‘The Chimera vectors are a class of vector that both Denton and I consider to be the Holy Grail of Project GATE. There are only two of them. I encrypted the vector codes for each until we’re ready to steal them.’

‘I suppose you know my next question,’ Sophia said.

Cecilia nodded. ‘One of these, the Axolotl Vector, enhances cellular repair, promoting not only accelerated repair rates but also regeneration. It’s chimeric in a sense because we introduced foreign genes from the Axolotl salamander. Salamanders can regenerate organs and entire limbs over a period of time.’

‘And the second vector?’

‘That requires a bit of explanation. Since you haven’t read the Akhana survival manual, I’ll need to give you an express lesson.’

‘On what?’ Sophia said.

‘On psychopaths.’

Sophia shrugged. ‘Serial killers, mass murderers. I’ve met enough in my time.’

Cecilia shook her head. ‘More than you’d ever know. You see, your understanding of psychopathy is based on western psychiatry’s understanding of it, which is next to nothing. Officially, the psychopath doesn’t even exist.’

‘That’s not true,’ Sophia said. ‘It’s a subset of antisocial personality disorder.’

Cecilia raised an eyebrow. ‘But is it? The real psychopath is not antisocial by any means. In fact, he is the most social. He would be the most charismatic and confident man you will ever meet. And he will go his entire life without ever being detected. Why?’ She smiled. ‘Because you’re too busy looking in the antisocial basket.’

Sophia unfolded her arms and leaned forward. ‘Why do we know so little about them?’

‘I think you know the answer to that.’

Sophia eyed her carefully. ‘I’m all ears.’

‘Fifty years ago, a small team of Eastern European scientists were recruited by the Fifth Column. During this time, they embarked upon a secret personal investigation.’ Cecilia wet her lips. ‘They wanted to investigate evil.’

‘So where did they begin?’

‘Right where they were. The Nazis strode across Europe in their hundred-league jackboots. These scientists were able to stay alive long enough to gather a wealth of scientific data on this evil they sought to investigate. And as the Nazis were driven out, they were replaced by the Communists, under the heel of Stalin. And so these scientists secretly began to piece together a picture of man’s inhumanity to man. And they found something very interesting. Something that, even today, only a handful of experts in this field would even suspect.’

Sophia swallowed. ‘Ahead of their time.’

Cecilia nodded. No smile. ‘They found a genetic abnormality. Which means the psychopath is not only without a conscience but also without the capacity to grow one. Ever.’

She leaned forward. ‘They found these men were not human. More like machines. An intra-species predator that lived among its prey. Undetected, unknown and unchangeable.’

‘So they’re cursed,’ Sophia said.

‘No,’ Cecilia said. ‘It’s not a curse for them. Their reality is very different to yours. Your logic does not apply in their world, just as theirs does not apply in yours. What is a curse to you is a blessing to them. It’s what enables them to survive, to not go hungry.’

Something cold needled Sophia’s spine. ‘When you say hungry, you’re not talking about food, are you?’

Cecilia shook her head. ‘You’re catching on. They can be your neighbor, a police officer, the local evangelist, politician, clinical psychiatrist, the vampire from a paranormal romance novel, the “create your own reality” new-age guru. We go about our lives clueless to their nature, and they go about their lives overpowering ours.’

‘I don’t get it though,’ Sophia said. ‘I mean, what’s the point? What do they get out of it other than . . . winning?’

‘Satisfaction. And more power. These scientists found that psychopaths seek no specific political or economic goal, as much as they pretend to; there is no specific land they covet or a level of wealth they pursue, for there is neither enough land nor enough wealth to satisfy them. You could even consider it an addiction. Think of the Roman Empire’s conquest of Europe, the Spanish conquistadores’ conquest of the Americas, the British occupation of Northern Ireland. The Fifth Column has the world’s most successful psychopaths at its helm, and they want it all. They seek infinite control. No bargain or parley can deter them. There’s no treaty that can halt their advance, no law that can limit them.’ Cecilia frowned. ‘And if it does limit them, they simply rewrite it. You have to understand that we’re dealing with individuals who have unlimited power. Unlimited resources. And more psychological knowledge about human beings than human beings themselves have. Specialized knowledge.’

‘How does no one realize this?’ Sophia said.

‘We’re born and raised to believe that everyone has some sort of good inside them. So we never even suspect the ice that runs through the veins of such people.’

‘But to get to that position, they needed to get into a position of power to begin with, right?’ Sophia said. ‘I don’t understand how we let that happen.’

‘There was no one event that marked their rise to power over humans. Or if there was, it was a long time ago,’ Cecilia said. ‘Psychopaths think a certain way. They have a particular world view. They gravitate towards a way of life that suits them. Lying, cheating, stealing, manipulating. It’s how they’re wired.’

‘What about the Fifth Column? Surely that hasn’t been around forever.’

‘No one really knows when it truly started. Psychopaths have worked in governments since governments existed. I have heard of precursor organizations to the Fifth Column, but you could say the Fifth Column was truly born on 22 November 1963. The psychopaths operating in the shadows of the US government found John F Kennedy’s policies to be . . . unpalatable. Denton’s father, Sidney Denton, was in charge of the operation.’

‘You’ve worked with Denton’s father?’ Sophia said.

‘No, but Leon Adamicz did. He programmed both the operatives and the decoys. A lot of people here at the Akhana believe 9/11 was the turning point. But I think it was long before that. I think the turning point was the moment those psychopaths took out the President, and made sure no President would ever cross them again. Not just in America, but in any country. And there was no turning back. They’d murdered the President of the United States.’

‘And they got away with it,’ Sophia said.

‘And were able to commit more crimes because of it. Start more wars because of it. There’s no redemption for that. They keep going because it’s the only way they know how. It’s the only thing they know. And it’s the only thing that keeps us from discovering their true nature.’

‘Do you wish you could’ve stopped them?’ Sophia said. ‘Before it came to this?’

Cecilia shook her head. ‘You would first need to know what to look for. That’s the problem. They have a specialized knowledge of humans, but we don’t have a specialized knowledge of them. At least, not one that’s widely available. And it has probably been withheld from us for that very reason. There’s no conspiracy theory here, Sophia. Because there doesn’t need to be.’

Sophia felt like a rock had been dropped in her stomach. ‘It’s just . . . foxes and rabbits.’

Cecilia leaned back in her chair. ‘Something like that.’

‘But do they cooperate or compete against each other?’

‘When there are plenty of rabbits, the foxes eat well. When there aren’t many rabbits, the foxes turn on each other. It depends on the situation. The state of our world today, there are over six billion rabbits. A portion are always collateral, of course. But that’s still a great deal of rabbits.’

Sophia looked down at her hands. They were still covered in grime from her trek here. ‘So what happened to the scientists?’

Cecilia’s gaze fell. ‘They didn’t last. Well, one survived long enough to pass the knowledge on to the only person within the Fifth Column he could trust. His assistant: Owen Freeman, a psychiatry undergraduate at the time. He kept the research safe. He made copies. Using a false name, he tried to pass it on so that the human race might be informed.’

‘I’m guessing that didn’t pan out.’

Cecilia nodded. ‘Not as he’d hoped. He tried to publish the research but no one would touch it. Years passed and Owen became one of the Fifth Column’s most distinguished psychiatrists. He still persisted in anonymously publishing the research. In the end, the research was circulated through a handful of libraries and comprehended only by specialists in the field. Owen had come no closer to teaching humanity about their one natural predator. So he went underground.’

‘What do you mean . . . underground?’

‘After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Owen left the Fifth Column and founded the Akhana,’ Cecilia said. ‘Over the last two decades, the Akhana has been recruiting disillusioned Fifth Column personnel. Mostly scientists. Some Blue Berets. Their Special Forces training has proved valuable in concealing and protecting the Akhana.’

‘How many people are in the Akhana?’ Sophia said.

‘Worldwide? A fraction over 15,000.’

Far more than she’d expected. ‘That’s a lot to conceal.’

Cecilia smiled. ‘Often the best way to conceal is in plain sight. Not all of our bases are hidden in the middle of a jungle.’

‘So that’s the express lesson,’ Sophia said. ‘Now what does this have to do with the second Chimera vector?’

‘Right. During the early years of the Akhana, Owen oversaw a team of scientists whose fields ranged from clinical pharmacology to molecular genetics. They discovered there was a mutated gene—an allelic variant—in the essential psychopath,’ Cecilia said. ‘It was called the MAOA gene. This MAOA gene or allele is semi-dominant. Just like the gene for color blindness. They found that one allelic variant of this gene causes Brunner syndrome; another causes autism. And yet another is present in psychopathy.’

‘A certain variation causes psychopathy? There’s a psychopath gene?’ Sophia said.

Cecilia nodded. ‘For simplicity’s sake, yes. Men possess one X chromosome and one Y, so they only have room for one copy of this gene. Whereas women have two chromosomes. They can carry two copies of the gene. This is where it gets interesting. If a woman carries the psychopath gene, there will always be a non-psychopath gene to counter it.’

‘So no female psychopaths then?’ Sophia said.

‘It’s rare. Just as women are rarely color blind. But there’s still a fifty-fifty chance they can pass the gene on to their sons.’

‘And then the son might become a psychopath,’ Sophia said. ‘What then?’

‘He can also pass it on to his daughter.’

‘So how many people are carrying this variant?’ Sophia said. ‘One percent?’

‘Not even close.’

Sophia relaxed slightly.

‘Based on the research gathered so far,’ Cecilia said, ‘we estimate six percent with the active gene, and a further six percent are carriers of the gene. The percentage varies from country to country, of course. We’ve found the poorer countries are often low, only one or two percent. The rich countries—rich for a reason, I suppose—have an alarmingly high number.’

Sophia swallowed. ‘How high?’

‘Trust me, you don’t want to know. But globally we’re looking at twelve percent of the human race carrying this gene.’

‘Jesus. That’s an epidemic.’

‘A pandemic. Over 800 million carriers. But it’s not too late. We can change that.’

Sophia chewed the inside of her lip. ‘So you say.’

‘If we release this Chimera vector to the population, it will have no effect on those without the variant,’ Cecilia said. ‘But in the psychopaths and the carriers of this gene, the Chimera vector will switch on a sterility gene and render them unable to have children. The psychopath gene will end with them.’

‘That’s your solution? Sterilizing—’ Sophia counted in her head ‘—400 million women?’

‘It’s a small sacrifice considering what it will do for humanity.’

‘No one gets killed but . . .’ Sophia paused to find the words. ‘What gives us the right?’

‘To stop psychopaths?’

‘To stop all those women from having their own children. That’s wrong.’

‘It’s a small price to pay to stop psychopaths from running the planet,’ Cecilia said.

‘It’s not our price,’ Sophia said. ‘It’s those women who’d be paying.’

Cecilia nodded. ‘I understand.’

‘No. You don’t understand. We don’t have the right to do that to four women, let alone 400 million.’

‘And psychopaths don’t have the right to manipulate, torture, rape, murder and enslave seven billion people, do they?’

‘But this makes us no better than them,’ Sophia said.

Cecilia shook her head. ‘No. That’s exactly where they want us. They want to manipulate us with our own emotions. Back us into a corner so we’re helpless and weak. If we can’t make an insignificant sacrifice—and it is insignificant in the grand scheme of things—then we can do nothing but watch the world burn.’

But it was still a sacrifice, Sophia thought. Was it one worth making? If it meant breaking the psychopaths’ stranglehold over humanity, then maybe it was worth it. Maybe it was more than worth it.

‘I don’t agree with your plan,’ she said.

‘You don’t have to. But if I were one of those women, I would still want you to do this.’ Cecilia leaned in closer. ‘Without a shadow of a doubt.’

‘And how do you intend to spread it?’ Sophia asked.

‘Mosquito breeding. We give female mosquitoes a sample of blood that contains the Chimera vector. The vector is passed through the mosquitoes’ salivary glands when they feed on a human. We release the mosquitoes into densely populated locations: worldwide deployment. Beginning with areas where mosquitoes can survive for a protracted amount of time, and then releasing in more temperate regions.’

They were using mosquitoes—vampires of the insect world—to get rid of psychopaths, vampires of the human world, Sophia thought. ‘It sounds hard to pull off,’ she said.

‘Actually, it’s quite a simple delivery method. And the most efficient and effective way to deliver the Chimera vector to the population.’

‘Once you have the Chimera vector codes, how long will it take?’

‘The code will be transmitted to every Akhana base in the world where we have the equipment to manufacture the vectors. We’ll inject them into volunteers, take blood samples from them and feed the blood to the mosquitoes. We’ve conducted time trials from when we get the code to the time we release the mosquitoes. We’re looking at forty to forty-five minutes.’

Sophia exhaled sharply, which made her feel slightly dizzy. ‘That’s fast.’

‘There’s one problem,’ Cecilia said. ‘I discovered during my Project GATE trials that if you inject both Chimera vectors into the same person—psychopath or otherwise—it creates an unanticipated synergy. One where two pseudogene clusters are expressed adjacent to each other. When this happens, they produce a third transcript as well as their own.’

‘So there are three Chimera vectors?’ Sophia said.

‘In a sense.’ Cecilia smiled. ‘I suppose that suits, since the Chimera had three heads. This third transcript, I call it the Methuselah effect. It switches on pseudogene clusters responsible for heightened DNA repair, hormone production, superior protection against free radicals and a considerable range of functions that slow down the aging process.’

‘It turbo-boosts the Axolotl Chimera vector?’ Sophia said.

‘Sure. Cut off a finger and it grows back a week later. But more than that, when these genes turn on, people that should be old—’ Cecilia eyed Sophia carefully ‘—become young again. And stay that way for a protracted amount of time.’

Sophia’s mouth felt dry. ‘They can live forever.’

Cecilia seemed hesitant. She looked down at the polished concrete floor between them. ‘Not forever. But definitely longer. It started with yeast and worms, and then in the 1980s we quadrupled the lifespan of mice. We tested elderly humans in the nineties and restored their appearance to someone of approximately your age. They were exceptionally healthy and resistant to disease. We can only guess at how long they will live for, but our conservative estimates place them at 360 years. It could be more. It could be a lot more.’

Sophia shivered at the thought. ‘If the Fifth Column get access to that—’

‘Then there’s no point using the anti-psychopath vector,’ Cecilia finished for her. ‘Because the psychopaths—’

‘Will never die,’ Sophia said. ‘The Methuselah effect works on psychopaths too?’

Cecilia nodded. ‘It works on everyone. That’s the problem.’

Sophia shook her head. ‘You should’ve destroyed it. No one should be able to live forever.’

‘The Chimera vector codes are stored on a supercomputer in the Desecheo Island facility,’ Cecilia said. ‘The only way to be certain it is destroyed would be to destroy everything.’ She shook her head. ‘We can’t do that. We won’t do that. The anti-psychopath vector is too important.’

‘That’s an incredible risk.’

Cecilia held Sophia’s gaze. ‘I’m aware of the risks.’

‘So you want the anti-psychopath vector, but the Fifth Column want both?’

‘Correct.’

‘And they know that combining the Chimera vectors gives them immortality?’ Sophia said.

‘Immortality is an incorrect term: it implies they can never die and you can never kill them. The Methuselah effect grants an indefinite lifespan. The Fifth Column is aware of the effect. And Denton is more than just aware. He took an . . . unnatural interest in this; an obsession almost. As any psychopath would. He wanted it refined for Project GATE.’

‘Wait a second,’ Sophia said. ‘You want to release the anti-psychopath vector worldwide to sterilize anyone who carries the gene, which is OK in theory, but then all the Fifth Column need to do is get hold of the Axolotl vector and—’

‘And inject themselves,’ Cecilia said. ‘Sure, you’re a sterile psychopath, but you’ve boosted your healing, your organ repair and limb regeneration and you have an extended lifespan. You don’t care about sterility. You care about yourself.’

‘It’s a double-edged sword,’ Sophia said.

‘Not for them,’ Cecilia said. ‘But for us it is. So now you understand the gravity of the situation. That’s why, when the time comes for you to steal the codes and decrypt them—that is, if you choose to help us—your first action will be to encrypt the code with another segment of my DNA. One that no one—not even you—can access. That’s our insurance policy in case you are captured.

‘Once you have done that, you must electronically transmit the codes to me and destroy your copy immediately. Either way, from the moment you have it, the code will self-annihilate in twenty-four hours. So it’s important I have it immediately. I will be on standby near the facility, in Puerto Rico. Once you’ve transmitted it to me, you’re free to put a bullet through Denton’s head. If you like.’

Cecilia stood abruptly. ‘We have the opportunity to rid the planet of Denton and psychopaths like him permanently. For the first time in hundreds, if not thousands, of years we can have a world without evil.’ She paced the room, chillingly focused. ‘A world without war. Can you imagine what that would feel like?’

‘No,’ Sophia said.

‘Precisely.’ Cecilia drew to a halt. ‘Because we’ve never had peace.’

She turned to her