Syndrome

by Thomas Hoover

  Ally walked over, slowly, and tried to take her hand. She was grasping the doll and she violently pulled back.

  "Hey," she said, trying to muster a matter-of-fact air, "how's it going? Do you remember me?"

  "I don't think she recognizes you," Stone said in a stage whisper. "I wish I knew more about the biology of the brain, but I think there's some kind of aggressive replacement of memory synapses under way. I think it's one of those LIFO things. Last in/first out. She's regressing chronologically, but in reverse. Maybe she's lost use of language, the way Alzheimer's patients do. I don't know."

  Ally felt herself near to tears. "Van de Vliet was going to use antibodies from me to try to. . something."

  "That was always a long shot," he said. "But now the preliminary tests he's just done on you indicate that the level of enzyme in you can be controlled very accurately. He's very excited."

  She turned back to him. "How do you know all this?"

  "I've become part of the story, Ally. That's not supposed to happen, but this is the only way to get it all firsthand. I have toliveit. And guess what, I now know enough to write the book I've been waiting all my life to write. I have the punch line."

  "Which is?"

  "Stem cell technology goes to the very origin of life, and it may turn out that for once Mother Naturecanbe fooled. Dr. Vee's venturing into areas now where evenhedoesn't know what's going on. Ally, what's happening in this room is the biggest medical story since. . Nothing begins to compare."

  Stone had lost it. There was true madness about him now.

  She walked back over to Kristen and leaned over and kissed her. Kristen stared at her in unfocused confusion, but then she smiled.

  "I'm alone in here. Will you take me outside? I want to find my mother."

  The voice was that of a five-year-old and it sent a chill through Alexa. The "grown-up" memory cells in her brain had been replaced by blanks. It was "last in/first out" and thirty-plus years of life experience were being replaced with brand-new nothingness.

  The Syndrome. Time had to move in one direction or the other. The body either went forward or in reverse. There was no equilibrium.

  Then she had a further thought. Winston Bartlett was not going to let this Beta disaster run to its natural conclusion- a horrifying exposure to the world. He was going to intervene. Kristen was not about to leave this room in her current condition. Either she left cured-which seemed wholly implausible at this point-or she departed in a manner that left no trace.

  Then yet another thought crossed her befuddled mind. She and Stone knew about Kristen. What does that mean forus?

  "Stone, we can't leave her here."

  "What are you proposing we do?" he queried. "Take her to an ER somewhere? Frankly, I don't know how you would describe her problem to an emergency room admissions staffer."

  "I'll think of something."

  "By the way, Ally, so you should know, she's wearing diapers. This is the real deal."

  "And how do you figure in all this?"

  "I told you. I'm going to be the James Boswell of stem cell technology. I'm going to report on this miracle from the inside. But now, Ally, if the Beta procedure is going to succeed you have to be the one to make it happen."

  She looked at him, still stunned by the wildness in his yes.And she had a feeling like her heart was being wrenched out.

  "You're working with them, aren't you?" She was fuming with anger. She no longer knew who could be trusted. He'd taken leave of his senses. Or had his senses been taken from him? Which was it?

  "I'm thinking about you. And hopefully about us. You're being offered something you'd be a fool to turn down. That's all I have to say." He took her hand and helped her back into the wheelchair. Then he whispered, "Let's get out of here."

  He quickly opened the door and rolled her out into the empty hall. When he closed the door behind them, he whispered again. "Didn't you see the surveillance camera and microphone in there? There's one in the room where they had me locked up. They just put them in."

  "To watch Kristen?"

  "And me. I heard Bartlett and Van de Vliet talking. If any of this Beta screw-up with her gets out of this building, Bartlett's conglomerate is toast." He bent over near to her and continued whispering. "Listen, we don't have much time. They've got your procedure scheduled for later on tonight. I'm still somewhat of a zombie from something they gave me, but maybe I can help get you out of here. Let me tell you what I've found out so far. Van de Vliet gave you a low-dosage version of the Beta procedure, in hopes he could harvest telomerase antibodies and use them on Bartlett. But there was only a trace. He did inject those into Bartlett, but he doesn't think it's enough to have any effect. So now Bartlett is demanding he give you a massive dose of telomerase. Van de Vliet is freaked about the risks, but Bartlett thinks it's his only chance to head off having what happened to Kristen happen to him too. However, what Bartlett doesn't know is that Van de Vliet has just finished a new computer simulation and he thinks he's finally figured out how to do a successful Beta procedure. For him, that's the Holy Grail."

  "How do you know all this?"

  "I heard him talking to his assistant Debra. I was supposed to be sedated. The reason he wants to perform it on you is because he now has so much data on you, as a result of the first procedure. He thinks he's got a real shot at redemption. Ally, if he's calculated wrong, you could end up like Kristen."

  "What aboutyou?" she asked. "You should get out too."

  "I should, but. . Look, I've been trying to get in here for a long time. Now I'm finally in. You could say I'm under duress, but I'm here and this is where it's happening. If I get out alive, I have a hell of a story."

  Is he thinking clearly?she wondered. He seems to be drifting in and out of a mental cloud.What is wrong with him?

  "Stone, there's an emergency door on the first level of the basement. If we can get up there, we might be able to escape. And while we're doing it, you might want to seriously reconsider staying in this place. We've both seen Kristen. What makes you think they're planning on either of us ever living to tell that tale?"

  "I'm having some trouble thinking just now." He was helping her out of the wheelchair. "But I do know you've got to disappear. Whatever plans they have for me remain to be seen, but I know exactly what's in store for you. So come on and try to walk. We can't use the elevator, but there's a fire door at the other end of the hall, which leads up to the lab floor."

  It's probably alarmed, she thought. Then what do we do?

  Walking was easier than she'd expected. The strength was rapidly coming back in her legs. But more than that, there was no sense of tightness in her chest as she might have expected. She was always aware of traces of stenosis, but now she felt nothing. Maybe there were miracles.

  The hallway was dimly lit and, she wondered,is a surveillance camera tracking our every move?

  "Shit," Stone announced when they reached the fire door, "it's alarmed."

  That's exactly what I was afraid of, she thought.

  "Any chance they're bluffing?"

  "Don't think so." He pointed. "That little red diode says it's hot."

  God, she thoughtwe've got to get out of here. "Maybe we could just make a dash for it?"

  He looked at her and shook his head. "Like you're in shape todash? No, what's called for is stealth."

  He was pulling out his wallet. "The thing about these card readers, some of them, like those that get you into bank ATMs, sometimes will open for other cards. I've got four kinds of plastic. Might as well give them a try."

  "Well, just hurry." She leaned against the wall. "I'm starting to get weak."

  He slipped his Visa through and nothing happened. He immediately tried MasterCard. Again nothing.

  "Maybe I should try my all-purpose bankcard." He slipped a Chase plastic through, but once more nothing happened.

  "This isn't working, Stone." She sighed, feeling her legs weaken as she clasped the wall. "I think we're going to have t
o chance the elevator."

  "Don't give up yet." He took out his American Express, kissed it and swiped it through. "One last shot."

  The red diode blinked off.

  "Never leave home without it," she whispered.

  "We will now proceed very, very quietly." He carefully pushed open the door, inches at a time.

  The stair had metal steps and was lit by a single fluorescent bulb. As he helped her up, Ally was wondering if there was any way to extract her mother too. She couldn't imagine how she could do it and besides, Nina might well refuse to go.

  No, just get out and make Stone understand that no way was Winston Bartlett going to let him go free to tell the story of Kristen. He clearly wasn't thinking with all cylinders.

  Stone Aimes was about to disappear, just like Kristen had.

  The entry to the laboratory level was also alarmed, but American Express once again saved the day. When they pushed open the door, however, the lights were on in the office at the far end of the hallway.

  Where's that door that Grant was going to use to get me out?she wondered. Then she saw a door markedexitnext to Van de Vliet's office.

  Shit, it's all the way at the opposite end of the hall.

  "Stone, we have to get to that door before anybody sees us. I don't know if it's alarmed or not, but that's the ball game." She reached for his hand. "If we can get there and get out, please come with me. We can make it to the highway. You can't stay here."

  "Let's get you out. Then we'll talk."

  "I'll drag you if I have to."

  As they moved quietly along the wall, they could hear an argument under way. She recognized the voices as Ellen O'Hara's and Karl Van de Vliet's.

  "I won't allow my staff to be part of this," Ellen was declaring. "I've seen Kristen. Any form of the Beta is dangerous. If you do anything involving that procedure again, you'll put everybody here at risk."

  "Don't you think I've thought about that, agonized about it? We have one chance to turn all this around. This is it."

  "I don't want to be involved and I don't want any of my people involved do you hear me?"

  "Then keep them upstairs." He was striding out of his office, flipping on the lights in the hallway.

  "Oh shit," Ally whispered. She opened a door and pulled Stone into the examining room, where her mother had first been admitted. Just as she did she heard thedingof the elevator and caught a glimpse of Debra and David Van de Vliet's senior researchers, getting off.

  When she closed the door, the room should have been pitch black. But it wasn't. A candle was burning on a counter and there was a figure at the far end of the room.

  He was sitting on the examining table, in the lotus position, his eyes closed.

  "Are you ready?" Kenji Noda asked. "I think just about everyone is here now."

  Oh my God, Ally thought. What are we going to do?

  She watched helplessly as he reached over and touched a button on the desk. A red light popped on above the door. A moment later, it opened.

  "What are you doing here?" Debra asked, staring at them.

  "Getting some exercise," Stone said.

  Then Winston Bartlett appeared in the doorway behind her.

  "How didtheyget up here?"

  "Ally, I'm not going to let them do this to you," Stone declared, seizing her hand. "We're going to-"

  "Ken, please get him out of here," Bartlett said. “Take him back downstairs, anywhere."

  "You shouldn't be out of your wheelchair," Debra was saying. She turned to Ellen. "Would you get-"

  "I'm not getting you anything," Ellen O'Hara declared. "I've just submitted my resignation. Effective three minutes ago. I don't know a thing about what's going on here and, from now on, I don't want to know."

  She got on the elevator and the door closed.

  "Ken," Bartlett said, "first things first. Go after that woman. Don't let her leave the building."

  Now Debra was rolling in a wheelchair. David had appeared also, deep disquiet in his eyes, and he helped her in.

  "There's very little risk to this," he said. "Believe me."

  She felt him giving her an injection in her left arm.

  No, don't. .

  As the room started to spin, she reached out and grabbed Stone’s arm and pulled him down to her.

  "Downstairs," she whispered. "Look around. There's-"

  She didn't get to finish because Debra was whisking her out the door and toward the laboratory. Stone had just grinned confusedly, seemingly not paying any attention to what she was saying. Instead he ambled toward the open stair door and disappeared.

  At this point, however, no one appeared to notice or to care. They were rolling her through the steel air lock. On the other side, Winston Bartlett was already waiting, standing next to a gurney with straps.

  No!

  Chapter 34

  Friday, April 10

  9:34p.m.

  She was still conscious as David and Debra lifted her onto the gurney. There was no operating table in the laboratory, but this procedure did not require one. It consisted of a series of small subcutaneous injections along both sides of the spine, followed by a larger injection at the base of the skull.

  As the injections began, she drifted into a mind-set where she was never entirely sure how much was real, how much was fantasy, how much deliberate, how much accidental. She remembered that she felt her grasp of reality slipping away, but there was no sense of pain. Instead, images and sensations in a sequence that corresponded to the passage of time drifted through her mind. It was couched in terms of the people she knew.

  The first image was her mother, Nina, and they were together, struggling through a dense forest Initially, she thought they were looking for her father's grave, but then it became clear they were searching for some kind of magic potion that would save her mother’s life. As they clawed their way through tangled tendrils and dark arbors, she became increasingly convinced their quest was doomed, that she was destined to watch Nina pass into oblivion.

  But then something happened. The forest opened out onto a vast meadow bathed in sunshine. In the center was a cluster of snow-white mushrooms, and she knew instinctively that these would bring eternal life to anyone who ate them.

  "Come," she said to Nina, "these can save you."

  "Ally, I'm too old now. I don't want to be saved. There comes a moment in your life when you've done everything you feel you needed to do. You've had the good times and now all that's left is the slow deterioration of what's left of your body. It robs the joy out of living."

  "No, Mom, this is different," she said plucking one of the white mushrooms and holding it out. "This prevents you from growing any older. You'll stay just the way you are. You can have a miracle."

  “'To never escape this vale of tears? To watch everyone you love grow old and wither and die? Is that the 'miracle' you want me to have?" Then she looked up at the flawless blue sky and held out her arms as though to embrace the sun. "My mind Ally. You've given me back my mind. Now I can live out whatever more life God will see fit to give me and actually know who I am and where I am. That's miracle enough for me."

  As she said it, a beam of white light came directly from the sun and enveloped her. Then the meadow around them faded away and all she could see was Karl Van de Vliet, who was bending over her and lifting back her eyelids.

  "Alexa, I can't tell you what you're about to feel, because no one has ever been where you're about to be. God help us, but we're on the high wire without a net here. But any new cell configurations should immediately form tissue that's a facsimile of what's already there. That's what the simulations show."

  She was listening to him, not sure if he was real or a dream. Then she heard Bartlett's voice.

  "Why are you talking to her, Karl? She can't hear you."

  "We don't actually know whether she can or not. At some level I think she's aware of her surroundings. In a way we should hope that she is. If there are going to be impacts on her conscio
usness, I'd rather she be alert and able to remember what it was like."

  Then the voices drifted away, but she was sure she had no control over anything. The white mushrooms. She was thinking about them again. Only now they were above her and growing toward the sky and then she realized she was underground, buried and looking up from her own grave.

  What happened next was a journey through time-somewhere in the far-distant future. She seemed to be watching it through a large window, unable to interact with what was happening on the other side.

  Time.

  She felt a sensation at the back of her neck and the images faded away.

  "This damned well better be right" came a voice. "There's not going to be another chance."

  "I did an activity simulation for a range of antibodies, just to make sure she wouldn't automatically reject the enzyme because of the earlier injection." The voice belonged to Karl Van de Vliet Her mind was clearing and she recognized it "But all the results indicate that the effect of the antibodies is essentially washed out at this concentration of active enzyme. Have the good grace to let me try to get this right."

  She was listening and trying to understand what was going on. Her mind had been drifting through time and space, but now she was aware that something new was happening. The hallucinations, the conversations around her, all were beginning to focus in, to build in intensity.

  But that was not what was really happening; it was merely a mask over something that had entered the laboratory, some kind of force.

  Then her vision began to work in a strange way that felt more like a sixth sense. She was "seeing" what was going on in the room, even though her eyes were shut. Or perhaps they weren't. She didn't know and she was still strapped to the gurney, so she had no way to check.

  "Kristy," Winston Bartlett said dismay in his voice, "you shouldn't be in here. You should be resting."