Ancestor: A Novel

by Scott Sigler Narrated by Scott Sigler

Overview

"The ancestors are out there¿you have to believe me."

From acclaimed author Scott Sigler-New York Times bestselling creator of Infected and Contagious-comes a tale of genetic experimentation's worst nightmare come true.

Every five minutes, a transplant candidate dies while waiting for a heart, a liver, a kidney.  Imagine a technology that could provide those life-saving transplant organs for a nominal fee ... and imagine what a company would do to get a monopoly on that technology.

On a remote island in the Canadian Arctic, PJ Colding leads a group of geneticists who have discovered this holy grail of medicine. By reverse-engineering the genomes of thousands of mammals, Colding's team has dialed back the evolutionary clock to re-create humankind's common ancestor. The method? Illegal. The result? A computer-engineered living creature, an animal whose organs can be implanted in any person, and with no chance of transplant rejection.

There's just one problem: these ancestors are not the docile herd animals that Colding's team envisioned. Instead, Colding's work has given birth to something big, something evil.

With these killer creatures on the prowl, Colding and the woman he loves must fight to survive - even as government agents close in to shut the project down, and the deep-pocketed company backing this research proves to have its own cold-blooded agenda.

As the creators become the prey in the ultimate battle for survival, Scott Sigler takes readers on the ultimate thrill-ride-and offers a chilling cautionary account of what can happen when hubris, greed, and madness drive scientific experimentation past the brink of reason.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169179996
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	06/22/2010
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	883,894

Related Subjects

• Mystery & Thrillers
• Fiction
• Science Fiction & Fantasy
• Fiction Subjects
• Thrillers
• Science & Technology - Fiction
• Social Science Fiction
• High Tech and Hard Science Fiction
• Action Thrillers
• Biology & Genetics - Fiction
• Science Fiction - Genetic Engineering
• Techno-Thrillers

Read an Excerpt

Paul Fischer had always pictured the end of the world being a bit more . . . industrial. Loud machines, cars crashing, people screaming, guns a-blazing. Perhaps a world- breaking bomb shattering the earth into bits. But here in Greenland? Nothing but packed snow, endless rocks, and the towering white vistas of glaciers sitting high on the horizon. No cities burning, no abandoned cars, none of that nonsense. Just a tiny virus, and some pigs.

Paul hopped out of the UH- 60 Black Hawk he li cop ter and onto a snowcovered field lit up by the breaking dawn. A woman in an air force jacket waited for him, fur- lined hood tight around her head to ward off the cold and the stinging wind.

She snapped a salute. "Col o nel Fischer?"

Paul nodded and casually returned the salute.

"Second Lieutenant Laura Burns, Col o nel. General Curry is waiting for you. This way, sir."

She turned and walked toward three white Quonset huts, their curved roofs blending into the landscape. Two tunnels connected the huts, completing the little human hamster town that had gone up less than twenty four hours earlier. He heard the hum of a diesel generator, saw the curve of two satellite dishes mounted on top of the huts.

Paul followed the girl, their shadows blending together as a long, broken gray shape moving across churned- up white snow. He wanted to get inside, hoped it was heated -- these cold temps raised hell with his left knee. Paul absently wondered if the young lieutenant was married, if she was the kind of girl his son would find interesting. He was starting to wonder if the boy would ever settle down and get to the business of making some grandchildren that Paul could spoil rotten.

Overhead, a pair of F-16s shot by, their jet roar echoing off the valley floor. Probably a squadron out of Reykjavík, in to enforce a no- bullshit no- fly zone that had gone up shortly after Novozyme sounded the biohazard alarm.

As he walked, Paul looked out into the shallow valley. Two miles away, he could make out the Novozyme facility: a main building that contained research labs and housing for the staff, a landing strip, light poles, metal guard tower, two small, unblemished sheet- metal barns for the pigs and a head- high electric fence that surrounded the entire compound.

The girl -- Second Lieutenant Burns, Paul mentally corrected himself -- led him to the middle hut. No airlock. There hadn't been time to set up a full temporary biohazard center, so the guys at Thule Air Force Base had shipped out the communications and command part of a portable Harvest Falcon setup. Not that it mattered much. Intel was almost positive that the viruses hadn't escaped the Novozyme facility.

The key word being almost.

Paul opened the door and stepped into the heated interior. General Evan Curry looked up, waved Fischer over to the bank of monitors that covered the rear wall. Several American soldiers sat at consoles in the cramped space. A few ranking Danes stood and watched.

Curry had the permanent scowl and gray- peppered buzz cut of the typical Hollywood general, but he strayed from the script with his five- footfive stature and deep- black skin. The only image that mattered, however, was the shine from his four stars.

"Hello, Paul." Curry extended his hand for a firm shake. "I'd love to say it's good to see you again, but this is just as bad as last time. That was . . .what, three years ago?"

"Three years to the day," Paul...

Videos