After the way he reacted to the idea of getting involved with New World? “No. There’s no way. He hated New World.”
“He tried to blow up a lab belonging to New World not long after he and Echols parted ways.” Phillips flicked her gaze back to Reese.
Right before having a breakdown from what Reese had heard. “Yeah, like I said, he hated them.”
“Yes, but how much?”
Reese started to say something, then snapped his mouth shut. It was a good question. How much did Dr. Markus hate New World? “I don’t know. A lot?”
“Would he be capable of hybridizing the ichor with living tissue?”
Dr. Markus was beyond capable. After the man got his life back together, he’d made some huge advancements in gene therapy techniques, which often required removing damaged DNA and replacing it with corrected copies. But the ichor didn’t have a molecular structure let alone any amino-acids.
But it did bond to existing ones and when dormant it was practically woven into the particles forming the cells.
“I think he’d be a far more likely candidate than anyone else I can think of. But again, we have that whole hating-New-World-Genetics issue.”
“He wouldn’t be the first person to go to bed with the enemy,” Harrington said. “Sometimes that’s the quickest way to destroy them.”
Reese thrummed his fingers on the papers. “Okay, say he did. Where do the other Anubis come in? Why go to the trouble of trying to steal Koda and his team?”
“Revenge doesn’t always follow logic.”
“Yeah, but most scientists are logical even when they’re not. He had to have a reason. I just can’t see him acting without one.” He adjusted his glasses. “Do you think you can get me more entries made by Echols? Not just the data reports sent to New World, but his personal ones?”
“All the files are gone,” Phillips said.
“I thought the techs recovered it?”
“No, they recovered a lot of data. Unfortunately, most of it was generic entries, videos, anything accessible to the lowest tier employee. What you have there is all the techs could recover from stored cache from the tier-five computers.”
“New World should have copies.”
“Yes, they should, but New World seemed to have suffered a major systems failure about ten days ago. And the machines that didn’t crash apparently caught fire.” Her expression hardened. “Tragically, the original files located in the Utah Facility were also destroyed when the drives were somehow mistakenly tossed into the incinerator during an upgrade around the same time.”
“That was right before the lab went dark.” If they had tried to hide something, the best way would be destroying anything connected with it. “Yeah, but if Dr. Markus was responsible for bringing down the lab, why would New World help cover it up by destroying records?”
“Maybe they didn’t do it to help Dr. Markus.” Phillips nodded at the folder.
“Then why would they do it?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll do some digging while we’re on the plane.”
“Plane?”
She straightened up. “We’re going to Nebraska. Park ranger found the mutilated remains of a mountain lion.”
For some reason, Reese glanced at Harrington. His expression remained blank.
“Uh, and why would park rangers call you about a mountain lion?”
“They didn’t. They called EPA because of the strange black substance covering the ground near the animal’s remains. The EPA called the FBI. And the FBI….” She shrugged. “So pack your shit, Dr. Dante. The plane leaves in thirty minutes.”
*****
The joints in Luca’s shoulders did not want to rotate; his hips were equally displeased, and his ribs screamed every time he inhaled. It was official: at some point while he’d slept, he’d been run over by a truck.
He sat up, and his tender ass put in its two cents. Unfortunately, he couldn’t blame the floor for his aching hole. No, that was all on him and Nox.