Living Proof

by Kira Peikoff

  He waited for her explanation, aware that they were suddenly at the periphery of his most crucial question about her.

  “What, exactly, do you know about this heart?” she asked.

  “Well, it was the first heart ever created using human embryonic stem cells,” he said carefully, feeling the words pinch his tongue—the words at the very core of his pursuit. “Like twenty years ago, right?”

  “That’s right,” she said, nodding. “And it was donated to this museum after stem cell research was outlawed.”

  “Right,” he said, “and there was a big outcry that the museum even kept it on display. I thought they got rid of it years ago.”

  “Nope. The people at the museum weren’t cowards, just smart. They moved it from the entrance hall to this private room. To be admitted, you have to be screened and invited by the board. There’s also a security camera—” She pointed to a tiny bulb in the corner of the ceiling. “—and this box is made of an unbreakable glass called Quarx. All so no one can destroy it.”

  “Wow. How do you know all this?”

  A proud smile broke her solemn expression. “Remember I told you when we first met that my dad was a researcher? And you asked if he ever discovered anything?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was on the team that developed this heart.”

  “Wow,” Trent exclaimed again, at once impressed, confused, and newly suspicious. “So was your dad famous, then?”

  And, he wondered, why didn’t that tiny detail show up in my case research?

  “No,” she said. “He had his name removed from the team after it became illegal. Back then, I thought he was a coward. But I came to understand that recognition wasn’t worth the hate mail and threats, and this all happened shortly after my mom’s death. He was still grieving, and it was easier on him to stay anonymous.”

  “I see. So why are you telling me this now?”

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this type of research, to see how you feel about it, and I thought this was a good place to do it.”

  A few seconds passed as Trent gathered his wits. “How I feel about it?” He paused, pushing away his actual concerns about immorality and focusing instead on what he knew she wanted to hear. “It’s sad this heart is a relic in a history museum.”

  “I agree.” She flexed her ankle, wincing.

  “Are you okay?”

  She waved a hand.

  “I remember,” he said slowly, “there was so much excitement.”

  “And for good reason.”

  He looked straight at her. “Do you think these cells really could have helped people?” They never did when they were legal, he thought.

  “Absolutely. There just wasn’t enough time to research.”

  Not like it mattered, he thought. Murder was murder.

  “This heart makes me sure,” she went on. “And this was twenty years ago. Imagine what could have been possible today. The therapeutic potential is endless because these cells can turn into any cell of the body.”

  “Still just a potential,” he responded automatically, delivering the skepticism drilled into him by the department. What the hell was he saying? Risking losing her trust, along with the entire case? He configured his features to seem sad. “Maybe if things had been different, without the DEP and the DEFP.…”

  “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought that.” Arianna leaned on her cane, shaking her head. “So many lives might have been improved, saved.… And what just makes me crazy is how many people today think that since this never helped anyone directly before, it’s no great loss now.”

  “Maybe,” said Trent, “they just need to see proof.”

  That word again.

  She cocked her head, studying his face. “I can see you have a rational mind. You’re just stuck in a society that sees that as a liability.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a deeper issue here that involves more than your opinions on theoretical science, which have to be backed up by some kind of ideology. But we haven’t discussed your ideas, except for your family being religious and you, not as much. So let me ask you this: What do you believe?”

  Trent felt a familiar uneasiness wriggling in his gut.

  “I’m trying to figure that out.…”

  “What do you know so far?”

  He sighed deeply and began to pace. She looked so patient, so eager to understand him, that his words spilled out with little calculation. “I know that I was raised Catholic, but I’ve never felt at peace with the religion. I’m starting to see that it makes other people miserable, too, not just me, so there must be something wrong with it.… And it bothers me that nobody can tell me the black-and-white truth about God or heaven or eternal salvation.”

  Arianna lifted her eyebrows. “What do you expect them to tell you?”

  Trent spun around to face her. “How can something unknowable be the goal of my existence?” He lifted his hands in frustration. “But what’s the alternative? Nothing? What kind of life is it to hold nothing sacred?”

  “It’s no kind of life,” she said. “But you can still hold something sacred without religion—in fact, I think you should.”

  “What?” He felt empty, like pretense personified and exposed.

  “Your own happiness here on earth.”

  The image of Emma’s defeated face popped into his mind; he nodded the slightest bit.

  She took a deep breath and looked straight at him. “I believe that following your own happiness is what life is all about. What makes religion so bad is that it condemns you for caring about exactly that.”

  “But they say you should devote your life to others.”

  “And look where it’s gotten you! Denying yourself is fighting yourself, sacrificing yourself, and for what? Nothing in the end.”

  “What do you mean nothing?”

  Her tone softened. “People have faith, but no proof, no reason, to believe there is anything or anywhere to go after we die, so that makes our life here on earth all the more precious.”

  He shook his head. “Why do you think I’ve doubted for so long?”

  “Why are you doubting your own doubt? When you abandon your reason for faith in God, you succumb to the notion that you’re a pawn of some higher being. But you are the only one in control of your life—of what you love and who you love.” She paused, looking up at him.

  “That’s all I’ve really ever wanted,” he said honestly. “Not to need permission from anyone else to live my life.”

  “And you don’t! They make you believe you were born a sinner and must spend your life making up for it. But the irony is that your only sin was belief in the first place. Which was hard for a mind like yours, and why you’ve felt uneasy for so long.”

  Trent stared at her as the words popped in his brain, exploding with clarity, shedding light on new roads he had only begun to glimpse.

  “This is what I’ve been trying to understand,” he said. “I’ve been trying to buy in to something that I always knew, on some level, didn’t make sense.… That’s my whole problem, and yet all these years, I thought there was something wrong with me.”

  She shook her head sympathetically.

  “Everything you said makes perfect sense,” he continued. “I’ve always worried deep down that God wasn’t listening or didn’t care, or even—didn’t exist.” Speaking the words—a fear he had pondered in his darkest moments—felt like heresy, and he automatically braced. But nothing happened, except for a deep ache that burned in his chest. He realized it was sadness. “All the time I spent at church, all the guilt over the years—for nothing.”

  “That’s not true,” she said. “It was painful, but you had to go through those years to get to where you are now—to your own understanding.”

  “I think I’ve been in denial,” he admitted. “It’s so hard to accept that much of my life has been a lie.…”

  Her eyes glistened with empathy. “But not anymore.”


  “No,” he whispered. She looked so gratified that the pain in his chest expanded until he felt he would burst. He backed away and began to pace. How could he have gotten so sidetracked from the mission? Damn his emotions for getting in the way, when he was so close to the truth.

  He stopped in front of her. “I knew you weren’t really Christian. But why did you say you went to church?”

  And I know you’re going there, but why?

  She smiled as if he had whipped back a curtain on a private window, but one always meant to be found. “I wanted to test your real attitude toward religion, and that night, when you were incredulous that I could be a supporter of religion and science, I kissed you, because I saw you understood the issue. Now you need something from me. You asked for proof about the possibilities of embryonic stem cells; you just haven’t had a chance to see what they can do.”

  His heart thumped wildly as he watched her take a breath, as though she were gearing up for a long-awaited announcement. She put a hand on his arm and stared up into his eyes.

  “I will give you the proof you need to become committed to science, which far from making demands on your life, could save it one day, as it may save mine—”

  He gasped. “What did you just say?”

  She reached up and touched his cheek. “Yes—I’ve been wanting to tell you so badly. The truth is, I brought you here to screen your reaction to this exhibit and to have this conversation, because what I really want to do is take you somewhere else.”

  The mysterious steel door materialized in Trent’s mind, along with the sinister voice behind it, and he knew—before they hailed a cab, drove in silent suspense to the East Village, and tiptoed through the dark alley—that she was finally taking him there.

  PART TWO

  ELEVEN

  Arianna knocked.

  “Well?” demanded a familiar male voice from behind the door. Trent shivered on the concrete slab next to her. In the shadows, she had become a silhouette, her cane appearing as a natural extension of her fingers. The air felt sapped of all warmth. Trent wrung his hands, knowing that the truth was imminent—a truth he didn’t know if he wanted to know, but had no power to stop.

  He saw her reassuring smile in the darkness as she answered the voice: “Sad face.”

  He was too distracted to process the random words as he heard three bolts unlock. Then the knob turned and the door swung back into the light of the room behind it. A wizened face thrust through the opening. At the sight of Trent, hostility set into the old man’s eyes. A blue face mask hung around his neck by an elastic band.

  “Who is this?” the man snapped at Arianna.

  She didn’t seem disconcerted. “Sam, I’d like you to finally meet Trent, Trent, this is Dr. Sam Lisio—one of the leading scientists working today.”

  Trent extended his hand, but Sam ignored it. There was something hauntingly familiar about his name, like a snippet of a common melody.

  “Arianna, are you mad?” Sam rasped.

  “Just trust me, okay? He knows what’s at stake.”

  She pushed the door open, motioning Trent inside. Sam did not budge.

  “Are you serious?” Sam whispered with a note of fear.

  “Sam, I’m telling you, he’s with us.”

  Trent blinked and nodded. He wanted nothing more than to turn and run back into the alley.

  Sam shot Arianna a vicious glance as he stepped aside. “It’s your loss more than ours.”

  Arianna ignored him and grabbed Trent’s arm. Together they walked through the doorway. Bright light cascaded from the ceiling, assaulting his eyes. After his pupils adjusted, he saw that the room was about the size of a studio apartment, but with a much lower ceiling; if he raised his arms, he could scrape it. The first objects he saw were three microscopes on a counter at the back of the room, next to computer screens. Sitting on a row of stools, two men were staring at him with shock, but Trent took no notice. Seeing the microscopes was like witnessing the death of hope.

  Claustrophobia overtook him as he realized he was standing in a reality that was exactly as Dopp had suspected. Unnerved, he glanced to the right: three white laminar flow hoods created a sterile environment on another counter, and across the room, a shiny black freezer stretched from floor to ceiling. Its green digital display read -78° C. Next to the freezer was an equally large incubator showing a steady temperature of 37° C. Next to them stood what Trent recognized as a carbon dioxide tank, a centrifuge, and a shelf with various supplies including petri dishes, gloves, vacuum tubes, pipettes and guns, and inverted microscopes.

  As Trent surveyed the room, he heard a strange squeaking noise coming from the corner. He walked over—despite Sam’s protests—to a cage holding rats running on a spinning metal wheel. In another cage, more rats were crawling stiffly, if at all. One of the men near the microscopes asked him a question, but he wasn’t listening; he couldn’t hear. He turned back around to look at Arianna, who was shaking her head at Sam and gesturing. Behind them, next to a cot on the floor, was the black plastic case she had carried from her clinic.

  He walked back toward them, feeling the remnant of hope slip away.

  “What—what is this?” he stammered.

  Arianna smiled as Sam glowered.

  “It’s a lab,” she said. “And these are the scientists who are trying to save my life.” She motioned to the two men to come over. They did so, slipping their face masks off, removing their rubber gloves, and stuffing them into the front pockets of their white coats. “This is Trent, the man I’m seeing, who I promise won’t expose us, so don’t feel threatened. Trent, this is Dr. Patrick Evans and Dr. Ian Kelly.”

  Patrick—a tall, bony man with lips as thin as his hair—lifted his head in minimal welcome. Ian, who was shorter and stockier, stared at him with dismay. Trent worried that his true identity was obvious, that he ought to just make a run for it. But no, he reassured himself. They couldn’t know.

  “Please, can you at least say hello?” Arianna said. “He’s not a monster!”

  The men grunted a greeting, which Trent reciprocated. He felt trapped in an ethical straitjacket laced tight with emotional strings, and for the first time in his life, he began to have a panic attack. His hands lost feeling and his throat seemed to close, as if his whole life force were withdrawing into his chest.

  Just get the facts, he thought, coughing to cover up his nerves. “So how does this all work?”

  “Well,” Arianna said, “all of this is top secret—”

  “Used to be,” Sam interrupted.

  “He’s not going to do anything!” she exclaimed, whirling on Sam.

  Trent shook his head in a vain attempt to reassure him.

  “So,” Arianna went on, “we have to be top secret to avoid detection by the DEP. It’s a complicated operation, actually, but it’s been working out for a few months just fine.”

  Trent looked down at his wristwatch as if conferring with a trusty sidekick; that was all he needed to hear. But instead of glory, he felt confusion; instead of rage, curiosity.

  “So how does it work?” he asked again.

  “For the past few months, I’ve been recruiting as many sympathetic women as I can to donate their eggs at my clinic, which we then mix with sperm to create embryos. Of course, for the DEP, I record their donations as attempts to get pregnant through in vitro fertilization. But the DEP doesn’t keep track of pregnancies, only the leftover embryos, so they never know that these women aren’t getting pregnant from all these so-called attempts.”

  “Clever,” Trent said. So that was behind the clinic’s sudden popularity, he realized.

  “Once I have the embryos, I separate them from those of my real patients who are trying IVF. Then after about four days, when the embryos are at the right stage of growth, I bring the strongest ones in that case—” She pointed to the black case on the floor. “—which keeps them at the proper temperature until I drop them off here, for these guys to use.”

&nbs
p; To use, Trent thought. How mechanical she made it seem, like dropping off a wrench at a car garage. He felt the first belated prick of anger, but focused on what she was saying.

  “This is where the record keeping gets a little complicated, and is the most worrisome part. We take out about eighteen eggs from each woman, which makes for eighteen embryos. But for IVF, we rarely implant more than three embryos so the woman won’t give birth to too many babies.”

  “I think I see where you’re going,” Trent said. “So you bring the three strongest embryos per donation back here for research?”

  “No, because that would be wasting valuable resources. What we do is take all of the strongest embryos from each batch—usually about seven—and use those, even though the records for the DEP say we only used three. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if the DEP didn’t send inspectors to physically count our stock of leftovers every month. But because of that, we have to make it seem like every embryo is there. If even one is missing, we’ll rack up a huge fine and bureaucratic hell. So these guys clone the few embryos that we need to make up the difference for each batch, and I take them back to the clinic in that black case and put them in the freezer in time for the next inspection. There’s no way the inspectors can tell the difference between an original and a cloned embryo on sight, so the clinic has passed every inspection perfectly. I still get nervous each time, but I think we’ve got it down.”

  Trent nodded as snatches of an early exchange with Dopp came back to him, from the day they first decided to tackle the case:

  “Are you suggesting she could be cloning and replacing the embryos?”

  “The technology is still out there. But the logistics would be very difficult for her. She’d need scientists, tools, a lab space, money. It would be a major conspiracy. But we’ve seen it before, years ago.…”

  Trent recalled later asking Dopp if they could test the DNA of a whole stock of embryos to find out if there were clones. But Dopp had explained that such a process would require a prohibitively costly contract with scientists and a lab to test hundreds of embryos—and even if they did find genetic matches, how could it be determined whether they were man-made clones or merely identical twins? It was an impossible hurdle that Arianna must have understood in advance.