The Immortalist

To James Watson

Standard-bearer of a revolution

MONDAY

Four Days to Lottery Day

One

DO YOU KNOW
WHO I AM?”
The woman with the short, black hair and striking violet-blue eyes glowered out of the open window of the little white Kia. The guardhouse was so close to the beach that the whoosh of the surf could be heard over the hum of the engine. Beside the road, fronting a vista of pine-covered mountains, a ledge of granite flaunted a row of platinum letters:
ACADIA SPRINGS BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE.

A body-builder type in a wide-brimmed, straw ranger hat and a blue uniform patterned after a state trooper's leaned out of the guardhouse window. “Yes, ma'am. You pronounced it perfectly clear. Sandra Rensselaer-Wright.”

For the fifth time she began to explain her need to get through the gate. She was nervous, and her patience was wearing thin. “My father built this place. He took a two-room shack on Wabanaki Cove and turned it into one of the biggest molecular biology centers in the world. I was
born
here. I used to ride my bike up and down this road when it was just a one-lane strip of gravel.”

“Be that as it may, ma'am, your name is not on the list.”

“When did anyone need to be on any goddamned list? This is a research lab. People come and go.”

“I'm sorry. There's a special event today, and Mr. Niedermann has given strict instructions that no one is to be—”

“Who the hell is Mr. Niedermann? Get Charles Gifford on the phone. I believe that Dr. Gifford is still the president of this institute. He'll vouch for everything I've told you.”

“I'm sorry, Dr. Gifford is not available. He's not to be disturbed. Really, I'm sorry. Why don't you come back tomorrow?”

“Why don't you kiss my ass?” The car door flew open as she sprang out of the Kia and ducked under the bar of the gate. She ran, desperate to get out in the open, away from the guardhouse, where she felt trapped. The guard gave chase, followed by a second man in blue—this one hatless, with a close buzz cut, but the same bulging deltoids and lantern jaw. They cut her off a few yards down the road, forcing her to veer into a grassy field.

“You have no legal right to keep me off this campus,” she exclaimed. “My daughter lives here. She's a minor and I'm claiming a mother's right. I have a goddamned custody agreement.”

“Look, I'm sorry. But orders—”

“Don't even think about getting in my way.” She made a feint back toward the road, but Ranger Hat adroitly cut her off. The other guard reached for her sleeve.

“Don't you touch me! Don't you fucking touch me!”

The guard went into a crouch with his hand on his gun holster. “Would you please get back into your vehicle, ma'am?” he warned.

“You think you can scare me with that gun, little man? Nice try. I've faced down drug-wasted, sex-hungry militias with AK-74s and RPGs. You're nothing.”

The guard's eyes opened wide, as if he expected her to pounce. He took a step back, but still kept his hand on the gun. Disaster seemed to be in the offing. But just then all three of them heard the crunch of tires on the gravel shoulder.

The woman turned and saw a short but well-built man stepping out of a golf cart. He was dressed in an expensive-looking charcoal-gray suit and a baby-blue tie that complemented his eyes and his gray temples. But he had a haughtiness about him that she disliked on sight.

“What seems to be the problem?” he asked.

“Sorry to bother you, sir,” answered Buzz Cut. “It's this woman—”

“I need to get through this gate,” she snapped.

The man in the suit pursed his lips and took his time studying her. “Acadia Springs is closed to the public today.”

“I'm not the damned public. I'm a staff medical officer with the Centers for Disease Control, and a professor of virology at Emory University School of Medicine. I've published more than a hundred and seventy papers over the past sixteen years. Does the name Rensselaer mean anything to you? Edwin fucking Rensselaer?”

“Of course. We're standing on Rensselaer Drive.” The man looked to Ranger Hat for an explanation, but got only a shrug. “Excuse me. I'm Jack Niedermann, vice president for development, Eden Pharmaceuticals. Did the CDC send you?”

“Eden Pharmaceuticals? Never heard of it. What's your business here?”

“Mine?” Niedermann raised his eyebrows. “Eden Pharmaceuticals is operating a joint research and production venture with Acadia Springs, and I just happen to be the executive officer on-site. And you are . . .
Doctor
Rensselaer, is it?”

“Rensselaer-Wright.”

“Very well, Dr. Rensselaer-Wright.” Niedermann looked away when he spoke her name, a nervous gesture that made Cricket suspect he knew damned well who she was. “The fact is, no one enters the campus today without my express permission. If you're here on behalf of the CDC—although you really didn't answer my question, did you?—I'm sure you won't mind if I call your headquarters in Atlanta to confirm.”

“CDC didn't send me. I'm here for my daughter, Emmy. She lives on campus with her father, Hank Wright. He's a mathematician. A statistician. Look, I just want to pick up Emmy, and then I'm out of here. That's it.”

“I can arrange to have your daughter brought to you here at the gate.”

“No, that won't work. She won't—I mean, I—look, why am I even explaining this to you? Let me talk to Dr. Gifford.”

“I'm not going to bother Dr. Gifford. Not over this.”

Cricket gave him a steely glare. “I have ways of making myself heard, Mr. Niedermann. I
will
speak to Dr. Gifford, whether you like it or—”

Niedermann cut her off with an upraised hand. “I don't have time for threats.” He flipped open his cell phone, punched a few numbers, and paced back and forth on the pavement with the phone to his ear. After trying a couple more times, he snapped the phone shut. “Dr. Gifford's not picking up. He and I were conducting a VIP tour until you interrupted us by storming in and assaulting my security men. I'm going to have to go back to the lab and find him. Wait here.” Niedermann got into the golf cart, put it into reverse, and swung back in a semicircle.

Ranger Hat, the nearest guard, wiped his brow with his sleeve. “I need to ask you to move your vehicle, ma'am. There are parking spaces in front of the entrance where you can wait for Mr. Niedermann.”

“No. I'll wait right here, thank you.” Still breathless from her tussle with the guards, Dr. Rensselaer-Wright sat down on a rock and watched Niedermann drive down the asphalt road named after her father that ran like the spine of the campus, past the blocks of dorms and old mansions and sparkling high-rise laboratories.

You shouldn't have let them fluster you,
she said to herself.
You have enough on your plate
. She tried to catch her breath as she looked at the mountains, blue-green in the morning sun. In the six years since her father had died, so much had changed here. Charles Gifford was running things now. God knew who these Eden Pharmaceuticals people were. But at least the mountains were the same. The herring gulls still glided over the beach, punctuating the heaves of the surf with their shrill cries. A sweet, mintlike fragrance filled the air.

But neither the mountains nor the sea could calm her. Her breathing became even faster and more irregular. She looked at the two armed men who stood watching her every move. Her car still stood beside the guardhouse, engine running, door ajar. Everything seemed strangely static and remote.
What is it, then? What's wrong?

She looked anxiously about her, until her eyes fell upon the flowerbed in front of the rock ledge. There, in rows of little white trumpets pointed to the sky, she found the source of the strange, sweet, minty scent.

Freesia.

Oh, fuck.
Not here. Not now,
she thought, with a growing panic.

Her chest began to tighten. It was as though an invisible anaconda, conjured out of the scent of freesia, were slithering around her, gripping her, coil by coil. Her heart beat frantically. It was a struggle just to breathe. Her ribs seemed to bend inward, almost to the cracking point. Her vision receded into a little, bright disk, as though she were looking down a telescope backward.

She clung to the rock, digging in with her fingernails. A feeling of impending doom came over her. Each breath seemed as if it would be her last.

“Are you all right, ma'am?” asked the guard.

The guard's words jarred her back to the here and now. Struggling to free her arm, she reached into her pocket, popped the lid of a plastic pillbox, and lifted two white, shield-shaped pills to her mouth. She crushed them dry between her teeth, savoring their bitterness, like a miniature act of self-destruction.