Richard J. Ronayne

Novella

Phenix Publishing Ltd

Nation-X Project

Dozens of my stories are currently being illustrated for release by Phenix Publishing Ltd for their Nation-X project, a multi-year project for 4-8000 word educational novellas.

This series was designed for young adults and high schoolers across Chinese and American schools, harnessing anthropomorphism to help digest mature, dark or joyful topics, whilst reflecting life, and exploring real social issues in an exciting and educational way.

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Bioethics
By Richard Joseph Ronayne

CHAPTER 1: Peering Through the Veil
Sitting in their car, in the dimly lit fog filled street, an anonymous figure pulled the tip of their hat down and made sure that the scarf around their neck helped cover their face as much as possible, whilst shuffling through the documents. “You’re doing the right thing,” they said to themself once more to calm their nerves, as they continued their patient wait.
One by one, the lights in the Office of Universal Information went out. They watched as the staff left for the night, after their days work, watching keenly for one in particular.
Vidocq Ronin, an old Irish wolfhound, had finished his paperwork for the day. The retired ex-cop found that even after forty years of service, his retirement funds were measly, so he continued work as a private investigator. Working at his leisure, as his own boss in the Office of Universal Information, he worked for the extra cash he desperately needed, and found that the work kept him from the suffocating boredom of retirement.
He was the last to leave that misty night. Pulling his flat cap on and tucking his black silk scarf through his long red coat to keep warm, he locked the building up for the night behind him and made his way to his vehicle.
The night’s fog was thick and heavy, headlights and streetlamps casting shadows that kept him on edge before they revealed themselves, he waded onwards until he reached the car.
His keen senses heard the opening of a car door, even though he couldn’t see it through the white cloud that surrounded him. As paranoid as he was alert, he placed one hand on the old revolver holstered beneath his jacket, whilst he placed the keys in his car.
The sound of footsteps echoed, approaching slowly, until the silhouette of a large figure could be seen. Ronin was ready. He turned the vehicles headlights on and took cover behind the driver’s door. “Can I help you, stranger?” he called out.
The stranger stopped immediately, momentarily blinded by the headlights, their silhouetted arms raising passively into the air. “PI Ronin?”
Ronin had made a great many enemies in his time and had learnt to never let his guard down for a moment. “Who wants to know?”
There was a pause. “A customer.”
“Step forward. Slowly,” Ronin suggested warningly, as the figure approached into view. A large gorilla failed to hide their obvious features, despite an effort.
“Please, I am not armed. I have a job for you,” the customer pleaded, with convincing sincerity.
Ronin took the customer back into his office, after patting him down for weapons of course. “Sorry about that doctor, you can never be too careful in my line of work,” Ronin said, pouring an apologetic whiskey and placing it in front of the doctor, on the paper strewn desk. “I presume the information is of a very sensitive nature, which is why you waited for the staff to leave,” Ronin queried, swigging straight from the bottle.
“Quite correct. Wait. How do you know I am a doctor?” the gorilla asked, taken aback.
“I am quite good at my job, Dr. Ubai. Which means I do not come cheap.”
“Please don’t use my name! This cannot come back to me, they cannot know that I was here,” Dr. Ubai startled.
“Relax doctor, I sweep this place several times a day for any bugs, your identity will remain anonymous on our paperwork. Thirty thousand Nation-X dollars, upfront, another thirty after the job is satisfied,” Ronin demanded, carefully analysing the doctor’s every expression.
“But you don’t even know what the job is for?”
“It’s obviously dangerous, ethically compromised, and you earn a lot, being a doctor and all, so you can afford my skills. Now, spill the beans, if you agree to my price.”
Dr. Ubai was flabbergasted, but he conceded. “Fine then. You are correct, it is extremely dangerous, and I have no one else that I can trust to look into the matter.”
He threw the documents across the table. “In there you will find all the information that I could uncover, leading me to the conclusion that Nation-X’s organ procurement organizations have willingly and deliberately contaminated the supply of bioethical organ donations.”
Ronin stared blank faced into the eyes of Dr. Ubai. “Speak plainly doctor?”
“For god’s sake man, hospitals are being supplied with stolen organs from the black market! And I suspect it is even worse than that. There has been an incredible spike in available organs, almost eliminating the usual waiting times completely.”
“That doesn’t sound like a bad thing to me?” Ronin deliberately poked to get a better reading of Dr. Ubai.
“Not a bad thing? The fact of the matter is that demand has always severely outweighed the supply of organs, but that fact has virtually disappeared in the last year and because it is saving patients, appearing to not be a ‘bad thing,’ nobody is questioning it. If I am right, to meet the incredible demands, the black market is either taking advantage of the severely impoverished, paying them pennies to relinquish their organs, or stealing them outright. That is called Organ Tourism which is unequivocally a ‘bad thing,’” Dr. Ubai spoke with a fierce and passionate intensity. 
This man clearly cared deeply for the downtrodden. He was ethically driven and intelligent to a fault, but he was lying. Something was stopping him from alerting the hospital administration, stopping him from going to the police. He was scared. “What are you not telling me doctor?”
Dr. Ubai was sweating, he looked like he had seen a ghost. He swallowed his whiskey in one, then slammed the glass back on the table, staring widely into the past as he spoke. “There’s more. I recently performed three kidney transplants. All of them went well, but I noticed a discrepancy: all of the donated kidneys had exactly the same DNA.”

 
CHAPTER 2: Let the Game Begin
“I don’t know about you, and your drinking habits, Ronin, but the rest of us only have two kidneys,” Dr. Ubai explained.
“So how is it possible to have three identical kidneys, doctor?”
“Cloning. That is the only explanation,” he said, swigging another glass of whiskey. “The black market does not have the organisational, financial, or technical ability to successfully perform cloning, certainly not on this scale.”
“That is why you are scared. For an operation like that, the government must be involved at some level.”
“There is active government sanctioned research into therapeutic cloning, where cells are cloned to grow individual organs. One method is somatic-cell nuclear transfer, where the nucleus is removed from an egg cell and fused with the nucleus of the organ cell you want to grow. The other method is pluripotent stem cell induction, where a mature cell can be reprogrammed through the introduction of four specific genes, allowing you to manipulate the growth of the cell. But those research studies are small, under close public scrutiny, and any use of the grown organs outside of those studies would be prohibited because the studies are far from complete or ethically sanctioned,” Dr. Ubai elaborated.
“You don’t believe that is the origin of the transplant organs then?”
“I know it isn’t. I personally advocate the use of therapeutic cloning, in the future, in order to generate tissues and perfectly healthy replacement organs. But these kidneys had been used by their original host. One for twelve years, one for sixteen years and one for twenty-two years. They could only have been made using reproductive cloning, which means that they cloned an entire person and harvested their organs. They’re farming them.”
Ronin had seen some unholy things in his years of investigation, but this turned his stomach. He stayed up late in his office after Dr. Ubai left, reading the documents until he fell asleep at his desk.
The next day, he wasted no time beginning his investigation. He tracked the transplanted kidneys back to their shared source, a private company called the Organ Obtainment and Relocation Group, who had a federal license to procure and care for donated organs. They appeared to be squeaky clean, as he was unable to uncover any dirt through his normal methods. Rich private companies knew how to cover their tracks though, experience taught Ronin that it is always the illicit connections that slip up.
Time to see an old friend, Ronin thought to himself, parking his vehicle round the back of Wendy’s Jewellery. He flipped the boot of his car, where he kept his ”tools” which consisted of a carpet roll of guns, a toolbox of electronic devices, a bucket full of explosives and an ornate sledgehammer. “There you are, Sledgy. Just the tool for the job.”
He dragged the sledgehammer along the floor behind him, over to the electrical box for the street. “Time to get to work Sledgy,” he said as he brought the sledgehammer down on the padlock, sending the access doors swinging open. 
He looked at the complicated panel inside of switches and wires, scratched his head, then swung Sledgy once more. A shower of sparks erupted out as the power went down for the area. “Good work old gal,” he said, as he made his way round to the front of the store.
The customers were leaving the store, disgruntled at the sudden power outage stopping them from purchasing their jewellery, as Wendy Bush could do nothing but apologise from behind the counter. “I’m so very sorry, please do come back tomorrow, y’all hear me,” she cried out, furious at the loss of sales she would suffer.
The footfall bell went off, alerting her to another customer walking in. “I’m sorry, we’re unable to make any sales at this time,” she began to say, before seeing PI Ronin. “You? You know you’re not welcome here, shoo now. He’s not here, so shoo!”
“Hello Wendy, always such a lovely pleasure. It’s a real nice place you’ve got here, shame about the power outage. I guess that means your security cameras aren’t working then,” Ronin said, grinning.
“Why, you son of a,” she started, reaching for a gun hidden under the counter, before realising the veiled threat, as Ronin tapped on his sledgehammer then on her glass cabinets. “Whaddya want with him this time? Corody!” She shrieked, as she stamped on the floor behind the counter. “Get out here you old termite, your ‘friend’ is back,” she said, spitting in Ronin’s direction.
There was some banging, and muffled shouting, as the floor behind the counter opened to reveal a declining staircase that Corody Bush slithered out from. “What now! You know I can’t connect your store to the generator down there, I have to stay off the grid,” he snapped.
“Shut up you fool; you have a guest. I’m going out to get some food, I don’t want to know what you boys are discussing this time,” she snarled, grabbing her purse, and huffing at Ronin as she exited the building, locking the door from the outside.
“Hello Corody, I need to place an order,” Ronin smiled. He knew that the underhanded pair didn’t like an ex-cop squeezing them for information, Corody knew how to play the game, but his wife would rather shoot him cold to end the relationship for good.
Corody led him down into the basement, where he had several screens flickering in the dark. “You know, for a man of the law, you sure do purchase your fair share of illegal items from the black market. Just remember our deal, I don’t betray you to the cops, you don’t betray me to the underworld.”
They sat down in front of the screens, which were shuffling through lists of illegal items for sale on dark web auction sites. “What are you after this time? Secret service gadgets? Banned military hardware? A nice exotic wife to settle down with so you can finally leave me alone?”
Ronin laughed with him. “No. Not after the last one. I find myself in the market for transplant organs, I hear they’re very fashionable right now.”


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