In Death 08 - Conspiracy in Death

complete success."
    "Organ regeneration."
    "Exactly." He all but beamed at her. "You have filled in blanks. I told the others you would."
    "Yeah, I've filled them. Friend screwed up your cushy circle with his artificial implants, knocked away your funding." She hooked her thumbs in her pockets, moved a little closer. "You'd have been pretty young then, maybe just getting your toehold. Must've pissed you off."
    "Oh, it did. It took me years to establish myself enough to gather the resources, the team, the equipment to compatently continue the work we'd been doing when Friend destroyed it. I hadn't quite reached the brass ring of prominence when he and some colleagues began experimenting with melding live tissue with the artificial material. But Tia, she believed in me, in my passions. She kept me well informed."
    "Did she help you kill him?"
    "No, that I did unassisted. Friend had gotten wind of my interests, experiments. Didn't care for them. He intended to use his influence to cancel my funding -- pitiful as it was -- to research the regeneration of animal organs. I canceled him and his little project first."
    "But then you had to go under," she said easing forward with her eyes steady on his. "You planned to move to human organs eventually, so you covered your tracks."
    "And covered them well. Enlisted some of the very best hands and minds in the medical field. And all's well that ends well. Watch your step."
    She stopped at the foot of the gurney, laid a hand casually on the guard. "You know they've got Young. He'll roll over on you."
    "He'd die first." Waverly chuckled. "The man is obsessed with this project. He sees his name shining in medical journals for the ages. He believes I'm a god. He would bite through the artery in his own wrist before he'd betray me."
    "Maybe. I guess you couldn't count on that kind of loyalty from Wo."
    "No. She was always a risk, always on the outskirts of the project. A skilled doctor but a fairly unstable woman. She began to balk when she discovered our human samples had been... appropriated without permission."
    "She didn't expect you to kill people."
    "They're hardly people."
    "And the others?"
    "In this arena? Hans believes as I do. Colin?" He moved an elegant shoulder. "He prefers to wear blinders, to pretend not to know the full extent of the project. There are more, of course. An undertaking of this magnitude requires a large if select team."
    "Did you send the droid after Jan?"
    "You've found her already." He shook his head in admiration, and his hair gleamed like gold under the bright lab lights. "My, that was quick. Of course. She was one of those loose ends."
    "And what will Cagney say when you tell him Louise was another loose end?"
    "He won't know. It's very simple, if you know how, to dispose of a body in a health center. The crematorium is efficient and never closed. What happened to her will remain a mystery."
    In an absent gesture, Waverly stroked a hand over Louise's hair. Eve wanted to taste his blood for that alone.
    "It will likely break him," Waverly considered. "I'm sorry for it. Very sorry to have to sacrifice two fine minds, two excellent doctors, but progress, great progress, requires heavy sacrifice."
    "He'll know."
    "Oh, on some level, certainly. And he'll deny. He does his best work in denial. But he will consider himself responsible. Guilty, I suppose, by omission. He is certainly aware that experiments and research are being conducted in this and other facilities, without official sanction. He tends to look the other way easily, to call out his loyalty to the club. One doctor does not turn on another."
    "But you do."
    "My loyalty is to the project."
    "What do you hope to gain?"
    "Is that the blank you can't fill? My God, we have done it." Now his eyes sparkled, emerald green and full of power. "We can rejuvenate a human organ. Within one day, a dying heart can be treated and brought back to health. Not just health, but strength, youth, vigor." Excitement had his voice rising, deepening. "Better in some cases than it was before it was damaged. It can be all but reanimated, and that, I believe, is possible with a bit more study."
    "Bring the dead to life?"
    "The stuff of fiction, you're thinking. So were transplants once, cornea replacement, in vitro repair. This can and will be done, and very soon. We're nearly ready to go public with our discovery. A serum that, when injected directly into the damaged organ through a simple surgical procedure, will