His gaze finds mine. “What? Why? Aren’t you better with the DNA stuff?”
“Is that the technical term? I’ve been mislabeling it this whole time.” I smile, but it’s forced. “They shut down my division, the lab, sunsetted the equipment. Everything.”
He nods. But it’s understanding, not agreement. “Mind turning off your phone?”
My face must show confusion, but he lifts his from the mount on the dash and demonstrates doing the same to his own. Reluctantly I do, showing him the device when it’s dead.
“What was that about?”
“I’m going to say something you won’t like.”
“Okay.” I don’t like where this is going. “And my phone needs to be off because?”
“What’s on the thumb drive in the safe deposit box?”
Ice flows through my veins. How does he know? How could he know? Did he hack the cameras at Platt?
“Lorien?”
I hold up a finger, asking him to wait. It’s a stall tactic because paralyzing fear has me experiencing something I never have before. My throat is squeezing so tightly due to adrenaline and I’m fighting to swallow and breathe. We studied the globus sensation in school, but I’d never experienced it before now.
When I regain the use of my autonomic nervous system, I force words that terrify me over the driest throat I’ve ever experienced. “How do you know about that?”
“I’ll tell you how if you tell me what.”
It says something about how badly I want to know how he knows that I spend no time at all contemplating outing myself. “The drive has data indicating that genomic isolation—basically DNA sequence modification—can cure most immunologic conditions.”
“In English?”
“There’s a cure for AIDS, arthritis, Lupus, Celiac. All of them. Not a pharmaceutical intervention. Not medicine. Cure.”
“For your brother’s condition?” He loops through a cloverleaf and sets us on C470, heading south and I wonder how we got here so fast.
I nod. “The data indicates that, yes. It’s not fully baked, but given the time and attention, all of those diseases would be gone well within the decade.”
“And they shut that down?”
“You think they know?”
“That the data in your lab would put them out of business, and their profits would tank… Probably. Profit is king. Earnings drive holdings. Stock prices make people very wealthy. And you could grind all of that to a halt.”
“They know…” I taste the words, bitter and disgusting in my mouth. “They know people could live, but they’d lose money.”
“It’s a guess. Shareholders care about increasing returns. Leadership cares about shareholders.”
“But the people who are sick?—”
He cuts me off. “Make them all their money.”
“Pull over.” I point to the shoulder. “Please pull over.”
He changes three lanes from the far left all the while dealing with commuters honking their horns and flipping him the middle finger.
“Please,” I beg.
As soon as the car slides to a stop, I unbuckle and hop out, folding at the waist to empty my stomach of what little is in it. It’s bile and bits and nothing more.
I don’t know how many times I retch before a warm palm slides up my spine, and he pulls my hair back. It’s too late. The closer strands hit my face over and over, sliding over my lips, coming away wet.
