Lorna suddenly quailed against stepping across that threshold, fearful of discovering what new horrors lay hidden here. Malik opened the doorway-and Lorna was shocked to hear childish laughter, accompanied by the clapping of small hands. Music also wafted out. The theme song from Sesame Street.
The incongruity of laughter in this house of pain set her teeth on edge. Fear grew sharper inside her.
“Come with me,” Malik said and led her inside.
Lorna had no choice but to follow, trailed by Bennett.
Malik continued his dialogue, sounding vaguely nervous, maybe even embarrassed. “Though they’re isolated here, we treat them very well.”
Lorna stepped into what could pass for an ordinary dayroom in any preschool. A chalkboard covered one wall. Beanbag chairs dotted the floor in a rainbow of colors. Crayon drawings decorated a corkboard, and in a corner, a plasma television showed a furry puppet conversing with Big Bird.
But it was the children in the room who drew Lorna’s full attention. Dozens of children sat on chairs or sprawled on rugs, raptly staring at the television screen. Each looked around the same age, or at least the same size. They stood no taller than her waist, but these were not toddling babies. Their fully developed features suggested maturity beyond their size. And from the downy fluff on cheeks and limbs, they were clearly related to the inhabitants on the other island. But rather than being naked, the children wore matching blue jumpers.
“How old are they?” Lorna whispered, choked by shock.
“From sixteen months to two years,” Malik answered.
As she stepped farther into the room one child turned toward her, then the others all swung to face her. It reminded her of the synchronization witnessed on the camera. Like a flock of birds startled into sudden flight or a school of fish turning on a dime.
She remembered Malik’s term: a hivelike intelligence.
Was that the source of this behavior? She knew flocking was still poorly understood. Some scientists wondered if there might not be some electromagnetic connection between birds in a flock or fish in a school, to get them to act so perfectly in unison. But the latest consensus seemed to suggest that each individual was responding to microsignals from its neighbors and responding in a preprogrammed fashion.
Looking at the behavior here, Lorna wondered if it might not be a combination of both.
The faces eventually swung back to the screen as a new song began to play on the television.
“They’re innocents,” Bennett said. “Kept isolated here from any corruption, bonding only among their own kind.”
Malik nodded. “We’re monitoring their IQ scores with nonverbal tests and watching for any signs of aggression. So far, their IQ levels are rising every week. And they’ve demonstrated no aggression. But that might be too early to judge. Aggression really only manifested after puberty with the others. Still, we’re hopeful.”
“What are you going to do with them?” Lorna asked, fearful of the answer.
“As fast as they mature, we’ll be collecting eggs from the older females in another six months. They’ll be nearing sexual maturity by then.”
Lorna went cold, contemplating such a violation of these little ones.
“From those eggs, we’re going to attempt to destroy the active sections of junk DNA that seems to be triggering these throwbacks, to try to breed it out of the next generation.” Malik rubbed his hands as if anxious to proceed. “We’re so close to a breakthrough that could change the world.”
Bennett nodded. “That’s why we could use your help.”
Malik concurred. “Your expertise with the breeding of exotic animals and handling genetic material is perfectly suited to aid us in the last leg of our work.”
The subtext was plain: it was an offer she couldn’t refuse. Not if she wanted to live. But how could she agree? These were not exotic animals close to extinction. In fact, they weren’t animals at all.
One of the children, a little girl, wandered from her beanbag and lifted her arms up in a universal gesture. Lorna leaned down and picked her up. The child was heavier than she expected, thicker boned, but her tiny hand lifted, and the girl began to suckle a thumb. Her small head settled to Lorna’s shoulder while bright eyes followed the alphabet lesson on the television.
(… brought to you by the letter W…)
Lorna could feel the child visibly relaxing. A slight tremble in her small body quieted with each breath. Lorna sensed the deprivation of these children, the lack of warm contact. It raised a question in her mind.
She glanced to Malik. “What happened to this child’s mother? To all their parents?”
Malik sought to assuage her. “You’ve seen them. They’re housed at the habitat. When we populated the other island, we separated the youngest specimens here. We’ve built this nursery with copper wiring in the walls to confine this group’s neural network to this handful of rooms, to isolate them from contamination while their brains are still pliable.”
Lorna pictured the violence caught on video, of one of the hominids attacking a guard. By Malik’s own admission, these weren’t dumb animals. Though they didn’t have the power of speech, they were plainly highly intelligent, communicating among themselves in ways no one could fully understand.
She began to suspect the reason for such an attack, for such savagery.
She was carrying it in her arms.
Maternal instinct was strong in most animals. In a communal setting, that instinct would be magnified. The loss of each child would be felt by the whole. Such abuse could drive them into a maddened state. Combine that with heightened intelligence-growing every week, according to Malik-the danger posed by the compound’s inhabitants would intensify.
No wonder the security measures were so strict.
Heaven help anyone who set foot over there.
FIVE MINUTES AFTER hitting the beach, Jack led his team through a grove of pines. He had quickly sought higher ground, but continued to parallel the beach as he circled toward the land bridge. In his head, he kept his position by fixing the sun’s position, the angle and direction of shadows.
Still, he wanted to getter a better lay of the land.
Spying a limestone outcropping that might suit his need, he lifted a fist.
Mack and Bruce dropped into shadows to either side, rifles fixed to their shoulders. Jack clambered up the rocky boulder. Sunlight dappled its surface. For the first time, he had a good view across the island, all the way to the cove on the western side. He noted a white speck out there. It trailed black smoke against the setting sun. He hoped Randy and the Thibodeauxs had enough smoke canisters to maintain their ruse.
He turned his attention to the immediate landscape below. He spotted the spit of sand connecting this island to the other. A glint of steel concerned him. It looked like some barricade split the bridge. The structure hadn’t been on any of his satellite maps, but the surveys had been old and the detail poor.
He frowned at the barricade but knew he had no other recourse. He would face that challenge when he reached it. Still, its presence nagged at him.
Why construct a barricade between the two islands?
Frustrated, he backed to the edge of the boulder, intending to hop down-when a stuttering spat of rifle fire erupted, exceptionally loud. From his perch, he spotted a flock of doves explode out of the forest, taking flight halfway between his post and the bridge.
He crouched, expecting the foliage to shred around him, believing he’d been spotted. But a moment later, the rifle fire turned into bloody screams. They rang out brightly through the air.
Then the screaming cut off with a note of finality. Silence followed, as if the forest were holding its breath.
Jack slipped off the boulder and back down into the shadows, keeping as quiet as possible. A cold certainty set in. He pictured the barricade. Something else shared this small island with them.