Legend's Apprentice

Results

I sat down cautiously. "Do you want to call your uncle or aunt?" Dr Mackenzie asked.

"Uncle Bucky's teaching," I said. "Aunt Emma's upstate talking to the X-Men about something or other. You might as well just tell me."

"Ok," he said, and tapped at his computer. He didn't seem freaked out, so perhaps this wasn't going to be terrible.

He turned the monitor so we could both see. There were twenty images  in two rows. "So what happens in DNA testing is that the sample is purified, amplified, chopped up into bits, and separated in a gel matrix, which is then stained and produces the patterns that you see of the black bands in a column. This is the first of four of these samples that I'd like to show you." I leaned closer.

"It looks like there's some...migration," I say apprehensively. Dr Mac nodded.

"Exactly. The first fourteen of these gels are the samples taken the night of the accident and the two weeks following. You can see that it's only on day thirteen that there's any differential. Then the remaining six are the ones done weekly since then. You can see that there's more decided movement in the later gels." He clicked the mouse and a new screen appeared. "Here we're seeing differences at week five. And here," he clicked again "week eight. The final one here shows movement at week ten. Now, I know I told you that each of the tests would take about eight weeks, but as we started to see the genetic drift, we prioritized the analyses of your samples. We have seen one case where the drift began but reverted to the pre-exposure pattern, and we wanted to make sure that reversion wasn't going to happen here."

"So what does this mean?" I asked, trying not to be too tense.

"Well, we're not sure yet," he said, not at all comfortingly. "What I do know is that three of these changes are occurring in regions known to produce physical changes. Your changes are occurring fairly slowly, which is good. The changes are in your genotype, definitely, but they're not in areas necessarily known to express in the phenotype."

I think about that, recalling freshman year bio. "So I'm not likely to sprout horns or green fur?"

Dr Mac smiled. "It's unlikely, based on what we're seeing here. Unfortunately, we don't have a huge data base of gels and abilities, so what I can say is fairly limited. Three of the areas we're studying are related to physical change. One is mental. We can't tell how strong these mutations will prove to be. They can range from very strong to unnoticeable. And we can't tell specifically what their effects will be, assuming that they will express themselves."

"So...mental changes?"

"Yes. They're what people commonly think about, like telekinesis, mental communication, that kind of thing. Your aunt has a very strong mental mutation: she has--er...she had---these organelles that allowed her to see microscopically. This is the really cool part. Although she can see atomic particles, that turns out to be a projection of a mental power rather than actual sight. Her eyes are quite exceptional, but they physically can't see down to the atomic level, they just don't have that capability. However, her brain can somehow generate images of atoms and molecules that her brain interprets as seeing, and her mutation also allows her to 'push' them using the force of her will. Very interesting. Umm.. or they were, before they went away." I smiled; I knew that Emma had somehow come up with a work around for plausible deniability regarding the existence of her powers, and it was kind of fun to see Dr Mac tap dancing around it. Obviously other people knew that it was just a smokescreen.  "Now, your uncle's mutations are still rare, but we see increased strength, endurance, and dexterity more commonly among mutations.  Unfortunately, as I say, we simply don't have enough data yet to predict what specific ability will result from mutation of specific sequences of DNA. We have an idea whether they will be physical or mental, and whether they'll express phenotypically, but not what someone will end up showing or the strength of the mutation. So we want to continue to take weekly tissue samples until the changes have stopped for at least a month. And if you notice anything different about how your body or mind works, contact the clinic immediately. We have people on staff around the clock, every day of the year, so even if it's three in the morning, somebody will be available to counsel you and take the information."