They had all been summoned to the conference room, but only Gabe, Jak, Chen, and Meadow had shown up. Silpa had called in sick. Heartsick, they all knew, though there had not yet been any confirmation of what they all feared was true. Mohammed hadn’t been at work in days. Nor had Olympia. So Dr. Krygoski, the center’s director, had summoned them to the conference room where they sat looking at one another, wondering what was going on.

“This is such bullshit. What’a we even here for?” Jak said, swiveling back and forth in one of the conference table chairs, a kid allowed on the adult furniture.

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Meadow said patiently.

Then the Director burst in with the air of a man with too many things to do than explain to someone else’s employees why their boss was a thief. Which is what he basically did, in that polite bureaucratese. He wouldn’t answer any questions. The university might initiate an investigation so all he could tell them was that Olympia had abruptly resigned in order to take another position.

“So what are we supposed to do?” Jak said.

“I’d suggest you just carry on. Just do what you normally do. What do you normally do?”

Gabe had to hold in a laugh, thinking how for Jak that meant he could go back to fucking around on the Internet, or trying to get bio-reactants to explode.

She couldn’t help but notice the smile creep over his face as the Director left, leaving them all looking around at each other as they had been before the meeting started.

Chen stood up. It was his turn to present at their monthly general lab meeting. He went to the podium computer and used it to switch on the projector hanging from the ceiling.

“Chen, you got to be shitting me?” Jak said, making a big-eyed incredulous face for everyone. But Chen just ignored him and continued with the presentation he was scheduled to give. The screen at the front of the room filled with one of his reliability graphs.

Gabe wondered if he’d continue talking even if the room was empty.

Jak gave everyone a salute—“Have fun, amigos”—then left.

But Gabe stayed. She wanted to see this. In place of the constantly deteriorating curve that Chen had shown during previous meetings, this one was straight again. It was as if the deteriorating data had been an aberration. Gabe leaned in for a better look. He began to explain how he had no explanation for why the data had suddenly become unreliable, then reliable again, but over the last few weeks, it had continually shown increasing signs of corruption: sequences he would have expected from SPA-12 showing up in SPE and vice versa.

 

Everyone else in the room thought it might have something to do with Mohammed. Or Olympia. Or the both of them. But as Chen continued to speak, he continued to look directly at Gabe, and she knew that the fucker knew what had happened. He knew it was her even if he couldn’t prove it. But so what? Let him, she thought. She gave him a steady look so he’d know that she knew that the real question was how the data had straightened out? Was Chen cooking the books to make the study come out right? He must be, but she couldn’t say anything without giving away how she knew. Chen kept looking at her. She looked right back.