Nano (27 page)

42.

PIA’S APARTMENT, BOULDER, COLORADO

MONDAY, JULY 22, 2013, 1:04
A.M.

The first thing Pia did when she got home was take a quick shower to get Berman’s scent off of her. Then she uploaded the pictures from the camera onto her computer and found that the shot of Berman could not have been any better. With the shock of the blindfold coming off and the flash of the camera, his eyes were fully open. Pia could see white sclera all 360 degrees around the iris. And the focus was so sharp it practically looked three dimensional. It was a better picture than the one of her own eyes, and that had worked well.

As she had done with her own photo, Pia enlarged the eyes to life size, then transferred the image to her iPhone. She worked fast, maintaining the intensity that had a hold on her since she ran out of Berman’s house. She’d never bothered to dress even when she pulled up to her apartment in her complex. No one was around at the time, as it was almost midnight, and she just ran in, carrying the camera and her clothes.

She hadn’t stopped moving since. Now she prepared to go to Nano immediately. She found her lab coat where it had been hanging for over six weeks and her ID, then tied her hair back in a ponytail before returning to her car. On the way to Nano, she ran down a checklist in her head. She knew she needed a lot of luck if it all was to work, and the closer she got, the more nervous she became. The confidence she’d felt back at her apartment melted away. The only thing in her favor was her familiarity with the graveyard-shift security staff from having interacted with them so often, probably more than anyone else on the scientific staff, coming in as often as she did on off hours. She was betting on the fact that they hadn’t seen her in over a month wouldn’t arouse any suspicions. In the past there had often been equivalent intervals. Still, the closer she got the more nervous she became. There were lots of reasons why what she was about to attempt might not work.

By the time Pia pulled up to the gate, she was shaking. She bit her lip as she handed over her ID to the guard. To Pia’s delight, the man merely glanced at it before handing it back. He touched the peak of his hat in a kind of salute before saying “Evening, madam” and raising the gate.

Getting through the gate as easy as she did buoyed Pia’s spirits, even though what was ahead was going to be more of a test. At the same time she was reasonably certain she would recognize at least one of the security people, and he would recognize her. She had frequently chatted with the guards when she was leaving and they often teased her about being so committed. She hoped that familiarity would mean they wouldn’t watch her too closely.

Pia parked and walked as confidently as she could to the entrance. Two guards were on duty. One, Russ, she recognized, but the other was a much younger man she didn’t know. She guessed he was new.

“Hello, Dr. Grazdani, long time no see,” said Russ. “Sorry to hear about your accident.”

“Yes, hi, Russ. I’m back.” Pia groaned inwardly.

Russ had been on duty when Pia had gained entry using the picture of her own eyes. Pia looked over at the reception desk, and was relieved to see that no one was sitting by the computer. Pia worried that a guard stationed there might see that the system was admitting Zachary Berman, CEO, and not this woman no one had seen for more than a month. But if she couldn’t get in, it didn’t matter who was sitting where. Pia switched her attention to Russ, but he was back talking to his youthful colleague and paying her no mind.

Pia whipped out the cell phone and without looking back placed the image of Berman’s eyes in front of her own. There was a reassuring beep. A green light flashed. It worked the first time. Pia swung open the glass door and was about to march through.

“Dr. Grazdani.”

It was Russ.

“Yes,” said Pia, knowing there was nowhere to run to.

“Welcome back.”

“Thank you, Russ,” said Pia. “It’s nice to be back.”

Pia scuttled away, slapped the elevator call button impatiently, and boarded the moment the doors opened. The whole time she was worried she’d hear her name being called out a second time. She breathed a sigh of relief when the doors closed and the elevator began its smooth ascent. Once she arrived on the fourth floor, she wasted no time walking down to her lab. Again she used the phone trick and again the scanner cooperated. A moment later she was in her lab.

Although she was tempted to wander around to look at the experiments under way and get a sense of what was going on with the mammalian experiments, she felt she didn’t have the time. Berman might well be madder than hell, as well as sexually frustrated, and possibly might react by making her persona non grata. She doubted it, knowing what she did about the man, but she couldn’t be sure and wanted to get in as much searching around Nano as she could in case it was the last time she would be able to get in the facility.

Knowing that there were security cameras all over Nano, Pia understood she couldn’t just wander around in her lab coat and jeans, looking out of place. Many employees wore scrubs, as in a teaching hospital, and she wanted at least that much anonymity. Pia found a set in Mariel’s office that were a bit too large but she put them on anyway, topping off her disguise with a surgical mask and a hood.

•   •   •

A
FEW MILES AWAY
, on a bedside table in an upscale apartment, a cell phone trilled. A text was delivered. A couple of minutes later, the phone sounded again, and this time a hand reached out from under the bedclothes and picked up the phone to check it. Whitney Jones was irritated at having forgotten to mute the phone when she’d turned out the light. The fact that it had rung wasn’t unusual. Her phone number was linked to numerous systems across the whole company that alerted her to certain people’s movements, but the only person who really mattered was Berman, and if he wanted to reach her, he could use the house phone, which he did on a regular basis. Sometimes it was for the most trivial of reasons, including that he couldn’t sleep.

Whitney looked at the screen. There were two texts: The first informed her that Zachary Berman had entered Nano at 2:05
A
.
M
., then, at 2:08, he had gone into one of the labs on the fourth floor. Whitney sighed. There was nothing unusual about Berman showing up at Nano at any hour of the day or night, but she wondered sleepily why he wanted to visit that particular lab. She shrugged and put the phone back on her night table. Quickly, she fell back asleep before she was able to speculate any further.

•   •   •

F
ULLY ATTIRED IN SCRUBS
, Pia headed for the door to the hallway. The lab was much as she had left it, with the same banks of equipment she had spent hours and days and months poring over. She wondered for a second who worked there now, but quickly discarded the thought. She had no time to reminisce; there was work to be done. What she did notice were banks of mice cages.

Leaving the relative safety of her familiar lab, Pia stepped out into the corridor. Her plan was to head down to the doors leading to the bridge that she had tried to go through unsuccessfully on several previous occasions. They were the doors from which Mariel always emerged whenever she had been off doing whatever it was she did elsewhere in the complex.

As Pia approached the doors she began to wonder what she might find. There were other buildings in the Nano complex, but the one to which she was headed seemed to hold the most promise. It was close to the building that housed most of the biotech labs, and it was physically connected. If there was an infirmary on the grounds, it most likely was there.

Pia tried to walk at a normal pace. She didn’t want to appear in a hurry, nor did she want to look as if she didn’t know where she was going. As she approached the door, she cupped the iPhone in her hand in an attempt to make it less obvious and made sure the photo of Berman’s eyes was on the screen. Pia brought the phone up along the right side of her head. To the left, on the ceiling, was what looked like a security camera: a small, inverted, dark brown plastic bowl. Stepping up to the scanner, Pia moved the phone in front of her eyes. As soon as she heard the telltale beep, she quickly lowered the phone and slipped it into the pocket of her scrub pants. The light flashed green. The door clicked. She was through.

Once again, Pia’s heart was pounding, now with a mixture of fear and anticipation. But on the other side of the storied doors the corridor looked exactly the same as it did on the near side: brightly lit with white walls and white composite floor. To Pia it didn’t even look like she was on a bridge connecting the two buildings. But after walking fifty feet or so, she guessed she had passed into the new building, and that knowledge lent the sterile corridor a sinister feel. There were a few blank doors but no signs or numbers. Above were occasional inverted plasic half spheres, probably cameras. She passed a bank of elevators on her left with oversized doors.

Suddenly, she saw someone walking along the corridor toward her, a man, judging by his size, but with his face concealed behind a surgical mask like hers. He was carrying a modern-looking white valise that blended with the environment. Pia’s heart skipped a beat as he glanced in her direction as they closed on each other. At about ten feet of her, he nodded slightly before looking forward in the direction he was headed. Pia nodded back and kept walking. They passed without a word like two ships in the night.

Pia let out a breath. Holding it in had been instinct. Of course there were to be people around, she reasoned, as well as other people possibly following her on TV monitors. She had to expect as much. She had to stay calm and continue walking. But where was she going? She passed several doors with iris scanners. Which ones should she enter? She assumed she was on the fourth floor as the bridge came from the fourth floor of the biotech building. But she couldn’t be sure. In theory, the idea of exploring the building seemed straightforward. In reality it was anything but.

The corridor took a left-hand turn and soon reached an intersection. Lines painted on the floor pointed in opposite directions: green to the left, and red the right. Which one to take? In either direction, the way ahead looked the same: more corridor.
Green for go,
thought Pia, but then changed her mind and went the other way, turning right. After what seemed a hundred feet, there was another left-hand turn, and then in front of Pia, past an unmanned guard station, was a set of heavy, large double doors with an iris scanner set in the wall to the side. Whatever passed through these doors had to be big.

Pia still didn’t know what she was looking for, but her intuition told her she had stumbled onto something. For the fourth time that night, she flashed her iPhone over the scanner and waited for the green light. When it came on, she opened one of the doors and walked in. When she saw what the room contained, Pia’s eyes bulged and she swallowed hard. “Oh, my God,” she said in a stunned whisper.

•   •   •

W
HEN
W
HITNEY
J
ONES’S PHONE
woke her for the second time, she saw it was Berman again, moving around the Nano complex. Good grief! Now he was in the main room inside the inner sanctum, so only the hardwired devices like the iris scanners would be able to communicate with the outside world. If she could, she would have called Berman to find out if everything was hunky-dory and ask what was making him wander all over creation. She decided to send a text that would be waiting for him when he got back outside the infirmary building.

“What’s up?” she typed. “Everything ok? Don’t forget London calls at 8 am ur time.”

Putting her phone back down, Whitney cursed before rolling over. She worried that she might have trouble going back to sleep.

43.

NANO, LLC, BOULDER, COLORADO

MONDAY, JULY 22, 2013, 2:48
A.M.

Pia stood in front of a large, almost ten-foot-high glass tank full of liquid. At her eye level, suspended upright in the liquid, was the body of a man, or, more accurately, two-thirds of the body of a man. He looked Chinese or Asian. The man’s brain was entirely exposed, and over his mouth was a tight-fitting mask, like a piece of scuba equipment. His eyes were open, staring blankly ahead. Pia could see that the chest had been opened and a portion of the wall cut away to expose the inflating and deflating lung. One of the man’s legs and one arm had been removed entirely, the stumps sealed tightly with a white material. On the remaining leg and arm, various muscles had been exposed, with electrodes inserted into particular muscle bundles.

The man was stationary, and to her horror, Pia could see what was holding him in place. He was anchored or impaled on a vertical pole that pierced his body in a cephalic-caudal axis, and also by various tubes that emanated from his body and disappeared into a number of sealed boxes on the floor. More lines ran from these boxes to the wall, where banks of signal lights were arranged in displays with a series of stopcocks. Pia looked at the lines more closely and could see that in one the red liquid was moving—it was bright red, oxygenated blood.

This half-man was alive, or mostly alive. And he was stuck on a spike like a butterfly collector’s specimen.

Pia staggered back until she leaned against the wall. She looked around the warm, humid room and saw it was cavernous, with a high black ceiling with exposed piping and duct work. The light coming from above was dim and seemed to be ultraviolet with a decidedly blue cast. Most of the light in the room came from the tank, which was brightly lit from above like a kind of huge aquarium. Pia noticed that there were more of these tanks, maybe as many as ten, but couldn’t see from where she was standing if they were all occupied. Most of them were.

There were people in the room, possibly lab workers or custodians, gowned with their faces covered with surgical masks. They stood about forty feet away, clustered around one of the aquarium-like tanks and were involved in a discussion. Pia couldn’t hear their voices amid the deep-throated hum and bubbling of powerful pumps that dominated the environment. There were three, no, four individuals: it was hard for Pia to tell. One looked over and spotted Pia. Pia made it a point to walk over to a nearby countertop, where there was a clipboard. She picked it up and pretended to study it.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God . . .” Pia said to herself under her breath. What the hell was going on here? In her mind Berman’s comment only hours before kept replaying: “No one is being abused, trust me. Everything is totally voluntary.”
Yeah, sure,
thought Pia. “These half-dissected people volunteered to be human physiological experiments.” Pia’s mind went back to the poor dogs they had used in the lab in medical school. That was sickening enough, but this?

“Volunteers?” Pia whispered. “My ass!”

A tank with a woman inside was lined up facing the first one, so that the two victims could look at each other Pia thought morbidly. This female was submerged in liquid like the man in the first tank, and had obviously been partially dissected as well. Pia could also see a portion of her lungs expanding with each respiration. Pia shuddered. What she was seeing was far worse than her worst nightmare. These people were being kept in a semi-living state, artificially respired and monitored. But why?

The blood.

Pia looked at the tubes in each tank and saw blood leaving and entering both bodies. These individuals were being kept alive and their blood was being processed and analyzed. She looked more closely at the woman, and on her forearm, she saw tattooed numbers, much like the ones she had seen on the Chinese runner. She kicked herself for not following up on that lead at the time. For a moment she tried to imagine what the numbers meant, but instead her mind kept returning to the blood. If it was subject to so much attention in this room, Pia reasoned she should look at it herself. She now had a sneaking suspicion about what was going on, but she needed to prove it.

While pretending to look at the clipboard, Pia studied the room and the other workers. She could see they were wearing more protective clothing than she: full-barrier protection with gowns and booties as well as masks and hoods. Pia made sure she stood with a tank between her and the techs so that they couldn’t see she was wearing street shoes and no gown over her scrubs. The lines carrying blood to and from the bodies pierced the huge containers and had ports, so Pia knew that if she found a syringe, she could draw a sample.

Halfway across the room Pia saw an equipment unit with all sorts of material, including beakers and other glassware, as well as tubing and, she presumed, syringes. But to reach them, she would have to walk toward the other workers. There was no chance they wouldn’t see she wasn’t properly attired and that she was out of place there. In short there was no chance, in her mind, that she wasn’t going to be found out no matter what she did.

•   •   •

A
FTER
P
IA HAD
left his house. Zach Berman had barely moved. He didn’t even untie himself immediately. He felt angry, humiliated, excited, unnerved, but mainly frustrated all at the same time. His anger came mostly from Pia’s leaving and from her brazen willfulness in taking those photos after he had specifically warned her not to. Yet he wasn’t truly worried that she had done it, after all, what could she possibly do with them? Pia seemed to think she had some ridiculous idea that having the photos would somehow work to her advantage. What was she going to do? Post a picture on a social media page? All it showed was him with his shirt off and a blindfold over his eyes. Big deal! It might be mildly embarrassing for a time, but most important it wouldn’t have any effect on the Chinese dignitaries he was dealing with. They all had mistresses, and they all played around. In that regard they were more like the French.

What Berman was mostly thinking was what a woman she was! What a tease! She had taken him to the edge of something, and he wanted to go back, desperately, and be thrown over. His phone pinged, telling him he had a text, but what could be so important at that time of night? Berman had a sudden thought. Maybe she’d somehow gotten his private mobile number, and it was Pia texting him, continuing the evening’s entertainment.

Quickly Berman extracted his hands from the slippery nylon rope, and pulled out his phone. Damn, it was from Whitney, reminding him of the calls he had to make that morning. How did she know he was still up? The woman needed to get a life, for God’s sake. Berman tossed the phone onto the couch so recently occupied by Pia’s delightful form. In his fantasy, she was coming back, and he slouched back in his chair and dreamed again about what he was going to do to her the next time he had an opportunity. She’d eluded him twice, first of his own accord and now of hers, but it wasn’t going to happen again. A tease was fun, but there was a limit.

•   •   •

A
BRUPTLY, TWO OF
the lab technicians left the room, walking out through a second entrance on their side that Pia hadn’t noticed before. The other two were preoccupied, apparently attending to a problem at the side of the aquarium structure, where they had been grouped. Quickly Pia took advantage of the situation and strode over to where the medical equipment was kept. She saw all manner of laboratory and medical paraphernalia, but where were the syringes? She opened a few drawers and found them. She grabbed three and went back to the first tank, nearest to the double doors through which she had entered the room.

A quick perusal of the port and Pia figured out where to attach the syringes. She plugged one into the line, toggled the stopcock, and drew a full syringe of blood, capped it, and quickly took two more. Hazarding a glance into the depths of the room, she noticed that a third tech had left. The remaining individual was still engrossed in whatever he or she was doing, so Pia pulled out her iPhone from her pocket, opened the camera app, switched off the flash, and quickly took a picture without raising the phone above the level of her hip.

Then Pia walked out of the room without looking back. Had she been seen? There must be cameras in there, she thought, but perhaps she didn’t look suspicious. Still, if anyone compared the entry logs with her appearance, she didn’t look much like Zachary Berman. She was afraid she didn’t have a lot of time. As Pia walked, she tried to process exactly what she had just seen. They were living, human laboratory experiments, somehow being kept alive, their circulatory systems being run through banks of testing equipment. Pia stopped for a second and thought she was going to throw up. What Nano was doing was such a travesty of ethics that it was unspeakable. But she didn’t have time to let herself become emotional. She gathered herself quickly. She had work to do.

As she retraced her steps back to her lab, Pia couldn’t help but think of the Chinese runner she had helped take to the ER. Was that him back in that chamber of horror? If not him, it was someone like him, a tattooed person maintained in a fish tank for physiological experimentation. Berman had said there were things going on at Nano that were taking place at facilities like it all over the world. Did he mean that? What she had just seen? Again, she felt a momentary wave of nausea sweep over her, making her shudder.

When she reached the lab, Pia thought about calling the police right away, but she was still ruled by her significant distrust of authority. She was trespassing, and it would be easy for Nano security to prove she had faked her way in using fabricated ID. The authorities would get nowhere near that lab tonight, and Nano probably had some major contingency plan for emergencies. Maybe they could dismantle the whole setup or exchange the human bodies for some other animals if necessary. The more information Pia had, the better.

Pia needed to look at the blood. Her work at Nano had involved microbivores, but she knew Nano could easily have been making other nanorobots with the same nanomolecular manufacturing techniques the company had perfected. Having seen the bodies in the tanks, Pia wondered what else Nano might be making. Perhaps these were nightmarish versions of tests that normally would have been conducted on lab animals, but in their race to bring to market, maybe they were just skipping animal testing for reasons of expediency and going directly to humans.

Back in her lab, Pia subjected some of the blood to a gentle, selective centrifugation, utilizing a special kind of apheresis to separate the blood solids from the plasma and then the solids themselves. Pia knew the nanorobots could be converted to neutral buoyancy by ultrasound waves, which she had used on the sample prior to putting it in the centrifuge.

With the gentle centrifugation under way, Pia turned on the scanning electron microscope to allow it to boot up. With that accomplished, and the remaining blood hidden in one of the many refrigerators in the lab, Pia peeled off her scrub clothes. She had another thought. She had to test the Chinese jogger’s blood that Paul still had squirreled away. It made her task that much more hazardous in that it would require leaving Nano and returning, but Pia knew she had to do it. Whatever she might find in the blood of the dissected individual in the tank, she needed to know if it was in the jogger, too.

Leaving the lights on in the lab, Pia went back to the elevators and descended to the lower level. As calmly as possible, she exited through the glass partition and walked back across the lobby toward the main exit. Russ was still on duty, reading a newspaper at the empty reception desk.

“You done for the night, miss?”

“No, Russ. I’m coming right back.”