“Are you going now?”
He walked out without speaking, down the hall to the elevator, desperate for fresh air. His one chance to tell Susan about his feelings had snuck up on him, and he wasn’t ready, and he’d blown it. She had no interest in him whatsoever, plus now she thought he was a creepy jerk. The elevator dinged, and he stepped in.
Susan’s voice floated down the hall. “I’m really sorry about the dating thing, Lyle! That’s not what I meant at all!”
The doors closed.
6
Monday, April 16
9:02 A.M.
NewYew headquarters, Manhattan
242 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
“One of our test subjects died.”
The executives stared at Lyle in shock.
“It happened last night,” Lyle continued. “Jon Ford—the same guy I told you about a few weeks ago, with the flu and the dehydration.”
Kerry rolled his eyes. “Not this guy again.”
“He died of a stroke about twelve hours ago,” said Lyle. “Try to show a little tact.”
Cynthia raised an eyebrow. “That’s terrible.” She paused. “How was his skin?”
“His skin was fine,” Lyle snapped. “This is not about his skin, this is about his life, which is over now, and about his recent activities, which include using our product.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Kerry, “obviously it wasn’t related.”
“Of course it’s not related,” said Sunny, “but this is still a very big deal for PR, and thank you, Lyle, for bringing it to our attention. All our competitors have to do is point to a dead guy in our testing history and go ‘Ah? Ah?’ and suddenly the public thinks we killed him. It doesn’t matter how stupid the connection is: if the connection is ever made at all, the damage will already be done.”
Cynthia frowned. “You say his skin was fine? No dermatological symptoms?”
“Yes, his skin was fine,” said Lyle, “great, actually, though I hope that’s not your plan for a PR strategy: ‘Man dies with great skin, story at ten.’”
“How many test subjects were there?” asked Kerry.
Lyle drummed his fingers on the table. “Six.”
“No,” said Kerry, “the full number—every test you’ve ever run.”
Lyle had the number memorized. “A hundred and twenty-eight human subjects, ranging from two to twenty applications each.”
“So this man who died, he only used it twice?”
Lyle nodded, seeing where Kerry was going. “Technically only once; his flu started before the second test and he never came back.” He did some quick calculations in his head. “We’ve recorded more than a thousand total applications of the product, in its various stages of development—that’s some pretty weighty evidence saying how safe it is.”
“So we’re fine,” said Kerry. “The guy took our test, ate some bad food, and had the most poorly timed stroke in history. This isn’t about product safety, it’s about image control: who knows about the connection, and who stands to profit from it? Is it likely to hit the news at all? Can we do some preemptive whitewashing?”
“This is never going to make the news,” said Carl gruffly.
“This is a very tight industry,” said Sunny. “Everyone in health and beauty is in bed with everyone else, and we’ve all got grudges and feuds and more catfights than a junior high cafeteria. If word can get out, it will, and it will spread like wildfire through everyone that matters.”
“It wouldn’t hurt us to slow things down,” said Lyle. “We need time to gather two things: evidence that this wasn’t remotely connected to us, and quantifiable proof that we did our due diligence to follow up just in case. On the off chance that this ever does get back to us, we’ll know we’ve done our part.”
“And other people will know we’ve done it, too,” said Kerry, “which is the more important thing.”
“Then consider this day one of emergency mode,” said Sunny, looking around at the others. “We’ve already banned all mention of 14G or ReBirth in company e-mail, to avoid the electronic paper trail if we ever get investigated for mislabeling; that ban stays in place. Verbal and paper communications only, and the papers will be shredded. Dust off your alibis and start shoring up your CYA files: you need to account for everything you’ve worked on for the past year, and it better not have anything to do with a plasmid lotion. The only official company project in the realm of gene therapy is Lyle’s burn cream, which has yet to be submitted to the FDA and, to be clear, has nothing to do with anything.”
There was a knock on the door, and a man poked his head in; it was Marcus Eads, the head of internal security. “Excuse me, Mr. Montgomery, but I think you need to see this.”
Jeffrey stood up, but Carl shouted him down. “He’s here for me, idiot.” He glanced at Marcus. “Is this about the stolen ID card?”
“Yes,” said Marcus, hurrying to the conference table. He set a handful of papers in front of Carl; Lyle could see they were photo printouts. “The receptionist’s ID card logged four different uses between 2:54 and 3:17 a.m.” He pointed at the photos. “This man came, walked the halls for a bit, and left.”
“Whoa,” said Lyle. “We had a break-in?”
“Last night,” said Cynthia. “Try to keep up.”
Carl scowled. “If he showed up so clearly on the cameras, why didn’t your men do something about it! Were they asleep?”
Marcus shook his head. “This image is the only frame of security footage he appears in. He knew exactly where our cameras are, and he avoided them like a ghost.”
Sunny whistled lowly. “So he had help on the inside.”
“Fire the receptionist,” said Carl. “And make sure to interrogate her first.”
“Already on it,” said Marcus.
Cynthia stood and walked behind them, staring at the photos. “That’s the door to the lab wing,” she said, pointing at the photo. She looked up at Lyle. “Is anything missing?”
“No,” said Lyle, “everything’s still there. My assistant moved a couple of— Holy crap. The lotion!”
Everyone looked at him.
“There were two bottles of lotion missing when I came in this morning,” said Lyle frantically. “I thought Susan must have moved them, but she’s in Mexico for another week! I didn’t even think about it.” He pointed at the photo. “He stole two bottles of ReBirth!”
“Find a face,” said Carl coldly, turning to the security officer. “Find a fingerprint, find a piece of hair, find anything you can. I want his name on my desk by this afternoon, and his head by tomorrow.” Marcus nodded and left. Carl turned back to the executives. “I don’t have to tell you how much we stand to lose if ReBirth gets out early. I want this man found and I want whoever sent him destroyed.”
“He knew our security system and he knew exactly where to go for the lotion,” said Cynthia. “How did they even know about it?”
“We had a hundred and twenty-eight test subjects,” said Sunny. “One of them must have talked.”
“Wouldn’t the plant be easier to break into?” asked Kerry.
“Yes,” said Lyle, “but it doesn’t have everything—a few samples, and the formula if you know where to look, but my office has the formula, the research, the test results, the whole thing. And now this guy has them, too.” He looked at Sunny. “This kills our little corporate deception—whoever has those files can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that we put the plasmids in there on purpose.”
“Find him,” Carl growled. “I want his head on my desk by morning.”
7
Thursday, April 26
Pathmark Sav-A-Center, Flushing, Queens
232 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
Lyle scanned the produce section, looking for brussels sprouts. He found them, filled a bag, and put it in his basket.
The entire company was in a holding pattern, too wary to continue with the lotion but too greedy to stop. Until they knew who’d stolen it, and
why, they didn’t dare to move. Only Lyle had kept working on it, careful building an iron-clad case for his own role as the inventor of the technology, ready to submit to the FDA the instant he got Carl’s approval. What else could they do? And it’s not that he was proud—this was about the principle of the thing. The science he’d done to create it. He’d spent too much of his life on products that made you “look younger and feel healthier.” He’d wasted his entire professional career making rich people attractive, and what had that gotten him? What did it matter what they looked like if they were still the same inside? And why bother with false beauty at all if someone like Susan could look better than all of them without even trying? NewYew was doing everything wrong, and if they’d only listen to Lyle—if they’d only let him tell them what to do—
Why do I need them to let me? Lyle asked himself. Why can’t I just do it?
The plasmids were supposed to be his thing—his big break into the world of real science. He could get work in a lab, or maybe a university; he could mold young minds and spark new ideas and really make a difference in the world. He was a smart guy—last year he’d reformulated NewYew’s entire line of eye shadows using a method no one had ever tried before, creating colors that kept their shade and thickness longer than anything else on the market. It was an astounding feat of chemistry—he’d even written a paper on it, which had landed him an interview in a NOVA documentary. He was relatively famous in the industry, but that was the first time people outside of it had cared. The first time he’d gotten any widespread recognition. It was the greatest thing that had ever happened to him.
And NewYew was taking it away. He wanted to do it honestly, scientifically, with papers and prizes and maybe an interview in Newsweek. Burying it in a hand lotion like this, and then keeping it a secret from the world … that didn’t advance science at all. It didn’t help anyone but NewYew.
Lyle picked up a package of steaks and poked at the plastic, watching the meat rebound back into shape. That’s what people really want, he thought. Plumpness. We want to have fat skin and skinny fat. We want six-year-old skin on twenty-year-old bodies, with hair colors that don’t exist in nature. He put the steaks in his basket and then, because they were right there, a package of sausages. He was hungry. He moved on.
I need to sell my shares and retire, Lyle thought, not for the first time. He took a jar of peanuts from the shelf. If we ever get past this theft thing, and ReBirth goes global and we all get rich, I’m going to sell my shares and buy my own lab and get back to basics.
Lyle got in line at a register, and when he reached the front the cashier looked up at him in relief.
“Oh good, you came back. Here it is.”
“What?”
She handed him a credit card. “You’ve got to be more careful with that, you could get your identity stolen.”
“This isn’t mine.” Lyle looked at the name: Christopher Page. The name sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it. “This isn’t mine.”
“You were just here,” said the cashier, “you just bought some…” She pointed at his groceries in the basket, confused. “Some brussels sprouts. Are you buying more?”
“Excuse me!” said a man, puffing breathlessly as he jogged up to the register, “I forgot my credit card.” Lyle looked at him and shivered.
He looked almost exactly like Lyle.
The cashier looked at the newcomer, then at Lyle, then back again. “Whoa,” she said, “that’s freaky.”
Their clothes were different, of course, and their haircuts, and the newcomer was heavier than Lyle, though not by much. What matched were the faces—the same shape of nose, the same color of eyes, the same general form to the features. The eyes were the same shape, as well, and the same deep green, but the newcomer’s were solid while Lyle had a heterochromia in his right eye—a small patch of amber on the green iris. He saw it in the mirror every day; he’d had it since he was born.
It was disconcerting to see his own face, so close yet so uncannily different. They didn’t look like twins, maybe not even fraternal twins, but they could certainly be mistaken for brothers.
Lyle held out the card. “I take it you’re Christopher Page?”
“Thanks,” said the man, then stopped, staring at Lyle’s face. “Are you … Dr. Fontanelle?”
Lyle peered at the man more closely, his stomach suddenly queasy. “Do I know you?”
“You don’t ‘know me’ know me,” said Page, “but we met last month, at the NewYew building. I was in the lotion test.”
“Are you brothers?” asked the cashier.
“We’re not…” Lyle paused, still staring at Page. “I’m very sorry, I don’t remember you. Were you in the 14G test?”
“I’ve lost a ton of weight since then,” said Page, slapping himself in the stomach. “Pretty great, huh?”
“How do you not remember him?” asked the cashier. “He looks exactly like you.”
“It’s the weight,” said Page again, smiling at the cashier. “You didn’t see me before—I had a face like a side of beef. Take that all away and I … well, I guess I do look kind of like you, Dr. Fontanelle. That’s an honor. I’d never noticed before.”
“Wild,” said the cashier. “Thirty-two dollars and forty-eight cents.”
Lyle absently handed her his credit card, never taking his eyes off the uncanny mirror image in front of him. Christopher Page, his memory finally informed him, had been the large man, the greasy-faced man. He remembered the name because they’d paid special attention to the way the lotion reacted to his oily skin.
It had only been a few weeks—nobody lost weight that fast. Lyle’s scientific curiosity took over, and he spoke without thinking: “Did you have a … bypass? Like a surgery?” He immediately felt guilty for asking such a forward question.
Christopher smiled proudly, evidently too proud to be offended. “Nope, just exercise. I’ve lost fifty pounds.”
The cashier handed Lyle his card and bags, subtly pushing him out of the lane. “Thanks for coming to Pathmark.”
Lyle followed Christopher to the front wall, staring. “You’ve lost fifty pounds in three weeks? That doesn’t happen with just exercise.”
“Well, I’ve been working on it for a while,” said Christopher, “it’s just that it finally kicked in for some reason. I could barely fit in my chair at the product test, but now look at me!”
“That’s … great.”
“Here,” said Christopher, digging eagerly into his back pocket, “here’s my business card, I sell HVAC systems. You want anything done, I’ll give you a great deal.”
“Yeah,” said Lyle slowly, “thanks.” Losing all of that weight must have exposed more of the underlying bone structure, he thought. He looks completely different. “Have you been sick?”
“Not really,” said Christopher, shaking his head. “Pooping like a champion, I guess, and drinking like a man in a desert. I ride an exercise bike for twenty minutes every morning—that’s thirsty work.”
Lyle snapped to attention, staring at the man’s too-familiar face. Jon Ford’s friend had said the same thing about him: heightened thirst and increased defecation. Lyle kept his face passive. “Have you had any pains? Trouble breathing? Numbness on your left side?”
“Not at all.”
Lyle pursed his lips, nodding. It’s probably nothing. I’m just creeped out from thinking he looked so much like me, and it’s getting to me. He picked up his bags. “I’ve got to get going, but it was nice to see you.”
“You’ve got my card,” said Christopher, calling after him. “And let me know when that lotion comes out—I’ll tell all my friends!”
8
Friday, April 27
NewYew headquarters, Manhattan
231 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
It was Susan’s first day back from spring break: fifteen days in Mexico. Lyle was imagining her, all excited and tan and, if he was lucky, still clinging to a relaxed beach dress code. He’d wo
rn his best shirt and gotten to work early. Susan staggered in half an hour late, her body hidden under a pair of baggy sweats and her hair wispily escaping from a pair of old pigtails.
“Holy crap,” she said. Her voice was deep and sluggish, like she had a cold. “This is what I get for burning all my sick days on this vacation. I totally shouldn’t be here today.”
“Oh,” said Lyle, scooting his chair just slightly farther away. He registered his disappointment at her appearance and pushed it aside, changing tactics on the fly. Now I can help her; show her what a nice guy I am. “I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do for you?”
Susan put her head on her desk. “Kill me.”
Lyle scooted closer. “Did you eat something bad in Mexico?”
Susan’s voice was muffled by the desk. “I have no idea. Ate something or picked up a bug. I thought I was being careful.”
Seeing her this close he could tell she was heavier than before—not fat, but she’d definitely gained weight. There was something weird about it, though; the weight hadn’t appeared in the places he’d expected.
That’s what fifteen years of staring at skin will get you, he thought, feeling guilty. Someone has a bad day and you get all judgmental.
“Look,” he said, “you don’t look bad.”
“What do you mean I don’t look bad?”
“I…” He paused, unsure. “I mean you don’t look bad.”
“Who said anything about me looking bad? How did that become a topic of conversation if it isn’t true and no one was talking about it?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I already told you I’m sick, okay? I’m sorry I don’t look like your stupid makeup models for your stupid photo shoots! You’re supposed to eat a lot when you’re sick, and I’m sick, and I wasted my whole vacation, and I feel like a whale and my—” Suddenly her voice cracked, a high-pitched break in the low, congested tirade, and she broke down in tears. “My voice cracks and I’m breaking out in zits all over the place and all I want to do is eat more!”