Novo Cetus

Chapter 29

    

James needed to talk to Hank. After using the inhaler, he'd felt fine for the first seventy-two hours, but in the last few hours, he'd been sweating. He knew the shakes were next.

Shocked by James' appearance, Melinda grabbed his arm and pulled him into a nearby seat. "Sit down! Do you need anything? I think you need water – I'll get some water." She ran to the galley, snatched several water bottles out of the refrigerator, ran back and handed him an opened bottle. She stood there, drinking her own water and staring at him, her brow scrunched with concern.

"Do you think it was something you ate? I hope it's not anything you ate. We all ate the same thing, right Dan?" Melinda hated getting sick. Dan came around, stood next to her and stared at James.

James drew in a long calming breath. He was going to have to tell them what was happening. He exhaled slowly and closed his eyes. "I need to talk to Hank. He didn't stop his research on my nanos after the accident; he developed an antivirus to the infection I have." He kept his eyes closed and pressed the water bottle onto his neck in an effort to cool a pulse point.

"I test positive for nanos."

"What exactly do you mean by that?" Dan asked. He was pretty good at figuring things out, but he knew what he was figuring couldn't possibly be true.

"He developed an inhaler that allows me to function at warmer, external temperatures – like this." James lifted his trembling arm and made a sweeping gesture.

"I don't give a damn about your curative inhaler; I want to know if we've been exposed to some kind of new nano bacterium!" Dan said, enraged. Over the years, he had worked with scores of deadly organisms and had been painstakingly cautious.

Melinda took an involuntary step back. As an engineer, she hadn't worked much around contagions.

Dan turned to Melinda. "Were you aware of James' exposure?"

"No! I'm just as shocked as you," she said and directed her attention towards James. "And I'm thinking that Hank had something to do with your exposure. That's why you're so confrontational with him," she speculated aloud. "And I thought it was because he was in charge of your project."

At this point, Dan stood aggressively occupying the space between the others and the cockpit. "Calm down, Dan," James said. "Exposure to my virus is through ingestion or intravenous. There is no airborne or other danger." His voice was still strong because he was in the slight, or physiological phase, of the tremor. The temperature in the cabin needed to be much cooler or he would quickly move into the pathological stage, where talking or walking would become almost impossible because of the tremors. It would take hours to recover if he reached that level.

"Please, someone turn down the heat and turn up the air conditioning on this airplane," he begged. "We need to bring the external temperature to around forty-two degrees, then I'll tell you all you want to know."

Dan got the air conditioning cranked up, while Melinda encased James in cold water bottles. She turbaned a wet towel around his head. Satisfied with her result, she confronted James.

"What the hell is going on?" she demanded. When Melinda had calked James in water bottles, Dan had retreated angrily to his laptop to continue to monitor the construction of the Mola suit, but now he looked accusingly at James for his answer.

James carefully recounted the events that had forever changed his life.

"Hank and I spent a lot of time theorizing the medical benefits of our nano technology. We often lamented that not only did we feel stuck in this Department Of Defense contract, but it would take years to get approval for animal trials." The cold cocoon Melinda had created worked and the tremors and sweating stopped. James' hunched shoulders relaxed and he unfurled his clenched fists. Reassured that the virus had stabilized, he continued. "Hank agreed to be the one to ingest the nanos. We had reliable data proving the majority of nanos would be eliminated within hours." His voice rose, as if to convince everyone of their good sense. "Anyway, Hank would ingest the nanos and I would take samples – blood and tissue. We had unfettered access to sophisticated research and imaging equipment," he explained.

"I would also have an emetic, and we would flush his system within the hour." He stopped. The cold nest that had comforted him moments before did nothing to shelter him from his reality.

"So what happened?" Melinda demanded. Under no circumstances had she seen Hank as the kind of researcher to take risks. In fact, she remembered Hank as meticulous in following all safety protocol.

James stared at the table tray locked in the upright position in front of him. Emotionless, he recalled the chain of events.

"Hank said he got there early, put the Kup 'o Koffee on my desk and went to take a piss; and while he was off pissing, I got there and thought 'oh, good someone brought in coffee' and I drank it. Besides all that cream and sugar, there were ten cc's of nanos stirred into that Kup 'o Koffee. The effect was immediate – all my organs went into overdrive – heart rate, blood pressure, even body temperature. Every negative symptom we theorized occurred immediately. I hoped I could send the nanos into stasis by bringing the ambient temperature down, so I hightailed it to a cold lab. Hank returned and waited for me, and waited, and waited. About an hour went by before he checked on the Kup 'o Koffee and figured out what had happened. He found me in a cold lab – freezing, alive and angry."

Halfway through the story, Melinda moved to the bank of seats in front of James. She knelt in the middle and peeked between the seats as James droned out the story. She remembered the Lab's fascination with "Kluck Kluck Koffee." They all drank the scientifically engineered hot or cold coffees, some sweet concoctions and others bitter brews.

"What about the emetic, did you use it?" she asked.

"It was too late. By the time Hank want back to retrieve it, the nanos were already bound to my DNA. The rest is just complicated, Melinda. I'm a top secret research project that has been shelved for the last few years." He closed his eyes, indicating there would be no more talking for now.

Dan didn't let him leave it at that. "Any more secrets, Dr. Moreau?"

James visibly cringed at the reference to the mad doctor, and Melinda looked at Dan, oozing with disapproval.

Dan defended himself. "It's going to be James and me in the Mola sub. There has to be trust."

"Well, don't trust Hank," James said. "He's still working on the nanos. I don't know why I was brought into this. He could easily run this project without me.

The pilot announced they would land soon. Dan turned his attention back to the progress on the Mola suit while Melinda replaced some of the water bottles, surrounding James with colder ones. She buckled herself in next to him. "This is really bad, James – really bad," she said.

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This is the last chapter I'll be posting before next year happy holidays.

This preview is almost finished, only going to post a few more chapters in January after that if you want to read the rest you'll have to buy a copy.