“Only one way to find out. Let’s try.”
She leaned against the base of the step before Tom could do anything, and the entire thing moved. There was no strain in her muscular physique.
“Wow! Superwoman!” Tom said.
“I’m barely touching it.”
Tom put his hands on the side of the stairs, gripping them for support. “Okay, you head up there, and tell me when the stairs align at the spot you were trying to study.”
Genevieve moved up the stairs as fast as she had come down them.
Two thirds of the way up, she said, “Keep going. Another five or six feet.”
Tom pushed gently, and the stairs swung round on an invisible axis.
“Stop!” Genevieve yelled.
Tom continued searching the area, filming every aspect of the room as best he could.
About ten minutes later, Genevieve said, “You’d better come up here, Tom!”
He glanced at her face, where small lines of fear developed beneath her eyes. “What is it?”
“I think we have a serious problem!”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Genevieve said, “They’ve been genetically modifying the human genome for centuries… possibly even millennia!”
“How?” Tom asked. “Why? I don’t understand. For what purpose?”
“How would you alter a person’s genetics prior to modern medicine and DNA sequence editing?”
“Hi, I’m Tom,” he said, holding his hand out sarcastically. “An expert cave diver and pilot. I’m not sure why you think I know anything about gene editing.”
She shook her head dismissively, as though he was over-thinking things. “How does natural biology and evolution work?”
“Information regarding what works and what didn’t work gets passed on by those who survive.”
“Right. Darwin’s theory of evolution.”
“What’s this got to do with ancient technology, terrorism, and Ben Gellie’s parents?”
“What if you wanted to create a very specific genetic trait, but despite not having the science, you have time. How would you do it?”
“Through breeding?” Tom asked.
“Right. The Russian cult translated and read the ancient scripts left here by the Master Builders. They couldn’t work out the science, but they had a genetic recipe…”
“For what?”
“I don’t know, but look at this.” Genevieve read some more text in Russian, then expelled a deep breath of air and swallowed hard.
“What is it?” Tom asked.
“Some of the text is missing. But, if I’m reading this right, they were making a weapon — the Phoenix Plague.”
“The Phoenix Plague?” Tom repeated the name. “As in the mythological bird that kept burning only to rise again from its ashes?”
“That would be the one,” she replied.
“How?” Tom asked.
“I don’t know.”
“They were trying to create a deadly virus! A plague capable of destroying the world, so that what, something else could rise from the ashes of human remains?”
“It looks like it,” Genevieve admitted.
“But who?”
Genevieve shook her head. “It doesn’t say.”
Tom fixed his flashlight on the last section, the very ending of all the writings. “There’s something else! What does it say?”
“You’re not going to believe it.”
“What?”
“They weren’t just trying to develop a deadly virus. They succeeded in developing it, incubating it into a deadly host, genetically designed, to be a ticking time bomb, capable of releasing the virus onto the world in the most effective way possible.”
“Where?”
“It doesn’t say. But it gives the name of the host…”
Tom shouted, “Who?”
Genevieve swallowed hard. “Ben Gellie.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Tom’s eyes were wide, his chest pounding at the news. “Are you certain?”
“Yeah,” she replied, her eyes cast downward, fixated on the Russian text next to the ancient Master Builder script. “There are words missing and things I’ll need to check on the computer tablet, but I think it’s clear, Ben Gellie is a deadly terrorist, who’s about to bring the human race to its knees.”
“Sam was certain Ben was one of the good guys.”
Genevieve shrugged. “It might be true, even.”
“How can you believe that when you think he’s the one carrying the Phoenix Plague?”
“Maybe he doesn’t know the truth. He’s just the host, a carrier of a disease he doesn’t yet know exists. He’s no more evil than a weapon, which has no say over how it’s used.”
“All right,” Tom said, realizing that what she was saying was probably the truth. “What do we know exactly?”
“Okay, like I said, there are words missing.”
“Why?”
Her well-trimmed eyebrow arched. “Why what?”
Tom said, “Why are there words missing?”
“I don’t know. There have been missing parts throughout all the Russian notes. It might be text that has faded over time, or it was written and then washed off after discovering it was wrong…”
“Or someone intentionally removed it?” Tom suggested.
“Like redacting a secret document?”
“We can’t rule it out.”
Genevieve made a dramatic sigh. “No. But whatever the case, those words are gone. All we have to work with is what we’ve got.”
“So what have we got?” Tom asked.
“There’s a story about John and Jenny coming together as the perfect genetic match to develop a host with the strength to survive the Phoenix Plague long enough to complete its incubation period.”
“Maybe John and Jenny had another child?”
“Maybe, but this one specifically refers to Ben.”
“You’re kidding me!”
Genevieve’s face crunched up in fear. “Afraid not. It refers to three ancient strains of DNA used to achieve the goal. It then lists those as: Australopithecus boisei, Homo ergaster, and Homo neanderthalensis.”
Tom turned his palms upward. “That’s it? I don’t get it. I thought you said it specifically refers to Ben.”
“It does,” Genevieve replied, her voice emphatic. “Did you ever study biology?”
“A little in high school. Nothing that’s coming to mind right now.”
“Good thing I paid attention in school then. In biology, a tribe is a taxonomic rank above genus, but below family and subfamily. Bring back memories?”
“Not a thing.”
“All right. In biological classification, taxonomic rank is the relative level of a group of organisms in a taxonomic hierarchy. Although the system is constantly being updated, there are currently eight ranks widely accepted for classifying all living things. Starting from the top down, these are domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.” Genevieve leveled her eyes at him. “Now do you remember?”
“Briefly. Go on.”
“At the highest level, domain separates all life into three classes, Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya. Humans for example, fall under the domain Eukarya. Humans fall under the kingdom of Animalia, the phylum of Chordata, class of mammal, order of primates, family of Hominidae, genus of Homo, and species of sapiens.”
“Genevieve!” Tom yelled. “Get to the point!”
“Australopithecus and Homo are both part of the family of hominidae. Australopithecus boisei, Homo ergaster, and Homo neanderthalensis all lived during the same period roughly a hundred thousand years ago and some of their DNA is still carried in humans today.”
“Okay, so you’re saying John and Jenny Gellie have ancient DNA in their blood?”