Lock In (Lock In, #1)(77)

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” I said.

“It’ll be great,” Buchold said. “For the first week. After that I’ll have to figure out what to do with myself.”

“The night of my dad’s party, you were talking about the therapies you were developing to unlock people from Haden’s,” I said.

“I remember I dragged you into the argument,” Buchold said. “Rick gave me crap for that yesterday when he remembered it. Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I remember that night you also mentioned the drug you were developing.”

“Neuroulease.”

“That’s right,” I said. “How far along were you with it?”

“You mean, how long until Neuroulease was on the market?”

“Yes.”

“We were feeling optimistic that we’d have enough progress on the drug within the year to apply for clinical trials,” Buchold said. “And if those showed promise we were pretty much already guaranteed a fast track at the FDA for approval. You have four and a half million people suffering from lock in. Especially now that Abrams-Kettering’s on the books, the sooner we can unlock them, the better.”

“What about now?” I asked.

“Well, one of the principal investigators blew up the company, and with it a whole lot of our data and documentation,” Buchold said. “Then he killed himself, and however I feel about that at the moment, he was the one who could have most easily reconstructed that data from what we have left. From what we have now, it’ll take five to seven years before we’re at the clinical trial stage again. And that’s optimistic.”

“Anyone else as close to it as you were?” I asked.

“I know Roche has a combination drug and brain stimulus therapy they’ve been working on,” Buchold said. “But they’re nowhere close to clinical trials with that. No one else is even in the same ballpark.” He looked at me sourly. “You want to hear something funny?”

“Sure,” I said.

“That bastard Hubbard,” he said. “At your dad’s party he was tearing into me about Haden culture and how they didn’t want to be free of their disease and doing everything short of implying I was encouraging a genocide.”

“I remember,” I said.

“Yesterday that son of a bitch calls up and makes an offer on Loudoun Pharma!” Buchold said.

“For how much?”

“For f*cking not enough!” Buchold said. “And I let him know. He said the offer was flexible but that he wanted to move quickly. And I said to him that a couple of days before he was telling me what a horrible idea our work was, and now he wanted to buy it? Do you know what he said?”

“I don’t know,” I said, although I had some idea.

“He said, ‘Business is business’!” Buchold exclaimed. “Jesus lord. I just about hung up on him then.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No,” Buchold said. “Because he’s right. Business is business. I have six hundred employees who are going to be out of work in three days, and even though Rick doesn’t think I should socialize with them”—Buchold rolled his eyes, and looked around to see if his husband was about—“I do feel responsible for them. It would be fine with me if some of them kept their jobs, and the rest had better severance pay than they would have otherwise.”

“So you would sell to him?” I asked.

“If no one else steps up with a better offer, I just might,” Buchold said. “Why? Do you think I should pass on the offer?”

“I would never tell you how to run your own business, Mr. Buchold.”

“What’s left of it anyway,” he said. “Well, I’ll tell you what, Agent Shane. You find me a good reason to keep my options open, and maybe I’ll do just that.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I will see what I can do.”

* * *

Five o’clock, and I was in the liminal space of Cassandra Bell.

It was bare. And by bare, I mean that there was literally nothing in it.

This was not the vast expanse of endless space. It was the absolute opposite, a close, tight darkness. It was like being at the bottom of an ocean of black ink. For the first time I understood claustrophobia.

“Most people find my liminal space uncomfortable, Agent Shane,” Bell said. A voice that I could not see and which came from everywhere, although quietly. It was like being inside the head of a very private person. Which, I suppose, was exactly what this was.

“I can understand that,” I said.

“Does it bother you?”

“I’m trying not to let it.”

“I find it comforting,” Bell said. “It reminds me of the womb. They say we don’t remember what it is like to be there, but I don’t believe that. I think deep inside we always know. It’s why children burrow under blankets and cats push their heads into your elbow when they sit beside you. I’ve not had those experiences myself, but I know why they happen. I’ve been told my liminal space is like the dark of the grave. But I think of it as the dark from the other end of life entirely. The dark of everything ahead, not everything behind.”

“I like the way you put that,” I said. “I’m going to try to think of it that way.”