The Wrangler found a clue in one of Lyda’s own research articles. A footnote about BDNF—Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor—gave him an idea. He went back to the dissections, this time diving deep into the rat brains. It took him two weeks to be sure enough of the idea to share it.
Mikala and Lyda were in the lab, working at separate computers. Some days they barely spoke to each other, yet they were rarely apart. The Wrangler stood in the middle of the room, equidistant from them. He held his lab reports in one hand, and his laptop in the other.
“The rats are depressed,” he said.
“You don’t say,” Mikala said without looking up.
“I went back and extracted each hippocampus,” he said. “They’re twenty to thirty percent smaller than they ought to be.”
He carried the reports to Mikala’s workstation, and she leaned forward to study them. Her neck was very beautiful, a strong contributing factor to her high physical score. Her hair smelled of citrus. He had never accounted for scent on his score card, but he wondered if he should start tracking that as well; research suggested that scent played a strong role in mate choice.
“Damn it, you’re right,” Mikala said. “Lyda, take a look at this. The poor little guys are clinically depressed.” Both women laughed, and he laughed with them, though he didn’t quite understand why it was funny. He was flush with the heat of their regard.
“This is great news,” Lyda said. She walked up behind Mikala. “We can market it as pest control. All you need is a bunch of really tiny nooses.”
Mikala laughed again. “The rats just kill themselves!”
“The tough part is teaching them to write the suicide notes,” Lyda said.
The Wrangler watched their faces—especially Mikala’s. He had never seen her laugh this hard. He’d hardly seen her laugh at all, lately.
When they settled down, he said, “I do have a suggestion for the next batch, however.”
“You do, huh?” Lyda said. Still grinning.
He said, “Is it possible—and I’m not sure it is—to increase the transcription rate of BDNF? I was looking at the CAD program—” He saw the two women exchange a look of surprise and said, “I’m sorry, was that not appropriate?”
“No, no,” Lyda said, still amused.
“We’re just impressed,” Mikala said. “Continue.”
He opened his laptop and showed them the change in the tumor cells that he thought might work. The women looked thoughtful, and finally Mikala said, “It’s worth a shot.”
They were taking him seriously! He could practically see them updating his scorecard.
In the end Mikala could not implement the exact change he suggested, but the idea led her in another direction. A month after he had brought her his diagnosis, she handed him the first batch of NME 110.
“I think the rats will be happier with this,” she said. “Thanks for your help on this, Rovil.”
At last he was being recognized. The Wrangler was dead. What would he become next?
—G.I.E.D.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Holy shit,” I said to Rovil. Ollie and I stood side by side in his foyer, surveying his apartment. “This is like a fucking Sims house.”
He smiled hesitantly, not getting the reference.
“The Sims,” I said. “Computer game when I was a kid.” Supposedly the point was to guide your virtual self into getting a job and falling in love and starting a family, but I spent all my time using cheat codes to get virtual dollars which I then used to build the coolest house and fill it with the coolest gadgets and furniture.
Rovil was playing it in real life. The apartment was overcrowded with trendy objects: white leather couches, a La Cornue gas range, white walls that became video screens and video screens that acted as walls, a sleek steel dining room table that appeared to hover over the floor, a glass-encased samurai sword … Each item was tremendously expensive, and each looked like it belonged in a different house.
Just like the twelve-year-old me, Rovil had no taste.
“How much is Landon-Rousse paying you?” I asked.
“It’s only two bedrooms,” Rovil said.
“It’s two bedrooms on the Lower East Side with that fucking view,” I said. The floor-to-ceiling windows were the classiest things about the apartment. We were on the twentieth floor, looking across the sparkling night city toward the Williamsburg Bridge, which glowed and pulsed with the lights of traffic. If it were me, I would have emptied the apartment except for a single couch and then set it in front of the window.
“I’ll be back in a bit,” Dr. Gloria said. “I need to see the city.” She slid through the window and flapped into the night.
Rovil said, “LR does compensate me a little better than Little Sprout did.”
“What do you do for them?” Ollie said. She was scanning the room as if it were a vault to unlock. She’d barely spoken during the ride south, and I was growing nervous about her mental state.
“I’m a product owner,” Rovil said.
“Which means…?” she asked.
“I’m responsible for overseeing everything to do with a product during its entire life cycle, from R&D to testing to marketing.”
“What product is that?”
“Ollie, leave him alone,” I said.
Rovil smiled, embarrassed. “It’s not out yet. I would have to have you sign a nondisclosure agreement.”
Ollie bristled. “After all we’ve shared, you’re going to ask us to sign an NDA?”
“I’m sorry,” Rovil said, truly apologetic. “I didn’t mean—”
I stepped between them. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s get settled. I need a shower, and then Rovil’s going to take us out for dinner, right, Rovil?”
I hadn’t mentioned this to him, but he grinned. “Yes, of course.”
“Great,” I said. “Now show us where we’re bunking.”
Ollie and I carried our shopping bags into the second bedroom, which Rovil didn’t seem to use. There were cardboard boxes stacked in the corner, a small desk, and a futon. He found us towels and bed linens, and then showed us the guest bathroom.
I took the first turn in the shower. When I got back, Ollie was crouched over one of the boxes.
“What are you doing?” I said, whispering and laughing at the same time.
She showed me the open box, which was lined with several white plastic bottles. “Rovil brings his work home with him,” she said.
“Are those drugs?” I kept my voice low. “What kind?”
“The bottles aren’t marked,” she said. “But the boxes are all Landon-Rousse.”
“Well put ’em back. Most of what they make are cancer drugs. The side effects are killer.”
“What’s he doing with them?” she asked.
“I dunno. Factory seconds?” I opened the shopping bag full of clothes that Rovil had bought for us. I’d made him stop at a mall on the way home. “I can’t see Rovil as a drug dealer. Though, hey, he is loaded.” I lifted out a pair of new black jeans and a gray sweater.
“You shouldn’t have told him all that stuff,” Ollie said. She closed up the box. “He can testify against us now.”
“Nobody’s testifying against anybody. He’s in the same boat as us, now.” I pulled the sweater down over my head. “Besides, Rovil’s god wouldn’t let him harm us.”
She leaned against the desk, her arms wrapped about herself as if she were cold, and stared at the Persian rug (a beautiful piece, with the price tag still attached by a string to one corner). Her eyes flicked across its surface as if reading fast-moving messages. “Now that we’re in the US, we’re vulnerable. He lured us—”
“I called him,” I said. “I dragged him into this.”
“But still—”
“You’re doing it again, Ollie. This is exactly how you felt at the Smokes’ house. You didn’t trust them; you didn’t know why they’d help us. But that worked out, didn’t it?”