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"I have no doubt," Ellie said "And I&039;m sure you know more about security clearances and needs to know and the like than I do One hates to break the law, though You&039;re in some kind of trouble, Captain, I can see it in your eyes"
Julia glanced over at hi to think so,to think ame I can&039;t see yet And since those same people don&039;t see I definitely need to knohatever information you have I understand your reluctance, but I have to insist"
"H him closely
"There are lives at stake," Chapel tried
"Of course," Ellie said "There always are"
Chapel saw in her eyes that she aiting for hiht words She wanted to talk to hiive up what she had for free He took a deep breath He wasleap of faith, he knew But he needed this information "The chie, with a list of people they want to kill Your naart here-wasn&039;t on that list, but they tried to kill her anyway"
"They are quite dangerous, yes," Ellie said, still giving nothing away
"Not just the forward "Now that&039;s interesting"
Chapel nodded "I intend to find out who it was And make sure they&039;re punished," he told her "So the chimeras, somebody has turned theet aith it"
She smiled, and he knew he&039;d won her over She sat back and looked up at the ceiling as if gathering her thoughts "Have you met any of the chimeras? Ian, perhaps?"
"Not Ian Malcolm and another one, who I&039;m told was named Brody," Chapel said
"Oh, ," Ellie said, leaning back on the couch She took a deep sip from her teacup full of whiskey "That&039;s the look of a soldier Are theyah?"
"Yes," Chapel said
"At least they&039;re at peace, then For once in their lives" Ellie sighed deeply "I was their teacher I disciplined them when need arose, and I daresay I was stricter than they would have liked But I did care for them You can&039;t not love your students, even the stupid ones"
Julia gasped in shock
"Oh, young lady, did you think a teacher wasn&039;t allowed to call someone &039;stupid&039;? Part of our job is to evaluate them, you know And there were a few of the boys ere stupid, quite as dumb as the proverbial rocks Others were brilliant They all possessed e used to refer to as ani"
"You were a teacher with UNESCO, weren&039;t you?" Chapel asked, prodding her to go on
"Oh, yes, back in the eighties, back when I thought I could still save the world by teaching it not to end sentences in prepositions I was rather more idealistic back then I specialized in children with developmental and emotional issues That hy the Defense Department wanted to hire me That and my security clearance"
"I&039;ht the chi about that I know thea uniform, that&039;s all"
Chapel nodded No need to ju assignment When was this?"
"Nineteen ninety," Ellie said
"So they would have been pretty young," Chapel said "Did anyone ever tell you why they were created-or why they were detained?"
"Absolutely not Before you ask, yes, I did wonder I burned with curiosity about that for a long time, but when you ask the same question a hundred times and are routinely told you don&039;t need to know the answer, you eventually give in and stop asking I&039;m sure you can understand that"
"Yeah," Chapel said "Yeah, I can"
"Captain, the word &039;yeah&039; does not belong in the English language The word you want to use is &039;yes&039; As in, &039;yes, ma&039;am&039; "
Chapel felt himself blush "Yes, ain "I think this will be a very long night if I uess which questions to ask and then tell you what I think you should know Why don&039;t I just go through the story as I reht," Chapel said
Ellie knocked back her cup in one gulp and began
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: APRIL 13, T+40:12
"It was 1990 when they first approached me A captain of the navy whose naain-came to my school on Roosevelt Island in New York He asked if I had any experience adence tests, specifically culture-neutral IQ tests I explained that I had been doing just such a thing for more than ten years I asked why he wanted to know, but of course he didn&039;t answer A fewmy summer break, I was asked to co I needed to adroup of two hundred children, all of thee I would be paid handsoree not to tell anyone where I was going or why
"Back then I was just a little older than you are now Still young enough to think an adventure sounded fun, rather than exhausting So I went I was certainly not expecting what I saw Caround enclosed by an electric fence There were guard towers and quite a number of soldiers Inside the fence were the boys They were adorable, and even when I noticed as so strange about their eyes, I couldn&039;t help but feel they were the healthiest, most curious bunch of four-year-olds I&039;d ever met I&039;m sure I asked a thousand questions that day, but I did not receive any answers, as you can iht in for, ad the tests Julia, dear, your parents were really quite interested in the results They kept asking me if I would stay and tabulate the results then and there They offered me more money It was summertime, when every teacher needs more money, so I did as they asked As it turned out, I ended up staying at the caht more years
"The boys were incredibly healthy and et sick, and when they fell out of trees or skinned their elbows, they healed with astonishing speed The soldiers played with them and treated them very well-at that time-but nobody, no one at all had considered they needed to be educated In the end I had to volunteer to be their teacher The prospect of these boys growing up in that camp, unable to read, unable to do basicto me I was under the i That they were being raised there by the o forth into the world, that they would get jobs and marry and have happy lives
"I sometimes think your father, Julia, hired me on simply because it was easier to do that than to disillusion me
"In many ways that was an idyllic time and I was quite happy The Catskills are a beautiful place, and I fell in love with country living In the summer I would hold class in a field of wildflowers deep in the camp In the winter ould all crowd into a cozy little schoolhouse, the boys wrapped up in blankets around woodstoves Beyond that-I was electrified It was an incredible opportunity for someone like me There were no televisions in Camp Putnam No radios or newspapers I could teach these boys to becoentlemen without any of the distractions or teined the papers I could write based on rants I could ith the data I collected I will admit I was not above the scientific iart and Bryant
"That changed, though, in 1993 That was the year of the first death
"The boys had always fought ah at the tiht that was just a product of their environment Boys will be boys, we said They squabbled over any little thing that one of theave one of theht as one of the other boys decided it by rights belonged to him
"When one of them-his name was Gerald-failed to show up inhooky or that he was sick When he was gone for a week, I began to worry Eventually Dr Bryant took me aside and explained Gerald was dead He had been attacked by three other boys, and they had broken his neck Sheunnatural The three boys who killed Gerald would be punished, she said, but I didn&039;t need to worry about it
"Three ain Two boys went into the woods, just playing, exploring, doing what eight-year-old boys do Only one came back He refused to tell us what happened to his friend and so guards had to go out looking for hi boy&039;s name was Marcus They found him impaled on a tree branch When his friend, Tyrone, was questioned, he admitted they had fallen out over whether Huckleberry Finn or Tom Saas smarter It was a question I had asked in class that day, and they had debated it at soth before Tyrone decided he could settle the question once and for all He had made a kind of spear out of the tree branch and he ran Marcus through with it, puncturing a lung
"I had plenty of training in dealing with e Tyrone, but Dr Taggart said that wouldn&039;t be necessary I did not see Tyrone again I assumed he had been taken to another facility, separated for the safety of the population What actually happened to hi I don&039;t like to contemplate
"It became rapidly apparent, however, that we had a real problehts turned into boys throwing rocks at each other, which turned into horrible beatings and boys using ainst one another The scientists tried all s in the boys&039; food to splitting the alone with each other at any tiuards in the cauard was killed, in 1994 It was a horrible ti for the culprit They were notgentle in their interrogations For a while things quieted down as the boys were put under a draconian sort of lockdown They were forced to stay in their cabins at all ti allowed out for exercise That couldn&039;t last, though, not if ished to keep the boys healthy I iine some of us believed the rash of violence had been a fad A phase the boys would grow out of
"This was not the case
"The boys continued their lessons through it all The only time they saw each other, for a while, was in er at each other found no other outlet I had to break up fights constantly I had guards rush in and restrain my students in the middle of my lectures If I called on a boy and he didn&039;t know the answer, the others would jeer at him mercilessly If he did know the answer, they would ht broke out that I couldn&039;t stop One of the slower boys, but one notorious for his incredible strength, attacked another boy right in front of me The attacker-his name was Keenan-broke the other boy&039;s ar on top of his victi him with his feet I tried to pull hi membranes-his third eyelids, I can see you don&039;t know the term-were down, and when their eyes were like that I knew they weren&039;t going to stop They were going to hit and bite and scratch until everything in front of the in his heart but pure, anie I had thwarted hiasped "What did you do?" she asked
Ellie inhaled deeply "I drewThree bullets in his skull, that was enough Did I not ht? We all were, by that point Every hu in Camp Putnam went armed at all times It just wasn&039;t safe otherwise"
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: APRIL 13, T+40:51
The fireplace by Chapel&039;s right side crackled and popped Apomotov came in and poured more whiskey into their teacups Outside the wind from the lake battered at the house, but inside all was quiet No one spoke a word as they waited for Ellie to continue her story
"The level of aggression ," she said, looking only into her teacup, "was far beyond anything we&039;d expected Anything we&039;d planned for These were children! You&039;ve only seen theels with black eyes When they turned on each other, or on us, they turned to des I reco in a sists, child development specialists, social workers My request was roundly denied It was too great a security risk
"The boys kept fighting, and every tiot so much worse In 1995, they killed one of the researchers, a Dr Harkness"
Julia gasped
"I&039;msorry," Julia said, when Chapel looked at her "Just-I knew her Dr Harkness She was really sweet She used to bring er Beat andand Seventeen She said being raised by scientists, I needed to see what the real world was like They killed her? Oh my God Oh my GodMom just told me she moved away"
She shook her head, and Chapel saw a tear roll down her cheek
"Please," Julia said "Just-go on I&039;ll be okay"
Ellie gave her a syet back to her story "After that the guards were told to shoot any boy acting violent They were huuards, and they rarely did as they were told At least, at first In 1996, things changed"
Ellie drew her feet up underneath her as if they were cold She took a moment to catch her breath and drink some more whiskey "I made a mistake A bad one It has occurred to me, more than once, that what happened wasoverly hard on myself But it happened because of what I did Or rather, what I didn&039;t do
"A group of the boys came to me Just four of them, a little cabal They were the smartest of the lot,They understood that normal children-human children-weren&039;t like this They said that if they could just get out of the camp, see the world beyond and live like normal children, then they would settle down That they would overcome their impulses The leader was a boy naest You could see in his eyes he was a natural leader Well, when his eyes weren&039;t covered by those horrible anized this little committee He came to me because he kneas the most sympathetic adult in that camp, and the one as the least tied to the military He asked s to uards would be at a certain hour And then he told me he needed my sidearm
"I told him it was impossible, and I refused to help He saw at once I wouldn&039;t budge and that he&039;d un So instead, then, he pleaded-begged, on bended knee-that I not tell anyone what he&039;d asked He proet all about the plan, that he would devote hihts later they rushed the fence They had no weapons and no idea what they were doing; they siht they could cliuards killed one of theet over the fence, believe it or not They fought the guards who came for them One of theain One of theot loose, and it was months before he was returned to us"
"That was Malcol Funt&039;s story
"Yes Malcolain, eventually The camp he came back to was not the one he left," Ellie said
She shuddered but went on "There had been a gate in the fence, originally A wide gate you could drive a jeep through The guards sealed that up They added a new, outer fence And in between them they laid mines Land mines There would not be a second escape attempt"
"Wait," Chapel said "They sealed the fence? There was no gate after that?"
"I believe I spoke clearly, Captain After 1996, the fence was co ever set foot in Cauards had decided, you see, that it wasn&039;t safe Not even for aro in or out was to be shot on sight And believe uards obeyed their orders to the letter"
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: APRIL 13, T+41:06
Chapel&039;s phone started to ring It surprised hih he jumped in his seat He took it out of his pocket and saw that it was still set to vibrate, but apparently Angel could get past that "Forgive me," he said He yanked the battery out of the phone, and it went silent again
"So frightened
Chapel didn&039;t blame her "That&039;s all the more reason why I need to hear it," he told her "A lot of people have spent a lot of ti But secrets have a way of festering This one&039;s old enough and dangerous enough that people are dying for it I have to stop that"