Somewhere in the back of his mind, his conscience was shrieking.
He pulled back. “I still have so many questions,” he murmured. “This is all so unexpected.”
“I understand—it must be quite a shock. But a good one, I hope.” She smiled. “What do you want to know?”
“Where are the embryos?”
In his years at the DEP, Trent had never set eyes on an actual embryo, the driving force behind his work.
“They’re not too glamorous, but I’ll show you.” She tugged him over to the refrigerator and pulled open the heavy door. Gas billowed out. “That’s the carbon dioxide that controls their environment,” she explained. “And there they are.”
Rows of thin glass flasks lined the interior of the fridge. Inside each flask was a red liquid. As far as he could tell, there was no life in there at all. And even though he knew to expect this, the reality seemed like a letdown.
“I told you they weren’t that exciting,” Arianna said. “At this stage, they’re just clusters of cells that you can only see under a microscope.”
“I see. Why are they red?”
“The red fluid is a culture medium that contains nutrients for the cells.” She shut the door and turned to him. “We should go.”
He nodded with relief.
“Bye,” she called to Patrick and Ian, who lifted their heads from their microscopes but said nothing. Trent and Arianna crossed over to the door, where Sam remained seething.
“Sam.” She patted his arm affectionately. “Please don’t worry. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“We should change the password,” he spat.
“Okay,” Arianna said, rolling her eyes. “Tell me later.”
Trent waved awkwardly as he and Arianna walked out into the cold night air. The door shut hard behind them in satisfied riddance.
“Sorry about them,” she said immediately. “Working in this kind of atmosphere makes them paranoid. But it’s just because they don’t know you—it’s nothing personal.”
“No, don’t apologize. They—you—are taking a huge risk.”
“This is true.”
When they reached the landing of the stairs, he put his arm around her and guided her through the alley. “So why here?” he asked. “Of all places for a lab, a church basement? And how did you manage to set it up like that?”
“I know it’s an odd place, and scary at night, but we couldn’t risk using a known lab, because the DEP makes periodic sweeps. And you saw how much equipment is needed, so none of us had the space in our apartments. When we were talking about forming this group about a year ago—”
“Are there other members?”
“Two more, the other doctors who work at my clinic. They help with recruiting donors, keeping the clinic running smoothly and studying the embryos. So with the three scientists, there are six of us altogether.”
“How did you find the scientists?”
“When I was an undergrad at Columbia, Sam was the foremost embryonic stem cell researcher at our school before it became illegal, and I formed a club that rallied to support him after the DEP got on his trail. He ended up going to jail, though—”
Trent barely contained a gasp, recalling that his initial research had yielded the same story, forever preserved in the campus archives.
“—and I found him all these years later, through some mutual acquaintances. I approached him cold, explained my situation, and of course, he remembered me. He was basically a recluse when I found him, but I managed to convince him to take on this project—he needed this in a way as much as I do. And he contacted Patrick and Ian, who he had worked with at Columbia. He actually contacted his whole team from back then, but only Patrick and Ian would have anything to do with the idea.”
“Fear?”
“Yes. If the DEP ever discovered us, we would all go to jail, no doubt. But luckily a few others feel the same way Sam did: that someone has to take the risk, or else scientific progress will end. And I’m paying them, of course, since I commissioned the research.”
They were standing at the threshold of the alley, but Trent could not wrest himself away from her, or stop himself from prodding. “It’s very brave,” he said. “Wouldn’t you be putting your body in serious danger to be the first human trial, if it comes to that?”
“And I hope it does! Of course it would be very dangerous, but necessary, so the risk is meaningless.” She looked pensive. “I feel like I’m reclaiming my life and my world. And if I happen to die in the process, well, then, I hope they learn something from my body. Then I’d die happy. But I refuse to sit around and wait for it to happen, with no struggle, no point, nothing whatsoever to be gained.”
Trent drew a ragged breath. “So, you were saying, why here of all places?”
“Right. When we were talking about forming this group, I looked up foreclosure properties, and this abandoned church was available to the top buyer or it was going to be destroyed. So then I realized: What is the last place the DEP would look for a secret lab? In a church. Plus, I couldn’t help but enjoy the irony. So, to be extra cautious, I put the money in a real estate investment trust where my cousin is a partner. Her company has a bunch of legit investors and buys a lot of properties in Manhattan, so the church slipped in under the radar. She bought it in her company’s name, so the IRS has no reason to trace it to me. I purposely left it looking deserted so nobody would think anything had changed.”
“Smart move, especially if the IRS decides to audit you. But how did you get all the lab equipment? And
