She hurried from the office to the elevator. She hit the button twice but the light was stuck on floor seven. That was the outpatient floor, the one on which Anita Molkesky had undergone intensive therapy for her bipolar disorder and suicidal ideations.

We were so close to getting away with it, Anita. But you know that there’s really only one escape.

Alexis gave up on the elevator and made for the stairs, jogging down the three flights with her heels clacking on the concrete. She passed an intern she recognized, mumbling an impersonal greeting. Only three people had keys to her lab, except for the master key held by housekeeping. But the cleaning staff was under orders not to enter any labs without direction, since most of the research was proprietary, classified, or potentially hazardous to human health.

She reached the basement, wondering whether the mysterious caller had been from a legitimate federal agency, a drug company, or that special class of mercenary operating slightly beyond the influence of either. Burchfield trolled in all three of those murky pools.

Alexis had projects going in three labs, but two of the labs were shared. The private one was a perk, containing functional MRI, PET, and CT scanners for her neural research. The department head had granted it as an unspoken reward for her work on the president’s bioethics council. She’d resigned from the council three months before, citing personal reasons, although the council’s shift in focus from mind-changing drugs to synthetic biology had made her a bit of a dinosaur anyway.

But this was one dinosaur that didn’t plan on going extinct. Not until she’d saved her husband, the world, and possibly herself, in that order.