Dr. Silas Mendel's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

By morning, Silas had not slept. The load bar on Elena's screen sat near the top all night. He stood at the control panel and did the math again. Seal every pen, and the mind-link machines starved. Run the machines, and the pens fell open. The foundry line fed both, but never at once. He needed a way out that was not a choice. Elena worked the wall of instruments beside him. Screens showed DNA charts and jagged power waves. She wiped her glasses and pointed at the load line. "You can't cheat the current, Silas. The line only holds so much." "Then I don't run everything at once," he said. "I seal the pens. I lock them tight. Then I cut the clamps and run the link machines only while the animals sleep." She frowned. "Sleep how?" "Tranquilizer. We dose them. A drugged animal can't test a door. I drop the clamps, feed the mind-link machines full power, and work fast. When they wake, I clamp the pens again." Marcus arrived at the door with three of his crew. He led the recapture teams and took his orders from Silas. He crossed his arms and looked at the plan on the screen. "So you want the pens open while I've got no walls holding them?" His voice was flat. "I chased those things once. I'm not doing it again because you turned off the locks." "They'll be asleep," Silas said. "You hope they'll be asleep." Marcus stepped closer. "My crews stand between your monsters and the city. You gamble, we bleed." Silas held his stare. "Then you stand ready. Darts loaded. If one stirs, you put it down. But I need this power, Marcus. The whole plan needs it." Marcus was quiet. Then he nodded once. "We stage at the pens. But the first sign of trouble, I clamp them shut, and I don't ask you." They ran the test that afternoon. Elena dosed each pen through the feed ports. Silas watched the lion sag against the steel and sink to the floor. When the subjects lay still, he killed the clamps. The load bar dropped. He fed the mind-link machines full current. Lights that had flickered for days now burned steady. For twenty minutes, the machines ran clean. Silas read the first true signal off a sleeping brain. Then Marcus's radio cracked. A crewman by the far pen shouted. The wolf subject was on its feet, swaying, awake early. Its dose had run thin. Marcus hit the clamp switch himself. The plates slammed tight. The load bar spiked. Every mind-link screen went dark at once. Silas stared at the dead machines. The plan worked, but only in a window he could not control. Each animal burned off the drug at its own speed. To rule their minds, he would have to time a hundred sleeping brains at once, and any one of them could wake and end it.