The driver of the car was standing at the edge of my periphery, talking and gesticulating, explaining his innocence to anyone who cared to listen.
A man knelt down beside me, imploring the crowd to back up and give him room. “I am a doctor!” he yelled in Arabic. I doubted it. It was one of the men chasing me.
I lay on my back, arms outstretched. The “doctor” leaned over me and looking in my face. He smiled. “Stupid American boy.”
He reached down and took my head in his hand, then brought it away to show me his fingers covered with blood. He turned and yelled at the crowd to back up again. I looked around, frantic, but could see nothing but faces, both repulsed and attracted.
“Someone call an ambulance!” yelled the “doctor.” Another man knelt down, taking off his turban, holding it against the side of my head. The “doctor” pretended to examine my arms and legs.
In the crowd, I saw a man in a black jacket holding the baby: silent but alive. I tried to yell, but no sound came out.
“Just relax,” the second man said. “Help will be here soon.” He stood, and the first man bent down close to my face. He squinted, peering with close-set eyes. His long, beak-like nose turned this way and that, as if he were trying to pick up a scent. Pale skin was almost white below his knit cap.
He curled his lips in a tight smile that might have been mistaken for a grimace. “Exitus acta probat.”
I passed out.
In the near future, when biotechnology is stretching the limits of ethics and legality, a man, a woman, and a young child are caught up in a heavily funded project based on the work of a brilliant geneticist. But bio-research firms, Big Pharm, governments, and black marketeers see a way to become wealthy and powerful. Kidnappings, payoffs, political intrigue, and murder follow the test subjects, who must decide what to do with the data and the lives that have been destroyed—and find a way to save the child.
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