“Jian?”
She just sat there, her hands turning a bottle of Dr Pepper over and over until the color was a light brown—the normal dark caramel shade mixed with the white of bubbles seeking escape against the bottle’s pressure. When she finally opened it, Colding thought, the thing would explode.
“Hey, kiddo, pay attention—you’re in check.”
She glanced at the board, then went back to turning the Dr Pepper bottle.
“Jian, talk to me. What’s eating at you?”
She looked at him, her eyes once again focused. “It is too big.”
“I know, it’s okay. Gary Detweiler is getting material for heavy cages. We’ll have them up in a few days. Doc tells me that will keep the animals under control.”
She laughed. “Doctor Rhumkorrf wants to see his name on the cover of Time magazine. He would risk all of us.”
Colding thought of the shorted meds. Jian was more right than she knew. He also thought of the cages, and of a tiny, camera-biting fetus enlarged to two hundred pounds. Or even bigger. Rhumkorrf had assured him everything would be fine, but the man’s statements were questionable at best. If Jian was worried, then Colding was worried. “Why are the fetuses so much bigger than you thought they would be?”
She looked down. The bottle turned faster. “I… I made projections, but… maybe I was not thinking clearly.”
Not thinking clearly. He thought about the timeline. She’d had her breakthrough, created the successful batch right when they left Baffin three weeks ago… two weeks after Rhumkorrf started shorting her meds.
“Jian, I need you to think. You said you coded for a herd animal. Docile, about two hundred pounds adult weight. But it’s not just the size of the ancestors, it’s the aggressive behavior, those… teeth.”
She raised her head, looked him in the eyes. He couldn’t quite read her expression. On her face he saw doubt, confusion. “I thought I program for herbivore. But… it is predator.”
No shit, Sherlock. Herbivores didn’t eat each other in the womb. If Genada had more time, more resources, Colding could just scrap this round of fetuses and have Jian start over. Magnus, however, wasn’t going to let that happen.
“I want to leave,” she said suddenly. “I want to leave this place. Something bad is going to happen, unless we stop it. We need to call someone.”
Colding’s breath caught in his throat. He automatically looked at the camera in the upper corner. Gunther was in the security room. Did he see Colding and Jian in here? There was no sound… but Colding had also thought there was no video capture in Sara’s room. Who knew what else he was wrong about? If Magnus found out Jian was talking about leaving, what would he do?
“Jian, don’t say that again. Don’t you even think about saying anything like that, to anyone. Do you understand?”
“But Mister Colding, I am afraid that I… I…” Her voice trailed off.
“These half-sentences of yours are really annoying, Jian. Just tell me.”
She looked at the chess piece in her hand and said nothing.
“Jian, just tell me. What are you afraid of?”
Her eyes narrowed. Something was going on in that brilliant head of hers, but what?
“I did things I do not remember doing,” she said. “I think that… I will look at code again, see what I can find.”
She set down her rook in a new space that blocked his check. Colding smiled and started to move his knight into attack position, when he saw that by moving her rook, she had put his king in check with her bishop.
“Checkmate in two moves,” Jian said absently.
“Fuck,” Colding said.
The bottle spun even faster. Without another word, she stood and walked out of the office.
NOVEMBER 27: KILL ’EM ALL
Implantation +18 Days
JIAN HELD HER breath and waited while Claus Rhumkorrf read her report on his computer. They were alone in the upper-deck lab. She was feeling better, but not when she was around him. Stress was bad for her. Made her twitchy. Made the shadows move.
He turned from the screen to stare at her. “But you don’t remember doing this?”
She shook her head. “I do not, but look at it. That is the real code I used for the genome. That is why my growth projections are so off.”
His eyes widened. She’d never seen that look before. A look of doubt, of fear. He turned back to the screen.
“I see,” he said. “And now that you know this, you have new projections?” His tone of voice, almost like he didn’t want to hear the answer.
“Yes, Doctor Rhumkorrf.” She again looked at the printout in her hands, even though she already knew the answer. “Birth weight, approximately two hundred fifty pounds.”
He swallowed. She actually heard him swallow. Trembling hands reached up to readjust his black glasses. “And your best guess at… at the recalibrated adult weight?”
“Over five hundred pounds.”
Of all the odd things, he picked his nose for a second. He wiped his finger on his pants leg. “That would be more in line with the growth we’ve seen in the fetuses. Still, we need to see the adults. We won’t know organ functions or dimensions for sure until we have an adult. Then we can make adjustments and try again.”
Jian couldn’t believe her ears. See an adult? Was he crazy? “Doctor Rhumkorrf, we need to kill them.”
His head snapped around, anger smoldering in his eyes. “Kill them? But we’re succeeding!”
Jian shook her head. “We are creating something bad. Something evil.”
“We’ll have the cages soon. We’re not going to kill anything.”
Jian started to speak, but was interrupted when Mister Feely’s head popped up the aft ladder.
“Bro-ski! Froot Loops! Get down here, pronto!” He disappeared back down the ladder. Rhumkorrf and Jian followed him to the first deck.
Mister Feely stood next to Molly McButter. Molly’s head hung almost to the ground. Thin trails of blood ran from her mouth.
Rhumkorrf knelt to look into the cow’s mucus-coated eyes. “What’s wrong with her?”
Tim shook his head. “I’m not sure. I just got here ten minutes ago and found her like this.”
“Ten minutes? You should have been here hours ago, Mister Feely. Were you drinking again, or just sleeping off last night’s hangover?”
“Fuck you, shit-breath,” Tim said as he ran down the aisle to his lab area across from the crash chairs and the elevator. He tore through the cabinets and came back with a fluid-filled IV bag and a needle envelope.
“So?” Rhumkorrf said. “What’s wrong with her? Doctor Hoel isn’t here to wet-nurse you anymore, you drunken idiot.”
“Know what, chief?” Tim hung the bag from a hook above Molly McButter’s stall, then knelt to work the needle into her neck. “You’re about one ounce of lip shy of me pimp-slapping you like a bitch.”
“Just tell me what’s wrong with the cow!”
“She’s sick, it’s like her body is feeding on itself. I’d say it’s a sudden onset of malnutrition.”
Jian had looked over the cows just last night, and they seemed fine. Malnutrition? How could that be? Too much stress. She felt all itchy. She wanted to get out of there, get away from Rhumkorrf, Feely and the cows.
“Ridiculous,” Rhumkorrf said. “It can’t be malnutrition. Molly’s feed bin is full; she hasn’t touched it. We’ve increased their food intake to compensate for the advanced fetal growth. She didn’t look like this yesterday… did she?”