Tiptoeing up the stairs, she heard voices, now clearer, more distinct. She peeked from the corner of the stairs. The door to the guest bedroom was cracked open. She saw Ana’s face. One eye had already swollen shut. Blood trickled from her nose and the corners of her lips. In a brief instant, Robin caught Ana’s good eye.
Ana looked away and made no utterance or gesture to acknowledge she’d seen her as Robin ducked behind the corner and inhaled sharply.
Another cry of agony sent shudders down her spine. She stole a second glance. A large shape, the muscular back of a man in a black T-shirt, blocked her view of Ana.
Without looking back, Robin scuttled up the stairs to the third floor and crept toward her bedroom. She lunged to her nightstand and traded the knife for the stunner. Mentally, she made a note to thank Jordan for providing the weapon then chided herself. She and Ana were not safe yet.
Robin warily stepped out from her bedroom and down the hall. The voices from the second floor grew louder, angrier. She quickened her pace, and the voices settled again. One of the floorboards groaned as she reached the stairs.
Her pulse thudding in her ears, she stopped. Everything went silent. She waited for the intruders to speak again, waited for them to dismiss the creaking floorboards.
But she knew better than to hold onto those ephemeral hopes.
Footsteps sounded from the second floor. Someone had been sent out to investigate.
Rotating the stunner in her hand, she recalled Jordan’s instructions and ensured the tiny display near the handle indicated the proper intensity. She leveled the weapon as the footsteps grew nearer. A woman appeared, rounding the stairs. Robin fired.
The woman’s body crumpled and fell back down.
She had lost her element of surprise and charged down the stairs, the stunner held in front of her. A man stepped out and leveled his weapon at Robin. As his jaw set and he took aim, Robin fired first. Like the woman before him, his limbs went slack, and he flopped to the floor.
Jumping to the doorway, she led with her weapon. She ducked as she took aim at the hulking man before her. He scooped up Ana in one arm and used her body as a shield. He pressed his own weapon to Ana’s temple. “Set down your goddamned stunner.”
Robin slowly lowered it. Ana caught her eyes and mouthed, “No.” Ducking beneath the weapon, Ana curled her foot behind her and kicked it backward into his groin.
He pulled the trigger, but his shot hit the ceiling. It didn’t smash a hole as Robin expected, and she raised her stunner and fired at the man. His body crumpled, and his weapon clattered on the floor.
Ana picked it up and pointed it at the man as she backed away. She kicked him in the groin again. “Bulletproof vests won’t protect you from that, asshole.” She turned to Robin. “Thanks.”
“Are you okay?” She knew the question was stupid as she stared at Ana’s bloodied face.
“Better now.” Ana wiped her face with her sleeve.
“Risky move you made.”
Ana scooped up the man’s weapon and held it up for Robin to see. “Just a stunner. He tortured me with it but didn’t try killing me.”
Robin looked at the man’s unconscious form, his chest rising and falling slowly. All three lay knocked out, stunned for the time being. “Let’s get out of here before they wake up.”
“And leave them in your house?” Ana asked incredulously.
“What else are we going to do? Kill them and bury their bodies?”
Ana spit red saliva on the black-shirted man’s chest. For a moment, Robin feared that was exactly what Ana wanted to do. “No, of course not. It’s just they tracked me down through my comm card. I’d normally call my department to clean up this mess.”
Robin brushed a hand through her hair, willing her heart to slow, willing the adrenaline to dissipate. “But if someone tapped into your card, they already have connections with the police.”
“Or they are the police.”
“If that’s true...” Robin paused. “I called this in before I got up here.”
“Then we need to move fast.” Ana stepped over the body of the other man lying outside the door to the bedroom. Crouching near the unconscious woman, she reached into one of her pockets and pulled out the Blackbird Organics pill. “These people want this pill bad, they wanted me gone, and I suspect they’d want you out of the picture as well. The department knows you’re involved since they found me hiding at your place. You aren’t getting out of this, and neither am I.” She held up the pill. “We need to hide while we figure this thing out.”
A tide of worry rolled through Robin. “Hide? For how long? I can’t abandon my patients. They need me.”
“That’s right,” Ana said, staring hard into Robin’s eyes. “They need you alive.”
A deep pit formed in Robin’s stomach as she recalled the time she’d spent imprisoned at Tallicor. Despite knowing she had no control over her situation, thoughts that she’d abandoned her patients had nagged at her. Children and their families, already in the terrifying battle against cancer, shouldn’t have to worry about their doctor being absent. “At least let me give the hospital a heads up.”
Ana bit her lip as if lost in thought for a moment. “Fine. I suppose that’s fair, but you can’t tell them where you’re going. In case the hospital has been compromised like my department; we’ll be dead in the water.”
After everything that had happened so far today, everything that Robin hadn’t even told Ana, she figured the hospital had been infiltrated. Images of Conrad Murray’s deceptively friendly face filtered through her mind. She didn’t intend to tell the hospital her whereabouts, but she resolved to at least give them her temporary comm card number should they need to reach her about her patients. She would not abandon them again. She sent a quick text message to the nurse’s station on her floor, figuring avoiding contact with the hospital administration and bureaucracy might give her more time before the mole at the University of Maryland Medical Center stumbled upon her suspicious disappearance.
“Grab a change of clothes before these assholes wake up,” Ana said. She cocked her head. “I don’t hear sirens yet, either. If the boys on this beat were coming, they’d be here by now. I have a feeling no uniformed officers are on their way.”
Robin rushed upstairs and grabbed a couple of casual shirts and slacks from her dresser. She stuffed them into a duffel bag before returning to Ana, who had already packed up her own meager belongings. They sped down the stairs as Robin pressed the app on her card to call a cab. “Where are we going?”
“Before we left Jordan’s, he gave me access to his lab in case I needed to do any experimental analysis.”
A taxi rolled up to the sidewalk and stopped under the canopy of tree branches. Robin yanked open the door and slid in. Ana followed and typed an address on the holodisplay.
“We’re going to TheraComp?” Robin pictured the expansive glass windows of the fourteenth-floor office and lab space Jordan and Chris leased within the Maryland Biotech Incubator building. Several other researchers, engineers, and lab techs worked in the startup company with them to develop their veterinary gene therapeutics. “Where the hell would we hide there?”
“No, not TheraComp.” Ana held out her comm card. She’d apparently retrieved it from one of the lackeys they’d left unconscious in Robin’s home. “Give me your card.”
Robin slipped it out of her pocket and brought it up to Ana’s. Her card glowed green while Ana tapped a couple of buttons. Finished, she cracked her card and threw the pieces out the window of the moving cab. “Can’t risk them following me via GPS again. Anyway, I’ve transferred access to Jordan’s old underground labs to you.”
“Underground labs? What is this, like the Bat Cave?”
Ana smirked. “Kind of, actually. You know how our boys used to be involved in the very genetic enhancement trade we’re now trying to get rid of?” She licked her lips. “Well, we’re going to camp out in their old stomping grounds.” Between her thu
mb and index finger, she held out the pill. “And with the help of this little guy, we’ll find out why those bastards are after us.”
Robin gulped. She feared she already knew exactly what they’d find in that pill. If the events of the past two days were any indication, they’d discover a dose of DNA material–based vectors filled with deadly prions. The question, to her, was not what resided in the pill but why it was there.
Chapter 23
Chris jumped over the table, scattering bowls of food, and landed on Vincent. He wrapped his fingers around the man’s neck. Images of his friends abducted and tortured by the man ran through his mind, and he tightened his grip around Vincent.
He would end this man now, end this man’s reign.
Someone hoisted Chris off, peeling his fingers back, wrapping their arms around him. He flailed, his face hot with anger. He thrashed against his captor.
“Calm down, my man,” Jordan said. “Calm down.”
His body went limp. Jordan let him go, and he spun around. “Why the hell would you protect him?”
“Let’s play this game with our heads, not our fists. It’s not wise to attack the wolf when he’s with his pack,” Jordan said in a low voice. He offered a wry grin, an attempt at optimism in the face of despair.
Chest heaving, Chris spun on Vincent again. The man no longer stood alone. Four other men and women, sporting cybernetic alterations like their friends from the alleyway, circled around him. As Jordan had warned, Vincent’s pack prepared to fight for their leader.
“Boys and girls, I think I’ve got this.” Vincent brushed kimchi off his lapel. “I want to have a talk, Chris. After that, I’m going to let you go. You’ve got nothing to fear.”
“How in the hell am I supposed to trust you?”
“You aren’t.” Vincent shrugged. “But you don’t really have a choice.”
Chris tensed his arms, ready to strike again. He stood no chance against these half-machine bodyguards, but he’d felt Vincent struggle against his grip. Like Chris, Vincent had never partaken of his own genetic wares. He’d never altered his genome or implanted any devices to enhance his body beyond its natural capabilities. Chris guessed Vincent, too, knew the addictiveness in improving and modifying oneself.
As the four robotic humans parted, Chris took a step forward. Jordan grabbed his wrist. He shook his head, his lips pursed and his expression serious.
“Tell me what you want,” Chris said, restraining his pent-up anger. “Tell me why you’ve been toying with us.”
Vincent sauntered up to Chris. “The last time I saw you, we were sitting in our prison cell. I was writing in that journal, you were reading a book.” He turned to Jordan. “An actual paper book, too, would you believe it?”
“I would.” Jordan kept a library full of physical books in his office. He’d proudly showed Chris his collection and shared his dreams that his own hobby, his own novels, might make it into someone else’s library.
Licking his lips, Vincent eyed the bowls on the table. “I’m famished, and we have a lot of catching up to do. It’d be better if that’s done over a good meal.”
Chris didn’t move. He felt no desire to eat and no desire to join this man at a table. Jordan grabbed his wrist and guided him to a seat. They sat on one side. Sun and Vincent joined them on the other.
With a wave, Vincent dismissed his four bodyguards. They disappeared through openings in the walls. The sliding doors hissed shut again, and Vincent rubbed his hands together. “I want to apologize for the rough handling up to this point, but I can never be too careful.” He pointed to his neck and feigned a choking expression. “But as long as you don’t pull any stunts with me, you’ve got nothing to fear.”
“After all the shit you’ve put me—us—through, that’s a bit hard to believe.” Chris folded his arms across his chest, unwilling to join Sun and Vincent as they shoveled food onto their plates with chopsticks.
“I don’t expect you to believe it.” Vincent took a bite of a green onion salad. “But now I’m the one with all the cards in my hand, and whether you like it or not, I could use your help.” He leaned across the table, still chewing, and grinned. “And I need you alive and in good health to be useful.”
***
Robin followed Ana through the glass door into warehouse that had once housed Jordan’s companies, both legal and illicit. They walked through the unassuming labs where his front company, Equest Advantage, had manufactured gene modifications for livestock and racehorses. Dust coated the equipment sitting on lab benches. Robin glanced around dubiously. If the PCR machines, gene sequencer, and tox-screening devices had been neglected for too long, they would need to be recalibrated to ensure they functioned properly. It could be tedious getting the lab in shape for their research.
“Are you sure this stuff all works fine?” Robin knelt to examine a glass shard from a pile of beakers and glassware that had shattered across the floor. “Awfully dirty in here.”
“This isn’t where we’ll be working.” Ana opened the door to a walk-in cooler, and the door swung shut behind her.
Robin stood and followed, catching the door in time to see Ana unlock a second passageway in the rear of the cooler.
“This is where the magic happens.” As Robin stepped down the stairs into the underground chamber, Ana gestured toward the floor of lab equipment. The machines buzzed and hummed, a soft chorus of mechanical chirps and beeps resounding throughout the space.
Robin expected the air to smell musty and damp, reminiscent of a neglected basement. Instead, vents from overhead pumped in clean, filtered air. Bright LEDs lit the space, and artificial windows in the sides of the smooth, plasticized walls offered a calming ambience. “This is the place where Jordan and Chris made their enhancements?”
Ana rolled her eyes. “Jordan would never outright confirm it with me, but I think we know the answer.”
Holding the handrail, Robin glided down the stairs. A stack of small silicon wafers on a table caught her eye. She went over and picked one up, rotating it in her hands. “If they were producing illegal enhancements down here, why did they have a collection of tox-screening lab-on-a-chip devices?” She looked at Ana. “These are used by the FDA. They test drugs and injectable therapeutics to demonstrate their safety.”
“I know.” Ana joined Robin at the table and picked up a chip. “Jordan and Chris were criminals, no doubt. But we—you—also know them beyond their past.” She held up the chip. “As far as them having these safety screening devices, I think that’s another question you and I both know the answer to.”
“Makes sense,” Robin said. She recalled how Chris had responded when a rash of cancer caused by faulty enhancements had almost brought Baltimore to its knees weeks ago. He worried he’d manufactured the gene mods leading to the cancer-ridden enhancers. “Hell, even when we proved the cancer-enhancement epidemic wasn’t his fault, Chris was hit pretty hard by the whole thing—which I think is why he’s so passionate about making sure the gene mod reversal therapy passes with the IRB, and we can actually develop it.”
“And I hope it succeeds.” Ana patted the table with the chips. “Thank God our neighborhood criminals were concerned about the safety of their customers when they were in business because these are exactly the type of devices we need to figure out what’s in the pill, right?”
Robin nodded. “Right.”
After reaching into her pocket, Ana withdrew the pill and stared at it. “This little shit has caused me a lot of trouble. It better all be worth it.” She grabbed a glass petri dish and set the tablet in it. “This is our only sample, though. Do you think it’s going to be enough?”
Rifling through the chips, Robin selected one meant for detecting contaminants like prions. “That pill will be more than enough. I only need a tiny sample—just a milligram or so. If everything turns out the way I think, this single test will be all we need.”
Robin cut a corner of the dissolvable tablet with a small blade. She ground up the
sample into a fine powder and transferred it to a plastic vial. Suspending the powder in a droplet of water, she mixed up the solution until it dissolved.
“Go ahead and insert the chip into that slot.” Robin pointed to an opening in the boxy gray machine sitting next to the stack of chips. After Ana did so, the device buzzed to life. A holodisplay projected a green image that gave way to a long list of potential contaminants.
With a pipette, Robin deposited a tiny droplet of the Blackbird Organics supplement solution she’d mixed into the receiving channel of the lab on a chip. The gray machine hummed louder and clicked as the fluid flowed through the microscopic channels within the device to test for possible matches to any toxic proteins.
The holodisplay above the device marked a red X next to each of the molecules absent from the sample. As the buzzing and clicking continued, the display scrolled through the entire list. A complete column of red Xs appeared down the display when the machine ceased its noisy analysis.
“Impossible.” Robin went through the list, hoping it was somehow wrong. She rubbed her temples and backed away.
“What?” Ana asked.
“The analysis didn’t find anything in the sample.”
“Did you run the right chip?”
“Of course.” Frustration filled Robin. Lab science was often unpredictable. There were so many variables, even in this straightforward experiment. A simple error might’ve contributed to what must be a false negative. “I’ll make up a second solution and run it again.”
“Okay,” Ana said, though her voice conveyed her skepticism.
Robin cut a new sample of the pill, massing the tiny chunk on a microscale to ensure she had enough for the lab on a chip to sense. Maybe if the powder was too dilute, the machine wouldn’t detect any contamination.
But she examined the labels on the chips. The devices were reported to achieve single-molecule detection. That meant she only needed one prion, one tiny malformed protein, for the machine to report a positive result. She ran the fresh sample.
The Black Market DNA Series: Books 1-3 Page 65