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“It was horrible, horrible, I felt as if I was on fire The painI could look down and see that I wasn’t hurt, but the pain, the agonyIt was unbearable I honestly thought that if it didn’t stop very soon, I would kill myself”
“Huh,” DiMarco said thoughtfully “We want Mr Tenerife if we can get hied him into all this”
“Finally, nuhtmare”
DiMarco gave hi for us now” She stabbed a finger in the direction of the cavern outside her“He’s caged and tagged, and enlisted as a private in the US Arh a foot of reinforced concrete and six inches of electrified Vanadium steel”
Atwell licked his lips nervously “Ma’am, I think we should remember that both Dekka and Armo were formerly held here, and both escaped”
“They escaped Torit to the last tords “Anyway, if we’re going to start counting our own kept htmare locked up down here”
Yes, Atwell thought gri crash research in numerous avenues: they had tried to weaponize and control the rock by feeding it various strands of animal DNA Sometimes—Armo—it had worked Other ti entirely different DNA—a passing mosquito, say—to create unsustainable monstrosities One hadunable to s
The Ranch had also pioneered cyborgs—human-machine blends: robots with human brains, weapons systems with a human head attached, or sometimes just a brain
Silence descended as DiMarco ten she was thinking For a solid fiveto convince hi to believe that years frohters in the eye and justify what he was doing General DiMarco made that harder hat she said next
“We are being handcuffed by rules and regulations that are totally inappropriate for this moment in history We need to be able to shoot first and ask questions later These are not street cri because God knows only a teenager is duenic alien virus But young or old, they’ve already done billions of dollars in daht! That should be the default, and we only exempt those we can use Work for me, or take a bullet”
“Yes,that had led to the Holocaust There had been gutless apparatchiks there, too, nodding and saying, “Yes, sir”
Then caood ood mood “There’s another ot it secured here, as you know, but we’ve only just recovered data from the Okeanos Explorer, and there is a discrepancy”
Her eyes practically burned a hole through his forehead “Discrepancy?”
“They weighed the rock on board We’ve noeighed it And there is a discrepancy of nineteen pounds, four ounces”
“Alain, broken by a slammed hand on the desk that made Atwell jump “Godammit! That’s 320 one-ounce doses! That does it I’ by the rules Prepare a request for a national ency We need to be kicking in doors! And let’s start with everyone as aboard Okeanos I want theive a rat’s ass about how that questioning is carried out”