Kingdom by Anderson O'Donnell Read Free Book Online Page B

“Highway to Hell” with Bon Scott assuring the darkened bar that he was still on his way to the promised land.
    Campbell raised his shot as well, tapping the rim of his glass against the bartender’s. He opened his mouth to return the greeting but as the bartender finished his shot and raised his hand to wipe his mouth, Campbell saw it: Tattooed just above the man’s right wrist was a circle with an asterisk in the center.
    Campbell’s arms and legs went numb as the shot glass crashed to the floor. He tried to get off the stool but his body was done and the world went fuzzy, disintegrating as if it were a movie shot by a student filmmaker who just discovered the soft focus lens. And then he was falling and the last thing he remembered was waiting to hit the floor. But he never did.

Chapter 5
    New Mexico
Aug. 25, 2015
11:22 p.m.
    T he Morrison Biotech arcology pierced the rust-colored sky high above the New Mexico desert, a twisted mass of satellite receivers and helicopter landing pads, all designed to extend man’s influence beyond its natural boundaries. Strange purple and orange hues danced around these upper levels of the arcology, stratospheric symptoms of a poisoned atmosphere that pressed low against the desert, choking out whatever sparse life still remained. Toxins drifting downwind from Los Angeles, smoke from the border riots, meth labs littering the Chihuahuan desert; all these contributed to the pollution that hung like a rotting crown around the headquarters of one of the world’s most powerful corporations. The never-ending surge of Mexican immigrants had rendered traditional geo-political boundaries irrelevant and whether Morrison Biotech was bound by the laws of the United States or Mexico was a matter of open dispute. However, as long as the corporation stuffed cash into the pocket of politicians from both sides of the Rio Grande, there was no rush toward resolution. Mexico was a failed state run by narco-terrorists and the United States was especially fond of Morrison Biotech’s shadowy existence—the company’s private security forces filled thesepower vacuums nicely, providing a buffer between the interior United States and the chaos along her borders. Subsequently, for CEO Michael Morrison, acid-tinged rain and a strange sulfuric smell were a small price to pay for the pleasure of doing business in the Chihuahuan.
    On most nights, Morrison spent long hours alone in his office on the 21st, and final, floor of the biotech arcology—the sprawling, self-sustained research facility where Morrison’s most skilled scientists both worked
and
lived—staring into the nothingness of the New Mexico night. Sixty-five years old, Morrison had twisted science, achieving an ageless appearance. He was neither young nor old but reaped the benefits of both; Morrison’s physiology was the flesh and bone equivalent of a masterfully tuned sports car. While forced to temper his epidermal alternations—only so much could be attributed to plastic surgery—the nine systems scattered throughout Morrison’s anatomy could now only vaguely be called human.
    Yet, tonight, Morrison turned away from the desert he had created. Clenched in his right hand were the latest results from the labyrinth of labs buried so deep under the arcology that a direct nuclear blast would only rattle a few test beakers; his scientists again failed to replicate the Omega gene—that was the name his company had given to the final gene in the human genome whose function remained a mystery.
    Morrison had read the report twice, absorbing the graphs and numbers with preternatural speed, before feeding it into the cold blue flames dancing in the open hearth fireplace that was the center of the office. The time for his scientists, considered Morrison as he watched the flames devour the report, had passed.
    From the darkness swirling below Morrison’s window came a sudden explosion of light noise—steel scraping steel, followed seconds later by