The Catalyst: (Book One)

by Devi Mara

  She carefully tucked it in with the rest of the tubes and skipped it in her numbering. When she placed the tubes into the archives, there would be no evidence of anything missing. She packed all of the fragile glass into a padded, climate controlled pack and snapped the lid shut. Harmin was just finishing with the machinery when she turned to face him. He gestured toward the three machines on the counter.

  “They’re ready. Oh, wait.”

  She tapped the button for the laser on her zygote machine. Had the zygote still been inside, it would have been destroyed by temperatures hot enough to vaporize it. She picked up the sample pack and took a few steps back. Harmin made quick work of the three small machines and they removed the sterile suits.

  “I’m sorry about the organism.”

  She looked up at Harmin in surprise. After a moment, she gave him a small smile.

  “It’s a pity. It would have been interesting to see it fully formed.”

  He simply nodded.

  The move from the border of Mongolia back to Chicago took both less time and more time than she imagined. The actual packing of their equipment onto the trucks and the subsequent unpacking onto the plane only took a day. It was the plane jumping that became tiresome. While the university equipment was basically mailed back, the team had to take three different planes. One a four passenger Cessna. It took three trips to get everyone from the site to a small airport where they took a larger plane to Beijing.

  After thirteen hours, she arrived in Detroit with enough of a layover to scarf down a premade sandwich. It sat in her stomach like a stone as she sat on a bench outside the terminal and clutched the sample pack to her. The bright yellow case stuck out in the sea of black business suits. She received several glances. She still wore a pair of faded blue jeans and a thread bare sweater over her white tank top. She was something of an oddity among the business people around her.

  The layover was an hour and a half. She glanced at her watch to see she still had nearly forty minutes left. With a sigh, she stood and walked toward the bathrooms. The light in the ladies room was almost painful, but she assumed that had more to do with her exhaustion than the actual degree of brightness. She set the case on the counter and placed her hands on either side of the sink.

  She looked in the mirror and winced. Dark circles bruised the bronze skin beneath her eyes. Her hair, usually springy curls, was a fuzzy mop. She sighed. After wetting her hands in the sink, she pulled the hairband from her hair and released the loose ponytail. Her hair tumbled in a thick mane down her back to end just above her waist. She wasted no time running her wet hands through it to try and tame it.

  When that did not work, she smoothed what she could and braided the rest. She licked her dry lips and scrutinized her appearance for another moment before she considered it good enough. She glanced at her watch. She had killed almost twenty minutes. After a quick bathroom break, during which she tucked the case under the counter out of sight, she left the ladies room to return to the terminal.

  Dr. Carey waved her over and she sat with her team making polite conversation until their flight was called. The next hour and a half was a blur of getting onto the plane, getting off of the plane, and collecting her suitcase. Through it all she kept a tight hold on the sample case. Dr. Scott seemed to suddenly notice it as they all stood together at baggage claim.

  Half of the group had already drifted away, tiredly trudging off to their homes. Probably planning to sleep for days. She shared that plan. She started to turn away, when Dr. Scott called out to her.

  “Are you planning to go by the university?”

  She followed his gaze down to the case clasped tightly in her left hand. Her fingers tensed on the handle.

  “I was going to. Do you need me to drop off anything?”

  His brows pulled together and for a moment she thought he would question her. Then the tension drained out of him and he sighed.

  “You are far more dedicated than me,” he said with a rueful smile.

  She gave him a weak smile in return.

  “It’s just the youth. It’ll fade.”

  He huffed a laugh.

  “Right.”

  She took that as her cue and turned away. She rolled her two year old, navy blue suitcase behind her. A gift from her father when she got the job at the university. He was proud, if not a little confused, that she would go into a field other than law or medicine. When she got her doctorate, he was amused. Not the kind of doctor I had in mind, he had joked.

  She pushed through the glass doors to the sidewalk where a line of taxis waited. She would need to visit her parents. It had been too long. At least three months. She approached the closest taxi and the driver rushed to take her bag. After placing her suitcase in the trunk, he reached for the case. She pulled it to her and shook her head.

  “Not this. I’ve got it.”

  He shrugged and gestured for her to get in the backseat of the car. As he pulled away from the curb, she let her head drop back against the seat. Suddenly, every hour in the enclosed space of the plane, every breath she had taken of recycled air, came back to her and she let out a heavy sigh.

  “Long trip?” the driver questioned.

  She opened her eyes to see the driver glance at her in the rearview mirror.

  “Yes.”

  She rocked her head to the side to watch the lights on the highway flash across the window. It began to drizzle.

  “You from around here?”

  “Born and raised,” she murmured without looking away from the play of light in the raindrops.

  “Where we headed?”

  She quickly told him her address and he continued to talk. With her gaze fastened on the window, she was vaguely aware of the driver’s continued chatter. When he began to speak about local sports, she tuned him out. Eventually the scene outside her window changed to her neighborhood. The car slowed and finally stopped at a ten story apartment building in a moderately wealthy neighborhood.

  “Well, here we go,” the driver said as he put the car in park.

  She watched the front door of her building open and the doorman, Benny, approach the taxi. He opened her door and gave her a bright smile.

  “Pleasant journey, Dr. Kay?”

  She gave the older man a tired smile.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  She smothered a yawn behind her hand.

  “I’ll just have your bags taken up for you,” Benny said.

  She gave him a grateful smile.

  “Please just leave them inside the door.”

  When she turned back to the car, he raised his eyebrows.

  “You’re not staying?”

  “I have to go by the university. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

  He looked concerned, but nodded.

  She climbed back into the car and he closed her door firmly. She returned his wave, before she turned to the driver and told him where she need to go. He silently pulled away from the curb and headed for downtown Chicago. He quickly fell back into his cycle of chatter. As he spoke, she dropped her gaze to the case in her lap.

  What am I doing?

  The thought had been spinning around in her mind since she left the dig site. She was risking so much and for what? A curiosity. Some days she seriously disliked the part of her that sought to know everything about everything. Curiosity got her into far more trouble than anything else. It had been that way since she was a child. She doubted it would change.

  The taxi pulled to a stop next to the backdoor of the science building and she popped open her door.

  “Give me twenty minutes?”

  He looked over his shoulder at her.

  “The meter’s running.”

  She nodded and slid out of the car. Her scuffed tennis shoes did not click on the concrete the way her usual heels did and she missed her lab coat when she reached for a pocket that was absent. Of course. She fished her keycard from the pocket of her jeans and swiped it to get into the building. The door beeped a
nd she jerked it open.

  The silence closed around her. She tightened her grip on the case and quickly took the stairs to the basement level. Made up of only personal labs, the basement was never seen by the university students. The nature of her work gave her an amount of privacy not afforded to the others in the building.

  She swiped her card at the stairwell door to enter the basement and pulled the door closed behind her. The lights of the hallway flickered to life when she took a step forward. Her lab was the last on the left, larger than the others. She pressed her thumb to the panel next to the door and then raised her gaze to the retinal scanner. The door of her lab made a sharp clicking sound followed by a hiss. It slid aside to reveal a room of white walls and shining stainless steel.

  She found herself smiling, as the door slid closed behind her. She set the case on the counter and raised her hands to rest over the clasps. For a long moment, she paused. Her eyes drifted to the machine she would use as an artificial womb. Until she placed the zygote in the machine, no one would ever know she did not destroy it in Siberia. As she stood perfectly still considering, a warm feeling ran down her spine.

  She tensed, inhaling sharply. When nothing else happened, she dropped her gaze back to the case. The click of the clasps seemed to echo. She withdrew the cryotube and walked to the machine.

  “Come on, Robin,” she urged herself.

  She pressed a button and a small shelf slid out. Without giving herself time to overthink it, she opened the tube and placed the slide on the shelf. It vanished into the machine and a quiet hum started. She licked her lips nervously and took a step back. It was done. For better or worse, in several months she would have an embryo.

  She turned around and closed the case. She walked out of her lab with it, not looking back once. The archiving was done on the third floor. Unlike the basement, the first, second, and third floors were under constant surveillance. She took the elevator. After placing the samples into the archives and uploading the data from her mobile, she tiredly left the building to return to the taxi.

  The driver seemed to sense her mood, because he was blessedly silent on the way to her building. Benny smiled at her when she arrived, but she could not summon the energy to return it. He took it gracefully, simply nodding and pressing the elevator button for her. When she entered her sixth floor apartment, she nearly tripped over her bags. She fell asleep in the middle of her bed with her clothes on.

  Chapter Three

  She jerked awake to bright daylight and the shrill ring of her cell phone. Fumbling for it as she squinted into the noonday sun, she managed to knock it off the bedside table and nearly fell off the bed. She forced her eyes open enough to find it laying half-under the bed. She snatched it when it began to shriek again.

  “Dr. Kay,” she said with a sigh, flopping back on the bed.

  “Morning, Dr. Kay!”

  She could feel her perky, nineteen year old assistant smiling through the phone.

  “Amber,” she acknowledged. “What time is it?”

  “Fifteen after noon, Dr. Kay.”

  “Could you call me back in about…” she rubbed at her face. “Twenty four hours?”

  Amber let out a little giggle.

  “You’re funny, Dr. Kay.”

  Not a joke.

  “What was your reason for calling, Amber?” she finally asked, giving in to the reality that she was not going to get anymore sleep.

  “There’s a slight issue with the lab.”

  Robin was immediately awake.

  “What kind of issue?” she asked, already standing.

  She wandered into her living room as Amber mumbled something.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  Robin grabbed her satchel from the back of a kitchen chair and dug through it. She quickly added her wallet and sunglasses. The rest of the items from her travel bags could wait. As she was about to open the front door, she realized she had forgotten to change. Robin dropped her bag and hurried back to her bedroom.

  “I said, whatever you put in the artificial womb is outgrowing the space. It needs to be moved to the tank.”

  Robin paused in the middle of wiggling out of her jeans.

  “What?”

  “It was like beeping and stuff, so I pushed that button you told me to push. Not the one that you said never to push but the other one. It’s, like, dark gray?”

  “Okay, and?”

  Robin tugged on a knee length skirt and crammed her feet into a pair of heels. She put her phone on speaker and tossed it on the bed so she could sort out her shirt situation.

  “I pushed that and it gave me this warning message.”

  “What did it say?” Robin asked, her voice muffled by her shirt.

  “What are you doing, Dr. Kay?”

  “Amber,” she said sharply. “What did the message say?”

  She swiped on some deodorant and switched into a blouse she could tuck into her skirt.

  “Something about there not being enough space in the holding thing.”

  Robin frowned thoughtfully, glancing in the mirror to be sure she was presentable. Her hair was still tightly braided from the day before, it would hold through a few more hours. She straightened her skirt and walked to the door.

  “Holding receptacle at full capacity?”

  Amber mumbled something that sounded like an agreement.

  “Are you eating in the lab?”

  “I brought you some.”

  Robin opened her mouth to lecture her and paused. She pulled the door to her apartment closed behind her and stalked toward the elevator.

  “What is it?”

  “A chicken taco.”

  “Don’t eat it before I get there,” Robin muttered.

  “Sure thing, Dr. Kay.”

  Robin sighed and hung up. She dropped her phone into her purse and waited for the elevator. With a sedate ding, the gleaming doors slid open and she stepped into the enclosed space. She glanced at the only other occupant as the doors closed.

  “Marty, right?” she asked.

  The man, in his mid-thirties and wearing a tailored suit, was already watching her with interest.

  “Right. And you are Dr. Robin Kay. 6B.”

  She gave him a small smile and looked away. The way his eyes were taking in every detail of her appearance made her urge the elevator faster. He lived three floors above her and had always been overly flirtatious in the past. She should have ignored him. She was mentally kicking herself when the elevator dinged and the doors finally rolled open. She gave him another quick smile and hurried off.

  “Have a nice day, Robin,” Marty called from behind her, walking at a much more sedate pace.

  A taxi was waiting at the curb for her when she exited the building. The daytime doorman, Nick, opened the back door and wished her a good day. Her smile to him was far more genuine than the one she had given her neighbor. The taxi driver was not as chatty as the one who brought her home from the airport. After she gave him the address of the university, she sat back in the seat and watched the city pass by.

  “It’s twenty,” the driver announced, stopping in front of the science building.

  “I know.”

  She handed him the twenty dollar bill she had in her hand and stepped out onto the white concrete sidewalk. In the last weeks of summer, the university was still free of students, and even at midday, there were only a few members of staff meandering around. She walked up the front steps of the science building and into the cool stillness of the lobby.

  The information desk to the right of the door was still empty, but she had no doubt the bubbly Janice would be back at her post on the first day of school. Readjusting the strap of her bag on her shoulder, Robin walked to the main stairwell next to the elevators. Her heels clicked loudly on both the tile floor and the smooth stone of each step. Amber met her just inside the entrance to the basement level.

  “Okay, so it’s growing. Like a lot. Seriously,” her assistant told her as they approache
d the lab.

  Robin sent the teenager a quick look and handed her bag over.

  “My phone is in there. Please connect it to my personal network.”

  The blonde’s ponytail bobbed when she nodded.

  “Right away, Dr. Kay!”

  Robin suppressed a smile and pressed her thumb to the print reader.

  “And please prepare the tank,” she said once the retinal scan was complete.

  The door opened and she split away from Amber to check on the embryo. It was like the blonde had said. In just the time between the phone call and her arrival, the embryo had grown large enough to change the message on the machine from proximity warning to imminent specimen destruction.

  “What is your status, Amber?”

  “I’ll be done in, like, five Mississippi.”

  Robin glanced at her with a raised eyebrow.

  “Alrighty. All done, Dr. Kay.”

  Robin nodded and began the process of stabilizing the embryo for transfer. It was not until she opened the machine that she realized she was looking at a fetus. Small, certainly no more than nine months old, but more than ready to breathe air.

  “I need a mask. Size A3,” she tossed over her shoulder.

  She heard Amber moving around the lab behind her, but she could not take her eyes off the specimen.

  “I got it!”

  Robin nodded without looking at her. She snapped on a pair of gloves and carefully extracted the organism from the protective biofibers of the artificial womb. She was not sure what she expected, but the specimen’s full body shudder startled her. The small body slowly unfurled from the fetal position and inhaled its first breath. It did not cry.

  Robin turned away from the table to carry the organism to the tank. Amber watched the whole thing with wide green eyes, never speaking but hovering just beside Robin’s left elbow. As Robin placed the mask over the organism’s face, Amber coughed lightly.

  “Yes?”

  “Well, um, I was just wondering…”

  Robin carefully turned on the air flow and placed the specimen in the nourishing gel of the tank. As expected, the small body sank a few feet and then hovered near the center of the container.