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be
drunk
. Maybe he’d hang withTim Feely after the morning’s experiment. Tim was always down for a drink and always seemed to have a bottle close at hand.
    Three years
.
    “I just wish I had you back,” Colding muttered. But Clarissa couldn’t come back, no matter how bad he wished for it. He couldn’t blunt the pain permanently lodged in his chest. What he
could
do, though, was make this goddamn project work … and by doing so, spare hundreds of thousands of people from experiencing pain just like his.
    He turned back to look at the compound, his home for almost two years. About fifty yards southwest of the hangar stood the compound’s other building. The square, cinder-block building only looked simple. Its two entry points were facility airlocks that maintained a slight negative pressure. It was a sobering thought—Colding’s home was a place designed to keep death in.
    The building contained state-of-the-art labs for genetics, computers and veterinary medicine as well as a small cafeteria, rec room and nine 600-square-foot apartments. It was a good-sized facility, but after twenty isolated months even the Trump Tower would seem claustrophobic.
    Between the hangar and the main facility stood a metal platform that supported a ten-foot satellite dish. The platform, the hangar and the facility were the sum total of civilization at Genada’s Baffin Island base.
    A distant, rapid growl of rotor blades echoed off the landscape. Colding turned to see a dark speck on the horizon. The speck quickly grew into the familiar image of a Sikorski S-76C helicopter. Colding loved the sight of that machine. If you took a typical TV news chopper, removed all the logos and painted it flat black, you’d have a twin to Bobby’s Sikorski. With twelve seats and a range of over four hundred nautical miles, the Sikorski could get the entire staff to safety in case of an emergency.
    The heli closed in, then swooped down to the mile-long landing strip like a noisy shadow, kicking up clouds of powdery snow. The landing gear extended. Bobby Valentine set her down gently.
    After a short pause, a metallic rattling sound echoed across the snowy landscape. The hangar’s massive doors—240 feet wide and 70 feet high—split in the middle and slowly opened just enough for the fuel truck. Brady drove it out and stopped close to the Sikorski. Colding walked toward the helicopter, watching the hangar doors to see if they would close.
    They stayed open. Which meant, obviously, that Andy Crosthwaite was not in the hangar to shut them.
    The main building’s front airlock opened. Colding expected to see Andy, but instead Gunther Jones trotted out into the cold. At six-foot-two, Gunther stood eye to eye with Colding but was much skinnier, his black Genada jacket always drooping from his rail-thin frame like a loose shirt on a wire hanger.
    “Gun, where the hell is The Asshole?”
    “Asleep. I didn’t want to leave you guys shorthanded.” He handed Colding a walkie-talkie. “That’s punched in to Andy’s room vid-phone.”
    Colding sighed and pressed the
transmit
button. “Andy, pick up.”
    No answer.
    “Andy, come in. I’ll keep squawking until you answer.”
    The handset crackled back. “Do you mind? I’m trying to sleep.”
    “Get your ass out here, Andy. Gunther’s supposed to be off-duty.”
    “Is Gun there?”
    “Yes, he came out to cover for your lazy ass.”
    “Then it’s a reach-around happy ending for all. Leave me alone, Colding.”
    “Dammit, Andy, come out here and do your job.”
    “I’ll pass. My GAF level is pretty low right now.”
    GAF? Colding looked at Gunther.
    “His give a fuck level,” Gunther said.
    Colding considered Andy only slightly more useful than a day-old dog turd. He’d served with Magnus, which was the only reason the dangerous little bastard had a job at all.
    “Andy, I’m—”
    “Uh-oh,” Andy said. “I think this thing is broken.”
    A click, and with it, the conversation was over.