Project

Thursday January 3, 6:57 p.m. New York Freezing rain, razor-sharp on the skin, continued to fall. Across the five boroughs of the city and into the suburbs, traffic moved at a crawling pace on every expressway. The Cross County was the usual parking lot, and the Henry Hudson was down to one lane. But the worst was the Cross Bronx, completely shut down because of a horrendous accident. The driver of the limo leaned over and switched off the radio, apparently abandoning all hope of finding a reasonably clear route out of the city. Now they would simply inch along, one car in a line of the thousands of other commuter vehicles going north on the FDR Drive. In the backseat, the passenger pushed aside the work he'd brought and glanced at his watch. He was going to be late for dinner. His daughter and her husband and three children were in from the West Coast until Sunday. Christmas week had been spent with his daughter's in-laws in New Hampshire, and this week the gang had been with them in Connecticut. He'd have liked to have it the other way around. He'd been home most of last week. This week, though, with the exception of New Year's Day, his schedule was booked. His wife phoned him at the office to tell him their daughter was now considering staying for another couple of weeks with the kids in Connecticut. He looked again at the electronic scheduler and shook his head as he paged through it. There wouldn't be any relief now until the end of the month. Not until the company's big deadline. He wouldn't be able to spend any time with them. He reached for his cell phone to call his wife. He had an eight-thirty breakfast meeting in the city tomorrow morning, and he contemplated telling the driver to turn around and take him to his apartment in Midtown instead. He could do without this commute tonight. The cell phone rang before he could make the call home. He looked at the display and felt his spine stiffen. A bitter taste edged into his mouth, and he considered not answering the call. He wished that were an option, but it wasn't. He knew he'd be answering. He even knew what the call was about. His old partner had phoned him daily this past month. Old skeletons were peeking out of the closet. This wasn't the first time; over the years, the episodes had come in waves. But this one was worse than anything they'd faced before. There was no getting around it. Still, they just had to put up with situations like this until the test samples were all gone. The last time he'd counted, there were only seven left. Seven. He pressed the button on the console and waited until the window between him and the driver slid shut before answering the call. "Hello, Mitch," he said, looking out at the blackness enshrouding the East River. "Have you been watching the news this afternoon?" his partner asked without a greeting. The agitation in his voice was clear. "No." He reached for the TV remote and turned it on. "There's been another shooting, this time in San Francisco." He switched the channel to CNN and muted the sound. In a moment, the closed captions began to scroll across the bottom of the screen. "Was he one of ours?" "Yes," Mitch said, his voice rising. "Did he live?" "No." Six left, the passenger thought grimly. "Then we don't worry about it." He glanced at his watch again. "I've got to go." "Wait," his partner snapped before he could end the call. "This is different from anything we've seen before. The violence is worse." "That's not because of us," he said calmly. "All the test cases have been the same. The ones that remain are the earliest specimens. They're older now than the others were. Adolescent hormonal shifts are complicating the equation. That can result in more damage." "Curtis, they're flipping every couple of days," his partner said, obviously trying to keep hisCoffey, Jan is the author of 'Project ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780778324065 and ISBN 0778324060.