by Jamie Metzl
I repeat Jerry’s words into my earpiece.
“How would they connect with you?” I yell at Jerry.
“Um, um, through the bash management system. They need to have my IP address to give me admin credentials,” he yells back.
“What is it?”
I repeat it as he reads it to me.
“I’m old school, Jerry,” I say. “Give me your u.D access code.”
Jerry stutters it out. “I’ll need to confirm the link with a retinal scan.”
I pass on the information.
“We need some indication you’ve received this message. We need you now,” I shout into my earpiece.
I don’t fully realize how much I’m shaking until I tap off the connection.
“And now come the ten plagues?” Martina asks cynically.
“Better ideas?” I snap.
She swivels to face me.
“Let’s take another look at what we have on the wall,” Sierra interjects.
My depression mounts by the second. We slide the data around the wall for tens of minutes that feel to me like tens of hours. We sift through the Santique section, each of us trying to move the content around in a way that completes the tale. Sierra tracks down her contacts to try to learn more about the cancer announcement. I send a message asking Franklin Chou to rush over to help. Each moment I imagine Toni, lost, afraid, alone. I feel a pulsing energy and a petrifying numbness battling for control of my body, as if a part of me is dying even as I struggle for Toni’s life. Our pitiful efforts in this pitiful room for this pitiful paper all seem wholly, violently, dangerously inadequate.
Then the gentle vibration on my right wrist radiates through me like lightning.
My left hand swings to tap it.
A Hebrew message flashes momentarily across our wall:
“What the fuck is that?” Martina asks.
The English version flashes a moment later: “In the multitude of counselors there is safety.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” she repeats.
“It’s Proverbs 11:14,” Joseph says quietly, as if his long silence and Catholic upbringing have been a preparation for this moment.
“Which means?” Martina demands.
Joseph ignores her assault. He leans back in his chair and looks up at the ceiling before focusing his eyes on me. “That we’re stronger when we work together.”
“It also looks like it’s part of the motto of Israeli intelligence, the Mossad,” Sierra calls out, reading from her search query on the other side of the room.
“Wait a second,” Jerry yells, “my system is connecting.” He begins waving his hands, excitedly conducting the symphony of invisible screens around him. “The Privileged Access Management package is downloading onto my system … I’m credentialing in to the Santique system … I’m being granted root access … Holy shit …” His eyes are scanning wildly side to side, his pitch escalating to a frenzy. “They are disabling the logbots around me … I’ve never seen anything like this. We’ve breached the system. I need a place to download the data … Plugging in to the VPN. Transfer happening now. Two hundred and forty seconds … 220 … 170 …”
We all stand amazed, watching Jerry work.
“One-ten … Seventy seconds … Forty … Ten … Three seconds, two, one. Got it!”
“Great, Jerry,” I shout. “How can we get access?”
“I’m setting up a data link to the university server now. Should have the access code on your u.D in a few. You should have it … now.”
My left hand flies toward the vibration on my right wrist. “Open file,” I bark at my u.D.
The tidal wave of files floods our walls.
“We need to narrow this down,” I say.
“Search terms?” Jerry asks.
All of us begin splashing them up. Noam Heller. Total cellular reversion. Antonia Hewitt. Turritopsis nutricula melanaster. Benjamin Hart. William Wolfson. Adam Shelton.
Joseph pools the terms and sets the search. Piles of files, represented by what look like individual sheets of paper, start growing up from the bottom of our electronic wall, pushing each of our search terms toward the ceiling by the files containing each reference.
“How many?” I ask.
“Six thousand two hundred forty-seven have at least one of our search terms,” Joseph says.
“Fuck,” I say, “that’s a lot.”
“We divide it up,” Martina orders. “Fifteen hundred each.”
“On it,” Joseph says, waving his hands in the air to splash fifteen hundred files on each of the room’s four walls.
Each pile feels dangerously tall, too vast a trove to sort through as quickly as we need. “We don’t have time—”
“So shut the fuck up and start looking,” Martina utters over her shoulder.
I’ve got fifteen hundred files on my wall and don’t even know what I’m looking for. My body is shaking.
“Just keep searching, Jorge,” Martina adds, this time more gently.
Swiping frantically through the files, I’m jarred by Martina’s name for me. I realize I’m Borges’s Librarian of Babylon trying to catalog the entirety of human knowledge without any kind of guide, searching endlessly for the catalog of catalogs he is destined to never find. I feel an intense pain in my gut. Six thousand files with potential clues contained within them. But Toni is gone, missing, and I know to the depths of my being I have far less than forever to find her.
We flip wildly through the files as time passes. Most of them deal with Heller’s research and the setup of the human trials. Chou arrives breathlessly and sits beside us to help.
Seconds become minutes, minutes become hours. I’m racing through the files but the time bomb is ticking away in my heart. Toni, Toni, Toni. Her name repeated in each tick. I force myself to focus.
At four, Sierra links in to the media event.
I turn away from my wall display to watch the svelte and tanned Swiss appear on the screen in his shiny blue suit and silver tie. Short brown hair graying slightly at his temples, he looks like someone who owns a yacht.
“Hello and good evening,” the man says smoothly. “My name is Arnaud Beauvais, chairman and chief executive officer of Santique Health.”
I turn back to keep working through my documents, still listening to the voice wafting over my shoulder.
“For all of our species’ history,” he continues, “we have been victimized by a terrible killer who has lived among us. This killer has taken our mothers, fathers, friends, even our children. We have fought back. We have fought back valiantly and yet generation after generation we have failed in our struggle. The killer, of course, is cancer, all forms of cancer. Ladies and gentlemen, madames et monsieurs, nushimen he xianshengmen, as of today this killer has been stopped. The cure is the proprietary process for the total cellular reversion of cancer cells we have been developing for many years and which I have the honor to announce tonight.”
“Do you have any idea what this means?” Sierra says excitedly over Beauvais’s voice as his remarks continue. “After this announcement, they will be one of the highest valued stocks in the world by the end of the week.”
“Even if it doesn’t work?” Chou asks skeptically.
“For the short-term, it doesn’t matter. Maybe it does work. Or who knows how they may have manipulated the regulatory process? When the stock shoots up, they’ll be able to go on a buying spree scooping up other companies. Even if the cancer miracle doesn’t pan out, the research pipelines of the companies they acquire will be theirs and the Santique shareholders who know the truth will be long gone by the time anyone figures that out,” she says.
“Keep going through the files,” Martina admonishes. “Has anyone seen reports on Hart and Wolfson’s treatment?”
Our collective “no” reverberates through the room as Beauvais takes a few softball questions from the virtual forum.
“When will this treatment be available?”
; “Is this treatment only for cancer or can it cure other diseases?”
“Will it be available in all markets?”
Beauvais answers each question with an Olympian benevolence. “According to our plans, the treatment will be available in major markets beginning in late 2026 and expand quickly across the globe in close consultation with world governments and institutions. So far, we have focused on cancer, but there is no reason to believe the same approach might not also apply to many other diseases …”
“Rich, can you come over here?” Joseph says softly, like a student asking his teacher to review his work.
Something about his tone catches my attention. I rush over.
“Look at this,” Joseph says. “A bunch of the files are classified under the name Michel Noland.”
“The one who published the article with Heller three years ago, the only article Heller published as a Santique researcher.”
“Yes,” Joseph says. “Look here. Noland was in charge of overseeing Heller’s work. Then Noland takes over the cancer research program himself.”
“We knew that. And?”
“Noland oversaw the work at Santique extending Heller’s research, even when Heller was no longer involved,” Joseph continues. “Then he authorizes the human trials.”
“So if Heller said he was being pressured by Santique to begin human trials, we can assume that pressure might have been coming from Noland,” I say.
“That’s what I’m thinking, but look here,” Joseph says, pointing. “All of the files have subcategories under the subheading of TCCRT, which the files identify as meaning Total Cancer Cellular Reversion Therapy.
“And look at these files.” Joseph pulls up another batch. “Same name, Michel Noland, subcategory here is called TCRT. That could probably either mean Total Cancer Reversion Therapy or Total Cellular Reversion Therapy.”
Now we’re all crowding behind Joseph.
“But when I try to open these files, they’re empty. So are the Noland files on Heller. It looks like they’ve been washed, with only the file names remaining elsewhere in the system architecture.”
“What does that suggest?” Martina asks.
“That someone is cleaning the files dealing with exactly what we are looking for, maybe storing them in a manner even more secure then encrypted digital files,” Joseph says.
“Like?” I ask, trying to push Joseph forward.
“I don’t know. Maybe encrypting them in another place or another way.”
“Michel Noland,” Sierra reads from her screen, “forty-seven years old. MD, PhD. Graduate of the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris. Cancer specialist. Chief scientific officer at Santique until he comes to Kansas City four years ago to supervise the building of the new Santique Research Center. Seems like quite a company star. His title is listed as advisor for special projects. Here’s a photo from their personnel file.”
The image splashing on our wall could be of a model in a cologne ad. His short, dark hair and thinly cropped beard frame sardonic brown eyes.
“And look at this,” Joseph adds. “When I search for Noland in the full data set, again most of the files are also scrubbed, both the references to him in other files and his own document folder.”
“Are we sure he even still works there?” Martina asks.
Joseph waves his hands in the air a few moments more until he finds what he’s looking for. “Yes, we are,” he says proudly, “the company has to list its non-US nationals annually for its visa filings. It’s the same information I have to provide.”
Now Joseph is rapid-fire swatting his hand to pass through the documents flying across the wall.
Until his hand stops abruptly in mid-air.
We stare, transfixed, at the file name floating on the electronic wall.
Root Directory File: Michel Noland; Sub-Directory File: Antonia Hewitt.
Martina’s command breaks the stunned silence. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”
I hesitate a fraction of a second, too shocked to move.
“Sierra and Joseph, you stay here and keep digging,” Martina orders. “Tell us immediately anything interesting you find. Azadian, let’s go.”
I shake myself to action. “Franklin, you come with us to Santique,” I order Chou, thinking we may need him to understand whatever we might find. I call Maurice on my u.D as we run down to the parking lot and pile into the Lincoln. “It looks like there’s a link with Santique,” I shout breathlessly. “They’ve got a file on Toni. There’s someone there who might be a key to the whole thing.”
“Looks like? Might?” Maurice responds suspiciously.
I explode. “Do you have anything? Do you know where Toni is? Have you tracked the ambulance? They’ve got a fucking file on Toni. I need you there now.”
“All right,” Maurice declares. “I’ll be there.”
“This is the only lead we have,” I plead. “Please, for the love of God, send the fucking cavalry.”
54
Callahan screeches the Lincoln to a halt in the Santique Research Center’s front parking lot. I jump out and run to the door, feeling the cold, blowing rain piercing my skin. I tap my fingers on the control panel beside the door with increasing force.
“Fuck,” I shriek, banging it.
I know from last week that even during business hours there won’t be a live person inside the lobby to hear me, let alone in the dark of night. I bang on the glass.
“Is there another door?” Chou yells.
“You go left, I’ll go right,” I shout. “Martina, you drive the circumference of the building with Callahan.”
I start running. Chou streaks in the opposite direction. We meet on the other side of the massive building a few minutes later. The thick frosted glass of the employee entrance is locked. I bang desperately on the door and control panel. No response.
“There’s a loading dock just around the corner,” Chou gasps through heavy breath. “I tried pulling on the metal grate. It’s fully shuttered.”
“Dammit,” I curse. “Where the hell are you, Maurice?”
Martina and Callahan pull in behind us in the Lincoln. “It looks like the only other entry points are this one and the loading dock,” Callahan confirms.
I tap the control panel outside the entry, again to no avail. I feel desperately out of place as the wet cold reaches my bones. The quiet whirl of sirens rises to a roar. Maurice’s car streaks around the corner, lights blazing, and pulls to a stop behind us.
“The doors are locked,” I yell as he jumps out of his car. “We’ve got to get in.”
“You are sure about this?” Maurice asks.
“Maurice, we’ve got to get in. The key to all of this has to be here. I was right that we needed to break into Heller’s lab and I’m betting I’m right now,” I say frantically. “It’s all I have. Please.”
Maurice looks at me, weighing the options. I know him well enough to believe my desperation about Toni is on the scale. “Okay, my friend,” he says cautiously.
His radio squawks. “Deputy Chief Henderson, we have the chief of security for the Santique research facility on the line.”
“Roger that,” Maurice says. “Put him through.”
“This is Jacques—”
“I don’t care what your name is,” Maurice barks. “This is Deputy Chief Henderson. I’ve got men stationed at each door of your facility. Either one or more of these doors opens in the next two minutes or we break them down. Am I clear?”
“May I ask under what authority you are seeking to enter our premises?” the security chief asks coolly.
“Reasonable suspicion,” Maurice says, looking over at me. “One minute and forty-five seconds.”
“Hold on just one moment,” the man says. “Reasonable suspicion of what?”
“Reasonable suspicion of exigent circumstances. One minute and thirty seconds.”
“You can’t just break into our facility. You need—”
Maurice cu
ts him off. “I have reasonable suspicion, sir.”
“I am sure this must be some kind of misunderstanding we can easily clear up,” the man says. “I’m at home now but can get in my car immediately. Would it be okay if I meet you just where you are in, say, fifteen minutes?”
“That would be wonderful. Thank you for offering,” Maurice says matter-of-factly.
My head juts forward.
Maurice lifts the handset to his mouth. “But if one of these doors is not open in fifty-three seconds you’ll be able to drive straight into your building when you get here.”
“Now just hold on one second, sir,” the increasingly nervous voice says. “You have no authority to enter our premises.”
“Forty-one seconds.”
“Please stand down. I’m on my way. We have strict security protocols.”
“Thirty-two seconds.”
“Sir, you don’t understand what you’re doing. We have strong connections with the governor. We have lawyers—”
Martina looks enraged by the reference to the governor but Maurice remains calm.
“We are forcibly entering your premises in twenty seconds.”
“Sir—”
“Ten seconds, five, out.” Maurice lowers the radio and looks over at me. “I hope you’re right about all this.”
Chou steps forward. “I think the metal door on the loading dock might be easiest to get through.”
“Where is it?”
“Just around the corner there.” Chou points.
“Get in,” Maurice orders.
We jump in the car and Maurice speeds over, calling two patrol cars to meet him at the loading dock. The officers rush out and connect long thick chains between the metal gate and the hitches on the backs of their cars.
Maurice launches the count. “One, two, three, pull.”
The three cars pull away from the gate like dogs straining at the end of a taut leash. Their engines rev, the tires screech, a smell of burning rubber permeates the air. The loading dock gate does not move.
“Stop,” Maurice yells into his radio. The engines quiet. “Pull back two feet. Let’s try this again. One, two, three, go.”
Our wheels connect with the pavement as we lurch forward for a fraction of a second, then bang our heads into the back of our seats.