emotion. It was a statement of fact.
‘She’s a human being,’ she defended, yet in even the short time she’d known this man Stephanie Jacobs knew compassion was a quality he didn’t possess, or he kept it pretty much chained up in a dark recess somewhere in that black soul of his. How could that be so, she thought, in a career that was dedicated to the betterment of the human condition? Perhaps that’s where she had gone wrong — or right, depending upon your point of view; perhaps she had allowed compassion to creep in too much, to prise open that cool, clinical reserve of hers. Not so long ago she had considered herself to be immune to such sentiments, for you simply couldn’t do this job and have any deep kind of feeling for the subject. The woman on the bed had to be meat in a clinical trial. Simply that. But it had all changed and she was on the verge of throwing her career into the trashcan because that often-cruel veneer of medical dispassion had been scraped away once and for all.
She took the clipboard from him. ‘She’s stable?’
‘Mother and foetuses doing well,’ he said. He went over to a cabinet on the wall and took out a glass bottle and a syringe. ‘Time for bye-byes, miss,’ he said.
‘I’ll finish that off,’ said Stephanie.
He pumped air out of the needle, a thread of silver liquid arcing upwards. ‘That’s OK, I’ve got it,’ he said, eyeing the syringe carefully.
‘It’s two in the morning. You should have finished hours ago. Go home. You’re supposed to be going out with your wife tomorrow — today — or have you forgotten?’ She held out her hand for the syringe. Beckoned enticingly with her fingers. ‘Come, give it here; it’s past your bed time too.’
He hesitated momentarily then handed it over. ‘Careful, Dr Jacobs, she’s a little wildcat tonight.’ He paused at the door, turned back to her. ‘I’d prefer it if I were going somewhere with you instead, you know.’ He grinned. ‘Come on, give me a sign. Give me some hope.’
‘You’re married,’ she pointed out, tapping the syringe with her fingernail.
‘So?’
‘So go to your wife,’ she said, smiling at him and turning to the woman.
‘You little tease,’ he said, leaving her and closing the door.
‘You little prick,’ she said under her breath, her smile falling away. Stephanie Jacobs moved over to the bed; the restrained woman lifted her head slightly, watched her keenly, the muscle in her smooth jaw working away like a mole beneath sand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, holding aloft the syringe. But she quickly pumped out the contents into the air and tossed the needle into a sharps bin. ‘Sorry that he’s such an arsehole.’ She bent to her haunches, touched the young woman’s forehead. It was very warm and damp with sweat. ‘Listen, I’m going to leave the room for a few minutes. I want you to stay calm, and if anyone comes in I need you to behave as if I’ve given you the sedative. Do you understand? You’ve had the sedative. Now do as I say. I’ve come to help you get out of here.’
‘You bitch!’ snarled the woman hoarsely.
Stephanie gave a shrug. ‘I can’t argue with you there. Remember what I told you, if you want to get out of here.’
She went to the door, opened it fractionally to check the corridor. It was empty. A fluorescent light flickered nervously. She hurried down the corridor, the sound of her footsteps coming back at her hollow and unusually loud, as if they strived to betray her. She felt sick with apprehension, her legs threatening to buckle beneath her, but there was no choice now. She knew she had to go through with this. She had the access. She would go unchallenged.
A part of her wished she had never met them both.
She wished she had never met Pipistrelle or listened to his outlandish ramblings, because that is what she first thought them. The ramblings of a man who went by the name of a bat. How crazy, how outlandish. But now she knew differently. It was she that had been caught up in something twisted, not he. On one level she hated Pipistrelle, because he’d confronted her, held up her dark deeds to the light for her to see in all their corrupt glory, and she did not like what she beheld. But there could be redemption, he said. It did not have to be like this. There could be salvation.
Then there was the other man. A powerful, respected being in his own right. A giant in the pharmaceutical industry. She was in awe of him. They all were, even his peers. How could she resist that? Better people had tried and failed. She realised how easily she had fallen for his flattery and the twin lures of a high financial reward and her name up there with the giants of research, and how easily his honeyed promises had led her to become something cold and vile.
Yes, she had been attracted to the career partly because of the illness that took her mother in old age and scrambled her mind so much that she wasn’t the same woman. Attracted to it because she could make a difference to people’s lives. It was partly why medical research held such allure. Partly. But once there her greed for professional recognition rose quickly like oil in water, to the surface, so that when she had shown startling promise, and had been headhunted for higher and better things, she gorged on the opportunities heaped before her, and entered, almost without question, her darkest phase; a phase when she felt she choked her very humanity in the process.
And in truth that’s why she was here, to atone for her sins. That’s why she must go through with this and accept the consequences, whatever they might be. Pipistrelle had promised safety, for herself and her year-old daughter, and she believed him. Trusted him.
God, she wished she had never heard of Project Gilgamesh.
The ladies’ locker room was empty, as she expected. There were few staff members abroad at this hour, a couple of colleagues hunched over their Petri dishes and agar jellies in a lab down the corridor; a security guard up top, guarding the main entrance to the underground chambers; another guard floating around, patrolling the building somewhere. She unlocked the metal door to her own locker, withdrew a white lab coat. Contrary to popular myth, they rarely wore them all the time, as seen in the movies. Most researchers preferred not to wear them and there was only a rush to put them on when they were being inspected by the bigwigs. This coat was her spare. She groped in the locker for a plastic name badge. This was definitely not hers. Pipistrelle had made a false one based upon her own. She looked closely at it; he’d done a good job and she wondered where he got the expertise. The likeness to the woman in the bed was close enough to fool a quick, disinterested glance, and that, she hoped, was all that was needed.
She took out a pair of flat shoes. They may be a size too big, she thought, but they’d have to do. She put everything into a carrier bag and checked the corridor before dashing out.
‘Evening, Stephanie,’ said a voice at her back. She turned, horrified.
He walked calmly down the corridor towards her, his hands in his pockets.
Randall Tremain was young, ambitious, you could read it in the way he carried himself, she thought. He was the head of security’s number two. Second in charge. His good looks, his warm smile, were masks to a far colder nature. She didn’t trust him, in the same way he trusted no one else. He smiled but she realised he was scrutinising her, digging deep beneath the fragile crust of her outward calm. She hadn’t expected him to be here. He wasn’t supposed to be in the building tonight.
‘Good evening, Mr Tremain.’
‘She is well?’
Stephanie nodded. ‘Well enough.’
‘Have to look after our valuable little investments, don’t we?’
‘Absolutely.’
He stared for a second longer than was comfortable. ‘I’m keeping you from your job, I’m sorry.’ He passed her and disappeared down the corridor.
She breathed a heavy sigh of relief, waited a few seconds and then rushed back to the room.
The woman lay watching her closely as she unloaded the contents of the carrier bag onto the foot of the bed. Stephanie bent down to her. ‘I’m now going to untie the straps from your ankles. I need you to keep calm and keep quiet. Do you understand?’ She placed a hand on the woman’s arm. ‘I promise to get you out of here, so please do as I say. For both of us.’ She drew in a calming breath and untied the first ankle. It left a large red welt. The woman didn’t move. She unbuckled the next, and then moved swiftly around the bed to the strap holding down the woman’s right arm. Finally she paused at the buckle on the last strap. ‘Remember what I told you,’ she said. ‘Keep calm.’
