Page 29 of Guarding the Doctor
“We had a late lunch,” Cassie said.
“Great, let’s order something from Uber Eats. I’m starving.”
Darla
Icrept up the hallways, using a through-the-wall sensor to look for heat signatures indicating that someone was inside the lab. It looked clear, but these walls were thicker than we’d anticipated, so we could have missed someone at the back of the space. If that happened, we’d just have to deal with it. Automatically I touched the butt of my gun in my holster, reassuring myself it was there.
“Ready?” Wanda’s voice was soft in my earpiece.
“Roger.”
Down the hall around the corner I heard the squeak of wheels. It was Yuri’s mop bucket, a sign that he was in place and ready to keep an eye out for visitors.
Wanda removed a small device from her pocket, pressing some buttons and holding it front of the keycard scanner. A few seconds later the lock clicked and we carefully stepped inside. Our eyes moved across the space, looking for evidence of motion detectors. Finding none, we stepped farther inside, turning on the small penlights we carried so we didn’t have to risk turning on any lights.
It was like a meat locker in here, super cold, and I wondered if they turned down the heat at night or something. The smell of antiseptic cleaner was overpowering.
The lab was a large, mostly open space, with tables of equipment running through the center, and several shelves and supply cabinets. A row of workstations ran along one wall, with the treatment rooms on the opposite site. A large private office and file room were at the back of the space.
Wanda headed for the workstations while I crept towards the windows on the north side, knowing those were the rooms where Kathryn had found her murdered friend. The first two rooms appeared to be empty. I swept through them quickly, looking for anything helpful but they looked like typical medical exam rooms, with only an examination table and cabinets full of basic medical supplies.
I hit pay dirt in the third room. A body lay strapped to the table, frozen halfway into a shift. He was male. Just like Kathryn’s friend Seth, his arms and legs had shifted while his torso and head still looked human-shaped. The male’s face was a mask of pain, visible despite the layer of fur that had sprouted over his cheeks and jaw. His fingers were curled into claws like he wastrying to get away. Pulling on a pair of latex gloves and a mask, I did a quick exam. The man looked to have been dead for several hours or more, his entire body stiff.
Quickly I took several pictures, documenting the condition of the body. I was tempted to see if I could get a blood sample to see what chemicals they’d injected him with, but I didn’t want to risk opening cabinets or releasing any potential biotoxins that were in the man’s blood. Looking down, I noticed a vial of Epinephrine on the table along with an empty syringe. Clearly the man had been in cardiac distress. It could be that whatever they gave the test subjects to make them shift was too taxing on their hearts, causing them to have heart attacks.
I wondered if the man had children he was leaving behind and felt a stab of sadness as I remembered Kathryn telling me that most people who signed up for these experimental drug trials did it either because they were really sick or they needed money.
Drawing a deep breath, I looked around for any other evidence of how they’d treated the man, or any clue as to who he was. Finding none, I checked out the other two rooms, but they were empty and looked untouched. I made my way back to Wanda. She’d picked the lock of Dr. Xi’s office. The doctor’s laptop was gone, so Wanda was attaching a small tracker to the cords at the back of the docking station.
“How’s it going?” I asked quietly.
“Almost done.”
I pulled out a couple of the small listening devices we’d brought and stuck one under Dr. Xi’s desk, then re-entered the main lab and installed two more, one on either side of the room. It was a risk, but we were betting that they weren’t sweeping for bugs here, at least not regularly. They weren’t super powerful, but the mics would definitely pick up any conversation in the general vicinity.
“You’ve got visitors,” Lois’s voice came through the earpiece. “They’re exiting the North elevators.”
Why would someone be coming to the lab on a Sunday night? Had we triggered some alarm we hadn’t been aware of?
“We’ll take the south door,” I said as Wanda exited Dr. Xi’s office and gave me the ‘ready’ signal.
Running as silently as we could, we headed for the back door, the same way Kathryn had done the night she discovered her friend Seth here in the lab. Closing the door quietly behind us, we slipped out the emergency exit. We’d disabled the alarm earlier just in case we needed this as an escape path. Wanda and I flew down the stairs as we listened to what was happening on the comms.
“You! What are you doing in this hallway?” Dr. Xi’s imperious voice carried through my earpiece as she encountered Yuri.
“I clean floor,” Yuri said, making his accent thicker than normal. “Boss say make clean.”
“The floor’s all wet. You’ve got water everywhere, what the fuck?” This voice wasn’t one I recognized. It was male. I hoped that Yuri could get his picture with the tiny camera we’d attached to his hospital ID badge.
“Must make wet for cleaning,” Yuri said slowly, as if he was searching for the words in English.
There was a crash, then I heard swearing in both Mandarin and English as Yuri apparently tipped over the mop bucket.
“Clumsy bear!” Xi yelled. “You’ve ruined my shoes with that filthy water. These are Louboutin!”
“Very sorry lady,” Yuri mumbled. “Please don’t get me fired.”
“Just clean this up, you imbecile,” the man yelled. “Fucking Russians, you can’t do anything right.”
