By late 2017, however, Holmes had begun to slightly rein in the spending. She agreed to give up her private-jet travel (not a good look) and instead downgraded to first class on commercial airlines. But given that she was flying all over the world trying to obtain more funding for Theranos, she was spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on travel. Theranos was also still paying for her mansion in Los Altos, and her team of personal assistants and drivers, who would become regular dog walkers for Balto.

But there were few places she had wasted so much money as the design and monthly cost of the company’s main headquarters, which employees simply referred to as “1701,” for its street address along Page Mill Road in Palo Alto. 1701, according to two former executives, cost $1 million a month to rent. Holmes had also spent $100,000 on a single conference table. Elsewhere in the building, Holmes had asked for another circular conference room that the former employees said “looked like the war room from Dr. Strangelove,” replete with curved glass windows, and screens that would come out of the ceiling so everyone in the room could see a presentation without having to turn their heads.

But by the end of 2017, it became clear that it was financially untenable to stay in 1701, largely owing to Theranos’s legal expenditures. The remaining employees were told they would be moving to the Theranos laboratory facility, across the bay in Newark, California. Employees who were still at Theranos at the time describe Newark as “crummy” and a “shithole.” The building was formerly home to a solar-panel maker, and it had a huge floor space. Employees were set up on the second floor, where people would sit four to a table in the open-floor plan. Holmes took the corner office with Balto.

The move may have been a last-gasp attempt to save the company, but morale at Theranos was already at an all-time low. The S.E.C. and other government agencies had started to subpoena current and former workers. Remaining employees started to resign or were let go, almost on a daily basis, it seemed. As two former employees told me, you could go to Antonio’s Nut House, the famous Palo Alto bar, any night of the week and there would reliably be a goodbye gathering for at least one Theranos employee.

Yet through all of this, former employees of the company have told me, Holmes had a bizarre way of acting like nothing was wrong. Even more peculiarly, she appeared happy. “The company is falling apart, there are countless indictments piling up, employees are leaving in droves, and Elizabeth is just weirdly chipper,” a former senior executive told me. One former board member also noted that Holmes would come to board meetings “chirpy” and acting as if everything was “great.” She would walk up to people in the office who could have just testified in front of the S.E.C., or been questioned by lawyers at the F.D.A., and she would give them a hug and ask how they were doing. She was so confident that the company would be fine, executives who worked with her said, that she enrolled Balto in a search-and-rescue program. Holmes spent weekends training him to find people in an emergency. Unfortunately, huskies are not bred for rescue; they are long-distance runners, and Balto failed out.

For years, Holmes had relished in the ritual of giving speeches to the employees. When Balwani worked at Theranos, the speeches ended with chants. Some were positive, and some were more famously negative, such as when employees in lab coats would chant “fuck you” to a competitor or journalist. But such rhetoric was usually followed by excited cheers and roars. One day in late December 2017, Holmes showed up at the Newark building and held an all-hands meeting. She appeared excited beyond restraint. Brimming with enthusiasm, she told her employees that Fortress Investment Group, one of the world’s largest private investment companies, had agreed to offer a $100 million loan that would allow the company to survive.