The waitress arrived with the coffees. As soon as she left, Leschuk leaned forward in his seat. “I wanted to talk to both of you about the drug trials,” he said quietly.

Ryland stirred cream aggressively into his coffee. “What about them, Vik?”

“I saw the third chimp,” Leschuk said. “I did the autopsy myself.”

Ryland tapped his spoon against the side of his cup. “So?”

“His bone marrow simply turned off, you understand?” Leschuk said, barely above a whisper. “One day the monkey was fine. The next he had full-blown aplastic anemia. No white cells. No red cells. Nothing but wasted marrow.” He held out his hands imploringly. “This is three chimps in a group of five hundred. In nature, you would expect to see this reaction less than once in fifty thousand chimps. The odds … .” He threw his hand up. “You cannot deny—”

“No one’s denying anything,” Ryland said. His voice lacked its previous edge. He sounded tired to Horton. Defeated, even. “Look, Vik, these monkeys have been on ten to fifty times the human dose for months and months. You can’t necessarily extrapolate the results to people.”

“I know, Neil,” Leschuk said. “I know. But—”

“But what?” Horton spoke up.

Leschuk stared hard at the table. “I can’t go on like this.”

“Like what?” Horton asked.

“Like a cheat and a fraud,” he said in a near whisper. “It is so unethical.”

“What are you going to do?” Ryland asked.

Leschuk looked back at his colleagues with pleading brown eyes. “I was hoping to convince you that we should speak to the FDA review panel,” he said. “Neil, we could explain, exactly as you have done just now, that this seems to be an idiosyncratic reaction specific to primates.”

“They will shut us down,” Ryland said evenly.

“Maybe, maybe not.” Leschuk shook his open palms in front of him. “We might have to modify Ellen’s formula. We’ve come this close. We can do it again.”

“Who would fund us next time?” Ryland asked despondently.

“Hopefully SeptoMed.”

“SeptoMed?” Ryland laughed bitterly. “Harvey Abram would see to it that we don’t have a Bunsen burner left between us. You know how invested the CEO has become in this project. I don’t think at this point he would accept an admission of failure—and let’s face it, Vik, that’s what you’re proposing by going to the FDA—as an outcome.”

“I’m sorry, but that is not my main concern. My conscience is,” Leschuk said. He glanced at the others before returning his gaze to the table. “If you disagree, I will not stand in your way. I will not speak to the FDA.” He shook his head emphatically. “But I will resign from the team. That much, I have to do.”