Sample 7
Cases unlock in order, like levels. This is case 72 of 100.
Hale Lab, 5th floor of a biotech institute in Boston, 6:10 am. Postdoc Lakshmi Iyer opened the -80 °C freezer and found slot 7 of the rack empty.
Sample 7 is a cell line that produces a promising compound against resistant infections. Six years of research fit inside that tube.
The freezer log shows the door opened at 11:12 pm, for 4 minutes. There was no break-in: the freezer room opens with a badge or a master key.
Three people were on the floor that night. One of them walked out with the tube.
The lab's meeting room, a whiteboard full of formulas, the hum of the freezers behind the wall.
Suspects
Desmond HaleLab director, 58
Lakshmi IyerPostdoc, 31
Nelson BarrosJanitor, 52
The real case
The research vials taken from a Boston hospital
Boston, United States, December 2019
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
In December 2019, a visiting researcher at a laboratory of Beth Israel Deaconess hospital in Boston was stopped at Logan Airport with 21 vials of biological material hidden in a sock inside his luggage. The material came from the laboratory's own line of cancer research.
He told agents he was carrying nothing, then admitted to the vials and said he intended to continue the research in another country. He pleaded guilty in 2020 to lying to the authorities and was deported. The case became part of a series of investigations into the transfer of research from American institutions.
The game borrows the researcher who smuggles vials of a valuable cell line out of the institution. Characters, crime and outcome are fiction.
Sources
Case glossary
Words from this case you might not know.
- postdoc
- A researcher who has finished a doctorate and works temporarily in a lab to gain experience.
- cell line
- A population of cells that can be grown and multiplied indefinitely in a lab, used for research.