Z-Volution by David Sakmyster, Rick Chesler Read Free Book Online Page A

During the flight here he had questioned everything. The tone of her voice, the timing of all this. Something wasn’t right.
    But now here she was, coming toward him. He could see her in the back of the Jeep.
    Guess we’re not going to the facility, he thought.
    He took off his aviator’s sunglasses, hooked them behind his collar and made for the ground transport, expecting to help her out. Instead, even before it parked, his mother—head wrapped in a yellow scarf, wearing tan slacks and a white silk blouse, sprang from the open door and ran to him. Elsa threw her arms around his neck and hugged him fiercely.
    “It worked!” she yelled over the winds and the Jeep’s engine. “It worked!”
    #
     
    "What do you mean?" Alex asked. "How are you better, what…?"
    A thousand questions ran through his mind, along with a small nagging alarm bell which was subsequently droned out in a wave of excitement and joy. His mother was not only alive and well, but she was going to make it. A miracle had somehow occurred here on this little island.
    But that warning bell chimed one more time. The coincidence of it all… She had suffered so long with this disease, but now that it had nearly run its course this mystery treatment works?
    He pulled away slightly, and with a trace of terror, searched her eyes, then her skin.
    "What is it?" she asked, her voice bubbling with uncontrolled happiness.
    "Nothing, just…" He studied her features. Couldn't tell what was under the bandana-scarf, but she just seemed…healthy. A modest sunburn at worst, but her eyes were strong and vibrant, without a touch of (dare he say it) yellow or reptilian. Why would he think that? Why consider that any miracle in this day and age had to come with a curse? Couldn't it just be a modern triumph of medicine here on this island, far away from FDA rules and lengthy testing periods before new treatments and drugs could be approved?
    "Did it really work? You feel better? I mean, you look great and all, and I am doing all I can to not drop to my knees and praise God right freaking now, but…"
    She squeezed his shoulders and nodded fast. "It worked, Alex, and it's real, but…" She looked over her shoulder at the driver and the man in a black suit and sunglasses sitting beside him. “I wonder if something else is behind the treatment, behind my selection in the first place.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I've heard things while they thought I was unconscious. I heard your name, and something about Vostok.”
    Alex paled. It is too good to be true. “What else?”
    She shook her head, leaned close and hugged him again. “Just trust me, we can't go back in there.” She cocked her head back toward the facility. “I know you had dealings with these people down there. Your father too. Bad people, and I know his death was no accident. So I'm scared. I don't trust them, don't trust any of this.”
    She pulled away, locked eyes with her son, then glanced toward the airplane.
    “Is it still fueled? Can we just go—how fast could we take off?”
    “Mom, I don't know if we can. We…" Shit , he thought, looking at the driver, who now stood up and started to get out of the Jeep. There was a gun holstered at his right hip.
    “Better not just yet.” He stepped in front of his mother and addressed the men. “Hey there. I’m Alex Ramirez. Thanks for the greeting party. What do we do next? Is there a release procedure, sign out form or something?”
    The driver said nothing, but the other man, still in the Jeep, lowered his sunglasses. He stood, then spoke into a walkie-talkie, something lost in the wind and the rustling palm tree branches alongside the runway.
    “Get ready,” Alex’s mother said to him, over his shoulder.
    “For what? What’s going on here?”
    “Told you,” she whispered, pointing back toward the airport, “nothing good.”
    The man in the Jeep lowered the walkie-talkie and finally spoke, leaning over the Jeep’s railing. “Mrs. Ramirez,