“I held out against my better judgment before, Arianna. I gave you the benefit of the doubt. But now it’s gone far beyond that. The DEP is trying to bring you down, you and all the other clinics on that list. And once the government is hell-bent on destroying you, how can you possibly win?”
“We can,” she insisted. “We have to.”
“I wish I could believe that. But they’re closing in. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail. What if someone followed you here?”
“They obviously haven’t, have they? And what about the plight of science? What about Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton, remember?”
Patrick shrugged sadly. “Who was I kidding? I’m no genius.”
Arianna opened her mouth to argue, but Sam cut her off. “Forget it. He’s a lost cause.”
“I’m sorry,” Patrick said. “But Sam’s made the bulk of our progress anyway.” He looked at Sam. “I know you’ll stay, and if there’s a solution, you’ll find it. You don’t need me.”
No one responded or moved. Looking down, Patrick rose and walked to the door. Before he opened it, he turned once to look at the furious group.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, quietly. Then he opened the door and slipped out as a chilling wind swept in.
Arianna closed her eyes, willing herself to remain calm. It was easier this time because she was not completely surprised. Patrick had seemed strangely apathetic the day before, as if his will to fight had disappeared with his courage.
Emily patted her knee. “Don’t think about him. We still have Sam.”
Arianna looked up at Sam, expecting to see him seething. But he was watching her with concern.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I think so. I just keep thinking about how you said you were getting closer. Maybe you don’t really need him?”
Sam shook his head. “I don’t. I know what combinations I have to try now; it’s just a matter of testing.”
“And only five days to wait,” Dr. Ericson chimed in. “And then we’ll get back on track. We can make it.”
Arianna looked at him gratefully. “I was so worried you would want to walk out, too, and then we’d have to close the clinic, since I can’t practice.…”
“We would never,” Emily interrupted. “We would rather go down with the ship than walk away.”
Her husband nodded. “That’s absolutely right. The clinic is everything to us, Arianna. We could never abandon it, or you. And if the only thing I ever did in my life was to help science even a little, then I would say it was damn worthwhile.”
Arianna smiled, feeling tears sting her eyes. She was about to respond when she heard a scraping against the floor. Sam pushed back his chair and stood up. The ceiling hung low above his head.
“Two things,” he announced. “First of all, none of you doctors should come here anymore. Patrick had a point—it’s plausible that someone could start following you, especially now. Who knows the extent of the new policy?”
“Fine,” Arianna said, “but we still need to get the embryos here when they’re ready.”
“Right, so we need someone trustworthy to step in and bring them to me.”
“How about Megan? Or Trent?”
Sam’s expression grew hard. “The former.”
“I’ll arrange it.”
“Second of all,” he went on, pacing across the concrete basement, “What we need to do now is plan for the transplant.”
“Already?” Emily asked.
“We need to prepare for the best-case scenario, so that if and when a breakthrough happens, we’ll be ready.”
Gavin and Emily nodded, excitement visible in their eyes.
“Sounds good to me,” Arianna said. “What do you need?”
“Egg cells. Five will do. I really need only one, but just to be safe, I want a few extra. Once I figure out how to make pure oligos, then the trick is to get your body to accept the cells, which is unlikely and dangerous if they are foreign matter.”
“Right…”
“So the theory is that we will scrape some skin cells from your cheek, Arianna. And then I’ll take a donated egg cell and remove its nucleus. In its place, I’ll inject the nucleus of your skin cell. The hybrid cell will act like an embryo and start dividing and growing, except that it will be your exact DNA. When it gets to the five-day stage, I’ll remove the stem cells, cue them to differentiate into oligos—by this point, I would have the growth factors down—and then we can transplant the cells into your spinal cord. Your body ought to accept them as its own. The cells should then travel up and down your spinal cord and replenish your lost myelin.”
“It’s genius,” Arianna cried. “Brilliant.”
“Theoretically, yes. But this technique has never been tried on humans.”
Sam stopped pacing and their eyes met. He looked at her with the adoring worry of a father unable to conceal his distress. Arianna smiled, feeling any lingering tension dissolve between them. Sam, she thought, you are my family.
“Tell me one thing,” she said. “What have I got to lose?”
SIXTEEN
The abrupt buzzing of Trent’s doorbell startled him. It was only 5:35 P.M. Arianna’s weekly piano lesson was not starting for another hour and a half. Who would be coming to see him this early? Surely not Dopp–it couldn’t be.
As Trent walked to the door, he imagined the interior of a jail cell—dirty, cramped, and cold, with maybe a sliver of light to retain his sanity. Paranoia had gripped him since the media leak had gone public the day before. Over and over, Trent mentally retraced his steps to the Cyber Café, the phone call to the Daily News, the dummy e-mail address he had created. Impossible, he thought. There was no way he could be discovered.
He put one hand on the doorknob. “Who is it?”
“It’s me,” came a voice, higher-pitched than he expected.
“Arianna!” he exclaimed, swinging open the door. “I didn’t—”
There was no beautiful face across from him. He stared blankly at the hallway wall.
“Down here,” she said.
He looked down and felt his jaw drop. She was sitting
