“Sure.”
The picture flicked past almost frame-by-frame. Nash stormed out of the motel room in the direction of the breezeway. A dark blur moved into the light, reflecting nothing and taking everything.
“Stop it. Back up about ten frames.” Reese leaned closer while the private did as asked. There, the last two frames, the blur almost became solid.
“What’s wrong?” Harrington said.
Reese worried his bottom lip with his teeth. “Uh, there’s something off.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s showing up on the camera.”
“The cameras at the lab caught them as a blur.”
“I know. And they shouldn’t have.”
The man narrowed a look at Reese. “Is there a reason why you didn’t say anything?”
“I didn’t really think it was important.” Reese held up a hand as if he could defend himself from the man’s withering stare. Not quite as bad as Phillips but bad enough. Besides, he carried a gun. “Sorry. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“I should hope not.”
To Private Todd, Reese said. “Can you enlarge it?”
He shook his head. “It’s as big as it will get without pixelating.”
Reese stared at the frozen picture. The more he looked at it, the greater the definition became. “Why are they showing up?” How, was a much better question.
“Could it be the cameras that recorded them?” Harrington said.
“No. They’re just standard infrared. The only time we came close to catching an image of them was with a high-speed movie camera. You know the kind that uses film and not a device that converts the picture into basically code to be interpreted by a computer.” And even then, it hadn’t been this clear. They’d discovered the inability for the Anubis to be recorded when they tried to document the fusion with the first cellular samples. The actual change Phased out on the recording, only to reappear once the Anubis had fused with the DNA in the cell.
It had been a drastic difference to the very first video recordings when they’d tried fusing the Anubis with living tissue.
There’d been fetuses in those cryo-units back at the facility with all the hallmarks of living tissue purging ichor at death.
Reese’s lips tingled, and his fingertips turned cold.
No. He had to be wrong.
Sweat broke out along the collar of his sweater.
“Dr. Dante?” Colonel Harrington pushed over a chair. “Sit, you just turned white as a sheet.”
“Fuck.”
“Dr. Dante?”
Nothing but a squeak came out of Reese’s throat. “It can’t… I don’t….” Reese was barely aware of Harrington forcing him into a chair.
“Breathe, Reese.”
He inhaled.
“Now talk.”
“I don’t think they’re dead.”