Whitney looked at the screen. There were two texts: The first informed her that Zachary Berman had entered Nano at 2:05 A.M., then, at 2:08, he had gone into one of the labs on the fourth floor. Whitney sighed. There was nothing unusual about Berman showing up at Nano at any hour of the day or night, but she wondered sleepily why he wanted to visit that particular lab. She shrugged and put the phone back on her night table. Quickly, she fell back asleep before she was able to speculate any further.

•   •   •

FULLY ATTIRED IN SCRUBS, Pia headed for the door to the hallway. The lab was much as she had left it, with the same banks of equipment she had spent hours and days and months poring over. She wondered for a second who worked there now, but quickly discarded the thought. She had no time to reminisce; there was work to be done. What she did notice were banks of mice cages.

Leaving the relative safety of her familiar lab, Pia stepped out into the corridor. Her plan was to head down to the doors leading to the bridge that she had tried to go through unsuccessfully on several previous occasions. They were the doors from which Mariel always emerged whenever she had been off doing whatever it was she did elsewhere in the complex.

As Pia approached the doors she began to wonder what she might find. There were other buildings in the Nano complex, but the one to which she was headed seemed to hold the most promise. It was close to the building that housed most of the biotech labs, and it was physically connected. If there was an infirmary on the grounds, it most likely was there.

Pia tried to walk at a normal pace. She didn’t want to appear in a hurry, nor did she want to look as if she didn’t know where she was going. As she approached the door, she cupped the iPhone in her hand in an attempt to make it less obvious and made sure the photo of Berman’s eyes was on the screen. Pia brought the phone up along the right side of her head. To the left, on the ceiling, was what looked like a security camera: a small, inverted, dark brown plastic bowl. Stepping up to the scanner, Pia moved the phone in front of her eyes. As soon as she heard the telltale beep, she quickly lowered the phone and slipped it into the pocket of her scrub pants. The light flashed green. The door clicked. She was through.