A quick perusal of the port and Pia figured out where to attach the syringes. She plugged one into the line, toggled the stopcock, and drew a full syringe of blood, capped it, and quickly took two more. Hazarding a glance into the depths of the room, she noticed that a third tech had left. The remaining individual was still engrossed in whatever he or she was doing, so Pia pulled out her iPhone from her pocket, opened the camera app, switched off the flash, and quickly took a picture without raising the phone above the level of her hip.
Then Pia walked out of the room without looking back. Had she been seen? There must be cameras in there, she thought, but perhaps she didn’t look suspicious. Still, if anyone compared the entry logs with her appearance, she didn’t look much like Zachary Berman. She was afraid she didn’t have a lot of time. As Pia walked, she tried to process exactly what she had just seen. They were living, human laboratory experiments, somehow being kept alive, their circulatory systems being run through banks of testing equipment. Pia stopped for a second and thought she was going to throw up. What Nano was doing was such a travesty of ethics that it was unspeakable. But she didn’t have time to let herself become emotional. She gathered herself quickly. She had work to do.
As she retraced her steps back to her lab, Pia couldn’t help but think of the Chinese runner she had helped take to the ER. Was that him back in that chamber of horror? If not him, it was someone like him, a tattooed person maintained in a fish tank for physiological experimentation. Berman had said there were things going on at Nano that were taking place at facilities like it all over the world. Did he mean that? What she had just seen? Again, she felt a momentary wave of nausea sweep over her, making her shudder.
When she reached the lab, Pia thought about calling the police right away, but she was still ruled by her significant distrust of authority. She was trespassing, and it would be easy for Nano security to prove she had faked her way in using fabricated ID. The authorities would get nowhere near that lab tonight, and Nano probably had some major contingency plan for emergencies. Maybe they could dismantle the whole setup or exchange the human bodies for some other animals if necessary. The more information Pia had, the better.
Pia needed to look at the blood. Her work at Nano had involved microbivores, but she knew Nano could easily have been making other nanorobots with the same nanomolecular manufacturing techniques the company had perfected. Having seen the bodies in the tanks, Pia wondered what else Nano might be making. Perhaps these were nightmarish versions of tests that normally would have been conducted on lab animals, but in their race to bring to market, maybe they were just skipping animal testing for reasons of expediency and going directly to humans.
Back in her lab, Pia subjected some of the blood to a gentle, selective centrifugation, utilizing a special kind of apheresis to separate the blood solids from the plasma and then the solids themselves. Pia knew the nanorobots could be converted to neutral buoyancy by ultrasound waves, which she had used on the sample prior to putting it in the centrifuge.
With the gentle centrifugation under way, Pia turned on the scanning electron microscope to allow it to boot up. With that accomplished, and the remaining blood hidden in one of the many refrigerators in the lab, Pia peeled off her scrub clothes. She had another thought. She had to test the Chinese jogger’s blood that Paul still had squirreled away. It made her task that much more hazardous in that it would require leaving Nano and returning, but Pia knew she had to do it. Whatever she might find in the blood of the dissected individual in the tank, she needed to know if it was in the jogger, too.
Leaving the lights on in the lab, Pia went back to the elevators and descended to the lower level. As calmly as possible, she exited through the glass partition and walked back across the lobby toward the main exit. Russ was still on duty, reading a newspaper at the empty reception desk.
“You done for the night, miss?”
“No, Russ. I’m coming right back.”
CHAPTER 44
Like millions of other Americans. Paul Caldwell didn’t have a landline in his apartment, relying solely on his cell phone for communication. When he was off, he was really off, so he never had night call like most other physicians. For Paul that meant that when he climbed into bed, the cell phone was switched off.
Pia had learned all this about Paul early on in their friendship. She knew that when he was off duty and away from the hospital, if she really wanted to get hold of him, she had to go to his apartment. If it happened to be after hours, she knew it meant getting him out of bed.
That information had been theoretical until now. Leaving Nano, Pia didn’t bother trying to call Paul. Instead she drove directly to his apartment. Leaving her car running, she ran up to the front door of his building and leaned heavily on his intercom buzzer for a good minute before he answered.
“Who is it?” Paul asked, sleepily.
“Paul, it’s Pia. I have to talk to you.”
“Pia? Is that you? It’s three-thirty in the morning, can’t this wait?”
“No, it can’t wait. If it could, I wouldn’t be here.”
“What’s happening? Are you all right?”
“Paul, just let me in!”
Paul buzzed Pia in, and she ran up the three flight of stairs to his door.
“You have company?” she asked. She wanted to be sure.
“No. Only me.” Paul held open the door dressed only in his boxers, his eyes half closed, and his hair askew. “What is it that can’t wait?” He closed the door and stood in his foyer, looking pathetic.
“Where’s the sample of blood? The blood from the Chinese runner.”
“What? Why do you need that now?”
“Because I do. Where is it, Paul? I’m in a hurry.”
“I can see that. The blood’s at the hospital in the freezer of the refrigerator in the doctors’ lounge. At least that’s where I put it. Can’t you sit down and tell me what’s going on?”
“No, I can’t, really. I don’t have the time. I need to look at that blood. Look at it closely. You have to trust me, Paul. I know what I’m doing. If you get dressed, you can follow me in your car. We’ll go to the hospital, and you’ll get the sample and give it to me. Then you can be back here in your bed in thirty minutes or so. This can’t wait for morning. By morning I might not be able to get back into my lab at Nano.”
“I didn’t think you could get in your lab now. What’s changed?”
“I don’t have time to explain. I’ve got to get back there right now. I’ve burned a couple of bridges, maybe all of them, but I have an idea of what’s going on at Nano, what they didn’t want me to know. Let’s put it this way: it’s worse than I ever suspected. Come on, Paul. A couple of hours from now I’ll come back here and explain it all to you, provided I’m right.”
Paul started to protest, but Pia was already gone, leaving his door ajar. He knew he could go back to bed, but he knew Pia would come right back and get him up again. He pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, stepped into a pair of loafers and walked outside. Pia was sitting impatiently in her car with the engine running. Paul stepped up to the car, and Pia lowered the window.
“There’s really no time for talking, Paul. If you get me the blood, I can be back here within the hour, and we’ll have everything we need.”