The Bone Labyrinth

  He looks slowly around the room. There are no toys, no drawing board, no ropes. He stares toward the food in the bucket, but he has no hunger.

  Only fear.

  He keeps his back to the far corner, turned away from the stinking pile, where the man made him go. There is no toilet here like back home. He feels shame—not only because he was taught not to go on the floor, but because he knows what is hidden in there, put there by the man.

  He huffs his confusion, his frustration.

  He thumbs his chin, rocking in place.

  [Mama, Mama, Mama…]

  Then a loud noise erupts—a roaring, a fierce bellowing. It comes from the big shiny door at the other end of the room. Red letters shine on a sign above it, angry like a warning. Something bangs heavily against that door.

  Baako goes still, afraid to move, fearful of attracting whatever screamed like that. His tiny hairs quiver with warning. He hears blood in that roaring, as surely as he smells it from his fingertips. His two mothers told him stories at night, often with pictures. Some had monsters in them: shadows lurking under a bed or trolls hiding under bridges.

  Trolls eat goats, he remembers Mama telling him.

  He does not know what made that bellow. It goes silent again, but Baako fears he might be a goat in this story.

  He turns from that shiny door and toward the double doors at the other end of the room, where the big man vanished, but he thinks of another.

  Mama, where are you?

  5:42 P.M.

  Maria paced the length of the octagon-shaped room. The floors were polished concrete, the walls a featureless white plaster. All around, glass-enclosed alcoves held ancient artifacts and tools, their antiquity in direct contrast to the modern sterility of the place.

  Dr. Dayne Arnaud stood before one of the cases, slightly bent at the waist, his hands clasped behind him. The paleontologist studied a fist-size stone, chipped into a prehistoric hand ax. But from the haunted expression on his face, he likely had little interest in what he was looking at and sought only to distract himself from the situation at hand.

  She understood. The brutal and sudden execution of Professor Wrightson weighed upon them both.

  She glanced to a pair of armed guards flanking the exit. Jiaying Lau had escorted her and Dr. Arnaud down into the subterranean complex beneath the zoo and abandoned them in this museum room, promising to return shortly.

  That was over an hour ago. By now Maria’s nerves were stretched as tautly as piano wire. She finally stopped next to the French paleontologist.

  Maybe if we compared notes . . .

  “Dr. Arnaud,” she said, drawing his attention. “Do you have any thoughts or theories about what might be going on here?”

  He glanced to the exit and gave a small shake of his head.

  She sighed, trying to sort things out. “Clearly this must be some sort of covert genomics project, one tied to ancient DNA, but there’s something else going on here, something the Chinese are still keeping under wraps. After they kidnapped you and Professor Wrightson, were you able to overhear anything?”

  “Hélas, Docteur Crandall,” Arnaud started, then firmed his lips and switched to English. “I’m sorry. But unfortunately I know no Mandarin, so the little that I overheard was meaningless to me.”

  She was in the same boat.

  “But,” he said, sweeping an arm, “from the collection gathered here, I can make some suppositions.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let me show you.”

  He marched her over to one of the larger alcoves. On a shelf, illuminated from panels at the back, rested a massive skull, far larger than any human’s, but with similar conformations.

  Something in the ape family, she guessed.

  When Arnaud spoke, she heard the envy in his voice. “Nothing like this skull has ever been found. At least not this intact.”

  “What is it?”

  “An extinct species of gorilla. Gigantopithecus blacki. Such beasts roamed the highlands of southern China and Vietnam until they died off a hundred thousand years ago.”

  She eyed the size of the skull. “It must’ve been massive.”

  “En effet,” he agreed. “It stood three meters tall and weighed as much as five hundred kilograms.”

  She tried to imagine such a half-ton beast.

  “All we know about the species,” Arnaud continued, “comes from a handful of molars and a few fragments of jaw. The first teeth were found back in 1935 at an apothecary shop in Hong Kong.”

  “As in a drugstore? What were the teeth doing there?”

  “In Chinese medicine, fossilized bones were often pulverized into a powder to formulate elixirs.”

  “But what’s all of this have to do with what’s going on here?”

  He stared around at the collection. “From this specimen and several others, I would wager someone has made a discovery of astounding importance, a cache of fossils and relics that could potentially rewrite what we understand about our early history.”

  She frowned at the gorilla skull. “What do you mean, our history?”

  “Like I said, Gigantopithecus went extinct only a hundred thousand years ago, making it a contemporary of early man in this region.” He moved to another alcove. “And look at all of the bone, antler, and stone tools on display here. From my estimate, they all date to the Upper Paleolithic.”

  She slowly nodded. She knew that period well from her own research. It was when Neanderthals coexisted with humans, along with a handful of other hominin tribes still in existence: the Denisovans, the hobbit-like Homo floresiensis, even a few surviving Homo erectus relatives.

  It was a pivotal moment in human history.

  Arnaud directed her next to a stone figure. It was a crude depiction of a gravid woman squatted around her large belly. “Such Venus figures began appearing in the Upper Paleolithic. The Venus of Willendorf, the Venus of Laussel, et cetera. If you look closely, you can see traces of red ocher painted on this figurine, a clear sign of ritualistic behavior.”

  “So you believe this entire collection all came from a relatively narrow sliver of history?”

  “Not only that, but also the same place. From the presence of that intact Gigantopithecus skull, I’d say these artifacts all came from southern China, maybe up in the Himalayas. Which brings us to this unusual item.” He shifted her over to another case, to another skull, this one much smaller. “Notice the blend of archaic features and modern anatomy found in this specimen. The flat face, the thick skull bones, the broad nose.”

  “It looks human.”

  “But not quite.” He glanced over to her. “This skull belongs to a cave-dwelling people, a tribe who were only recently discovered in the southern provinces of China. They’re called the Red Deer Cave people, and their existence still baffles paleontologists and archaeologists.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they shouldn’t exist. For the longest time, it was accepted that Neanderthals were the last of our closest relatives to survive, dying off some thirty to forty thousand years ago. But the bones of the Red Deer Cave people date back only eleven thousand years.”

  Her eyes widened. That was a mere blip in geological time.

  “Most paleontologists believe they’re a subspecies of human, a crossbreed of Homo sapiens and a more ancient hominin tribe, the Denisovans, further proving our ancestry is much more blended than previously suspected.”

  She already knew this to be true. It was well documented that humans carried the genes from both Neanderthals and Denisovans, the percentages of which varied by regions. But much still remained a mystery, like the fact that a recent comprehensive study suggested our genetic ancestry owed a debt to a third archaic group, one as yet unknown.

  The possibilities intrigued her.

  If that puzzle could be solved, what might be learned about our true past?

  “Do you think that’s what the Chinese are exploring here?” she asked. “Trying to piece together t
he genetic root of what makes us human?”

  “I don’t know.” He swept his gaze across the room. “But from the pristine condition of these fossils and relics—all marking such a significant moment in time—the Chinese discovered something important, something they judged valuable enough to keep hidden from the rest of the scientific world.”

  She considered the cost involved in the construction of this buried laboratory complex. It must have been substantial, on a par with the Manhattan Project. But even more disconcerting was who was running it all.

  She glanced to the uniformed guards. “If you’re right about this discovery, why is it being run by a division of the Chinese military?”

  Arnaud furrowed his brow. “Perhaps they are seeking a way to weaponize what they found.”

  Maria took in a deep breath, horrified at what that might mean.

  “Then again, Dr. Crandall, was not your own research funded by DARPA, the U.S.’s military science division?”

  That was certainly true.

  Are my hands any cleaner?

  Her funding came from a division of DARPA called the Biological Technologies Office, whose mission statement was to explore the boundary between the biological and the physical sciences. Before accepting DARPA’s grant money, she had read up on other BTO projects, many of which involved enhancing soldiers in various ways: from advanced prosthetics to cortical implants. But one of the projects also sought ways to increase human intelligence through genetic manipulation. She suspected her and Lena’s research with Baako was linked to that long-term goal.

  She closed her eyes, unable to deny the truth any longer. Like it or not, the world was in the midst of an escalating biotechnological arms race. And she and Lena were a part of it.

  But who were we truly working for? She pictured Amy Wu’s smiling face. Was it China or the United States?

  She breathed harder, realizing now she would have no choice in the matter going forward, not if she wanted to live. She remembered the lesson in the brutal execution of Professor Wrightson.

  Be useful . . . or be dead.

  She stared toward the exit, knowing the one person who would decide her fate.

  As if responding to her summons, the door opened and a figure entered, followed by an armed Chinese soldier. But the newcomer wasn’t the one whom Maria had been expecting.

  Kowalski lumbered into the room. He cast a scowl back at the man with the pistol—it was that bastard Gao—then turned to Maria. His left cheek looked freshly bandaged, and he was wearing a new set of gray coveralls.

  “There you are,” he grumbled.

  “What happened?” She studied his face. “Is Baako—”

  Kowalski fingered his bandage. “He freaked out. Attacked me.”

  Maria felt her heart skip a beat, but then Kowalski flattened his fingers and scooped them under his chin, signing to her.

  [I’m lying]

  He stared pointedly at her. “We should both go down there and try to calm him.”

  Before she could respond, Gao prodded Kowalski deeper into the room. “The major general says for you all to wait here.”

  Kowalski’s jaw tightened with frustration.

  Seems we’re not going anywhere yet.

  With no more explanation, Gao swung away and stormed out of the room. Clearly something had the Chinese soldier agitated.

  “What was that all about?” Maria asked Kowalski.

  Kowalski looked grim and kept his voice to a whisper. “I think they may be onto us.”

  6:05 P.M.

  “I’m certain my brother left no trail for the Americans to follow,” Chang Sun insisted. The lieutenant colonel stood at stiff attention, but his eyes blazed with anger. “I would stake my life on it.”

  And I will hold you to that, Jiaying thought.

  She stood inside the complex’s security office. Earlier she had received a warning from the Ministry of State Security, which oversaw intelligence operations for the People’s Republic of China. From rumblings within the U.S. intelligence services, it seemed the Americans suspected who was behind the attack on the primate center. And if so, she had to assume the Americans might be sending assets to investigate.

  If they aren’t already here . . .

  To ramp up the facility’s security, she had personally come down to this office, into the heart of the section run by Chang. It was a purposeful trespass to demonstrate her fury, a sign that she lacked confidence in the lieutenant colonel’s ability.

  She swept her gaze across the bank of monitors covering the three walls. Technicians were normally seated at the U-shaped desk below those monitors, observing the feed from the various cameras positioned throughout the underground complex and the zoo above. She had ordered everyone out to have this private conversation with Chang.

  She let the man stew upon her rebuke, staring instead at the monitor that showed Dr. Crandall’s gorilla seated sullenly in his pen. “And you had that beast’s body and cage thoroughly scanned for any hidden electronics.”

  “Gao saw to it personally just now. After he strip-searched and did the same to the zookeeper. There’s nothing. Like I said, there was no failure on my brother’s part that could have led the Americans to look toward our shores.”

  “But according to the Ministry of State Security, they are doing exactly that.”

  “Then it must have been something the Americans learned from that mole in the White House’s science division. Who knows what Dr. Wu told them before she died or what the Americans learned afterward?”

  Jiaying recognized this was a likely scenario. Thankfully, Dr. Wu knew no details about these labs. Still, Jiaying refused to loosen the noose from around Chang’s neck or his younger brother’s. Not until she was fully satisfied that the Americans knew nothing about this facility.

  “What about Dr. Crandall?” Chang asked.

  Jiaying shifted her attention to another monitor, one showing an overhead view of the room holding the American geneticist and the French paleontologist. They had just been joined by the tall zookeeper, led there by Gao.

  “I will bring a technician with me when I rejoin her and scan her there,” she said. “I still have much to discuss with her.”

  “Do you believe she’ll cooperate?”

  “That will depend to a large extent on whether you are able to secure her sister. How are matters proceeding in Italy?”

  Jiaying took pleasure in pointing out another of Chang’s failures. Apparently Lena Crandall had survived the caves of Croatia and was on the run with a small group whose identities and loyalties remained obscure. Jiaying was still mystified by the strange path that Lena and these others had taken in Italy.

  It made no sense.

  Why had they gone to that remote Catholic sanctuary?

  Chang spoke stiffly, “All should be resolved within the hour.”

  “Let’s hope in a satisfactory manner. I suggest you concentrate on that and leave the matter of Maria Crandall’s cooperation to me.”

  Jiaying glanced over to another screen. The monitor was dark. It required a special key to access that feed, a key only she and Chang possessed. When activated, it offered a view down into the Ark. With the two sisters in hand, the problems facing the facility could be resolved more quickly.

  Then again, if need be, Jiaying could manage with only one of the sisters.

  She turned to Chang and fixed him with a cold stare. “See that our perimeters are continually monitored, especially for any foreigners.”

  “And my brother?”

  She turned and headed toward the door. “An agent from the ministry will be here shortly to interrogate Gao. Once finished, have your brother dismissed from the premises until we fully grasp the breadth of his failure.”

  “But—”

  “Are you questioning my orders, Zhōngxiào Sun?”

  She felt the other’s gaze burning a hole into her back. She preferred to keep those two brothers apart, to keep Chang isolated from any support. The lieut
enant colonel would tread more carefully and respectfully, knowing his brother’s career could be in jeopardy.

  “Bù, Shàojiàng Lau,” he said.

  She smiled, hearing the obeisance in Chang’s voice.

  That’s more like it.

  She headed out, determined to bend another just as firmly to her will.

  6:18 P.M.

  Maria stood with her arms outstretched to her sides as an electronic wand was passed over her body by a technician in a white lab jacket. Major General Jiaying Lau stood to one side with her arms crossed. The woman had asked her to submit to this search but had never explained why.

  Not that I can’t guess.

  The Chinese must have caught wind of the possible presence of the GPS tracker, but the haphazard search suggested they were unsure. It felt more like they were covering their bases. She glanced over the top of the technician’s head toward Kowalski. He looked unperturbed. Surely the guards had already searched him and likely used the wand on Baako, too.

  The technician said something in Mandarin to Jiaying, bowing his head slightly and stepping away. She could guess what he was telling his superior: All clear. So what had happened to the tracker? Had Kowalski found a way to hide it in Baako’s cell? Or had Baako swallowed it?

  She had so many questions, but Jiaying had returned before she could get anything further from Kowalski.

  The major general stepped forward. “With that matter settled, Dr. Crandall, let us continue our earlier conversation regarding the research being conducted here. I believe that once you fully appreciate what we’re trying to accomplish, you’ll want to be part of it.”

  Like hell I will, she thought, but she turned and looked about the octagon-shaped room full of fossils, specimens, and relics.

  “If I had to hazard a guess,” Maria said, “your project must involve building a stronger soldier through genetics.”

  Jiaying showed no reaction, beyond the slightest bow of her head. “Perhaps on the surface that is our goal. But the biggest advances in science have always been driven by the baser needs of the world.”

  “In other words, necessity is the mother of invention,” Maria quoted.

  “Such has been true since the beginning of time. But all too often what the military funds in secret eventually reaches the larger world. Look at the global Internet. It started as a small U.S. military information web, but soon expanded to change the world. Similarly, the hurdles we leap here today will alter the path of humankind tomorrow.”