suspicious.
“We just let him go—he was on probation so it wasn't an actual firing.” Ryan paused and stared at the ceiling. “I recall that it wasn't solely for his poor project showing, of course, but a combination of documented causes. The most notable I remember is that his lab notebook was indecipherable. My TD—my Technology Director—informed me that the notations were inconsistent with his assignment.”
“What did you make of it?” Robb was interested.
“He was in over his head. That was strange of itself. Like I said earlier, he came in with a strong resume, solid references and stellar interviewing skills. But that doesn't guarantee success. You never know whether someone's past success has been a result of luck or mentoring or was personally achieved. You really don't know about a candidate until he or she actually delivers.”
“Did he know he was working with tagged amines?”
“I doubt he was with us long enough to learn about that.”
“What happened to the chemist after he left CI?”
“I couldn't tell you. We got an HR to HR call some time later. You know the routine. 'No, he had not been released for cause. No, he wasn't eligible for rehire.' I really didn't pay any more attention.”
“Is it possible that the yield was low—“
“—because he was extracting the product to take it out of the building with him?” Ryan's faced turned red. “It's entirely possible. We had no protocol to search our employees as they left the site. As far as I was concerned, the TD let him go because of incompetence.”
Ryan continued to read the spectrometer's trace and his face hardened. “That doesn't prove it was ours,” he said under his breath. But even so his face was clouded with doubt and he seemed anxious to move on. Yet, he didn't; he could not avert his eyes from the evidence. Suddenly, he blurted, “What's the ratio?”
“It's one to one-point-three-five.”
“That's our tag,” Ryan admitted. No longer in doubt his defiance took over. “But it's not our product. We couldn't have made that. The chances are astronomically small...”
“I have reason to believe what you're saying, Ryan.” Robb remarked but if Ryan heard, he couldn't accept the consolation.
“If this was made public,” Ryan mumbled, “I can't imagine the consequences. No one would believe us.”
Neither Natalia nor Robb replied; a hard silence amplified by the projector's whirring fan. Ryan's face continued to redden, his shoulders tensed and his fingers slowly clenched into tight balls. When he looked ready to explode, he seemed to finally have heard Robb. The color cleared. He turned to face Robb and Natalia. “How did you make this connection?”
But if Ryan was expecting relief, the scientists were not forthcoming.
“How did you make this connection?” Ryan reiterated, his jaw set firmly.
Their silence was uncomfortable.
“You won't tell me?”
“No,” Robb answered, “but we are certain.” Then Robb went on the offensive. “Were you developing other proteins twenty years ago?”
“You're not helping me much.” Ryan snapped.
“We're helping as best we can.” Robb was no less firm.
Ryan leaned back, tilting his chair to a grotesque angle, and stared upward, scanning the shadowy recesses of the drop ceiling. Here and there, between the psychedelic scattering of reflecting pinpricks were regularly spaced charcoal hemispheres. He sighed heavily—he hadn't noticed them earlier—the room was wired.
“We're not being monitored,” Robb assured him.
“Would it matter if we were?” Ryan asked rhetorically.
“They're nonfunctional. This room is no longer approved for classified discussions,” Natalia explained.
Ryan raised his eyebrows and Robb shot Natalia a quick, silencing, glance which Ryan could not fail to observe. Not that it mattered to Ryan. Robb and Pawluk had been at least one step ahead throughout this charade. Though he did not share Natalia's confidence, he needed their help, and CI during his tenure had done no wrong. Of that he was confident.
Ryan addressed Robb's previous question. “Yes, we did.” He conceded. “Several proteins were indicated early in the Methuselah game.”
“Early?” Natalia asked.
“None panned out.” Ryan explained simply.
“Why not?” Robb was quick to keep Ryan talking.
“I'm not fully sure, we don't chase every loose end,” Ryan explained. “We couldn't figure out what to make of them. For starters, they had no effect on mammals.”
“What kind of mammals?”
“Rats and pigs. It was challenging to get them to ingest it.”
“Why was that?”
“Based on our observations, they had a horrible taste.”
Robb guffawed. Natalia looked embarrassed.
“What did you do then?” She asked. “Bad taste is an effect—”
“We tried other means,” Ryan interrupted. “Injections, topicals and inhalers—but, surprisingly, those also had no recorded effect. So we re-started the game. It was the first and only time we did so.”
“How did you do that?” Natalia was curious.
“We eliminated what we thought were divergent vectors—“
Natalia furrowed her eyebrows.
“—We narrowed the initial conditions to compounds that were biologically-friendly.”
“Isn't that tampering?” Robb interjected somewhat rudely.
“It was pragmatic.” Ryan was dogmatic. “Our projects were in their infancy. Too many resources were being consumed on legal defenses. We were limited in what we could explore and how much we could test our products. We had to tailor the game to outcomes we could manage—and that meant we had to compromise.”
“Would you have done it differently with more funding?” Robb questioned.
“I doubt it.” Ryan answered honestly. “I always work within the framework of profit and loss. I manage every project.”
“Of course,” Robb agreed.
“Robb!” Natalia said sharply.
“Don't misunderstand, Natalia,” Robb was matter-of-fact.
“Freedom is the luxury of academia.” Ryan made peace with one but not the other.
Natalia fumed.
“How did you push the next generation of games?” Robb interjected when she didn't speak.
“We promoted a genetic angle,” Ryan continued. “Specifically, the life-cycle of the Monarch butterfly.”
“Age defying genetics?”
“Yes, hence 'Methuselah.'”
“I don't understand.” Natalia sounded annoyed.
“Biblical legend suggests he lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years.”
“Jankowiak wasn't religious, Ryan.”
“Neither are butterflies,” Ryan retorted.
Robb guffawed.
Natalia regained her composure. “Would Jankowiak have kept a record of the protein's molecular structure on his laptop?”
“Possibly,” Ryan considered. “It might have been part of the presentation he had planned to deliver to GenCorp.”
“Why would he take the risk?” Natalia questioned.
“He wasn't threatened by the loss of a single idea,” Ryan mused. “He didn't fear intellectual theft because—“ He stopped, his stomach knotted at the realization.
“Because?” Natalia interrupted.
“—he had more ideas to pursue than life to live,” Ryan muttered. Then, with a stronger voice, “He told me this a hundred times. I had no idea he was being prophetic.”
“The genetic angle,” Robb said sharply, severing Ryan's reminiscence.
“It was sufficiently successful to take to market.”
“Not the chemistry, Ryan,” Robb clarified. “Did you use the same markers on your subsequent development project?”
“More or less,” Ryan replied. “We might have altered the ratios of isotopes or the placement onto functional groups, but the strategy was the same.”
“Do you vary the
composition and placement by project or by team?” Robb cross-examined.
“Yes.” Ryan was evasive.
“Every time?”
It was Ryan's turn to classify his information. “As much as can be controlled without being obvious. We have a strict policy that prevents the cross-fertilization of reagents between teams—that's a standard contamination prevention policy—yet, I'm sure it's happened more than a few times.”
“So you could tell us when this was made?”
“Most likely. I doubt that it differs from your assessment.”
“You targeted the animal kingdom only?”
“Yes.”
“You found no genetic impact?”
“No.”
“Did you test it on plants?”
“Not at all.”
“Got it.” Robb nodded his head. “Natalia, please continue.”
She flipped through several slides—additional evidence that CI's proprietary material had been pilfered—but the slides lacked uniqueness until she stopped on a PCR of DNA.
“What's this?” Ryan asked.
“This is a DNA assay extracted from cells found in the sample matrix. It's corn.” Natalia answered.
“What about it?” Ryan was suspicious.
“It's been genetically altered,” Robb stated.
“I don't see a connection.” Ryan stonewalled. The ACE-Asia samples might have been contaminated... Robb and Natalia analyzed bulk samples from environmental sources—which had a multiplicity of origin—not the test tube aliquots from a sterile lab: They couldn't be expected to ascertain the exact origin of every happenstance component.
As he stirred with relief, he chided himself: He should have suspected immediately but his pristine “company-laboratory” frame of reference was too narrow. If it proved true he would gladly accept his folly.
“We don't think they're contaminated.” Robb read through Ryan's justification.
“How can you be