He took the photo. The built-in flash briefly illuminated the woods, showing the creeping advance of the vines only twenty yards away. Instead of radiating outward uniformly in all directions, there was a pronounced bulge directly in front of Pierce, as if the plants were intentionally trying to reach him and Carter.
A moment later, he had Dourado on the line. After briefly explaining the situation, he sent her the picture of Van Der Hausen and instructed her to make it a top priority.
“Already on it,” she told him. He could hear her tapping on her keyboard in the background. “Is there anything else I can do? Should I alert the Liberian authorities?”
Pierce relayed the question to Carter, who shook her head. “Let me analyze it first. Figure out how best to kill it. The last thing we need is the army descending on this place with flamethrowers, burning the whole jungle down and inadvertently spreading it further.”
“Cintia, I’m going to put Dr. Carter on the line. Get whatever equipment she needs and have it overnighted to Monrovia.” He held out the phone to Carter. “Whatever you need,” he told her. “Sky’s the limit. You can even get an espresso machine, if you want.”
“This doesn’t mean I’m going to come work for you.”
“No strings attached. Except, of course, that I do expect you to save the world from that.” He pointed to the infested zone.
Carter regarded him with a mixture of admiration and wariness, but she took the phone and rattled off the names of a few pieces of equipment. Pierce got the impression that she was holding back, asking only for a bare minimum, perhaps still harboring some distrust about the gift. When she was done, she handed the phone back to him. “Thank you.”
He nodded and spoke to Dourado again. “I’ll be wrapping things up here as soon as I can. Do me a favor and let Augustina know. Tell her I’ll call as soon as I can.”
“Will do. And I will call back as soon as I have more information about Van Der Hausen.”
He hung up and activated the phone’s built-in flashlight. He aimed the light at the forest, a beacon to guide Bishop and any other survivors to safety. In the ambient glow, he could see red splotches on his hands. Chemical burns, though nowhere near as bad as the level of pain led him to expect. The enzyme was a slow-acting acid. The vines were the real threat, since they immobilized victims, allowing the plants to digest them over the course of hours, perhaps days.
A few minutes later, he heard shouts from the forest and saw a group of people running toward them, with the gigantic form of Bishop in the lead, literally plowing a path to safety with the blade of a shovel. A partially vine-wrapped figure was slung over one shoulder. Cooper.
Pierce allowed himself a relieved sigh. He didn’t know if his guide was still alive, but he was glad that the man had not been left behind to be devoured by the jungle.
“They all made it,” Carter whispered. “Thank God.”
“Thank Bishop,” Pierce murmured.
“Don’t call him that,” she warned. “He goes by Lazarus now. Or just Erik.”
“Lazarus.” Pierce nodded. The resurrected man. Of course. As if to keep him from commenting on this, Dourado chose that moment to keep her promise.
“Prompt as always,” he said into the phone. “What have you learned?”
“I have some information about Van Der Hausen.” Dourado’s tone was unusually subdued. “And there’s something else.”
“Van Der Hausen, first.”
Dourado related the salient facts about the passport and the man, a genetic engineer who had volunteered to work in Liberia during the early days of the Ebola outbreak. He had returned to Europe and started his own boutique gene-splicing company. “Some of his working capital came from Cerberus shell companies.”
“Cerberus is behind this?” Pierce said it more loudly than he had intended. His outburst did not go unnoticed by Carter. Pierce covered the phone’s mouthpiece. “I think we found our culprit. And you were right. It’s an engineered species.”
Dourado spoke again. “Until we know more about Cerberus, it’s impossible to say exactly what role they played, but yes, there does seem to be a connection.”
“Keep digging. Whether or not this has anything to do with Kenner, we need to stop Cerberus.”
“Dr. Gallo is not responding.” Dourado said. “Not by computer or telephone. They are not in the citadel. The door was last accessed more than eight hours ago.”
Pierce frowned. “I thought she might try something like that. I arranged for Aegis to keep an eye on them. If nothing else works, try to reach them through the Gibraltar office. I know she has her phone. She just tried to call me.”
“Dr. Pierce, listen to me. I checked with the airlines. Dr. Gallo and Fiona went to Greece—”
“Damn it,” Pierce muttered.
Dourado was not finished. “And Dr. Gallo’s vehicle was involved in an accident near the city of Argos.”
Now at last, Dourado’s apprehension made sense. A chill went through Pierce. “What do you mean, involved?”
“The police are investigating, but I can find no indication that she was at the crash site or taken to a hospital.”
Pierce heard himself speaking, asking nonsensical questions, parsing Dourado’s words in a futile attempt to ignore the painfully obvious fact that Gallo and Fiona had been taken.
Cerberus had them.
22
Gallo awoke in a groggy panic. Even before the world came into focus, she knew that something was amiss. The feel of a firm mattress beneath her, blurred outlines dimly illuminated, the faint odor of a citrus cleaning solution, the complete absence of any sound but her own breathing. It was all…wrong.
I was driving. There was a…crash…explosion?
She could not grasp hold of the last bit, but she knew something bad had happened. The fact that she was in a strange place, a hospital room perhaps, indicated that she was far from where she had been.
She sat up, an action she immediately regretted as a wave of pain shot through her entire body. Her gut clenched, and she heaved so violently that she rolled off the bed and crashed onto the floor, the impact triggering a second round of full-bodied agony. Bitter bile stung her mouth and nostrils. She retched again, but there was nothing for her stomach to expel. It was not the pain her body was rebelling against, but something else.
God, I’m hungover.
Except she knew that was not quite right. This was not the result of alcohol. It was more like the nausea that sometimes followed anesthesia.
Someone drugged me. After the crash.
That made a strange sort of sense. If she had sustained serious injuries, perhaps the medical responders had given her a sedative or a strong painkiller. Yet something about that explanation did not quite ring true.
As the initial surge of pain receded into a dull ache, she took stock of her condition. The discomfort was mostly felt in her extremities and in the muscles of her back. She had taken a beating, but she felt certain her body was intact. No broken bones. No internal injuries.
She managed to draw a few quick breaths, fought through the urge to vomit again and blinked until her eyes were clear enough to see that she was not in a hospital room.
The bed she had fallen out of was a simple single mattress without headboard or footboard. The walls were a butterscotch yellow, with no pictures or other decorations — and no windows. There was a single door with no knob and a plain wooden chair beside the bed. She had probably come within an inch of cracking her head on it. Aside from that, the only other thing in the room was a large flat-screen television mounted high on the wall, opposite the bed.