"What the-? Doctor, are you seeing-"
"I am...?! Should this be happening?"
Doctor Reyes tried to keep a hold on the squirming baby and showed it to Dusk, who immediately let out an eloquent string of curses.
"Nope. Not normal. Not normal at all! I didn't think this was supposed to happen!" Dusk glanced worriedly at Luna, who was grimacing in pain before rushing out. "Ryder! Something's wrong-!"
In a quick moment, Ryder was in front of his child, red-brown eyes narrowing as he took in the scene. It was hard to tell with the squirming and the ear-piercing screeching, but he hissed and he pulled his shoulder blades back.
"God damnit."
[/||\]
"What do you mean by, take him out?! We need to get your kid to the NICU-"
Ryder made an exasperated gesture, clutching his child tighter to his chest. They had, for safety's sake, moved out of the delivery room into another ward.
"Look, I can either save the kid or I can explain this to you, and despite having two minds in one, I can't do both, so which one do you want me to do?"
"Save the kid, but-"
"Then we're in agreement. Wren, don't let Luna worry too much, it's gonna be fine."
Ryder dashed off, shouting things in a mix of English and whatever other language Altera spoke and leaving the poor doctor very confused. She turned to Wren.
"What did he mean by all of that?"
Wren looked off into space, stimming with her hands, thinking. "You're... aware of how an Impostor's DNA is changed when they are infected with a parasite?"
Doctor Reyes nodded, and Wren continued. "The specifics of it is that it... it adds two new bases to the DNA strand. You're familiar with the original four, adenine and thymine, guanine and cytosine? It adds two other bases to that four, which means that the DNA strand then codes for a different set of proteins.
"Now the problem with this is that when a strand of mRNA is taking a copy of a section of DNA out to a ribosome to make a protein, the kid doesn't have the corresponding amino acid to link up with the codon of the mRNA, meaning that the anticodon on a piece of tRNA doesn't have the amino acid that corresponds with it-"
"Can you speak English? I don't remember much of that part of genetics."
Dusk sighed. "What Wren's trying to say is that since Ryder and Luna's kid has instructions to bring a certain building block, but doesn't have the actual building block itself, his body is very confused and doesn't know what to do. We might say that the DNA is in flux in order to simplify it, but that's the actual definition."
"Which means," Wren mused, "that Ryder has a couple of options. He can either try and change his kid's DNA code from end to end, which wouldn't happen, or he could simply try and provide those 'building blocks' to his kid. However, that wouldn't be sustainable for long... slow down the damage, maybe, to buy time for another solution...
Wren trailed off. She cursed, which was very unusual for her.
"What?" Dusk asked.
"He's gonna irradiate his kid."
"What?!"
"Or... maybe not..." Wren furrowed her brow. "He might... methylation... actually, yes, probably a mixture of the two..."
Dusk groaned, dragging a hand down her face. "Wren, I'm gonna need you to explain more, because genetics is not my field of expertise. Remember, nanotech, with a bit of a background in biotech. Not like your 8 years and a MS in biotechnology and whatever it is that you fool around with while Luna and I are off collecting rocks!"
"7 years, actually," Wren corrected, somehow still calm. "But in short DNA methyl is the addition of a small chemical that turns off a gene. So every cell in your body has the instructions to make up a living being, but it only uses the code of the cell that it's supposed to be. Methylation is the reason why your skin isn't, like, stomach cells dissolving the rest of your flesh."
"So he's basically going to flip the 'off' switch?"
Wren shrugged. "If he can. But the problem then is that... well... the cells that the symbiont codes for... are very regenerative."
"Um, what does that mean?" Doctor Reyes asked.
"That's classified," Wren said in an offhand way.
Doctor Reyes put her hands on her hips. "More classified than what you've already told me?"
"Yep."
"Doctor Rhys, I understand that this is top-secret, 'know and we'll have to kill you' type of knowledge, but I just delivered a baby who was writhing in his own skin and a mother who's scared half to death. What am I supposed to tell her?"
Wren shrugged. "What's there to tell? I mean, no use stressing her out even more before we even know if her kid's gonna survive the hour-"
"Excuse me?!"
"Well, probably more than an hour," Dusk said, giving a look to Wren. "I mean, the specifics are classified, and we're gonna have to make you sign an NDA anyways, so... well, basically, the code that Ryder passed down to his kid contained instructions on how to make cells specific to those with a symbiont. And those cells are very easily replicated and the actual appendages... well... let's just say that those cells have a lot of fail-safes in the case that their DNA is altered."
Doctor Reyes blinked. "So..."
"So Ryder's probably going to irradiate his kid in order to disable those fail-safes in the cells, as another precaution so that his kid doesn't go through this again. And one of the places where he's gonna have to do radiation therapy is in his kid's brain."
Dusk and Wren watched Doctor Reyes carefully as she took in a couple of breaths and rubbed her face. "Excuse me?"
"He's gonna irradiate his kid," Wren said matter-of-factly. "And yes, he's fully aware of the adverse effects that could lead to, but he does have 'two minds in one' and his background is in medical science. If anyone could do that without killing a newborn, it's him."
"I'm gonna need you to back up a bit," Doctor Reyes said, holding up a hand. "Go back to the part where you said that he will irradiate a kid who's twenty-four minutes old. How does he think he's gonna be able to do that without long-lasting side effects? Or, hell, how does he think he's gonna be able to do it without the kid dying, period?"
Wren shrugged, unconcerned. "He's done a lot of crazy stuff already, if anyone could do it, it would be him."
"How are you so casual about this?"
"In our job, you see a lot of crazy stuff," Dusk deadpanned. "You get used to it.
"Also, whatever are we gonna tell Luna?"
YOU ARE READING
Command: Past is Present
Fanfic"We've learned from our mistakes, Altera. Enough blood has already been shed." "That didn't stop the start of World War III, did it?" "No. It didn't. But it ended it." "Human minds are just sacs of salt interacting with proteins. Even now, you live...
