Robin Cook - Seizure

The plan that Stephanie and Daniel had devised was to create ten separate stem-cell lines, each comprising cellular clones of Ashley Butler. All ten would contribute cells to be differentiated into dopamine-producing nerve cells. The tenfold redundancy was to serve as a safety net, since only one of the cell lines would ultimately be used to treat the senator.

Perhaps later that afternoon, or more likely in the morning, Stephanie would begin the process of harvesting the multipotential stem cells from the forming blastocysts, but until then she would have some free time. The only problem would be getting away from Daniel but staying within the safety of the Wingate Clinic, and thanks to his emotional detachment from her, she didn’t think that would be an insurmountable problem, although outside the clinic, he refused to let her out of his sight.

“How did the fusion go?” Daniel called out from where he was sitting.

“Looks good,” Stephanie said, peering at the construct under the lens of a microscope. The oocyte now had a new nucleus with a full complement of chromosomes. Following a process that no one yet understood, the egg would now begin mysteriously reprogramming the nucleus from its duties as the controller of an adult skin cell back to a primordial state. Within hours, the construct would mimic a recently fertilized egg. To initiate the conversion, Stephanie carefully transferred the artificially altered oocyte into the first of several activation mediums.

“Are you as hungry as I am?” Daniel called out.

“Probably,” Stephanie responded. She glanced at her watch. It was no wonder. It was almost twelve. The last time she’d had anything to eat was at six that morning, and it was only a continental breakfast of toast and coffee. “We can head over to the cafeteria once I get this egg into an incubator. It’s got only another four minutes in this medium.”

“Sounds good,” Daniel said. He slid off his stool and disappeared into their office to get out of his lab coat.

As Stephanie prepared the next activation medium for the reconstructed egg, she tried to think of some excuse to return by herself to the lab during their lunch. It would be a good time for a bit of sleuthing, since most everyone ate lunch between twelve and one, including the egg room technician, Cindy Drexler. Lunch hour was a major socialization time for the clinic staff. Stephanie’s first thought was to blame her need to return on the activation process of the eleventh egg, but she quickly discarded the idea; Daniel would be suspicious. He knew that once the egg was in the second activation medium, it was to sit undisturbed in the incubator for six hours.

Stephanie needed some other excuse and seemed to be coming up blank until she thought of her cell phone. Particularly after Daniel’s beating, she’d been compulsive about keeping it on her person, and Daniel knew it. There were several reasons for her compulsiveness, not least of which was that she’d told her mother to use the cell number rather than the hotel’s. But having just talked with her mother that morning and hence being assured of no imminent emergency with her health status, Stephanie wasn’t concerned about missing a call over the next half hour. After glancing back toward their tiny office to be certain Daniel wasn’t watching, Stephanie pulled the tiny Motorola phone from her pocket, switched it off, and placed it on the reagent shelf over the lab bench.

Satisfied with her plan, Stephanie returned her attention to the activation process. In another thirty seconds, it would be time to move the egg from the first medium to the next.

“What do you say?” Daniel questioned, as he reappeared without his lab coat. “Are you ready?”

“Give me another couple of minutes. I’m about to transfer the egg and put it into the incubator, and then we can be on our way.”

“Sounds good,” Daniel responded. While he waited, he stepped over to the incubator and looked in at the other containers, a few of which had been in there for five days. “Some of these might be ready to harvest stem cells this afternoon.”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” Stephanie responded. Gingerly, she carried the newly suspended reconstructed egg over to the incubator to join the others.

Kurt Hermann let his feet fall to the floor in an uncharacteristically sudden, uncontrolled movement. They had been perched on the countertop in the video room. At the same time, he sat bolt upright, causing the desk chair to roll backward a short distance. Regaining the serenity developed over many years of martial arts training, he scooted himself forward in a slow, deliberate fashion to get closer to the screen he’d been watching for the last hour. He couldn’t believe his eyes. It had happened so quickly, but it appeared as if Stephanie D’Agostino had just taken the cell phone Kurt had been trying to get his hands on over the previous week and a half out of her pocket and had deliberately placed it behind some reagent bottles on the shelf over the laboratory bench. It was like she was hiding it.

With the button on top of the joystick that was currently connected to operate the minicam he was watching, Kurt zoomed in. Using the joystick itself, he kept the camera directed at what he hoped was the phone. It was! Its black, molded plastic tip was just visible as it protruded from behind a bottle of hydrochloric acid.

Confused at this unexpected but promising development, Kurt zoomed back out, only to realize that Stephanie had disappeared from the camera’s angle. Using the joystick again, Kurt panned the room and quickly found both Stephanie and Daniel in front of one of the incubators. Increasing the gain on the volume control, he strained to listen in case she mentioned the phone, but she didn’t. They were continuing their talk about going to lunch, and within minutes they left the laboratory.

Kurt’s eyes rose to the screen just above the one he’d been watching. He saw the couple emerge from building number one and start across the central courtyard, toward building number three.

During the construction of the clinic, Paul Saunders had given his head of security carte blanche to make it secure, in hopes of avoiding a catastrophe similar to what had happened to the clinic in Massachusetts, when a couple whistle-blowers had penetrated the clinic’s database. Because they managed to gain unauthorized access to the computer server room and avoid apprehension after their trespass, Kurt had made sure the entire new complex was bugged with audio and video. Both the cameras and the microphones were the latest stealth technology, integrated by computer and completely unobstrusive. Unbeknownst to Paul, Kurt had had them included in the restrooms, the guest apartments, and most of the staff living quarters, where they were concealed in various and sundry electrical fixtures. Everything could be viewed from the monitors in the video room off Kurt’s office, and in the evenings, Kurt found watching some of them entertaining, even when security wasn’t necessarily an issue. Of course, Kurt could make an argument to the contrary, for it was important in an organization like the Wingate Clinic to know who was sleeping with whom.

Kurt continued observing Daniel and Stephanie until they entered building number three, although his eyes were mostly on Stephanie. Over the last week and a half, he’d become addicted to watching her, despite the ambivalence she evoked. He was both attracted and repulsed by her innate sensuality. As with women in general, he appreciated her beauty yet at the same time he recognized her Eve-like qualities. Kurt had watched her make and receive calls in the laboratory, and although he could frequently hear her side of the conversation, he was unable to hear the caller. Consequently, he’d not been able to provide Paul Saunders with the name of the patient as Kurt had promised, and Kurt liked to keep his promises.