Thursday, April 9
10:33 p.m.
"Grant, is that you?"
Ally squinted in the semi‑dark of the room, finally making out the silhouette. He was sitting in a chair beside her bed, and his face was troubled, reminding her of when he'd had a bad day in high school.
Am I dreaming again? she puzzled. The clock on the wall told her that this was a late hour for whatever he was up to now.
"It's me," he said, his voice low, just above a whisper. The door behind him, she noticed, was shut. "Welcome back to the world. They moved you upstairs just for tonight. This is the first chance I've had to get near you."
She was still wondering where she was, what day it was. The walls were an icy blue, illuminated only by the silver‑ and‑green glow of the bank of CRT screens that now monitored her heart and her respiration. She lifted her head off the pillow and for a moment, looked past Grant, examining the screen of the heart monitor. It was a phonocardiogram.
She knew what to look for. Over the years she'd learned to interpret every irregular pulse, every errant amplitude, but now the sonic abnormalities that typically characterized her stenosis, the struggle of her heart's scarred valve to maintain adequate coronary output, were significantly damped.
There'd always been murmurs, abnormal heart sounds, as long as she could remember, so what did this mean? Had the damaged valve already begun restoring and strengthening itself? While she slept?
Or was this just more of some dream?
Why was she in this hospital anyway, hooked up to monitors? She still couldn't remember exactly.
"What . . .?" She tried to rise up out of the bed. Again she wondered, was Grant real or some chimera?
Then she realized she was strapped in, though the straps were held only with black Velcro.
As she started to pull them open, she noticed she had an IV needle in her arm, with a plastic tube that led to a bag of liquid suspended from a hook above her head. More annoying, however, was the checkerboard of taped‑on sensors on her upper body, for the ongoing phonocardiogram. She looked at all the tubes and connected wires and felt like a laboratory animal in the middle of an experiment.
"Ally, you're at the Dorian Institute, remember? Dr. Van de Vliet's stem cell clinical trials. Nina's here too."
"Oh." That rang a bell, sort of. "What . . . what day is it?"
He told her. "You've been under sedation since late yesterday, Ally. But Dr. Vee says your test data show you're responding—"
"Mom's here, right?" Now things were starting to come back. "How's she doing? Is she—"
"He's talking about discharging her by the end of next week, even before the NIH clinical trials are officially over." Grant tried a smile. "By then, he thinks the procedure will have replaced enough tissue in her brain that she might not even need a caregiver. She's doing crosswords again. Need I say more."
"My God." Now she remembered how on‑again, off‑again Nina's mind had been when she brought her out to the institute. Had she really been given a second chance? And so quickly? If so, it was truly astonishing.
But now she found herself staring at Grant, mesmerized. Something about him seemed oddly off.
"Grant, what... what's going on with you?"
"I've . . ." He was hesitating. "I've been thinking about everything. Now I really wish I hadn't done what I did."
"What are you talking about?" This kind of revisionist remorse didn't sound like the Grant she knew.
"Have you seen Kristen? They said you know about her, were asking about her." Then he stepped back. "Do you know about her?"
Kristen. She tried to remember. Is that the woman everybody . . . Her mother had come to the institute with a pistol trying to find her? Then she was kidnapped. . . .
"It's the Syndrome," Grant went on. "She wanted the Beta procedure, and Dr. Vee finally agreed. But nobody expected anything to happen like what eventually did. That's why W.B. went ahead and had it too."
Beta. Now she remembered that Kristen had mumbled something about that word.
"Ally, I got you into . . . When I told W. B. that I thought you and he had the same rare blood type, AB, he wanted to bring you into the program."
"You mean for my heart?"
He looked away and his eyes grew pained. "Well, that's part of it. There's another part they haven't told you about."
"What's that?"
"Antibodies. They think there's a chance you could be made to develop them and then they could use them to help W.B. He doesn't have the Syndrome yet, but it's probably just a matter of time."
What, she puzzled, is he talking about? What "antibodies "? What "syndrome "? She was weak and she wasn't sure her mind was fully functional. But after what appeared to be
the miracle of her heart, she was willing to forsake a certain amount of momentary rationality.
Then more memory started returning. "Kristen. What about her? I saw—"
"Ally, the Syndrome started with her over four months ago. At first they didn't fully realize how serious . . . but now it's getting worse every day." He paused and turned away. "Look, I've been thinking. I'm really sorry that I brought you into this. What if something goes wrong?"
"What do you mean?"
"If you could see Kristen now, you'd understand."
"Where is she? Is she still wherever they're hiding her?"
"No." He turned back. "Kristen . . . After what happened yesterday, she had to be brought back out here. There's a ward downstairs, on the floor below the offices and lab, that's kind of like an intensive‑care unit. That's where you were until tonight. But you can't go back down there on your own. Not even the nurses can go without a special authorization, which is never given."
"But if Kristen is—"
"Ally, you 're the one I'm worried about. I thought what they were going to do to you was safe. But last night I. . . I heard them all talking and I think you could be in serious danger. They don't actually know what the consequences of what they're doing will be. You need to get out of here and at least get the real story. I don't want this on my hands. Truthfully, there could be some deep legal shit coming out of all this. I can think of at least three felonies. I don't want any part of that liability, and I want you to testify that I got you out of here if it ever comes to that."
Finally the straight story, she thought. He's afraid he's about to be an accomplice in a criminal conspiracy. He's getting cold feet.
"Grant, do something for me. Get me unplugged. All these sensors. I want to go see her for myself."
"Ally, forget it. To begin with, I can't unplug you. Only a
nurse can do that. And I don't want to. You've got catheters in places I—"
"Then I'll get a nurse to come and do it. I'll say I need to go to the bathroom. That should get me unhooked."
Annoyed she looked around. Where's the buzzer? There has to be one somewhere. Then she spotted a set of controls attached to the bed and sure enough, there was a red button. What else could it be?
She pushed it and a light came on above her door. Moments later, a short blue‑haired woman with the name marion sewn into her white uniform opened the door and came striding in, flicking on the fluorescent overheads.
"My, my, we're looking well," she declared ignoring Grant. "I'm glad you're finally awake. He told us to call him the minute ... They're all saying you and your mother must have special genes. You've both been such terrific patients. He'd been keeping you sedated but he discontinued that medication this afternoon. He wanted you to wake up with your mind clear."
"Well, I'd really like to get up and go to the bathroom and get something to eat," Ally said "Mainly, I just want to get out of this bed for a stretch before I start developing bedsores. I'm feeling strong, for now at least. Can you unhook some of these wires and suction cups? And I certainly don't need that IV. I'm so hungry I could inhale a quart of ice cream in one gulp."
"Yes, of course," Marion said and began dismantling the intravenous tubes. "We only monitor you and hydrate you when you're not conscious. The standard procedure is to let you get up and start getting some exercise as soon as possible. You should be careful, though, because at this point you're not as strong as you think. Changes are taking place in your body that require a lot of your energy. If you feel up to it, you could walk around for a couple of minutes, but you shouldn't let yourself get tired."
As Marion continued now removing the taped‑on sensors, Ally looked up and saw another uniformed nurse standing in the doorway. She also was middle‑aged, with prematurely gray hair, and she was holding a syringe.
"May I come in?" she asked. "At this stage he needs a blood sample every three hours. Just twenty cc's."
Ally watched as the new nurse quickly and deftly took a small sample of blood. Then she capped it off and turned to leave.
"I need to centrifuge this immediately."
And she was gone.
Then Marion finished removing the IV tube and catheter and all the taped‑on electrodes.
"If you want to get up and use the bathroom and walk around a little, I'm sure it would be all right. I'll come back in a few minutes and bring you a tray with a nice healthy bowl of broth."
The moment she was out the door, Ally turned to Grant.
"I want to see Kristen. Now."
"I thought the first thing you wanted was to go to the bathroom."
"I'll get to that. You said she was downstairs somewhere. How do I get there?"
"It's in the security zone," he said. "You're not authorized—"
"You're a big shot around here. Winston Bartlett's right‑hand flunky. So why don't you authorize me yourself."
"Ally, you know I can't do that."
"Then take me there."
"I don't want to see Kristen anymore," he declared, biting his lip. "She's completely lost . . . everything. I could deal with it until I saw her this morning. It's just too much."
"Has he let her mother see her?"
"Are you kidding? Letting that psycho anywhere near her is the last thing anybody's going to do."
"Then get me in, dammit."
"Ally, forget about it."
"Why?"
He hesitated, as though marshaling his thoughts.
"Sis," he said finally, "there're only so many risks I can take for you, and they have to be about something that matters. Forget about Kristen. Nothing can save her now. But I'm offering to help you get out of here before they go any further. I can't be seen helping you, but they've started you down a road that you don't want to go, believe me. I got you into this, but if there's still time, I want to try to help get you out."
She didn't know what was going on, but if Grant of all people was freaked about what Karl Van de Vliet had in store for her, then maybe she'd better take it seriously.
But she was through relying on him for anything.
"Okay, but I want to call somebody to come and get me."
"Are you referring to that reporter, by any chance?" he asked. "The guy who drove you here? W.B. hates him."
"Yes." She was puzzled that he would know about Stone. "How do you—"
"Bartlett has him."
"What do you mean?"
"He's radioactive now. I actually kicked him out of here myself yesterday. This is not a moment for press freedom. He could screw up everything. W.B. said he's doing a book. No way is that guy going to be allowed human contact with anybody till the sale of Gerex is in the bank. He had a run‑in with Bartlett in the city and they took him somewhere. I don't know the location. And I don't want to know."
"Oh my God."
"He's most likely okay. It's just temporary safekeeping."
"All the more reason I'm not leaving till I see Kristen."
"There's no way you're going to get into where they're keeping her, Ally."
"All right." There was no arguing with him when he was this freaked. "What do you want me to do?"
He pulled a plastic card out of his jacket pocket. It was white, with the gerex corporation embossed on one side and a magnetic strip on the other.
"This is a master key to this place. Because of security, you can't just go out the front, through the lobby. But if you take the elevator down to the first floor of the basement, where the lab is, there's a fire exit there, in the back, that opens onto a path down to the lake. If you'll go out that door and wait right there, I'll come around and get you to the parking lot. I know a way that will miss their surveillance cameras. I'm scheduled to go back to the city now and I'll take you with me."
"But if I wanted to see Kristen?"
"You'd have to go into the laboratory and then take the elevator that's inside there. Don't even think about it. It's way too risky."
She looked at him, trying to gauge his sincerity. Had he become a new man, finally caring about somebody other than himself? Or had a glimpse of whatever had happened to Kristen scared the hell out him and awakened the specter of being part of a felonious enterprise?
"Why are you doing this?"
"To make up for a few things," he said, turning to leave.
With that, he walked out and quietly closed the door.
That remains to be seen, she told herself.
She went to the bathroom, then put on a bathrobe and headed out into the hallway. The nurse's station was not occupied. Marion was still in the kitchen on the first floor, presumably.
Good.
She was feeling shaky, not nearly as strong as she'd initially thought she was, but she pressed on, taking the elevator, her first use of Grant's Gerex master key. She bypassed the first floor and an instant later she was stepping into the basement's laboratory area.
At the moment it appeared to be entirely deserted, though the fluorescent lights bathed the space in a stark, pitiless light.
Down the hall was Dr. Van de Vliet's office and the examining room, where she and her mother had gone when they were being admitted. At this time of night, everything was closed and probably locked.
She turned and looked at the forbidding entryway to the glass‑enclosed laboratory. Through the transparent walls she could see the dim glow of CRT screens and incubators filled with petri dishes. And there at the back was—could her eyes be trusted?—the outline of an elevator door. She hadn't noticed it until this minute. It seemed to be built with a nod toward camouflage.
It could lead to Kristen, she told herself. Find out what Grant is so freaked about. He can wait a couple of minutes.
She was starting to feel even weaker, but she pressed on. Next to the heavy steel, high‑security air lock leading into the laboratory was a card reader and she swiped the white card through the slot.
The air lock opened silent and perfunctory. When she went through, the door behind her automatically closed and then the hermetically sealed door in front of her opened. She was in.
Next a bright fluorescent light clicked on, all by itself.
"Jesus!"
Maybe it was connected to a motion sensor. Or on a timer.
Then she looked around. This, she thought, is the place where the Gerex Corporation has supposedly changed medical history. What was created in this very room had if Grant was telling the truth, saved her mother's sanity. And if she could believe the monitors she had looked at in her room, her own heart condition had begun to be reversed after a lifetime of progressive decline.
Yet something about it had been pushed too far. Somewhere in the midst of this miracle, the Gerex Corporation had done something so obscene no one could even talk about it.
She looked around the laboratory, wishing she could understand what she was seeing. It smelled like solvent, acetone, with a mingling of more pungent fumes. The black slate laboratory workbenches were spotlessly hygienic and equipped with several large microscopes that featured flat‑panel screens. She noticed a heavy server computer at the back, presumably networked to all the terminals in the building, and then she remembered that Van de Vliet had once spoken of computer simulations.
Someday soon, she told herself, she was going to understand what really was going on here, but for now she headed for the elevator.
Another zip of Grant's white card and the door opened. There was indeed a floor below the laboratory, and she pushed the button. The Dorian Institute was all about security, but this subbasement area was doubly secure.
After a quick trip down, the elevator door opened onto another air lock chamber, this an exit from the pressurized environment of the laboratory.
Why, she wondered, had no one spotted her yet? Perhaps this part of the clinic was such a lockdown that nurses and guards weren't necessary.
As she stepped from the air lock, she was in a hallway. She walked down and tried the first unmarked door. It was locked, but then she saw the slot for her card. She slipped it in and the door opened automatically.
The room she entered had a row of beds, each shrouded in a curtain. As she walked down the center aisle, she realized that only one of the beds was occupied.
And, yes, it was Kristen. She was lying there and when Ally slid back the curtain, her eyes clicked open, startled.
"Hi, don't be afraid. I'm a friend." She quietly finished drawing the curtain aside.
Now the once‑breezy Kristen Starr was staring at her with angry eyes, the false bravado of a frightened child. And she looked much younger than she had in the head shot she'd attached to the walls of her town house with steak knives. She said nothing for a moment; then she mouthed, "Who are you?"
"I talked to you on the phone a couple of days ago," Ally said, not sure herself exactly when it was, "when you went down to your place on West Eleventh Street."
"I don't know you," she mouthed again, this time with a slight whisper.
"My name is Ally Hampton." She moved next to her so she could keep her voice down. "I'm an interior designer. I once did an apartment for you in Chelsea."
"I'm about to go on a journey," she whispered. "I don't remember you, but maybe you're the one who's going with me.
There was something otherworldly and chilling about her voice.
"What journey do you—"
"We were going to go away. That's what he promised. Just us two. Well, I'm ready. I want to go out and play. But he doesn't care anymore. He just wants me to disappear. So that's what I'll do. Only we'll do it together, you and me." She reached up from her bed and ran a finger across Ally's face. "Will you take me out of here? He promised me everything, that I could get it all back. But now I know he didn't care. He was just using me." She stopped, then gave a cruel laugh from the back of her throat. "But now it's going to happen to him too. I can tell. That's why he doesn't want to see me anymore. He doesn't want to see what's in store for him."
What has happened? Ally wondered. It sounds like some kind of bizarre experiment gone wrong.
"Won't you come with me?" Kristen went on. "We'll go to a place nobody has ever been to before. It'll be just us."
Her seductive eyes, at once plaintive and demanding, would have lured anyone toward wherever she wanted to go. For a careless moment Ally found herself wanting to follow them.
No, this is madness.
Or, Ally thought with horror, is she seeing something in me that I can't see?
"Kristen, listen to me. Please. I think it's very possible I've just had a stem cell procedure. For my heart. I don't know if it's like what you had, but I want to know what happened to you."
"Don't do it," she mumbled, seeming to come back to a kind of reality. "Just get out of here now. After . . . it starts, he gives you shots and things, but nothing works."
Ally felt her consciousness start to wobble. She reached out and seized the edge of the bed for support.
"Kristen, talk to me."
Her eyes went blank again, and Ally could just barely make out what she mumbled next. In fact, all she could catch were random words, words that only drifted through her consciousness and failed to stick or make any sense. It was as though Kristen were in a stance and sleepwalking among the words of some alien language.
"Young," Kristen seemed to say. "You want to be . . . to stay. Old is so horrible. Time. You're young and then suddenly you're old and it turns out you can't . . ."
Ally heard the words, but they didn't make any sense.
"I'm sorry, Kristen. I'm feeling a little dizzy."
"It's started," she said, abruptly coherent again and focusing in on Ally. "That's how it began with me. At first they said everything was okay and then it wasn't."
"What are you talking about?"
"It's happening throughout my body." She sobbed. "I've stopped having periods and I'm getting acne. Everything is . . . changing."
The words drifted through space, and Ally felt like she was hallucinating, in a place where time was sliding sideways. The images were all retro, things from her past that floated through her vision in reverse chronological order.
That was it. In her mind, time was going backwards. But was it just in her mind? She looked again at Kristen and gasped. Finally, finally she understood the horror of what was really happening. . . .
Oh my God.
"I got here as soon as I could after they called me," came a voice from the doorway. She turned and saw Karl Van de Vliet, together with the nurse Marion. "You really shouldn't be down here. I don't know who gave you a card. But we've brought a wheelchair. You really should be resting."
Marion rolled the chair through the door and expertly plucked the card from the reader.
"Now, please sit down," she said. "We all just want to be on the safe side, don't we? I'll need to give you a sedative."
Ally looked at Van de Vliet, wanting to strangle him.
"No, you're not giving me a damned sedative. I don't want to be on the 'safe side.' I want the truth. And I want it now."
Thursday, April 9
11:16 P.M.
"Let's go into the lab to talk," Van de Vliet said. "I'm very sorry I wasn't here when you came out of sedation. But Marion called me at home, as I'd told her to do, and I came in as quickly as I could. I've got a place on the lake, just down the road, so I'm never far away."
He was rolling her through the air lock door, Marion behind them. Then they took the elevator up. She was furious that Kristen was being left behind like an abandoned casualty of war.
Ally also was reminding herself about her appointment with Grant to get the hell out. But her mind was having trouble holding a lot of thoughts at once.
He pushed her wheelchair into the section of the laboratory where a line of computer terminals was stationed. After he'd fluffed a pillow behind her head and turned off some of the glaring fluorescents, he began.
"Alexa, this is a delicate time for you. We need to get you upstairs as quickly as possible and feed you some broth and put you back to bed. However, I want very much to give you an update on the status of your treatment. The headline is, it's going very well. We fused some of the telomerase enzyme with your existing stem cells and your response was immediate. In fact, it appears the new heart tissue has reached critical mass and has already begun replicating itself. We've learned to expect the unexpected around here, but your response has significantly exceeded our simulations."
He turned to Marion and asked her to go up and make sure Alexa's bedding had been changed. "We'll be up in a second. And please make sure that bowl of broth is ready and waiting."
After she departed through the air lock, he walked over to a lab bench and checked the numbers that were scrolling on a CRT screen.
"All right," Ally said "talk to me. I just saw Kristen. I'm still not sure if I believe what I think is happening, but I want the real story and I want it now."
"That's part of what I need to discuss with you." He glanced away for a long moment, a pained expression on his face, seeming to collect his thoughts. Finally he turned back. "You see, the clinical trials have demonstrated that we can use the telomerase enzyme to 'immortalize' a patient's own stem cells and then rejuvenate their brain or liver or even their heart. So the next question that's hanging out there in space is obvious. What would happen if we could find a way to generalize the enzyme and disperse it throughout someone's entire body, not restricting it to just one organ? And not just rejuvenate—regenerate."
This question had actually passed fleetingly through her consciousness, though not fully articulated. It had taken the form of wondering where the use of these "immortal" cells could eventually lead.
"The trick would be to have just enough enzyme in your bloodstream to replace senescent cells as they are about to the, but not so much that healthy cells are replaced." He paused searching for a metaphor. "If we thought of the process of cell senescence as something inexorable and steady, like a treadmill, then what we want to do is run just fast enough to stay in one place."
"This whole thing does sound like Alice in Wonderland."
"Yes, well . . . if we could do that, then it's possible, just possible, that one's entire body would simply begin regenerating itself instead of aging. Not just your skin. All of you. That's the theory behind what we've called the Beta procedure."
"But is that something you ethically ought to be doing?" she said, feeling a sense of dismay, of playing God. "Isn't that going too far?"
"Frankly, I'm beginning to agree with you, but there are others who ask, how far is too far? Half the medicines we now have are intended to trick the body's responses somehow—or to meddle in some other way, turning off stop‑and‑ go signals at the cellular level. For example, some birth control pills make your body think you're already pregnant. They trick our natural mechanisms. That kind of thing is commonplace in medicine today. But our research is poised for the next level, to answer the question of how long we can actually live. So here's the argument. There's no reason the human life span has to be what it is. In some unhealthy nations the average citizen doesn't even reach sixty. Whereas in others, like the United States and Japan, the mean is already well past three score and ten. So what is right? What is reasonable? A hundred? Two hundred? It's entirely possible to believe we could live productive lives at least twice as long as we do now."
"And you think we should do this? The world would be thrown into chaos."
"But look at the incredible cure rate we've already effected here using the telomerase enzyme. When our clinical trials for the NIH are announced, it will be the medical equivalent of the shot heard round the world. Nothing we know will ever be the same again."
"That's where you should leave it. To go further is obscene."
"I fear recent events may have proved you right. Against my better judgment, I went ahead and experimented with the Beta procedure. And the results thus far have turned out to be disastrous."
"I guess you're referring to Kristen."
"One day I casually mentioned the Beta to Winston Bartlett and without telling me, he brought it up with Kristen. She insisted on trying it." His expression grew increasingly pained. "I want you to know I was against it. I warned her that it was highly experimental, that I could not guarantee what the side effects might be, but she begged me to do it anyway. Then Bartlett essentially ordered me to do it."
"So what happened?"
He grimaced. "I got the dosage wrong. That's my best guess. After I performed the Beta on Kristen, the enzyme was stable in her for over two months and appeared to be having an effect. All signs of aging abruptly stopped. It gave me a false sense of confidence. Also, there were no side effects. That was when Bartlett wanted to try it too. So I went ahead with him. But then, to my horror, she started evincing side effects. I now believe the dosage I gave her was badly calibrated. It was too high—by how much I think I've finally determined—and the enzyme eventually began replicating too rapidly. It got away from me." He paused. "What happened to Kristen, we now call the Syndrome, for lack of a better name. And it's about to happen to Bartlett."
"But what does all this have to do with me? Why was I brought out here with all kinds of bribes and pressure and—"
"Do you want a simple answer? Of excruciating honesty?"
"It would be helpful."
"The simple answer is, Winston Bartlett has an extremely rare blood type. It's AB. You have the same."
"How did you know—"
"Your brother. You see, I need to try to develop antibodies to the telomerase enzyme that won't be rejected by his immune system. I think there's an outside chance that I could culture antibodies taken from someone with the same blood type and use them to arrest the rampant multiplying of telomerase enzyme about to begin in Bartlett's blood."
"I'm here because you're using me!" She couldn't believe her ears. And Grant had set it up. No wonder he was finally feeling guilty.
"I just need to borrow your immune system for a few days. It's very safe."
"I don't think so. I'm out of here."
"Actually, the procedure is already under way. While Debra was taking your last blood sample, she also injected a minuscule amount of the telomerase enzyme in active form, the proprietary version used in the Beta, into your bloodstream. Don't worry. It's perfectly safe. The dosage was so minute that there's no way it could have any effect on you."
"You have got to be kidding!" My God, she thought, I could sue the hell out of—
"Don't worry, think of it like a smallpox vaccination." He paused. "Now, though, I have to tell you that I just learned the initial dosage probably didn't do the trick. The amount of antibodies created was, unfortunately, minuscule. Which means we need to go to a slightly higher infusion. But again, don't worry. It's still safe."
"I can't believe I'm hearing this," she said finally, gasping for air in her fury. "You didn't ask—"
"Alexa," he cut in, "right now I have something like two weeks left to try to head off the Syndrome in Winston Bartlett. If we achieve that, then I'm hopeful the antibodies he creates can be successfully used to start reversing the Syndrome in Kristen. We will know how to manage the Beta. Who knows where that could lead? But it all begins with you. You're the clean slate we need to start."
"Before we go one step further, I want to know what, exactly, happens with the Syndrome. I think I know, but I'd like to hear—"
"Something that's too bizarre to believe. It literally defies every natural law we've ever known."
He couldn't bring himself to put it in words, she thought, but she knew she’d guessed right the first time.
The Syndrome. Kristen Starr was growing younger. That was the horrible development and nobody could deal with it.
And they couldn't stop it.
Karl Van de Vliet had created a monstrosity.
"I am so out of here," she said struggling to rise from the wheelchair. "If you try to keep me here, that's kidnapping. We're talking a capital crime."
"Alexa, I understand you're upset, but you're in no condition to be discharged. I'm very sorry." He pushed a red button on a radio device on his belt. There was genuine agony in his eyes. "I've never in my life coerced a patient in any way. But you have to understand that so much is dependent on you now. There are no easy choices left."
He's lost control of the situation here now, she told herself. He's truly terrified of Winston Bartlett. That's who's really got control of my fate.
Moments later, the security guard from the lobby, accompanied by Marion, came through the door of the laboratory.
"No, I'm not going to let you do this," Ally declared. "I'm not letting you do any more medical experiments on me."
As she struggled again to get out of the wheelchair, she felt a prick in her arm and saw the glint of a needle in the dim light.
"I'm sorry, Alexa. It should all be over in just a couple of days. And I swear no harm will come to you."
She was feeling her consciousness swirl as Marion began rolling her through the steel air lock.
The last thing she heard was Van de Vliet saying, "Don't worry. A week from now, all this will seem like a dream."
Friday, April 10
7:04 a.m.
Stone felt his consciousness returning as the blast of an engine cut through his sedative‑induced reverie. Where was he? There were vibrations all around him and a deafening roar that was slowly spiraling upward in frequency and volume.
As the haze that engulfed his mind slowly began to dissipate, he wondered if this wasn't more of the fantasy he'd been having, of flying through some kind of multicolored space‑time continuum. Or was he waking up to something spectacularly real?
As he opened his eyes and looked around, he realized it was no dream. He was in a cramped airline seat, strapped in with a black seat belt. His head was gently secured to a headrest by a soft cotton scarf, but his hands were free, lying in his lap.
Somebody had lifted him into the seat and strapped him down.
On his left was a Plexiglas window, and when he looked out, he saw the earth beneath him begin falling away.
My God.
Then he realized he was in a white‑and‑gray helicopter that had just lifted off from a rooftop helo pad. He watched spellbound quickly coming awake, as the craft quickly began a flight path that circled around and past the lower end of Manhattan.
Then he heard the pilot speaking curtly to an air controller somewhere and he looked up and realized it was the same samurai bastard who’d slugged him on the street and then aided in his kidnapping.
But that had to be yesterday, or God knows how many days ago. He was realizing he’d just lost a chunk of his life.
And now he was being taken somewhere. In a very big hurry.
"Being up here always seems like being closer to God" came a voice from behind him. He recognized it with a jolt. It was the man who thought he was God.
Shakily he removed the scarf that had been holding his head and turned around. Winston Bartlett was gazing down through his own plastic window, seemingly talking to himself.
"What . . . what the hell is going on?" He could barely get the words out.
"Oh," Bartlett said turning to look at him. "Good I particularly wanted you to see this. It should help make my point."
Stone struggled to comprehend what was happening. He was with the man he had wanted to call Father for nearly four decades, whether he could admit that to himself or not. It could be the beginning of the kind of bonding he had always hungered for, but he didn't want it like this. They finally had a relationship, and it was completely antagonistic. He had just been drugged and kidnapped by his own father, this after being threatened and fired. Again, Daddy dearest.
So what was this evolving chapter about? Winston Bartlett, he knew, could be ruthless, but he also was a visionary in his own way.
Then he remembered what had happened. He'd been trying to track down Kristen.
"Where . . . where are we going?"
"We're going to the place you seem to find so interesting," Bartlett declared over the din of the engine. "But I was hoping that we could have a rational discourse along the way. What's been happening thus far doesn't serve either of us. I'm hoping things have cooled down a bit and we can call a truce."
Stone was still trying to clear his head, get the cobwebs away. It was difficult. He'd lost consciousness in a town house in the Village, on solid ground, and regained it here, where the earth itself seemed in motion. And now Bartlett was trying out another bargaining style, so even the rules appeared to be in flux.
"Look, down there." Bartlett was projecting through the din around them and pointing toward the wide expanse of New York Harbor. "This McDonnell Douglas is my Zendo, my monastery, and the world below is my contemplative garden. I come up here to find peace. This is an intersection of the great forces of nature, one of a finite number on earth, where a mighty river returns to the salt sea from which it came. These waters have flowed in the same cycle for millions, billions of years, mingling, evaporating, separating again—just as life on this planet continually replicates itself, growing and aging and dying, but not before producing the seeds of its replacement. How can something be at once both timeless and constantly changing? I ponder that a lot and I always end up thinking of this river meeting the sea. Down there, nature is a force unto itself, oblivious to good or evil, to human desires or human laws."
Bartlett was doing a riff on some obsession of his own, Stone decided. Or maybe it was some of the Zen philosophy that went along with acquiring a world‑class collection of samurai swords (if you believed the published profiles).
All the same, looking down at the sprawling city and the harbor full of ships, it was hard not to feel omnipotent and humble at the same time. The thing Bartlett seemed to be getting at, though, was that nature could not be told what to do. And he seemed to be on the verge of declaring himself a part of that unbridled natural force, also powerful enough to do whatever he pleased.
Now they were heading up the Hudson, teeming with early bird tourist cruises and small single‑masted sailboats. Bartlett paused to take in the view with satisfaction. Finally he continued his monologue.
"I know we've had our differences, but I'm prepared to try to get past that. I want to talk to you about something I always think of when I fly across this river. Time. I call my obsession Time and the River. Physicists will tell you that time should be thought of as a kind of fourth dimension. Things are always at a certain place in three dimensions, but when you describe the location of a subatomic particle, for example, you also have to say when it was there. To locate it accurately, you need four dimensions. We think of them all as rigid but what if one of them could be made fluid? What if you could alter the character of time?"
In spite of himself, Stone took the bait. "I don't know what this has to do with anything. Nobody can alter the pace of time." He found himself recalling a snippet of verse by John Donne:
O how feeble is man's power,
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall!
"Strictly speaking, that's true," Bartlett said gravely, turning away again to stare out the Plexiglas window, down into the morning space below them. The Hudson was now a giant ribbon of blue heading north into the mist. "But what if we could alter the clocks in our body to make them run slower?" He smiled then pointed off to his left. "All this below us has happened in a couple of hundred years. What will it look like down there in another hundred years? Will we still need these puny machines to fly, or will there be teleportation? Whatever it is, what would you give to be around to see that? To have your own time slow down while the world around you went on?"
Stone was looking out into space, wondering. . . not whether Winston Bartlett was an egomaniacal madman but rather how truly mad he really was.
Flying in the helicopter, he felt like Faust being shown the world by Mephistopheles. Except here Satan was his own father, offering him a teasing prospect of what it would be like to live on and on.
It would make a hell of a story. The problem was, miracles always came with some kind of terrible price. What was the price this time?
Then he had another thought. Was that what had happened to Kristen? Was she paying the price for some kind of hubris that pushed nature too far? Nobody had claimed she had any kind of medical condition that necessitated a stem cell intervention. So had she been experimenting with some other procedure? Had Mephistopheles now called in his marker?
He wanted to ask but the vibration and the noise made his brain feel like it was in a blender.
"Do you understand what I'm saying?" Bartlett went on. "Do you want to be part of the most exciting development in the history of medicine? Well, this is your chance. There is a majestic experiment under way. But now we know it's not for the fainthearted. The question is, do you want to live life or just write about it?"
"I think it's time I heard the whole story," Stone said finally, forcing out the words. "What's your part in this 'experiment'?"
"I've put everything at risk, but now I'm this close to controlling the clock. So . . . are you my son? My flesh and blood? Do you have the balls to try it too?"
Stone suspected the question was rhetorical. He was already up to his neck in whatever was going on. He just didn’t yet know how big a part of it he was. While he'd been sedated overnight, had they started experiments on him?
He knew that some of the buzz about stem cells involved the fantasy that someday they might be used to forestall the aging process. Responsible researchers all said that they weren't trying to extend life; they were only hoping to make a normal lifetime more livable. Rejuvenative medicine. Winston Bartlett, however, had just taken stem cell potential to its obvious conclusion; he was talking about doing what others did not dare. Regenerative medicine.
"What would we give to be able to look forward to thousands of mornings like this, ending it all only when we chose?" he declared his hands sweeping over the dense green beneath them. "Time would become something that merely flows endlessly through us, ever renewing. So‑called old age would cease to exist, at least for those with the courage to take the necessary risks."
Now they were moving above the pine forests that comprised the outer ring of the Greater New York suburbs, as below them the green wilds of New Jersey, north of the GW Bridge, were sweeping by.
Hmmm, Stone pondered if a man somehow stopped growing older and nobody else did, at some point he'd end up being the same "age " as his grandchildren. That caused him to think again about Amy and wonder if Bartlett would ever reconcile himself to her existence. . . .
A few minutes later, he looked down and saw a wide clearing in the trees and a red‑tile roof. They had arrived but from the air, the Dorian Institute gave no clue to the momentous research going on inside.
Bartlett said nothing as they began their descent, and in moments they were settling onto the rooftop landing pad. The downdraft from the rotor cleared away a few soggy leaves, which had somehow blown there, and then the Japanese pilot cut the power and the sound died away. When Bartlett opened the side door, the first thing Stone noticed was the fresh, forest‑scented morning air against his face.
He found himself wondering whether the roar of the engine had disturbed the patients, but that was almost beside the point. The Dorian Institute was not, he now realized, merely about using stem cell technology to heal the sick. Bartlett had been letting him know that it was also about an experiment that was much, much more profound.
In the silence that followed, Bartlett stepped onto the pad and lit a thin, filtered cigar. (For somebody who’d just been talking about how long it was possible to live, the act confounded credulity.) He took a deep drag, then tossed it onto the paving and peered back through the opening.
"Are you able to walk yet?"
"I think I can manage," Stone said. He actually wasn't sure at all. The vibrations of the chopper had done serious damage to his sense of equilibrium.
But he did find he could take small steps. As they moved to the stairwell leading down to the third‑floor elevator, Bartlett said, "I know you've been here once before. You tried to sneak in. Grant saw you and sent you packing. Well, this time you're here for real. The full experience. We're going to start by taking you down to the lab and checking you in."
The man, Stone suspected, was trying to hide everything that was going on in his mind. He wanted to talk about grandiose themes, but his mind was really somewhere else. Beneath all the braggadocio, there was the smell of deep, abiding fear. Winston Bartlett was in some kind of major denial.
"You know, life has been good to me," Bartlett declared as though thinking out loud. "I've done and seen things most mortals can only dream of. I'm sixty‑seven, but I feel as though I've only just begun to live. And that's what I intend to happen." He turned back to Stone. "Whether I have a son to share this with remains to be seen."
A son? Stone glanced back at the man Bartlett had called
Ken, who was now shutting down the McDonnell Douglas. Maybe he was a surrogate son for Bartlett. He was clearly a lot more than a bodyguard. He’d been the one who nabbed Kristen and returned her to the reservation. So what did he think of whatever was going on? Or what about Ally's brother, Grant? He'd claimed he was the son Bartlett longed for and had never had.
Winston Bartlett already had a surfeit of sons.
When they walked through the door and into the hallway of the third floor, it was milling with the breakfast crowd, nurses and patients, but no one took any special notice of Winston Bartlett, the man who had made it all possible. Did they even know who he was? Stone wondered.
"We're going downstairs." Bartlett directed him toward the elevator. "I'm still offering you a choice. You can be part of the biggest medical advance in human history, or you can be just another impediment."
Stone glanced at his watch. The hour was just shy of nine.
Where is Ally? What kind of procedure has she undergone? Is she okay? He had to find her.
As they headed down, he felt like it was a descent into some pit of no return. Winston Bartlett had not elaborated on what awaited down there. It was as though he couldn't bring himself to face whatever it really was.
What was the worst‑case scenario at this point?
What he had to do was figure that out and then plan a countermove.
Friday, April 10
7:48 p.m.
There are sounds of doors opening and closing, with whispered words that are like alien hisses. She senses she is in motion, on a bed that is gliding past powerful overhead lights.
She doesn't know where she is, but that doesn't matter, because wherever it was, she knows it surely is a dream.
All she remembers is that Karl Van de Vliet had told her he wants her to undergo a second procedure with the telomerase enzyme, which possibly might create sufficient antibodies to reverse . . . It's all a jumble now in her mind.
Or had she just dreamed all that? Now her life seems a flowing river that has no beginning and no end. Her mind is drifting, a cork bobbing helplessly in the current.
Then her brother, Grant, drifts alongside her. At least she thinks it's Grant. She recognizes his voice.
"Ally, can you hear me?" he seems to be asking. "Is there anything you want to tell me? Do you still want to go through with this?"
It's the kind of dream where she can hear things around her, but when she tries to speak, no sounds will come. Instead, she's talking inside her head.
I'm afraid. I'm just afraid.
"I can still try to get you out, but you have to help. I waited for you last night but you never came."
She wants to say, yes, get me out, but she can only speak in the dream.
Now the lighting changes and she feels like she is falling. No, she realizes, she's just on an elevator.
"Talk to me, Ally," whispers the voice one last time. "I can try to stop them, but I have to know what you want."
Then a door opens and she floats through it and out. Then comes the clanking of a door that reminds her of the steel air lock she'd gone through last night looking for Kristen. The smells. She's in the laboratory.
"We can take her from here," comes a voice, drifting through her reverie.
She fantasizes it's Karl Van de Vliet. Or maybe he really is there. In her dream state it's hard to know. But he isn't alone.
"You said you'd make one more attempt to create the antibodies. Is . . . "
It's Winston Bartlett. Or at least it sounds like him.
"I said I would do all I could, W.B. The first attempt . . . you know what happened. I got almost no results, but I gave you an injection of all I managed to garner. Today I spent the day doing simulations. We're working closer to the edge than I thought. That's why I needed her down at the lab tonight. I want to run some more tests and then try to make a decision. Tonight. There's just a hell of a lot more risk than I first thought."
The voice trails off and Ally finds herself trying to comprehend "risk."
She hears "beta" again and it floats through her mind, but now its meaning is unclear. It's something she'd heard but can no longer place.
"Ally," comes a ghostly voice. Surely this is a dream, and she recognizes it as her father, Arthur. Now she can see him. He's wearing a white cap and they're boating in Central Park. He shows up in her dreams a lot and she feels he's the messenger of her unconscious, telling her truths that she sometimes doesn't want to hear.
"Ally," he says, "he's going to perform the full Beta procedure on you. He didn't tell you, but you know it's true. He thinks he's finally calculated everything right. Can't you see? Is that what you want?"
She isn't sure what she wants. And right now she isn't entirely clear where she fits on the scale of sleeping/waking. It is so bizarre. The two parts of her mind, the conscious and the unconscious, are talking to each other. Her unconscious is warning her about fears she didn't even know she had. Or at least she hadn't admitted to yet.
Then she hears Winston Bartlett's voice again.
"Karl, we can't save Kristen now. I've finally realized that. She's gone too far. It's just a tragedy we'll have to figure out how to live with."
"The body is a complex chemical laboratory that sometimes gets out of balance. There's always hope. I think—"
"Know what I fucking think?" Bartlett cuts him off. "I think I'm in line for the Syndrome if you don't get this right."
What Ally wants to do, more than anything else, is to make sense of what her options are. The most obvious one— in fact, maybe the only one—is to flow along with that infinite river she feels around her, just to lie where she is, in this sedative‑induced reverie, and let her body be taken over by Karl Van de Vliet. Perhaps he has marvelous things in store for her. Except she has no idea what's real and what is imaginary.
"The simulations are giving me some idea of what went wrong with the Beta before." The voice is Van de Vliet's. "I have one more test to run, but if I handled this the way the simulation now suggests, I think I could actually generate the telomerase antibodies we need and get the Beta to finally work, avoiding the Syndrome. But to prove it would require a full‑scale experiment. I'm reluctant to do that without Alexa's permission."
"Christ, Karl, are you getting cold feet? This is a hell of a time for that."
"Call it a pang of rationality."
"But everything is at stake."
"I don't know what's eventually going to happen with the Syndrome, but it's criminal to jeopardize any more lives." Van de Vliet sighs. "Look, you had the procedure of your own free will, and you knew the risks. Alexa Hampton didn't volunteer for the Beta. She's not a lab rat. At the very least, we ought to get her to sign a release. The liability is. . . In any case, I'm not doing anything till I run this last test. Then maybe I'll have some idea exactly how much risk is involved."
"And then, by God we're going to do it. Tonight. This is it."
She feels a cold metal object insinuate itself against her chest. Time rushes around her, sending her forward on a journey that seems increasingly inevitable. Where it's taking her, she has no idea, but she senses she no longer has an option of whether she wants to go or not.
Now her dreamscape has become crowded as Grant drifts in once more. He seems to be wearing a white lab coat like the others. He settles beside her and takes her hand
"Ally, it's going to be okay. I'm going to be here for you."
Grant, why are you here? Do you really give a damn about me?
She wants to talk to him, but the words aren't working. Why is this happening?
Don't let them give you more medications, she tells herself. Get your mind back and get out of here.
[Chapter 33]
Friday, April 10
8:45 p.m.
Ellen O'Hara had not left after the day shift ended at six p.m. Instead, she had told Dr. Van de Vliet that she wanted to reorganize some of the NIH paper files she kept in her office on the first floor. The truth was, she had become convinced that the culmination of something deeply evil was scheduled for later that night.
The evil had begun when Kristen Starr's mother arrived looking for her and declaring that she'd been kidnapped. Then after Dr. Vee categorically denied he knew anything about her (a blatant lie), Kristen was brought back to the institute from wherever she'd been moved to, and she was visibly changed. She was whisked down to the subbasement the moment she arrived and immediately sealed off in intensive care, but it was clear she had no idea who she was or where she was. Something horrible had happened to her. And maybe it was imagination, but she no longer even looked like a grown woman.
Then this morning, Bartlett and his Japanese bodyguard brought in the young man who had accompanied Alexa
Hampton, but he wasn't put through the admissions formalities. Instead he was taken directly downstairs.
May at the front desk said she thought he was a newspaper reporter she’d met once when they were on a public‑health panel together. That was when Ellen realized he was Stone Aimes, that feisty medical columnist for the New York Sentinel.
Now Stone Aimes might be able to save Alexa Hampton.
Dr. Van de Vliet and Debra had carried out a special stem‑ cell procedure for her aortic stenosis, the first that they had attempted for that particular condition. The results, as shown by her file, were nothing short of astonishing. She’d begun responding in a matter of hours.
She should be in a room upstairs, so why was she still down in the subbasement?
Now Ellen O'Hara knew the reason.
She had seen in the file that they were going to perform the Beta procedure on Alexa Hampton. When they'd performed it on Kristen Starr, the result was a horrific side effect. And now they were going to do it again. Tonight.
The criminality that started with Kristen Starr and Katherine Starr was going to be compounded. She was about to become part of a criminal conspiracy. She had to put a stop to it.
She was nervous about confronting Van de Vliet, but she didn't know what she could say that wouldn't sound like an indictment. Still, she was damned well determined to do it.
If nothing else, it would provide a diversion.
She put away the files and walked out into the dim hallway, then made her way into the reception area.
"Everything all right, Grace?" she asked the nurse at the desk.
"My, you're working late," came the pleasant reply. "Quiet as a mouse around here. I guess it'll be even quieter when the clinical trials are finished. I mean, after the celebrating is over."
"Right." But they're not over, Ellen thought. And there may
not be a celebration. "I'm going down to sublevel one. Is Dr. Vee down there now?"
"I think he's in his office. Everybody else went out for a bite, probably that diner down the road. I think something's scheduled for later on. I don't know. Everybody looks kind of worried."
"Well, nobody has said anything to me." They don't need to, she thought. I saw the file.
She swiped her card through the security slot and got onto the elevator.
When she stepped off, the laboratory was dark and a light was showing under Dr. Van de Vliet's office door.
Good. She swiped her card in the reader next to the laboratory air lock and went in. Another swipe and she was on the elevator down to the subbasement, where she was not authorized to be.
She went to the second door and slipped her card through the slot, wondering what she would see.
The room was dark and smelled of alcohol and disinfectant. She quickly closed the door behind her before turning on the overhead fluorescents.
Alexa Hampton was secured to the bed with restraints, and she appeared to be sedated, though she did slowly open her eyes as the light flickered and then stabilized. There was a wheelchair in the corner.
"Ms. Hampton, can you hear me?" she whispered, hoping not to alarm her. "Do you remember me? I was the one who helped you when you were first admitted."
She watched as Alexa stared at her for a moment and then quietly nodded.
"I . . . I want to get out of here." Her eyelids fluttered and then she closed her eyes again. "But I'm too weak. I can't move."
"You're strapped down, love. Let me help you."
She reached for the Velcro straps and then paused. Was this a decision she wanted to make?
If I do this, it's the end of my career here. Have I lost my mind? What will I do after this?
But if I don't try to stop them, God knows what . . . we could all end up convicted of criminal conspiracy and in prison.
"That reporter friend of yours is here." She pulled open the straps, then helped Alexa sit up in the bed and swing her legs around. "I'm going to take you to him."
"It's so horrible," Ally went on. She was settling into the wheelchair as though she expected it. Then she looked up, her eyes dazed. "Where are you taking me? 'Reporter'? Do you mean—"
"Like I said I'm moving you into your friend's room."
She rolled her to the door, then stopped and cracked it and peeked out.
"Don't say a word dear," she whispered as she began pushing Alexa down the hall. There was a pale flickering light under the door at the end. "Debra and David and the others have all gone out to the diner down the road and Dr. Vee is in his office, probably running some last‑minute computer simulations. But we need to be quiet."
The fluorescent lights seemed to swirl overhead. This all feels so familiar, Ally thought. This is where I saw Kristen. Does Ellen know what happened to her?
"You two have to decide what you want to do."
"Stone? You're sure he's here?"
"Yes," she said "and he's in some kind of battle of wills with Mr. Bartlett."
When they reached the door at the end she tried it and it was locked. She pulled out her magnetic card and zipped it through the slot.
As they went through, Ally realized the room was lit only by the glow of a laptop computer screen.
"Stay here," Ellen said turning to leave. "I'm going to try to talk to Dr. Vee."
As the door closed Stone finally looked up. He was wearing a sweater and jeans and had been typing furiously on a Gerex laptop.
"Hey, how're you feeling?" He paused to glance down and save what he'd been writing, then clicked off the computer.
"I have no idea." Something about him didn't seem quite right. It was like he was on happy pills or something. "How about you? The last time I saw you, I was passing out."
"I don't actually remember all that much of what happened after that. I think I went back to the city. But I feel great now. Like I went through a dark tunnel and came out the other side. I feel very different. I don't know what's next, but right now I'm just happy to be in the middle of the biggest story in the history of medical science."
What's going on with him? she wondered. He's spacey. He has to be on some kind of drug. What have they done to him?
He closed the laptop, then reached and clicked on a light by the bed. "Come on. Want to see something incredible? It's a marvel of medical science, never before happened."
"What—"
"Come with me. I guarantee you've never seen anything like it."
He tossed the laptop onto the bed, then swung his feet around and settled them onto the floor. She noticed that the room was a pale blue, with white linoleum. There was a pair of white slippers next to the bed.
He slipped them on and then opened the door and grabbed her wheelchair.
The hallway felt colder now, yet it was also stifling, as though someone had drawn the air out of it.
"There's nothing we can do," Stone said.
There was a hint of madness in his voice. It was as if he were trying to convince himself that he was still sane, and it wasn't working. He was just barely holding it together.
Then she realized he was about to go into intensive care, where Kristen had been.
"So Kristen's still here?"
"Oh, you'd better believe it," he said. "She is most definitely still here."
When they got to the door, he revolved back.
"Ally, you really don't have to see this, you know. Not if you'd rather . . . Nothing remotely like this is going to happen to you. They assured me."
What the hell is he talking about?
"On the other hand," he went on, "maybe you should see it. Maybe everybody in the world should see it. It's so astonishing."
He pushed open the door and rolled her in. Then he reached down and lifted her to her feet. Standing wasn't that hard, and somehow he had known that.
The room seemed to be captured in mist, though surely that was her imagination. Everything must be her imagination.
Kristen was in the corner of the room, in a wheelchair, but now her body was shriveled. No, shriveled was not the right word. In fact, there might not be a word to describe the change. Her skin was smooth and flawless. She didn't look like this the last time Ally saw her and now she wondered how long ago that actually was. How many hours, or days?
The bones were the same as always; in her cheeks the underlying structure was sharp and severe and elegant. But there wasn't enough flesh on them. They were reminiscent of what happens at puberty, when the body starts changing in ways that aren't well coordinated.
That was it. Kristen had become a child—it was in her innocent eyes—except that her body was now the flesh of a child over the bone structure of an adult.
It scarcely seemed like the same person from the last time. She had crossed some mystical divide. She was holding a large rag doll—where did she get that? Ally wondered—and humming the tune of the ditty that ended with "Now I know my ABC's. Tell me what you think of me."
"She can't talk," Stone was saying. "I mean, actually communicate. Or at least she doesn't seem to want to. I've already tried. But isn't what's happened incredible? There's never been anything like this in history. The replacement cells are making her body newer and newer, so she's getting younger and younger."
Ally walked over, slowly, and tried to take her hand. She was grasping the doll and she violently pulled back.
"Hey," she said, trying to muster a matter‑of‑fact air, "how's it going? Do you remember me?"
"I don't think she recognizes you," Stone said in a stage whisper. "I wish I knew more about the biology of the brain, but I think there's some kind of aggressive replacement of memory synapses under way. I think it's one of those LIFO things. Last in/first out. She's regressing chronologically, but in reverse. Maybe she's lost use of language, the way Alzheimer's patients do. I don't know."
Ally felt herself near to tears. "Van de Vliet was going to use antibodies from me to try to . . . something."
"That was always a long shot," he said. "But now the preliminary tests he's just done on you indicate that the level of enzyme in you can be controlled very accurately. He's very excited."
She turned back to him. "How do you know all this?"
"I've become part of the story, Ally. That's not supposed to happen, but this is the only way to get it all firsthand. I have to live it. And guess what, I now know enough to write the book I've been waiting all my life to write. I have the punch line."
"Which is?"
"Stem cell technology goes to the very origin of life, and it may turn out that for once Mother Nature can be fooled. Dr. Vee's venturing into areas now where even he doesn't know what's going on. Ally, what's happening in this room is the biggest medical story since . . . Nothing begins to compare."
Stone had lost it. There was true madness about him now.
She walked back over to Kristen and leaned over and
kissed her. Kristen stared at her in unfocused confusion, but then she smiled.
"I'm alone in here. Will you take me outside? I want to find my mother."
The voice was that of a five‑year‑old and it sent a chill through Alexa. The "grown‑up" memory cells in her brain had been replaced by blanks. It was "last in/first out" and thirty‑plus years of life experience were being replaced with brand‑new nothingness.
The Syndrome. Time had to move in one direction or the other. The body either went forward or in reverse. There was no equilibrium.
Then she had a further thought. Winston Bartlett was not going to let this Beta disaster run to its natural conclusion— a horrifying exposure to the world. He was going to intervene. Kristen was not about to leave this room in her current condition. Either she left cured—which seemed wholly implausible at this point—or she departed in a manner that left no trace.
Then yet another thought crossed her befuddled mind. She and Stone knew about Kristen. What does that mean for us?
"Stone, we can't leave her here."
"What are you proposing we do?" he queried. "Take her to an ER somewhere? Frankly, I don't know how you would describe her problem to an emergency room admissions staffer."
"I'll think of something."
"By the way, Ally, so you should know, she's wearing diapers. This is the real deal."
"And how do you figure in all this?"
"I told you. I'm going to be the James Boswell of stem cell technology. I'm going to report on this miracle from the inside. But now, Ally, if the Beta procedure is going to succeed you have to be the one to make it happen."
She looked at him, still stunned by the wildness in his eyes.
And she had a feeling like her heart was being wrenched out.
"You're working with them, aren't you?" She was fuming with anger. She no longer knew who could be trusted. He'd taken leave of his senses. Or had his senses been taken from him? Which was it?
"I'm thinking about you. And hopefully about us. You're being offered something you'd be a fool to turn down. That's all I have to say." He took her hand and helped her back into the wheelchair. Then he whispered, "Let's get out of here."
He quickly opened the door and rolled her out into the empty hall. When he closed the door behind them, he whispered again. "Didn't you see the surveillance camera and microphone in there? There's one in the room where they had me locked up. They just put them in."
"To watch Kristen?"
"And me. I heard Bartlett and Van de Vliet talking. If any of this Beta screw‑up with her gets out of this building, Bartlett's conglomerate is toast." He bent over near to her and continued whispering. "Listen, we don't have much time. They've got your procedure scheduled for later on tonight. I'm still somewhat of a zombie from something they gave me, but maybe I can help get you out of here. Let me tell you what I've found out so far. Van de Vliet gave you a low‑dosage version of the Beta procedure, in hopes he could harvest telomerase antibodies and use them on Bartlett. But there was only a trace. He did inject those into Bartlett, but he doesn't think it's enough to have any effect. So now Bartlett is demanding he give you a massive dose of telomerase. Van de Vliet is freaked about the risks, but Bartlett thinks it's his only chance to head off having what happened to Kristen happen to him too. However, what Bartlett doesn't know is that Van de Vliet has just finished a new computer simulation and he thinks he's finally figured out how to do a successful Beta procedure. For him, that's the Holy Grail."
"How do you know all this?"
"I heard him talking to his assistant Debra. I was supposed to be sedated. The reason he wants to perform it on you is because he now has so much data on you, as a result of the first procedure. He thinks he's got a real shot at redemption. Ally, if he's calculated wrong, you could end up like Kristen."
"What about you?" she asked. "You should get out too."
"I should, but . . . Look, I've been trying to get in here for a long time. Now I'm finally in. You could say I'm under duress, but I'm here and this is where it's happening. If I get out alive, I have a hell of a story."
Is he thinking clearly? she wondered. He seems to be drifting in and out of a mental cloud. What is wrong with him?
"Stone, there's an emergency door on the first level of the basement. If we can get up there, we might be able to escape. And while we're doing it, you might want to seriously reconsider staying in this place. We've both seen Kristen. What makes you think they're planning on either of us ever living to tell that tale?"
"I'm having some trouble thinking just now." He was helping her out of the wheelchair. "But I do know you've got to disappear. Whatever plans they have for me remain to be seen, but I know exactly what's in store for you. So come on and try to walk. We can't use the elevator, but there's a fire door at the other end of the hall, which leads up to the lab floor."
It's probably alarmed, she thought. Then what do we do?
Walking was easier than she'd expected. The strength was rapidly coming back in her legs. But more than that, there was no sense of tightness in her chest as she might have expected. She was always aware of traces of stenosis, but now she felt nothing. Maybe there were miracles.
The hallway was dimly lit, and she wondered, Is a surveillance camera tracking our every move?
"Shit," Stone announced when they reached the fire door, "it's alarmed."
That's exactly what I was afraid of, she thought.
"Any chance they're bluffing?"
"Don't think so." He pointed. "That little red diode says it's hot."
God, she thought we've got to get out of here. "Maybe we could just make a dash for it?"
He looked at her and shook his head. "Like you're in shape to dash? No, what's called for is stealth."
He was pulling out his wallet. "The thing about these card readers, some of them, like those that get you into bank ATMs, sometimes will open for other cards. I've got four kinds of plastic. Might as well give them a try."
"Well, just hurry." She leaned against the wall. "I'm starting to get weak."
He slipped his Visa through and nothing happened. He immediately tried MasterCard. Again nothing.
"Maybe I should try my all‑purpose bankcard." He slipped a Chase plastic through, but once more nothing happened.
"This isn't working, Stone." She sighed, feeling her legs weaken as she clasped the wall. "I think we're going to have to chance the elevator."
"Don't give up yet." He took out his American Express, kissed it and swiped it through. "One last shot."
The red diode blinked off.
"Never leave home without it," she whispered.
"We will now proceed very, very quietly." He carefully pushed open the door, inches at a time.
The stair had metal steps and was lit by a single fluorescent bulb. As he helped her up, Ally was wondering if there was any way to extract her mother too. She couldn't imagine how she could do it and besides, Nina might well refuse to go.
No, just get out and make Stone understand that no way was Winston Bartlett going to let him go free to tell the story of Kristen. He clearly wasn't thinking with all cylinders.
Stone Aimes was about to disappear, just like Kristen had.
The entry to the laboratory level was also alarmed, but American Express once again saved the day. When they pushed open the door, however, the lights were on in the office at the far end of the hallway.
Where's that door that Grant was going to use to get me out? she wondered. Then she saw a door marked exit next to Van de Vliet's office.
Shit, it's all the way at the opposite end of the hall.
"Stone, we have to get to that door before anybody sees us. I don't know if it's alarmed or not, but that's the ball game." She reached for his hand. "If we can get there and get out, please come with me. We can make it to the highway. You can't stay here."
"Let's get you out. Then we'll talk."
"I'll drag you if I have to."
As they moved quietly along the wall, they could hear an argument under way. She recognized the voices as Ellen 'Hara's and Karl Van de Vliet's.
"I won't allow my staff to be part of this," Ellen was declaring. "I've seen Kristen. Any form of the Beta is dangerous. If you do anything involving that procedure again, you'll put everybody here at risk."
"Don't you think I've thought about that, agonized about it? We have one chance to turn all this around. This is it."
"I don't want to be involved and I don't want any of my people involved do you hear me?"
"Then keep them upstairs." He was striding out of his office, flipping on the lights in the hallway.
"Oh shit," Ally whispered. She opened a door and pulled Stone into the examining room, where her mother had first been admitted. Just as she did she heard the ding of the elevator and caught a glimpse of Debra and David Van de Vliet's senior researchers, getting off.
When she closed the door, the room should have been pitch black. But it wasn't. A candle was burning on a counter and there was a figure at the far end of the room.
He was sitting on the examining table, in the lotus position, his eyes closed.
"Are you ready?" Kenji Noda asked. "I think just about everyone is here now."
Oh my God, Ally thought. What are we going to do?
She watched helplessly as he reached over and touched a button on the desk. A red light popped on above the door. A moment later, it opened.
"What are you doing here?" Debra asked, staring at them.
"Getting some exercise," Stone said.
Then Winston Bartlett appeared in the doorway behind her.
"How did they get up here?"
"Ally, I'm not going to let them do this to you," Stone declared, seizing her hand. "We're going to—"
"Ken, please get him out of here," Bartlett said. 'Take him back downstairs, anywhere."
"You shouldn't be out of your wheelchair," Debra was saying. She turned to Ellen. "Would you get—"
"I'm not getting you anything," Ellen O'Hara declared. "I've just submitted my resignation. Effective three minutes ago. I don't know a thing about what's going on here and, from now on, I don't want to know."
She got on the elevator and the door closed.
"Ken," Bartlett said, "first things first. Go after that woman. Don't let her leave the building."
Now Debra was rolling in a wheelchair. David had appeared also, deep disquiet in his eyes, and he helped her in.
"There's very little risk to this," he said. "Believe me."
She felt him giving her an injection in her left arm.
No, don't . . .
As the room started to spin, she reached out and grabbed Stone’s arm and pulled him down to her.
"Downstairs," she whispered. "Look around. There's—"
She didn't get to finish because Debra was whisking her out the door and toward the laboratory. Stone had just grinned confusedly, seemingly not paying any attention to what she was saying. Instead he ambled toward the open stair door and disappeared.
At this point, however, no one appeared to notice or to care. They were rolling her through the steel air lock. On the other side, Winston Bartlett was already waiting, standing next to a gurney with straps.
No!