most ruthless organizations within the Chinese government. Anyone trying to worm their way into that group was either stupid or insane. Will Borger was neither. He was in a third and very small classification of potential intruders: specialized experts. The team China had amassed was extremely talented, but its members had one common flaw which not even they had considered. They were young. Each of them were born into the digital age, living and breathing technology since birth. But while some people considered that an asset, Borger knew better. Young hackers understood how the technology worked, but their knowledge would never match someone like Will Borger who was part of the technology’s very inception. They would never understand the building blocks as thoroughly as he did. Nor the vulnerabilities of those building blocks.