by Jamie Metzl
“Good morning, Rich,” she says groggily. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m sure it is,” I say unconvincingly. “I’m flying back to Kansas City this morning. I just tried Toni on her phone and she didn’t answer. I wanted to see if you knew anything.”
“She was going back to work this morning. The shifts got rearranged when she took her days off and they hadn’t expected her to come back so soon. She told us yesterday she was on the early shift for the rest of the week, starting at five in the morning.”
“Thanks so much for letting me know,” I say, feeling a bit relieved. “Sorry to have bothered you. Please go back to sleep.”
“Call any time, Rich,” she says before the connection cuts.
My body begins to relax as I place the next call.
“NICU,” the duty nurse answers.
“Good morning,” I say. “This is Rich Azadian, Antonia Hewitt’s boyfriend.”
“I know who you are, Rich,” she says warmly.
“I’m calling to talk with Toni if she’s available, please.”
“I’m sorry, she’s not here yet.”
I feel the knot yanking my stomach. “Wasn’t her shift supposed to start an hour and forty minutes ago?”
“It was, but we know she’s been through a lot these past days and she’s not exactly used to the early mornings. We’re more than happy to cover for her all morning if she’s still asleep.”
My pounding heart shakes my entire body. Could she be still asleep? I call her two more times. Still no answer. When we land momentarily in Shelton’s private airport in Cuba to drop Flores off, I take the captain’s hand quickly and tell him goodbye, but my mind is frantically elsewhere as the plane takes off again. Where could she be?
A calming thought enters my mind. Haruki. I tap an icon on my u.D I’ve never before used.
“Yes, Dikran-san?” he says. “How may I be of service?”
His cheery voice soothes me. “I need you to tell me if Toni is still in the house.”
“No, Dikran-san.”
I feel my heart falling. “What time did she leave?”
“She left at 4:47 a.m. central daylight time, Dikran-san.”
“What was she wearing, Haruki?” I ask, the fear rising within me.
“A white uniform traditionally worn by those in the nursing profession. May I—”
I tap off Haruki and urgently scroll for Maurice.
“Back from the beyond?” he says after tapping in.
“I can’t get hold of Toni.”
“All right,” he says calmly. “I understand my men are still with her.”
“She’s not answering her phone. She left the house at a quarter to five this morning in her nurse’s uniform. She was supposed to be on the 5 a.m. shift at Truman but didn’t show up. I need to know if she’s with your protection team.”
“I imagine she is but stand by, Rich,” Maurice says. “I’m putting you on hold.”
I try to control my nerves as the line goes silent.
Maurice returns a few moments later. His voice is entirely changed. “They escorted her to the hospital at 4:59 a.m. She told them she didn’t need security in the hospital so they waited outside. They’re still there.”
Every nerve in my body activates in panic. “What the fuck, Maurice?”
“I’ve ordered my men into the hospital to search for her. I’ve got three more cars on their way. We’re in touch with hospital security. I’m heading over there now. It’s premature to jump to conclusions.”
“Premature?” I shout, beside myself. “Those guys were supposed to be protecting her.”
“I know, Rich,” Maurice says. “I get it. She’s most likely still in the hospital. I’m getting in my car now. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Call me in fifteen.”
I can hardly breathe as the line drops.
“Is everything okay?” Ms. Newmark asks.
My face is too paralyzed to answer.
After thirteen minutes I can’t take it any longer.
I feel the weight of Maurice’s silence as the line connects. A part of me fears breaking it.
“The surveillance cameras show her being approached by a man and a woman as she passes through the lobby,” he says quietly. “Both of them are wearing hats obscuring their faces from the cameras. The feeds show them walking her to a room, then emerging ten minutes later.”
It takes every ounce of energy I have to fight the convulsions of fear surging through my body.
“I’m sorry, Rich,” Maurice says gravely, “but the cameras show the two people dressed in scrubs and masks coming out of the same room wheeling out a body under a sheet. They took her to an ambulance we’ve so far been unable to track. I’ve got my top people on this, Rich. When do you land?”
52
Maurice is waiting for me on the runway as Shelton’s plane taxis to a stop.
His impassive face is a complete response to the question I don’t need to ask as I race down the steps. “This is our number one priority right now,” he says softly.
I feel the blood surging through my veins; my hands are shaking. “Have you tracked the ambulance?”
“We’re still looking. All of our personnel have been notified. I’ve issued a national missing persons alert.”
I stare wildly at Maurice. This may be the best he can do, but it seems pitifully inadequate. It’s hard to believe Maurice’s approach will work given the sophistication of whoever we are dealing with. It’s painfully, depressingly, urgently clear to me that my team will need to figure out the big picture ourselves to have any chance of finding Toni. “I need to get to the Star right now.”
“I’ll drive you there. We can talk on the way.”
Maurice speeds me through traffic, the siren screeching from the roof of the car as the self-driving vehicles pull over automatically. But no matter how fast we go it still feels to me like we’re crawling.
Arriving at the Star, I run up the stairs and into our digital conference room. Martina and Sierra are there waiting. I give them a staccato summary of what I’ve learned and about Toni, pausing for only a moment to tell of my promise to the SBN elders. With Toni missing, I’ve too much to lose to be cagey.
Martina steps up. “We need to know the details of all this. Halley, focus on the money.”
“We need more help,” I interject. “Where is Joseph?”
“He’s out on the Brain-Pulse story,” Martina says. “Another rave last night. I—”
“We need him here now.”
Martina looks at me preparing for battle, then relents. “Call him.”
Joseph answers after the third ring.
“Joseph, I need you in the conference room right away.”
I feel the silence on the other end of the line.
“Joseph?”
Still no reply.
“Toni is missing. She’s been kidnapped.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, boss.”
Joseph rushes in anxiously twelve minutes later and trains his ancient eyes on mine as I’m detailing more of what I learned and mapping the options for where Toni could be. As always, his unspoken emotions are expressed through his quiet presence.
“Abraham,” Martina barks, “you need to dig into the SBN organization and Israeli intelligence. Azadian, continue.”
“On it,” Joseph replies, tapping his u.D as he takes his position in front of one of the data walls.
I rush through the relevant details from the ship, filtering out only the most sensitive. My head is about to explode, but I calm myself. If I lose it now, I sense, I’ll never find her.
A stunned silence permeates the room as I come to the end of my report.
Then the data starts splashing up on the walls.
“There’s a story here,” Martina says, her voice more reflective than I’ve ever heard it before. “Let’s fucking find it.”
We spend over two hours in frantic dialogue, fighting to narrow down the options. If SB
N and the Israelis didn’t kill Heller, who did? A rival intelligence service? A big health company? I step out every few moments to check in with Maurice or call Toni’s frantic parents to give them an update. Part of me feels I should be out searching for Toni, but I know the path to finding Toni is figuring out the bigger picture and that’s only going to happen here. The digital walls fill fast with words, images, and stacked files, but even after all we’ve learned, the amassing jigsaw pieces still don’t come together as much as I desperately need them to.
“That’s interesting,” Sierra murmurs into her screen, breaking a momentary silence.
“Well?” Martina says, seeming annoyed she has to ask.
“It’s a press advisory from Santique Health. They’ll be making a major announcement today at four.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, desperate for any additional information.
“Usually companies do this sort of thing for a product launch, something they think will get a lot of media attention and bump up their share price. They do it at the end of the day so media sources won’t have time to do much background and have to go with what the company says for the morning news cycle. The news can build all night to drive a big surge in share prices the next morning.”
“Any indication of what they’ll be announcing?” I ask.
“No,” Sierra says. “It’s the usual ‘hide the ball.’”
“Can you find out?” Martina asks.
“Maybe,” Sierra says tentatively. “Probably.”
“What are you doing standing around, then?” Martina barks.
Sierra looks momentarily shaken, then regains her composure and marches out.
“What about Shelton?” Joseph asks softly.
“How do you mean?” I ask.
“Can we be so sure that Shelton, SBN, and the Israelis are all on the same team? Could they have different interests that might make them collaborate in some ways and compete in others?”
Joseph’s words are so thoughtful and reasoned they push my mind into rewind. “It’s definitely a possibility,” I say, sitting down a moment and trying to force myself to calm, but all I can think about is Toni.
Martina perks up. “Play that out.”
We open a new space on the wall where I splash out the four categories into columns. Under each of the names I add a section labeled individual interests then add a full row underneath labeled common interests. New questions jump out as we begin dictating to fill the coordinates. The process is too slow, but I’m desperate for anything. I squeeze the sides of my chair to hold myself down.
Our questions stack up on the wall, taunting us with their importance and unanswerability and making me even more crazed than I already am.
“A revolutionary stem cell treatment for cancer.” Sierra’s breathless words reverberate through our brains. She stands fiercely just inside the door, her hands at her hips.
It takes only a fraction of a second for the words to sink in.
“Joseph,” I order, “unpack the Santique hub.”
He waves his hands over the section of the wall where all of our data about Santique has been stored. The files and images minimize the other hubs as they spread across the wall.
“So Santique learns of Heller’s cancer research, they recruit him as a contractor and fund his work,” I begin, hypothesizing aloud. “The research is promising on worms and mice but the data from the human trials less so. Then why would they be announcing the results of those trials now? Why wouldn’t they start a new trial to reach a better outcome?”
“Maybe they had multiple trials going,” Sierra fires back. “Maybe some other pressure is pushing them forward. Maybe Heller didn’t know all they were up to. Didn’t Heller mention something about that in the letter he embedded in the dog’s DNA?”
“I think—”
Joseph’s actions are a fraction of a second faster than my thought. We race through the letter he’s splashed on the wall until we find it.
“Although Santique was not, by my design, aware of my total organism cellular reversion research, they were well aware of the progress I made in cellular reversion as a potential treatment for cancer and had begun additional research in their corporate labs based on my preliminary findings. Independent of me, Santique made the decision to go forward with experimental human trials in early 2025.”
“So there could be a whole other strain of Santique’s work that grows out of Heller’s research but is also independent of it,” Sierra muses.
“And either the timing is extremely coincidental or somehow the two strains remain connected,” I add. We’re getting more information but still don’t have clarity. Not enough to feed my desperate drive to figure out how and where I can find Toni. “Could the timing be linked to Toni’s … ?”
“We’ve got to explore all of the options,” Martina declares. “Maybe they lied about the research. Maybe they got rid of the evidence that things weren’t going well.”
Her words rattle me. “The cancer treatment didn’t work on Hart and Wolfson. Heller knew that,” I add.
“How do we know?” Sierra challenges. “Heller didn’t think the cancer treatments worked on humans but maybe he didn’t know everything. Hart and Wolfson certainly got a lot better. And even if Santique didn’t know about the age reversion, all three are out of the picture in one way or another.”
Joseph reads the strange look on my face. “Where would Toni fit in this?”
“The kidnapping this morning, the timing of the Santique press announcement today,” I say softly. “The coincidences are too great. There’s got to be a connection. And if there is a connection, there’s got to be a link somewhere in the company’s network.” My shaking finger taps my u.D, and Jerry Weisberg’s sweaty face appears in a box on the wall.
“Jerry,” I say, “I need you to drop everything. I need you—”
“I’m finalizing the firewall around Heller’s files. You don’t want—”
“It doesn’t matter. Toni is missing, kidnapped. I need you to do something. Now.”
He stares back, awaiting additional information.
“She was taken from the hospital this morning. The police are trying to find her. I don’t give them much of a chance. We’re starting to think there’s a connection between her disappearance this morning and an announcement coming later today from Santique about a revolutionary new cancer treatment.”
“What kind of connection?” Jerry asks nervously.
“We don’t exactly know.” I feel my face falling. I clench my jaw muscles, tightening to keep it up. “There are too many coincidences piling up. We don’t have any better options.”
“What do you need?”
“Full access to the Santique system.”
Jerry blanches. “Multinational firms like that, with so much intellectual property and deep political connections, have some of the best security systems in the world, protected by quantum photon encryption. It could take months to get in if it’s even possible at all.”
“Jerry,” I say, my whole body trembling, “you’ve got to do better. Someone’s got Toni. They could’ve easily killed her this morning and left her body somewhere in the hospital. I have to think she’s alive and there’s a chance, there’s got to be a chance, there’s information somewhere in their system that can help us find her.”
“I want to help you, Rich,” Jerry says with absolute earnestness. “I’d do anything.” His voice softens. “I just don’t have the processing power it would take to crack this kind of system. Physics is the limitation.”
“Franklin Chou plugged in to the UMKC system to do the genetic analysis of the dog. Could doing that help?”
Jerry shakes his head. “You don’t understand what I’m saying. Multiply that by a thousand, a million. A company like Santique already has a system far more powerful than the university’s. There may be only ten or twelve exascale supercomputers in the world with the processing power it would take to even have a chance of getti
ng in.”
I am too desperate to stop asking questions. “Okay then,” I challenge, as if the very existence of such supercomputers is a cause for hope. “Where are they?”
“Probably four or five of them are in China and controlled by their government in one way or another. Three are part of the US government—with the Department of Defense, the CIA, and the Data Analytics Agency—and completely unavailable. The rest are probably with the few national intelligence agencies with the sophistication, resources, and will to operate at that level.”
I freeze.
“What?” Jerry asks, noticing my sudden change of expression, my eyes widening, my mouth opening.
I am too focused to respond. My mind locks in. The single thought takes hold of my being.
I slap my u.D with an intensity that stings, tap my biometric icon, then swipe frantically until I find it. In an instant the box appears on the conference room wall. The ten-digit number flashes for five seconds before disappearing.
53
“What the hell was that?” Martina says.
I dictate the numbers to my u.D.
The line rings twice before it connects.
Beep.
I hesitate a moment before realizing this single beep is all there is. “This is Rich Azadian,” I say as quickly as I can, not knowing how much time I have. “My girlfriend Antonia Hewitt was kidnapped from Truman Medical Center in Kansas City this morning. I fear for her life and desperately need your help. You pledged on the ship you’d help me protect her. If that meant anything, I need you now. There may be a connection between her disappearance and a press announcement about a new cancer treatment to be released today at 4 p.m. central time by the Santique Health Corporation. We need to hack into the Santique system but can only do it with your immediate help. Please!” I turn to face Jerry on the screen. “My friend Jerry Weisberg is a computer expert.” I point at Jerry. “Jerry, say exactly what you need.”
Jerry hesitates, confused.
I raise my voice. “Jerry, dammit, if you could have any assistance in the world what would it be?”
“Um, um,” he stutters, “a quantum supercomputer and a team of twenty of the best hackers in the world?” His expression asks if I’ve lost my mind.