Chapter 83
I leaned on the car, while thoughts about the future refluxed in me inconsequentially, punctuating long intervals of mental emptiness. Pure feelings: the hot air, the smell of the grass, the vision of the trees and of the three policemen digging something from the ground, the sound of insects and of their voices coming from a distance. The events happened moments earlier became a remote bad dream, maybe not even that. All of a sudden my brain refused to fully acknowledge what had happened. Perhaps this is how dissociative amnesia starts.
But then Susan Avery walked towards me and brought me back to reality. She had a small glass vial in her hands, sealed in a plastic bag.
“Does this look like your polymer?”, she asked
I opened the vial, looked at it, smelled it, and nodded
“Did you give it to them?”, she asked
“No, I never gave anyone this much sample…”
“Then how do they have it? Is it possible that someone else in you lab is passing it to them?”
I shook my head no.
“I don’t believe so. I think they reverse-engineered my sample and learned to synthesize the polymer themselves”
“So now it could be extensively used for unknown applications”, Avery said, with just the slightest question mark in her statement
“I suppose so…”, I said, shuddering at the implications
Luke and Sam had been inspecting the rundown hut while Avery and I had been talking, and now they were coming back with an expression of mixed boredom and disappointment, as that of a hunter who comes back without a prey
“There’s nothing in there”, said Sam
“Ok guys, let’s go then”, said Avery
“So what’s the white stuff? Is it the chemical?”, he asked in his coarse voice, tugging up his pants from the belt loops
“Looks like it is”, said Avery, and looking at me for confirmation
“Ok, we’ll keep this as evidence”, Luke said
Avery handed him the plastic bag with the vial
“If you guys can hold on to this on your way back to the police station, I will drive Iris”, said Avery
“Where to?”, Sam asked, slightly arching his brows, still holding on to the belt loops
This guy must have been a bully in his teens, I thought
Avery looked at me, with a confused expression shading her face for a brief instant like a fast cloud crossing the sky
“Do you still want to go to FoodTech labs?”, she asked after a pause
There was nothing I wanted, but all I said was, “Well, that was the plan. We might as well stick to it”
“Let’s go then”, she told me, opening my door as to make sure I followed up with what I just said, before slipping in the car herself
“See you guys at the station”, she called from the window, raising a hand in farewell.