Dragonfly Girl

by Marti Leimbach

  “Who did all this?” I ask.

  “The same artist who did the sculpture out front,” April says, pausing to admire the silvery formations. “I wasn’t so keen at first. I was worried someone would be decapitated by one of these . . .”

  “Stalactites?”

  “Whatever. The artist donated his time, so it wasn’t as though we were having to dig into the budget. Anyway, Rik likes them. He’s the visual one.”

  My cheeks burn brighter at the mention of his name. I really wish he didn’t have this effect on me.

  I follow April down a hall until at last we arrive at a blank wall. “Are you ready to go back, Cornelius?” she asks the rat on her shoulder. She steps toward the wall, then places her head against it as though listening for something inside.

  “What do you hear?” I ask.

  April laughs. “Nothing. We use ear scans to open internal doors.”

  Just as she says this, a seam appears in the wall and the two sides peel back, making me jump. I’m so freaked out by the wall separating that it takes me a moment to appreciate the room now before us. Across an oak floor are dozens of vintage laboratory tables lit by pendant lamps made of conical laboratory glassware. In cabinets lit with pinprick lights is antique medical and apothecary glassware: flasks and beakers with ground-glass stoppers.

  “It looks like an old-fashioned laboratory,” says April, “but it’s our dining room.”

  I walk forward, staring up at the walls. There are cast-iron mortars used centuries ago in apothecaries to crush ingredients, nineteenth-century English reagent bottles with the names of chemicals stenciled in white enamel beneath their short necks. Also, an entire library of antique scientific books.

  “It’s . . . beautiful,” I stammer.

  April smiles, glancing up to the leather-bound editions. “I’ll just put Cornelius back,” she says, and disappears through a door at the end of the room, leaving me to walk among the vintage collections. Above a buffet table are pictures of historic laboratories: Edison’s lab in Menlo Park, Louis Pasteur’s cluttered tables, medieval laboratories with their great clay ovens.

  I hear April’s voice behind me. “Everything you see belongs to Munn. Some of the equipment was actually used by his father, who was also a scientist. When Munn moved to the US, he had to either donate it all to a museum or bring it with him.”

  “You said this was a dining room. Who eats here?” I ask.

  “We do, of course!” she says.

  I’m used to the school lunchroom, Formica tables that fold up, lunch on scratched trays, not soft lights and buttery wood and precious collections on shelves around me.

  “I feel like I’m in another world,” I say.

  “We have all our meetings here. Wait until you’ve seen the rest of the facility! But first, you’ll need to sign some papers.” She opens a drawer and digs out a pen and a short stack of formal-looking documents. “These are just saying you won’t tell anyone what you see here in the lab. There are a few details that are, like, low-key top secret,” she says casually.

  She checks the pen for ink, then hands it to me. I look at the papers and see immediately that they are from the US government. That much is obvious from the insignia.

  April notices my hesitation and shrugs. “A lot of labs do government work. You’ll have to get clearance and stuff, too, but that can come later.”

  I tell myself this is no big deal. Researchers at the Norwegian glacier laboratory have to trudge hours through a tunnel and work under seven hundred feet of ice. By contrast, signing some papers is easy. I sign everywhere there’s an X.

  “Great!” says April, once I’ve finished.

  I follow her to the far side of the dining room, where a break in the bookshelves reveals another white wall with the same slightly metallic sheen as the one before. I watch with astonishment as, once again, April presses her ear to it, causing an undetectable seam to reveal itself.

  This time, the seam in the wall doesn’t lead to a room but to a whole new building, a giant dome-shaped structure dug deep into the ground. There are no windows, but round lanterns embedded into the walls glow as though the walls are studded with small, lit hearths. The stairs, spiraling gently down three flights, have spotlights along each riser. Clever use of mirrors makes it all bright enough, even welcoming, like an enormous cave of delights. I can see the tops of people’s heads below, working in separate laboratories walled off by glass.

  “We have a gym, a library, a file room, a computer room. For security reasons, you can’t get any network other than our own internal one, however,” says April, “so you can’t use your phone. I’m sure you understand.”

  “It’s amazing,” I say, stepping forward. I suddenly have the strangest feeling, and when I look down, it appears that my feet are resting on nothing. There’s no floor. Then I realize I’m standing on a shelf of glass that makes up a balcony overlooking the great dome. The glass is solid, but it feels like I’ll drop into space. I lurch back, suddenly dizzy.

  “You’ll get used to it,” April says. She walks across the glass floor, then hops up and down to show me how safe it is.

  It’s like she’s walking on air. I follow her, staring at my feet as I cross the clear surface, feeling uneasy at the great drop below. Finally, I reach the balcony railing.

  I peer down at all the different labs spread out like pieces of a puzzle. An area of marble tables at the dome’s center looks like a coffee bar.

  “Come on,” April says. “Let me show you where you’ll be working.”

  We begin down a long staircase, stopping finally on a floor full of what appear to be baby incubators. I look inside one, then lurch back. Instead of a baby, it holds an enormous lung. The lung is surrounded by a complicated circuitry of tubes and filters. Something is making it breathe. It is the most grotesque thing I’ve ever seen, and it produces a warm marine smell that hovers in the air.

  Next to it is another incubator, this one holding a fist of tissue that pulses rhythmically with a familiar beat.

  “Is that a human heart?” I say weakly.

  April looks at me with amusement. “A human heart? God, no! A beating human heart is worth a million bucks. We don’t keep them sitting around. That will be a sheep heart or something.”

  “And the lung?”

  April squints at the enormous lung as it slowly heaves away, inflating and deflating. “It could be anything, but I’m guessing cow.”

  There are a number of kidneys, a few tracheas, and what looks to be a liver. All of them are housed in the same type of incubator.

  “Walk around, learn everything you can, ask questions. Munn always says, ‘Don’t leave good ideas behind.’ He’ll be pissed off if he doesn’t see you snooping.”

  I’m already snooping. I can’t keep my eyes off the transparent tanks with their gory, live organs. “Why do you keep all these organs in what look like baby bassinets?” I ask.

  “We call them the Innards. It’s not the organs that are important here, but what you are calling the ‘bassinets.’ They not only keep the organs alive but repair them. Ideally, the repair would be a hundred percent, but we’re not quite there yet.”

  “Why would work on organ repair need to be kept secret?” I say, remembering the nondisclosure agreements I signed.

  “No reason, really. But our government work is secret. Munn put together a team that contributes to the work at DARPA, which is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”

  To me, DARPA means weapons, military, defense. I have to remind myself that they also developed Siri, Unix, and the Cloud, for example, so it’s not all army stuff. “What do you guys actually do?” I ask cautiously.

  “We just . . . you know . . . help them,” April says with a light laugh. I follow her through a series of quick turns. “But you’ll have nothing to do with DARPA. You’ll be on the regenerative medicine side. You know, the organs you see here.”

  This is the work Mellin is famous for. I’ve nev
er heard of this other stuff involving DARPA. “But . . . why did Mellin get involved with defense?” I ask.

  This time it’s not April who answers me. Instead, I hear a male voice with a heavy accent. At first, I’m spooked, because it’s the same accent as the red-haired man. “Threats have been spurring on science for as long as there has been war,” says the voice, and suddenly I’m back in that coffeehouse in Sweden, feeling cornered.

  But it isn’t the red-haired man. There, at a coffee bar with granite countertops and a gleaming espresso maker, a guy with dark hair perches on a barstool. He’s young, maybe only a few years older than me, but nonetheless has an impressive five-o’clock shadow. His T-shirt, threadbare at the neck and with what look like chemical burns on one sleeve, reads Never trust atoms. They make up everything.

  “The government bets that we will come up with remarkable ways to combat the enemy. It’s a technology race, and America wants to be number one,” he says.

  Mellin is known for stem cell research, not military weapons. But I’m rapidly becoming aware of what they really do down here.

  “Dmitry, I should have known you’d be here,” April says, rolling her eyes.

  “I’m always here,” he says.

  “I mean here, here. In the way. Stop talking, at least. You make us sound scary!”

  He says, “We are scary. One of our researchers disappeared—poof! My theory? Kidnapped.”

  April frowns at him. “The police theory was that he had gambling debts and wanted to disappear. He’s probably living on an island right now, drinking margaritas.”

  But Dmitry isn’t persuaded. “Kidnapped,” he insists, and sips from his tea. To me, he says, “You know James Bond? We are the people who invent his gadgets: false fingerprints, ring cameras, that sort of thing.”

  April rolls her eyes. “James Bond isn’t real!”

  “False fingerprints are real,” he says with a certain glee. “But our guys developed a 3D fingerprinting device that takes in structures of the skin so fakes don’t work anymore. It’s in all the airports now.”

  April says, “Dmitry works on neutralizing attacks from foreign agents. You must forgive him. It’s obviously affected his brain.” She removes a couple of coffee mugs from a cupboard. “Milk or cream?”

  “My brain is untouched,” Dmitry says. “We have a contest against the Russians, my former people. We have Silicon Valley while they have Silicon Forest. I am sure you are aware.”

  No, not aware. About Silicon Forest, that is.

  “Dmitry, please stop about the Russians. We’re not some crazy espionage facility!”

  He moves from the far stool to one closer to me. “But we are an espionage facility,” he says, speaking only to me. “It is important you understand, but I hope you will stay despite this. Maybe you’ll be assigned to me!”

  “You don’t get everyone for your own research, Dmitry!” April says. She turns to me and mouths the word weapons, then hands me a mug. “Don’t let Dr. Gloom worry you,” she says. To Dmitry she says, “If you don’t shut up, Kira will never take this job. And Munn himself recruited her!”

  “I’ll take it,” I say.

  “What?”

  “I’ll take the job.” I’ve never been so certain about anything in my life. I don’t care about DARPA or Will or anything else. Just being here is thrilling. I never want to leave.

  April looks confused. “Don’t you want to hear the pay?”

  “If you’re paying me at all, that’s fine.”

  Dmitry says, “Every year scientists get younger. Did you hear about the boy in Belgium who received his bachelor’s degree at the age of nine? I used to think I was clever until I heard that,” he says.

  I smile. There is something appealing about his earnestness. April’s cool clothes and precision hairstyle contrast with Dmitry, who wears mismatched flip-flops and baggy jeans. He looks like he hasn’t had a proper haircut in years, but he has a charming manner and a lopsided grin.

  He says, “Munn loves anomalies. I had the advantage because my father was a scientist. I grew up in laboratories. Did you know that Stalin was a botanist? He revered scientists so much he often had to murder them.”

  April rolls her eyes. “Are you trying to put Kira off? Nobody is getting murdered.”

  “April takes an optimistic view. But Russia will not tolerate any form of disloyalty. They killed my father and little sister, for example.”

  I glance at April for confirmation, but she’s suddenly busy refastening a set of papers on her clipboard. I look at Dmitry and read from his expression that he is telling the truth.

  “Oh, I’m . . . I’m so sorry,” I begin.

  Suddenly, something that sounds like an egg timer rings in the laboratory. April calls over her shoulder, “Is nobody going to check those organs?”

  “Will is over there,” says Dmitry, peering across the laboratory. To me he says, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Such matters do not affect you.”

  I am stunned by what he has told me. His father, his sister? Meanwhile, I brace myself, readying to confront Will. I can see him now, ducking and bobbing along the rows of organs. He reaches the coffee bar, looking larger in his lab coat, his hair more golden under these lights. He stops abruptly when he sees me, his expression darkening.

  “Hey, Will,” says April brightly. “Look who you get to mentor!”

  Will takes in a long breath. “I see you are incapable of taking good advice,” he says to me. Then he splutters something else I can’t hear before turning away and walking back to the organs, some of which are sounding alarms.

  12

  FOR THE FIRST time in my working life I wear no name tag. I don’t fill in a time sheet or punch a clock. My official title is that I have no official title. I earn more than I ever did as a gift-wrapper, and my colleagues—if I dare call them that—hold advanced degrees, yet I address them by their first names. I’m surrounded by science, and I can access any piece of research within Mellin’s system. It turns out everything is on their system. No more paywalls.

  It has the strangest effect on me, as if I’m Cinderella enjoying the party, at least until midnight, when I’ll be returned to mice and rags. The biggest problem, other than Will, is that I barely have time to eat or sleep.

  There’s a coffee place near work, and sometimes Lauren and I meet there for a latte. Last time she said, “What’s with the dark circles under your eyes? Sleep deprivation is super bad for you. Acne!”

  I told her that in 1894 the Russian scientist Marie de Manacéine kept puppies awake twenty-four hours a day, and by the fifth day, they had all died. She took a sip from her coffee then shook her head in disgust.

  “I am so against animal testing,” she said, wiping milk from her lips. I reminded her that this took place in the nineteenth century, but she stopped me. “I know,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I was just pretending to be clueless.” Then she offered to hang out with my mother some evenings. “Just to keep her company. But only if you promise to speak to that cute boy,” she added.

  She meant Rik. And no, I don’t dare speak to him. I’m still too embarrassed about what happened in Stockholm.

  When I’m not in school or looking after my mother, I study everything I can about tissue engineering, renal disease, transplants, dialysis outcomes, drug therapy. I try to be thoughtful toward everyone at the lab. They are incredibly nice to me, except Will.

  He’s determined to get me fired or convince me to quit. Day one, he relegated me to the position of scrub maid, imagining that no one can stand being elbows-deep in organ fluids. This means that for hours every day I wear long gloves and a plastic apron and sometimes even a garment that looks like a shower cap so that I don’t get any of the gore from the Innards on my hair. Meanwhile, he sits in a chair, using his heels to roll across the floor, swiveling left and right. Evenings, he slips off his unstained lab coat and goes off in his pristine car while my lab coat makes me look like I’ve been butcherin
g livestock. I scrub my skin raw getting off the smell.

  Once in a while he attempts to teach me something, but even then he makes it as unpleasant as he can.

  “Think about it,” Will says this morning in a rare moment of instruction. “What happens to raspberries when you unfreeze them?”

  “They turn to mush?” I say. I’m squatting under a table, cleaning up a small spill. In my hands are a scraper and a pan. In my pockets are leakproof bags for the guts.

  “And why is that?”

  “Ice crystals form between cells and squash them,” I say, edging myself farther under the table.

  “Squash them?” Will snorts. “Exogenous ice crystals exert pressure on cell membranes as well as cell structures within the cytoplasm,” he says, in a tone that is meant to sound instructive. “Please work on precision. I heard you describing how one of the dangers of dehydrating rabbit embryos was that they ‘dry up like raisins.’”

  I don’t understand his criticism and answer straight. “But they do dry up like raisins,” I say, looking up at him from beneath the table.

  “Damn you! I am trying to teach you something!”

  It takes me a moment to figure out where I went wrong.

  “Sorry. It’s ‘raisins’ that upset you?”

  He throws his head back and rolls his eyes. “Oh, forget it,” he says. “Just go—please. Finish what you’re doing and find someone else to pester.”

  “Pester? I’m sitting on a floor!”

  “Yes, but that’s exactly it. You need to learn to clean up more discreetly.”

  One of the researchers, Chandni Bhatt, told me to drop by any time. So with Will annoyed at me, I take the opportunity to look for her lab, known as the “Bhatt Lab.” I find her there, feeding nutrients to an array of pig kidneys. They’ve been stripped of cells and washed clean, then repopulated with human stem cells.