Cretaceous Conspiracy #3 and Ancient Ice Apocalypse #4(on kindle)

Geniuses

Three years later… Isle of the Noble Cretaceous Research Facility

General Ty Taylor walked into the research labs but Daisy barely paid attention to him. She was arguing vehemently with her husband who the head of paleo-genetics, as the rest of the team watched the drama. Ty brough her here to solve the problem of the Genosaurs not surviving and after seventeen months, she had learned everything about genetics and then found the solution. She capped her marker and tapped the code. The walls were covered in scribbled genetic coding and mathematics. “These are the best solution. These codes are almost identical to the ones missing from the genome mapping. They will work and do work in living animals.”

“It’s not that simple. They…” Dale stopped when her watch beeped. He loved his brilliant wife, but she didn’t always see the big picture. How could she, I haven’t told her the truth, he thought regretfully as she stormed out, silencing the beeping on her wrist.

Daisy ignored the people in the hall as she went to the breakroom. She was so angry. She loved Dale and she found his solution. His reaction hurt her emotionally and she hated the turmoil she felt, it made it so hard to be rational as she mused, I don’t understand why he refuses to accept the logical solution. It’s time to eat. Just go eat and just leave him to look at the data.

Dale stomped out then he stopped in shock. The last person he wanted to see. A man who was possibly the most evil person on the planet. He stammered, “Mr. Neimad, we… we weren’t expecting you.”

D. Adam Neimad grinned, reminding, “I am the primary investor, I would like to see where our billions are going. Have you fixed the resequencing problem?”

“No,” Dale answered flatly.

“Hmmm,” Neimad hummed.

Dale walked down the hall after Daisy and stopped when he found her in the break room devouring a bowl of oatmeal, but it smelled and looked odd.

“Good grief, Dee, what are you eating?” Dale demanded as he took the bowl from her hands.

“Instant oatmeal, but there was no hot water or milk, so I used coffee and creamer,” she said as she reached for the bowl. It was hot and she thought her substitute for warm milk was clever since she wasn’t allowed to blow up the instawave again.

“You’re not eating this; I’ll make you something else.” He took a meal out of the freezer then hid the panel on the insta-wave as he punched in a code before it turned on to cook her food.

Daisy glanced at the older man who followed Dale into the breakroom with General Taylor. From his expression, she realized found their behavior odd. She had never met anyone whose eyes were such a true red color, they looked like rubies. She realized he was the corporate backer for the research, the owner of Neimad Global.

“Excuse me, Dr. Cane, what solution did you propose for the problem we are having with our clones?” Mr. Neimad asked curiously.

Lavender eyes exactly like his mother’s blinked at Damien; her voice had a Canadian lilt. “Komodo Dragon DNA, incubated in unfertile Komodo Dragon, Emu, or Saltie eggs.”

“Saltie?” Damien asked, holding up his hand to silence her husband.

“Saltwater or Nile Crocodiles, of course.” She blinked again then she rambled for several minutes about the genetic coding sequences. Mr. Neimad actually seemed intrigued by her solution as he listened to what her husband wouldn’t.

“And I told you, it would make the clones too aggressive,” Dale snapped when she paused for a breath. “Find another set of codes, ones not close to the territorial and hunting instinct codes.”

“Mathematically, the Komodo Dragons have the closest coding. The aggression can be trained out with behavioral programming after hatching,” Daisy insisted as the timer on the prepackaged meal chimed.

Dale took the meal out and set it on a plate. “Dee, this isn’t one of your theoretical projects; these are going to be living animals, we don’t know how to train them yet,” Dale talked to her like she was a child.

Daisy may only be twenty-two, four months and approximately seventeen days old, leaving her a year less than half his age but she was not a child. Enraged, she stomped her foot as if having a tantrum. “I ran the math like you asked, if you don’t like the answer, then give me a different problem to solve.”

She snatched the food from Dale and stomped past Neimad and Ty like they weren’t standing there watching the exchange. Turning the opposite way from the geno-labs, she headed toward the computer lab. Dale’s refusal to accept her solution made her doubt herself; she hated doubting herself and she didn’t want anyone to see her cry. Her hormones were all over the place. She thought he would be happy when she told him she was pregnant this morning, but his look was one of horror. It broke her heart, so she retreated into her analysis and decided to wait for him to be happy too. She knew that statistically there was a percentage of the male population that did not take the news of late in life fatherhood well.

Watching her leave, Damien remembered the brilliant, young, beautiful scientist going by a different last name as a nineteen-year-old girl in a mental institution. If he could recruit her, Dr. Daisy Cullen-Cane would be an asset despite her odd behavior and O.C.D. Being married to his top paleo-geneticist would help, he hoped. “I think I shall go examine your enchanting wife’s work.”

After Mr. Neimad left, Dale grabbed Ty’s arm. “Please, General, you have to help me.”

“If you don’t want to use Komodo Dragon DNA then refuse to,” Ty responded. “You are the Research and Development Director.”

“Not that. It isn’t safe to have her where Damien can get at her. You don’t know what he is like, you have to help me get Daisy to leave,” Dale begged. He had never regretted marrying the most brilliant mind of her generation until he watched the immortal who owned him studying her.

“The only way to make Daisy leave, is if she believes you no longer love her and have someone else. You will have to be almost abusive to make her stop loving you, you may even have to let her catch you cheating on her,” Ty warned, remembering everything his father told him, and everything he had learned the hard way about Daisy’s unique personality.

Dale shook his head, refusing, “I don’t think I could do that… Can’t you talk to her?”

“I have known her since she was eleven, she is obsessively loyal to those she cares about once her mind is made up. The only way to make her do what you want is to convince her she has reason to leave. You’ll have to destroy her trust,” Ty revealed. He hated to advise Dale to do this, but he knew Daisy. Once her loyalty was given, one had it for life, but after her trust was totally broken, it was forever gone. “Why would you want to send her away?”

“Mr. Neimad is curious about her, once he figures out how special she is, he will turn her into a lab rat. She just told me, she’s pregnant. I… I can’t let him experiment on her or raise my child in one of his boarding schools like I was raised in. Please Ty, we have to get her out from under his nose.”

Ty eyed the geneticist curiously, his extensive background check had shown no previous connection between Dr. Cane and Mr. Neimad, especially nothing like the one Dale just revealed. “Fine, I’ll help you, but you will lose her forever.”

Dale’s hands shook as he stuffed them in his pockets, “I don’t care, as long as they are safe from him.”

Seven months later…

It was the middle of the night when Darcy snuck into the maternity ward because her lord ordered the research analyst killed for refusing to come to work for him. It was a petty reason, so Darcy decided to give Daisy a merciful death from a stroke in her sleep. It was the only kindness the assassin could give her only real friend. She opened the door slowly, but Daisy wasn’t asleep. She was scribbling equations on the nurse’s whiteboard. The door moaned.

As soon as Daisy saw her, she hugged Darcy so excitedly her bobbed, brown wig fell off. Daisy brushed her fingers gently over Darcy’s bald scalp and the tattooed golden flower above her left ear.

“You’re still shiny,” Daisy declared in both a sad and happy voice. “Why are you here?”

“Got your message about the babies and my new oncologist works shifts twice a year at the clinic upstairs. Some kind of doctors on loan thing to pay for medical school. Next month he’ll be back home.” Darcy shrugged, continuing the lie for why she kept her head and eyebrows waxed, “And I don’t mind being shiny. I save a lot on shampoo since I got cancer which is good because you need my share of the world shampoo supply.” She shook the end of Daisy’s long braid at her.

They both laughed, then Daisy pushed her down into a chair and put Danny in her arms. “Danny boy, meet your Auntie Darcy. She’s going to be your godmother.”

“Daisy, I can’t. You know I’m still sick and…” She stopped with a gasp.

When Darcy looked down at the newborn, she saw her late baby brother Finn for a moment. Danny had the same sweet face and same little pucker pulling up the center of his lips as Finn had, and her heart began to beat again. It hurt a little bit and she shed a single tear of joy.

“He’s so beautiful, Daisy.”

“Yep, he’s the handsome one.”

“Who are you?! It’s the middle of the night!” A rude nurse came in, and demanded, “Why don’t you have a visitor badge? And why are you holding Mrs. Cane’s deform… her son?” The nurse corrected what she was going to say but Darcy understood.

The implication that Danny or Finn was imperfect in any way, ignited a cold hatred in Darcy as she glared silently at the woman, planning a thousand horrible ways to murder her.

Daisy came to Darcy’s defense, saying, “If my best friend wants to come downstairs and hold her godchild because she has insomnia between cancer treatments she can!” Then Daisy continued insulting the woman viciously, by pointing out, “As a nurse, you should have a little bit of compassion or change careers.”

The nurse stared at Darcy’s baldness and wig laying on the bedside table then stammered something about not knowing there was another way down from the cancer center upstairs before she rushed out.

“Of all the…”

“Daisy, don’t rant, you’ll wake up Danny… What’s his brother’s name?”

Daisy picked up the sleepy twin. “Benny, this is your Auntie Darcy.” The baby blinked at Darcy then closed his blue-violet eyes.

“How did you get such handsome sons with such an ugly husband?” Darcy demanded then, at Daisy’s sad look, Darcy announced flippantly, “What? I’m not kidding! They get their looks from you; you’re going to have girls all in the yard when they grow up. You got lucky this time. Next time, pick one for his brawn and strong jawline, not his brains.”

“Mrs. Cane?” A different nurse brought Darcy a visitor’s pass and apologized for the rude one. While Darcy held Danny, Daisy excitedly told her about her new project and research. Darcy just nodded, pretending she didn’t understand, then she answered all of Daisy’s questions about the botany doctorate program she was in.

Later that night, Darcy broke into Daisy’s home lab and copied all the new research. The potential to harvest energy straight from the universe and convert it into usable electricity was fascinating. Her lord was not happy Darcy had not just killed the difficult Dr. Daisy Cane as ordered but he saw the value of her new research and agreed as long as Darcy could get the information he wanted, Dr Cane was more valuable alive than dead. One week later, after Daisy and the twins were home from the hospital, Darcy brutally murdered the nurse who insulted baby Danny, her second Finn.

Two weeks after their birth, Daisy’s ex-husband Dale had not even visited his sons. He blamed Daisy for Danny’s birth defect and said such horrible things to her, Daisy was reduced to tears. Watching Daisy on the hidden cameras Darcy placed in her house, she got angry as her only friend rocked her sons, sobbing. Daisy’s heartbreak drew Darcy back to Jonstown where his Aunt Nora revealed Dale’s brother Melvin was born with a harelip too. As she drove home, Darcy vowed Dr. Dale Cane would die the death he feared most.

Almost two years later…

Daisy’s ex-husband had never visited their children when Darcy was given the order to terminate the staff on Isle of the Noble. He claimed Danny’s harelip proved she wasn’t a suitable mother to produce his offspring. Darcy decided it was just another ridiculous thing Dale blamed Daisy for because she was smarter than him. Now that her lord had decided those on Isle of the Noble were at the end of their usefulness, Darcy meticulously guaranteed the abusive, philandering husband of her one and only friend died a particularly gruesome and violent death. The death he feared most.

Dressed in her trademark black, she led the assault team of necromanced slaves and trained vicious Genosaurs. It made her laugh as the scientist tried to flee her lord’s creations from Daisy’s solution to the Genosaur longevity problem. After she checked the last surviving soldier to make certain he was dead, she went to find Dr. Dale Cane. He was barricaded in a room with a few surviving scientists.

“Open it,” she ordered one of Damien’s necromanced slaves.

The necromanced mercenary forced the door open and her snap sent several mircoraptors to stand in front of the scientists. She grabbed Dale from the cowering group. A single punch dropped him as they begged for mercy. Darcy felt no pity for these people. They claimed to be Daisy’s friends and yet they allowed her husband to abuse her and hid his cheating.

She whistled the command to dispatch them before she hauled Dale over her shoulder and carried him out. Their screaming was music to her soul. She dumped Dale on the floor of the isolation room and stripped him of his jacket.

Her four favorite microraptors hissed and growled as they waited obediently. A gesture made them attack him. She repeatedly splashed him with healing potions, so his death would take longer. She whistled, making the microraptors back away. She knelt in front of her best friend’s bloody ex-husband.

“Please,” Dale begged, “Please… I’m sorry. Tell Lord Damien I’m sorry. I’ll fix them. I’ll…”

“You had your chance, Dr. Cane, but even our lord can’t save you now.” Darcy pulled her mask down, flipping her purple false braid over her shoulder as she sneered at him, “You shouldn’t have hurt Daisy again, Dale.”

His eyes opened wide in fear as he recognized her. “You… You’re the Jaguar?!”

“Yes, but you can call me January this month.” Standing and pulling up her mask, she calmly informed him, “You will never hurt Daisy or her children again. I will take care of them, and you can wait in hell for our lord to join you.” Then with a snap of her fingers, she ordered the four microraptors to tear him into pieces. They ate him alive while he beat on the glass, screaming, “January! Please! I was only protecting her from him. I love her… I was… just… protecting her!” He shouted and thrashed trying to throw them off of him until one tore open his throat.