There were human, and yet some seemed inhuman … more accurately—unhuman, the obvious result of genetic tinkering. Besides the extra arms, there were freakishly large skulls possessing extra eyes, chest cavities loaded with duplicate vital organs, three-fingered hands and webbed feet and bat-shaped ears that looked almost satanic. It was as if the computer had gotten bored and, in a slow psychopathic burn, had unleashed its inner Mengele, tinkering with its crews’ genetic code.

Mengele …

ABE latched on to the obscure reference, replaying the memory of my last conversation with Dharma: “IN YOUR LAST LIFE, I SAW YOU HELD CAPTIVE AS A YOUNG BOY IN A NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP. I FELT YOUR WRATH AT THE CREATOR AS YOU WITNESSED YOUR MOTHER SENT TO THE OVENS; I EXPERIENCED YOUR DESPERATION AND FEAR WHEN YOU WERE DELIVERED INTO THE HANDS OF JOSEF MENGELE, A PSYCHOPATH WHO PERFORMED GENETIC EXPERIMENTS ON JEWISH CHILDREN.”

“Stop!” My head hurt, and at that moment I wished I could—

WHY DO YOU WISH TO TERMINATE EISENBRAUN?

I turned to Oscar, the cephaloped resting a sucker paw on my wrist.

No, no … not Eisenbraun, Oscar. I was referring to ABE. It’s a computer chip … never mind. Oscar, we need to vent … we need to open this pod—this one over here. Can you tear this aluminum door from its frame and use it to smash open the pod?

Reading thought waves translated through my bio-chip, the nine-foot-tall squid slid four of its tentacles around and between the refrigerator door and tore it loose from the frame. Wielding the seventy-pound object over its head, it smashed it with a sudden burst of blunt force against the top of Dharma’s cryogenic pod.

The impact shattered the outer casing, expelling a stream of cold misty exhaust from the interior of the damaged sleep chamber.

With the internal pressure relieved, I was able to lift the lid.

Lying in a draining pool of tetrodotoxin gel was Dharma Yuan, her nude form held in an internal harness, her face concealed behind a plastic mask. As I watched, a sixteen-inch bang stick rigged to the body harness forcibly expelled the business end of a hypodermic into the Chinese woman’s breastplate, the six-inch needle injecting a syringe filled with adrenaline into her heart.

Seconds later, Dharma’s mask began pumping pressurized air into her esophagus, inflating her lungs. As her stomach bloated, the harness constricted, squeezing out the forced breath, clearing the way for the next blast of oxygen even as the vest portion of the bodysuit initiated alternating cardiac compressions.

Neon-orange vital signs appeared over the plastic mask covering her forehead.

It took twenty-three minutes and two more injections before Dharma began breathing on her own.