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Jack understood.
They’d both reached their goal.
After this final assault, all bets were off.
Chapter 57
Lorna kept the children lined along one side of the hallway. She edged up to the set of swinging doors that led into the main lab room. Voices reached her.
“How much time is left?”
Lorna recognized Malik’s accent. She also heard the panic in his voice. She used the tip of her pistol to ease open the door and peek through.
Be
Malik stood by a bank of computers. He was shoving hard drives into a metal suitcase. A portable Dewar flask for transporting cryogenic samples stood next to it.
“What about the rest of my team?” the doctor asked.
“Expendable,” Be
Lorna struggled to understand. Why were they leaving? Why this sudden urgency? She attempted to fold this new reality into her plans of escape. Could she somehow use this to her advantage?
Be
Malik snapped his briefcase shut, passed it to Be
“Understood. We’ll make arrangements en route.”
They turned and headed toward a far door, but it was not the one leading into the villa. An Emergency Exit sign glowed over the doorway.
Where did it lead?
As if hearing her question, Malik asked, “The tu
“It’s out of the direct line of fire. And the pilot is armed.”
Lorna stayed hidden. For the first time since her arrival here, hope bubbled through her. There’s another way out! If she maintained a safe distance and followed them out this back door, she could take the children into hiding in the woods and wait for this war to end.
But her luck wasn’t holding.
A harsh voice barked behind her. She turned to find a stick figure of a man standing by the entrance to the surgical suite. She recognized the technician, Edward, the one who had drawn her blood, injected her with hormones. She also recognized the rifle pointed at her.
“What are you doing here?” he called out loudly. He eyed the kids and kicked the closest one. “Drop your pistol and move into the lab.”
Lorna had no choice. She let the pistol clatter to the floor. The children came rushing up to her. She backed through the swinging doors into the main lab.
She turned to find Malik and Be
“Dr. Polk?” Be
Malik’s eyes widened upon seeing the clutch of children sticking close to her legs. “What luck.”
Be
“I could use a couple of these specimens,” the doctor explained. “They’d be perfect seeds for the new facility.”
Lorna’s stomach sank toward her feet. She’d delivered them straight into the hands of the monster.
Edward pushed into the room behind her. He had confiscated her pistol and pointed it at her. He took in the scene with a glance: the briefcase, the Dewar flask. His eyes flicked up to the emergency exit sign.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
Malik took a step forward, crouching slightly with a hand on his hip. He eyed the remaining children, as if trying to pick out a ripe melon. “I won’t lie to you, Edward. You deserve at least my honesty. The island is going to blow up in about seventeen minutes.”
Edward stumbled forward. The tip of the pistol wavered with his shock. “What?”
Lorna felt equally stu
“Don’t worry,” Malik said. “Your work won’t be in vain.”
Edward swung his pistol toward the two men. “Take me with you.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. No room. Especially now. We need these specimens.”
Malik straightened from his crouch. A tiny pearl-handled pistol had appeared in his hand as if by magic. He pointed it at Edward’s face and fired.
The shot was loud, stinging her ears.
Edward fell backward, tipping like an axed tree.
Even Be
Malik turned to his boss, but he kept his pistol aimed at Lorna. “We could each take one specimen. A breeding pair would trim at least a year off our new start-up.”
Be
His gaze briefly brushed across Lorna’s. The guilt that had flickered before now shone steadily. Lorna suspected he normally kept himself above such dirty work, purposely diverted his eyes from the bloody reality of this project. But such i
The same couldn’t be said of Malik. Working in the trenches from the start, he was covered in blood up to his elbows. “I’m afraid we’ll have to leave you here, Dr. Polk. You’ll have your freedom for”-he checked his own watch-“another fifteen minutes.”
Malik bent down and grabbed a boy by the arm and dragged him into the air, carrying him like a sack of groceries. “We’ll need a female, too. Take that one.”
He pointed his pistol.
Be
As they backed away a massive explosion ripped through the space.
The blast lifted her off her feet and tossed her backward. She slid across the floor. A flaming book tumbled past her nose, trailing ash. More debris blasted into the space. She fought to raise up to an elbow.
Children had been blown to the far wall. Be
Lorna searched around for a weapon.
Edward’s body had rolled against a table. There was no sign of her pistol, but his rifle was still tangled over his shoulder.
If she could reach it-
But Malik was already pushing up off the floor.
Be
Lorna began to sidle toward the rifle-when something massive bounded out of the fiery doorway and landed in a crouch. She stared in disbelief at the monstrous tiger. The beast roared, black tongue curled, exposing saber-sharp fangs.
Malik scuttled away like a crab.
Be
Lorna recognized the tiger from the video feed on the other island. The psychotic bunch must have broken free of their prison-and plainly had come for revenge. She now understood why Be
More shapes piled in behind the first, pouring out from the short tu
Off to the side, Malik had backed to the emergency exit. He had somehow kept hold of the Dewar cryogenic flask. He hugged it to his chest and dove out into the tu
Be
One of the hominids came forward. He was missing an ear, and his face was massively scarred. Lorna recognized him from the video feed. He had been the one with the pregnant female, the one Be
That would make him Adam, she thought.
He came at Be
The man didn’t bother to move or struggle. There was nothing he could do.
Then the children suddenly rushed forward, moving like a flock of starlings protecting a nest. They piled on top of Be
Adam stood over them. More hominids appeared behind him.