Chapter 8 On a Mission
on a mission
Lorien
The antsy feeling doesn’t leave me. In fact, it gets worse and worse throughout the day until I’m so on edge, I can’t think of a single thing to calm my anxiety. Panic attack, here I come.
I’m a rule-follower by nature. I color in the lines if I color at all. I was never tardy for school and I’m always on time for work. I don’t lie, cheat, or steal.
I’m a good girl, a little nerdy, sometimes na?ve, but only because I’ve been busy chasing a college degree and then a top-tier doctoral program.
I’ve never been the girl who would, or even could, steal corporate data and hide it in a place that no one can touch it. No one knows I have it, not even Dr. Patel.
It’s late in St Louis, but if I know anything about my graduate advisor, it’s that he’s still at his desk. He’s a workaholic. That happens easily when the people we love are gone. We sink into work, make the data our families, live for the job.
I grab my phone and pace my kitchen. Sure, my foot hurts, but the cool tile actually feels good and having those shoes no longer mashing the top of my big toe is a relief I didn’t know I needed.
Me: Are you available?
It’s a full five minutes before any response. Five minutes where my heart could audition to tap along with the Rockettes against my ribs. If it sprang out of my chest and landed at my feet, I wouldn’t be any more stressed than I am right now.
Dr. Patel: Yes. Please call me.
I press go on the contact of the man who’s unerringly polite, flip the device onto speaker phone, and continue my pacing.
“Hello, Dr. Anderson. How are you?” His quiet demeanor and lilted English are a balm to my stressed soul. Something about him allows me to relax, to be myself, to be fully seen in a world of shadows.
“I’m well, Dr. Patel. How are things in St. Louis?”
“Good.” He takes in an audible breath and lets it go slowly. “And bad. It never gets easier. But the work is worth doing.”
He lost his wife three years ago. I hadn’t yet defended my dissertation. He was more emotive than I’d expected him to be, more real about his loss and the toll it took on him watching his wife suffer. We’re kindred spirits, he and I.
“It is. I love it, but I wish it were from a place of what if and not reality.”
“Yes, yes, but then would it be a job instead of passion?” His chair creaks as he leans back. That chair should’ve been retired three decades ago, but he insisted it go with him to his new office. At least there’s no doubt where he is.
“Speaking of passion,” I start but really don’t know how to continue.
The pacing is agitating, as if it’s a metronome timing my anxiety and stress.
Stopping dead in my living room, I exhale one long thought, not worrying about how it will sound.
“I found some data that can be used to cure everything we’ve been researching.
I was directed to shelve it. Instead, I stole it and it’s in a bank deposit box under my name and yours.
No one knows and I promise I wasn’t trying to bring you into this.
But the science is irrefutable. Gene modification therapy, and we can have a cure for everything we’ve been working on. ”
“Lorien.” He’s aghast. He never uses my given name. “You stole work product and attached my name to it?”
“Not exactly. Sort of?”
“Define sort of.” His Indian accent mimics mine with its midwestern drawl in something that would be funny if it weren’t this topic.
“I needed someone I could trust.” My tone is quiet and verges on desperate.
“Someone who would understand the information and know the significance it holds. There’s no way anyone knows I have it, but if I’m not allowed to work on it, I don’t want the data wiped.
I want Strider to live. I want all your hard work to come to fruition. ”
“With stolen data?”
“With proof that we can cure—not medicate, not profit off of, not study—cure.”
“That sounds reasonable, but these companies have deep pockets, and they protect their profits at all costs. You just stood both of us against a tsunami of problems.”
“Not necessarily. For one, I might be allowed to continue working. For two, we can reverse engineer the process so that your lab runs the same test with the correct parameters to achieve the same result.”
“It is theft. It compromises every ethical bit of research I’ve ever done.”
I drop my chin, embarrassed and properly chastised. “I’m sorry, Dr. Patel. I won’t say another word about it. You’re free and clear, ethically and morally. You’ll only see the drive if something were to happen to me. I’ll make sure of that.”
“What do you mean… ‘if something were to happen to you’?”
“Academia has its problems. The ivory tower metaphor isn’t unearned,” I start.
He clears his throat.
“But the corporate world has two challenges, one from within and one from without. Shareholders want money. They demand profitability. Sometimes that revenue isn’t ethical.
And the public, when they discover that, find a way to blame employees for decisions made by leadership to line those pockets. ”
“Child, what have you gotten yourself into?”
“I’m in the same position as you, Dr. Patel.
Only without tenure. But with a flash drive that shows how your wife’s body—how my brother’s body and so many other people we know—could have, with genetic modification, experienced relief.
That could be pharmaceutical intervention, which is what I’m sure Platt BioPharma wants, or it could be a cure.
I don’t see why my research and yours can’t dovetail.
Platt gets to make meds until you find the cure.
They’ll be on to something new by then anyway. ”
“You’re speaking of corporate espionage.”
The laugh that bursts from me might seem rude, but he knows me too well. “By me? That’s hysterical. I’m twenty-eight, with more book smarts than street smarts, at my first real-world job. I’m not cut out to be a spy. I’m just a sister on a mission.”
“Give me some time please, Dr. Anderson. I need to noodle on this, as the kids would say. I think you have put us both in a terrible position. But some of your hypotheses hold merit. I will reach back out.” He pauses. “On another note, how are you liking Denver?”
“I could deal with more humidity, but the views are fantastic.”
“And you’re well?”
I look at my big toe that’s black and blue and the fine wound along the nail that lets me know I shouldn’t have worn those shoes today. “I am.” The silent walls from my neighbor screams at me, before I finish, “The move was a good one for me.”
Liam
I can’t say I’m not intrigued. Lorien Anderson, the clumsy, bookish beauty is a thief.
And a schemer.
I don’t need that trouble living right next door.
I’ve spent years, not exactly off the grid, but off social media, off tech algorithms, on the perimeter looking in.
No one can see what’s around them when they’re inside the experiment.
But outside the fishbowl, it’s easy to see how people have programmed their lives.
Instant gratification.
Perceived belonging.
Appearances.
Vanilla cake in a vanilla world where a set of sprinkles makes one “unique.” How can people stand it?
Not my problem, but the idea that so few see it makes me feel like I’m shouting into a vacuum. Then again, there are only a handful of people I truly care about. My life with them is real. I’m their brother or brother-in-law. I’m a son and an uncle.
The rest of the world could fall off a cliff, and I wouldn’t bat an eye. That’s a bad reference.
The rest of the world could burn, and I wouldn’t be phased. There, that’s better.
Lorien said something that caught my attention. I’m just a sister on a mission. Like calls to like or some such bullshit, because I get that. Now I need to know what that mission is and which sibling set her on this path.
I don’t like eyes on me. I don’t want problems finding their way to my street or my doorstep, but I can’t help but respect someone who would break the mold for family.
I set some crawlers in the program I work with to search more on her and her family.
Some would call it invasive, and maybe it is.
But the people I love—my family—will find my protection at all costs.
Destroying the trust of one cute girl at the expense of shielding my family from her trouble is justifiable.
While I’m at it, I start a list. I need to dig into that ex of hers. The fact that I know of him is only because his kind of trouble came too close to my family.
I also want to research her chain of command at Platt BioPharma.
The problem is I know some of the directors on their board. I know a few shareholders. My brother-in-law is one. So is my sister.
Hell, I can look in the mirror and see one staring back at me.