Page 14 of Her Last Escape

"Well," Novak said finally, "this case just got very odd."

Rachel nodded slowly, already trying to sort through the implications. "New Horizons Cryonics," she muttered, pulling out her phone again. "Let's see what we can find out about them."

“You look into them,” Novak said. “I’ll see if I can find out whether or not Thomas was in any way connected to them.”

As they set to work in the still-parked car, the crow took flight from its perch, its shadow briefly passing over their windshield like a dark premonition. Rachel couldn't shake the feeling that they'd just stumbled into waters that might be deeper than she was willing to consider. Cryopreservation sounded very sci-fi to her, very over her head. And if this case was taking them to places like that, what else might be waiting for them?

As she began typing the facility's name into her phone's search bar, she couldn't help but wonder: what kind of person kills people who are trying to live forever?

CHAPTER TEN

While Rachel found the website for New Horizons Cryonics to be very vague and unhelpful, Novak was able to find out what he needed right away. She listened to his side of the conversation as he called Ellie Whitman, only to have her sister, Ramona answer. She was able to answer all of Novak's questions, though, and less than five minutes after hearing New Horizons Cryonics mentioned for the first time, it appeared they had a solid link.

"Get this," Novak said. "Not only was Thomas Whitman speaking to people at New Horizons, but he'd already paid them a handsome sum. Neither Ramona or Ellie knew the exact amount, but Ellie was sure it was at least fifty thousand dollars."

Rachel chewed this over for a while, trying not to get too excited about what now looked like a very promising link between the victims. "And they're certain about this?"

"According to Ellie, Thomas wasn't exactly subtle about it. He'd been trying to convince Ellie to sign up too. But Ellie said she shut him down every time. Said she wasn't comfortable with it…that it sounded like something people did in horror movies."

"Can't blame her there," Rachel muttered, as Novak finally pulled out of the parking lot of the coroner’s office and started in the direction of the highway. The mid-afternoon traffic was relatively light, giving them a clear shot to the location of New Horizon, which the GPS placed as being thirteen miles away, on the outskirts of the city.

Now that they were moving again, she allowed herself to dwell on something that had been bothering her ever since Dr. Welsh had mentioned the topic of cryopreservation. This wasn’t the first time Rachel had heard of it. In fact, the mere mention of it had triggered a memory she'd rather forget—one of many she thought she’d buried so far down that it would never come back again.

Three years ago, lying in a hospital bed in Sweden, watching snow fall outside her window while doctors discussed her "options." Her tumor had been particularly aggressive then, starting to spread again after one of the experimental treatments was supposed to have not only stopped it, but caused it to shrink. Just one of several failed experiments. She remembered the endless hours spent online, researching alternatives, desperate for anything that might give her more time. She could even recall the face of the kind nurse who had brought her the laptop to do her research on.

That's when she'd first stumbled across cryonics. The websites and articles she’d read had been filled with optimistic promises about future revival, about beating death itself. She'd read every article, every testimonial, her hands shaking as she clicked through page after page. The price tags had been astronomical – hundreds of thousands of dollars for whole body preservation, slightly less for just the brain. But even if she'd had the money, something about it had felt fundamentally wrong. Silly, almost.

Rachel glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror, touching the small scar near her hairline where they'd gone in to remove the tumor when it had initially shrunk to a point where it could be removed safely. The experimental treatment had worked, in the end. No need for science fiction solutions.

"You okay?" Novak asked, breaking into her thoughts.

"Yeah, just..." She paused, considering how much to share. "When I was sick, I actually looked into this stuff. Cryopreservation, I mean."

Novak's eyebrows shot up. "Seriously?"

"It wasn't my proudest moment…but I never really gave it much serious consideration, anyway." Rachel kept her eyes on the road ahead of them, but her mind drifted back to those desperate days. "When you're facing death, really facing it, you start entertaining ideas you'd normally dismiss. The science sounds almost plausible when you're desperate enough. They talk about vitrification instead of freezing, about nanobots that'll repair cellular damage, about quantum computers that'll map and restore consciousness. You name it, the hope for it is out there.”

“Wait…quantum computers?”

“Yeah…to upload your consciousness and then download it whenever some weird bio-miracle body can be created to store it.”

“And this is a real thing?” Novak asked.

“In theory…though we don’t have the tech for it right now.”

“Man, people will do anything to beat death, huh?”

She nodded her head. "But the more I researched, the more red flags I saw. The complete lack of peer-reviewed evidence. The way they dance around the fact that no one's ever been successfully revived. Not even the mice they test it on. And the ethical implications... who gets to decide when or if you're brought back? What happens to your assets in the meantime? What if future societies want nothing to do with reviving people from the past?"

"Plus the whole 'playing God' angle," Novak added.

Rachel nodded. "That too. Though I try not to judge. When you're staring down your own mortality, rationality isn't always your strongest suit. I get why people buy into it. The promise of a second chance, even a far-fetched one, can be pretty seductive when you're out of options."

Her phone buzzed in the midst of their discussion, displaying an unfamiliar number. Rachel hit the speaker button. "Agent Gift speaking."

"Agent Gift, this is Sergeant Rose." The voice crackled through the car's speakers.

"Oh, hi again. Is everything okay?"

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