San Diego Wildlife Sanctuary…
The world had rules, and Davis Okoye had lived by them. Respect the troop, protect the vulnerable, de-escalate when possible, assert dominance when necessary.
You never looked a silverback in the eye unless you were prepared to follow through. You never turned your back on a wounded animal unless you wanted to get mauled. And you sure as hell didn't screw around with things you didn't understand; especially not genetics.
But apparently, no one had told Energyne that.
He stared, disbelieving, as George; the albino gorilla he had raised, trained, and protected for nearly a decade, stood nearly three times his normal height, his fur rippling with tension, the steel door of his reinforced enclosure bent like tinfoil in his hands.
George wasn't just bigger; something was wrong about him. The proportions were off. The way his muscles bulged, the way his breathing had become ragged, wheezing through nostrils too flared to be natural; it all screamed unnatural.
"This is bad," Davis muttered, more to himself than anyone else, "This is... this is very bad."
Behind him, Kate Caldwell; the disgraced geneticist turned corporate whistle-blower, stood frozen, her eyes locked on the massive gorilla with a haunted look. She was breathing hard, like she was fighting to suppress the urge to either run or confess to something.
Davis didn't know her well yet, but he could tell that what he was seeing was familiar to her.
"You said George was infected," he growled, turning slightly toward her, "With what?"
Kate's lips parted, but her voice barely came out, "A gene editing pathogen. Engineered by Energyne. I worked on the vector design, not the final payload. This wasn't how it was supposed to work."
Davis narrowed his eyes, "Then how the hell was it supposed to work?"
Her hesitation told him everything, but she finally brought her courage to her tongue and spoke, "Controlled growth. Targeted adaptation. Military applications were off the table; officially. But something this unstable, this aggressive… this wasn't for cancer therapy. This was for weaponization."
George roared; a sound Davis had never heard before from the gentle giant he'd once considered his closest friend. It was guttural, animal, but there was something else there.
Pain. Confusion. Fear. And underneath all of it... rage.
The walls of the enclosure shuddered as George slammed a massive palm into the steel mesh.
Two guards nearby flinched, one even reaching for his weapon, but Davis held up a hand, "Don't," he said, "You shoot at him, and you're going to need a damn good lawyer for your own funeral."
George's eyes locked on Davis's for a heartbeat. There was a flicker; just for a moment, of recognition. But then it was gone, drowned in whatever chemical hurricane was rewriting his DNA from the inside out.
Kate stepped forward cautiously, "That's not just CRISPR in his blood. That's something new. Something hybridized."
Davis turned fully toward her, stepping closer, "Explain."
She licked her lips, "Energyne didn't just experiment with human gene therapy. They used samples from a dozen species. Wolf. Lizard. Reptile. Invertebrate. All designed to be modular. Plug-and-play. You introduce the pathogen, and it picks up ambient DNA to begin recombination; the body becomes the lab. George… he must have come into contact with one of the satellites that fell."
Davis's expression darkened, "So let me get this straight; your old company shot this crap into space, let it crash back to Earth, and hoped nothing would go wrong?"
She didn't answer. She didn't need to. Another siren began to wail across the compound. One of the guards rushed in, holding a tablet with a live feed on it.
"Sir. We've got movement; a lot of movement. Something big is coming out of the Rockies. Some kind of… wolf?"
Davis blinked, "A wolf?"
"Not just any wolf. It's fast. Like, not-even-turbine-helicopter fast. And it can glide. Looks like it has… quills?"
Kate paled, "Quills? That's Ralph. Or what used to be Ralph. We used porcupine genes for armoured response. DNA from the Draco genus for membrane extension. Oh god... it's active in more than one subject."
Davis turned back toward George, who now stood motionless, his chest heaving like a piston. There was blood on his knuckles from smashing the cage. But he wasn't trying to escape anymore.
He was listening to something.
"What is it, buddy?" Davis asked, his voice softening, "You hear something?"
George turned slowly, his massive head tilting toward the sky, nostrils flaring. Then, without warning, he let out a deep, shaking growl; not of aggression, but of instinct.
Kate was already checking the feed, "They're broadcasting something. A signal. Low frequency. Must be coming from Energyne's tower in Chicago."
"A calling card?" Davis asked, already knowing the answer.
"More like a homing beacon," Kate replied grimly, "They're luring them in. They want all four subjects in one place."
Davis didn't like the way she said that, "What do you mean 'four'?" he demanded, "We've got George. We've got this flying wolf freak. What's the third and fourth?"
Kate looked up from the tablet, her face drawn and distant. "We lost track of the third and fourth canister. They went into the ocean. North Atlantic. Deep water."
Davis froze, "That's a problem."
"You don't understand," she said quietly, "We used cephalopod DNA for neurological plasticity. Octopus cells. Regenerative data spliced from amphibians. If any of that took root in a marine predator—"
"No," Davis interrupted, "No. I've had enough monsters for one day. Let's deal with the two we've seen first."
But even as he said it, something in the pit of his stomach turned. The world had rules. Something told him those rules were starting to change.