Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lexi
It was nearly five thirty when we got back to the hotel. The casino was still going strong, fueled by a toxic mixture of alcohol, adrenaline, and money.
The elevator ride to the penthouse felt longer than the drive from the beach house. None of us talked. No jokes, no frantic theorizing. Just the weight of Ginger’s absence sitting like a stone in our stomachs.
When the penthouse door closed behind us, the silence became a physical presence. I went straight for my laptop and set it up on the dining room table. I needed data, facts, something measurable to shove between myself and the image of the bald man carrying Ginger away.
Gray made sure the dead bolt was on the door and pulled out her tablet. Gwen closed the curtains and started a pot of coffee. Basia sat near me at the dining table, rubbing her temples and looking exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with pregnancy.
“Why do I have a feeling that we don’t have a lot of time?” Basia asked me.
“The conversation I overheard in the casino from Mr. Whiny makes me feel like some kind of action regarding Ginger is imminent,” Gray said.
“Plus, they told the police that she had an important appointment coming up,” I added. “They were super anxious to get her tonight and couldn’t even wait until the morning. Something big is happening, and soon. I doubt it’ll be good for Ginger.”
I connected the cables, booted up my laptop, and connected to the Wi-Fi. I pulled an enhancer from my backpack, along with a few other tools I always carried with me. We needed speed, so while I didn’t have the best equipment at hand, I would maximize what I had.
“You have everything that Slash and the guys found in your email,” Gray said, pulling up the shared files on her tablet. “They sent them to all of us. It’s not much, but it’s a starting point.”
“We’ll start there and build the rest from scratch,” I said.
The laptop screen lit my face as I began probing Tango Bio Research Solutions—public records, private filings, subcontractor relationships, university affiliations, anyone doing business with them in the last decade.
Their public-facing front was all biomedical development, safety protocols, ethical commitments. A glossy shield.
Too glossy.
“Purportedly,” Gwen said, sipping coffee and reading her notes, “Tango Bio is researching next-gen medicines and antibiotics, using mostly animal-to-human pathogen vectors. Normal stuff, on paper.”
“But not in practice,” I muttered.
Gwen nodded. “No, not in practice. And if a previously shut down CIA biological project was ever going to resurface…”
“It would be under something like this,” Gray finished, pacing the length of the table. “Maybe we should request a surprise inspection. Sic them on the lab.”
“Sic who on the lab?” Basia asked.
“The US government agency that’s responsible for implementing that Animal Welfare Act Lexi was talking about earlier,” Gray responded. “I don’t know exactly who that would be, though.”
Gwen sat back in her chair. “That would be the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS for short. If any facility is mistreating animals, that’s the agency that would shut it down in a heartbeat.”
“So, it’s easy. We request an immediate inspection from APHIS,” Basia said.
“Hate to be the realist here, but I doubt it would happen any time fast,” Gwen replied. “Especially since we have no proof of anything, just a suspicion.”
“I agree with Gwen,” I said, “Those inspections are likely to take days, even weeks, to schedule and execute, and that’s if they even believed us in the first place.”
“I don’t think we have weeks,” Gray said quietly. “They seemed especially eager to get Ginger back as soon as possible…for something.”
Since we all agreed with her assessment, that ended that discussion.
Energized by anger and concern, I drank a couple of mugs of coffee and dived deeper into Tango Bio’s server activity by hiding behind a series of chained VPNs while testing their security.
Their infrastructure was unfortunately active, fortified, and well maintained.
If I were to hack, it wouldn’t be an easy one.
At some point, Gwen slid her phone across the table.
“Check this out, Lexi. I found several old articles about the Vision Zone Technology animal operation in Arizona that led to their closure and supposedly abandoning their research. The later articles report on the progress of the federal and state inquiries, but it is the initial investigative piece that is most interesting. Prepare yourself—it’s shocking.
I am pretty sure this was article Slash cited that led to the place being shut down. ”
I clicked the link and saw a twenty-year-old investigative piece written by Arizona journalist Barbie Shutt. The evocative title read, “Vision Zone Technology Revealed to Be Using Illegal Animal Testing.” Gray and Basia also pulled up a copy of the article on their devices and started reading.
Shutt’s reporting was crisp and damning.
She detailed how Vision Zone had posed as a cutting-edge sensory-research subsidiary while secretly running cognitive-enhancement trials on felines, canines, and primates.
Current and former employees described relentless neurological restructuring protocols, implanted behavior overrides, and intelligence-escalation trials so extreme that most animals failed to survive the experiments.
Vision Zone denied everything, but from leaked documents and whistleblower accounts, Shutt compiled a disturbing picture of a lab pushing animals beyond natural physical and psychological limits in the name of science.
A second article reported that when state and local authorities inspected the site, investigators had to stop the raid twice to compose themselves.
It sickened me.
Of particular interest, however, was one of the experiments that Shutt uncovered, the Enhanced Canine Intelligence Unit.
It purportedly involved cognitive and behavior modeling, neural enhancement mapping, and language-pattern comprehension testing on dogs.
My heart skipped a beat as I read on. The lab-trained dogs appeared to have been designed for situational awareness predictions, advanced communication techniques, and emotional responsiveness conditioning.
There was a brief mention of technology adaptation trials, but from all accounts, most dogs failed to demonstrate proper responses to the protocols or had been broken and discarded after the relentless, brutal experiments.
I was surprised they hadn’t created any monsters.
Maybe they had. Regardless, the lab’s training program failed miserably to meet the standards of the AWA—no surprise there.
Unfortunately, when they shut down the lab, most of the animals had to be put down because they were too damaged.
“This is beyond vile,” Gray murmured.
“Disgusting,” Basia added.
I agreed with both of those opinions, so I scrolled on.
The photographs accompanying the article were even worse than the narrative, if that was possible.
Rows of metal cages packed with animals showing surgical incisions and restraint harnesses.
Lab schematics annotated with chilling technical precision and stainless-steel operating tables under stark fluorescent lights.
Trays of scalpels and electrodes ready for procedures that no ethics board would ever approve.
The lab had denied everything, of course, but the paper trail, the investigation, and several former employees told a different story. The lab was immediately shut down for good—or so everyone thought.
All this started to make sense. If somehow this branch of research had continued unchecked, Ginger wasn’t naturally smart. The lab had built her to be smart. Who knows what she and others like her had to endure to reach that capacity?
“Unbelievable,” Gray finally said. “Is Ginger even a real dog?”
“I’m not sure I even know what the definition of a real dog is after reading this,” I admitted, scrolling farther.
There were animal profiles, diagrams, early prototypes.
“If Ginger is an extension of what they were working on twenty years ago, she may be one of the prototypes for a cadre of animal spies trained in surveillance, infiltration, and communication relay. They must have had some success, even twenty years ago, which is probably how they found a way to fund and continue the research until today.”
Gray sat down heavily in the chair. “You’re sure about that, Lexi? I’m just not convinced there’s a robust market for dog spies.”
“No, of course I’m not sure. I’m not an expert by any means.
But there have been huge advances in genetic engineering and nanotechnology in the last twenty years.
After all, AI can create videos that have avatars looking and moving like real people, such that you can’t tell the difference.
We saw that firsthand with the video Angel made of me.
That would have seemed impossible two decades ago. ”
“That makes more sense to me,” Gwen confirmed. “It feels like they somehow developed a way to engineer new neural pathways beyond standard canine capacity.”
I tapped my screen. “Shutt talked about how the experiments involved upgrading memory retention, conceptual reasoning, pattern recognition, and emotional interpretation. But more importantly, the lab was working on rudimentary language comprehension. We saw that firsthand in Ginger.”
Basia swallowed hard. “That does fit our Ginger.”
“It does,” I agreed. “She can understand what we’re saying and follow complex commands.
She might also be able to interpret context, and perhaps even detect intent.
But most importantly, she can communicate what she’s heard or wants to say for herself.
That’s the most fascinating, and yet by far the most troubling part, because to do that, she’d need some additional assistance. ”
Gray immediately grasped what I was hinting at and shot up from her seat, holding out her hands like she wanted to distance herself from me and my thoughts.
“Whoa, my mind just took a giant leap there, too. Lexi, are you implying what I think you’re implying? That maybe Ginger has some kind of embedded organic artificial intelligence?”
“What?” Basia gasped. “AI? Ginger is a robo-dog? Are you out of your mind?”
“Lexi, that’s a pretty big step in terms of biological concepts that are relevant and proven today,” Gwen said.
I held up a hand. “Look, I don’t mean to freak anyone out.
I’m just thinking aloud. Ginger is clearly a dog, not a robot.
Obviously, I’m just speculating here, but to my mind, using artificial intelligence in some capacity to augment an otherwise smart dog would be the most plausible scenario for what we’ve witnessed so far with Ginger.
I’m hypothesizing that the lab might have built an intelligence model inside a living organism.
It sounds like science fiction, but we saw for ourselves that Ginger can process environmental cues and decision-making at an advanced level.
That was evident from our short time with her.
How they might have done that is beyond me, but I don’t think it’s a bridge too far given the explosive pace of AI in the past decade. ”
“That is…mind-blowing,” Gwen said.
I blew out a breath, my thoughts still racing.
“Or maybe they just found a way to fuse or augment AI capabilities into a dog’s brain using nanotechnology and cellular energy sources.
They would’ve had to start with a puppy, but with enhanced logic and language capacity, who knows what the results might be? ”
There was dead silence in the room before Gwen spoke quietly. “I’m truly appalled at this possibility, but as the only biologist here, I can’t say with certainty that this theory is impossible. I wish I could.”
Gray placed a hand flat on the table. “Holy crap. If you guys are right, and Ginger is now back in their hands, God knows what they want to do with her.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, fighting the sickening twist in my chest. “She tried to tell us. Everything she did—bringing us objects, barking at the TV lab scene—was not random. She’s not confused. She knew she was in danger and asked for our help. And we failed her.”
Basia’s voice cracked. “So, what do we do now?”
“We need to figure out who’s really operating this lab,” I replied.
“What’s their mission, their endgame? I’m still unsure as to who benefits from this capability and, therefore, who would be their customers.
This can’t be cheap, so someone is heavily invested, and that probably explains why they want Ginger back so badly. ”
“And how do you propose we find out who is operating the lab?” Gray asked, leaning in.
“We follow the money,” I said quietly. “Money doesn’t lie and, in fact, it often speaks volumes. And once when we know who they are and what they’re doing to those animals…if it’s illegal, which I’d bet my last chip on, we take them down. But to do that, we need more information on them—and fast.”
I considered for a moment. “Let’s see if we can get a line on that investigative reporter, Barbie Shutt, the one who broke the story wide-open in 2006. Maybe she’s kept tabs on the company or still has some old contacts who might be able to help us.”
“That may be the best idea we’ve had to this point,” Gray said. “Let’s get on it.”