“After what happened at my last place? Hell yeah. Paranoia saves lives,” I muttered. “This doesn’t make sense. Why take those that are worthless? That speaks of a suspect who had no idea of what he was stealing. Which means there’ll be a second attempt.”
“You know what they were after?” Brown asked.
Paulson and I held each other’s gaze for a few moments. I wouldn’t comment on this.
“Yes,” Paulson finally said. “Something that may prove incredibly valuable to us, but might bankrupt other pharmaceuticals.”
“That’s a massive motive,” Brown agreed.
“Huge.” Paulson stared around the destroyed lab. “The company put security in place to prevent this, and it still happened. We need to know how. This is disturbing, and Ed’s attack is an escalation.”
“If you wouldn’t mind…” Brown waved at us to leave.
“Someone needs to make sure those cultures aren’t contaminated. All it takes is one of your men opening the refrigerator and a stray skin cell, and we lose years of work,” I argued. “Ed nearly died defending them. I won’t allow any contamination to happen.”
“Rain, I’ll stay, and before you argue, Detective Brown, none of you are cleared to be in here. Not around our work anyway, I will sit in the corner next to the fridge and ensure nothing happens,” Paulson stated.
Brown appeared displeased and about to quarrel.
“Please don’t make me force my hand,” Paulson said quietly.
Brown hesitated, but finally nodded. “Fine. But stay out of my way.”
“Actually, it’s a good job I’m staying. Don’t touch that!” Paulson ordered. “That’s acid and will burn straight through your protective garments.”
Brown winced and sent his officer a dark look as I exited the lab and decontaminated.
“Rain, we’ve been asked to attend the lecture room. The corporate team wants to talk to us,” Sophie said, approaching as I began heading towards the elevators.
“Do they? I hope they have something in place for this,” I replied.
ENS Pharmaceuticals was a massive square building. The ground floor held conference rooms and a staff cafeteria with a small food court. There was also a lecture hall for presentations, along with some private bathrooms with showers. The first and second floors were laboratories, while the third level was dedicated to corporate. That floor had its own separate entrance, so the comings and goings of the floor did not disturb those in the labs below.
As they all worked together, those in the separate teams knew to move quietly around their floors. The office workers above, quite simply, didn’t. After several experiments were ruined because people were startled by the corporate staff’s loudness, a separate entrance and elevator block had been built.
“Can you believe this?” Sophie asked as we headed down.
“No. I was probably the last to see him. Ed didn’t leave with me yesterday. He went back to check his culture, the one that seemed to be mutating.” I paused and stopped walking.
Had I seen Ed’s experiment there? I wracked my brains before turning on my heel and heading back to the lab.
“Rain?” Sophie called. I banged on the glass to get Paulson’s attention and picked up the handset outside.
“What is it?”
“Check Ed’s desk. He had an example that was mutating incorrectly, not behaving as it should. Is it still there?” I demanded.
Paulson looked around before shaking his head.
“Re-check the fridge; had he put it back?”
“No, I can’t see it.”
“They took Ed’s sample,” I stated.
“Could that be what they wanted?” Paulson asked as Brown stood beside him.
“Doubt it because not even we knew what it was doing. It wasn’t the target, but a bonus they grabbed. It proves one thing: they’d no idea what to take,” I said.
