“Well?” Masten asked, easing back into his thick leather chair and panning around the table. His dark hair was graying at the edges and above a face that could have passed for that of a B-list celebrity. At least an older one. But he wasn’t a model; he was a mogul. A decades-old prince of biotech and a hardened executive who knew the ins and outs of the industry as well as anyone. Perhaps better.
When no one spoke, he looked to the woman seated next to him. Nora Lagner, his chief technology officer and right-hand man, or rather right-hand woman.
“We’re as ready as we’ll ever be,” she said.
Masten nodded and continued around the oval table, glancing past Henry Yamada and Rachel Souza to Dr. Perry Williams, the project’s chief medical officer and the man in charge of the medical staff.
After a moment of careful thought, the older doctor finally nodded as well. “I’m inclined to agree.”
“Just inclined?”
“Well, assuming we haven’t overlooked anything.”
“Like what?”
Williams gave a shrug of his shoulders. “If I knew that, it wouldn’t be missed.”
An amused Masten leaned forward and increased the volume on the triangular-shaped speakerphone in the middle of the table. “Anyone else?”
There was a brief silence before—one by one—six remote subject-matter experts replied on the speakerphone with a simple “Agreed.”
But even as the others concurred, an air of hesitancy remained. A certain nervousness, especially in Williams. In many ways, the secrecy of the project was both a blessing and a curse. There was little interference to hamper their ambition, but there was enough real-world experience among them to know what could happen if they were wrong. In other words, what they were really up against, and of course, the odds of actually pulling it off.
The sobering fact was that either way, people would know. Good or bad. They would eventually find out. It was inevitable. Frankly, it was a miracle the project hadn’t leaked already, especially once the trials began. But Robert Masten had managed to keep it quiet from the outside world.
“Rachel?”
She looked to find Masten looking her way, noting briefly his stiff, pressed collar and pin-striped shirt. Well-dressed as always, with hair that even when messy managed to look good.
“Yes?”
“Are we good?” he asked.
“From my side, yes.” She glanced at Williams, on her right. “Again, it will come down to the primary factors.”
“The heart—”
“And lungs,” added Williams. “Without oxygen, nothing else will matter. But we won’t know how effective the protectants have been until we’re almost finished.”
Masten looked back at Rachel.
Once again, she nodded in agreement. Her boss, Williams, was an internist. A medical doctor specializing in the major organs of the body. The heart, lungs, diaphragm, kidneys, and liver. Or in this case, the preservation and survival of said organs. The body could live for a short time without a liver or kidney, up to several days, but without a heart or lungs, the survival window dropped to mere minutes. Yes, there were artificial ways to compensate. Temporarily. But without the four principal organs, complications would increase immediately and dramatically.
Which brought them to her.
Rachel Souza’s training was in another critical area: the body’s thousands of miles of arteries and blood vessels, known as the vascular system. She was not an expert on organs, like Williams, but instead on the vital pathways linking them together. And though Williams was right, no amount of pumping or oxygenation to those organs was going to matter without the vascular system being liquid.
The biggest wild card was the protectants, chemical compounds designed to prevent excessive damage, which in the end would show just how successful the vitrification process had been. Just as Williams indicated.
“Doctor?” Masten asked again.
Rachel quickly nodded, stymieing her nervousness by turning to Henry Yamada. “As long as we can stay within range.”
“And will we stay within range?”
Yamada cleared his throat and nodded as well. “There’s no reason to think we won’t.”
“Good,” said Masten. “Then we’re ready to jump-start.”
It was an attempt at levity. To which the older Williams added, “If the tube insertion is successful. Yes.”
Rachel remained quiet. The most significant risk was that everything, every single step, had to happen within just a few minutes. Which was where her and Williams’s real worries lay. That the electric shock would come too soon. Before the arteries were fluid enough. Because if they weren’t, there would be no point. You can’t pump something frozen.
But now that the day was finally here, Rachel could feel her confidence morphing into apprehension. It was all beginning to feel so … theoretical.
Yes, they knew how quickly blood would warm. Should warm. She and Yamada had tested it hundreds of times. Along with large sections of tissue. Heart, lung, liver, kidneys, stomach, all of them. And, of course, the brain. The science and the math told them the same thing over and over again; it should work.
But there was still a lot that could go wrong. And she and Williams both knew it. Unlike Lagner, Masten’s CTO, who believed that every problem could be solved with enough technology. Biology was different. Much less precise and predictable. Because life often had a way of operating according to its own set of rules, presenting surprises when one least expected them. Even in the most routine and controlled procedures.
An hour later, Rachel knocked quietly on Williams’s office door and heard his answer from within. The older doctor stood by the window on the far side of the room.
She passed his desk, covered in stacks of dark-colored X-rays and MRI images, organized and carefully labeled. Next to them towered a giant computer monitor spanning nearly half the entire desk, and in front of it, a keyboard, a desk phone, and several handheld medical devices.
Williams glanced over his shoulder when she approached, then turned back to the window.
“You okay?” she asked.
There was a long pause before he answered.
“This is it, Rachel. This is for all the marbles.”
She turned an empty chair toward him, then sat. “I know.”
“We have one shot.”
She nodded but said nothing.
“After this, we may never get another chance. At least not in our lifetimes.”
“It’s going to work.”
He sighed. “Is it?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
She managed a grin. “Just more hopeful, I guess.”
“Hope is not a strategy.”
She leaned back, watching him. “What is it that worries you the most?”
The older doctor exhaled, still staring through the glass. “The unknown, what else?”
“We’ve tried to think of everything. Every contingency.”
“That’s not what I mean.” He finally moved from the window to the second upholstered chair, next to hers, lowering himself. “This has implications, Rachel. Serious implications.”
“I know.”
“Either way,” he said. “Whether we succeed or fail. And I don’t know which will be worse.”
“What do you mean?”
“Win or lose, what we do today will ripple for a long time.”
“But is that bad?”
“It depends on the outcome.” He leaned back. “Let’s just say judgment can be very unpredictable. Especially after the fact.”
“We’re the ones with the opportunity. Not them.”
“Exactly. And why do you think that is?”
“We found the anomaly.”
Williams smiled below his white mustache. “The ‘anomaly.’ I suppose that’s a better word than ‘luck.’”
“None of us know why, Perry. We can’t find any rhyme or reason. We’ve tried. Maybe it is just the luck of the draw. Who knows? Maybe we find out, and maybe we don’t. I’m not even sure it matters. If it works, it will be incredible, for everyone. Are there risks? Yes. But have we done everything we can to address them? Also yes. So what judgment are you worried about? The ethics?”
Williams’s eyes stared past her. “At the very least. Yes, we’ve tried to contain all the risks we can think of, here in our lab. But the tide of public opinion is far more powerful and much less certain. Everything we do tomorrow will be dissected. Later. Every … single … thing. No matter how small the decision. No matter how insignificant it might seem in the moment. Every minute will be dissected, examined, and second-guessed for years to come. Even decades.”
“Only if we fail.” Rachel winked.
“Especially if we fail.”
From his seat, Williams turned and glanced back through the window. His glasses reflected the sunlight. “It all comes down to this. A single stroke of luck.”
“Or coincidence.”
“Same thing.”
She thought it over. “Well, whatever it is, on this I actually agree with Robert and Nora. Reluctantly, but I agree.” When Williams raised an eyebrow, she finished, “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”
He blinked absently. “Now or never, eh?”
“Now or never.”
“And should we fail?”
“Then we tried our best.”
Williams finally released a grin. “That’s what I love about you, Rachel. Even when you know the odds, you still manage to be optimistic. It’s an admirable trait.”
“I really think we have a good chance of pulling this off.”
“I hope you’re right,” he said. “Because if we don’t … someone dies.”