Love in the Midst of Chaos

Scratches

We head to Chloe's apartment, to get changed before we head back to the lab. We don't even make it to the lab before we get a phone call from Mitch, "hey, guys, we've got a problem?"

"What do you mean?" I lean over to the middle of the back seats to Mitch can hear me.

"The bear woke up."

"What?"

"Yeah, I don't know how but injected him with a microchip, with an RFID tracker."

"what?" Jackson shakes his head, "why do you have a microchip with an RFID tracker?"

"In case anyone had any plans to release it back into the wild."

I shake my head, "don't ask questions, just be grateful."

"Okay, where is he now?"

Mitch sighs, "same as five minutes ago. He's running through the woods, alongside the highway. It looks like he's headed towards the, uh, 'meudon' forrest." Mitch butches the French name.

"Meudon Forest?" Chloe corrects.

"Yeah, that's what I said."

"The Meudon Forest is south, but according to the people from the bio-lab, that bear lived west, in les Hauts-de-Seine."

I shake my head, "it's because he's not heading home, he's heading to the other bears."

"yeah, uh," Mitch starts, "listen, you know how we talked about the bears changing? Well, I think they've developed some kind of endoskeleton."

"You've gotta be kidding me."

"Sadly, no."

"Alright," Jackson nods, "we'll drop Phoebe off at the lab to help you and then we'll head to the forest."

"See you then."

When we get to the lab I run inside, "are you two okay?" I look between Jamie and Mitch.

"Yeah," Jamie nods, "we're fine."

"You missed quite a party," Mitch cocks his head a bit.

"Yeah," I nod, "I can I see that." I walk up to Mitch and see a couple small scratches on his face, "hey, those are nice little scratches."

"I know, it's hot, right?"

I turn to Jamie, "is there a first aid kit?"

"Yeah," Jamie turns around before giving me the kit, "here."

"Thank you." I turn back to Mitch and point to a rolling stool, "sit."

Mitch shakes his head, "look, I don't have time for..."

"you are tracking a bear, Jamie is perfectly capable of reading a map and telling the others where the bear is, if needed. You need to sit and let me look at your face before you get an infection."

"Okay," Jackson calls out, "we're at the forest, Mitch, northwest corner. Where's the bear?"

I take Mitch's place at the computer, while he sits, "in the woods, due west of you. And for right now, all questions are to go to Jamie so that I can treat our dear Doctor's face."

"There isn't a lot you can do for that, Phoebs," Jackson chuckles.

Jamie comes and takes my place at the computer, "it looks like the bears about 500 yards in."

I open the first aid kit and start to clean Mitch's cuts, "I'm fine," he complains before wincing.

"yeah," I chuckle, "and that means you're not." I shake my head, "was this from the bear or the glass?" I glance up to the now boarded window in the room.

"Uh, the glass, I think."

"That's good," I nod, "a lot less bacteria that way."

We wait for what feels like hours for the team to get back to the lab, luckily they are all in one piece. While we are waiting I look over the DNA and blood panels of the bear, utterly confused by what I'm seeing. When the group gets back we go over it all together. "This is the DNA profile of our bear from the lab," Mitch pulls up the DNA sequence for the bear.

I sigh, "and this is the same bear's DNA six years ago, when he was first tagged," I pull up the DNA code and put it next to the new one, "notice anything different?"

"It changed," Jamie studies the codes with her arms crossed, "because of the Mother Cell."

"Yes and no."

Mitch shakes his head, "think of it this way, none of Earth's creatures are born perfect. Right? We all have genetic anomalies."

"Think birthmarks, double joints, webbed toes."

"Right, but all the anomalies that become the norm are the ones that are adaptive. That are more useful to survival, like opposable thumbs."

Chloe crosses her arms and shakes her head, "what does that have to do with the animals."

"Uh," I shrug, "the traits we've seen; the bear's endoskeleton, the bats flying abnormally high, lions seemingly communicating over long distances... they all make the species better, stronger. And we think," I look over to Mitch, "just like our ancestors developed opposable thumbs, but the Mother Cell is accelerating these mutations. Normally, we would see theses occur naturally, but not for another several generations. Maybe a few hundred years from now."

Mitch nods, "depending on how long it takes us to screw up the planet."

"But we're seeing it now, because of the Mother Cell. But here's the good news. If the Mother Cell can make a naturally-occurring situation worse, maybe it can do the opposite."

"Correct."

Abe leans forward a bit, "what's the opposite?"

I take a deep breath and look over to Mitch, but before I can answer Jackson does, as if he can read my mine, "the Mother Cell can cure the animals."