Crime Zero by Michael Cordy Read Free Book Online

ViroVector's vast dome and nodded at numerous members of her staff as she passed, a few of them stopped to tell their boss that her jacket was crooked. All did it with a respectful and affectionate smile as if this weren't the first time. To each one she gave a small smile and a thank-you and then moved on, leaving her buttons untouched. She had more important things on her mind. The project she had been working on for years was finally coming to fruition. But now that the theory would soon be a reality she could see all the small things that could unravel. In particular she was trying to remember exactly when Karl Axelman was meant to die.
    Now fifty-one, Alice Prince had founded ViroVector Solutions in 1987, two days before her thirtieth birthday. Twenty-one years later her brainchild was already the world's third-largest biotech company and the most influential on the West Coast. Headquartered just south of Palo Alto between San Francisco and San Jose, its sprawling campus comprised the huge crystal dome, three separate hundred-yard production sheds, a helicopter landing pad, a sports complex, and a parking lot. Bordering a science park and the Bellevue Golf and Country Club, the perimeter was protected with a lightweight steel fence, linked to a series of sensitive scanners and alarms. The crystal dome, like the rest of the campus, was a so-called smart building, designed by the celebrated British architechnologist Sir Simon Canning. It resembled a visiting spaceship, particularly at night when the interior lights illuminated the predominantly glass structure. But everyone at ViroVector called it the Iceberg because the visible part of the building, which housed the commercial offices, administrative departments, and the supercomputer TITANIA, was a tiny part of the overall structure. The majority of it was underground, where the extensive warren of biocontainment laboratories was located.
    It was to the underground laboratories that Dr. Alice Prince was heading now. After going through one of three doors off the dome's ground-floor reception hall, she walked down a long corridor, past a white door on her left. AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY was stamped above the acronym TITANIA. As she passed, the temperature in the corridor dropped slightly. The Cold Room housed ViroVector's vast protein-based biocomputer. TITANIA, an acronym for Total Information Technology and Neural Intelligence Analogue, was the artificially intelligent brain that controlled and coordinated all the smart buildings and most of ViroVector's corporate functions, from data capture and manipulation to production scheduling, project management, payroll, and security.
    At the end of the corridor Alice stopped before a yellow door marked with a large black biohazard symbol. And when Alice placed her palm on the door sensors, it was TITANIA that recognized her DNA profile and ratified her Gold clearance to the biolab complex. Through the yellow door was a small vestibule with a computer terminal and a printer. Two white-coated female technicians greeted her, and she smiled back. She wished she had a better memory for names because she recognized their faces. From here she walked to another door, which again required TITANIA to check her identity before hissing open to reveal a transit station containing lockers and shower cubicles. She undressed and took a quick shower, then dressed in surgical greens and safety goggles. She now walked to one of two yellow elevators with large black biohazard symbols on the doors.
    Inside the elevator there was only one button with a star on it. When she pressed it, the doors closed, and she felt the high-speed cabin descend fifty feet underground to the main complex. As the doors opened, the safety goggles shielded her eyes from the ultraviolet light in the screening corridor outside. The light was used to break down viruses. At the end of the corridor was an entry area that gave access to the underground system of five concentric