He didn’t waste time trying to figure out the Water itself. He had less than a cupful. He had to see what the Water would do.
David locked himself in the lab. Shy called. He didn’t answer the phone. Max summoned him to his office. David ignored him.
He worked. He went as long as he could without sleep, running every test himself. He didn’t trust any of his assistants with a single one. He took his own blood and skin samples and used them for the tests. He monitored the results under a scanning tunneling microscope, watching the chains of molecules dance and twist themselves into new shapes.
And he saw it.
As he’d suspected, it was there in the self-repair sequence, a total re-organization of the base proteins. They rearranged themselves from the usual human chaos into something almost crystalline in their order and perfection. And then they ran up and down the strands of DNA, incredibly, impossibly fast, plucking out imperfections and errors and excising whole sequences of damage and decay.
It took only seconds, but in the aftermath there was an entirely perfected chain of DNA. From this basic set of instructions, all new cells would be rebuilt without junk or cancer or waste. They would be born again, whole and pure.
Now all he had to do was duplicate the process.
FOUR DAYS LATER, DAVID looked at the sample hydrogel, now containing the synthesized DNA repair strands.
The hydrogel was really just a delivery system, mostly purified water contained in a network of polymers at a molecular level. It bonded together in unexpected ways; the self-healing properties of the gel base acted as a kind of catalyst for the proteins, and the molecular structures replicated themselves throughout the liquid. It turned out to be incredibly stable, maintaining integrity and viability at room temperature. It would not require refrigeration or even special handling.
Just like water.
But inside, it was more like a DNA-charged biological machine. It told cells how to rebuild themselves without flaw or disease.
At least, that was what his computer models said.
Out in the real world, David had no idea if it would really work. If he was forced, right now, to give an estimate of his chances of success, he’d say seventy to seventy-five percent. Maybe even eighty percent.
Animal testing would be useless. It was designed only for human DNA. When he’d injected some into a lab mouse, it simply refused to spread through the cells. It was inert.
He considered trying it on himself. Then stopped. He was healthy, near peak physical condition, and he had only a small sample. How would he actually know it had worked? There was nothing to cure in him. It could be a waste of all his time and effort.
He realized he might be scared, too. He tried to tell himself that wasn’t entirely selfish. If the hydrogel killed him, there would be no one equipped to carry on his work. He wasn’t being arrogant; even with his detailed notes and research material, it would take another researcher enormous leaps to catch up to where David had started.
Ordinarily, this would be the beginning of a long series of tests. He would finally give all those other scientists working for Conquest something to do. There would be lab testing, the publication of a paper in a peer-reviewed journal, a patent application, and then, finally, clinical trials on humans.
That would be the safe, ethical, and completely sane course of action.
Instead, David loaded the sample into a syringe and left the lab.
When he got into his car, he spent a good ten minutes sitting there, trying to talk himself out of what he was going to do. It didn’t work.
He started the car and began driving toward All Children’s Hospital.
AMBER, ELIZABETH’S MOTHER, WAS dozing in a chair when he arrived. She snapped awake and looked vaguely guilty, as if she could act like some sort of watchdog against her daughter’s cancer.
But there was nothing that was going to save Elizabeth. David could tell just by looking at her. She was curled onto her side, burned down to almost nothing by the drugs, bones sharp and pronounced through her pale and papery skin.
“It’s good of you to come,” Amber said. “She really liked you.”
Maybe it was her accidental use of the past tense, or perhaps she was simply too full of misery, but that was all it took before she began sobbing. David hugged her and tried to mouth some comforting words, but he felt like a liar and a fake. Only part of his mind was even conscious of her body in his arms. Instead, he felt the syringe in his jacket pocket, as if it weighed twenty pounds.
He offered to stay by Elizabeth’s bedside while Amber went and got something to eat. Amber resisted, of course—he’d known she would—but it took only a little convincing. He’d been in this situation so many times before as a volunteer. The parents needed a little air, a little space, that wasn’t infused with so much dread. They needed a minute or two to feel normal and catch their breath before returning to the place where their children were dying.
Amber was no different. There was no mistaking the guilty relief in her eyes when she paused at the door before she left. David had her cell number and promised to call if Elizabeth woke.
She wouldn’t. She’d just had her latest hit of pain medication before David arrived. There wouldn’t be a nurse around to check on her or draw blood for another hour at least, David guessed.
This was the right thing, he kept telling himself. It was her only chance.
So why did he feel like some kind of predator, hovering over the young girl as if waiting for a chance to cull her from the herd?
There were a hundred ethical reasons not to do this: uninformed consent, human testing, the very real chance it would kill her.
But she was dying. There was no other choice.
David kept telling himself that.
He tried not to think of Mengele and the other butchers who experimented on their victims in the Nazi concentration camps. They said that was for science, to advance the cause of human knowledge, too.
This was different. He was going to save her, not kill her.
At least, he sure hoped so.
He stood and removed the syringe from his coat. It would work. It had to work.
Just before he plunged the needle into her IV, David froze. His conscience seemed to be screaming at him. What if he was wrong? What if he had made a mistake somewhere along the line?
Then what he’d invented was no cure. It would probably tear through the girl’s body like a tank through tissue paper, replicating itself madly. It could unwind her DNA at the cellular level, practically melting her body’s organs as it tore apart the protein chains that made up the building blocks of life.
If he’d screwed up, she would die horribly, quickly, and in pain.
He could feel himself at the threshold, like a man standing in the door of an airplane, wearing a chute and preparing to jump. Take this step, and there was no going back.
He had to wonder if he was doing this to save her or because he simply had to have an answer, one way or another. If he simply needed to solve the puzzle that badly.
Are you really willing to do this? he asked himself. Are you willing to sacrifice another human being for your own reasons?
He looked down at Elizabeth. She was still and fragile.
No. He would not sacrifice her.
He would save her.
He pressed down on the plunger and sent his sample into the tube leading directly into her veins.
He heard someone at the door just in time. He slipped the syringe back into his pocket while keeping the motion hidden with his body.
Amber had returned.
“I forgot my purse,” she said. “Got all the way to the cafeteria before I . . .” She looked at him strangely. “What are you doing, David?”
“I thought the IV might be clogging,” he said. He was both amazed and horrified how quickly and ea
sily the lie came to him. But something must have shown in his face, because Amber was suddenly wary.
“Was that something in your hand?”
“No,” David said, too fast.
She stepped closer to him, eyes narrowed. David wasn’t sure what she was going to say.
They both jumped as the alarms on all of Elizabeth’s monitors went off at once.
The machines screamed in electric panic. Her heart rate shot up to 176. Her blood pressure skyrocketed. Elizabeth’s body began jerking violently.
Amber’s eyes went wide and locked on David. “What did you do?” she demanded. “What did you do?”
She screamed the question at him as nurses and then a doctor ran into the room. They pushed both David and Amber back to get at the girl. David positioned himself at the foot of the bed. He wanted to see. He had to see.
Amber kept yelling at him. The nurses, as busy as they were, looked at them both, wondering what the hell was going on.
The doctor was too busy. “Get me Ativan,” she said. “The girl’s seizing.”
“What did you do?” Amber yelled again, and this time she hit him, hard, aiming for his face. He turned in time to catch it on the shoulder.
God, he thought. What did I do?
Then, suddenly, the machines stopped wailing. “Wait,” the doctor snapped at a nurse, just before she put a needle of drugs into the girl.
It was like the electric current going through the room was cut off. The frenzied motion, the tense commands, they all went silent. Everyone watched.
The monitors told the story in quiet pings and blips across their screens. Elizabeth’s pulse, blood pressure, and breathing all returned to normal.
And Elizabeth blinked slowly, and sat up.
She looked around at all of them gathered by her bed. “Mom?” she said uncertainly.
Amber pushed past the medical staff and put her arms around her daughter.
The doctor was still looking at the machines, baffled.
David didn’t move. He didn’t even want to breathe, for fear of breaking the sudden peace and sending the room into chaos again.
“Honey,” Amber said. “Elizabeth, sweetie, are you okay?”
Elizabeth blinked more rapidly, still confused. “Yeah,” she said.
Amber started crying.
“Mom,” Elizabeth said, drawing out the word as only an embarrassed daughter could. “What are you doing? I’m fine.”
“Elizabeth. How do you feel?” the doctor asked.
For a moment, Elizabeth said nothing. Then she smiled over her mother’s shoulder.
“Honestly,” she said. “I feel great.”
DAVID WAS EVENTUALLY HUSTLED out of the hospital room, as more and more doctors and staff began to crowd inside. He hung around long enough to overhear one of the nurses use the term “miracle” before she was shushed.
As he left, Elizabeth said, in a strong, clear voice, “Really, I feel fine.”
He went back to his car and looked at his hands. They were shaking slightly as the depth of what he had done began to sink in. It was past midnight by now. He put his hands on the wheel, and they stopped shaking.
He went back to work.
IN THE LAB AT Conquest, he engaged in busywork—the soothing kind of pointless cleanup and straightening that usually came after he was finished with any big project. He organized his notes, backed up his data, and even cleaned the gunk out of the DNA synthesizer. Sometime in the early-morning hours, he went to the atrium at Conquest’s entrance and found a chair. The night sky was clear through the giant glass windows. He was too keyed up to sleep, despite his exhaustion. He stayed there, almost motionless, for hours, just thinking.
He talked to Amber shortly before 3:00 A.M. She apologized for the late hour, apologized for striking him, apologized for everything, really.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” she said over and over. He told her not to worry about it. Stress, exhaustion, and the natural instinct of a mother to protect her child—it all came together.
“Yes, but to think you were hurting her, I must have been insane,” she said.
No, you weren’t, he thought. But he didn’t correct her. He could hear the release of so much weight in her voice, the joy of actual hope returning.
“The doctors are saying something about total spontaneous remission. Have you ever heard of that?” she asked.
Yes, he had. It was incredibly rare. But it happened sometimes.
“It’s like a miracle,” she said.
Yes, it was.
She hung up. Elizabeth was cured. There would be more work to do, of course. But David was sure of it. Even without access to her charts or blood samples, he could see it. It was the same glow of life and health that Mueller had suddenly exhibited after receiving Simon’s cure.
When the sun began to rise above the horizon, he decided it was time.
Time to change the world.
He took his phone out of his pocket and made the call.
Simon’s voice was thick with sleep. “What is it?” he demanded.
“I think you’d better come to work today,” David said. “I did it.”
CHAPTER 15
SIMON WAS LITERALLY dancing in his office. On top of his desk.
“Come on, David,” he said. “This is worth a little victory celebration.”
David just watched. “Seems a little premature to me.” He held up the invitation that had been in his company mailbox when he arrived that morning. “We’re not even in clinical trials yet, and you’re having a party?”
The invite was beautiful: thick embossed paper, trimmed with gold, asking the recipient to attend Conquest Biotech’s “latest breakthrough on the frontiers of medicine.” There had been a press release emailed companywide that morning as well.
Simon gave David a scolding look and kept on dancing. “Are you worried your discovery isn’t going to hold up?”
“No, but—”
“There you go. You know it works, and I know it works. We need the stock jump and the good news after the Revita mess. So what’s the problem?”
Simon had already tested David’s formula. Personally. He’d taken the next available sample of the hydrogel and, before David could stop him, drank it down in a single gulp. For a split second, David had worried he’d just killed his boss. But then Simon had sucked in a deep breath and said, “Oh yeah. That’s the stuff.”
A battery of tests on Simon confirmed it. As young as Simon was, he’d done a lot of hard living. But all the damage to his liver and pancreas was healed in an instant. David even saw regrowth of hair and the disappearance of a few tiny crow’s-feet around Simon’s eyes.
That was all the proof Simon needed. So he was throwing a party. Perfectly in character, David figured.
But something kept nagging at him. That was why he was here; it wasn’t just the party. Something had occurred to him, late at night, while Shy slept beside him. Now he had to know if he was right.
David took a small vial from his pocket and tossed it to Simon. Simon caught it one-handed without missing a beat.
“What’s this?”
“What’s left of the original sample of the Water. I don’t need it anymore.”
“You call it the Water?”
“Yeah. Seemed like the most fitting name. Why?”
Simon smiled like he’d just heard a dirty joke. “No reason. You should hang on to this. Like a souvenir.”
“I don’t need it. My formula works, remember? And I’m healthy enough. I don’t need to use either of them.”
“You’re going to be in a minority in a very short while, then,” Simon said. “Once we hit the market with this, people are going to pay any price for it. Youth in a bottle. Perfect health, available with a prescription. Ask your doctor about it today. Tha
t reminds me, I’ve got to get marketing on the line about names for this. What do you think? Genesis? Too biblical? Well. Whatever we call it, people are going to mortgage their children to pay for this stuff, David.”
“No. No, they’re not.”
Simon stopped dancing. “Excuse me?”
David took a deep breath. Then he asked the question. “How long have you been using the Water yourself, Simon?”
Simon stopped cold. The smile, the dancing, every piece of the happy-little-party-animal act he liked to display to the world—it all froze up like a defective ride at Disneyland.
David could practically see the calculations running behind Simon’s eyes, weighing the chances of effectively denying it, of lying his way out of this.
Evidently, the odds weren’t good. Simon hopped down from the desk and straightened up, ironing the slouch out of his shoulders and the smirk off his face. He relaxed and seemed, in an instant, a more solemn and impressive man.
“I suppose I should have realized you would work it out,” he said. Even his voice had dropped half an octave. “I must be getting complacent in my old age.”
“Just how old is that?”
Simon smiled. “More than you need to know right now, David. But yes. I have been using the Water for some time now.”
“The others, too. Max, Peter, Sebastian?”
“Of course. How long have you known?”
“I’m actually a little ashamed it took me this long to figure it out,” David said. “All those comments about your father. But I thought because the Water was scarce, it would be too valuable to waste without a viable replacement. That’s backward. The reason it’s scarce is because you’ve been using it. And when you began to run out, that’s when you came to me for a replacement. Isn’t that right?”
“More or less. Don’t feel bad, though. Only a few people have guessed before you did.”
“I still should have seen it. Of course you’ve been using the Water yourself. Who wouldn’t want to be young and healthy all the time?”
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