Page 16 of Brax (Voodoo Guardians #36)

Asa Lawrence stood outside the offices of GTR Genetics, watching as the FBI and ATF agents sifted through the destruction. Almost everything they had was saved on a secure server that backed up to the cloud, but there was also all the experimental equipment they were using.

“Mr. Lawrence?” asked Brax.

“Yes, that’s me. What agency are you with?” he asked.

“We’re not with an agency. We’re a private security firm that’s looking into a school that potentially abused children who were highly intelligent, possibly even cloning them.” He stared at him, frowning, and shook his head.

“We don’t work with any schools, and that’s not something we would ever condone. We very specifically look at genetic markers that cause certain diseases.”

“I understand that, sir, but we recently met with the daughter of Dr. Felix Rubenstein. Are you familiar with that name?”

“I’d say. He did some pretty groundbreaking research twenty, maybe thirty years ago. He was obsessed with trying to create a clone of his dead wife and daughter. He had a living daughter, whom you obviously met, but apparently, he wanted to get the other daughter and his wife back.”

“That sounds like him,” said Mav. “Is there any possibility that your disgruntled employee was somehow connected to him?”

Asa started to speak and then closed his mouth. He looked at the destruction and devastation of their place of business and then back at the men.

“I want to say ‘no,’ but I have to be honest. You just put a thought in my head that won’t go away. Confidentially, her name is Ines Ruben. I never made a connection before. There wasn’t a reason to.”

“Why would she do this?” asked Pax.

“She’s been disciplined several times for consistently being late to work, not calling in when she was scheduled to be here, asking for four days off, and taking five or six or even an entire week.”

“No reason given?” asked Brax.

“Ines was an interesting individual. Brilliant, but we had to be careful how we treated her.”

“Why?” asked Brax.

“She was also a patient. We have a research clinic that looks into the rare diseases that we spoke of. She’s been seeing the clinicians and researchers there for two years. The problem has always been that Ines is very vague about where she came from, her disease, that sort of thing.”

“Jesus,” muttered Saint.

“That’s not the worst of it,” said Asa. “She was getting worse right before our eyes. That’s why I was trying to give her some grace. As I said, she’s a brilliant researcher, but she’s obsessed with her own disease, not all the ones we’re working on.”

“Just what is her disease?” asked Saint.

“That’s a great question. We’ve yet to be able to identify it or put a name to it. It was yet another reason we were so tolerant of her behavior and outbursts. She was valuable to the research and was willing to do anything to find a cure.

“There is no name for it. None. We’ve never seen anyone with her deformities before, and as I said, she’s getting worse. When she first arrived, we noticed that her bones seemed to be twisting in on themselves, like a tree limb.”

“Jesus,” muttered Brax. “She must have been in extraordinary pain.”

“You have no idea. I’m not sure how she was able to walk or even drive. Her organs were slowly calcifying, causing repeated shutdown and repeated hospitalizations. Her shoulders have started to twist, and poor woman, her facial features. I don’t mean this to be cruel, but she resembles images of the hunchback.”

“Are the outbursts a side effect of this?” asked Saint.

“The research team believes so. Since the rest of her organs are calcifying, we decided to do scans of her brain to see if that was affected. Pockets of calcification are everywhere.”

“Will she survive?” asked Brax.

“No. Not without an identical donor to give her genetic material. Blood, bone, marrow, proteins, enzymes, hell, even DNA.”

The men stood, silently staring from one person to the next.

“I know this is a lot to ask,” said Brax, “but is there any way that you would allow us to see her files?”

“That violates everything we’re about. The HIPPA laws are very clear about patient records.”

“We know that, but we have a research team that might be able to help this person and, in the process, help someone in our family.”

“Are you telling me you have someone with this same disease?” he asked.

“No. I think we might have her clone.”