The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [138]
He wasn't. The man who stood in the doorway wore, not a uniform, but a crisp lab coat. In photographs he would have been handsome, but in person there was a waxy quality to his flesh and a stiffness to his manner every bit as artificial as his shiny hair. He had all the life and charm of a manikin.
“I didn't expect to find you here, Dr. Larsen,” he said, baring whitened teeth in a facsimile of a smile.
“I was just leaving, Dr. Adler.” She angled her shoulder as if to brush past him, only he didn't move out of the doorway. He was easily twice her size.
Adler kept smiling. “I just saw Mel. He's on security tonight. He didn't tell me you were in the building.”
Larsen shrugged, hoping the action hid her trembling. “I suppose he forgot to mention it.”
It seemed as if he wanted to frown, but all he could manage was a slight reduction of his smile, though a furrow did shadow his forehead. “Mel never forgets things.”
“What are you doing tonight, Dr. Adler?”
He blinked, obviously confused. Maybe he wondered if she was asking him out; he had hit on her often enough those first weeks when they started sharing the lab, before he finally got the hint she wasn't interested.
“Oh,” he said, finally getting her meaning. “I wanted to get a new PCR reaction going so I can have the results tomorrow. You got the memo, didn't you? There's a bonus for any researchers who complete their current projects ahead of schedule.”
Larsen did her best to mimic his smile. “I'm sure you'll get it, Barry. The bonus, I mean.”
She didn't wait for a reply. Instead she turned completely sideways and edged past him. He still didn't move, but she was small and thin—too thin, some people said, but it was difficult to remember to eat when there were so many experiments to perform, so many answers to find—and she managed to squeeze past him into the hall.
“So what was it you were doing here tonight, Dr. Larsen?”
Something in his voice made her hesitate. Her hand slipped into her lab coat pocket, and she turned around. “I was just reworking some numbers. I thought I had made some mistakes in a calculation earlier today.”
There was a sly light in his eyes now. “You never make mistakes, Dr. Larsen.”
“Yes I do,” she said softly, clutching the disk in her pocket. “Sooner or later, we all do.”
She turned and started down the corridor. Everything was pale in the fluorescent lights, washed of color and life, and she felt dizzy, but somehow she kept going. Only there was no point, was there?
Larsen glanced at her watch. Twenty-two minutes. The guard would be back any second. He would talk to Adler, and Adler was a pathological blabbermouth; he would say he had seen her in the lab. The guard would alert the front gate, telling them to detain her for questioning, and even if she didn't want to, she would tell them everything. Because over the last few months, she had learned that, despite his rigid views, her graduate advisor had been right about one thing. Signing a contract with Duratek had been like making a deal with a devil.
Over the years, she had fooled herself, believing her work would lead to good. She had even been able to rationalize holding the subjects E-1 and E-2 against their wills, even though it broke the most fundamental rules of scientific ethics. After all, one day her research could help to heal those with brain injuries, or give those born developmentally disabled a chance at normal lives. However, she knew now that Duratek cared nothing for such goals.
These last months, she had been performing a different kind of research: observing, listening, trying to understand what it was the company was really doing. As secretive as they were, the managers still let things slip, and while she couldn't be certain—there wasn't enough data to support her hypothesis—she believed she knew something of what they planned. A belief that was confirmed earlier today.
The work we're doing here is going to change the world, Dr. Larsen,