She nodded toward him, and David raised a hand in a semi-wave without ever looking up from the laptop. He tapped away at the keyboard.
“Dr. David Boudreau,” she went on, indicating him again. “Nepotism at its finest. Yes, my grandson, but also smarter than anyone else in the room, myself included, and the only other person involved in this operation aside from myself who has encountered these particular bio-forms before.”
A rumble of voices filled the room, mutters of surprise and astonished whispers.
“Excuse me,” Agent Hart said. He wore a look of amazement that turned his handsome face boyish. “You’ve seen the sirens before?”
Alena arched an eyebrow. “Sirens? Ah, the bio-forms. Clever, but please don’t think for a moment that these creatures are anything but an unknown species of marine life. As Dr. Ernst will tell you, they are unusual, dangerous, even terrifying, but they are hardly unnatural. Their ‘song,’ if you’d like to pursue the siren metaphor, is not dissimilar from bats’ echolocation, aiding their sensory perception when out of the water.”
She started to go on, but Agent Hart interrupted again. All eyes were now on him and the room seemed to have grown smaller.
“Wait. Seriously,” he said, growing agitated. The one female FBI agent in the room, who Alena presumed must be his partner, put a hand on his arm, but Hart ignored her. “‘Hardly unnatural’? They’re underwater vampires, for fuck’s sake. They burn in sunlight.”
Alena frowned. She had gauged the potential problem that Turcotte might represent, but had not counted on Agent Hart posing difficulties. She knew the trauma he had been through, and she could see how shaken it had left him, but she had no time to comfort him.
“Sarah?” she said.
Professor Ernst stood. Attractive in a disheveled, academic sort of way, Sarah Ernst was forty-seven, her hair dyed an auburn just close enough to red to be serious and daring in equal turns.
“Dr. Ernst is a former MIT professor with PhDs in astrobiology and marine biology. She’s been part of my team for three years.”
“Thank you, Dr. Boudreau,” Ernst said. She looked out over those gathered in the room, then focused on Hart. Alena had taught her well. Crisis management was often about personnel management. “Let’s get this clear right up front. There is no evidence that anything remotely resembling horror movie vampires exists, or ever existed.”
Professor Ernst smiled and they all seemed to relax. “Based upon the records I’ve read of the prior encounter with these … with the ‘sirens,’ the best reference point I can provide is a rare skin condition called xeroderma pigmentosum, in which the flesh is not protected from ultraviolet light and is therefore burned. With a lack of pigment, UV light damages DNA, causing cellular mutation that — in such cases — can cause the skin to burn or blacken. As the cells divide, the mutation spreads, and so does this burning effect. What happens with these creatures is obviously a radical example of this phenomenon—”
“They don’t just blacken,” Agent Hart interrupted. “They catch fire.”
Ernst nodded. “So I’m told. Right now, I’m theorizing the presence of crystalline proteins in the skin that will burn on exposure to sunlight. Look, honestly, if I had read about the existence of these things, I would never have believed it. But there have been many things found in the ocean that nobody expected. And obviously, presented with them as a reality, I can only theorize until I have one of them to study. One thing I’m confident of, though …” She smiled. “There’s no such thing as vampires.”
“Thank you, Dr. Ernst,” Alena said as the woman sat down. Then she gestured to the slender African-American man beside Ernst. “The final member of my team is Dr. Paul Ridge, whom I stole from the geology department at Northwestern. Thanks to his experience with primordial cave formations, I needed him more than his students did.”
Professor Ridge waved a hand to identify himself, then cast an expectant look at Alena, silently urging her to move on. Ridge didn’t like the spotlight at all.
“Now, normally I would have to mislead you about the nature of my employment, but this is a crisis management scenario, so there’s to be no bullshit.” Nobody flinched at her profanity and she nodded her approval. They weren’t looking at her like an aging civilian anymore. “I’m a specialist in extraordinary discoveries. That’s the best way to describe it. It’s much more interesting than ‘analyst,’ which is the word I use when I want to bore people into not wondering about me anymore. My team is an under-the-radar division of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is part of the DOD.
“Beyond that, all you need to know at the moment is this: The U.S. government has had two prior encounters with life-forms that sound substantially similar to what the crew of the Antoinette encountered on the island, and both of them were also island-based infestations. The first habitat was off the eastern coast of Africa and was eradicated. That was in 1967. Fishermen discovered the second habitat in the South Pacific only seven years ago. I was involved with both cases.
“As you can see, I survived. Both habitats were destroyed, along with their inhabitants. The sun will kill them, as you know, but so will firepower. Seven years ago, we tried to put to use lessons I learned in ’67, but failed.”
“Failed how?” Captain Siebalt asked, genuinely curious.
“Our job is twofold — destroy the threat, and learn everything we can about it. Most of my team died in ’67 because we focused more on acquiring a research subject than on containing the threat. This time, things will be done differently. We will bring one of these things home to study, but eradication is our first priority.”
“You want to bring one of these things back alive?” Agent Voss asked. “If you’ve seen these things, then you must know—”
Alena held up both hands to forestall any further interruption. “It won’t be easy, of course. In order to fulfill that part of the mission, we will have to catch one in the dark. I’d prefer a living one, but a dead one will do. That means bagging one and then keeping it out of the sunlight long enough to get it back here and locked away in the dark. Just keep that in mind. If it helps, tell your people that there will be a reward for the first person to bring me—”
“Absolutely not!” Captain Rouleau said.
Alena narrowed her eyes. The old Coast Guard officer had reddened, either with anger or embarrassment.
“Captain?” she said.
“Pardon me, Dr. Boudreau,” Captain Rouleau said, “but that sort of thing leads to competition, which is a distraction that could get good men and women killed.”
She let out a breath, nodding. “I’m sorry, Captain. You’re right, of course.”
“Besides, Navy sailors don’t need a reward to motivate them,” Captain Siebalt added, glancing sidelong at her from his place at the table. “If there’s any way to bring one of those things back whole, you’ll get one.”
“That’s all I can ask,” Alena said. She glanced over at her grandson, who had paused and looked up from his laptop. “David, anything to contribute before we continue?”
He gave her his typical insouciant smile and scratched at his chin. “Only that you’ve been at this nearly ten minutes already. Tick, tick, Alena.”
Little shit, she thought, with all the love in her heart. She couldn’t help but chuckle, though she knew it would be her last for a while.
“All right,” she said, turning to look at them all again. At Captain Siebalt and his officers to her left at the long table, at Captain Rouleau and his people, at the FBI agents who had more invested in this situation than any of them.