Wickedly Ever After_ A Baba Yag - Deborah Blake Page 0,14

him into the cool, air-conditioned building’s interior. The long hallways were quiet and seemingly abandoned, although periodically they passed a door that gleamed diffuse light through its glass panels, or heard reverberating voices in the distance.

Eventually they reached Phil’s lab, where he swiped the badge again and waved them inside. “Welcome to my lair,” he said in a mock-spooky voice. It would probably have been more impressive if he hadn’t looked so cheerful.

The room itself was large and sterile-looking, with white walls lined with stainless steel countertops and small glass terrarium-type cages. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead and some of the counters held tools and machinery Barbara couldn’t even begin to guess the purpose of. The air smelled odd, almost too clean, with an underlying hint of chemicals and a tang that reminded her of ponds and stagnant water.

“What exactly is it that you do here?” Barbara asked. “Liam tried to explain it to me, but I’m afraid I didn’t really understand. You somehow bring dead animals back to life?” She hoped it wasn’t some sort of necromancy. There were a few wizards who practiced such things, but they made her skin crawl.

“It’s actually quite amazing,” Phil said, his homely face glowing with pride. “We’re the only laboratory in the country that has been able to replicate the University of Newcastle’s Lazarus Project. Time magazine called it one of the most significant inventions of 2013, you know. The Lazarus Project, that is. Not us.”

“Uh-huh,” Liam said. “It’s some kind of de-extinction process, isn’t it?”

“Exactly,” Phil said. “We use breakthrough genome technology to resurrect an extinct frog—the gastric brooding frog, to be exact, which went extinct in 1983. It was actually quite a remarkable creature. Its name came from its ability to swallow externally fertilized eggs into its stomach, which then acted as a uterus until it gave birth through its own mouth. No other living creature could do this.”

Liam looked almost as green as a frog himself. “Why would they want to?” he muttered.

“Actually, this frog has some really interesting medical applications,” Phil said, his enthusiasm bringing spots of color to his pale cheeks. “It could help us to figure out how to manage gastric secretions in the gut. We use somatic cell nuclear transplantation to inactivate the nuclei of donor eggs from the great barred frog, Mixophyes fasciolatus, and replace them with the dead nuclei from the gastric brooding frog, using eggs kept in a deep freeze since the species went extinct. It’s an amazing achievement, and could herald a new era in global biodiversity.”

“Uh-huh,” Liam said again. “I have no idea what you just said, but I’m definitely impressed.”

“They are very cute,” said Babs, looking into one of the glass habitats. “I like frogs.” She bent down to gaze inside, making little croaking noises that the occupants seemed to respond to.

The three adults walked over to her and Phil pointed out a few choice specimens. To Barbara, they looked much like any other frog she’d ever seen; small and gray-green with pebbled skin and large, bulging eyes. Hard to believe that such an innocuous creature had so much power over her and Liam’s future.

“These were created by science?” Barbara said. “Truly?”

“They were,” Phil said. “But our hope is that now that we’ve got a dozen of them, male and female, they will mate on their own and re-create more without human intervention.”

“Not this one,” Babs said, pointing at a small frog at the front of the cage. “She does not like any of the boys you have.”

Phil laughed. “Kids have such great imaginations, don’t they?” But that was the one he grabbed and put into a small perforated container, which he handed to Liam, who tucked it under his coat.

“Do me a favor and try to bring it back, will ya?” Phil said. “I’d just as soon not have to explain why we are one frog short.”

“Will doing this get you into trouble?” Barbara asked.

“Nah, not really,” Phil replied. “You wouldn’t believe the things that go missing in these labs. Remind me to tell you the story about the radioactive spider sometime.”

She looked over her shoulder and up overhead with alarm. “You lost a radioactive spider?”

Liam chuckled. “It’s a joke, honey. From an old comic book.” He narrowed his eyes at his friend. “It is a joke, right?”

Phil winked at him as they excited the building. “I’ll never tell.”

They walked back over to their vehicles and stood by the side of the Airstream.

“May I ask you something?” Barbara said