The Dead World (The Dead Room Trilogy Book 2)

by Erickson,Stephanie

  Brent beamed, seemingly more grateful than Ashby was.

  “All right, Mr. Ashby. I’ll be in touch,” he said.

  Ashby nodded. “I’m anxiously awaiting your call.”

  With that, Ashby tried to get back to his life, leaving his future in the hands of a young college student.

  Back in his own lab, Hope kept her distance from him, caring for the remaining chimps, and keeping up with documenting their condition. That was fine with Ashby. He wanted space anyway. He needed time to think about everything. About Judy and Mendi, about what Mendi could be hiding behind all those passwords and protections, and about where his own research was going.

  Unfortunately for Ashby, it was two days before he heard from Brent. Two more days of sleeping in the lab. Two days without speaking to Judy or Mendi. He’d had dinner with Ashley and told her what was going on, or at least, part of it. Ashley didn’t ask too many questions. She said she’d be thinking of him, and just wanted them both to be happy. Despite that, it made for a long two days.

  Ashby was sitting at his computer, checking his email for any word on another potential patient for his robots, now that he knew they would work, when Brent came bursting into his lab.

  “Mr. Ashby. I did it! I finally got through everything. It’s just documents and pdfs on here, right? Maybe a few Excel spreadsheets?”

  “Yes. That sounds about right,” Ashby said, hoping he sounded believable.

  Brent held out the stick. Ashby snatched it from him as if he was drowning, and it was his only lifeline.

  “Thank you,” he said, turning the stick over in his hands, inspecting it, as if he expected it to reveal its secrets to him right then and there.

  “So, Professor Juno. That’s the one I need you to put in a good word for me, if you can.”

  “What?” Ashby asked, drawing a complete blank.

  Brent’s face fell. “You said you’d talk to my science teacher, put in a good word for me, as a sort of thank you?” He’d gotten quiet, as if he felt stupid.

  “Oh, of course.” Ashby clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You’re a true lifesaver. Speaking to Professor…”

  “Juno,” Brent filled in.

  “Professor Juno is the least I can do. I will do it right now, before I get caught up in going through these files, okay?”

  Brent’s eyes lit up once again. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Oh no, thank you.” They shook hands, and Brent practically skipped out of Ashby’s lab.

  Ashby made good on his promise. He looked up Juno in the campus email, sending him a glowing recommendation of the boy, and asking him to go easy on him during the lab. Of course, he wasn’t sure what good it would do. Some professors were possessive of their students, and didn’t like others sniffing around, but he promised he’d try, and so he did.

  Once that slight delay was over, he could move forward with a relatively clear conscience. He looked at the stick and thought about Mendi—about what he was doing at that moment. They’d never gone so long without speaking to each other. He’d lost his wife and his best friend, all in one swoop. And not to some tragedy, but to their selfishness. Ashby frowned and held the stick tightly in his fist, as if he might crush Mendi through it, like it was some kind of voodoo doll.

  Hope came up behind him then. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Just some files I need to review.”

  “Oh. Do you want me to take a look at them for you?”

  “No. Thank you. I need something to keep my mind occupied while I wait for another group for us.” He hesitated. “Listen, when the next one comes along, would you like to accompany me to the procedure?”

  “Dr. Mendi always goes with you. He’s more qualified anyway.”

  “Maybe. But Dr. Mendi and I have had a fatal difference of opinions. I will no longer be seeking his counsel. Since you’re here to learn, I thought you might want to come.”

  “Oh. Well, I mean. Absolutely. It would be an honor,” she sputtered.

  “Great. Hopefully, we’ll get a good group of candidates soon.”

  “Hopefully.” She lingered for a moment, as if unsure what to do.

  “That’s all for now, Hope,” Ashby said, wanting her to leave so he could dig into Mendi’s secret.

  “Oh. Of course.” Her face was already turning red as she turned and went back to caring for the chimps.

  Ashby held his breath as he opened the folder. Brent was right. It was just spreadsheets, documents, and pdf flies. It didn’t seem like there could be much of anything in there that would be incriminating, but what did Ashby know?

  He sorted the files by date, and then opened the oldest one first. It was a few weeks old.

  It was from a big pharmaceutical company called Dermott. They were huge, and they made all kinds of drugs under different names and labels. Most people didn’t know just how much they owned, but they basically ran the country. Driving up the price of drugs notoriously, they controlled the market without most of the modern world knowing. Forcing their products on providers and insurers alike, they dominated the industry in an unprecedented way.

  Seeing the name on that first file caught Ashby off guard, and he looked over his shoulder.

  It looked like a copy of an email, saved to a word file.

  Dr. Mendi,

  You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. I’m a physician at, well, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is my mother. She’s suffering, and I believe you can help her. If you’re willing to take some risks, my family is willing to make it worth your while. I know you can save her. I’m attaching her records, as well as our proposal.

  All I ask is that you take the time to consider it.

  Thank you.

  Josh Dermott, MD

  “What the hell…” Dermott was the name of the miracle Alzheimer’s patient. The first non-cancer treatment he’d done with his DNA editing. And Mendi had been so eager to move forward with it, despite his normally cautious way.

  Ashby dug deeper, opening the files. The first few were just her medical records, charts, history, and things like that. The last one was a PDF file. The proposal.

  It looked like a contract, between the Dermott family and Mendi. A contract to at least try to save their mother, and, in return, they would fully fund any and all research outside of cancer for his miracle cure.

  There was even a nondisclosure clause. If he told anyone where the money came from for his research, their agreement was done. Apparently, the family had a large non-profit organization set up, and they gave all funds to him through them. The whole thing was completely unethical, as well as against university policy. Ashby hesitated. That was a grey area, wasn’t it? Non-profits were okay to take money from, but the way they’d done it, directly helping the owners of the non-profit with his research, it was shady at best. He was willing to bet the dean wouldn’t like it one bit.

  Ashby sat back in his chair. Had he discovered this before he’d discovered Judy and Mendi, he wouldn’t have thought twice about it. So his friend had bent the rules to save a life. So what? And the cascading effects would be tremendous. He’d save hundreds, if not thousands, with the data he collected with their money. And according to the family, it was “a small price to pay.”

  But now…Ashby had enough to potentially doom Mendi. If Ashby told the university, at a minimum, Mendi would get canned. Although they wouldn’t want to lose the prestige of being the university where cancer was cured, the president didn’t abide rule breaking at all. He was notorious for letting staff members go at the slightest infraction. Plus, Ashby was close to a cure himself. So the university wouldn’t lose that element of exclusivity.

  At most, the family would pull their funding, and he would be done. Without a place to work, or funding behind him, his miracle cure would be over. At least until someone else picked him up. But that would hopefully give Ashby the time he needed to get to the finish line first.

  He ejected the flash drive and held it between his
two first fingers, staring at it, wondering exactly what to do with it. Was it right for Mendi to get as far as he had? He’d cheated. He’d taken a buy-out from the worst possible entity he could’ve chosen. Didn’t he deserve to be humiliated?

  Then Ashby thought about how he felt, standing in front of the two people he loved best in the world, aside from Ashley, both of them scrambling to get their clothes on, both of them probably laughing at him after he stormed out. The image hardened his resolve as he clasped a fist around the stick.

  “It ends now,” Ashby said as he stood, and then went to the dean.

  8.

  September 2024

  Ashby was left disappointed. The university saw the potential in Mendi’s work. Or maybe it was the potential for financial gain. Ashby wasn’t sure. But they ended up slapping Mendi on the wrist, giving him a leave of absence. Even Dermott hadn’t done anything to reprimand him, looping the university into their nondisclosure, and compensating them further for it.

  Ashby had fallen short. Again. And it had cost him. Mendi hadn’t spoken to him since the meeting with the dean.

  But what had he lost really? Something he never had. He didn’t want to talk to the man anyway. He’d simply given him an eye for an eye. And yet, Mendi still came out on top.

  In the weeks that followed the incident, he struggled to focus.

  Hope came up behind him. “New group?” she asked as she set a cup of coffee in front of him.

  “Yes. We have some very promising candidates.” He held up two folders. “These two in particular are interesting. Such different cases, and yet…”

  Hope took the folders and looked at the pictures. Ashby never did that. It was best to make an unemotional decision. After seeing a face, it was difficult not to make assumptions about the person based on appearances. It was best to just read the data and meet the candidates after the decision was made. But Hope didn’t operate like that. She got too attached to the chimps, and the rats for that matter, and things didn’t look like they’d be much different with actual patients.

  “Hope, try not to get too attached, okay?” Ashby cautioned.

  “I can’t help it. We could save them. Why not take them both?” she suggested. “They both need you. How can you turn them away?” It came out a bit accusingly, but Ashby knew she didn’t mean it like that. She didn’t have an accusing bone in her body.

  “At this stage of the game, you have to think about not only what’s best for them, but also what’s best for the research. Think of that man who died slowly. Painfully. If I had been more careful about my selection, he wouldn’t have suffered like that.”

  She frowned down at the two faces. “But at least he had a chance.”

  “I’m not sure he was so grateful for that chance,” Ashby said, gently taking the folders from her. He was leaning one way, and he just needed to look over the files one more time to be sure. He supposed there was no reason why he couldn’t take both, but for the first trial with more than one bot, he felt one patient was plenty. He needed to see how, and if, it worked. In this case, better to kill one bird with two stones than two birds with two stones.

  She stood behind him while he paged through the charts and data. The woman was young. Too young. She was stage four with an aggressive form of ovarian cancer. Otherwise, she was healthy. Ashby tried not to look at the other data, but it was difficult not to. Even he had his limits. She had young children, ages five and seven. A boy and a girl.

  On the other hand, the man was in his late fifties, with a much-less aggressive but no less deadly type of cancer. He had more time than she did. His kids were grown. His wife was retired, and he wasn’t far behind her. A physician himself, he would either be very easy to work with, or very difficult. Although he’d understand the jargon, and he wouldn’t need a lot of hand holding, doctors sometimes made the worst patients.

  He told himself the decision was based on the cancer. One was fast moving, and the other wasn’t. The man had time to explore more options. The woman didn’t. With an aggressive type like this, the bots might be her only chance. If they did their job, they’d wipe out the cancer in a few short weeks, and hopefully, he could beat it to the finish line, leaving her intact.

  Then, the first woman popped into his head. The one who’d died because her cancer was too aggressive for the bots to keep up.

  Holding up her file, he turned to Hope. “Do you think three or even four bots would be better on aggressive cancers like this one?”

  “In theory, yes. Three or four would be overkill for our chimps. But a human is different. There’s more ground to cover. You’d need to do almost daily scans on her, if not hourly at first, to track their progress,” she said, searching the woman’s data. “She will die if you don’t help her.”

  “She may die even if I do help her. I’m not a miracle worker.”

  “Not yet.”

  The very next day, Ashby met with the woman and went through the procedure. He knew he shouldn’t be spending so much time with one patient, but he couldn’t help thinking that she could be his breakthrough.

  She seemed very enthusiastic. Ashby struggled to keep her expectations realistic.

  “You must understand. This is a brand-new procedure. Even I don’t know if it will work. Your cancer is very aggressive. I’m not offering you a miracle. I’m offering you a risk. The bots could eat you alive.”

  She smiled. “Like some monster movie?”

  “It’s not a joke, Mrs. Loretti.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I’m not worried. After all, what do I have to lose? One way or another, we’re all meeting our maker. I’d just like to see my kids grow up before I meet mine.”

  The procedure was delicate. He’d never worked with four bots at once before. They were squirrelly little devils, and hard to capture. But, slowly, he got them all, and inserted them into a small incision made by the overseeing surgeon, in order to get them as close to the cancer as possible. Giving them a head start, so to speak.

  When it was over, he sat back and let out a deep breath he didn’t know he was holding.

  “I want scans every six hours on this one. We need to keep close track of where these robots are, and what they’re doing. Don’t let them start eating her,” he instructed the nurse and the attending physician, who looked startled. Apparently, they didn’t understand the extent of the potential side effects. It didn’t matter. As long as they were diligent.

  For a moment, he wished Mendi had been there. He would’ve recommended a less cowboy-style approach. Two bots would’ve been safer. But Ashby knew two wouldn’t be enough to save her. The man, sure. Two would’ve been plenty. He had time. But her, no. She needed more. That was when it occurred to him. Treatment and number of bots could be tailored to the patient. For someone with less-aggressive or early-stage cancer, they could save money by using fewer bots. This didn’t have to be a cookie-cutter procedure.

  The idea excited him. He wanted to call the man and get him started right away with two, but he knew he should wait and see how his little beasties did in the woman first. It was absolute torture.

  The first six hours revealed nothing. Mrs. Loretti rested comfortably in her hospital room where she had to stay during the duration of the treatment. Ashby tried not to be discouraged, and he told her to do the same.

  But oddly, she wasn’t disappointed at all. “Mr. Ashby, it’s been six hours. They’re probably just learning their way around. It’ll be fine.”

  He wished he could be as calm as she was. On the bright side, they weren’t eating her alive. Yet.

  By the next six-hour scan, something remarkable was happening. Her tumors were shrinking. Markedly.

  Ashby ordered another scan in three hours. “Now that we’re seeing a change, we need to stay on top of it, so we can remove the bots at just the right moment.”

  “Sounds great,” Mrs. Loretti said with a smile. Ashby was starting to like her in spite of himself. He didn’t just want this to work. He wanted it
to work on her.

  By the next scan, fifteen hours post procedure, her cancer had diminished eighty percent.

  “Eighty percent,” he repeated. Hope had a gleeful glimmer in her eye, and Mrs. Loretti beamed.

  “I never imagined it would work this quickly,” she said quietly, squeezing her kids’ hands.

  Her husband had a tear in his eye, and he mouthed ‘thank you’ to Ashby.

  Ashby nodded and felt the need to sit down. Quickly, he left the room and sat on a bench just outside. Was this what Mendi was always talking about? The people behind the disease? But he’d sold out. He was a bit of a fraud. And instead, Ashby, the one who’d never professed to be any kind of savior, was having a change of heart.

  The last scan, two hours later, revealed no trace of the cancer. Ashby ordered a blood test to be doubly sure that all the cells had been removed, but in the meantime, he rushed her to the OR to remove the bots.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Tired,” Mrs. Loretti replied honestly.

  Ashby nodded. “Well, you’ve been up a lot of the night with us scanning and prodding you. Get some rest. I bet you’ll feel some improvement before you know it.”

  The removal went off without a hitch. Unlike the insertion, he didn’t need a surgeon, although the man was on hand, just in case something went wrong. No need to go fishing around for the energetic little things. He could use the signal from the box to call them out of his patient.

  Slowly, he gathered the four bots in a smoother-than-anticipated procedure and deactivated them. Using microscopic thermal goggles, he was able to watch them all exit and obediently go back into the small, black box, just as he’d watched them go mere hours ago.

  The doctors kept Mrs. Loretti at the hospital another night for observation and to wait for the results of her blood test.

  “What if they come back positive?” her husband asked, a look of fear in his eyes. It was a look of knowing. Of promises being broken. Of having been there before.

  “If they come back positive, we can always send the bots back in. Or try a more traditional method of treatment, now that most of the cancer is gone. Your doctors will be able to advise the best course of action. But now that you have this tool at your disposal, I’d say there’s no reason to despair.” It was the first time he’d deliberately given a patient and their family hope. Or maybe she’d given him hope.