"So you had her killed, knowing procedure would require my suspension and an investigation."
"It seemed that had solved our little problem, and with Senator Waylan putting pressure on the mayor, we'd have time to finish. We were so very close to complete success."
"Organ regeneration."
"Exactly." He all but beamed at her. "You have filled in blanks. I told the others you would."
"Yeah, I've filled them. Friend screwed up your cushy circle with his artificial implants, knocked away your funding." She hooked her thumbs in her pockets, moved a little closer. "You'd have been pretty young then, maybe just getting your toehold. Must've pissed you off."
"Oh, it did. It took me years to establish myself enough to gather the resources, the team, the equipment to compatently continue the work we'd been doing when Friend destroyed it. I hadn't quite reached the brass ring of prominence when he and some colleagues began experimenting with melding live tissue with the artificial material. But Tia, she believed in me, in my passions. She kept me well informed."
"Did she help you kill him?"
"No, that I did unassisted. Friend had gotten wind of my interests, experiments. Didn't care for them. He intended to use his influence to cancel my funding – pitiful as it was – to research the regeneration of animal organs. I canceled him and his little project first."
"But then you had to go under," she said easing forward with her eyes steady on his. "You planned to move to human organs eventually, so you covered your tracks."
"And covered them well. Enlisted some of the very best hands and minds in the medical field. And all's well that ends well. Watch your step."
She stopped at the foot of the gurney, laid a hand casually on the guard. "You know they've got Young. He'll roll over on you."
"He'd die first." Waverly chuckled. "The man is obsessed with this project. He sees his name shining in medical journals for the ages. He believes I'm a god. He would bite through the artery in his own wrist before he'd betray me."
"Maybe. I guess you couldn't count on that kind of loyalty from Wo."
"No. She was always a risk, always on the outskirts of the project. A skilled doctor but a fairly unstable woman. She began to balk when she discovered our human samples had been… appropriated without permission."
"She didn't expect you to kill people."
"They're hardly people."
"And the others?"
"In this arena? Hans believes as I do. Colin?" He moved an elegant shoulder. "He prefers to wear blinders, to pretend not to know the full extent of the project. There are more, of course. An undertaking of this magnitude requires a large if select team."
"Did you send the droid after Jan?"
"You've found her already." He shook his head in admiration, and his hair gleamed like gold under the bright lab lights. "My, that was quick. Of course. She was one of those loose ends."
"And what will Cagney say when you tell him Louise was another loose end?"
"He won't know. It's very simple, if you know how, to dispose of a body in a health center. The crematorium is efficient and never closed. What happened to her will remain a mystery."
In an absent gesture, Waverly stroked a hand over Louise's hair. Eve wanted to taste his blood for that alone.
"It will likely break him," Waverly considered. "I'm sorry for it. Very sorry to have to sacrifice two fine minds, two excellent doctors, but progress, great progress, requires heavy sacrifice."
"He'll know."
"Oh, on some level, certainly. And he'll deny. He does his best work in denial. But he will consider himself responsible. Guilty, I suppose, by omission. He is certainly aware that experiments and research are being conducted in this and other facilities, without official sanction. He tends to look the other way easily, to call out his loyalty to the club. One doctor does not turn on another."
"But you do."
"My loyalty is to the project."
"What do you hope to gain?"
"Is that the blank you can't fill? My God, we have done it." Now his eyes sparkled, emerald green and full of power. "We can rejuvenate a human organ. Within one day, a dying heart can be treated and brought back to health. Not just health, but strength, youth, vigor." Excitement had his voice rising, deepening. "Better in some cases than it was before it was damaged. It can be all but reanimated, and that, I believe, is possible with a bit more study."
"Bring the dead to life?"
"The stuff of fiction, you're thinking. So were transplants once, cornea replacement, in vitro repair. This can and will be done, and very soon. We're nearly ready to go public with our discovery. A serum that, when injected directly into the damaged organ through a simple surgical procedure, will regenerate the cells, will eradicate any disease. A patient will be ambulatory within hours, and will walk out, cured, in under forty-eight. With his own heart or lungs or kidneys, not some artificial mold."
He leaned toward her, eyes gleaming. "You still don't understand the scope. It can be done over and over again, to every organ. And from there, it's a small step to muscle, to bone, to tissue. With this beginning, we'll draw in more funding than we can possibly use to complete the work. Within two years, we will be able to remake a human being, using his own body. Life expectancy can and will double. Perhaps more. Death will essentially become obsolete."
"It's never obsolete, Waverly. Not as long as there are people like you. Who will you choose to remake?" she demanded. "There's not enough room, not enough resources for everybody to live forever." She watched his smile turn cagey. "It'll come down to money then, and selection."
"Who needs more aging whores or sidewalk sleepers? We have Waylan in our pocket, and he'll push his influence in East Washington. The politicians will jump right on this. We've found a way to clean up the streets over the next generation, to employ a kind of natural selection, survival of the fittest."
"Of your selection, your choice."
"And why not? Who better to decide than those who've held human hearts in their hands, slid into the brain and gut? Who understands better?"
"That's the mission," she said quietly. "To create and mold and select."
"Admit it, Dallas, the world would be a better place without the dregs that weigh it down."
"You're right. We just have a different definition of dregs."
She shoved the gurney hard to the right and leaped over it.
Roarke crouched at the secured door. His entire world had become that single control panel. There was a raw bruise on his cheekbone, a jagged gash in his shoulder.
The security droid was minus his left arm and head, but it had taken entirely too much time.
He forced his mind to stay focused, his vision to remain clear, and his hands steady. He never flinched when he heard footsteps pounding down the corridor behind him. He could recognize the slap of cheap cop shoes a mile off.
"Jesus, Roarke, was that droid your work?"
"She's in there." He didn't glance back at Feeney, but continued to search for the next bypass. "I know it. Give me room, don't get in my light."
Peabody cleared her throat as the computer warning sounded again. "If you're wrong – "
"I'm not wrong."
She rammed her fist into his face and relished the sting of knuckles meeting flesh. Something ripped as she tackled him and sent them crashing onto the floor.
He wasn't soft, and he was desperate. She tasted her own blood, felt her bones jar, saw one quick burst of stars when her head cracked against the wheels of the gurney.
She didn't use the pain, she didn't need it. She used her rage. Half blind with it, she straddled him, slamming her elbow into his windpipe. He gagged, strained for air. And she twisted the syringe he'd nearly pumped into her side out of his hand.