by Forester, TJ
They ate and only talked in generalities. She hated the fact that he was getting under her skin—she liked him and she might as well admit it to herself. However, she wouldn’t let things go too far before she found out if he was involved in anything bad. She would do more investigating into the matter, just as soon as she figured out how.
After lunch, she went back to her office. Her mass spec machine beeped and she looked at the results and then decided she would try what Logan had suggested. She would use a completely dead cell, rather than a damaged one and see if her serum had any effect. She didn’t see how it could—it was dead—it seemed highly unlikely that her RNA based treatment would do anything.
She put the cell on a slide, and put a drop of solution on it and then waited. The reaction was not immediate and so she had stopped timing it visually. The reaction usually took thirty minutes or so and she didn’t expect anything whatsoever to happen. She was only testing it because Logan had asked her too.
She set about working on her usual routine. The timer finally sounded. She looked into the microscope and nearly dropped a test tube she was holding when she saw the results. The treatment was actually having some kind of a reaction. The cell wasn’t completely alive but it was changing.
How odd, she thought. Of course, the standard definition of death and its limits were not well understood. Scientists simply defined death by the cease of metabolic functioning but there it was having some kind of reaction. She would certainly have to pursue this more. She would get an older cell. This one had been frozen, which would greatly reduce cellular decay.
She would try the solution on a cell that had been dead at room temperature for—let’s see. I’ll start at an hour.
Chapter 8
“Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the
rest of us could not succeed." Mark Twain
~
Sitting at lunch the next day with Logan, she told him about her preliminary findings. His enthusiasm was warranted, it could turn out to be a huge breakthrough, but he seemed far more excited about it than she would have expected. After all, she was only working on individual cells now—she certainly wasn’t ready to publish.
“How long can the cell be dead—” he put his utensils down and leaned forward “—does it completely reverse the damage?”
“I’m hardly at the point to celebrate. They are only single cells after all and they had been frozen.”
Looking out the window, she saw the orderly who had taken Jenny Carian’s body. He was just getting into a white Triogenix van. Another man sat in the passenger seat. They both wore gray overalls with the Triogenix logo printed on them.
Who is that man?”— She pointed at the window —“the one getting into the driver’s seat.”
Logan looked out the window. “His name is Able Ashyr—” he took a bite of his food “—he works for Dr. Soranto. Why?”
“And the other guy”— she didn’t answer him —“who is he?”
“John Kroger—” Logan eyed her suspiciously “—why do I get the impression that you aren’t actually dropping it?”
“Dropping what?” she feigned ignorance.
He was silent until she looked at him. “You know exactly what I’m talking about—” he motioned around them “—and I don’t really think you want me to remind you of the particulars in front of all these people.
“Okay—” she admitted “—I haven’t completely dropped it, but you can’t really expect me to. Could you?”
“Probably not—” he said “—why do you want to know who those guys are?”
“The driver is the one I’ve been looking for—” she hesitated and then said in a hushed tone “—the orderly who took the body.”
Logan sat up straighter and stared out the window seemingly, deep in thought, but he said nothing.
After the van drove away, he spoke in a grave tone. “Leave it alone. Let me look into it.”
She decided to do just that, but she didn’t tell him what she had already found out. If he were innocent, maybe he would find the same correlation. If he did, and told her about it then she would know that she could trust him.
***
For the next month, Sherena threw herself into her work—focusing on dead cell rejuvenation, and perfecting her serum, though she kept that out of her reports. She was supposed to be researching cancer, so she did enough of that to get by, and then she charted extensively on the subject.
She and Logan had settled into a habit of eating lunch together almost every day. Several times, she had asked his advice about her research, but she didn’t offer much information and she kept their relationship from progressing.
She had a completely dead cell—that is dead at room temperature for several hours—on a slide infused with her serum. Several other tests were in various stages, but there was nothing else for her to do. She had thirty minutes to kill so she headed to the doctor’s lounge for some coffee and maybe a donut.
Able Ashyr walked by her in the hall. She tried not to react.
“Hey Doc,” he said, as if they knew each other.
Her heart was pounding, she didn’t respond. She was either going crazy, or that guy was in on a murder, and he obviously knew who she was. He didn’t stop and she certainly wasn’t going to start up a conversation, but she couldn’t get his voice out of her mind. His casual, “Hey Doc,” really bothered her and it echoed repeatedly in her head.
It must have been at least a solid minute before she realized that she was standing still in the hall—way to act natural—she kicked herself. She continued to the lounge and got her coffee but she had completely lost her appetite, so the donut was forgotten.
She sat down hard in her office chair, involuntarily reliving the night Jenny Carian died. When the alarm on her slide went off she jumped and it took her a minute to remember what it was.
“I’ve got to let this go, or find out what really happened, or else I’m going to lose my mind,” she told herself aloud.
She took a deep breath, and tried to relax. When she looked at the slide, the surprise took her mind off Able Ashyr completely. The cell had not just had a minor change. From what she could see, it was completely alive. The other tests had been quite promising, but nothing like this one. She had tweaked her serum and this was the first test with the new version.
She wanted to call Logan, but it was already after lunch and she didn’t want to tell him until she had something more definitive. She had a few dead hamsters in the freezer. Not her normal test subjects, however, given the direction of her research she had acquired them for just such a situation. They had not died of cancer; in fact, she had nearly forgotten her cancer research all together—too tied up in her new serum.
She didn’t expect anything to happen, even though the science supported the possibility. She had only tested the new serum on a single cell after all, but she through procedure out the window for once—too curious to wait—she did some calculations and then drew up a dose and injected a dead hamster.
After putting the hamster in a cage—pointless she was certain—she looked at the clock and tried to focus on her other work.
Several hours later, when it was time to go home, the hamster still lay there dead. Of course, she expected that. Maybe I should have thawed him out first—she thought. The test had been premature anyway, she knew. Besides, even if she were somehow able to revive the cells, the brain would be dead.
She made a mental note that she should test the serum on dead brain cells. It was of little use to rejuvenate cells with no way to fix the brain.
What am I thinking?—she chided herself—you’re not supposed to be trying to bring things back from the dead, only cure cancer!
It was Logan’s fault. Every time she had given him an update on her research he had asked her about reviving dead cells, animals, you name it. The man was completely obsessed with death and though she was loath to admit it, she was completely obsessed with him!
Whe
n she got back to work the next day, no surprise, the hamster lay there dead in the cage exactly where she had left it. She took some samples and looked at the cells. There had been some change, but she hadn’t expected the test to work. Even if the cells had revived, without the brain to tell the lungs to breathe the animal would just die again.
She went about her other work, but she couldn’t get the small rodent off her mind. What if she injected it before death?—she wondered. The brain cells would still be alive, of course, maybe the serum would kill the hamster—and then revive it? That was a stupid train of thought, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it and so she went to acquire a live hamster.
This was most certainly the most stupid idea she had ever thought of and it was far too early in her research, good thing she wasn’t putting notes on this in her computer—she would probably get fired for such an unscientific experiment. Once she had the hamster, she injected it and went about her other work.
She ate lunch with Logan and when she came back, the hamster was still there, walking around, bored in its cage. Now came the hard part. She had to kill the sweet thing. Logic told her she should only injure it first to see if it healed faster than normal, but she hated hurting animals—the only part of the job she detested.
Putting the animal down could be done painlessly, she simply had to put the rodent in a small gas chamber. She would knock it out using isoflurane, a kind of ether, and then flood the chamber with a mixture of carbon dioxide. The drug would merely render the animal unconscious, and the carbon dioxide death would not cause too much damage to the hamster’s brain.
She put the animal down quickly and just as she had done the deed, Dr. Soranto showed up in her lab.
Great, she thought, the man already thinks I’m stupid. I’m certainly not going to tell him that I am trying to resurrect a dead hamster—that I just killed—on his dime!
“Dr. Soranto, what can I do for you?” she asked whishing he would leave fast.
“Would you mind coming with me for a moment?”
“Sure—” she hesitated “—just give me a second to transfer this hamster.”
It certainly wouldn’t revive if she left it in the gas chamber. She put it in a cage, and took note of the time.
“Sorry to make you leave your office, but we have had a security breach.”
“Really—” she panicked but held her composure “—what happened?”
He motioned to the medical records room. Her heart began pounding. She wasn’t sure what was going on around Triogenix and who was involved, but she knew it was huge and could involve murder—though Logan had pretty much convinced her that whatever it was, it had not been that bad. However, he hadn’t been there.
Dr. Soranto was watching her curiously, and she realized her mind had drifted. Who knew what her expression had been. She met his eyes as calmly as she could, and he continued.
“Someone was in medical records without authorization—” he paused “—did you see anyone in there? Your lab is the closest.”
Her mind exploded. It had been her! Why didn’t he know, or did he? She had a tracker in her shoulder and she had used her own login—that had been stupid!
“I—” she hesitated too long and then shook her head to cover it “—no, I get really involved in my work. I only go out for coffee. I didn’t see anyone.”
“I see,” was all he said.
She rambled on, “Not sure I would know if the person was supposed to be there or not, you know. I haven’t met very many people around here and…,” she drifted off and he stared at her.
Either she had blown her cover by acting like an idiot, or he thought she was one by now.
He stood there for a moment and then simply asked, “If you see anyone without a nametag—he pointed to hers—just let me know.”
“Okay,” she said nervously, and then he left.
She went back in her lab and locked the door. Her breathing now out of control, she glanced around the room. Her mouth dropped when she saw him. There he was just looking at her as if nothing had happened.
It was the hamster. He was alive!
Chapter 9
“We are always paid for our
Suspicion By finding what we suspect.”
Henry David Thoreau
~
Sherena didn’t tell Logan about the hamster. She felt she needed to know whether she could trust him or not. Furthermore, she had not recorded any of her findings in the lab computer. She had to get into that “off-limits” building before she could decide about Logan. Whatever was in there, he knew about it. The only question was how to do it.
Whatever she did, it would be dangerous—somewhere between losing her job and her life—if she got caught. In case of the latter, she made some quick calculations and loaded a syringe of her completely untested serum, enough for her body weight, and put it in her pocket. She hoped tonight wouldn’t come to a human trial, but it was better than the alternative, and she would only use it if she was certain they were going to kill her.
She had run every test that she could think of on George—her newly named, back from the dead, hamster—and found no immediately noticeable ill effects. Of course, she was not a hamster, and so it was a very reckless back up plan.
Now she had to get into the building and everything was biometrically locked, at least from what she could tell from watching at a distance. Sherena had wandered as close as she dared one night and what she had thought was a park that first night was, in fact, a very old graveyard—as if the whole place wasn’t getting creepy enough.
She had a theory, and she would find out if it were accurate tonight. The night she had hacked the medical records, she had noticed a pattern. Tonight should be an AMA patient on Dr. Johansson’s ER night shift, if they hadn’t changed anything after they had noticed her unauthorized peeping.
Dr. Soranto had given no indication that she was a suspect, and she hoped that a little random searching had not let them figure out what she had found. With all their security, she still found it odd that they didn’t know it had been her. Her only guess was that they hadn’t had much surveillance on an unsecured area of a secure facility.
She had been watching Able Ashyr’s comings and goings and knew that he always drove that white van with the Triogenix logo on the side. If anyone were going to be murdered, he would be picking up the body in that van—that is how she came to be hiding in the dark, outside the ER, in the subzero weather.
She had dressed as warmly as she could down to thick long-underwear and a very heavy parka. Even with all that on, her fingers were numb inside her gloves. She hadn’t been there the whole shift, she had set up a back door on the computer—she had a few hacking skills, but she had neglected to put that on her resume.
After all, the back door had been simple. All she needed was to be alerted to any ER admission, and that was not a secure file. The hospital was on WIFI so, it was more a simple matter of masking her logged on status. She had one other piece of information she needed—that was if the patient had a diagnosis that suggested he or she could leave AMA—a coma patient would be pointless.
At zero-one-hundred hours, a patient had been admitted for shoulder pain—exactly the type. She had already waited for two hours and had about decided to give up when she saw the white van appear.
I can’t believe all these doctors have been duped into believing the AMA story repeatedly when they have so few patients on night shift, but I guess I might have believed it myself. Bob seems so nice.
He was full-time, unlike the doctors—plain sight was apparently the best way to hide. Even though Sherena had been waiting for Able to roll a body out on a gurney, she felt sucker punched when she actually saw him doing it—her theory had been correct and she wanted to vomit.
She had already planned her route to the building, around the back, through the trees. Her parka and pants were dark, and so there was no reason to notice her there in the middle of the night. She had also assumed tha
t they must have a back door if, in fact, they were taking murdered corpses there.
There wasn’t much distance to cover, and she left before the van did. In spite of that, it beat her to the building; however, Able and John Kroger were still unloading the body. She got as close as she could without drawing attention to herself.
She watched as Able used the retinal scanner and waited until they wheeled the body in. Luckily, there was an alcove very close to the door. As soon as John was through, Sherena sprinted—as fast as she could without slipping on the ice. She made it just in time to stab a stick into the opening to keep the door from closing completely. She ran back to the alcove to make sure they hadn’t noticed that the door hadn’t completely shut. They didn’t.
After five minutes, which seemed like an eternity, she moved to the door and slowly crept in, and shut the door softly. It made no sound. She looked around, hoping to find a breaker box or something of the sort so that she could cut the power if needed. The room was stiflingly hot, and so she took off her parka and gloves and hid them. If she were caught, she doubted they would be useful to her anyway.
She walked along a darkened corridor until she found where the men had gone. She ensconced herself, and watched them. They were loading the corpse into some kind of a glass tube.
What is that? Her brain couldn’t make sense of it. It looked similar to one of those stasis chambers on a science fiction movie, but she didn’t think that type of technology actually existed—maybe it does.
She didn’t stay to watch anymore, she had seen enough to know something very, very sinister was going on indeed. That limited her time and most likely meant that if she were caught, she would soon find herself in one of those cases, whatever they were.
She stealthily made it down the hall. The room where the men were was large with lots of machinery so it took up most of the ground floor space. Each room she came to was locked. She found what looked like a safe place to hide and waited for the men to leave before she tried the upstairs.
