“Okay, okay,” Pia said, holding up her hands as if Paul needed to be calmed down. “Your point’s well taken. And I think you’re right. I don’t need any drugs. All I need is the camera and a bit of creativity.”

“The camera you can borrow.”

“And I might not even borrow that if I can’t fool the scanner with my own image.”

Chapter 27

27.

NANO, LLC, BOULDER, COLORADO

THURSDAY, MAY 2, 2013, 5:41 A.M.

Pia hustled across the Nano parking lot, clutching her cell phone. She knew the night guards were replaced at six. Her hope had been to get there earlier, but she was not a morning person, and had not gotten up immediately when the alarm had gone off. If this ruse with the iPhone and the iris scanner didn’t work, she thought the tired and generally less attentive staff who were just about to go home would be less likely to notice anything was amiss. To some degree she also knew the men who manned the shift from all the times she had gone into or out of the lab in the wee hours of the morning for various experiments. In contrast to the day and evening shift, they were more conversational, apparently out of boredom.

On the screen of her phone, Pia had ready the image of her eyes at a zoom of just slightly less than normal. As she had expected, there were two guards on duty in the foyer of her building, half the daytime or evening complement. She even knew both of their names.

“Morning, Russ. Morning, Clive.”

“Morning, Dr. Grazdani. Early start for you,” said the older man, Russ.

“Yep. I’ve got lots of experiments running. Gotta go—have a good day, you guys.”

Pia walked over toward the scanner positioned to guard the entrance to the bank of elevators. Russ and Clive ignored her as they concentrated on making their shift-change entries into the logbook. At home, in the bathroom mirror, she’d practiced what she was about to do. Although when she entered she had her phone pressed flat against her right ear, as if on a call, now she moved it to a horizontal position lateral to her eyes with the screen pointing forward. When she was in front of the machine and it indicated it was ready to take a reading, Pia leaned back slightly and moved the phone such that it was directly in front of her eyes.

She waited impatiently. Nothing happened.

She jiggled the camera up and down slightly, but still there was no familiar beep from the machine, as she had hoped. Quickly she glanced at the scanner over the top of the phone. Instead of the usual green light coming on, indicating a successful match, there was nothing. The scanner clearly wasn’t happy. The ruse hadn’t worked.