Immune

5. Deoxyribose Nucleic Acids

"W-what?" Jessica stuttered. "That's not possible! You're joking!"

Kris' eyes continued to pore into hers, cold and piercing. "I don't joke," he said, dead serious. 

Jessica was silent, thinking about all the events that had occurred and allowing all the information to sink into her mind. She remembered Krystal's limbs slowly turning black and then looked at her hands. They were skin colored, without any abnormal signs from blood clots. Like Kris had said, she should have been dead, but because she was immune, the disease never affected her. "How am I immune?" she suddenly asked. 

"It can only be written inside your genome," Kris said, distracting himself by studying his fingernails. "Your genome is all of your genetics. It's what makes up you," he paused, then looked back into her eyes. "Your genetics came from your parents. You inherited their genes which make up you. Now, concerning your immunity, there are two hypotheses* that I have come up with. Either you became immune because it was a hereditary* trait passed down by your parents, or, mutations in the particular gene* susceptible to ISC could've been mutated."

Jessica looked at him blankly, dumbstruck and unable to understand anything he had said. 

Kris sighed. "Simply worded, you're immune because either your parents gave it to you through their genetic information or your DNA mutated."

"But then why wasn't Krystal immune as well?" Jessica asked. 

"Who's Krystal?"

"My younger sister."

Kris paused, thinking. Suddenly his eyes flashed intelligently. "Your sister contracted it but you were immune?! Now I understand!" He clapped his hand to his forehead. "If your sister wasn't immune, the chances of the immunity being hereditary or prominent in the genetics of your parents are so much lower, making the hypothesis that your individual genome mutated a more plausible explanation!"

Jessica stared at him, unsure of what to say. "Um...what?"

"Because your sister was infected but you weren't makes the chances of you having mutated to become immune higher than the chance of you inheriting the immunity."

"Ah...I see," Jessica said. "How about you? How are you immune?" 

"It's nothing you need to know," he said sharply, suddenly becoming cold again. "You don't need to know anything about me. I am nobody."

"No," she said. "You're somebody who matters. You even saved me and I don't know how I'll ever repay you. You act cold, but all this time, you've been-"

BAM

An bullet flew by, narrowly missing Jessica's head. She frantically dodged behind a large tree, barely escaping a shower of bullets. "KR-!" A hand suddenly covered her mouth, dampening the rest of her words. 

"If you say my name, we're both dead."

●Hypotheses: Plural for "hypothesis." It's a scientific prediction, part of the scientific method; usually the words "if" and "then" are used.

●Hereditary: Passed down to children from parents

●Gene: Part of the DNA that holds information for a specific trait

●Deoxyribose Nucleic Acids=DNA