“It’s a long story,” Melanie said.

“So is ours,” Laurie said.

“I have a question,” Kevin said. “Did you people come here because of Carlo Franconi?”

“Whoa!” Jack said. “Such clairvoyance! I’m impressed, and intrigued. How did you guess? What exactly is your role here in Cogo?”

“Me, in particular?” Kevin asked.

“Well, all of you,” Jack said.

Kevin, Melanie, and Candace looked at each other to see who wanted to speak first.

“We were all part of the same program,” Candace said. “But I was just a minor player. I’m an intensive-care nurse for a surgical transplant team.”

“I’m a reproductive technologist,” Melanie said. “I provide the raw materials for Kevin to work his magic, and once he has, I see to it that his creations are brought to fruition.”

“I’m a molecular biologist,” Kevin explained with a sigh of regret. “Someone who overstepped his bounds and committed a Promethean blunder.”

“Hold up,” Jack said. “Don’t go too literary on me. I know I’ve heard of Prometheus, but I can’t remember who he was.”

“Prometheus was a Titan in Greek mythology,” Laurie said. “He stole fire from Olympus and gave it to man.”

“I inadvertently gave fire to some animals,” Kevin said. “I stumbled on the way to move chromosome parts, particularly the short arm of chromosome six from one cell to another, from one species to another.”

“So you took chromosome parts from humans and put them into an ape,” Jack said.

“Into the fertilized egg of an ape,” Kevin said. “A bonobo to be exact.”

“And what you were really doing,” Jack continued, “was custom-designing the perfect organ transplant source for a specific individual.”

“Exactly,” Kevin said. “It wasn’t what I had in mind in the beginning. I was just a pure researcher. What I ended up doing was something I was lured into because of its economic potential.”

“Wow!” Jack commented. “Ingenious and impressive, but also a little scary.”

“It’s more than scary,” Kevin said. “It’s a tragedy of sorts. The problem is I transferred too many human genes. I’ve accidently created a race of protohumans.”

“You mean like Neanderthals?” Laurie asked.

“More primitive by millions of years,” Kevin said. “More like Lucy. But they’re intelligent enough to use fire, make tools, and even converse. I think they are the way we were four or five million years ago.”

“Where are these creatures?” Laurie asked with alarm.

“They’re on a nearby island,” Kevin said, “where they have been living in comparative freedom. Unfortunately, that’s all about to change.”

“Why is that?” Laurie asked. In her mind’s eye, she could see these protohumans. As a child she’d been fascinated by cavemen.

Kevin quickly told the story of the smoke eventually bringing him, Melanie, and Candace to the island. He related how they’d been captured and then rescued. He also told them about the creatures’ fate of facing lifelong internment in tiny concrete cells purely because they were too human.

“That’s awful,” Laurie commented.

“It’s a disaster!” Jack said with a shake of his head. “What a story!”