Other things were new as well. She'd been seeing a lot of Stone Aimes and helping him finish his book on the Gerex Corporation's successful clinical trials with stem cell technology. After all the publicity following the fire at the Dorian Institute, the manuscript was generating a lot of buzz. A paperback auction was already in the works, with a half-million floor, and Time had abruptly taken a second look at the "first serial" excerpt his agent had been trying to place with them and come up with six figures. The only part Stone hadn't reported was the ghastly side effect of the early Beta experiment, the Syndrome, because Kristen Starr had disappeared. He had no proof and his publisher refused to print potentially libelous speculation. In the meantime, Winston Bartlett hadn't been seen in public since that tragic day. The business press speculated he had become a Howard Hughes-like recluse in his Gramercy Park mansion. Ally had tried several times to reach him through his office to find out what he wanted to do about the design job, and each time she was told he would get back to her. He never did. Maybe he was still recuperating. When the firefighters pulled him out of the flaming wreckage, his clothes were singed from the electricity that had coursed through his body, his heart was stopped and he appeared to be dead. In fact, he was dead. The paramedics immediately began intensive CPR. Moments later, his heart was beating again. Then he declared he was well enough that he didn't need to go to a hospital. He had his Japanese henchman, Kenji Noda, help him to his McDonnell Douglas and he disappeared into the night. Oxygen had not been to his brain for . . . No one knew how long. The paramedics said he awoke in what seemed another reality. Was he still alive? There had been no reports otherwise, but he most certainly had withdrawn from the world. Karl Van de Vliet, for his part, had been hospitalized for severe burns. He remained in the trauma unit at St. Vincent's Hospital, but when Alexa tried to go visit him, she was told he wasn't accepting visitors but was doing well. Katherine Starr was dead from a massive concussion, along with the two researchers, Debra Connolly and David Hopkins, who had been in the wrong place when the steel racks collapsed. And Alexa never been able to find out what happened to Kristen Starr. Officially, nobody by that name was there. But business was business. With the clinical trials over, the pending sale of the Gerex Corporation to Cambridge Pharmaceuticals was proceeding on autopilot, handled by Grant Hampton, who stood to make a bundle or so he bragged to Alexa. The Dorian Institute had been closed and all the remaining records moved to a converted facility near Liverpool. After six days in Lenox Hill, Ally went home, and three days after that she had returned to her desk at CitiSpace. Now, inevitably, she was back to her workaholic habits and grueling hours.