Mission Cure

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE - M:FAC/3 - Richard

RICHARD

Cohen seemed to be having a crisis of conscience. As the two of them headed downstairs, the doctor wouldn't stop talking about everything he'd ever done wrong in his life. Every selfish action, every questionable deed. He clearly thought this was the time to confess.

And Richard was his Priest.

"I should never even have graduated," Cohen was saying. "I cheated on so many of those tests. But none of the material had anything to do with my major!"

Richard nodded and walked along.

"I might have done better if I didn't spend all my time selling broken stereo equipment to suckers."

Scowling, Richard glanced in Cohen's direction, needing a little more information. It couldn't be as bad as it sounded.

"I advertised them as 'after market'," he quoted the air. "No guarantees, buy at your own risk. But I knew they were garbage."

It was as bad as it sounded.

After a few seconds, Cohen continued. "When I was little, there was a girl in daycare who had these frizzy pigtails. I don't know why, but I pulled those pigtails whenever nobody was looking," he imparted, disgusted with himself. "And I liked it. It was horrible."

"That is horrible," Richard agreed.

"Well, you don't have to make me feel bad."

Giving him a look, Richard told him, "You should feel bad."

Doctor Cohen seemed to shrug, not so much with his shoulders, but his entire stance. He knew he was awful, that's why he was unloading onto Richard. Maybe he thought if he put it all out there, it would go away. Like removing a stain from a nice, white shirt.

After walking in silence for a bit, Cohen sighed. "I infected Doctor Moore."

Richard stopped walking. With very little sleep and exorbitant amounts of stress, he was sure he'd heard wrong. "What?"

Cohen kept walking. "And not on accident, either."

"Are you... wait. What?" Richard had to jog to catch up to him, and when he did, he regretted it. The things Cohen had to say, Richard did not want to hear.

"He wanted to share the credit. He was talking about co-authoring books and splitting the reward money... I've spent eight years on this project. It was mine."

Richard was aghast, furious even. Was Doctor Cohen actually admitting responsibility for all of this? For the condition of his daughter? "You can't be serious? Why would you do that?"

"You're asking the wrong question. What you should be asking is how he could think of stealing what was rightly mine."

"Are you excusing what you did?"

Cohen splayed his hands out in front of him. "No. It was... wrong."

"But only because it didn't turn out the way you wanted?" Richard asked.

Cohen didn't respond.

"So, Doctor Moore wanted something you thought was yours. And to keep it away from him, you infected him with an illness that might be incurable? That's basically murder!"

Cohen was shaking his head. "No, we already had the cure. He just needed to stay... incapacitated until we returned to Earth, and then everyone would be cured – including Doctor Moore." He paused. "Right after I got my Nobel."

"You already had the cure?" Richard flushed with excitement. "You said you might have a cure."

"Well, that gets complicated."

"And what do you mean, 'back to Earth?'"

Cohen waved away his question. "New Earth, whatever."

They came upon an open briefcase, spilling papers across the floor. After closer inspection, Richard could see that the area was damp and covered in broken glass. Cohen knelt down and picked up a few of the papers in a daze. He was clearly upset by the situation.

"They're all broken," he muttered.

Richard knelt beside him, careful to avoid the shards of glass. "So, this is why you said you might have a cure," he guessed.

Cohen nodded.

Richard's heart practically broke in half. If this was the last of the cure, and it was spilled across the floor... "Can't you just make more of it?"

The doctor was silent. Then, "When we discovered that fungi can be killed with H2O2, Doctor Moore volunteered to test it on himself. We created it from Barium salts, which was time consuming and dangerous – but it worked. We infected him, and then we cured him using intravenous H2O2 therapy. And that's when he decided he deserved half of the credit." Cohen paused, but it was clear by his expression that he wasn't finished.

Richard waited silently.

The Doctor stood up, leaving his briefcase on the floor, and started walking.

Richard followed him down an isle and into an alcove of tall shelves. Inside, Cohen had set up a secret work-space – a large rectangle of picnic tables covered in everything science-related. There were stacks of books and notepads. Binders and cups of pencils, laptops and veils and tubes and a million other objects Richard could not identify.

"I didn't want to share the credit, obviously. So, I moved my supplies down here, and then... I left a few cells open when I knew Doctor Moore would be doing his rounds." Cohen sighed. "But apparently, it wasn't soon enough."

Richard could feel the anger boiling up inside of him. Cohen was the reason his daughter was tied to a chair in Spencer's apartment. But he might also be the reason she gets cured. "Wasn't soon enough?" he prompted.

Richard gestured to an empty corner of the room. "This is where I'd been keeping the Barium salts."

"What are we looking at?" Richard asked, confused.

"Nothing," Cohen answered angrily. "It looks like Doctor Moore found this area and took the remaining salts. They were gone when I came down here earlier. And all that was left of the cure was in that briefcase."

All hope of making more of that solution was drifting away. Richard could feel it dissipate around him like the last remaining wisps of morning fog. "You think he took the Barium and hid it?"

Cohen nodded. "As a ransom. He wanted credit for his contribution to the project, and the Barium was his leverage."

"Then all we need to do is find where he put it!"

Cohen laughed – actually laughed – and gestured to their surroundings. "Where? Those boxes could be anywhere on this ship, and you can bet Doctor Moore did not choose an obvious hiding place."

Richard walked back and forth. He let his hand wander over the stacks of open books. "H2O2," he mused. "That's hydrogen peroxide."

"Yep."

"Two hydrogens and two oxygens," he thought out loud. Then it dawned on him... "We have an electrolyzer in one of the school rooms! We've never used it. It was included with the supplies for the science curriculum."

"An electrolyzer."

"Yes!" Excitement spread through Richard, causing his hands to fly around as he explained. "It can separate water into nitrogen and oxygen. We then take the resulting ozone, blend it with water-"

"And we get hydrogen peroxide," Cohen finished.

"Exactly."

Cohen smiled. "We better get to work."