by Jamie Metzl
“Stop,” Maurice shouts again. “Blow it.”
In minutes, another patrol car arrives. Two men in black uniforms get out and walk over to Maurice. He gives them the orders before all the cars pull back.
“On your call, sir,” one of the men says over the radio after the explosives are set.
“Do it.”
The explosion is not huge but leaves the gate a shattered mess.
“Let’s go,” Maurice says.
Martina, Chou, and I follow him through the smoldering hole.
“What the hell …” the stunned security guard says, rushing over to us in the hall. “I was told you have not been authorized for entry.”
“You were told wrong,” Maurice snaps. “We’re looking for …” He turns to me.
“An employee of yours named Michel Noland,” I say.
“Is he here?” Maurice asks aggressively.
“I’m not authorized to provide any information about our—”
Maurice gets in front of the guard and stops him in his tracks. The guard’s bulging neck muscles make him an imposing match for Maurice’s tall, muscular frame. “You are going to tell us right now whether he’s here.”
The guard shrivels. “I don’t know—”
“Take us to his office,” Maurice commands.
“It’s in the restricted—”
“I don’t give a damn where it is,” Maurice orders, “take us there right now. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir,” the man shrinks obsequiously, “but it’s in—”
“Take us there now.”
The guard puts his head down and leads. We follow him to an elevator bank and then up to the eighth floor. The hall only extends about fifty feet before it’s blocked by a thick metal door.
“I was trying to explain to you,” the nervous guard says, “this is our high-security zone. The only way in is with retinal verification and a personal security code.”
“Are you authorized?” Maurice asks.
“I-I …” the man stutters.
“Don’t say a word,” a tense voice yells from behind.
We turn to see a tall, burly man rushing toward us.
“Don’t say a word,” he repeats. “They have no authority to be here. Our lawyers are on the way.”
“I was trying to explain to them—” the guard says.
“Oh, shut up,” the man barks.
Maurice only smiles. “And you are?”
“Jacques Malraux, chief of security.”
“Very nice to meet you, sir,” Maurice says politely.
I’m not surprised by Maurice’s formality and have a sense of what’s coming next.
Malraux looks at Maurice, confused.
“I’m just going to need to borrow something for a moment,” Maurice says.
“You’ve got to be—”
Malraux’s words are cut short by the firm clasp of Maurice’s hand around the back of his shoulder-length hair. Maurice forcefully yanks Malraux’s face in front of the scanner.
The words RETINAL SCAN AFFIRMATIVE flash across the monitor.
“You idiots,” Malraux says. “You also need a personal identification number.”
Maurice lets go of Malraux’s hair. “Darn it,” he says, walking a few steps back. “I guess I didn’t think of that.” He pauses a moment before he speaks. “All right guys, blow it.”
I get a certain perverse pleasure observing the transformation of Malraux’s face.
“Wait just one second,” Malraux yells. “You can’t just storm into our building and blow out our walls. This is the United States of America.”
Maurice doesn’t even look in his direction. “Set the charges,” he orders his two men in black.
The men pull the small explosives from their belts and rip the covers off their adhesives.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Malraux says. “Merde. There is going to be hell to pay for this.” He begins tapping a code into the control panel. The door glides open.
“Now take us to the office of Michel Noland.” Maurice’s tone makes clear he will brook no dissent.
Malraux grudgingly leads the way. We arrive at a large corner office blocked off by a security wall similar to the one we just breached. I feel my pulse surging.
Maurice glares at Malraux.
“Even I don’t have access to this office,” Malraux says.
“Show me.”
Malraux places his face in front of the scanner.
RETINAL SCAN NEGATIVE.
“All right, boys,” Maurice says nonchalantly.
We step back as they strategically place the explosives.
“Wait, stop,” Malraux shrieks. “You can’t do this. You can’t just barge into our building and start blowing up things. You can’t—”
“On my mark. Five, four, three … I’d suggest you step back.”
Malraux stares at Maurice, his eyes bulging until the countdown registers in his mind. As he jumps back away from the metal door, I catch the nervous smile on Martina’s face.
“Good … Two, one, execute.”
Boosh. The room fills with dust. The doors stand, but barely.
“Crowbar,” Maurice orders.
In sixty seconds we are in. The large office is all windows on two sides facing the building’s exterior. It is sparsely decorated with a minimalist, almost Zen feel.
“Look at this,” Chou says after opening what looks like a closet door. “I haven’t seen anything like this in years.”
I enter the room just as he puts words to what he is seeing.
“Paper files,” he says incredulously.
The walls are lined with old-fashioned, color-coded folders like a twentieth-century doctor’s office. It’s far more information than we can absorb quickly, especially without the assistance of technology, but we begin desperately leafing through the files. The categories are all there. Noam Heller. Heller research. Total Cancer Cellular Reversion Treatment. Trial protocols. Benjamin Hart. William Wolfson. Total Cellular Reversion Treatment. Heller SBN. Heller formula. Heller vial inventory. November 7 security breach. Antonia Hewitt.
My hands shake as I open the thick file with Toni’s name on it. I scan the handwritten notes referencing her role in the November 7 security breach by Dr. Heller, summarizing our conversations in Heller’s lab, and noting that Toni spent thirteen minutes with Dr. Heller in the jellyfish aquarium room when no surveillance information was available. The reports track her every move from the time we visited Heller’s lab, at her house before the explosion and at mine after, and includes photographs of her house, of Sebastian inside it, of my house, of the hospital. A document transcribes all of the messages from the past week going to and from her u.D. Another details the extraction of her 2021 blood sample from the National Biostorage Facility, immediate preparation for her procedure in the “treatment module.” I flip frantically through the documents, feeling the blood drain from my head.
My eyes are bulging but my mind locks into gear. “They’re starting her today on some kind of procedure,” I shout urgently to Chou. “It says she’s in the treatment module. Where the fuck is that?”
“Where is it?” Maurice yells at Malraux.
“I am not able to communicate absent the presence of counsel.”
Maurice walks toward Malraux and Chou and I flip through the files desperately. My heart pounds. Toni, Toni, Toni. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Here,” Chou yells.
I rush over.
“It’s in the Parkville Underground,” he says. “The limestone caves up north. 8800 Northwest River Park Drive, lot forty-one. It’s the caves the university used to own.”
“Grab the file. We’ve got to go,” I say turning toward the door.
Maurice orders his men to set up a command post at Santique and then calls into his handset, “I want all available cars going to 8800 Northwest River Park Drive in Parkville.”
I’m desperate to leave but quickly pull Martina into the file room. “Th
e rest of the story is here, Martina,” I plead. “Stay here as long as you can.”
55
We’re at nearly a hundred and ten miles per hour weaving through traffic up US 71 North to Highway 169. Maurice keeps tabs on the fifteen police cars heading in the same direction.
I frantically read the file on Toni over and over, searching for even the smallest shreds of additional information. What type of procedure? Why? How long does it take? All I can think of is Toni lying inert, being wheeled from the hospital. Toni alone and afraid in a dark limestone cave deep below the surface.
Come on, Maurice, I think. Drive. Drive!
From 169, we make a screeching turn on Highway 9. I can hear the throng of sirens converging behind us. Maurice races toward the entrance of the cave, honking his horn for the guard to lift the rail. The rail stays put and Maurice crashes through. The road funnel loops deeper and deeper down into the cool, white limestone. The screech of the tires and the reverberating roar of the sirens amplify exponentially in the enclosed space. After five complete spirals down, we corkscrew onto a level road and speed past the glass-enclosed numbered lots.
One, three, five, seven. The odd numbered lots to our left flow sequentially. The frosted glass entryway of each is embedded into the surrounding limestone, each opening to a series of smaller interior caves from the central atrium.
Faster, Maurice. Hold on, baby.
Twenty-seven, twenty-nine, thirty-one.
I jump out of the car and bang on the frosted glass door of lot forty-one. Maurice follows immediately behind, rapping the door with the back of his flashlight.
“Stand back,” Maurice orders. He hacks his crowbar into the area around the clasp, then lifts his leg and smashes the same area with his heel. The glass cracks but holds. He lifts the crowbar again. With five whacks the door is breached.
I dart in front of him as the officers fill in behind. The polished limestone of the domed central atrium is covered by a thin film of clear polyurethane. Spartan modernist furniture gives the atrium a Japanese feel that reminds me of Noland’s office. Eight small doors line the circumference of the room, with plastic sheets creating a sterile zone separating each door from the air of the central space.
I charge through the plastic of the first door, yelling, “Toni, Toni!” It’s an operating room like the one I saw in Heller’s lab, but it’s empty. I jump out.
“Toni,” I yell again, rushing in to the second.
Nothing.
“Baby,” I shout as I rip through the third.
A man and woman in surgical masks and white lab coats look up at me and raise their hands, signaling me to stand back.
My eyes feel like they’re bulging from my head. I hardly see the two people. Every ounce of me is focused on Toni lying inert on the operating table. Red tubes pass from each of her arms, sending her blood into a machine, where it seems to spin through a clear cylinder. Her mouth is covered with an oxygen mask and her head surrounded by an electrocorticography helmet with hundreds of cords passing from patches stuck to her scalp and into a large processor. Digital displays monitor her bodily functions.
I leap toward her. “Baby, can you hear me?”
She doesn’t move.
“What the fuck are you doing to her?” I shout, pushing the two people aggressively.
“Stop.” Franklin Chou’s strong word echoes through the room. “Stop, Rich,” he begs.
Maurice and three officers file in behind him with their pistols drawn. “Put your hands in the air where I can see them,” Maurice shouts at the two people.
They lift their hands. “You don’t understand,” the man says in a French accent through his surgical mask.
“Where I can see them,” Maurice orders.
An officer comes behind each and jams their hands behind their backs before placing them in plastic cuffs, then pulls off their surgical masks and pushes them down on the ground.
As the masks come off, I recognize the cropped beard and the mocking, intelligent eyes from the research files. And I feel an instinctual urge to tear Michel Noland to pieces.
“I’m telling you,” Noland says calmly, “don’t touch anything. You don’t understand what you are doing. This is a very delicate procedure.”
“He’s right,” Chou declares from behind me. “Total Cellular Reversion Treatment?”
Noland’s contemptuous eyes confirm.
“When did the process begin?” Chou asks, his voice retaining its calm.
Noland doesn’t answer.
“When?” Maurice shouts.
“I am not at liberty to answer your questions absent the presence of counsel.”
I lunge toward Noland, but Maurice gets there first. He lifts Noland up by his shirt and presses him into the limestone wall. “When did it begin?”
“This afternoon,” Noland grunts.
Maurice eases his grip, and Noland sinks to the ground.
I place my hand on Toni’s forehead. Baby, baby, baby. She is completely nonresponsive. Panic overtakes me. “What does that mean?” I fire at Chou.
“I don’t know,” he says contritely. “All of my knowledge about this is theoretical. We’ve only just begun our experiments on the roundworms and mice.”
“Can we stop it?” I shriek.
“It looks like they’ve already begun the cellular reversion process. If Heller’s notes are correct, the transfusion and genomic alteration should take approximately six days. We don’t know anything about stopping in the middle.”
“Which is exactly what I was trying to tell you,” Noland pronounces from the floor.
“You have the right to remain silent,” Maurice says, shaking his head in disgust.
Chou is already immersed in the science. “If they’re using genetic materials from her 2021 blood sample, she now has a mix of cells with different age signatures inside of her. It’s got to be incredibly confusing for her body. Heller’s process requires complete sedation during the transfusion because the struggle between the old and new cells can be extremely traumatic—”
“Can we stop it?” I repeat.
“I don’t know,” Chou says nervously. “Shutting it down now could be extremely dangerous for her.”
“What about all of the blood in her body? She can’t have been here for more than twelve hours.”
“If I’m right,” Chou says, “then all of her current genetic material has already been compromised.”
“Morons,” Noland says under his breath, “of course it has.”
I take an aggressive step toward Noland, my predatory instinct fully activated.
Chou places his arm across my chest as he speaks. “We would need more recent genetic materials, if a reversal is even possible.”
“And the additional catalytic compound you don’t have,” Noland mutters.
My heart sinks as I turn toward Toni. I have tried to protect her and failed. She lies motionless, being morphed into an earlier version of herself with the last four years of her life—the three years we’ve known each other, her dreams and hopes and pains—vanishing through the transfusion tubes. I think of Katherine Hart mourning a man who has lost forty years of their life together. Time, cruel and unforgiving, is also, I suddenly realize, the ultimate carrier of the true meaning of our lives.
My mind whirls frantically. More genetic material. My body freezes as my brain locks on to the idea. I stand up straight and turn toward Chou. “I’ve got it.”
“Got what?”
“Last Saturday Toni had her eggs extracted and a skin graft taken. They’ve just been deposited with Kansas City Cryobank.”
“But you’d need someone who actually knows what the hell they’re doing to do the procedure, if it’s even possible at all,” Noland declares, recognizing his opportunity.
I turn my head slowly and bend down to face his. Then I grab his shoulders and ram him violently against the wall. “And it sure as fuck is not going to be you.”
But the urge to take care
of Toni overpowers my drive to harm Noland. I let go of his shoulders and stand. My mind locks in. “Where do we need to take her?”
“Hospital’s the best bet,” Chou says. “We don’t even know what we don’t know. We’re going to need a lot of help.”
“Of course you are,” Noland murmurs from against the wall. “So this may be a good time for us to negotiate.”
I take an instinctive step toward him, then stop myself, the idea suddenly becoming clear in my head. I turn toward Maurice. “Can you please get this asshole out of here?”
Maurice signals his men who grab Noland and his colleague and begin dragging them out. “You are making a terrible mistake,” Noland yells, “I am willing to neg—”
Chou eyes me nervously as the closing door cuts off Noland’s voice. “Plan B?”
“We can do better,” I say, slapping my u.D and swiping frantically for the icon. I find it and tap. Nothing. “Shit.”
“The limestone is blocking the signal,” Chou says. “Looks like there’s no repeater.”
“I’ve got to get above ground.”
Maurice jumps in. “I’ll drive you. We need to call the ambulance.”
I’m pulled in two directions. I need to get above ground but can’t bear to leave Toni.
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Chou implores, recognizing my agony. “We shouldn’t wait. We need to get her to the hospital. Go!”
Maurice pulls me away and into his car. We screech down the drive and then up the loops and out the ground level exit. I can’t tap my u.D fast enough. “Come on,” I mutter.
The ten-digit number flashes for five seconds on my u.D’s monitor before disappearing.
I’m shaking as I dictate the numbers into my wrist.
Beep.
“This is Rich Azadian,” I yell. “I’m in Kansas City. My girlfriend is stuck halfway through a reversion process. I need your help right now. I need you to get me the catalytic compound and your best scientists from the ship to reverse the transfusion. I know this is a lot to ask but I’m taking you at your word. I’m begging for your help.” I pause to collect my thoughts then drop my tone a notch. “You asked me to pledge mutual respect and support and I did. Now I need you to do your part.”
