Living Proof

by Kira Peikoff

  “But we don’t have any embryos left, remember?”

  “I know. So tonight, I am going to bring you the batch I was going to bring yesterday—but only to clone. And then—” Her voice faltered. “—then I will have to take the originals back here right away to restock in the freezer before tomorrow, just in case he shows up.”

  “So we’re not even going to be able to use those?”

  “No.”

  “So when the hell are we going to get embryos again? We can’t mess around here!”

  “I know that, Sam.” Her voice shook. “But I can’t here either. Look, I have a girl scheduled this afternoon for her extraction surgery. The embryos from her eggs will be ready for research in five days. And by then, the clones you make tonight should be ready to stock.”

  “That puts us at Sunday!” He sounded accusatory.

  “Yep. That’s the soonest I can take any embryos out of here. Whenever I take them out from now on, I will have to come back right away with replacements. So that means a constant supply of clones. If we’re ever short again, we risk wasting even more donations.”

  “Why can’t you just change the stupid numbers again if you have to?”

  “Because now I have to file the count every day. There’s no room for that anymore.”

  “But we don’t have time for this goddamn bullshit!”

  Arianna couldn’t speak past the lump in her throat.

  “Hello?” Sam said.

  “I’m here,” she muttered.

  “Sorry, I just can’t believe those bastards.” He paused, and Arianna knew what he was going to say, for the tears that coursed down her cheeks were already mourning the words: “We just lost five days.”

  * * *

  From the head of the conference table, Dopp glared at each of the twenty-five faces around him. He pressed his palms hard against the table, turning his fingertips white.

  “One of you,” he snarled, “is a traitor. Not just to me, or the department—but to God. Unless you come forward and repent, He will not forget it.”

  The faces around him looked solemn, even fearful. None had seen this side of their amicable boss before, the one who asked about their children’s birthday parties and their sick spouses. But Dopp had never been publicly betrayed.

  “I am shocked and disgusted by such an outrageous, deliberate effort to undermine my new policy. Until the traitor comes forth, all of you will suffer consequences—blame it on your colleague, not me. There will be no more honesty policy about clocking in and out of work. From now on, you must all have your immediate supervisors sign off on your timesheets before submitting them to me. And from now on, the tech support team will be closely monitoring all e-mail correspondence and all Internet activity. Anyone found sending personal e-mails, or otherwise slacking off, will be suspended without pay.”

  Dopp slapped his hands against the table. The woman on his right side jumped. “Also,” he said, making eye contact with each person around the table, “if any of you know who the traitor is, and you do not come to me, you, too, will face God’s wrath. Keeping silent is an equal sin to lying. Remember Proverbs, passage fourteen twenty-five, ‘A truthful witness saves lives, but a false witness is deceitful.’ If there are any witnesses in this room, come to me today, and you will be forgiven. Now, go. Get out of here. I don’t want to see your faces anymore.”

  People pushed back their chairs and scurried out of the conference room with the urgency of a fire evacuation. Dopp waited until they had all funneled through the door before walking back to his own office. He felt chilled inside. Such treachery was unprecedented. What did it say about his own judgment that he had hired a person capable of it? He would have to beg the Lord’s forgiveness for such a costly error.

  Who could the offender be? There was Doug Anderson, whom Dopp had recently denied a raise. (Budget problems prohibited anything of the sort.) Perhaps he was feeling especially spiteful? There was also Marie Hunter, who had once lied about being hospitalized when Dopp sensed she had actually gone on vacation. But was she capable of duplicity of this scale? And why? Then there was Trent, who had been acting frustrated recently, but swore his attitude had turned around. Dopp recalled how eagerly Trent had pledged not to disappoint him, so this kind of stunt would not make sense for him to pull. Meanwhile, the tech guys had found no evidence on anyone’s computers to suggest a culprit. Maybe someone would come forward.

  In the meantime, Dopp’s only hope was Inspector Banks—the man who could deliver news that would render the leak meaningless. It was 9:45 A.M. Banks was probably on his way back from Arianna’s clinic already. While Dopp waited, he pulled out the Bible from his drawer. Yellow stubs protruded from the tops of the pages, marking certain sections Dopp had especially liked. He flipped to one tab randomly and read:

  “Colossians 2:5: For though I be absent in the flesh, yet I am with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ.…”

  Dopp continued to read, feeling the Lord’s words revive his soul and reinstill his humbleness. The betrayal of an employee seemed petty in contrast with Christ’s ultimate sacrifice. Motivation filled him anew: no one would get away with killing embryos on his watch, for he would track down the sinners and bring them to justice in Christ’s name. But it needed to happen before the state legislature mowed down the department, along with his job.…

  There was a knock at the door. Banks.

  “Come in,” Dopp called.

  Banks walked in, dejected. “She passed.”

  “No!” Dopp rose furiously. “How?”

  “She said she read the paper this morning. I guess she could have had time to straighten things out before I got there, but we’ll never know. I went as early as I could.”

  Dopp clenched his teeth, sending a sharp pain through his jaw. “Can you believe this?”

  Banks shook his head. “In all of our years, I never … Do you have any idea who?”

  “No. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What now?”

  “Well, for a start, I’m going to check out all the labs in the East Village myself. I know for a fact Arianna Drake isn’t going to a doctor there, like she told Trent.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I researched MS specialists in Manhattan. Since she’s a doctor herself, I know she would only go to the best. Funny enough, all the top-rated people practice at big-name hospitals like Mount Sinai, New York Presbyterian, Saint Luke’s. Nowhere near the East Village. You’d think that Trent, as a former reporter, would be able to figure that out. But no, he’s a gullible fool, I’m sorry to say.”

  Banks clucked his tongue. “He’s just inexperienced and idealistic. Some young people tend to believe that true evil isn’t possible in the world. I used to think so myself.”

  “If it weren’t, our department wouldn’t need to exist.”

  “I know that. But maybe you should give Trent the benefit of the doubt. He hasn’t seen what we’ve seen. After all, he’s been a loyal employee for three years and he’s the only one of us in direct contact with her. She could still open up to him. Who knows?” Banks gave a close-lipped smile.

  Dopp frowned. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying, if we were going to catch her in error, it would have been today. Now she’s wise to us. She’ll be prepared. And Trent’s been trying to get her to talk, but he’s stymied by the Devil’s force in her. She’s a master manipulator, and he’s never been up against anything like that, so he needs us, and we need him.”

  “Go on.”

  “If we put more pressure on her and really intimidate her, she’ll want to confess all her worries to someone. Like good cop, bad cop. And who will be right there listening, playing to her fears, and encouraging her to spill her guts?”

  Dopp nodded, fingering the cross pin on his lapel that mirrored Bank’s. “I like the way you think.”

  * * *

  “I’m quitting,” Patrick sai
d.

  No, Arianna thought, not again. The faces around her in the basement looked as appalled as she felt.

  “What did you just say?” Sam asked Patrick, who hugged his arms close to his chest and looked away.

  Arianna’s foot twitched, egging on her urge to jump out of her folding chair and kick it to the ground. But her legs would not cooperate.

  Gavin and Emily Ericson flanked either side of Arianna in the group’s tiny circle, per the emergency Tuesday night meeting. All of them were gaping at Patrick.

  “How do you dare,” Dr. Ericson spat. “After everything we’ve done!”

  Emily put a hand on Arianna’s knee and said nothing, looking supremely disappointed.

  “I have to quit,” Patrick said. He rocked slightly back and forth on his chair. “I’m sorry, Arianna, I really am. This was a very hard decision.”

  “Just because of the crackdown? We got around the inspection, Patrick! They’re not going to catch us. The worst part is just that we’re losing time, so we need you even more now! Now that we’re close…”

  “I held out against my better judgment before, Arianna. I gave you the benefit of the doubt. But now it’s gone far beyond that. The DEP is trying to bring you down, you and all the other clinics on that list. And once the government is hell-bent on destroying you, how can you possibly win?”

  “We can,” she insisted. “We have to.”

  “I wish I could believe that. But they’re closing in. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail. What if someone followed you here?”

  “They obviously haven’t, have they? And what about the plight of science? What about Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton, remember?”

  Patrick shrugged sadly. “Who was I kidding? I’m no genius.”

  Arianna opened her mouth to argue, but Sam cut her off. “Forget it. He’s a lost cause.”

  “I’m sorry,” Patrick said. “But Sam’s made the bulk of our progress anyway.” He looked at Sam. “I know you’ll stay, and if there’s a solution, you’ll find it. You don’t need me.”

  No one responded or moved. Looking down, Patrick rose and walked to the door. Before he opened it, he turned once to look at the furious group.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, quietly. Then he opened the door and slipped out as a chilling wind swept in.

  Arianna closed her eyes, willing herself to remain calm. It was easier this time because she was not completely surprised. Patrick had seemed strangely apathetic the day before, as if his will to fight had disappeared with his courage.

  Emily patted her knee. “Don’t think about him. We still have Sam.”

  Arianna looked up at Sam, expecting to see him seething. But he was watching her with concern.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I think so. I just keep thinking about how you said you were getting closer. Maybe you don’t really need him?”

  Sam shook his head. “I don’t. I know what combinations I have to try now; it’s just a matter of testing.”

  “And only five days to wait,” Dr. Ericson chimed in. “And then we’ll get back on track. We can make it.”

  Arianna looked at him gratefully. “I was so worried you would want to walk out, too, and then we’d have to close the clinic, since I can’t practice.…”

  “We would never,” Emily interrupted. “We would rather go down with the ship than walk away.”

  Her husband nodded. “That’s absolutely right. The clinic is everything to us, Arianna. We could never abandon it, or you. And if the only thing I ever did in my life was to help science even a little, then I would say it was damn worthwhile.”

  Arianna smiled, feeling tears sting her eyes. She was about to respond when she heard a scraping against the floor. Sam pushed back his chair and stood up. The ceiling hung low above his head.

  “Two things,” he announced. “First of all, none of you doctors should come here anymore. Patrick had a point—it’s plausible that someone could start following you, especially now. Who knows the extent of the new policy?”

  “Fine,” Arianna said, “but we still need to get the embryos here when they’re ready.”

  “Right, so we need someone trustworthy to step in and bring them to me.”

  “How about Megan? Or Trent?”

  Sam’s expression grew hard. “The former.”

  “I’ll arrange it.”

  “Second of all,” he went on, pacing across the concrete basement, “What we need to do now is plan for the transplant.”

  “Already?” Emily asked.

  “We need to prepare for the best-case scenario, so that if and when a breakthrough happens, we’ll be ready.”

  Gavin and Emily nodded, excitement visible in their eyes.

  “Sounds good to me,” Arianna said. “What do you need?”

  “Egg cells. Five will do. I really need only one, but just to be safe, I want a few extra. Once I figure out how to make pure oligos, then the trick is to get your body to accept the cells, which is unlikely and dangerous if they are foreign matter.”

  “Right…”

  “So the theory is that we will scrape some skin cells from your cheek, Arianna. And then I’ll take a donated egg cell and remove its nucleus. In its place, I’ll inject the nucleus of your skin cell. The hybrid cell will act like an embryo and start dividing and growing, except that it will be your exact DNA. When it gets to the five-day stage, I’ll remove the stem cells, cue them to differentiate into oligos—by this point, I would have the growth factors down—and then we can transplant the cells into your spinal cord. Your body ought to accept them as its own. The cells should then travel up and down your spinal cord and replenish your lost myelin.”

  “It’s genius,” Arianna cried. “Brilliant.”

  “Theoretically, yes. But this technique has never been tried on humans.”

  Sam stopped pacing and their eyes met. He looked at her with the adoring worry of a father unable to conceal his distress. Arianna smiled, feeling any lingering tension dissolve between them. Sam, she thought, you are my family.

  “Tell me one thing,” she said. “What have I got to lose?”

  SIXTEEN

  The abrupt buzzing of Trent’s doorbell startled him. It was only 5:35 P.M. Arianna’s weekly piano lesson was not starting for another hour and a half. Who would be coming to see him this early? Surely not Dopp–it couldn’t be.

  As Trent walked to the door, he imagined the interior of a jail cell—dirty, cramped, and cold, with maybe a sliver of light to retain his sanity. Paranoia had gripped him since the media leak had gone public the day before. Over and over, Trent mentally retraced his steps to the Cyber Café, the phone call to the Daily News, the dummy e-mail address he had created. Impossible, he thought. There was no way he could be discovered.

  He put one hand on the doorknob. “Who is it?”

  “It’s me,” came a voice, higher-pitched than he expected.

  “Arianna!” he exclaimed, swinging open the door. “I didn’t—”

  There was no beautiful face across from him. He stared blankly at the hallway wall.

  “Down here,” she said.

  He looked down and felt his jaw drop. She was sitting in a wheelchair, staring up at him. Her characteristic smile was gone, and without that merry distraction to plump up her cheekbones, Trent noticed how drawn they had become. Below her lower lids, dark circles spread like smudged ink, underlining the fear in her eyes.

  “It was time,” she said, tapping the wheelchair’s padded armrest.

  “I—I’m sorry,” he stuttered.

  “I knew it was coming.” She paused, and in her eyes, an ember of mischief caught flame. “The good news is that I can finally beat you in getting just about anywhere, including up and down stairs. This thing goes eighteen miles per hour at top speed.”

  Trent raised his eyebrows. This was sounding more like the woman he loved. If he closed his eyes, in fact, she would sound exactly the same, minus the troubling visua
l.

  “You must be the fastest woman on earth now.”

  “Something like that.” She smiled and leaned forward in the chair, propelling the machine into Trent’s apartment. “It senses my movements,” she called over her shoulder as she zoomed past him. She leaned backwards and it stopped.

  “Not too shabby, huh?”

  “That actually looks pretty fun,” Trent said, catching up to her. He leaned down and kissed her, then grabbed her hand to pull her up. She staggered out of the chair and took tiny steps toward the couch, holding his forearm. He noticed that her hand did not close fully around his arm, though she was struggling to keep her balance. When she let go and sank onto the couch, her fingers remained curled, like the petals of a dying lily.

  He sat next to her and covered them with his hands. “I’ll cancel the lesson,” he said quietly.

  “Don’t be silly. I came over early to practice.”

  “What?”

  She withdrew her hands and wiggled her fingers slowly. “I can still play scales, even if the tempo is molto largo. And I’m pretty sure I can still pull off twinkle, twinkle at least.”

  Trent’s lips stretched into a thin smile. “You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “This isn’t about proving anything to anyone. It’s about living my life to the fullest, and right now, playing your keyboard is about all the living I can manage. So if you will now get up and please escort me to the keyboard, I can practice for a while before Molly gets here.”

  Trent studied her with awe. “That time outside the lab, you really meant it. When you said you were reclaiming your life.”

  She nodded. The subtext of his words hung in the air between them, but she did not flinch or even avert her eyes. It was he who looked away first, he who struggled to stand as he lifted her from the couch and buried a kiss deep in her hair.

  * * *