No Time to Die

by Kira Peikoff

  “I want to go with you,” he whispered. “We don’t know this woman. Let me come.”

  Zoe shook her head. “It’s too much for you. I can take care of myself. I took karate, remember?”

  “But you’re so small.” He winced as if he might have offended her. “You’re the boss, though.” It was his affectionate kid nickname for her—one that had now taken on a new significance. She smiled. It wasn’t lost on either of them.

  Through the window, she saw a yellow cab roll to a stop in front of their door. She could make out the silhouette of a woman in the backseat.

  “I’ll be fine,” she whispered. In case she was threatened, Gramps was the last person who could defend her, but she didn’t say so. She wondered if somewhere, deep down, he still saw himself as a young Olympic hero, merely contained in the shell of a crippled old man. Like Ulysses—made weak by time and fate, but not in will. She and Gramps shared flip sides of the same tragedy, she realized—both were trapped in bodies that belied their souls. She grabbed his hand and steered him to his favorite recliner in the den.

  “Wait here,” she instructed. “I’ll be back soon.”

  He sat down with a look of defeat. “But how will I be able to reach you, just in case?”

  “You think I didn’t think of that?” she said, pulling her cell phone out of her purse.

  He raised his eyebrows. “I thought your father took it.”

  “He did. And hid it in the toolbox, where he hides his extra key.” She shook her head with a smile and leaned down to kiss his cheek. “Don’t worry, this is going to be awesome. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” he whispered. “Please be careful.”

  She held her index finger to her lips and tiptoed to the door. Opening and closing it was the trickiest part, but she managed to slip out just as Gramps gave a few coughs for good measure.

  Outside the quiet night was cool. She should have brought a jacket, but it was too risky to go back inside. She skipped down the brownstone steps, inhaling the scent of the pink and white magnolia trees that lined the block. As the sweet fragrance filled her with a sense of possibility, the cab’s rear door popped open for her. She grasped the cold metal handle, glancing over her shoulder at the apartment’s second-floor window. Its light was off, so she climbed inside and shut the door. The cab lurched forward, its headlights stabbing the darkness.

  Natalie twisted to face Zoe full on, smiling and extending her hand. “It’s so nice to finally meet you.”

  “You’re so young!” Zoe exclaimed, and then blushed. “I just imagined you as way older. I read your CV online, and you’ve done so much.”

  Natalie was prettier than she’d imagined, too, but didn’t say so. With her sleek brown bob, prominent cheekbones, and shapely breasts under her cashmere sweater, she looked more like a hip news anchor than a nerdy scientist. Though Zoe would never admit it, she always noticed the size of other women’s cheekbones and breasts before anything else, and judged their femininity accordingly. Already, Natalie’s ranked about ten times greater than her own, and Zoe felt a deep-seated envy stir, admiration of a womanliness that could so far be matched only in spirit.

  Natalie chuckled at her surprise. “Thank you. I may look young, but I’ve been doing research since I was your age.” She cleared her throat. “Since college. So I’ve had a lot of years to build up my CV.”

  Zoe could tell she was being modest. “Yeah, but it’s what’s on it that’s impressive. All that stuff with the genes you found that relate to aging . . . didn’t you get a MacArthur genius grant?”

  A proud smile tugged at her lips. “About five years ago. It was given to me with the hope that I would work on targeting the location of the master regulator gene. The gene that’s believed to underpin the entire aging process.”

  “Dr. Carlyle told me about it,” Zoe said. “I’d never heard of it before.”

  “Most people haven’t. It’s still only a theory.”

  “So what happened?” she asked eagerly. “What did you find?”

  Natalie glanced out her window at the shuttered storefronts zipping by on Broadway. The usually busy road was deserted at this hour, and the green lights seemed to last an eternity.

  “I didn’t find it,” she replied. “But I came closer than anyone ever has. That is, I found several possible locations on certain chromosomes that I think could hold the gene, or group of genes. I just haven’t been able to dig much further. It’s very hard to separate out the cause and effect when you don’t have a picture of what the gene would look like turned off—without that, we can’t begin to reconstruct the chain of events that kick in to accelerate aging. It’s impossible to know which chemical reaction causes which, like dominoes that are all falling. We can see they’re being knocked down, but we can’t tell where it started.” A smile spread across her face. “Not yet, at least.”

  Zoe couldn’t help picturing a perpetual collision of dominoes inside of Gramps’s body, one striking the next, and the next, involuntary as a heartbeat and just as finite. She wondered how many more he had left.

  The cab slowed, and she saw that they were in a grittier neighborhood than her own. Few people ventured onto the shadowy streets, and those who did walked with hunched shoulders and quick strides. She felt the first clip of fear, but brushed it off. Something about being with Natalie made her feel safe.

  After paying the driver, they climbed out on the sidewalk next to Columbia, right at the threshold of the cobblestone campus. Near the black gate stood a sleepy security guard, who barely moved when Natalie flashed her blue faculty ID. Before he could decide to inspect her picture, they strode past him and onto the university grounds. It was as awe-inspiring as its surroundings were not. Zoe wanted to stop and admire the imposing dome supported by columns that formed the centerpiece of the campus, and the statue of a bronze lady on its steps, but Natalie took her hand and pulled her along. A few students sauntered by them, loudly talking and laughing, but otherwise, the campus was empty.

  They walked past the domed building and a great wide lawn, then sharply turned to the left and stopped before a smaller, rectangular building. It looked to be about ten or twelve stories high. Etched above the door were the words: FAIRCHILD CENTER, DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES. Natalie reached into her purse to retrieve her access pass, and Zoe noticed a gleam of sweat on her upper lip, despite the breezy night.

  “Are you okay?” she whispered, standing in front of her, in case anyone should pass them.

  Natalie flashed her a reassuring smile. “No one’s here. Let’s go in.”

  She held her magnetic pass up to the door’s black sensor and a green light flashed. As she opened the door, Zoe went in first, ducking under her arm. All the lights were off. The door closed behind them with a soft thud.

  “Stick by me,” Natalie said. “I don’t want to turn on the lights in case someone notices.” Zoe reached for her hand, but grasped her elbow by accident in the darkness. Natalie’s pace was brisk, and Zoe had to take extralong strides to keep up. The faint blue glow of her cell phone gave them a few precious inches of sight. She tried not to imagine a rat scurrying over their feet.

  “I’d know my way around here in my sleep.” Natalie’s voice seemed disembodied, bouncing off the walls like an echo. Zoe could tell the hallway was narrow and she sucked air in, warding off claustrophobia. The air smelled like a janitor’s scrubbing fluid, pungent with cleanliness. They blindly rounded a corner and walked down another hallway, their rapid footsteps tapping the floor in tandem.

  “Almost there.” After a few more steps, Natalie stopped and unlocked a door, then led Zoe inside a darkened room.

  “Close your eyes.”

  She obeyed. Fluorescent lights switched on with a buzzing sound and her hands flew to her face.

  “Sorry,” Natalie said. “But we can use the lights now. This is an internal room, no windows.”

  When Zoe opened her eyes, she saw that they were in a lab about twice the size
of her bedroom. All kinds of exotic equipment filled the room. Many were items she didn’t recognize, but some she did, like computers, microscopes, test tubes and slides, which sat on a long counter in the back of the room. Wonder overcame her, as if she had landed on an alien planet far more advanced than her own.

  “Welcome,” Natalie said. “This was my lab.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s beautiful.”

  “I don’t think most people would call it that.”

  “Well, I think it is. In a way that trees and mountains could never be, even though they’re beautiful, too.”

  “Funny, I know just what you mean.” Natalie tilted her head, contemplating her with a smile. “Okay, let me tell you what I’m going to do and why, and then let’s do it and get out of here.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “To sequence your genome, I’ll need to study your DNA, which is in the blood sample you’re about to give. I’ll start off the process here, tonight, by breaking your DNA down into small pieces, using my hydrodynamic shearing device, and then I’ll store it on glass slides called flow cells. Keeping it on slides is a better way to preserve the DNA than to just save your blood in a test tube.”

  “Why do you have to break it into small pieces?” Zoe asked, climbing onto a stool next to a tray of empty vials, syringes, and rubber gloves.

  “That allows the sequencing machines to analyze the base pairs in manageable chunks—it’s like reading a book one page at a time. Imagine if all the words were smushed together onto a single, gigantic scroll—it would be far too long to read at once.”

  “I see.” Zoe extended her arm and Natalie dabbed the inside of her elbow with a cotton ball. The scent of rubbing alcohol permeated the air.

  “When I find my next lab, I’ll begin the process of unveiling your genetic code. Using the slides, I’ll run many chemical reactions with colored dye to reveal several hundred of your DNA bases at a time. It’s a painstaking task, far too complex to explain on the spot. But in order to look for mutations, I’ll compare what I find to the known human genome, which was mapped by scientists in 2003 and is 99.99 percent accurate. I’m especially planning to focus on the certain locations I told you about.”

  “Where you think the master regulator gene might be.”

  “Yes.” Natalie’s green eyes shimmered with intensity. “Finding that gene is the key to my theory about aging.”

  “Which is?”

  “I had a paper published last year explaining it. In my view, aging is progressive disorganization resulting from postmaturational expression of genes that continue to cause developmental changes after development is complete.”

  Zoe raised her eyebrows. “One more time in English.”

  Natalie smiled. “In other words, once we’re grown up, that master regulatory gene is still telling our bodies to keep changing even after we’ve matured all the way. That gene causes what I call development inertia—a persistent reorganization of the body’s parts. That normally occurs during development but it’s coupled with genes that coordinate the complex changes that occur in our bodies. The information in those genes is exhausted when we reach maturity, but developmental inertia continues, progressively disrupting the internal order of our bodies—and that’s why we eventually break down and die.”

  “So if you can find the gene . . .”

  “Then we can silence it in young adulthood—at peak physical health—and become biologically immortal.”

  “Like me, but grown up.”

  “Exactly. Let me show you my favorite passage from a textbook that sums up my whole life’s work—and then you’ll have a better idea just how exciting this is for me.” She dashed over to a shelf stacked with thick hardcover books and pulled down one with a black spine that read: Gerontology Perspectives and Issues, 3rd Edition. She brought it over to Zoe, leaned down for her to see, and opened it to a dog-eared page. “Look here.”

  Standing, Zoe read the highlighted passage over her shoulder:

  Perhaps the richest treasure of all in the hunt for longevity genes will be finding the genes responsible for the differences in life span between different species. To date, none have been identified. However, it is believed that this approach will likely lead to the discovery of pacemaker genes—a small collection of master regulatory genes that controls the tempo of age-related erosion of homeostasis and organismal decline across species.

  “A treasure hunt,” Zoe breathed. “That’s so cool.”

  “I know.” Natalie glanced at her watch. “We better hurry, though. I want to get you back home as soon as possible. Why don’t you sit down again.” She motioned to the stool next to the counter and Zoe hopped up onto it. “This’ll be quick and pretty painless,” she added, as she slipped on latex gloves and went about preparing a needle and tube.

  “That’s okay, after all the tests I’ve had, I’m not squeamish.”

  She held out her arm again and Natalie instructed her to make a fist. “Such tiny veins!”

  “I always get that. Too bad guys aren’t impressed,” she blurted, and then flushed. She hadn’t meant to say that, but was so at ease.

  As Natalie chuckled, they heard an unmistakable rumble. The needle was inches from Zoe’s arm.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Wait, listen.”

  The rumble was getting louder, more measured—footsteps. A group of them, coming closer. Natalie glanced nervously from Zoe to the room’s only door.

  “There’s no way out,” she murmured. “No windows.”

  Zoe jumped off the stool. “What do we do?”

  Natalie was already running to turn off the lights. “The supply closet, over there,” she said, pointing. “Hurry.”

  The lights flickered off as Zoe rushed to the left side of the lab, knocking over a chair in the total darkness. It clattered loudly to the floor.

  “Damn it,” she muttered, but it didn’t matter. The lab’s door was already opening, letting in a stream of light from the hallway. She heard Natalie gasp and whipped around by the force of her own curiosity, despite knowing that she ought to duck.

  In the doorway stood two stern-faced policemen—next to her horrified mother and father.

  “Oh, Zoe!” her mother cried, rushing to bombard her with a hug. “You’re okay!”

  Her father charged up to Natalie, who stood helpless in the back of the room. “You’re going to be put away for a long time,” he snarled. “No one lays a hand on my daughter.”

  Natalie’s face had drained to a sickly white. “How did you find us?” she whispered, as the two policemen approached her. She tried to retreat, but found the wall right behind her.

  Mr. Kincaid’s gaze swung from her to Zoe, who was squirming out of her mother’s hold. “You think you’re so smart, taking your cell phone. You didn’t know I installed a GPS tracker on it just in case. I was worried you would pull a move like this.”

  Zoe felt her stomach drop away.

  “We heard you sneak out,” he said, “and wanted to see where you were going.”

  Her jaw hung open. No words could form.

  One of the policemen clicked a pair of handcuffs into place around Natalie’s slender wrists, while the other one spoke in a grim voice accustomed to commanding hardened criminals.

  “You’re under arrest for trespassing and child abduction.”

  “But my son!” she choked out, straining against the handcuffs. “What’s going to happen to my son?”

  “You have the right to remain silent,” he warned her. “Anything you say can—”

  “I wasn’t abducted!” Zoe screamed, hurtling herself toward Natalie. But her mother’s arms locked around her like tentacles and the policeman droned on, barely glancing in their direction. Her father shot her a warning look.

  “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed fo
r you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?”

  Natalie gave a dazed nod. The men grabbed hold of her biceps and roughly escorted her toward the door.

  “I came here on my own!” Zoe shouted at their backs, ignoring her parents’ dismay. “I didn’t mean to get her in trouble!” But they paid no attention. Natalie craned her head around, and despite her shell-shocked expression, Zoe caught her lips mouth the words: It’s not your fault.

  Then she was yanked out the door.

  CHAPTER 11

  Washington, D.C.

  Friday, June 14, 2:00 P.M.

  Les spoke into the phone, his voice grave. He was in his office ripping up sheets of printer paper, unable to keep his hands still. The white shreds looked as though a blizzard had let loose over his desk.

  “Stephen Kincaid?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Les Mahler, chief of the Justice Department’s Bioethics Committee. I was very concerned to hear about your daughter’s abduction last night.”

  “Thank you.” There was a long pause. “Sorry, I’m still a bit in shock—what can I do for you?”

  “Listen, we’ve decided on the need to disclose something to you on behalf of the committee and the FBI. You understand that this is extremely confidential and privileged information, requiring your utmost discretion.”

  “Absolutely.” His tone took on a nervous edge. “You have my word.”

  “We believe your daughter is in great danger. Her condition primes her as the perfect target for a group of wayward scientific activists collectively known as the Network. They prey on individuals who might be suitable for experimentation. Twenty-seven people have already been targeted.”

  Kincaid gasped. “How could I not know about this?”

  “The President has kept it highly classified so as not to spook the public.”

  “Of course. I see. So how can we protect her?”