EXCERPT

CHAPTER 1

Suzanne Coughlin walked out of the lab door, turned right, and marched down the hallway. She looked down at the white tiles, hoping no one would see her. Something hit her in the shoulder. She heard a pan crash, and saw glass and blood splatter on the floor.

"Oh, shit, I'm sorry!" She turned, looked down, and then looked around to see if she had drawn a crowd.

It was Dan, a colleague, bringing blood samples back to the lab for analysis. He was on his knees, picking up the mess. He looked up.

"Suzanne, are you okay? You look pale, you're sweating."

She bent down. "Yeah, oh, here, let me help you."

"Don't worry about it. Let me call the cleaning crew." He reached for the cell phone in the top pocket of his lab coat. "Where you off to, Suz? We have our lab meeting in five minutes."

"I have to go down the hall to serology. Do me a favor, Dan, and tell them that I'll be a little late." She stood, turned, and walked directly to the Cryogenics Storage Room.

She had to be in and out of the room quickly. The vials were stored in a box sunk deep in a large container of liquid nitrogen. She walked to the back corner, around the maze of other tanks, put on a pair of thick, insulated gloves, and pulled slowly on the handle of the holder that held the box of vials.

She thought she heard something, stood up, and spun around. The box filled with the small vials flew out of her hands. She got down on her knees and shuffled the vials back into the box.

The Cell Bank that Suzanne had entered was formed several years before so that the Committee for Human Cloning (C.H.C.) could easily regulate use of human eggs. It was the only facility of its kind in the country. All harvested human eggs, by law, had to be sent there for storage. Thousands were being frozen each year in preparation for in vitro fertilization.

The Bank was located at the Center for Fertility at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, where an average of ten thousand infertile couples per year were treated. There were at least one hundred other fertility centers, on the East Coast alone, that sent cells to the Bank.

The storage and use of frozen human eggs were carefully regulated by the C.H.C. Those entering were videotaped and each had to sign in and out.

Suzanne tried not to look at the camera. She wanted it to look like a routine visit. Sweat formed on her forehead. She took a deep breath, walked over to the log book, spent a few seconds staring at the pages, then looked down at the samples and recorded the identification numbers: MM151, MM152, MM153, MM154, MM155, MM156. Then, under the authorization column, she wrote, Doctor McGrath, G.B.M.C.

She walked out with the samples in hand, quickly put them into a small thermos full of liquid nitrogen, and stuffed the thermos into her large canvas purse.