by Nick Thacker
“We made a hell of a team, Ben. We brought companies to justice, small and large. We got millions paid out by organizations that had refused to abide by well-established rules and regulations all over the world."
“Sounds like you played lawyer.”
She nodded. “We used paralegals for most of it, but that’s essentially what the work was. Writing letters and threatening massive class-action suits if they didn’t pay up. But the real work was in getting them to change. To actually care about this stuff.”
“Did they?”
“Some did, not many. It was exhausting work, but it was only rewarding when things changed. Money changing hands is only fun when some of it lands in your lap, and not enough of it did for us to be able to be swooned by it.”
“Not necessarily a bad situation, though. You were in it for the right reasons.”
“Right, exactly. But, like I said, it was exhausting. The sheer amount of work it took to even get a payout, much less a change in policy or practice, was daunting. And we never did get many answers about this place. About my old division that moved to Switzerland.”
"So, how did your husband die?" Ben immediately regretted asking. It felt harsh, forward. But it didn't seem to bother Eliza.
“It was a climbing accident, just as I said on the phone. But I have reason to believe the company orchestrated the entire thing. They killed him, Ben. Murdered him because of the work I had been doing. We wanted to stop it, but we were never going to do more than bring lawsuits and letters up against them. They… took it to the next level.”
“Yeah,” Ben said. “I’d say killing him is a definite leveling-up. But… how? They made it look like an accident?”
She seemed as though she were about to cry, but she held it together. “Yes, that’s what I believe. He was found at the bottom of a wall we’ve climbed together many times. It’s an easy face, typical aid climbing, and he fell on the abseil — the rappel.”
“How do you know there was foul play?”
She paused. “That’s just it. I can’t prove it. There was nothing that suggested anything outside of an accident.”
Ben’s face must have betrayed a bit of his feelings of disbelief.
“I know,” she said. “I know how it sounds. It’s crazy, but… I know they got to him. They made it as accidental as possible. Slipped cam, shortened rope, something. I know it happened. About a year after it happened, I was slated to speak at a university, to give a presentation I've done many times. A day before the event, the university called to cancel, citing 'communication misunderstandings.' But I believe that, too, was the work of the company. They wanted to silence us, and they have."
“Why?” Ben asked. “Why would they — the company — go through the trouble? It’s one thing to be against what you and your husband did for a living, but it’s another thing entirely to actually kill him. That’s, like you said, ‘next level.’ Why would they be so upset about your work?”
Eliza shifted in her seat again, signaling a change of subject. “Harvey — Ben — do you know the name Lucio Canavero?”
Ben shook his head.
“He’s a doctor. A scientist, really. He was recruited by EKG a few months before I quit, but he was very quickly made head of the entire medical research component of the division that was to move out here. He was given carte blanche to carry out his research, and I assure you, there was plenty of money there to keep him happy.”
“What sort of research did he do?” Ben asked.
“Animal testing, just like everyone else in the department. Like I was supposed to do. But his work was, well, controversial.”
“In what way?”
"Here," she said, "give me a moment." She pulled out her phone and flicked around the home screen until she found a folder and opened it. Inside was a photo app, password protected. She placed her thumbprint over the phone's main button, and the app opened. "It's not the most secure method, but it will do for now. Take a look. These were sent to me by an acquaintance I used to work with. I haven't been able to get ahold of him to confirm anything, and I fear the worst."
Ben took the phone, holding it gently in his open palm. His finger hovered over the first image’s thumbnail, but before he pressed it he looked up.
“These — these are real?” He asked. “And this is what Canavero’s new division, and EKG, were working on?”
She nodded. “What they are still working on, Ben.”
He swallowed, almost wishing he had turned down the offer to help this woman. But something was driving him forward. Something horrible, and yet something intriguing.
The truth.
Could this be real?
He clicked on the first image, and his hand shook, nearly dropping the phone.
13
Ben
The images were all close-up pictures, taken by the staff and their boss, Lucio Canavero. They were all pictures of the inside of a medical facility, but unlike a hospital, most of the hallways and corners of rooms were dark, with only a single bright light source directly above the operating tables.
And the operating tables were exactly that — sterile, cold steel tables. Besides medical implements and instruments, there was nothing about the pictures that made him think he was looking at the inside of a state-of-the-art research laboratory.
But it was the subjects of the pictures that had appalled Ben. He flicked through each image, pausing for a few seconds on each one, sometimes pinching and pulling his fingers apart on the screen to enlarge them and see more detail.
Each of the pictures was of an ape — a chimpanzee, Eliza told him — in different stages of 'testing.' Its eyes were closed in each of the images so far, yet Eliza told Ben that the ape, a young chimp by the name of Apollo, was very much alive.
Worse, she told him that Apollo had not been anesthetized before the operations had begun.
In the first picture, Apollo lay on the metal table, its thin arms and legs strapped down with thick leather bindings. Its head was straight and even, held in place by a form-fitting Styrofoam headpiece that was also attached to the table.
The next few images showed Apollo again, but with the additions of human hands and arms as they worked on Apollo’s body, attaching and applying tubes and different salves to the chimp’s hairy frame. One tube ran into the chimp’s chest cavity, inserted and attached after a ‘researcher’ had cut a two-inch hole near the animal’s sternum.
Another image showed some sort of liquid coursing through the semi-opaque tube, which was coiled around a rectangular white machine that sat nearby on the table.
“Keep going,” Eliza said.
Ben didn’t want to, but it was important. He’d flown all the way here for this, even though he hadn’t known it at the time. He was horrified, but it wasn’t just the images that terrified him. Whatever they were working on was important enough to kill over, he thought. The realization caused him to look up.
Eliza was nodding, a concerned look in her eye. “Yes,” she said. “This is all true, Ben. Keep going. You must know what they are doing.”
He did. The next images showed the chimp’s head being turned sideways, a larger human hand beneath it, cradling it.
And then the true horrors began. Ben watched as the cameraperson began taking pictures more and more frequently, judging by how little Apollo’s head was moving around on the table as the doctors and aides performed their operation.
And that operation seemed to involve cutting across Apollo’s neck. Another person’s hands held white cloth that caught most of the chimp’s blood, but Ben was surprised to see that there wasn’t much of it — perhaps a pint or two.
“They’ve lowered his body temperature,” Eliza said. “It’s off-screen, but there is a machine pumping saline into the chimp’s bloodstream, essentially replacing his blood.”
“Replacing it?” Ben asked.
“Yes,” Eliza said. “They call the procedure Emergency Preservation and Resuscitation, or EPR. It’
s a new technique, but American doctors have been using it on gunshot and mortal wound victims. It almost ‘suspends’ them, slowing everything down in the host’s body so that doctors can remove dangerously sick organs or fix excessive bleeding injuries.”
“That’s… incredible,” Ben said. He couldn’t think of a better word. What he was seeing was, almost, not credible.
“It truly is remarkable,” Eliza said. “And it works, which is even more remarkable.”
“And why are they doing it to Apollo?” Ben asked. “I didn’t see any gunshot wounds or anything.”
“Keep looking,” she said.
He did. The next few images were at a slightly different angle, but still looking down toward Apollo as his neck was cut entirely through.
They severed his head.
The surgical procedure ended with Apollo’s head completely removed from the spinal cord and neck, and with someone’s hands cupping Apollo’s cranium and lifting it off the table.
The head disappeared but was then replaced in the next image.
But something seemed strange, off. It was…
“Oh, my God,” Ben whispered.
“Yes,” Eliza said.
“That’s… that’s not his head.”
There was another chimpanzee head in the image now, but it was clearly the head of a different chimp. Apollo’s body lay still on the table, but a new cranium lay where the young ape’s head had been.
“What are they going to do?” Ben asked. But he kept sliding to the next image, in part hoping the sequence had finished and simultaneously wanting to know the ending.
That ending came soon.
The next sequence of images was of Canavero and his team working on reattaching the new chimp's head onto Apollo's body. Ben watched in silent suspense, partly knowing how it would end.
The final image was the most terrifying of all. The Frankenstein-looking wound on the young chimp’s neck stood out in the image, bloody and scabbing over, the thick sinewy threads crisscrossed in ‘X’s around his neck, but it was the chimp’s face that caught Ben’s attention.
The chimp’s eyes were open.
14
Eliza
Eliza watched the man — Harvey Bennett — as he browsed through the images, his eyes scanning and catching every detail. She had been hesitant to reach out, but she was now glad she had. This man was thorough, and he was slowly coming around to her side.
She wasn’t lying to him — she did believe that EKG had killed her husband. She had never been able to prove it, but she knew Ben and his team at the CSO didn’t work through normal channels. They would vet her case, for sure, but they would find her correct in her assumptions.
This company needed to be taken down.
She had spent the latter portion of her life attempting to bring down companies just like this one, and her husband had given his entire life for that same purpose. They had succeeded many times, but they had also never come up against a company such as EKG.
She knew from her experience and time working at EKG’s old headquarters that there was something different about them. They didn’t care for conducting research through typical, peer-approved channels, nor did they care for the methods and means they took to get their results.
They cared for results, and that was it. Nothing else bothered them.
The company had been started many years earlier, just after the end of World War II, and it had changed hands many times. She knew that the latest owner, an investor and amateur scientist, was interested in using the company’s results as his personal profit engine — a story unfortunately not uncommon, as she and her husband had found.
But he had even fewer scruples than others similar to him, Eliza had eventually learned. The man simply didn’t care for anything but profits, and the results that drove them.
She had realized her mistake of accepting the high-paying job almost too late, but she had been able to quit without direct repercussions. When she discovered that they were going to move Canavero’s division to Switzerland, her and her husband’s plans began to take shape.
Her husband, unfortunately, had paid the ultimate price.
They were going to burn, and she would do all she could to see that it happened.
“I don’t understand,” Ben said. “This chimp — Apollo — or whoever it is now, is alive. How is that possible?”
Eliza forced a smile. “I assure you it is very possible. EKG has been performing experiments just like this one for years, and most of them, unfortunately, did not end nearly as well.”
“Is it… capable? I mean, can it —“
“It is a full chimpanzee,” she said. “A functional being, completely capable of anything Apollo was able to do.”
“But its brain —“
"Is different, yes," Eliza said. "And that invokes a major ethical concern. But the technology — the science involved — is all quite real. The process of cooling the blood with saline, which slows cellular activity enough to perform surgery such as this, is coupled with a new technique developed by Canavero using polyethylene glycol, or PEG, which conserves nerve cell membranes. That's important because it allows the spinal column and cord to be cut without damaging it. It will re-fuse afterward. They use a negative pressure device to urge the areas to heal, and it's been proven quite effective."
“I just…” Ben wasn’t sure what to say. “I just didn’t realize any of this was possible. It seems like something out of science fiction.”
“All of science fiction is just truth before its time,” Eliza said. “I can assure you, this research EKG is doing is based on mountains of prior research, both by them and the companies and scientists that have come before. They’re standing on the shoulders of giants, and to be honest with you, Ben, this progress doesn’t surprise me.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No, not at all. I’ve seen the same sort of surgical prowess used for similar experiments on mice and rats, and some other small mammals. This — this is big, for sure, but it’s nothing, Ben. It’s nothing like what’s coming.”
She watched the man in front of her. He seemed to be chewing on something as if he were deep in thought. She expected a certain question; everyone she'd brought this up to had asked it. He might still ask it, but for now she could see that he was working through a much deeper emotional reaction to all of it.
“All of that stuff… taking actual heads off. Transplanting them. It’s… considered scientific advancement?”
“Well, sure,” Eliza said. “It advances our understanding of what’s possible.”
“And scientists are okay with it?’
“‘Scientist’ only means that a person is engaged in the research and study of something, and that they have determined to abide by the rules established by previous scientists.”
“The scientific method.”
“Precisely, Ben,” she said. “Scientists come from every walk of life, and they are impossible to categorize. For some, the promise of solving a problem is enough motivation. For others, it’s money.”
“Money was their motivation for doing this?” Ben asked.
“Well,” Eliza began, “yes. But — I don’t think I mentioned it before. Apollo, the chimpanzee in these photos, was paralyzed.”
“Paralyzed. As in, he couldn’t move?”
She shook her head. “From the neck down.”
“And… after?”
"He was able to move as if nothing had ever happened."
“Wait a minute,” Ben said. “So Apollo, previously, couldn’t even move? And then they swapped his head with another chimp, and he… could move? Like, he could walk, move his arms?”
“Oh yes, Ben. He could do anything his fellow chimps could do.”
“So he’s okay, now?”
“Well, no. They terminated the experiment after 24 hours of close examination.”
“They killed him?”
“Euthanized, I believe, is the word they used. But yes, they p
ut Apollo down after a day of study, for ethical reasons.”
“Good to know they’re taking ethics into consideration.”
Eliza laughed at that. “Right. My thoughts exactly.” She liked Ben’s tone, his sarcasm. He was easy to get along with, and in that way he reminded her of her husband. “Ben, I’m not worried about their experiments on chimps.”
“Why not? It seems a bit… rushed, to say the least. I’m no doctor, and I don’t think I’d know the business end of a scalpel, but it seems like EKG should be stopped. At least slowed down a bit, right? To present this stuff to a… a board, or something? Isn’t there something like that out there?”
“Yes, absolutely,” Eliza said. “And peers — other scientists and doctors — have weighed in already. Many feel as you and I do, that this research is moving along too quickly, that there are ethical considerations as to the nature of a chimp’s soul — their being — that should be answered first.”
“Wait a minute,” Ben said.
She saw it in his eyes. The moment. The single spark in his mind as he put it all together, finally understanding what this was all about.
“Go on, Ben,” she said, urging him along.
“You said… you told me you’re not worried about their experiments on chimpanzees.”
“Correct.”
“Which means… you’re thinking they’re testing —“
“I’m not thinking, Ben. I have proof. My research in the division just before I left was related to all of this; I just didn't know it at the time. Researching serums and chemical compounds that would help the spinal column of a vertebrate animal heal, discovering and testing new medicines for the treatment of mortal lacerations, all of it. I had no idea it was for this, until right at the end. My husband and I were able to put the pieces together. He died because of it. And that’s why I want to take them down.”
Ben sucked in a deep breath, a quick, sharp inhalation. He held it. Looked around, then leaned close. Exhaled, then met her eyes.