Last shot

Chapter 39

The churning of the roller bottles in combination with the moist warmth of the incubator augmented Dolan's stress hangover. He sped his pace through the passage, his skin reflecting back the red tint thrown from the hundreds of quarts of gently spinning growth fluid. The events of last night, from the party to the explosion's aftermath to the hum of the crime-scene cleaners' machinery, had left him so wired and rattled that he'd lain in bed agitated for hours after Chase disappeared out the window. He'd awakened with a sourness in his mouth to match the toxic thoughts that had pervaded his broken sleep.

He passed through the airlock into the test suite, the screeches of the monkeys making him smile for the first time in days. Huang wasn't at his desk, but on his chair, as promised, were the PowerPoint slides that Dolan needed for his talk at Friday's pre-IPO presentation. The magnifications depicted the stages of poxvirus's transformation into Xedral. Always a crowd pleaser.

The macaques settled from the excitement of Dolan's entrance, emphasizing the emptiness of the suite. Tuesday morning's departmental stratcom had drawn Huang's team into the conference room on the south corridor.

Grabbing the slides and turning to go, Dolan extended his arm to receive Grizabella's high five. His hand whiffed through air.

The cage was gone.

Dolan stood dumbly, regarding the blank space.

Across the suite the storage-closet door sucked open from an unfelt breeze, the latch bolt tapping back against the plate. Before the door a janitor's mop protruded from an abandoned rolling bucket.

Uneasy from the sudden calm of the monkeys, Dolan set down the slides. He crossed the lab and toed the bucket. It rolled to the side on squeaky wheels. He gripped the door handle and pulled.

An empty cage sat centered on the closet floor, Grizabella's name and ID number rendered on the affixed plaque.

Two men in generic Beacon-Kagan lab coats entered. They nodded, and then the burlier of the two breezed past Dolan, claiming Grizabella's cage.

"Where is this test subject?" Dolan asked.

"We don't know. We were just told to clean up."

"What do you mean? What happened to the test subject?" The men didn't slow, so Dolan followed them. "Was she in the cage when you started?"

The other said, "She was removed from the study." They were maddeningly uninterested, unhalting in their progress toward the doors.

"This is part of my experiment," Dolan said. "Who gave you permission to remove this test subject?"

"I'm sorry, Dr. Kagan. We're just following instructions. Isn't this Dr. Huang's section of the lab?"

The sliding doors opened with a hiss, and they passed through.

"Who authorized this?" Dolan shouted after them.

The doors sealed with a vacuum slurp. A few of the monkeys tittered, in on a private joke. Dolan fell into Huang's chair, rolled a few inches.

Huang's screen saver bounced around. A monkey striking the pose of Rodin's Thinker. Witty.

Dolan allowed his pinkie to graze the keyboard. The screen saver vanished, revealing a Windows desktop. Huang was still logged in.

Alone in the suite, no approaching footsteps on the hallway tile.

Dolan did a search/find using Grizabella's subject ID number, calling up a number of documents. The most recently changed was a spreadsheet titled Subject log-X3-AAT thru X5-AAT.

He stared at the Excel icon for a very long time, the chatter of monkeys echoing around the sterile walls.

Then he double-clicked on it.