“And your original piece on the lab was incredible,” Gwen said. “You inspire us by your dedication to helping animals.”
Barbie’s gaze lingered on all of us. “I can see that,” she said quietly. “And while I’m impressed…I’m also a little scared of you guys.”
That, frankly, felt fair.
“Sure, we’re capable, but we also had some help from our significant others,” I admitted. “We’re all professionals at this type of thing and have some…unique skills. Unfortunately, today I tried to follow the money and hit a wall. It’ll take me longer than we have to break through on that front. However, we were able to confirm that Tango Bio is a privately held company and they have no current federal or state research contracts.”
“They also don’t appear to be currently licensed or permitted for biological or vertebrate research in New Jersey, as far as I can tell,” Gwen interjected. “Their prior license with the state lapsed three years ago. Their federal biological safety cabinets, or BSC certification, has also expired. Looks like their biosafety level four certification was last renewed and inspected over fifteen years ago. It’s possible they could be developing biomechanical technology solutions, such as automated prostheses, but that wouldn’t correspond with the surgical implants we found on Ginger or even the fact they’re experimenting on animals in the first place.”
“Not to mention, the current lab and staff must be expensive to maintain,” Gray said emphatically. “We need to discover who’s paying for it and what they hope to get out of it.”
Barbie reached down and pulled out a folder from her portfolio. “That’s precisely the million-dollar question I’ve been trying to answer. Unfortunately, I don’t have that answer, but I do have some information that might point you in the right direction. It starts back with Vision Zone. There was plenty that didn’t make it into the article because I could never corroborate it, and frankly, it wasn’t essential to exposing the animal mistreatment and shutting the operation down.”
“What kind of information?” I asked.
“When Vision Zone resurrected the old Tango Bio lab in Arizona in the late ’90s, they believed technology had finally caught up with their ambition. Miniaturization, neural mapping, computing. All of it had advanced enough that they thought they could succeed where they’d failed before.”
“So, this wasn’t a new idea?” Gray asked.
“Not even close,” Barbie replied. “It was a second attempt. Same dream. Better tools.”
“And they expected government contracts?” I asked.
“That was the goal,” Barbie said. “But they needed seed money first to build out the lab, buy equipment, and hire staff. None of that’s cheap. And that money didn’t come from the US government.”
I leaned forward. “Foreign?”
“My source insisted it was,” Barbie said. “Likely Middle Eastern. He never met the investors. Never saw them or knew what they wanted. Just money appearing in the accounts and orders flowing down.”
“There has to be a trail,” I muttered.
“But it gets worse,” Barbie said. “By then the intelligence community wasn’t interested in theory anymore. They wanted working prototypes. Proof. When Vision Zone couldn’t deliver fast enough, the government lost interest and the lab had to scale back their plans to limp along on foreign funding alone.”
“And they cut corners,” Gray guessed.
Barbie nodded grimly. “Staff. Care. Oversight. Everything. That’s what led to the conditions I exposed. My source didn’t turn because of ethics. He turned because he hadn’t been paid in two months.”
A heavy silence settled over the table.
“I never managed to track down the investors,” Barbie continued. “When the investigators returned to the lab after the initial visit, they found the place wiped and the business files gone. Like someone vacuumed the place clean.”
Gwen frowned. “How was there anything left for Tango Bio to buy years later?”
Barbie smiled thinly. “Excellent question. I don’t have a clean answer. But I do know several key Vision Zone personnel resurfaced here at Tango Bio’s New Jersey facility.”
“So, the research survived,” Gwen breathed.
“Some of it,” Barbie replied. “But Tango Bio was already struggling by then. Their biomedical devices division had a bad decade. Products failed and the ones that worked got undercut by cheaper Chinese manufacturing.”
“So, they were desperate,” I said.
“Yes. A former manager told me an overseas company approached them with money. Enough to keep Tango afloat, but only if they acquired Vision Zone’s assets.”
I blinked. “That’s…a deal with the devil.”
“Tango leadership saw it as low cost, high upside,” Barbie said. “They handed the Vision Zone people a separate lab and gave them whatever they wanted. No questions asked.”
“And no one knew what they were doing?” Gwen asked.
