“Who is this?” the man snapped at Arianna.
She didn’t seem disconcerted. “Sam, I’d like you to finally meet Trent, Trent, this is Dr. Sam Lisio—one of the leading scientists working today.”
Trent extended his hand, but Sam ignored it. There was something hauntingly familiar about his name, like a snippet of a common melody.
“Arianna, are you mad?” Sam rasped.
“Just trust me, okay? He knows what’s at stake.”
She pushed the door open, motioning Trent inside. Sam did not budge.
“Are you serious?” Sam whispered with a note of fear.
“Sam, I’m telling you, he’s with us.”
Trent blinked and nodded. He wanted nothing more than to turn and run back into the alley.
Sam shot Arianna a vicious glance as he stepped aside. “It’s your loss more than ours.”
Arianna ignored him and grabbed Trent’s arm. Together they walked through the doorway. Bright light cascaded from the ceiling, assaulting his eyes. After his pupils adjusted, he saw that the room was about the size of a studio apartment, but with a much lower ceiling; if he raised his arms, he could scrape it. The first objects he saw were three microscopes on a counter at the back of the room, next to computer screens. Sitting on a row of stools, two men were staring at him with shock, but Trent took no notice. Seeing the microscopes was like witnessing the death of hope.
Claustrophobia overtook him as he realized he was standing in a reality that was exactly as Dopp had suspected. Unnerved, he glanced to the right: three white laminar flow hoods created a sterile environment on another counter, and across the room, a shiny black freezer stretched from floor to ceiling. Its green digital display read -78° C. Next to the freezer was an equally large incubator showing a steady temperature of 37° C. Next to them stood what Trent recognized as a carbon dioxide tank, a centrifuge, and a shelf with various supplies including petri dishes, gloves, vacuum tubes, pipettes and guns, and inverted microscopes.
As Trent surveyed the room, he heard a strange squeaking noise coming from the corner. He walked over—despite Sam’s protests—to a cage holding rats running on a spinning metal wheel. In another cage, more rats were crawling stiffly, if at all. One of the men near the microscopes asked him a question, but he wasn’t listening; he couldn’t hear. He turned back around to look at Arianna, who was shaking her head at Sam and gesturing. Behind them, next to a cot on the floor, was the black plastic case she had carried from her clinic.
He walked back toward them, feeling the remnant of hope slip away.
“What—what is this?” he stammered.
Arianna smiled as Sam glowered.
“It’s a lab,” she said. “And these are the scientists who are trying to save my life.” She motioned to the two men to come over. They did so, slipping their face masks off, removing their rubber gloves, and stuffing them into the front pockets of their white coats. “This is Trent, the man I’m seeing, who I promise won’t expose us, so don’t feel threatened. Trent, this is Dr. Patrick Evans and Dr. Ian Kelly.”
Patrick—a tall, bony man with lips as thin as his hair—lifted his head in minimal welcome. Ian, who was shorter and stockier, stared at him with dismay. Trent worried that his true identity was obvious, that he ought to just make a run for it. But no, he reassured himself. They couldn’t know.
“Please, can you at least say hello?” Arianna said. “He’s not a monster!”
The men grunted a greeting, which Trent reciprocated. He felt trapped in an ethical straitjacket laced tight with emotional strings, and for the first time in his life, he began to have a panic attack. His hands lost feeling and his throat seemed to close, as if his whole life force were withdrawing into his chest.
Just get the facts, he thought, coughing to cover up his nerves. “So how does this all work?”
“Well,” Arianna said, “all of this is top secret—”
“Used to be,” Sam interrupted.
“He’s not going to do anything!” she exclaimed, whirling on Sam.
Trent shook his head in a vain attempt to reassure him.
“So,” Arianna went on, “we have to be top secret to avoid detection by the DEP. It’s a complicated operation, actually, but it’s been working out for a few months just fine.”
Trent looked down at his wristwatch as if conferring with a trusty sidekick; that was all he needed to hear. But instead of glory, he felt confusion; instead of rage, curiosity.
“So how does it work?” he asked again.
“For the past few months, I’ve been recruiting as many sympathetic women as I can to donate their eggs at my clinic, which we then mix with sperm to create embryos. Of course, for the DEP, I record their donations as attempts to get pregnant through in vitro fertilization. But the DEP doesn’t keep track of pregnancies, only the leftover embryos, so they never know that these women aren’t getting pregnant from all these so-called attempts.”
“Clever,” Trent said. So that was behind the clinic’s sudden popularity, he realized.
“Once I have the embryos, I separate them from those of my real patients who are trying IVF. Then after about four days, when the embryos are at the right stage of growth, I bring the strongest ones in that case—” She pointed to the black case on the floor. “—which keeps them at the proper temperature until I drop them off here, for these guys to use.”
To use, Trent thought. How mechanical she made it seem, like dropping off a wrench at a car garage. He felt the first belated prick of anger, but focused on what she was saying.
“This is where the record keeping gets a little complicated, and is the most worrisome part. We take out about eighteen
