Nano

CHAPTER 42

The first thing Pia did when she got home was take a quick shower to get Berman’s scent off of her. Then she uploaded the pictures from the camera onto her computer and found that the shot of Berman could not have been any better. With the shock of the blindfold coming off and the flash of the camera, his eyes were fully open. Pia could see white sclera all 360 degrees around the iris. And the focus was so sharp it practically looked three dimensional. It was a better picture than the one of her own eyes, and that had worked well.

As she had done with her own photo, Pia enlarged the eyes to life size, then transferred the image to her iPhone. She worked fast, maintaining the intensity that had a hold on her since she ran out of Berman’s house. She’d never bothered to dress even when she pulled up to her apartment in her complex. No one was around at the time, as it was almost midnight, and she just ran in, carrying the camera and her clothes.

She hadn’t stopped moving since. Now she prepared to go to Nano immediately. She found her lab coat where it had been hanging for over six weeks and her ID, then tied her hair back in a ponytail before returning to her car. On the way to Nano, she ran down a checklist in her head. She knew she needed a lot of luck if it all was to work, and the closer she got, the more nervous she became. The confidence she’d felt back at her apartment melted away. The only thing in her favor was her familiarity with the graveyard-shift security staff from having interacted with them so often, probably more than anyone else on the scientific staff, coming in as often as she did on off hours. She was betting on the fact that they hadn’t seen her in over a month wouldn’t arouse any suspicions. In the past there had often been equivalent intervals. Still, the closer she got the more nervous she became. There were lots of reasons why what she was about to attempt might not work.

By the time Pia pulled up to the gate, she was shaking. She bit her lip as she handed over her ID to the guard. To Pia’s delight, the man merely glanced at it before handing it back. He touched the peak of his hat in a kind of salute before saying “Evening, madam” and raising the gate.

Getting through the gate as easy as she did buoyed Pia’s spirits, even though what was ahead was going to be more of a test. At the same time she was reasonably certain she would recognize at least one of the security people, and he would recognize her. She had frequently chatted with the guards when she was leaving and they often teased her about being so committed. She hoped that familiarity would mean they wouldn’t watch her too closely.

Pia parked and walked as confidently as she could to the entrance. Two guards were on duty. One, Russ, she recognized, but the other was a much younger man she didn’t know. She guessed he was new.

“Hello, Dr. Grazdani, long time no see,” said Russ. “Sorry to hear about your accident.”

“Yes, hi, Russ. I’m back.” Pia groaned inwardly.

Russ had been on duty when Pia had gained entry using the picture of her own eyes. Pia looked over at the reception desk, and was relieved to see that no one was sitting by the computer. Pia worried that a guard stationed there might see that the system was admitting Zachary Berman, CEO, and not this woman no one had seen for more than a month. But if she couldn’t get in, it didn’t matter who was sitting where. Pia switched her attention to Russ, but he was back talking to his youthful colleague and paying her no mind.

Pia whipped out the cell phone and without looking back placed the image of Berman’s eyes in front of her own. There was a reassuring beep. A green light flashed. It worked the first time. Pia swung open the glass door and was about to march through.

“Dr. Grazdani.”

It was Russ.

“Yes,” said Pia, knowing there was nowhere to run to.

“Welcome back.”

“Thank you, Russ,” said Pia. “It’s nice to be back.”

Pia scuttled away, slapped the elevator call button impatiently, and boarded the moment the doors opened. The whole time she was worried she’d hear her name being called out a second time. She breathed a sigh of relief when the doors closed and the elevator began its smooth ascent. Once she arrived on the fourth floor, she wasted no time walking down to her lab. Again she used the phone trick and again the scanner cooperated. A moment later she was in her lab.

Although she was tempted to wander around to look at the experiments under way and get a sense of what was going on with the mammalian experiments, she felt she didn’t have the time. Berman might well be madder than hell, as well as sexually frustrated, and possibly might react by making her persona non grata. She doubted it, knowing what she did about the man, but she couldn’t be sure and wanted to get in as much searching around Nano as she could in case it was the last time she would be able to get in the facility.

Knowing that there were security cameras all over Nano, Pia understood she couldn’t just wander around in her lab coat and jeans, looking out of place. Many employees wore scrubs, as in a teaching hospital, and she wanted at least that much anonymity. Pia found a set in Mariel’s office that were a bit too large but she put them on anyway, topping off her disguise with a surgical mask and a hood.

A few miles away, on a bedside table in an upscale apartment, a cell phone trilled. A text was delivered. A couple of minutes later, the phone sounded again, and this time a hand reached out from under the bedclothes and picked up the phone to check it. Whitney Jones was irritated at having forgotten to mute the phone when she’d turned out the light. The fact that it had rung wasn’t unusual. Her phone number was linked to numerous systems across the whole company that alerted her to certain people’s movements, but the only person who really mattered was Berman, and if he wanted to reach her, he could use the house phone, which he did on a regular basis. Sometimes it was for the most trivial of reasons, including that he couldn’t sleep.

Whitney looked at the screen. There were two texts: The first informed her that Zachary Berman had entered Nano at 2:05 A.M., then, at 2:08, he had gone into one of the labs on the fourth floor. Whitney sighed. There was nothing unusual about Berman showing up at Nano at any hour of the day or night, but she wondered sleepily why he wanted to visit that particular lab. She shrugged and put the phone back on her night table. Quickly, she fell back asleep before she was able to speculate any further.

Fully attired in scrubs, Pia headed for the door to the hallway. The lab was much as she had left it, with the same banks of equipment she had spent hours and days and months poring over. She wondered for a second who worked there now, but quickly discarded the thought. She had no time to reminisce; there was work to be done. What she did notice were banks of mice cages.

Leaving the relative safety of her familiar lab, Pia stepped out into the corridor. Her plan was to head down to the doors leading to the bridge that she had tried to go through unsuccessfully on several previous occasions. They were the doors from which Mariel always emerged whenever she had been off doing whatever it was she did elsewhere in the complex.

As Pia approached the doors she began to wonder what she might find. There were other buildings in the Nano complex, but the one to which she was headed seemed to hold the most promise. It was close to the building that housed most of the biotech labs, and it was physically connected. If there was an infirmary on the grounds, it most likely was there.

Pia tried to walk at a normal pace. She didn’t want to appear in a hurry, nor did she want to look as if she didn’t know where she was going. As she approached the door, she cupped the iPhone in her hand in an attempt to make it less obvious and made sure the photo of Berman’s eyes was on the screen. Pia brought the phone up along the right side of her head. To the left, on the ceiling, was what looked like a security camera: a small, inverted, dark brown plastic bowl. Stepping up to the scanner, Pia moved the phone in front of her eyes. As soon as she heard the telltale beep, she quickly lowered the phone and slipped it into the pocket of her scrub pants. The light flashed green. The door clicked. She was through.

Once again, Pia’s heart was pounding, now with a mixture of fear and anticipation. But on the other side of the storied doors the corridor looked exactly the same as it did on the near side: brightly lit with white walls and white composite floor. To Pia it didn’t even look like she was on a bridge connecting the two buildings. But after walking fifty feet or so, she guessed she had passed into the new building, and that knowledge lent the sterile corridor a sinister feel. There were a few blank doors but no signs or numbers. Above were occasional inverted plasic half spheres, probably cameras. She passed a bank of elevators on her left with oversized doors.

Suddenly, she saw someone walking along the corridor toward her, a man, judging by his size, but with his face concealed behind a surgical mask like hers. He was carrying a modern-looking white valise that blended with the environment. Pia’s heart skipped a beat as he glanced in her direction as they closed on each other. At about ten feet of her, he nodded slightly before looking forward in the direction he was headed. Pia nodded back and kept walking. They passed without a word like two ships in the night.

Pia let out a breath. Holding it in had been instinct. Of course there were to be people around, she reasoned, as well as other people possibly following her on TV monitors. She had to expect as much. She had to stay calm and continue walking. But where was she going? She passed several doors with iris scanners. Which ones should she enter? She assumed she was on the fourth floor as the bridge came from the fourth floor of the biotech building. But she couldn’t be sure. In theory, the idea of exploring the building seemed straightforward. In reality it was anything but.

The corridor took a left-hand turn and soon reached an intersection. Lines painted on the floor pointed in opposite directions: green to the left, and red the right. Which one to take? In either direction, the way ahead looked the same: more corridor. Green for go, thought Pia, but then changed her mind and went the other way, turning right. After what seemed a hundred feet, there was another left-hand turn, and then in front of Pia, past an unmanned guard station, was a set of heavy, large double doors with an iris scanner set in the wall to the side. Whatever passed through these doors had to be big.

Pia still didn’t know what she was looking for, but her intuition told her she had stumbled onto something. For the fourth time that night, she flashed her iPhone over the scanner and waited for the green light. When it came on, she opened one of the doors and walked in. When she saw what the room contained, Pia’s eyes bulged and she swallowed hard. “Oh, my God,” she said in a stunned whisper.

When Whitney Jones’s phone woke her for the second time, she saw it was Berman again, moving around the Nano complex. Good grief! Now he was in the main room inside the inner sanctum, so only the hardwired devices like the iris scanners would be able to communicate with the outside world. If she could, she would have called Berman to find out if everything was hunky-dory and ask what was making him wander all over creation. She decided to send a text that would be waiting for him when he got back outside the infirmary building.

“What’s up?” she typed. “Everything ok? Don’t forget London calls at 8 am ur time.”

Putting her phone back down, Whitney cursed before rolling over. She worried that she might have trouble going back to sleep.