Chapter Ninety-Five

The Warehouse, Baltimore, Maryland

Monday, August 30, 5:04 A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 54 hours, 56 minutes

Mr. Church sat behind his desk. He hadn’t moved at all in over half an hour. His tea was cold, his plate of cookies untouched.

On his desk were three reports, each laid out neatly side by side.

On the left was the coroner’s report on Gunnar Haeckel that included DNA, blood type, body measurements, and a fingerprint ten-card. In the middle was a brief report on Hans Brucker that included preliminary information and a fingerprint card. The blood type was a match; the basic body specifications were a match. That was fine. There were a lot of people of that basic size, build, weight, and age with O Positive blood. The troubling thing were the two fingerprint cards. They were identical. Church had ordered the prints scanned and compared again, but the results had not varied. Not even identical twins have matching fingerprints, but these were unquestionably identical.

But it was not the inexplicable match of fingerprints on the two dead men that troubled Mr. Church. For the last half hour he had barely looked at those reports. Instead all of his attention was focused on the brief note he had received from Jerry Spencer, who was now back at the DMS and ensconced in his forensics lab. The note read: “The prints taken from the boy are a perfect match for the unmarked set of prints you forwarded to me. The only difference is size. The unmarked set are larger, consistent with an adult, and there are some minor marks of use such as small scars. However, the arches, loops, and whorls match on all points. Without a doubt these prints come from the same person. There’s no chance of a mistake.”

When Mr. Church first read that note he called Spencer and confirmed it.

“I thought my note was clear enough,” said Spencer. “The prints match, end of story.”

But it was by no means the end of the story. It was another chapter in a very old and very twisted story. It painted the world in ugly shades.

Mr. Church finally moved. He selected a cookie and ate it slowly, thoughtfully, thinking about the boy called Eighty-two. The boy who had reached out to him, who had risked his life to try to save millions of people in Africa and to save the lives of the genetically engineered New Men.

Church picked up the boy’s fingerprint card and turned it over to study the photograph clipped to the other side. It had been taken during the physical examination of the boy. Church looked into the child’s eyes for long minutes, searching for the lie, for the deception, for any hint of the evil that he knew must be there.