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“Lightheadedness. Fainting. A small number of more serious reactions. No one knew what was causing them.”
I did. Or at least, I thought I did. Hypoxia.
“And Alexander shut Helix down?”
“Not immediately.” She paused. “I found the altered data first.”
Something in the way she said it didn’t sit well. “Did you tell him?”
“No. I believed we needed time to understand what had happened before Alexander decided the future of the entire project.”
“So you concealed it from him. That two researchers on your team fabricated data. That patients had serious side effects.”
“I delayed telling him.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
Her expression didn’t change. “Not to me.”
“He found out?”
“He found the original results. And then he found out that I had known.”
“What did he do?”
“What Alexander always does once he is certain.” Her gaze moved across the abandoned floor.
“He decided. Alexander believed the risks ended the conversation. I believed they gave us something we needed to understand.”
“And you still believe that?”
“I do.”
“What does Julian Mercer have to do with this?”
“Julian?”
“My collaboration with him was suspended. He was a postdoc on Helix. I wondered if there was a connection.”
“He has nothing to do with me.”
Her gaze fixed on me with a cool curiosity. “I had followed Aurora for years. When Alexander brought it to Blackwood Hall, I read every paper your team published again. I wanted to understand what he saw in your work that he had refused to see in ours.”
“Aurora isn’t Helix.”
“No, but Helix asked some of those questions first. Alexander gave you the funding, the laboratories, the people, and, most importantly, time. He gave Aurora the chance to answer questions Helix was never allowed to finish asking.”
“Were you in my office?”
“Yes.”
The simplicity of the answer unsettled me more than a denial would have. “Why?”
“I wanted to see what Alexander had chosen. And I wanted him to understand what it was like to lose part of it.”
“The fire?”
A small, almost mischievous smile touched her mouth. I stared at her.
