The Devil's Assassin by Brian Read Free Book Online

discovery, and
when our funder’s at the DOD found out about it, we received a call from the
NSA telling us to keep it secret and to send them the DNA results as soon as we
have them.”
    Mike Huggins addresses Jasper, “Can you rewind it back to
where the needle comes out? And then advance it frame by frame.”
    “Sure.”
    Green rewinds the tape and starts it from where the creature
is feeling Sahar’s neck, frame by frame. June, seeing this animal feeling
Sahar’s neck for a pulse lets out a mournful sigh. “Is he doing what we think
he’s doing, Doctor? Could he be that intelligent?”
    “Let’s not jump the gun, Doctor Dituro,” says Van Houten.
“Despite what our eyes see. There may be another explanation. It certainly has
the appearance of intelligence.”
    The film continues to advance frame by frame, though on this
system, which records at one frame per two seconds, they are not able to see
enough detail. One moment the needle is not there, the next moment it is.
    “Can’t you get more of the needle than that?” asks Mike
Huggins. “We can’t see where it came from.”
    “This isn’t the movies, Doc.” says Jasper. “We have to
record at a low frame rate because we have a lot of labs and limited storage
capacity. Some stuff that happens you won’t see. The
idea with security video is to get an idea of what is happening, generally, and
maybe catch a glimpse or two of the perp. We have that, I’d say.”
    The film is already to the point where the creature is
licking off the needle. Then it’s gone and he’s moving toward the door again.
    “Well,” says Detective Maas. It would seem that we have an
unfortunate situation with that animal, Doctor Van Houten. One
that concerns the safety of the public.”
    Van Houten is uneasy. “I agree that we have a problem.
However, that animal is at the moment a top government secret, Detective Maas.”
    “That animal is clearly dangerous,” says an angry Maas. “I
hope the next words out of your mouth are something more constructive.”
    Van Houten becomes more confident, after all, he has the
highest levels of the government behind him. “Of course we’ll do everything we
can to find it, you can rest assured. But it will, in the short term at least,
be a federal operation.”
    Detective Maas knows a bureaucratic wall when he sees one
and that’s what he’s sensing now. “I strongly suggest you let me put out an APB
on him. It’s the quickest way to find him – casts the biggest net.”
    “That’s exactly the opposite of what we can do. He wouldn’t
remain a secret very long that way, Detective.”
    “To hell with your secret, Doctor! What’s so important about this animal that it has to remain top secret, even
when we know now that it’s a danger to the public?”
    Van Houten doesn’t want to discuss it, but he feels that if
he doesn’t tell the detective something he will only cause trouble. “This is an
unusual animal. Very unusual, as you can see yourself. It is unusual in this day and age to find an absolutely new species as large as
he is, and a hominid! New species are found quite often, but they are generally
very small, ranging from insects and worms to small rodents and small monkeys.
This is an unprecedented find! But believe it or not, the government has
protocols for discovery of an animal like this … One as seemingly intelligent
as this one is.”
    Van Houten hopes this is enough to placate the detective,
but sees that it isn’t by the confused look on the detective’s face.
“Detective, we must establish his terrestrial lineage before we can
release news of his discovery to the public. It’s a government mandate that I
cannot do anything about.”
    Van Houten emphasized “terrestrial” by saying it more
slowly. Detective Maas thinks this over. He is just as surprised as he can be
when he puts two and two together. “You mean to tell me that that thing might
be an alien?”
    Van Houten shrugs and bobs his head