His last-ditch idea was to find a patient with a blood type of AB positive and introduce a small quantity of the special Beta telomerase enzyme into them. The theory was that this might induce their body to produce compatible antibodies, which could then be extracted and cultured in the laboratory. If a sufficient quantity could be produced they could be injected into Bartlett and hopefully arrest the enzyme's pattern of entering the host's bloodstream and metastasizing into the more complex form that brought on the Syndrome. And if it did work, then there might even be some way to adapt the procedure to Kristen. "Karl, if Cambridge Pharmaceuticals finds out about the Beta fiasco, how's it going to affect--" "How do you think it's going to affect the sale? If this gets out, there'll be no sale. To anybody. Bartlett will be ruined, and Gerex along with him. That's everybody here, in case you're counting." He turned and exited the lab, pushing pensively through the air lock, and then he walked slowly toward his office, collecting his thoughts. He was just passing the elevator when it opened. _Sunday, April 5 8:47 A.M. _ Winston Bartlett looked up to see Van de Vliet as he stepped off the elevator, and the sight heartened him as always. The Dutchman was a genius. If anyone could solve this damned mess, surely he was the one. "First thing, Karl, how is she now?" "I think you'd better go down and see for yourself," Van de Vliet said slowly. "As I told you on the phone, she still comes and goes. I think it's getting worse." Bartlett felt a chill run through him. He had once cared for this woman as much as he was capable of caring for anybody, and what had happened was a damned shame. All he had intended was to give her something special, something no man had ever given a woman before. "Will she know who I am? She still did yesterday." "It depends," Van de Vliet replied. "Yesterday afternoon she was fully lucid, but then earlier this morning I got the impression she thinks she's in a different place and time. If I had to guess, I'd say she's regressing chronologically. I suppose that's logical, though nothing about this makes any sense." Bartlett was following him back through the air lock and into the laboratory. The intensive-care area below was reachable only by a special elevator at the rear of the lab. All these once-cocky people, Bartlett thought, were now scared to death. Van de Vliet and his research team might actually be criminally liable if the right prosecutor got hold of the case. At the very least they'd be facing an ethics fiasco. But I'm the one who's about to be destroyed. In every sense.