The In Death Collection Books 21-25 - J. D. Robb [92]
He blew out a breath. “I’m not yet calling any federal agency. At this time, this continues to be a homicide investigation. Any criminal activity discovered through that investigation falls, until we’re boxed, within the aegis of the NYPSD. If you find what you’re looking for, Dallas, if it becomes necessary to shut those schools down, to take minors into protective custody, we’re going to have to alert Federal.”
“Understood, sir. Thank you.”
She waited until Tibble, Whitney, and Quincy left the room. “He bought us some time, so let’s use it. Peabody, field kits. Feeney, we need portable electronics—scanners, keys, data analyzers and retrievers—whatever you’ve got in your bag of tricks. The best you’ve got. We’ve taken a lot of time here, so I’m tapping my source. We’ll meet up on the main helipad, twenty minutes.”
“Already on the way. Kid.” Feeney jerked a thumb toward the door for McNab.
McNab headed out, then stopped and turned back. “I know this is inappropriate, but I gotta say, this is freaking arctic.”
He zipped out before Eve could dress him down, but she figured she could leave that to Feeney.
“I’m not part of your on-site team,” Mira began. “I’m consult, and I know those limitations. But it would be a great favor to me if I could go with you. I may be able to help. And if not . . . it would be a great favor to me.”
“You’re in. Twenty minutes.”
She pulled out her ’link, contacted Roarke on his personal.
“Just got me,” he said. “We’ve only just left the Center.”
“You can fill me in later, I’m going to New Hampshire. I need fast transpo, big enough to carry six people and portable electronics. And I need it here.”
“I’ll have a jet-copter to you within thirty.”
“Main helipad, Central. Thanks.”
She was buzzed when she pushed open the door to the roof and the primary helipad. On other towers and flats, the traffic copters or emergency air vehicles were a constant hum and clatter. She hoped to Christ they didn’t shake their way to New Hampshire.
Wind tugged at her hair and sent Peabody’s new ’do into wild waves. “Give me what you’ve got on cloning.”
“I got a lot,” Peabody shouted back. “Organized discs into history, debates, medical theory and procedure—”
“Just give me some basics. I want to know what I’m looking for.”
“Lab work, probably a lot like what you’d see in infertility centers and surrogate facilities. Refrigeration and preservation systems for cells and eggs. Scanning equipment to test for viability. See, when you just bang and breed, the kid gets half its genes from the egg, half from the sperm.”
“I know how banging and breeding work.”
“Yeah, yeah. But see, in clonal reproduction, all the genes come from one person. You have a cell from the subject, and you remove the nucleus and implant it in a fertilized egg that’s had its nucleus removed.”
“Who thinks of this stuff?”
“Wacky scientists. Anyway, then they have to get the egg going. It can be triggered by chemicals or electricity so it develops into an embryo, which, if successful and viable, can be implanted in a female womb.”
“You know, that’s just gross.”
“If you leave out the single-cell bit, it’s not that different from in vitro conception. But the thing is, if the embryo is successfully brought to term, the result is an exact dupe of the subject who donated the original cell nucleus.”
“Where do they keep the women?”
“Sir?”
“Where do they keep the women who get implanted? They can’t all be students. It had to start somewhere. And not all students are clones. You can’t have a bunch of women with Mavis bellies walking around campus. Have to be housing, wouldn’t there? They’d have to monitor them throughout gestation. They’d have to have facilities for labor and delivery, for whatever you call it after the kid comes out.”
“Neonatal. And pediatrics. Yeah, they would.”
“And security, to ensure nobody changes their mind or blabs. Like, ‘Hey,