Chapter 12

Later that same afternoon, Natalie came into his room and asked if he was all set to go.

“Go where?”

“You have an appointment with Dr. Pike today. I’ll walk with you.”

Jeremiah snickered. She made it sound like they were going for a coffee. She was, he knew, more guard than companion.

“Sure,” he said. “That would be lovely.”

They were a good five minutes early for the appointment and arrived to find the door to his examination room closed. As there was no waiting room, they stood in the hallway.

“Who’s in there?” Jeremiah asked. As far as he knew, he was Pike’s sole patient. Natalie shrugged her shoulders and looked at her shoes.

When the door opened a minute later, Jeremiah was surprised to see Charles Scott come out of the room, his suit jacket draped over his arm and his shirtsleeves rolled up above his wrists. Pike was at his elbow and both men looked momentarily flustered to find them there.

“Mr. Adams,” Scott said, straightening his shoulders and assuming his usual air of supremacy in seamless transition. “Why on Earth are you loitering in the halls?”

“Sorry,” Natalie said. Jeremiah noted that she seemed slightly rattled, as well. “Mr. Adams has an appointment. I think we’re a few minutes early.”

Scott offered her a cool expression. “You would do well,” he said, “to adhere to your exact schedule.”

She nodded and retreated back down the hall. Pike invited Jeremiah into the exam room with a flick of his hand, and Scott took a moment to button the cuffs of his shirt. As Jeremiah stepped around him to get into the room, he noticed a fresh cotton bandage adhered to the back of Scott’s neck, at the base of his skull. About two inches in length, it was difficult to miss.

“I didn’t know you were Dr. Scott’s doctor,” Jeremiah said when Pike closed the door hastily behind him.

“I’m not. He just comes in periodically for vitamin injections. He’s something of a health nut.”

Last Jeremiah knew, vitamins weren’t typically injected into someone’s skull.

He hoisted himself onto the table and watched with interest as Pike covered and then cleared away a metal tray holding implements that he’d presumably just used on Scott. Judging from the serious size of the needle and the amount of blood-soaked gauze, he was fairly confident Pike was lying to him.

Two hours later, alone at the computer in his rooms, Jeremiah thought he’d discovered the truth. A rudimentary search revealed the startling possibility that Dr. Pike had injected Scott’s brain with stem cells. There was little else it could have been. There was a chance, he supposed, that it might have been a treatment for migraines. But Jeremiah knew about that kind of pain. Migraines were difficult to mask. It had to be stem cells. After that, Jeremiah kept landing on scientific journals that touted stem cell therapy as a promising treatment for various neurological disorders.

He remembered now the odd change that came over Scott every time he spoke about the medical possibilities of human cloning, the way his eyes always seemed to gloss over with something approaching desperation whenever he talked about it.