“Ask them...Find out where Chris is.”
“We don’t have time for that,” Jordan replied.
He looked around the lab frantically. There would be no way he could clean this mess up and ensure the other two intruders remained incapacitated while he got Hugh help. He couldn’t drag their two bodies down to the facility’s holding cell on his own; he had planned on using Hugh’s help once he’d stunned them, whether he had to convince the tech to aid him with the threat of the stunner or the man helped on his own accord.
Now it didn’t look like that would be an option at all. Though the wound didn’t appear immediately fatal, the tech would bleed out if Jordan didn’t get him medical help consisting of more than some torn fabric and tape lying around the lab.
“I appreciate your enthusiasm, but you aren’t making the calls. You still got that tracker card?”
Hugh nodded and handed it to Jordan.
He dialed emergency services and grabbed Hugh’s wrist. The automated operator answered the call. “Yes, there are three injured. Two were trespassers. One with stab wounds and another apparently paralyzed by a stunner. A third individual—the one protecting himself and the facility—has suffered a gunshot wound.”
“May we use your comm card’s GPS capabilities to locate the scene of your emergency?”
“Yes,” Jordan said.
After ending the call, he shot a quick message to Dellaporta informing her she should visit the lab immediately. She’d find one victim, one person stunned but eventually capable of answering her questions, and another man who had valiantly defended against the break-in but would need medical attention. He placed the card beside Hugh and gave the tech the stunner. “If anyone comes to bother you before Dellaporta or the ambulance arrives, use this.”
“I thought you said there were two other people upstairs,” Hugh said. “You told them there was only one person stunned. Did the other get away?”
Jordan shook his head. “There will be only one stunned intruder when they arrive. I’m bringing the other with me.” He patted Hugh’s good shoulder. “You stay awake until they get here. Okay, my man?”
Hugh nodded.
“Thanks for your help. I’m sorry I didn’t trust you, but you saved my ass, and I won’t forget it. I won’t doubt you again.” He furrowed his brow. “But how in the world did you get out?”
“I told you I wanted to be Houdini. You thought I gave those dreams up when I grew up?”
Jordan grinned. “I want you to teach me your tricks later, but I need to move now. I’ve got to find Chris. Once they take you to the hospital, you’ll be safe. But when they release you, if I haven’t reunited with you by then, find a place to lie low. Get the hell out of Baltimore if you can, okay? Make your next disappearing act count.”
Hugh nodded again. “I’m sorry...” His words fell as his eyelids drooped.
“It’s all right, my man. I won’t forget this.”
Jordan scoured the dead thug’s pockets. He found nothing but a single comm card. He took it and put the knife into his pocket then dashed up the stairs. Both of the larger man’s accomplices remained paralyzed on the floor.
Crouching by the smaller man, Jordan scooped his arms under the trespasser’s shoulders and dragged him toward the emergency exit. He slapped the man’s face. The man blinked slowly, his mouth opening and closing.
“Wake the hell up.”
Sirens wailed in the distance, piercing through the otherwise quiet night.
“Come on.” He yanked the man’s eyes open.
“What...do...you...want?”
“Did you people come here in a car? You got a vehicle somewhere?”
With one eye half closed, the man stared back but didn’t answer.
“I’m not playing around.” Jordan flicked open the heat knife, its blade burning red.
The man’s lips trembled. “...yes.”
“Where the hell is it?”
“The alley.”
“The one connected to Holabird Avenue?”
The man’s head quivered slightly, and Jordan took it as a nod. He hoisted the man up. “Great. Let’s go for a ride.”
Chapter 36
The rhythmic beeps of EKG machines welcomed Chris back to consciousness. He opened his eyes, this time aware of where he was waking up. Fatigue had settled into his limbs, and his arm trembled as he lifted it. A wan pallor dulled the normal olive glow of his skin, but he could sense he’d survived the worst of whatever ailed him.
Beside him, Robin was sitting in a chair, her chin against her chest and hair curtaining her face. Her slow breathing told him she had succumbed to the exhaustion and partook in the sleep she so desperately needed. As vitality crept back into his body, he remembered the fervor with which she’d fought to save the enhancer that almost went into cardiac failure, and he realized she must have saved him, too. His last memories were fogged in a feverish haze, but he recalled the doctor scrambling to find out what had befallen him.
He imagined how she must have expended herself single-handedly diagnosing and treating him. The work she’d performed was nothing short of a miracle, and he had no idea how to adequately express his gratitude to her. He supposed her patients—especially her patients’ parents, given she primarily treated children with cancer—must have often felt the same way, as though Robin were a goddess of life.
He thought to wake her, to ask what happened, but he couldn’t do it. But he could see she truly was no immortal being, and her dedication to saving his life had exhausted her. As soon as she got up, she wouldn’t rest again. Waking her now to satisfy his curiosity would be tremendously selfish.
His arms still trembled slightly, and a chill persisted throughout his body, but he no longer felt like a plane falling from the sky. Sitting upright, he gazed around the room.
Nothing had changed since he’d volunteered himself as their first human subject of HDXT.
The other five patients, the enhancers, all lay, imprisoned by their medically induced comas. Yet as he stared, he wondered if the bulges protruding in their skin weren’t larger, if their flesh had turned more blue and red with bruises and popped blood vessels.
They didn’t have long.
He dropped one leg over the side of the bed and slipped the other foot to the floor. Slowly, he tested his balance. He still felt weak, but he could walk without being overcome by nausea, and his muscles didn’t give out. Stretching his arms seemed to release the stiffness in his joints and back. Pacing around chased away the remnants of his grogginess, and he knew Robin had set him on the right course toward vitality again.
He had no idea what she had done, but she’d saved him. He knew that much. A wave of gratitude surged through him, but it wasn’t the only lingering emotion. He couldn’t be sure if it was because of the imprisonment or the terrifying experiences he’d gone through with Robin, but a weak smile spread across his lips. As much as he tried to repress it, the thought of taking her out for dinner, maybe dancing afterward, flashed across his mind. He immediately dismissed the silly notion. A morally steadfast doctor like her would never let an ex-con like him take her out for anything as innocuous as a cup of coffee. Their relationship was one of necessity and nothing more; their lives intertwined because a fatal disease plagued their city.
With pursed lips and a scrunched brow, he leaned over the lab bench. Robin had left a notebook, its open pages filled with her slanted handwriting and the results of the sequencing tests she’d run while he’d been an invalid. He rubbed his upper arm, still tender from the repeated biopsies she’d taken to run these experiments.
A grin tore across his face as he leaned over the notebook and read what she had recorded.
All the results seemed to point to diminished numbers of cancerous cells in his tissues.
Their cure worked on him, but he needed to know it would help the others. He scanned the notes further. Apparently, his illness was nothing more than a bacterial infection. There was no immune system rej
ection of the vectors or HDXT.
His heart sank as he read on. The infection had been caused by a contaminated saline solution. Robin hadn’t blamed him, but he cursed at himself, knowing he was responsible for manufacturing HDXT. The responsibilities were no different than his work at TheraComp. Any researcher or scientist would scold him for introducing an unsterilized solution into something as insignificant as a tissue culture in a plastic dish, much less a human being. It was a rookie mistake, one he should never have committed.
Shaking his head, he was thankful he’d volunteered as the test subject. If they’d injected this contaminated solution into the other patients...he shuddered. Their immune systems were weak due to the cocktail of cancer therapies keeping them alive. A bacterial infection could end their lives before the cancer did.
Despite their mistakes, they needed to press forward and treat these patients. Whereas Chris had only been a victim of the enhancement-induced cancer for a matter of days, maybe hours, these others had suffered for weeks. Time was crucial, and the imminent deaths of his and Robin’s experimental patients hung over him like a funnel cloud waiting to descend as a thrashing tornado.
Robin still slept. Chris sighed as he placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Robin,” he whispered softly.
She didn’t respond.
“Robin, wake up.”
She jumped, her head whipping around wildly.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I thought it’s about time we administer the treatments to these people.” He indicated the enhancers with a quick wave.
Rubbing her eyes, Robin nodded. “I already did.”
“You injected HDXT into each of them? But—”
“Don’t worry. I sterile filtered all the samples and tested them for the bacteria that took you out of commission. The therapies were clean. Now it’s just a matter of time before they take hold and heal these people’s cells.” She yawned and stretched out her arms. Then her eyes shot open wide. “How long was I out?”
“I have no idea. I just woke up.”
“Well, can you help me take blood samples and a couple biopsies? I want to see how our treatment strategy is working on these people.”
Chris nodded and followed her around as she inserted needles and withdrew blood and tissue samples from each of the patients. She seemed to have already rallied into full doctor form with whatever meager sleep she’d been able to sneak in.
For a moment, he wondered if this type of dedication to her work was normal. He hadn’t noticed any ring on her finger, and she’d never mentioned anything about a family. Likely, she was married to her job at the medical center. He thought how lonely it must be spending all that time in the oncology unit before realizing she might not be so different from him. After all, Veronica had chided him for spending too much time in the lab back in the days he’d worked at Ingenomics. Even when he’d delved into illegal genetic enhancements, he spent every day of the week developing and manufacturing his genies. The rare moments he wasn’t working in the lab or discussing distribution with Jordan he would spend drinking away the time at one of Jordan’s parties.
And usually that type of release occurred only after Jordan had urged him to take a break from his work. It struck him that maybe it wasn’t just the fact that he’d become involved in an illegal business that destroyed his relationship with Veronica. No, he’d planted those seeds long before his ventures with Jordan.
He’d eschewed spending time with her in favor of work.
Chris watched Robin inject a sample of blood into a solution of detergents to disrupt the cellular membranes and initiate the first steps toward isolating their DNA.
This is where all his dedication to work had led him. Throwing himself headfirst into “feeling productive” sent him to the penitentiary where he’d almost died, and now it had landed him in a new type of prison where he was supposed to be working twenty-four hours a day. Wasn’t this what he’d dreamed of, what he’d once strived for?
When he scoffed at the irony of his situation, Robin turned. “What’s up?”
“My mind’s going in circles,” he said. “I think I’m just going crazy. We’ve been stuck down here for far too long.”
“The sooner we save these people, the sooner we’re out.” She didn’t conclude the statement with the doubt that he knew she, like him, must harbor. They’d toiled to save these enhancers’ lives with the mirage-like promise they’d all be freed and forgotten about by their unnamed captors.
“Is there anything else I can do to help you?”
She shrugged. “I think I’ve got most everything taken care of.”
“Looks like you don’t even need me, huh? All that talk about being a clinician and not a researcher...not an issue anymore.”
“I’m a quick learner,” she said.
“You’re damn good at this,” he said. “Let me know if you get tired of working at the hospital and want to partner up with Jordan and me. We could always use a good clinical specialist on the TheraComp team.”
She examined the readings on the gene sequencer’s holodisplay. After standing, she put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Can’t give up on my kiddos at UMMC. I don’t think there’s a job in the world that could tear me away from them.”
The machine buzzed, signaling complete sequencing. A new holoprojection of results glowed in the air before them.
“It’s working,” Robin said with a wide grin.
Color had returned to her cheeks, and her eyes glimmered with a happiness that hadn’t been there the first day Chris had woken up in the lab, confused and greeted by her exhausted face.
“It’s actually working.” She wrapped her arms around him, squeezing him and laughing into his shoulder. “I can’t believe we did it.”
Her optimism was infectious, and he returned her brief embrace. “We did it,” he repeated her words.
While the data demonstrated the reduced expression of cancer markers in the patients’ tissues, inflamed red patches still mottled the enhancers’ skin between bulging, swollen vessels. It would take time for their bodies to recover and return to a normal, healthy state. The excess tissue, the malignant tumors, now lay dormant. But they weren’t out of danger yet.
All the color faded from Robin’s face, and she pulled away from him. Her expression turned dour.
“What? What is it? Did we do something wrong?” Chris asked.
She shook her head and brushed back the matted hair falling in front of her face. “I’m just not sure about this anymore.”
“Everything seems to indicate HDXT is effective. There haven’t even been any complications with the patients’ immune systems, either.” He held her shoulders at arm’s length. “What are you worried about?”
“That’s not what I mean. I’m glad it works, but that might be the problem.”
“I’m not sure I understand.” His arms dropped to his sides.
She waved a hand over the enhancers. “Whoever has us imprisoned in here, whoever is running this outfit, is probably responsible for the bombing at the hospital and, if I were to guess, the cause of all these people dying from this cancer in the first place. They were the ones that messed up their enhancements and started selling products screwing with people’s DNA.”
“Okay,” Chris said, still unsure of what Robin implied.
“And we think that person is so desperate to find a cure because they probably have the same cancer, right?”
“So this isn’t a technical concern, is it?” A glimmer of understanding hit Chris. “And you’re wondering whether we should actually save that person’s life.”
Robin nodded. “Would it be worth our lives, worth our escape to let this person just erase all their problems, all the deaths they caused? If we help them live, what prevents them from doing this again? They’re just going to continue selling their genies and end up killing more people.”
“You want us to destroy the cure?” He stepped in front of the freezer, a
fraid of what Robin might do if she acted impetuously. The extra samples they’d manufactured remained frozen down and awaiting use.
“I’m tired of seeing people die because some street dealer promised them a half-assed genie will improve or even save their life. Do you know what that’s like?” Her nose scrunched in a snarl. “And it’s not just adults anymore. It’s kids. These genies are being cut up and diluted like crack. They’re being sold cheap enough that I’ve seen teenagers in my wing that tried it out on themselves.”
“Christ. I never really considered that.” The desire to alter one’s body, to improve upon the innate genes driving a person’s natural growth, had long since been instilled in younger generations as well as older junkies riddling themselves with physiologically altering substances. His stomach twisted into a choking knot, and he shrank back as a geyser of guilt exploded when he considered he’d been a part of the cruel system enabling these teenagers, these kids to destroy their lives.
Her cheeks turned crimson. “Screw these people. I can’t help them!” She slammed a fist on the lab bench. A couple of glass vials jumped and rolled with the impact.
Chris took a step forward and grabbed one of her wrists. “I understand, but what about the patients still back at UMMC? What about the others still on the street, still dying? You’d be condemning them, too.”
“Maybe a few lost lives are better in the long run. Don’t you think a short-term sacrifice is worth the long-term benefits of letting whatever asshole is responsible for this mess die?”
“What if the asshole responsible isn’t the one suffering from this cancer, though? What if it’s someone else important, but the whole enhancement business keeps chugging along even after they die? Would it be worth it? Is that a risk we can take?”
She pulled away. “You’re probably right. This business won’t disappear. But even so, why should we give them what they want? Every time we give in to them, every time anybody gives in to them, they’ll learn they can just keep terrorizing the medical community to clean up their messes.”
Chris sighed. “We have to give up the therapy. We have to help them if we’re to escape and help the others out there.”
The Black Market DNA Series: Books 1-3 Page 46
