But after a few seconds Sam realized that wasn’t the case. Ragged, bloody footprints, originating from the open cage, crisscrossed the entire room. Distinct trails led into each of the three doorways on the left side, and wound their way among the ruined machinery strewn about the place. The baboon had escaped and explored the abandoned station, and then for some reason—maybe just familiarity—had returned to its cage to die.

The last thing Sam noticed was a kind of electrical control box bolted to the wall, just shy of the nearest cage—it was only a few feet from where he and Dani stood. It had the word ElectroBolt, like a company logo, across the top, and it had rows of plastic buttons below that. The first eight of those were labeled with stickers that read CAGE 1, CAGE 2, and so on through number eight. Just above all of those, though, was a big red button labeled MASTER RELEASE/ALL LOCKS. That button was covered by a clear plastic dome on a hinge, to make sure nobody pushed it by accident.

Crude wiring ran from the control box to the floor, and then down the row of cages, where the door locks all had the same ElectroBolt logo on them.

Sam took it all in—the smashed equipment and the cages and the dead animals. And the smell. With every breath, he caught more of the rancid atmosphere of the room. It was like a bathroom stall where someone hadn’t flushed, combined with the rusty scent of blood.

“Someone was working in this place,” Dani said.

Sam nodded. “Recently.”

He felt his thoughts automatically retracing the things he and Dani had learned earlier. The bullet points, anyway.

Project Rigel, whatever it was, had started ten years ago and ended five years later—its own creator, Mr. Pierce, had pulled the plug, out of fear.

Then Pierce had apparently formed a group called Watchdog, to keep an eye out for anyone trying to restart the project.

For reasons Sam couldn’t guess, that group was watching places all over the world, in countries like Brazil and India.

Maybe that search had been aimed at the wrong places.

“We figure the bad guys are people trying to get Rigel going again,” Dani said. “Right? That they kidnapped people who originally worked on it, to use what they knew.”

Sam nodded.

“So what are we seeing here?” Dani asked. “I mean … did someone try to relaunch Rigel right here? In Ashland? Right under the military’s nose?”

Sam tried to get his mind around the absurdity of it. For a moment he considered another possibility: that the military itself was trying to relaunch the project.