Part Three. Gods

Chapter Fifty-Two

The Dragon Factory

Sunday, August 29, 12:51 A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 83 hours, 9 minutes E.S.T.

Hecate and Paris stood together on a small balcony that jutted out from a metal walkway built above and around the central production floor of their primary facility. Below them over a hundred employees moved and interacted with the mindless and seamless choreography of worker bees. It was an image they had discussed and one they always enjoyed. Everything was color coded, which added to the visual richness of the scene. Blue jumpsuits for general support staff, white lab coats for the senior researchers, green scrubs for the surgical teams, orange for the medical staff, charcoal for the animal handlers, and a smattering of pastel shades for technicians in different departments. Hecate liked color, Paris liked busy movement.

The production floor was circular and a hundred feet across, with side corridors leading to labs, holding pens, design suites, bio-production factories, and computer centers. The lighting made it all look like Christmas.

Rising like a spike from the center of the floor was a statue of the tattoo each of the Twins wore in secret: a caduceus in which fierce dragons were entwined around the shepherd’s staff to form a double helix. Dragons were each carved from single slabs of flawless alabaster, the milky stone a perfect match for their skin. The central staff was marble, and the wings were made from hammered gold. The Twins had no personal religion, but to them the statue was sacred. To them it revealed aspects of their true nature.

Paris leaned a hip against the rail and sipped bottled water through a straw. He and his sister always drank from a private stock of Himalayan water. The general staff was provided with purified water. Their dockside warehouse, however, was filled to the rafters with bottled water from the bottling plant in Asheville owned by Otto on behalf of Cyrus. No one at the Dragon Factory was allowed to drink any of those bottles. Hecate and Paris certainly wouldn’t.

Generally the water shipments went directly from the bottling plant to the customs yard and then by ship to ports all over the world. The current store was scheduled for distribution to several islands here in the Bahamas. The cargo ship was scheduled to dock in ten hours.

“You really think Dad put something in the water?” asked Paris.

“Don’t you?”

He shrugged. “Like what? We’ve tested it for toxins, mercury, pollutants, bacteria… it’s just water.”

“Maybe,” Hecate said neutrally. “Maybe.”

“If you’re that concerned with it, then dump it into the ocean and fill the bottles with tap water.”

“We could,” she said. “But wouldn’t you like to know what’s in it?”

“You ordered a battery of new tests as soon as we got back. Let’s leave it until our people finish their analysis.” He narrowed his eyes. “Or… do you think you know what’s in it?”

She took his bottle from him and sipped it. “Know? No, I don’t know, but I have some suspicions. General suspicions…”

“Like…?”

“Genetic factors.”

Paris looked at her in surprise. “Gene therapy?”

“It can be done in water. It’s difficult, but Dad could do it. We could do it.”

“What kind of gene therapy?”

“I don’t know. If Dad was just a corrupt businessman I’d think he was adding something to create an addictive need for the water. For that particular brand of water.”

“We tested for hormones…”

“No… Dad’s all about genetics these days. And viruses.”

“We checked for viruses,” Paris said nervously.

“And found none, I know. That’s why I’m having the water tested for DNA.”

“What do we do if we find something in there?”

“Well, Brother… that depends on what the gene therapy is intended to accomplish. If it’s just an addictive component, then we let it slide but ask for a bigger cut of the water market.”

“What if it’s something bad?”

“ ‘Bad’?” She smiled at that. “Like what?”

“Like something destructive. Something that will kill people.”

Hecate shrugged. “I don’t know. Why? Are you getting squeamish?”

“After what the Berserkers found in Denver? What if I am?”

“God! It’s a little late to start developing a conscience, Paris.”

His eyes met hers and then shifted away. “I’ve always had a conscience. Something like a poison or a plague… that would be different.”

She shrugged.

Paris said, “The stuff we recovered from Denver. That’s Nazi death camp stuff. That’s… that’s wrong on a whole different level from anything we’ve done.”

“It’s fascinating.”

“Christ! It’s gruesome. I can deal with some slap and tickle. And, yes, I can deal with a little snuff… but the systematic torture and extermination of millions of people?”

His sister gave another dismissive shrug.

“Why the hell does Dad want that crap?”

“Why would any geneticist?” she asked.

“I don’t want it.”

“I do. I wish we had the Guthrie cards. Hundreds of thousands of blood samples, all neatly indexed with demographics. They’d be useful for collecting genetic markers.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think I’d like to build our empire on those kinds of bones.”

“What… you don’t like being an evil mastermind?”

“This isn’t a joke, Heck.”

“I’m not joking. And don’t call me that.”

“Is this how you see us? I mean, really? Do you think we’re evil?”

“Aren’t we?”

“Are we?”

Hecate handed back the water bottle. “We’ve killed people, sweetie. A lot of people. You yourself have strangled two women while you were screwing them. Not to mention all the people the Berserkers have killed. I never saw you shed a tear. Evil? Yes, I think that pretty much covers it.”

“We’re corrupt,” Paris said, almost under his breath. “Corruption isn’t actually evil.”

“It’s certainly not a saintly virtue.”

He crossed to the other side of the balcony and stared out through a big domed window at the warehouse on the dock. The doors were open and he could see the pallets of cased water. “Is there a line? Between corruption and evil? If so… when did we cross it?”

Hecate studied her brother’s profile. She had suspected that this was coming, but she hadn’t expected to hear this much hurt in Paris’s voice. “What’s going on with you? You’ve been in a mood ever since we left Dad’s place.”

“Dad. Alpha.” Paris snorted. “If we’re evil, Hecate, it’s because he made us that way. He’s a monster. We’re… by-products.”

“The apple and the tree, Paris.”

Paris shook his head.

Hecate frowned. “What are you saying, that if you had a choice you’d have done things differently? That you would have chosen a different path than following in Dad’s footsteps?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t want to get into a whole nature-versus-nurture debate, either,” he snapped. When she said nothing he leaned on the rail and stared out over the water as if he could already see the freighter. “I enjoyed what we did. I know that about me, and in a way I’m comfortable with it because I know that it serves my appetites. So… maybe there’s a level of corruption-of evil-that I’m okay with. Maybe even a level I want to be part of what defines me.”

“But…?” she prompted.

“But I don’t know that I want to believe that I have no limits. That my darkness has no limits.”

“That’s a little grandiose, Brother.”

He turned and spread his arms. “Look at me, Hecate. Look at us. We’re grand. Everything about us is larger than life. None of it’s real, a lot of it’s not even supposed to be possible… but here we are, and we’ve begged, borrowed, and stolen so much science that we’ve made the impossible possible. There’s never been anything like us before in history. Dad calls us his young gods, and in ways he’s not far wrong. We bend nature to our will.” She opened her mouth to speak, but Paris gave a curt shake of his head. “No, let me finish. Let me say this. Hecate, we’ve always been the Jakoby Twins. People would actually kill to be with us. People would kill to be near us. You know that for a fact because men have killed each other over you on two continents. We’re legends. We also know we’re not normal. We’re not even true albinos. This skin color is too regular, too pure white. Our bodies are without a single genetic flaw. We have blue eyes and perfect eyesight. We’ve never even had cavities. We’re stronger than we should be; we’re faster. And we’re almost identical twins despite being of different genders.”