Act I — Chapter 5
5
The pincer arm slid along the BioTek Microplate Stacker’s sleek body, holding a clear rectangular plate. The plate’s surface was pitted with a grid of a hundred small round wells, each one filled with pale yellowish-brown fluid. The Stacker handed the plate off to a Synergy Microplate Reader, which drew it into a dark slot. Its payload deposited, the Stacker rose toward a vertical tower of identical plates, its pincers rotating to grab the next set of samples.
Tina Giordano batted a lock of her unkempt dark hair out of her eyes and focused on a computer terminal beside the Reader. Laboratory robots whirred around her as she studied the console. Centrifuges spun. Pipettes trickled thin streams of fluid. Gantries and belts carried plates among devices that heated the s
