To my parents, with love and thanks for always believing in me
And to Matt, whose passion gives me courage
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part 2
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Acknowledgments
Copyright
PART ONE
ONE
One number flashed in Arianna’s mind: 464. She didn’t have much time.
Dr. Arianna Drake stepped into the deserted hallway, listening.
It was 7:30 A.M.—still too early for the man to arrive. No matter her dread, their appointment could not be adjusted or canceled, even if a patient went into labor before her eyes.
In the silence, Arianna could hear her own pulse drumming in her ears. She hurried toward the locked door at the opposite end of the hall, her heels clicking across the linoleum floor. The corridor was narrow and painted an antiseptic white, made starker by the fluorescent lights overhead. Nothing about the place stood out from any other private clinic in Manhattan; Arianna had made sure of it.
She stopped at the end of the hall, thumbed through her keys, and inserted one into the lock. Pushing the handle down, she leaned into the door and slipped inside.
The lab was neither hot nor cold, and breathing suddenly seemed easier, like stepping into an oxygen tank. On the left side of the room, a black floor-to-ceiling freezer spanned about ten feet wide, with multiple doors opening to different compartments inside. A green digital display across the front read -78°C. It hummed quietly next to a liquid nitrogen supply tank. Along the back of the room was a row of electron microscopes hooked up to computer monitors. Facing the freezer, on the right side of the room, was an incubator set at 37 degrees Celsius.
She yanked one of the freezer doors open. Cool air billowed out. Inside, several hundred slender glass tubes lined the shelves in rows, appearing to contain a hardened red liquid. Murmuring numbers under her breath, Arianna shivered as she counted the tubes, her finger hopping up and down the rows.
A pins-and-needles sensation suddenly surged in her right ankle. The tingling slid into her foot, tickling her veins from the inside out. Afraid of losing count, Arianna pressed on, stressing every fifth number aloud like a musician keeping time. When she at last reached the final tube—number 464—she shut the freezer door and sat down in place, breathing hot air onto her frozen hand. For a moment, she closed her eyes, appreciating her aloneness in the lab and the way everything in it functioned. But her foot was waking from slumber, twitching with little stabs of pain. She pointed her toes and traced a few circles in the air, wincing as the pain dispersed. Was the numbness starting to last longer, she wondered, or was she just more aware of it?
It was quiet enough to hear the seconds tick on her watch: 7:50 A.M. Ten minutes to showtime. She swallowed uneasily, considering whether she had time to count the tubes once more, just in case. But there was no need; she had counted them last night, after hours, and arrived at the same magic number. Better to be sitting at her desk, composed and ready. She breathed in and stood up slowly, avoiding a rush of blood to her head. Before letting herself out, she threw a loving glance at the incubator. Sometimes she wondered if she was capable of forgetting what preciousness lay inside—or whether that knowledge stood like a pillar in her mind, with every other thought swerving around it just to get by.
The hallway was still empty, but she heard the low rumble of Dr. Gavin Ericson’s voice in the office next to hers. It was a comforting sound, the reminder of an ally. She paused at his door and knocked.
“Arianna?” he called.
She opened his door a crack and peered inside, seeing he was on the phone. Gavin and his wife, Emily, who together constituted the rest of the clinic’s staff, were among her closest friends, dating to medical school a decade back.
Everything okay? he mouthed, one hand cupping the phone.
She smiled and nodded. “Good to go,” she whispered, and pulled the door closed.
Inside her own office, she sat down at her desk, straining to hear any sounds from the clinic’s front door. Nothing. She turned to her computer and pressed her index finger to the middle of the screen. After two seconds, the screen lit up and unlocked. A floating message in a box read, WELCOME, ARIANNA. NOVEMBER 1, 2027. 7:57 A.M.
It was impossible to concentrate on real work, and Arianna knew better than to try. She wondered who the man would be this month—but there was no way to know ahead of time. She looked up at her wall, which was covered with pictures of newborns swathed in blue and pink, next to a bulletin board of cards from grateful parents. In the middle of all the pictures hung a flat screen that streamed live video of the entrance to her clinic. Now it showed an empty sidewalk, occasionally a passerby, and a tree-lined street littered with yellow leaves.
For a few tense minutes, she watched—and then, just as she turned back to her computer, she heard it: the creak of the front door. She felt her body stiffen.
Neon red light burst from the screen on the wall, followed by an earsplitting whistle. She swiveled fast to face the screen. Between flashes of red, she could make out a man in a suit. Shielding her eyes, she grabbed a remote from her desk drawer. As she clicked off the alarm, the high-pitched whistle faded, leaving a ringing in her ears.
She stared at the screen, which preserved a snapshot of the intruder. This one was a stout older man with a raised knee, captured the moment he entered the clinic’s waiting room. He wore a black suit and a stern expression, also a gun at his waist. Arianna’s stomach clenched as
