Contagious

Triangles used many stem cells to make their cellulose framework and become full-blown hatchlings. Sometimes old stem-cell lines produced bad s.h.i.+t: defective cells, even cancerous cells. When that happened, the reader-b.a.l.l.s and herders and builders identified bad stem cells and simply removed them.

The stem cells producing crawler strands, on the other hand, worked as solo operatives. They were in a hurry. Herders focused on finding and converting more stem cells, not doing quality control.

Donald, being the oldest of the three infected Jewells, had more shortened telomeres than Betty, and far more than Chelsea. Most of his modified stem cells produced defective muscle strands. Some of these strands were dead on arrival, just floating bits. Others lived long enough to send and receive the “I am here” signal and join up with other strands. Still others made it to full crawler size and began their mission along the nerves, although this effort alone was usually enough to make them shut down after a little bit of distance.

And when they shut down, the rot began.

Slowly at first, a low-level exponential reaction. But as the number of dead strands grew, so did the level of rot-inducing chemicals.

Each modified muscle strand carried both the apoptosis catalyst and a strong counterchemical that blocked the catalyst. If there were more living strands than dead strands, the apoptosis couldn’t gain a foothold. But when there were more dead strands than living strands, that balance tipped the other way.

Throughout Donny’s body that balance was tipping fast. Tiny areas of cell death expanded and multiplied. Particularly in his left hand, the apoptosis compounded on itself and started to spiral out of control.

While he slept, Donny Jewell began to dissolve from the inside out.

THE LITTLE BLUE BOOK

Zero casualties. Well, one if you counted Private Domkus tripping on a branch and spraining his ankle, but other than that, nothing. So if it was his most successful hatchling encounter yet, why did Colonel Charlie Ogden feel so anxious?

Air transport had pulled all of Whiskey and X-Ray companies out of Marinesco and taken them back to Fort Bragg. North Carolina wasn’t exactly a central location for the missions, but it wasn’t that far, only a forty-five-minute flight to Detroit on a C-17 Globemaster transport jet.

Fort Bragg was a big

Fort Bragg also housed the USASOC, the United States Army Special Operations Command. Unconventional warfare, special reconnaissance, ant.i.terrorism—all kinds of aircraft, coming and going at all hours. No one asked where they went, no one asked why they went. That was life 24/7 for the USASOC, and it provided ideal cover for Project Tangram operations.

Throw in all the aircraft available at the adjacent Pope Air Force Base, including plenty of those C-17s, and you had a perfect mix—built-in secrecy, endless options for transport. The DOMREC came and went; no one wondered why.

Ogden sat alone in his quarters, performing his nightly ritual. It consisted of three things:

A letter to his wife.

The Bible.

The Little Blue Book.

He kept the letter short. He was tired and had to get some sleep. I love you, I miss you terribly, I don’t know when I can come home, but I pray it will be soon. The usual stuff, repet.i.tive only because it was sincere and he had to express it to her every day. Fold, insert, but don’t seal—tomorrow some CIA s.h.i.+thead would read it and make sure he wasn’t writing home about the hatchlings.

The Bible was just the New Testament, actually. Most of the gold lettering on the faux-red-leather cover had flaked off. Half of the back cover had torn off somewhere in the Mideast. Just random damage, not sacrilege.

Every night he read pa.s.sages from the New Testament, then moved on to the Little Blue Book. Sometimes he’d skim the Bible pa.s.sages, skip around, read some sentences and not others, but he didn’t do that with the Little Blue Book. With that one he read every single word.

Every single name.

He opened it and started reading.

Lewis Aucoin, 22.

He never wrote down rank. Death was death. You didn’t get a better death because you had a better rank, right?

Parker Cichetti, 27.

He remembered Parker. Good guy. Could juggle.

Damon Gonzalez, 20.

He’d never met Damon. Not even once.

He continued down the list of names, giving each one a moment of remembrance, a flicker of light in the terrestrial world just in case the afterlife was dark and silent. Sometimes he wondered if the souls of the dead could experience heaven only when someone remembered their name. Once you were forgotten, you were truly gone forever. Guys like Einstein, Patton, Caesar... every day people read about them in history books, saw their names in movies and TV—they spent an eternity in heaven. Guys like Damon? Probably would wink out of existence shortly after Ogden himself pa.s.sed on.

He didn’t know where he’d picked up that strange belief, but it was always at the back of his head, driving him, pus.h.i.+ng him to greater and greater achievements. He had to make a name for himself. He’d never thought the name could be as grand as that of a Churchill or a Schwarzkopf, but now he knew better.

He’d been given a once-in-a-lifetime task, and if he succeeded, victory would land him in the history books forever.

Was G.o.d testing him with this task? That was definitely possible. G.o.d worked in mysterious ways, true, but twenty years in the military had shown Ogden more of man’s inhumanity to man than he cared to remember. Sometimes G.o.d just put the players on the field and let them have at it.