“Robin!” Tanner burst through the door. “God, I looked everywhere for you.” He sat down at the table.
Robin closed out of the projected notes. “You got a full list of possible contamination sources?”
He gestured over his comm card to project a list between them. “There you have it. Let me know if you see any possibilities. Most everything is pretty generic, though.”
She no longer had her list from the Wrights but hoped she’d recognize something. Maybe something would pop out.
And it did.
She pointed at a line under medications. She recalled the small blue pill Ana had showed them back at Jordan’s place—the one piece of evidence Ana claimed remained from the murder of Ross Garret and the subsequent fire at the police department. “Blackbird Organic Supplements for neonate and infant health?”
Tanner nodded, his mouth dropping open. “Did your patients take these, too?”
“I’m not sure. They didn’t record them before.” She felt certain she hadn’t seen the supplements on the list. But the incidents Ana had described revolving around the Blackbird pills and Robin’s misfortunes surrounding the prion infections proved too intricate a web of coincidences. “But patients are often unreliable, aren’t they?” She stood from the table. She had found a reason to contact the Wrights again; she might have discovered a possible link between Tanner’s patients and hers. Most importantly, she needed that sample from Ana. The single blue pill might hold the key to more than neonate and infant health.
***
Chris tried to back up but succeeded only in pressing himself against the wall of the Korean restaurant. Breathing heavily, the man in the navy-blue suit leveled the gun at his head.
Before he could pull the trigger, another shape burst from Chris’s periphery and tackled the gunman. Chairs and tables scattered as the two bodies pummeled each other. The pistol flew across the floor. Chris dove to pick it up.
He aimed it at the two entangled forms. “Stop!” When neither listened, he fired one shot into the ceiling. His ears rang, and the two fighters froze. The restaurateur grinned at Chris with yellowed teeth as he got off Blue Suit and backed out of the way. “Nobody bothers customers.”
“Thanks,” Chris said. He breathed an enormous sigh of relief and shook the dust and dirt off his sleeves. He stepped toward the suited man. Blood trickled out of his nose, a souvenir from Chris’s savior. “What the hell do you want from us?”
The man laughed. “From you? Your lanky buddy over there attacked me.”
“You were stalking us.”
“Of course I was!”
Footsteps sounded behind him as Jordan appeared at his side.
The suited man’s artificial eye glinted green, and his nose scrunched into a snarl.
Chris waved the gun at him. “Tell me who sent you.”
“Not a chance.”
“You need help? You want the usual?” Their host Jung rummaged through the silverware behind his counter and pulled out knives of varying sizes and shapes. As he sauntered back over, a tourist couple slipped through the door. Their eyes went wide as saucers as they gawked at the scene before them. “Closed! All closed!”
As the tourists fled, Jordan shook his head. “No, I don’t think we’ll need this kind of help.”
Chris cocked his head. He suspected he already knew the answer to his question before he spoke. “I’m guessing you used to come here more than you led me to believe when we were in the enhancement business, huh?”
“That would be accurate. Korea’s always been a hotbed of biomedical technology, both legal and otherwise.” He gestured at the suited man, still sitting on the floor glowering. “We already know who sent this guy.” He knelt in front of the man. “Jeremy Vincent Kar.”
The man’s eyes went wide for a second before narrowing again. “I won’t say anything.”
“You don’t have to,” Jordan said. “I told you this trip would be worthwhile. Vincent, of course, wants to know why we came over. As soon as we set the meeting up with Sobek, I have no doubt he was suspicious. ”
Chris recalled how Vincent had tortured Veronica before for information and how he’d had Robin and Chris abducted to work for him. The man did not practice subtlety. “So why not dispose of us? Why not kill us on sight?”
“The mere fact they set up a meeting with us tells me he wants something from us.”
“He hasn’t been afraid to ask more forcefully before.” Chris jabbed the gun at the suited man. “Maybe it’s better we don’t have a tail.” The hammer clicked back as he pointed it at the man’s temple.
The man flinched. For the first time, his eyes flashed in fear. He held his hands up, palms out in front of his face. “I wasn’t sent here to hurt you. Just follow you. Keep track of you. That’s it, okay?”
“So instead of beating around the bush, do you think you can get us straight to Vincent? No more games.”
The man hesitated.
Chris pressed the gun to his temple. “If you can’t, then we don’t need your help, do we?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Chapter 20
Robin paced around the conference room after Tanner left. She called Nancy Wright.
Nancy answered. “Dr. Haynes, is something wrong?”
“No, no,” Robin said. “How are you all doing?”
“Feeling in tip-top shape today. We only wish you had released us yourself so we could have thanked you personally.”
“Don’t worry, it’s my job.”
“It’s more than that,” Nancy said, “and I think you know it.”
She did, but she didn’t want to gloat about saving patients’ lives when the threat of continued prion infections loomed. “Did you by chance take any supplements from Blackbird Organics you may have forgotten to report to me?”
“Oh, my God. I have—I do. I can’t believe I forgot. It’s a vitamin, a supplement, you know? It must’ve slipped my mind.”
“That’s all right.”
“Wait.” The excitement dropped from the woman’s voice. “Do you think those supplements are responsible for what happened to Jacob and me?”
“I’m not certain,” Robin said. She didn’t want to cause needless worry. “But I’d suggest avoiding them for now...I have a huge favor to ask. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. After what you’ve done for us, I’d bend over backward for you.”
“Do you happen to have any of those pills on hand? I would be more than happy to come by and pick them up myself.”
“Absolutely. Whatever you need.”
After ending the conversation, she left a report at the nurse’s station saying she needed to make an emergency house call for a patient. The sun still sat high among the lumbering white clouds, but that didn’t stop the nervous anticipation coursing through her when she exited the hospital alone. She wished she could’ve brought the stunner Jordan had given to her, but bringing a weapon into a hospital would land her in a boiling pot of trouble. She hoped the same individuals who had assaulted her that morning wouldn’t be so brazen as to repeat their stunt in broad daylight.
Exiting the hospital, she called a taxi. Her new comm card had no issues connecting to the nearest available cab, and a yellow vehicle pulled up to the curb. She took a final look around at the people streaming in and out of the hospital, but no one stared her down, no one followed her, and no one tried to mug her.
The taxi stopped in front of a brick row house, and she clicked an option on the holodisplay to command the autodriving car to wait for her. She stepped out. A dog barked, and she ducked, expecting another attack.
But the harmless Labrador was separated from Robin by a screen door. She checked her comm card to confirm the Wrights’ address and trudged up to the house with the dog. He wagged his tail at her approach. Nancy appeared at his side, grabbed his collar, and nudged open the screen door.
“Dr. Haynes, thanks for dropping by.” The woman wore a frown, as if
expecting Robin to deliver bad news. Nancy pulled the dog back as it tried to break free. “Is something wrong?”
“I have a couple quick questions I hope to sort out,” Robin said.
“Come on in. I’d be glad to see how I can help.”
The dog escaped and jumped up at Robin. She flinched but endured his slobbering kisses.
Nancy scratched the Lab behind his ears. “He might be excited, but he’s a complete angel.”
“I’m sure. I’m sorry to be so crass, but I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of time. Do you have any of those Blackbird supplements?”
“That’s just it.” Nancy pursed her lips. “I don’t. I must have run out or misplaced them or something. Since you called, I turned over the whole house looking for them.”
Nancy might think the fact the missing pills meant nothing, but Robin harbored no such delusions. “Was anything else gone?”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing valuable? No signs of a break-in?”
Nancy laughed. “You think somebody would steal neonatal and infant health supplements?”
“Crazier things have happened.” Robin recalled the pile of strange incidents she’d racked up since she first discovered the prion disease in Jacob.
“I wish I could help, but I’m afraid I have nothing to offer.”
“I understand. In any case, thanks for looking.” She wondered if Nancy were hiding something. Again, she wanted to give the mother the benefit of the doubt. She suspected someone had eliminated whatever evidence might appear in the Wrights’ supplements. “Please, let me know if you do come across any of those pills.”
“I will.”
Robin started out the door, already pulling out her comm card. She slipped into the idling cab and waved another goodbye to Nancy. She shot a message to Tanner to see if his patient had any Blackbird supplements.
She suspected she knew the answer.
If the Wrights’ supplements had disappeared, Tanner’s patients would likely experience the same thing.
The cab’s holodisplay interrupted her thoughts. “What is your destination?” Robin swore she could detect a hint of impatience in the robotic voice.
She almost input University of Maryland Medical Center in the holodisplay’s destination box. Her shift didn’t end until nine p.m. But she couldn’t hit the confirm button. Instead, she typed in her home address.
Her thoughts turned to a single blue pill, the last tenuous connection that might exist between the prion disease and the mysterious events plaguing her over the past couple of days. Ana’s instinctual act of stealing a tiny pill might prove invaluable.
She hoped no one else knew of Ana’s thievery.
***
Stuck in the guest room in Robin’s Wyman Park row house, Ana rotated the pill between her fingers before laying it on the desk. She wanted to take it to the lab, to start experiments, to see what Ross Garrett might’ve found before his death.
Her own technical skills were limited. Back when she’d earned her criminal justice degree, she’d also completed a minor in biology. It was sufficient to earn her a coveted spot on the Bio Unit.
But the experiments she’d performed almost a decade ago in college hadn’t prepared her for the more demanding analysis necessary to identify the chemical and biological components in the Blackbird Organics supplement.
Ana stood and paced. She couldn’t stand being cooped up knowing the organization responsible for the assassination of Senator Sharp was still at large, all the evidence pointing to Ross Garret’s murder had been torched, and her friends—was she actually calling Robin, Chris, and Jordan that now?—her friends were risking their lives and well-being scouring their own networks for information to help her nail Jeremy Vincent Kar and the remnants of Tallicor.
She should be out on Baltimore’s streets. Not Robin.
Hell, Ana figured she should be in Korea with Chris and Jordan. Normally, she’d conduct extensive interviews, ensuring she spoke to anybody and everybody who might’ve been anywhere near the scene of a crime. But Lieutenant Conway had scolded her for even being at the police department when she should be at home recuperating from her injuries.
Ana flicked open her comm card and eyed the last contact Conway had sent her. It was the number to a psychologist the department recommended for officers. She tossed the card on the desk. Conway had said she might be suffering from PTSD. She might be enduring delusions and hallucinations. He’d said those words almost as if he had been suggesting she had been imagining the events in the burning evidence room, as if what she might have seen—what and who she had overheard—had all been in her head.
She had almost told Conway she’d seen Gordon Huff but decided he couldn’t be trusted any more than anyone else in her department.
Now the only three individuals she placed any amount of confidence in were Robin, Chris, and Jordan. When she’d joined the force, she never would have believed she’d find herself relying on former criminals. If she could’ve seen herself then as she did now, she wondered if she’d ever follow those foolish dreams of becoming a cop and helping clean up the city. Hell, even her parents had told her she was making a mistake joining Baltimore PD, and she’d heedlessly be risking her life.
But she’d persevered.
If she thought about it, she had indeed helped rid the city of two of its notorious criminal organizations by taking down the Kaufman brothers last year and more recently causing Tallicor to flee like cockroaches in the light. She admitted she hadn’t done it on her own, though. Chris and Jordan had played major roles in both cases.
She peered out the window. Trees stood and spread their limbs over the cobblestone road. Sunlight filtered through the broad green leaves across these branches and bathed the street in a verdant glow. The brick-faced houses and the faux gas lamp streetlights added to the historic look of the neighborhood. It harkened back to a time when Baltimore had once thrived as one of the largest seaports in the country, and its inhabitants basked in a bullish economy. The city had offered new hope to a young nation when it survived the British onslaught in the War of 1812.
And now Ana dreamed it would offer that hope again. Chris and Jordan’s help in upending the illegal enhancement rings plaguing the city proved it. If two former biotech criminals could change their tune to assist a detective like her, she might actually have a chance at turning Baltimore around. She was not naïve enough to think she could do it on her own, but as she saw Robin, Chris, and Jordan succeed in their legitimate biotech endeavors by offering therapies to reverse enhancements, the path to rejuvenating Baltimore seemed clear.
Entrepreneurship, innovation. She needed to make room for others to flourish in the healthcare industry by warding off those who abused the advancing technologies medical research offered.
Her comm card buzzed and flashed red. She rushed to the desk and picked it up. Her heart thudded as fear raced through her. A single message scrolled across her screen: Unauthorized home intruder. Her apartment had been broken into.
The home security application required her to answer if it was a false alarm or if she wanted to request emergency assistance. Her finger hovered above the red button to report the incident, but she froze.
If someone truly was breaking into her apartment, it no doubt had something to do with recent events.
And if her suspicions of external influences compromising the department proved true, sending police assistance to her home would be a futile effort. They might already know the trespassing had taken place; they could be responsible.
The police would demand to know where she was when they didn’t find her there. She couldn’t give up her refuge at Robin’s.
Maybe a cleanup squad had been ordered to seek out anything Ana might have procured to incriminate Gordon and anyone else involved in the conspiracy she hoped to unravel.
But as far as she knew, they had no idea she possessed this last Blackbird pill. Otherwise, she had no other evidence that hadn’t a
lready burned in the fire at the department.
A shudder went down her spine. She was glad she’d stayed at Robin’s place.
If the department was responsible, they would’ve expected she was resting at home. Maybe she was the evidence they were looking for.
A loud crash sounded from downstairs.
They’d found her.
Chapter 21
After a forty-five minute ride on the mag-lev train, Chris and Jordan arrived at the heart of Korea’s booming medical industry: Daegu.
They followed the man Vincent had sent after them. He had introduced himself as Kyobum but refused further conversation until he ushered them through the train station. Huge metal rafters supported an expansive glass canopy shielding them from the gray skies and pounding rain. A line of autobots, motors humming, waited as passengers exited the passenger cars and placed their luggage atop the bots.
When a drone glided too close above him, Chris ducked.
Kyobum smirked and shook his head.
“Don’t worry,” Jordan said. “Despite appearances, these things never hit people.”
“Well, I’m not interested in being the first.”
Kyobum led them out of the station’s protection and toward a waiting queue of taxis. A line of men and women in suits waited with levitating umbrellas above their heads. Several of the people sported prosthetic, metallic hands glinting in the streetlights. Their eyes, too, shone green in the murky gloom, evidencing ocular implants like Kyobum’s.
In the States, the healthcare paradigm dictated any injury should be treated so it appeared no harm had ever occurred. Tissue engineering enabled treatments to reduce the massive scarring and deformation once associated with third-degree burns. The field hadn’t developed so far as to regenerate traumatic injuries such as a lost limb, but cybernetic prosthetics could restore the functionality of a hand or foot. To further obscure the fact an appendage had ever been lost in the first place, medical device developers wrapped the robotic arms and legs in a synthetic material designed to encourage natural skin cell growth over the prosthetic. Even for a bioengineer like Chris, these prosthetics were practically undetectable in both appearance and function compared to the arm or leg someone might’ve been born with.
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