Z-Volution Read Online Free PDF

paths. Both geniuses and leaders in their field, they were competitors who had become much more, and at one point Arcadia even had dreams of a family and a settled future.
    But that was all shattered when Dyson took his genius and his theories and meshed them up into radical notions about genetic superiority and making the world a better place through targeted racial manipulation. Bio-engineered diseases that would only affect certain ethnic groups, things like that. He began associating with dangerous new friends and attracting the attention of people who could—and would— cause exactly the types of mass plagues and extinctions Arcadia was sworn to prevent.
    She had risen to a senior rank at the CDC, her skill and promise noted by the current administration, and she had been rewarded with greater and greater responsibility.
    Now this.
    What to do with a package from a bio-terrorist who just happened to be her former lover—and who, by all accounts, died three months ago?
    The only thing stopping her from calling the authorities and having the package checked for suspicious materials—or burning it in the incinerator right now—was the recollection of something Xander had told her one night as they lay in his big bed, cocooned in silk sheets. He had said that she alone was the only person he trusted. The only one he would ever share vital secrets with, and if anything ever threatened her, he would ensure she had a way out. A failsafe , he kept calling it, but she knew what he meant: an antidote, or an immunization.
    She knew he had been working on such things for all the wrong people. What if he had succeeded, and what if he then made good on his promise and sent her something before he died? Something that finally made its way here after…that island and whatever happened there?
    She hefted the package, warning bells chiming in her brain even as she ignored them all.
    She tore open the wrapping.
    #
     
    The gift—a thumb drive ensnared in gobs of bubble wrap—was in her computer, and the lone file in the only folder sat patiently as she hovered the mouse pointer over it.
    What the hell is zrex_kilr.exe?
    Having come this far and throwing caution to the wind, she clicked open the file.
    What are you giving me, Xander?
    Even as the outpouring of data, 3D models and cellular micrographs whipped across the screen, and more and more files were accessed, Arcadia knew her life was about to change forever.
    She saw bits of protein strings whipping past her eyes, then flashes of still photos and video files depicting impossible things—things that could have been visuals out of a Hollywood make-up effects lab.
    Unblinking, she took it all in, bombarded, mesmerized and overwhelmed, but her confusion and disbelief began to clear away as the scientific data began to roll out, reinforcing her deepest fears while presenting a compelling yet sobering scenario that quite possibly signaled a pandemic unlike anything humankind had experienced—far beyond Influenza outbreaks, Smallpox epidemics and the Black Plague.
    She stared more intently at the data, and at the file directories, looking for the one that might represent the culmination of all this work. The antidote.
    The ‘Z-rex Killer’.
    As started to search, her screen flashed and a popup from the CDC alert center startled her.
    Her adrenaline spiked and her skin broke out in goosebumps.
    High Priority. Washington had just sent in the alert. The equivalent of DefCon-5 or Terror Threat Level Red.
    Arcadia looked out her window at the sudden flood of activity—all her friends and coworkers had received the same alert and now scrambled to make calls and warn their constituents.
    The CDC was now on high alert for an imminent biological terrorist event.
    Meanwhile, she had quite possibly just been given a gift from a dead lover that held the key to a solution.
    First, she needed to make a call. She had to let Washington know.

5.
     
    Langley, Virginia
    Alex paced the floor