by Kira Peikoff
CHAPTER 9
Washington, D.C.
Thursday, June 13, 7:30 A.M.
For what seemed like the fiftieth time in two days, Les pressed PLAY on his computer. The DVD on his office computer whirred, and then the image of Natalie Roy sitting cross-legged in a black mesh chair filled his screen. Her face was feline, angular, with high cheekbones and a puckered mouth. Brown hair fell to her chin in a sleek bob, showing off her slender white neck. She licked her lips and glanced at a gardenia plant on her windowsill, just offscreen. He heard his own authoritative voice begin.
“Please state your full name and position for the recording.”
“Natalie Elizabeth Roy. Assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia.”
“How long have you known Helen McNair?”
“Approximately four years, since I first started working here.”
“And what is the nature of your relationship?”
“We’re colleagues and friends.”
“How close of friends? Be more specific.”
“Pretty close. I don’t know how you want me to quantify it. It’s not a scientific measurement.”
“You talked every day?”
“No. We’re both busy. That’s why I didn’t think much of it when we didn’t speak for several days last week.”
“We’ll come back to that. Did you socialize outside of work?”
“Yes, sometimes we would grab a bite to eat or catch a movie.”
“Was your age difference ever an issue?”
“That’s an odd question.”
“Was it? She’s old enough to be your mother.”
“I don’t see how the private details of our friendship are relevant to her being abducted.”
“Just answer the question, Dr. Roy.”
Watching it, Les thought the menace in his tone came off perfectly—just enough to sound threatening, while still within the realm of composure.
She crossed her arms. “I don’t know what you’re getting at. Sometimes she tends to mother me because she knows I’m raising my son alone, trying to be as good a mom and a scientist as I can be. I have my dark moments, and she gets that. But that’s the only way the age difference has ever played a role.”
“Have you ever had a fight?”
She didn’t answer right away, and Les paused the video to rewind a split second. He zoomed in on her mouth until her pink lips filled half the screen, and pressed PLAY again.
“Have you ever had a fight?”
The muscles in her chin tensed. “No. Never.”
Liar. “So you never got angry with her or disagreed with anything she did?”
“Isn’t that what a fight is, Dr. Mahler?”
“Let’s reiterate, then. You and Helen McNair were quite close. She intimately knew about your life outside of work. She comforted you during tough times and you confided in her and vice versa. Is that correct?”
Natalie nodded.
“Did you know, prior to my announcement in the meeting just now, what she was doing in her lab?”
Her lips formed the word as he spoke. “No.”
“No? Did you ever suspect that she could be capable of performing a secret, potentially dangerous experiment?”
“No. She never told me anything about that. I still can’t believe it.”
Natalie’s lips pressed together. She regarded the camera with a blank stare.
“Listen, Dr. Roy. If you have information to share but you’re worried about repercussions, don’t be. Anything you say here will be kept entirely confidential.”
“Unfortunately I have nothing else to add.”
Pure bullshit. Les shut off the video in disgust. There was nothing more insulting than being lied to, point-blank. It was the moral equivalent of being spat on. But if she was hiding vital information, how could he prove it? Despite his determination, he could find nothing concrete in her personal e-mail exchanges with Helen, no way to root his suspicions in fact. All that cash sacrificed to Cylon for nothing.
But someone was working for the Network through Columbia, relaying information back to Galileo, someone who was close enough to Helen to know about her secret project. And Natalie knew something that she wasn’t letting on, that much seemed clear. How could he force her to cooperate before it was too late? Helen had already been missing for a week now, with no trace of—
A sudden, urgent knock on the door interrupted his thoughts.
“Who’s—”
Before he could finish, Benjamin Barrow charged in, red-faced and waving a newspaper.
Les stood up at once. “Excuse me, but—”
“Have you seen this?”
“Seen what?”
Barrow dropped the newspaper onto his desk and jabbed at the page. “This.”
New York City
7:30 A.M.
Natalie’s bedroom door burst open, flooding the dark room with light. She buried her face in her pillow as the memory of the previous day’s near-firing punctured her consciousness like shrapnel. Clinging to sleep was useless. She heard footsteps pattering over the carpet and soon a bony hand squeezed her shoulder. “Mom.”
“What’s up?” she asked groggily, feeling for her glasses on the nightstand.
“What have you done?” Theo’s face appeared a blur, but there was no mistaking the anger in his voice.
“What?” She sat up and slid on her glasses. He was glaring at her with suspicion, as if she were an impostor of his real mother. Her hand flew to her palpitating chest. “What are you talking about? You’re scaring me.”
“This.” He thrust his laptop onto her knees. “I’ve already gotten three e-mails about it.”
She peered down at the screen, at a headline that screamed in bold:
TIME OUT ON MAD SCIENTIST’S ILLICIT
EXPERIMENT
COLUMBIA PROF CAUGHT TRYING TO SNEAK AGELESS
CHILD INTO LAB
Under the subhead was a thumbnail reprint of her official faculty photo from Columbia’s website. In it, her chin-length brown hair was neatly straightened, framing her sharp features. Her green eyes beheld the camera proudly, reflecting her elated smile. The picture had been shot the day after she was hired. Next to her picture was a headshot of Zoe smiling tentatively against a blue background, as though for a school portrait. The slight chubbiness of her cheeks and her large guileless eyes made her look like a young tween, though the picture was dated last year.
She looked at Theo in shock. “Are you kidding me? What the hell is this?”
“The Post. It’s a mistake, right? They messed something up?”
Speechless, she looked again at the glowing screen, where the article was posted under the local news tab. Its time stamp was 6:36 A.M.
NEW YORK—A Columbia University assistant professor’s attempt to smuggle a child with a rare disorder into her lab was intercepted Wednesday, according to a source with knowledge of the incident who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Dr. Natalie Roy, 37, was caught impersonating another professor’s assistant in order to obtain confidential medical records and contact information of the girl, Zoe Kincaid, who was recently diagnosed with a nearly unprecedented condition called Syndrome X. According to her doctor, Ray Carlyle, chair of the National Association of Medical Genetics, Kincaid’s body stopped aging altogether when she was 14 years old. She is nominally 20.
“It’s possible that her body contains a mutation that could hold the key to the mystery of why we age,” he said, when reached at his office Wednesday evening. “Sequencing her genome could prove a very promising step in unraveling this mystery, which is why Zoe went to Columbia to meet with researchers.”
However, the legal issues surrounding her case are complex and require caution, according to Columbia’s lawyers. General Counsel Mark Whitman said that since her brain stopped development so young, she could technically be considered a minor, and as such, cannot be considered her own agent. Her parents have not consent
ed to the research, which is why her case was turned down before Dr. Roy attempted to secretly pursue it. What lies at the root of Dr. Roy’s actions, according to the source, is her zealous desire to make a scientific breakthrough no matter the human cost.
It remains unclear what repercussions she will suffer for her missteps, but Columbia’s administration is aware of the situation, the source confirmed. Dr. Roy has been an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences for four years and has had no prior history of offenses, according to the school’s records. She was unable to be reached for comment before press time.
“Sometimes we have to put our research interests aside and focus on what’s right,” the source concluded. “Above all else, protecting a child comes first.”
Natalie blinked at Theo in a daze. He was staring at her. A lock of curly brown hair fell over his eyes, but he didn’t push it away.
“You did it, didn’t you?” he whispered.
“That little—” prick, she wanted to say, but stopped herself. “This is unbelievable.” Seeing her own face next to such a slanted story was surreal, like a vicious prank. But it was real—and it was appallingly public character assassination.
“So it is true?” Theo pressed. His disappointment bordered on disgust. She felt as though one look at his face could split her into a thousand broken shards.
“Zoe’s over eighteen,” she protested. “She wanted this, she came to us! If the guy I work with wasn’t such a—”
“But the lawyers?”
“Oh, screw the lawyers! All they care about is not getting sued. They’ll make any story up to cover their butts. But Zoe has two decades of experience, more than any minor I know! She should be allowed to think for herself. The lawyers are the ones who are so zealous that they don’t consider the human cost!”
Natalie slammed the laptop shut and reached for her cell phone, which she always left on silent during the night. She had eleven missed calls, five that she recognized as Adler’s office line.
“Oh my God, I have to go right now.” She leaped out of bed and ran past Theo into the bathroom, pulling the door closed behind her.
“But what’s going to happen?” he called. She could tell his cheek was right up against the door. “What will we do if you lose your job?”
She nearly gagged at the words, and was glad he couldn’t see her.
“Mom?”
“It’ll be all right, honey,” she heard herself say. Somehow her tone sounded competent and reassuring—the secret weapon of mothers in emergencies. She wished her own mother were still around to tell her the same. A powerful maternal force overcame her. She opened the door and scooped Theo into a tight hug, holding the back of his head with her palm. His tall and lanky body was rigid in her arms.
“It’ll be okay,” she whispered.
He didn’t respond.
Forty-five minutes later, she was walking into Adler’s corner office with an escalating sense of trepidation. Other faculty members and students she passed in the hallway stood in clusters, whispering and glancing at her with unmitigated contempt. Anonymous hate mail was already piling up under her office door with accusations like “child abuser” and “child hater.” The lies made her eyes burn. She yearned for a friend, but without Helen—the one person who would have understood—she was alone.
Surprisingly, Mitch was already sitting in Adler’s spacious corner office when she entered. He refused to make eye contact with her, instead staring out the floor-to-ceiling window at the treetops swaying below. She wondered if he was at all ashamed of obliterating her career, or if he was just poorly avoiding awkwardness. She ignored him, fighting the torturous urge to scream, and instead sat in the black leather chair at his side. Together they faced Adler, whose usually placid expression was the epitome of fury. He acknowledged Natalie’s presence with a glare, then shifted his attention to Mitch.
A copy of the Post lay open on his desk.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he barked. “We had settled this privately yesterday. Of all the asinine things to do, you called a reporter?”
Mitch glowered. “I wasn’t the one who called him. Someone else leaked it.”
Natalie stifled a bitter laugh. “You never cease to amaze me.”
“Mitch, we’re not total idiots,” Adler snapped. “Give me a break. You did this. You have single-handedly brought the worst press to our school at the worst time possible. Admit it.”
“Fine, I talked to the stupid reporter. But he called me first!”
Adler rolled his eyes. “Sure he did. He divined that you wanted to throw Natalie under the bus.”
Mitch squirmed in his chair. “You weren’t even going to punish her! I was just doing the right thing.” His face was growing redder, Natalie noticed, and he kept pinching his collar away from his neck.
A vein popped up on Adler’s forehead. “By doing the right thing, you have probably cost us thousands upon thousands of dollars in lost grants, not to mention the priceless cost of disrepute. Do you know how long it’s going to take for this to wear off?”
“It’s her fault!” Mitch cried. “None of this would have happened if she hadn’t done that.”
“Yes, but you never should have ever spoken to the media!” Adler roared. “Those damn reporters are going to be all over us like flies, right when we’re trying to keep the FBI investigation under wraps.” He shook his head. “Thank God you didn’t say anything about the mole and Helen! But still, what is the Bioethics chairman going to think? If Les Mahler wasn’t already going to put the department on probation, I bet he will now!”
Mitch paled. Probation by the Justice Department’s Bioethics Committee meant that all the Biology faculty’s experiments would indefinitely need to be monitored and approved by a federal representative to ensure that no ethical lines were being crossed. It was worse than a hassle. It was an insult of the worst order, akin to branding the department with a scarlet letter. Often it led to an exodus of the faculty and an inability to attract new talent.
“Neither of you thought through the consequences of your actions,” Adler said. “You’re both very talented”—he looked sadly at Natalie—“but I’m afraid that’s not going to be enough to save you. On direct order from the dean, your terminations are effective immediately.”
The commotion downstairs roused Zoe from sleep—yelling, scuffling, the house phone ringing and ringing unanswered. A prickling sweat came over her as she heard Gramps’s voice rise above it. She jumped out of bed and ran down the stairs in time to see her mother blocking the front door, clutching Gramps’s arm, in an apparent standoff with her father, who was shaking a newspaper at them.
“I didn’t do anything,” Gramps was shouting. “Stephen, calm down!”
Zoe raced up to them. “What’s going on?”
Her father turned to her with rabid eyes. “You! Going behind our backs to Columbia!”
“Dad, I told you, I wanted the research. It’s my body,” she said, trying to stay calm.
“You should have told us first,” her mother scolded. “Look what happened. You almost got caught up in some crazy scientist’s web! And now the media’s made a circus of it!”
“What?” She looked anxiously from Gramps to her parents. “What are you talking about?”
“That,” her mother said, motioning to the newspaper in her father’s hands. He handed it to Zoe. When she finished reading, her face was white.
Her secret plan had backfired. But who was this Natalie Roy who wanted to help her?
“You led her straight into the tiger’s lair,” her father was bellowing to Gramps in the foyer, “and it’s only lucky that someone found out before she got hurt! She wouldn’t have gone this far if it weren’t for your encouragement.” He shifted his gaze to his wife. “Pam, I can’t put up with him anymore, that’s it.”
“Don’t you dare accuse him of anything,” Zoe interrupted, standing as tall as she could, though even with her shoulders thrown back
, she only reached up to her father’s burly chest. “I went to Columbia all by myself. And I was the one who called the Post. I just didn’t tell them the story they printed.”
“What?” her parents screeched in unison. Gramps’s eyes widened as his eyebrows shot up. It took a great deal to surprise him, but Zoe saw that this was enough.
“I needed you to take me seriously,” she told them. “I thought if I appealed to the media, they would print my story and put pressure on you to consent to the research. I knew you would never agree on your own. I mentioned Mitch Grover, the scientist I met at Columbia who turned me down, so I guess they called him, and then somehow things got all twisted. The article was supposed to be about the fact that I can’t age, and how I’m looking for science to help me—not that I’m a little girl being exploited! I don’t know what happened.”
Gramps sighed. “They’ll always go for the more sensational story if they can find one.”
Her father blinked, while her mother crossed her arms, looking hurt. “You should have just come to us. I didn’t know you were that serious.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered, and you know it. You and Dad would never have signed those forms.”
“I don’t know what to say, Zoe,” her father said in a quiet voice, which alarmed her more than his shouting. “You’re totally out of control. You’ve ignored our warnings not to open this can of worms, and look where it’s gotten you. Your mother and I will need to spend some time discussing a proper punishment, but until then, you’re grounded. No cell phone either.”
“Seriously?” she replied in disbelief. “So I really am fourteen all over again?”
“You’re living under our roof, and you will respect our rules, no matter how old you are. Now give me your phone.”
“It’s upstairs. I’ll go get it—but only if Gramps stays. You have to promise nothing will happen to him.” Gramps looked at her, and she could tell he was touched.