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CHAPTER1
CARSON
Northern Lights Genome Project
Reykjavik, Iceland
Reykjavik was cold this time of year. Who was he kidding? Reykjavik was cold any time of the year. Even during the summer months, they were lucky if the temperature managed to climb above the mid-fifties. His twin brother Mason liked to point out that Alaska’s temperatures were brutal in comparison. Carson Payne asked himself again why he’d decided to become a geneticist and accept a job as the lead for an up-and-coming company specializing in genome research.
The simple answer was they had offered him a boatload of money, a generous living stipend and to pay off his student loans. Given that he’d studied for both his undergraduate and doctoral degrees at Clemson University, the amount they’d paid off had been staggering. The more complex answer was that Northern Lights Genome Project, NLGP as it was more commonly known, was on the cutting edge of genetic research. Their corporate headquarters might be in Silicon Valley, but their vast research facility was outside Reykjavik, where it was believed if there was some kind of ‘accident,’ between the frigid temperatures and sparse population, any resulting damage could be maintained.
It was another bone-chilling day in Iceland and Carson was headed from his lab to the coffee room. Coffee was, in his opinion, the elixir of life. He was one of those people who others learned not to speak to until he’d had his dark roast with just a splash of cream—none of that powdered or flavored stuff—real cream. He was just about to enter when he overheard a snippet of a conversation that would change the course of his life.
“I understand Seattle was a colossal failure,” said Tim Bartles, one of the scientists working on the EnGen project.
“That could well be the understatement of the year,” said Kam Perkins. “I heard Dr. Bullard flipped out. He thought they had a viable breeder, but he wouldn’t cooperate, and they had trouble extracting what they needed from the samples they were able to get.”
“They should have had scientists or at least people with a medical or scientific background trying to get the samples. Trusting that kind of thing to goons is not the way to get the job done right.”
“Agreed. They kept spraying the thing with a saltwater solution to try and keep it under control, but it appears that doing so may have corrupted what they were able to harvest.”
“Too bad they didn’t get a female. They could have put it down and harvested the eggs.”
“I think that may be what they try next. The problem is they’re so rare, the males are over-the-top protective, and there are those that think trying to get one could provoke a war.”
“We have the approval of the Ruling Council, don’t we?”
“We have the tacit approval of some of them. I’ve heard some of those at the top are worried we’ll be disavowed if things go south. Besides, the Council has never had much sway over their clans, and no one wants to face off with the Phantom Fire.”
Phantom Fire? Wasn’t that the mythological band of mercenaries made up of immortal dragons?His colleagues couldn’t actually be talking about the existence of dragons, could they? Dragons didn’t exist except in fairytales and legends. Many believed they’d existed thousands of years ago, but surely if they had, they had long ago gone extinct.
The two men seemed to be shuffling around, getting whatever they were getting in the break room. Carson didn’t like at all what he’d overheard. He might have dismissed it as two scientists spinning wild theories, but neither Bartles nor Perkins was given to speculative research or gossip. Coupled with some other things that had been drifting around the office compound for the past few months, it was troubling.
Genetic research was important. There wasn’t anyone at NLGP who didn’t take it seriously. It didn’t matter who you were or what you did; in the end, it all came back to genetics. But given that Carson was a snow leopard-shifter, he’d had a crucial need to understand genetics from an early age. He couldn’t help but believe that if they could understand shifter DNA—specifically how two different species with two completely different DNA sequences could combine into a new one, they might be able to help humans understand that shifters weren’t freaks. In point of fact, they were their first cousins—closer to humans, genetically speaking, than chimpanzees and bonobos.
Carson knew that genetic research generally bored the hell out of people. When at social gatherings he told people what he did for a living they either got a glazed-over look in their eyes or they made insipid jokes aboutJurassic Parkand/or Dolly, the first cloned sheep. They didn’t understand that truly understanding and mapping DNA was the key to scientific discovery. If what Bartles and Perkins said could be taken at face value, something at NLGP had gone terribly wrong.
Some of those who saw the potential in genetic research, including his brother Mason, also saw the potential dangers. There was no denying it. Human nature being what it was, there was a very real chance that any advances in understanding DNA could be weaponized or used to perpetuate some of the horrors portrayed inJurassic ParkandThe Island of Dr. Moreau.Carson didn’t deny it. He just believed that if the only people doing the research were doing so for personal or nefarious gains, it could lead to the end of life as anyone knew it. He believed with every fiber of his being that ethical scientists and geneticists needed to be leading the research into the answers only DNA could provide.
Mason called him ‘Forrest’ and chided him for what Mason believed to be his naïveté and deliberate blissful ignorance as far as NLGP was concerned. But naïve was the last thing Carson was. He was well aware of the pitfalls of genetic research. He believed the shifters needed to be involved in order to ensure their kind—all species—were protected and respected and not used for perverse or evil purposes.
Maybe Mason was right. Maybe he was naïve—there were just as many unethical shifters as there were humans—maybe more. After all, shifters knew shifters existed and understood the leg up they had on the evolutionary ladder and food chain from their wholly human counterparts. The ability to shift from man to beast had enabled some species long extinct in their purebred form, e.g., cave lions, dire wolves, saber-tooth cats and the like to continue and thrive. But dragons?
Carson worked the rest of the day, keeping mostly to himself and trying to look busy. Over and over, he replayed the conversation he’d overheard between Bartles and Perkins. He wanted to dismiss it, but given who they were, he couldn’t. Two months ago, if he hadn’t known who they were, he could have written it off as idle guesswork, but he’d been given a big promotion as lead on his team, and he knew Bartles and Perkins held similar positions. There was no way they were talking frivolously. In addition, he, too, had heard about the EnGen project going terribly wrong and the big bosses were looking at overhauling the entire program, including personnel.
“Hey, Carson,” said Joyce Nelson, one of the people he supervised, as she stuck her head in his lab, “a bunch of us are going to the Crystal Cube for burgers and brews. Want to come?” The Crystal Cube was one of the local taverns that had pretty good food and a wide variety of beer and ale on tap.
“No. I need to finish up here. Then I think I’ll head to the Glacier Café. It’s Meatloaf Monday.”
Joyce laughed. “You and your meatloaf.”
Carson grinned. “Hey, the Glacier’s meatloaf is really good, and it’s pretty much the only place they serve it, and they only serve it on Mondays.”
While that was true, it wasn’t the real reason he didn’t want to go out with his team. He was still having trouble processing what he’d overheard, and he was thinking of doing something incredibly stupid. By going to the Glacier Café, he wouldn’t be doing anything unusual, and if he decided to commit career suicide, it would be harder to track a phone call from one of the payphones inside the café.
After he was sure everyone was gone, Carson downloaded his most recent and updated research onto a backup storage device that looked like a cell phone battery. He’d taken to having three cell phone batteries—one which he normally kept in his cell phone, one in the glove compartment of his Dacia Duster, and one in a small hidden compartment of his luggage.
It wasn’t that Carson was paranoid, but his brother Mason could be a bit eccentric. Mason had served in the US Military and had a tendency to be something of a conspiracy nut. When Carson had announced he was going to work for NLGP in Iceland, Mason had insisted he take a gun, have an unregistered cell phone no one knew anything about, and have his secret storage devices. Mason believed that NLGP wasn’t all that it said that it was and that they had their own secret, hidden agenda.
