Page 35 of Conspiracies and Chemistry

TESSA

Oliver was ridiculously fast, but adrenaline and shame kept me at his heels. I managed to slip out of the building before the electromagnetic locks bolted with a buzz.

Now I understood why Dad had stayed a week past the solstice. He’d brought a group of a dozen like-minded associates to the Discovery Diagnostics parking lot. Some of them were his age, grizzled and weathered from living rough, off the grid. Others were baby-faced dudes, their eyes wide and shifty. There were a few women in yoga pants who looked like they’d come in their minivans straight from the school drop-off line. When I met my father’s gaze, his eyes narrowed in accusation.

“You didn’t tell me you worked for big pharma,” he said, loud enough for only me to hear. His lip curled as he scanned my lab coat, which I hadn’t taken the time to shed.

“I don’t,” I said equally as quiet. “You’d be better off driving down the road to Gilead. Or better yet, going home. We do good work here.”

He held my gaze for a moment, then lifted his bearded chin and shouted, “Companies like Discovery Diagnostics know the cure for cancer, but there’s more profit in treatments. So they hide the cure and sell us snake oil.”

“No! More! Snake! Oil!” one of the younger guys shouted. The rest of the group repeated the phrase as they waved their signs.

For half a second, Vaseline-lensed nostalgia washed through me. As a gangly thirteen-year-old, I’d been so excited when Dad finally said I was old enough to go with him to a protest. It had been at Diablo Canyon Power Plant, and we’d chanted,No safe dose of radiationandSave our children's children.In my cynical hindsight, he’d probably wanted me there so everyone would keep my generation’s nuclear-free future in mind. But I hadn’t thought of it then. I’d been thrilled that Dad finally wanted to do something with me aside from silently eating flapjacks in our camp chairs outside our trailer.

A broad body in a white coat stepped in front of me. He held up his hands. “Hi, folks. I’m Oliver, and I founded Discovery Diagnostics. What seems to be the trouble?”

“You’re in charge, junior?” my father sneered.

Oliver propped his hands on his hips, further shielding me. “I am. Sir.”

“Then you’re the one I want to sign this statement.” My father held out a paper. I wondered briefly how he’d printed it. Had he trusted the network in my home, or had he gone to one of those sketchy internet cafés and used a VPN to bounce his IP address halfway across the world? Or did he have a typewriter in his truck?

Oliver took the paper and scanned it. “You’re asking me to promise to release the cure for cancer we’ve got in our vault?” He chuckled. “We don’t have a vault, and if I had a cure for cancer, I’d be a very wealthy man.”

“That’s exactly it!” A woman, her hair in a long braid down her back, pushed to the front. “It’s more profitable to sell us your ineffective treatments. You’re lining your pockets with our suffering!”

I tried to push around Oliver, but he flung out a hand. It landed on the front of my lab coat, and the strength in his fingers shocked me into stillness. His fingertips dug into my stomach muscles, grounding me in my body.

“I’m sorry you’re suffering,” he said gently. “And I’m doing everything I can to help. Discovery Diagnostics develops tests for cancer and other conditions that will help the medical community diagnose diseases earlier. Patients will be able to receive treatments sooner and have a better chance at survival.”

He handed the paper back to my father, who snatched it from his grip. “Treatments,” Dad scoffed. “Poisons, more like.”

I met my father’s gaze. I remembered it too. She laughed when clumps of her long blond hair fell out. She told ten-year-old-me it was a sign the treatments were working. But even a self-centered tween noticed when her clothes hung off her too-spare frame, when she came back winded from her slow shuffle to the mailbox at the end of the driveway. The chemo was poison, and in the end, it hadn’t saved her. My nose prickled, and I blinked hard.

“Dad,” I said, “go home.”

Oliver’s head whipped around, eyes wide. “What?”

No one in Dad’s group blinked. He must have told them about his misguided, traitorous daughter who’d fallen prey to big, bad pharma. The one who needed saving from her ignorance.

“Can’t.” Dad’s lips twisted. “I promised a show.” He jerked his thumb at the guy with the camera on his shoulder a few steps away. A reporter with hair that didn’t move in the breeze stood next to him.

“At my expense?” I said softly.

His green eyes went flinty. “You’re on the wrong side, Tessa. I raised you better than this.”

Had he? I was so young when Mom died. A blank paper for him to inscribe all his theories about the government, the healthcare industry, the cabals he saw everywhere. I believed that living off the land, in a community of like-minded people, away from the prying eyes of the government, was how we protected ourselves.Trust no onewas our mantra. It served me and my anger toward the doctors who’d broken my trust by letting my mother die. And it served me later, when I’d learned enough through my independent homeschool studies to understand my father had it wrong and I couldn’t trust him either.

I should be grateful he’d taught me that. I only wished I’d remembered it when I’d listened to Harry.

With one last, searching glare, he turned to his comrades. “Discover the truth. Down with Discovery!”

They chanted back, “Discover the truth. Down with Discovery!” They held up their hand-lettered signs and continued the chorus.

I grasped Oliver’s wrist, which was still banded across my stomach. “Let’s go back to work. I don’t think they mean any harm.”

“What about…” He nodded at the padlocked, heavy-duty metal storage box in my dad’s truck.

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