Good Intentions
September 2010… (aka: present day)
This was certainly not the best day of Mary Shannon's life.
It was supposed to be. All of the wedding magazines Brandi had collected over the last six months of planning told her it would be. Yet here she was in the white dress and satin shoes with upswept hair and makeup done in tasteful nude-tones by a "professional" and it was anything but perfect.
Perhaps she was making a mistake. Maybe Raph wasn't the man for her and the sick feeling in her stomach was dread.
Then again… maybe it had more to do with the stench of rotting flesh floating on the early morning breeze.
No one had seen it coming.
They should have smelled it. Mary thought bitterly, wrinkling her nose in distaste.
But they didn't. No one did.
Seven months earlier…
Jenkins Early was running late, again. The irony was not lost on him. Any humor in the situation did however seem to float over his supervisors heads – he'd already been written up once. This was the third day this week he'd slept through his alarm and hit every red light from his home in central Albuquerque to the labs a half mile out of town.
He was so fired.
Jenkins entered the GeneCo labs at a dead sprint, his left arm thrust through the wrong arm of his lab coat, the right arm wind milling in a futile attempt to slip into the sleeve that was flapping like a kite behind his left shoulder. He carried a messy pile of multicolored papers in his left hand and was alternating between trying to read the paper on top of the pile and actually watching where he was headed.
Three years of working at GeneCo and at least a hundred morning sprints through the labs had given Jenkins an uncanny ability to avoid disaster as he bounded past busy researchers and their bubbling beakers. He skidded into Karl Matt's office for the morning meeting of the Research and Development department 15 minutes after it started.
Joel Sanchez handed him a cup of luke-warm coffee and a copy of the document the bored looking red-head at the front of the room was reading.
"Nice of you to join us Mr. Early," Dr. Matt shot Jenkins a dirty look. "As I was saying…"
Joel and Jenkins exchanged rolled eyes and proceeded to ignore their boss in favor of a scribbled exchange on the back of the meeting notes.
Do you want to get fired?
Was Karl mad?
What do you think?
Shit!
What story are you going to use?
Think he'd believe I found the protein transcription factor for C85?
What???
Later. Meet me at the usual spot after work.
The meeting was wrapping up around them and Jenkins hastily shoved the scribbled on paper in his pocket. He'd managed to straighten up his papers and put his lab jacket on properly during the ten minute meeting and looked almost presentable when Karl Matt stopped in front of him, frown set on his knife-like face.
"Is it that you don't care about what we do or that you are not competent enough to contribute?" Karl asked in a bored voice that almost hid the fury in his flat brown eyes.
Jenkins quivered, "I-I'm very sorry sir. I was up very late working on C85 and I overslept my alarm."
Dr. Matt was not a particularly nice man. He would have loved to fire Jenkins Early for his inability to arrive at work on time more than a few days out of every month, but Jenkins was brilliant and necessary to the project. Rotti Largo, the company's young founder was also not a nice man. And Rotti had made it very clear that C85 was top priority for the Albuquerque research facility and therefore Karl's hands were tied. He settled for glowering down his long nose for several uncomfortable seconds before snarling, "well, are you planning to work at all today?"
GeneCo had three research facilities in the USA. The first opened in Chicago two years earlier. The Albuquerque branch had been open for only nine months but was already producing more results than the Chicago and New York labs combined. The company's founder, a young billionaire with more money than sense and no read idea at all about the science he was asking for, was constantly pushing the labs to release new products long before they were tested properly. Dr. Matt himself knew of three specific drugs that had only been released after some hefty bribes to the FDA.
Sometimes, if he bothered to think about it, Karl Matt felt badly for the part he played at GeneCo. He knew, logically, that a drug that could not pass the FDA tests was a drug that likely should not be offered at drug stores across the nation as a cure-all. However, and more importantly, he also knew that the sink or swim outcome of GeneCo's first five years would make or break his career and he chose to turn a blind eye over and over until he truly was blind to the horrors at his very doorstep.
C85 was Rotti Largo's brainchild. It was, though few within the organization knew, the reason he had founded GeneCo in the first place.
He had been seventeen when his father, Rudolph Largo, died of liver disease. The same liver disease that killed his grandfather and probably his great grandfather's grandfather – though medical knowledge had not been advanced enough in the early half of the twentieth century to be sure. Rudolph had died at the top of the donor list for a new liver that had not come in time. Rotti drank himself stupid for a year before deciding that there had to be something to do about it.
He had started the first GeneCo lab two months and three days before his nineteenth birthday.
Two years later in October 2006 Shinya Yamanaka's team at Kyoto University created the first ever induced pluripotent stem cell using the adult cells of a mouse. In November 2007 Yamanaka and his colleagues made scientific history yet again by producing a human IPSC. That same month James Thomson and Junying Yu at University of Wisconsin-Madison used a different method to achieve the same result.
By January 2010 GeneCo had replicated both experiments successfully as well as one pioneered by Sheng Ding in La Jolla, California in June 2009 that did not require any modification of the genetic makeup of the original cell. This third method was the task of the Albuquerque lab.
With three separate labs working round the clock on the next stage – growing the IPSC into actual human tissue – Rotti fully expected GeneCo to get there first.
Present day…
There was a knock at the door to the Sunday school room Mary and her bridal party had been given to get ready in.
Mary tensed, tightened her fingers around the 23 Glock she'd hidden in her bouquet, and called out, "Come on in."
The door creaked slowly open to reveal a teary Brandi and a grim-faced Jinx.
"He's not here?" Mary sucked in a sharp, deep breath and puffed out her cheeks in a noisy sigh, eyes cast to the white ceiling above.
There were several moments of silence. Jinx took the bouquet out of her eldest daughter's hands and placed it on the table. Brandi sank into one o the child-sized chairs that littered the room and buried her tear stained face in her hands.
"Ok," Mary said at last. "Ok." she took another deep breath and tightened her grip on the glock that Jinx had left in her hands. "I'll jus--"
The door slammed open, cutting her off mid-word. Marshall stood in the doorway, his tall lean figure a dark silhouette against the bright afternoon outside. He did not linger long, the moment his keen blue eyes spotted Mary he was on the move. When he was a few feet away he stopped again. His face was grave but determined.
Mary relaxed the grip on her gun when she realized who it was. "Did you find him?" She asked hopefully.
Marshall shook his head. "I'm sorry Mer, all I found was this." He held up a pale blue envelope.
The faint floral design on the envelope caught the light and seemed almost to glow. It was, she realized with a jolt, their wedding stationary. The barely-there pattern and semi-masculine colors had appealed to Mary more than anything else she'd seen on the one hellish day Brandi and Jinx had kidnapped her to make wedding plans. They'd ordered too much and ended up with an entire box of blank cards and envelopes that Raph had joking said they would use to let friends know to come to their golden anniversary.
Thinking of Raph tightened the knot of fear in Mary's stomach. She took the envelope from Marshall with tembling fingers, and slipped open the envelope. Had he not sealed it because he was interrupted? The thought almost caused her to drop it. Please be alright she begged of him, as if by wishing it to the universe she could make it so.
The note was short. Scratched in the familiar combination of small and capital letters – as if no one had bothered to explain the concept to him and so he'd chosen the forms he liked best. She remembered finding this endearing and then supremely irritating. Now it made her guilty. She'd never appreciate Raph as anything but a sex-toy.
MaRy,
I am soRRy I could Not tell you sooNeR. I Received a call last Night offeRing me a plaCe oN a baseball team in JapaN. They waNted me to staRt Right away aNd I Could Not say No. I kNow you doN't love me the way I love you aNd I want you to be happy. I thiNk it is betteR this way. I will always love you.
GoodbyE
Raph
Mary stared in mute horror at the short note, so cruel and final in its brevity. Her mind was overwhelmed with a hundred emotions and for several minutes she couldn't move, couldn't tear her eyes away, couldn't utter a single sound to reassure the three worried faces in the room with her. Raph was safe (relief) Raph was gone (anger, sadness, a sharp knife of pain) She would never see him again (regret, guilt, relief).
When she could move she handed the note wordlessly to Marshall. He met her eyes, nodded a silent understanding and read the note. Mary watched his face as he skimmed the words. His emotions were no more stable than hers. She could track them through the narrowing of his eyes, the tightening of his jaw: anger, disbelief, more anger, relief, and back to anger. When he finished he gave her a look of such compassion she suddenly wanted to cry.
He sat on a chair between Jinx and Brandi and explained in a soft voice what had happened – because he knew without asking that Mary couldn't – and then rose to spread the news to her guests. Mary watched him the entire time without saying a word.
A/N: GeneCo is a deliberate reference to the GeneCo Biotech company in Repo the Genetic Opera (if you haven't seen it: do so now. Unless you are under 18 in which case – forget I said that). The research is completely invented by me. Based on a knowledge of what GeneCo will be producing in 2056 and on my very limited (wiki fed) knowledge of Induced pluripotent stem cell research (welcome to the world of completely random obsessions about science) I am freely destroying Repo canon to make it work for my purposes so I do not consider this a crossover. My repo canon is that Rotti started the company as stem cell research and discovered that they could create entire organs to make the need for organ donors for the rich disappear… then in 2030 a massive outbreak of organ failure elevates his company from a mostly unsuccessful member of the massive biotech industry to the leading/only one on the market. Anyone who is curious about this subject, I recommend this article: .com/latestnews/World-first-as-woman-gets. it's not exactly what I have the lab doing, but it shows that it might actually be possible.