LITMIR.BIZ

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or mistreating noncombatants.”

      “Nor did they work as a single coordinated force like a modern army,” Eduardo reminded him.

      “I think they were guerrillas.”

      Romanticizing, Eduardo thought, yet the young man had a valid point. This burial was possibly a warrior of some significance. “This drawing depicts ceremonial combat. One-on-one for the purpose of producing a few vanquished prisoners. These unfortunates were needed to fill a central role in the sacrifice ceremony that followed battle. From the drawings on the walls and past finds, we know the warrior prisoners were first stripped of clothing and battle equipment. Then naked and leashed around the neck with a rope, they were brought to a ceremonial center. There the prisoners’ throats were cut, their blood consumed by the ceremony participants, and finally their bodies were dismembered.”

      “Yes, but why? And who fought them? Why not use them as slaves or integrate them into the tribe? If they had, they might not have died out so fast.”

      “Purity of race, perhaps.” Eduardo shrugged. “They needed sacrifices and wouldn’t do that to their own if they could avoid it.”

      “But outsiders didn’t believe it was an honor. Poor souls. Professor Calan of UCLA found the burial tomb of a Moche priest and a child, both with a bone deformity. Yet they weren’t ritually killed.”

      “Which proves they honored their own and sacrificed the outsiders.”

      Gil look disgusted.

      “You’re glad it’s an ancient culture?”

      “Let’s just say I wouldn’t want to meet up with them in the jungle.” The young man pointed to the find. “The lid’s intact. Can you open it?”

      “I want to X-ray it first. Bring me a box please.” The jar had a seal rimmed in flecks of gold and a waxlike substance.

      Eduardo took photos and measurements, then tied the string grid lines from the rest of the dig to this spot. Until he studied and deciphered the icons on the urn, he wouldn’t open it. It had significant weight, and whatever was inside was preserved—and sealed for a reason.

      U.S. Army Medical Facility

      Virginia

      Clancy’s heels clicking on the tile floor were like something out of a slasher movie. Distant and unsuspecting. That she was the only one working after hours magnified her seclusion. She stopped outside the primate lab and swiped her ID access through the security. Quick footsteps from somewhere to her left made her skin tighten.

      Sergeant Victors appeared, his sidearm drawn. When he saw her, he pointed it to the ceiling and relaxed.

      “Damn.” She snapped her fingers. “Lost another chance to fire your gun, huh, Daniel?”

      “Oh yeah, I’m trigger-happy tonight. Be careful.”

      “Next time come at me with more firepower than that. I feel insulted.”

      He grinned like a new groom as she pushed open the door.

      “You’ll be okay with that creature?” he asked.

      Clancy glanced into the lab at the sedated orangutan in the titanium cage. “That wuss? Oh yeah.”

      “He’s a 250-pound wuss, ma’am.”

      “Yes, but I think our relationship is in the wooing stage. He tried picking fleas off me this morning.”

      “Did he find any?”

      Her narrow look lost impact when she smiled. “Okay, that does it, you’re off my Christmas list.”

      Waving at him, she stepped into the lab, but didn’t turn on the overhead lights. The bluish illumination from inside the glass cold storage locker and the running lights under the tables shone off the black floor and stainless steel with an incandescent glow. Besides, Boris was sleeping and she’d like to keep it that way. Whenever she was near, he shook the cage and dry-humped the bars.

      The embarrassment wasn’t half as bad as the fact that her only romantic prospect lately was a fat hairy orangutan that was doped up most of the time.

      And he had his happy juice three hours ago, she thought, checking his stats for the day. Turning away from the computers, she slipped on latex gloves and prepared a syringe to draw blood. A pinprick was enough to examine under the microscope, but this would just save Dr. Yates from doing it in the morning. Boris had favorites and Francine Yates wasn’t one of them. Must be pheromones, Clancy thought, moving to the cage and stroking the sleeping orangutan’s forehead.

      “You really are an ugly creature,” she said softly, swabbing the vein. “But I mean that in the nicest possible way.”

      She pushed the needle into a protruding vein, then drew back the plunger. Boris didn’t even flinch. The syringe full, she drove the needle into the rubber-stoppered vial, then let a single drop fall onto the slide. Bending over a microscope was passé, and she brought the magnified sample up on the larger screen. At two thousand magnification, the blood cells were still working. She sat in a wheeled chair and admired the beauty of a simple cell.

      She’d done this a thousand times in the last two months and had completed her third-stage computer synthesized tests just last week. Implanting Boris was only the first stage. They had to let it ride for weeks or perhaps months before they’d know if the pod did any severe damage to the animal’s body, mostly the brain.

      An injectable bionanotechnology with neuron-synthesized capabilities was not a cold medicine. It altered the brain, the body’s ability to function. The reaction to physical antibodies, the breakdown of the technology or white cell damage wasn’t conclusive without knowing long-term effects in the test animals.

      Yesterday’s discussion with the commanding officer and his medical board popped into mind. None of them were pleased with her insistence on a longer test period. Though they were on schedule, it was just not fast enough for the room full of officers. They’d grilled her for three straight hours till she was ready to confess her ex-husband’s fetish for wearing women’s panties. But then, that would prove the caliber of loser she attracted. Clancy wasn’t swayed.

      She’d created it. It was her baby, and the only reason Clancy was sitting here in the first place was that her natural ability—found too late in life to make her millions—got her here. Shortchanging herself or the project was simply not an option.

      Relaxed in the chair, she stared at the cells on the screen, then turning to the scope, she dropped a pinpoint of a simple flu virus into the blood sample. The blood cells immediately fought it off with amazing speed.

      “Yes!”

      The implantation was changing his blood, and Boris’s behavior, with the exception of his ardent displays of affection for her, was normal. Nonaggressive. Almost no change. A good thing since they were altering his brain and body chemistry. He could, for all they knew, turn into King Kong with a really nasty attitude.

      She labeled the vial with time and date, then in the chair, rolled across the slick floor to the cold storage locker and opened the glass door. Frosted air swept around her face as she put the vial in a new rack, then checked the sequential numbers. She frowned, recounting, then realized there was a new set of four samples on the next level at the back. She plucked a tube from the rack and read. No name, only numbers. That wasn’t necessary. Boris was the only candidate here this week.

      Curious, she jotted down the number, put the pallet of tubes back, then closed the fridge door and pushed off. She glided to the computer, grabbing the desk to stop herself, then opened log files and punched in the new set of numbers. She waited for the search.

      Her gaze skipped around the darkened room, flicking to the camera panning in slow, quiet intervals. Colonel Cook’s personal eyeball into your life. Did he watch everything around here? Made her almost tempted to flash him. A portion of the massive string of buildings was a hospital, and while it wasn’t hidden from sight, what they did here was classified—though

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