Syndrome

by Thomas Hoover

  "Oh, I think I'm getting a rough idea, but I'm a little pissed too," Stone said, remaining standing. "For example, there's the matter of Kristen Starr. You see, she was terminated from the clinical trials approximately three months back. So I was wondering, when is Van de Vliet planning to report her current condition to the NIH?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about." His startled voice said otherwise.

  "Oh, I think you do. I saw her today." Then he decided to bluff. "She had an interesting tale to tell. She-"

  "Shit, you interviewed Kristy? Aw, man, don't believe anything she. ." He hesitated. "What did she say about W.B.?"

  "Tell you what, we'll play twenty questions. You tell me what you think she said and I'll tell you if you're right or not."

  "Hey," Grant declared, his eyes intense, "she wanted to do it man. Nobody put a gun to her head or anything. She was freaking out after she got sacked. She thought Dr. Vee could fix her skin and she couldn't wait to try it."

  "You mean-"

  "The Beta. Take a look at Van de Vliet. He's a walking testimonial. No side effects for him, so why not? The worst thing that could happen would be nothing, right? So she figured, what did she have to lose? Well, now we all know."

  "The Beta? That's…?"

  "You fucker." Grant bounded to his feet. "You don't know the first thing about what I'm talking about do you? How the fuck did you find out about Kristen anyway?"

  "I told you I spoke to her." Well, it was almost true. He'd yelled at her. "She's very. . unsettled just now. But I guess you know that"

  "Hey, she was always fucked-up, but W.B. liked all the energy behind that. He looked right past the eating disorders and the coke and the late-night clubs she went to all the time. But, man, if you think she's spaced, try her mother. That crazy-"

  "Grant, why not level with me? There's something very wrong going on here. I'm in the business of telling the truth, and I've got a keen nose for medical horse-pucky. So how about coming clean? If it's good, why not, and if it's bad, it's going to come out eventually anyway. Hasn't Winston Bartlett learned anything from all the screw-ups in Washington? It's not the situation-it's thecover-up."

  "Well, I don't know what Kristy did or didn't tell you, so we're not going in that direction. I heard about her little trip downtown this morning. I assume that's probably when you saw her, if in fact you actually did. Right now she's being taken care of, for her own good."

  "'Being taken care of'? So happens I had a close encounter with a couple of her caregivers today. They're taking care of her, all right."

  "Look, she used to be W.B.'s girlfriend okay? He's still very concerned about her. Everybody's really sorry about her situation, but nobody saw it coming. And now he's got some problems of his own."

  "You seem to be pretty heavily involved with Winston Bartlett's personal problems."

  "Yeah, well, the man's been like a father to me. And I think he feels that way too, since he doesn't have a son of his own."

  Stone let the taunt just hang in the air for a moment. He mainly just wanted to slug the smug little bastard.

  "You don't know how little you know, about him or about anything. Someday I may take the trouble to straighten you out. But right now you're not worth the effort. All I care about at the moment is what's going to happen to Ally."

  "Everybody cares what happens to her. A lot depends on it. Dr. Vee thinks she's our best shot"

  "What. . what thehellare you talking about?" Stone stared at him through the twilight. "Whatdepends on it?"

  "Guess you're not as smart as you think you are." He was up and heading for the parking lot. "Come on, pal. Time to hit the road. I'm gonna tuck you in. This conversation is terminated. And it never happened anyway. I'll have them unlock the gates for you."

  Chapter 27

  Wednesday, April 8

  8:25p.m.

  Alexa watches as the prow of their forty-one-foot Morgan, two-masted, cuts silently through a placid sea. She vaguely remembers the vessel. It was teak and magnificent. Steve had chartered it, bare-boat, for two weeks and taken them cruising through the Bahamas. By the end of that time, she felt they could have sailed it around the world.

  But that was six years ago, when he was still very much alive. Now the boat feels like a magical carpet taking them someplace together, effortlessly. The genoa, the mainsail, and the mizzen are all full and blossoming outward even though there's no wind. She's at the helm, holding a course toward something white on the horizon, and Steve is with her. He's alive again and he's with her. She feels her body suffused with joy. Then she looks at the reflection of herself in his sunglasses and realizes she's a little girl, still a child. This is all a dream, she realizes, a cruel dream. Then she looks again at the horizon, the blazing white light, and senses that it represents the future. Their destiny.

  Now the sea around them, which had been placid, starts to roil. The wheel is becoming harder to control, and the sun is starting to burn her. In its pitiless glare she feels herself beginning to age rapidly. She glances at Steve and she can see his skin starting to shrivel. She senses he is dying, right there before her eyes, but her hands feel glued to the wheel and she can't let go to try to help him.

  Now the sea is growing ever more choppy and the white symbol on the horizon has begun to bob in and out of view. Sometimes she can see the "future" and sometimes she can't. Waves are crashing over the sides, inundating the deck, and she feels anxious about what lies up ahead. Will they ever get there, and if they do, will she want what she finds? Even more important now, will Steve still be with her?

  As the waves pound against them both, oddly she doesn't feel wet. Instead, what she feels is a stab of muted pain in her upper chest, pain she knows would be searing if she were to experience its full impact. She looks down to see that the wheel she thought she was holding is gone, and her chest is pierced by the steel mechanism to which it was attached. It has gone all the way through her.

  Next a huge wave comes straight over the bow and slams against her and Steve. Her body convulses with pain and she senses that he is being swept overboard, directly off the stern. She screams at him to hold on, but then he is gone, lost in the dark sea.

  Now the boat itself is starting to disintegrate, as both masts tip backwards, then come crashing down. Up ahead, the white light that is the future is growing ever more flame-like. It is part of a shoreline she is trying to reach, but now she doesn't think she's going to get there. Around her, the boat's lines and cleats are being swept into the pounding sea.

  In moments the boat has disappeared, but she continues on, propelled by some force she cannot see, until she finally crashes onto the rocky shore.

  It is a chiaroscuro landscape of blacks and whites. Oddly, Stone Aimes has appeared and is holding her hand as they make their way along the barren seascape, where everything is hazy and trapped in fog. She thinks she sees figures lurking in the mist around them but can't make out who they are. Everything is static and frozen in place, like the images of motion on the Grecian urn caught for eternity.

  She reaches out to touch Stone and her hand passes right through. That's when she realizes the white light and this rocky shoreline represent the other side.Is this what death feels like?she wonders.Like the white tunnel drawing you in?

  But then she has another thought. Maybe she isn't dead at all. Maybe she is in a third place, somewhere suspended between life and death. She looks again at Stone and tells herself they're not dead, they're in some kind of time machine. This voyage is about time.

  Now time has begun to flow around her like a river. Days, weeks, months, years, they all course by. But she knows it is a chimera. Nothing can make time go faster or slower.

  Then the bright lights are gone and she feels alone. Very alone.

  But she isn't. She hears voices around her, drifting, echoing, and she tries to understand what they are saying.

  "She's stabilized. We're past the critical phase."

  "Do you want to bring
her up now?"

  "Not yet. We still don't know how it's going to go."

  There was a pause, and then a male voice.

  "This was the Beta too, wasn't it, Karl?" Another pause. "Well, wasn't it? The injections. That's the first time since. ."

  Again the voices drift off. She listens, not sure what she is hearing. She tries to process the word "beta" but makes no headway. In computer slang, "beta" means a program that is still being tested. Then she remembers hearing the word just hours earlier. She had been talking to some woman. But she can't remember who-“

  "I changed the procedure this time," comes a voice. "I injected the special Beta enzyme separately from the activated stem cells. Whatever happens will happen at the enzyme's own pace now. And I kept the dosage as low as I could. We'll be monitoring her telomerase levels throughout the day. If there's no rejection, we will be past the first phase."

  "Is the dosage the only difference from before?" comes the other, accusing voice.

  "At this point, David, manipulating the Beta is an art, not a science. I'm just attempting to create antigens, the way a smallpox vaccination does. Then we'll try to harvest them. This is not really a full-scale Beta procedure. I don't plan to do that ever again."

  There was another long silence.

  "That man who was here with her. Her cousin, did he say? I saw no family resemblance, but he seemed very upset."

  "That's why I had him sent upstairs. I think he's the reporter W.B. was so concerned about. Anyway, he's gone."

  Stone. She realizes that's who they're talking about. And now he's gone. She's on her own.

  Next the voices drift away for a time, into some echo space that mutes them. Finally, though, they come back.

  "This should be adequate for another four hours. After that, you'll need a glucose IV to keep her hydrated."

  "I've already put it on her chart. By then we should have some idea of which way this is going. I'm thinking, I'm praying, that this time is going to be the charm. That I've learned how to modulate the enzyme."

  "Is she ready for transfer to IC?"

  "Anytime."

  The voices start drifting away. A fuzziness is enveloping her senses, leaving everything soft and muted.

  The pain is gone from her body now, and the bright lights around her seem to be dimming. The figures in the white haze on the perimeter are now disappearing, one by one, as though filing out of a room. And now she feels like she's floating, with things moving past her.

  Then, finally, one lone voice is talking to her, is really talking to her, in a private and unmistakable way. And as she drifts back into the gulf of anesthesia, she listens to words that do not make a lot of sense.

  "The Fountain. Through all the ages, we've been looking in the wrong place. It'swithinus. Together, Alexa, we have this chance."

  She listens as the voice begins to drift away. Yet she feels a genuine sense of closeness to it. She realizes she no longer has control of her destiny. But still she wants to be where she is.

  Now the sea is coming back, flowing around her, and she tries to remember where she is and why, but all she is aware of is the sea rising, until she is engulfed.

  Chapter 28

  Thursday, April 9

  8:00a.m.

  Stone awoke in his Yorkville apartment nursing a hangover and a lot of regrets. He'd inhaled a triple scotch after driving Ally's Toyota back and parking it on the street the night before. He'd needed it. Yesterday had been a day where, in sequential order, he'd seen a woman who'd lost her memory get kidnapped (probably); he'd been fired from his day job; he'd finally gotten inside the Dorian Institute, only to blow the opportunity completely. But the most important thing that happened was, he'd rediscovered a woman he'd once been in love with and he currently didn't have the slightest idea what was happening to her. Thinking back over their last few moments together, when she was being checked in by Van de Vliet and his research team and he was being hastily sent up to the lobby, Stone suspected that Ally was about to be subjected to something they didn't want anybody to know about.

  Now he was determined to get back inside the institute and look out for her.

  As he pulled himself out of bed and shakily made his way into the kitchen to start the coffee, he was trying to decide where to begin. As it happened he now had all the time in the world

  He didn't mind all that much losing his position at theSentinel-come on, that was writ across the sky-but he particularly regretted being denied the pleasure of quitting on his own terms, complete with a flamboyant fuck-you- very-much farewell speech to the managing editor, Jay. He'd actually been rehearsing it for weeks.

  The dream of just showing up at the Dorian Institute and walking in was no longer even a fantasy. There was a special "not welcome" mat out for him. Even more than the first time, he'd need a calling card.

  That had to be Kristen Starr. She clearly held the key to whatever it was Winston Bartlett and Karl Van de Vliet were trying to cover up. But how to find her? The only real lead he had was the apartment she'd come back to, apparently returning like a genetically programmed salmon going back upstream but not really knowing why.

  Okay, why not go back down there and look around again, only do it thoroughly?He and Ally hadn't had time to do much more than a cursory look-around. The specter of the knives in the walls still haunted him.

  But how to get in?

  Then he remembered that Ally had been given the key by Kristen's spacey subtenant, Cindy, the one who was renting the ground-floor apartment. Did she leave that key at her CitiSpace office or did she put it on her key ring?

  Her car keys were lying on the table by the door, where he'd tossed them last night. He walked over and checked them out. There were several house keys on the ring in addition to her Toyota keys. Could she have put Kristen's key on the ring too? Or did she stash it in her desk at CitiSpace?

  Swing by the apartment and try these, he decided Maybe I'll get lucky.

  As he headed for the shower, a cup of black Jamaican coffee in hand, he thought again about the last thing Alexa's good-for-nothing brother, Grant, had said, something about how Alexa was their "best shot." Whatever that meant, it couldn't be good.

  By nine o'clock he had showered, shaved, and was in Ally's Toyota headed for West Eleventh Street. As he turned right on Fourteenth, he had a fresh idea.

  Kristen's phone was still working, at least as of yesterday. So did she have speed dial, a memory bank of numbers? That could be a gold mine of the people closest to her. But if not, there were other tricks, ways of getting phone information. There might even be information in the phone itself: who do you get on "redial" and who do you get with *69, the last number that dialed in?

  The last number that dialed in would probably be the Japanese guy who left a message and then kidnapped her. But the last call out could be interesting.

  He had a nagging feeling that this wasn't the best way to be spending his morning, but he couldn't immediately think of anything else.

  West Eleventh Street was comparatively empty, so he had no trouble securing a parking space. After he'd turned off the engine, he looked at Ally's key set again. Well, there were four other keys on it besides the Toyota keys. Give it a shot.

  He got out and locked the car and walked up the steps. It was a perfect spring morning, cool and crisp, and this part of the Village was quiet and residential. He found himself envying the owners of these beautiful nineteenth-century town houses. There was something so dignified and secure about them.

  Then he saw a man emerge from the apartment below the stoop, just a few feet from where he was standing.

  "Hi. How's Cindy?" he called down, hoping the social gesture would let the guy know he wasn't about to do a second- story number on Kristen's town house.

  The man, who looked to be in his late twenties, was dressed in a black suit, with long blond hair tied back in a ponytail, and carried a shoulder bag that appeared to be serving as a briefcase. He stared at Stone with a puzzl
ed look.

  "Who?"

  "I was here yesterday and. . a woman named Cindy, friend of Kristen's, said she was leasing the garden apartment. I was just wondering-"

  "I'm sorry. Maybe you have the wrong address. I've had this place for almost a year and a half now." He was moving on down the street as he called back over his shoulder. "Good luck."

  What the hell is going on?

  He looked up and checked the number. Yep, it's217. Cindy had definitely gone into that apartment yesterday and talked convincingly about living there and working at the E! station. She even had keys to Kristen's place.

  So who the hell wasthatguy? He looked back, but now he had disappeared.

  Did I justimaginethat? he puzzled.

  He moved up the steps to the heavy white wood door and started trying keys.

  The first one wouldn't enter the lock, nor would the second. The third key entered but would not turn.

  Okay, last chance.

  He inserted the fourth and it seemed to stick. But he gave it a wiggle andvoila, he was in.

  Thanks, Ally.

  But when he stepped through the door and switched on the light, he could only stare in disbelief. The apartment had been completely cleared out. The white walls, which had been covered with knifed photos of Kristen only yesterday, were now blank. Even the few pieces of furniture were gone.

  "Jesus, I don't believe this." His voice echoed off the empty marble mantelpiece and bounced across the room.

  He looked around. Since late yesterday, somebody had come in and cleaned out the place. Thoroughly. Any hopes of finding old letters, an address book, anything personal, were gone. He knew immediately that he had been outsmarted. Kristen Starr, and now her friend Cindy, had officially ceased to exist. Cindy might still be at E! but she was going to be terrified and subject to massive memory loss on the subject of Kristen.

  But wait a second.They left thephone. The answering machine is gone, but maybe they didn't realize that phones can have memories and can sometimes tell tales. That might be worth a try, but check out the place first.