“And he’s staying there. This was anticipated. Make him comfortable. I want him where you can keep an eye on him. I want him close to you.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem.”

“See that it isn’t,” Preach said in that tone of voice she had quickly learned brooked no contradiction.

*   *   *

DARPA was in a constant state of modified lockdown, as secure as Fort Knox. Nevertheless, even in a facility where secretive projects were as common as houseflies, there were three areas within it so restricted almost no one had access. Almost. Paulus Lindstrom was in charge of one of these. A magnetic chip embedded in the pad of his left forefinger and an iris scanner were employed to gain access.

Lindstrom entered and immediately stepped into an ultrasonic cleaning chamber. The outer door closed, a red light switched to blue and the inner door slid open. He went through, into the heart of the Mobius Project.

The laboratory was windowless, the frigid air constantly cleaned, filtered for microbes, and recirculated. It was large, high ceilinged, and compartmentalized into four discreet areas, Blue, Green, Yellow, and Red. Lindstrom had two assistants: Ben and Jerry. The jokes around the confluence of their names had long gone stale and now were never mentioned. In the early days, either Ben or Jerry would bring in ice cream, but those days were gone, too.

Maybe they had ended when the first chimp had torn off its face, for, contrary to what Lindstrom had told St. Vincent, there had been more than one simian subject to end its life in this grotesque fashion. Lindstrom had told St. Vincent what he wanted to hear and, in so doing, had descended into an entirely new level of hell, one that Dante would not recognize.

It had never occurred to him that St. Vincent would want to try out Mobius in the field at this far too early stage. Progress, as all scientists knew, was not achieved in a straight line. It was, in its way, akin to psychiatry, where it was often one step forward, two steps back, or, if you were exceedingly fortunate, two steps forward and one back. Those who stood outside the laboratory, who had no knowledge of or interest in the scientific method, could not understand. What they understood—what they wanted—were results. Nothing else interested them. This was why he had lied to St. Vincent. The idea of his funding being cut was intolerable. But now he had sent a human being into the field, his mind altered by the Mobius implants.