clear and secured. She made herself ignore the machine and concentrated on supervis-ing the equipment setup. She grinned when she saw that Rand had included a small espresso machine. Apparently even her coffee breaks would be private for a while.
The windows were blocked and sealed, inside and out, and the locks on the door had been drilled out and replaced with several high-security coded devices.
“Ma’am?” the technician installing the lock called her over. “We’re going to need you to key in a code for this when we’re done. Our orders are that only you will know the access code—and Mr.
Rand, of course. The code needs to include numbers, letters, upper- and lower-case. The longer the better.”
Brin nodded. She thought for a few moments.
“Where do I enter it?”
The young man handed her a keyboard that was wired into the lock. He stepped away, leaving her alone.
She typed her code quickly, then repeated it to verify.
“S@VanNah60024220.”
She knew she’d never forget. It was Savannah’s name and her birthdate backward. She knew, also, that it made the password less secure, but the insertion of the @ symbol and random caps should make up for her lack of attention to protocol. A series of lights flashed on the keyboard, and the small digital screen went blank. Only a single green light remained.
Brin handed back the keyboard, and the tech glanced at it, then smiled. “It accepted the code.
Usually we have to have people give it three or four tries to find something complex enough.”
“I’m a complex person,” she replied.
He held out a second keypad. “This one is a print analyzer,” he said. “Please place your right thumb on the pad.”
Brin did so, and a thin beam of light scanned her thumbprint. The tech went back to work for several more minutes, installing the print analyzer next to the door, then he turned back to her. “In order to enter the lab, you’ll need to key in your code, then place your thumb on the analyzer for a scan, okay, ma’am?”
She nodded, thinking that of all the labs in the building, this was the only one she knew of that had both a coded lock and a thumbprint lock to get in. Curious, she asked, “What happens if either the code or the print isn’t correct?”
The tech shook his head. “The whole lab will go into lockdown,” he said. “Short of someone blowing this steel door off the frame, no one will go in or out unless the system is reset by us.” He grinned at her, then added, “Try not to do that, ma’am. I hate being called out in the middle of the night for a lost password.”
“Got it,” she said.
Within fifteen minutes, the techs were cleared, the equipment was set up and only two things remained. Whatever was in the case she’d seen on Rand’s desk would have to arrive, and she would have to figure out what the hell it was.
She closed the door, started up the coffee machine and booted up the laptop. Four hours and so many pages of data later that they blurred in her mind, she sat back and stared at the machine in disbelief. Her coffee sat cold and forgotten beside her. She glanced at her watch, noting the time, and gasped. She closed the files, stood and turned to stare at the sample case, which was still sealed. Cables ran from the case to an outlet on the wall, and to a UPS backup in case the building power failed. Now she understood the caution and the secrecy. She reached out and touched the case gently—almost reverently.
Despite the mountains of data, what she had in her lab was relatively simple, at least in principle.
It was an answer, and the question was as familiar to Brin as her own heartbeat.
Degenerative diseases could be attached in a number of ways, but in too many cases all that medical science had done was find ways to slow them down. When the body quit fighting on its own, or began eating itself from within because some cell or protein mutated, or changed or blended incorrectly with another, it was difficult to reverse the process. In fact, for all practical purposes, it was impossible.
But this case held an answer. In fact, it held an army. It was a very small army, but potent. What the Chinese branch had sent for verification and further study was nothing short of the miracle she’d worked her entire career encounter.
They called them nanoagents—small manufac-tured structures capable of performing work on the cellular and subcellular level. They represented the smallest machines ever created, biological in nature and programmable to a purpose. That purpose was the restructuring of cells. She ran the data through her mind, searching for flaws and somehow unable to concentrate because she was lost in the possibilities.
In China, they’d taken healthy cells and used them to program the agents. Using tiny electrical signals, they’d brought their tiny machines into harmony with those cells, and then they’d released them into the biosystems of diseased cells. The nanoagents served a single purpose. Once programmed, they worked to bring their host into harmony with their programming. They’d been used to slow, halt and even reverse viral attacks and cellular dysfunction.
The claims made in the report on her laptop were pretty outrageous, but the research seemed solid. It hadn’t been slapped together or hurried, and somehow they’d managed to keep it under wraps. That alone was amazing, because just the possible discovery of something this big—something this overpoweringly wonderful—would have sent waves of reaction through several scientific communities.
She turned off the coffeemaker, checked the equipment and shut off the lights, slipping out into the hall. The building was down to a skeleton staff—she was nearly half an hour beyond her normally scheduled departure time. It wasn’t like her to forget time, even less like her to risk being late picking up Savannah. She had just enough time if she pushed the speed limit on the way.
A FEW HOURS LATER, Brin sat on the sofa, chewing her thumbnail and forcing herself to watch television. She wasn’t even sure what program was on.
She’d reached Dr. Britton’s call service and left a message, as well as a numeric page. There had been no return call, despite her use of the word
“emergency.”
Now her eyes flitted between the TV screen and Alex’s computer. It sat idle on the desk in the corner, mocking her—tempting her. There might be something in one of the files that would clue her in as to what was happening with him. As much as she needed to know the truth, she also hated violating his privacy. He’d never forbidden her access to the machine, but he’d mentioned it was work—
and that there were security issues. She’d always felt that was enough reason to leave it alone.
“Screw it!” she growled at last, slamming one fist on the sofa as she rose, stalking to the computer as though it might run away from her at any moment.
She hit the power button and watched the machine hum to life. She knew he had the system password protected. She was also pretty sure she knew what the password was, or at least a varia-tion of it. The security login screen opened and she stared at it, frowning.
Savannah. She typed it in with the caps at first.
When it didn’t take, she dropped the caps. Met with that failed attempt, the furrow on her brow deepened and she sighed as she sank back in the chair and folded her arms around herself. Then she sat up, and she smiled. She reached for the keyboard and typed.
“Savannah02242006.”
The computer screen went blue, and then the desktop popped into view, icons all in their neat rows along the left side.
“Bingo!”
Brin started sifting through files in the documents section. Chances were the document she was looking for would be a word processor or database document. She tried e-mail briefly, but the password was different and she couldn’t manage to break it. She even tried Alex’s old standby from their early days, but it was a no-go.
Then she found a document titled “Resignation.” Her finger paused over the mouse button for a second, and then dropped on it with some urgency.
It was a letter of resignation to someone named Denny, dated just two days before Alex’s departure. She had just begun to read it when an odd thing happened. A chat window popped open in front of her, obscuring the letter and flashing an annoying orange bar.
