motivate you further,” he said, and held out a photograph above her head.
Lucy gasped as she saw a black-and-white shot of her mother. Sheviz didn’t give her the chance to speak.
“Your mother, my dear, is in the company of my associates. If you do not comply with my demands, perhaps she will become the next subject of these experiments.”
Hot tears stung Lucy’s eyes.
“Leave her alone,” she hissed.
“Then tell me what I need to know.”
Lucy squeezed her eyes shut, struggling against the tide of despair that washed over her.
“It’s not just about blood groups,” she uttered. “The species you’ve cloned has evolved on a different planet. It isn’t a Nephilim, it’s an alien species and its tissue cannot be grafted onto any species on Earth. There is no way to do it without killing the patient!”
Sheviz slowly shook his head, tutting as he slipped the needle into her arm.
“One more time, Lucy. I want you to imagine this needle slipping into your mother’s body. Now, tell me how to overcome the cellular rejection.”
Lucy swallowed, blinking away tears and with them her resolve.
“You need to induce donor nonresponsiveness using hematopoietic chimerism,” she whispered harshly. “That’s how real scientists have cloned donor cells in the past.”
“Go on,” Sheviz said.
“Introduce the donor stem cells into the bone marrow of the recipient, where they will coexist with the recipient’s stem cells. Bone marrow stem cells give rise to cells of all hematopoietic lineages.”
Sheviz gasped, slapping his forehead with his spare hand.
“Of course,” he uttered. “Through the process of hematopoiesis. We were using leukodepletion of the blood to remove the recipient’s white blood cells to reduce alloimmunization, but it wasn’t enough to prevent immunoshock.”
“Lymphoid progenitor cells are created,” Lucy continued in a whisper of self-loathing, “and move to the thymus where negative selection eliminates the reactive killer T cells. The existence of the donor stem cells in the bone marrow causes donor reactive T cells to be considered native to the body and undergo apoptosis, or programmed cell death. There is no further rejection of the new genetic material.”
Damon Sheviz smiled down at Lucy as she looked away in disgust.
“Congratulations, my dear,” he said, shaking his head. “You’ve solved the mystery of why one of my patients in Washington DC survived: his lineage came from Ethiopia, and there are some tribes living there who originated in the Levant. He was already carrying native T cells, and they protected him long enough for the genetic material we inserted to begin taking effect. Now the next subject will not die from the procedure, but shall be our crowning glory.”
A sudden crackling noise erupted from beyond the darkness of the room, like hailstones hammering on a tin roof. It was a moment before Lucy realized that it was the sound of gunfire coming from outside.
Sheviz withdrew the needle from her arm, and Lucy realized that perhaps someone had finally found her.
WADI AL-JOZ
WEST BANK, PALESTINE
Keep low and stay behind me,” Ethan said to Griffiths.
The fossil hunter grunted in reply as they hugged the side of a low wall. Aaron Luckov, the sawed-off shotgun cradled in his grasp, led the way.
Even as they were coming within firing distance of the two MACE guards, Ethan saw one of them press his finger to his ear and frown in concentration as he listened to a message presumably coming through an earpiece he was wearing. Ahead, Aaron Luckov moved out to the right as Ethan saw the two guards suddenly reach for their weapons.
“They’ve made us!” Luckov hissed.
Ethan saw the guards turn to face them, both handling machine pistols with military efficiency as a burst of semiautomatic fire shattered the hot morning air. Ethan flinched and ducked aside as from the corner of his eye he saw a parked vehicle’s windshield smashed into a web of cracked glass.
“Aaron, covering fire!”
Luckov popped up from behind the parked car and unloaded two rounds in the general direction of the MACE troops, who leaped desperately down into cover as a hail of buckshot hammered the warehouse doors.
Ethan lunged forward, reaching a low wall no more than twenty feet from the warehouse before he took aim and fired off four rounds at the brickwork behind which the guards had disappeared. Bullets whipped past in response, zipping and twanging as they ricocheted off the car beside him.
“Keep them down!” Ethan shouted to Aaron.
The Israeli popped up again, letting both barrels fly this time before rushing forward and ducking into a narrow alley almost opposite the warehouse. Firing by sections,