THE TITAN EXPERIMENT

CHAPTER 16 - The Serum

Over the next two weeks, Sarah made astonishing progress. The first giant that fell was the Greenland shark. The sequencing machine isolated the segment of the DNA strand associated with anti-aging, allowing her to pinpoint the genes responsible for destroying the molecules that harmed DNA. But it was only one element of a greater problem.

Sarah used the Ocean Blue research and the resulting serum that Roland Zanderthal created as the core foundation of her new serum. She started by obtaining extractions from the pineal gland of the barracuda behind its head... and dangerously close to its savage set of jaws. Using a grated platform lift at the bottom of the aquarium, technicians raised the fish to the surface and secured it with heavy duty clamps and straps. Carefully, Sarah kneeled close to the giant head. Even with the fish held in place, knowing in her mind that it couldn't get to her, she still felt a tremble of fear that brought chills to her arms.

With a six-inch long syringe, she drew the raw fluid from the gland for experimentation. She worked fast. She didn't want to press her luck, being so close to the jaws rimmed with jagged teeth. Also, the extraction had to be done in a timely manner in order to keep the fish alive. Even though it was immortal, it still needed to breathe to exist.

By the end of the first week, Sarah moved on to the next phase of her work.

She remembered dragging a stool over to the main worktable in the center of her lab. Under a microscope, she sliced a tiny opening into a cell taken from the barracuda. She then used a pipette to insert the DNA taken from the Greenland shark. Gene splicing had been around for nearly a century. This was step one: Insert the anti-aging gene from the shark into the cells of the barracuda. This formed a chimera—a combination of genes taken from different species to create a new improved gene.

Next, Sarah used the same process with the immortal jellyfish. She sequenced the DNA strand, isolated the gene responsible for its ability to regenerate, and then spliced it into the chimera, adding a third gene to the mix. A trifecta of sorts intending to use the key strengths of each specimen. This combination offered the potential to slow the aging process. It also made cell regeneration a possibility as well.

The full two weeks of painstaking lab work seemed like a dream that crept by at a snail's pace. Each hurdle had to be cleared in the correct order before proceeding to the next step. But from a professional perspective, Sarah knew the research and trials went by faster than the years it usually took to make a scientific breakthrough. She had unlimited resources. She had the tools provided by Dr. Frazier and Wolf. And she had the full support of Admiral Jax. She knew the admiral had ulterior motives. It was clear in Sarah's mind he didn't just want the serum so he could live forever. That had to be a major factor, but not the only one. There always had to be more. More than they were telling her. More that they wanted from her, and more that they were hiding from her, but she couldn't worry about that now.

One step at a time, Dr. Lawson, no more, no less, the admiral had said.

Finally, at the end of the second full week in the lab, Sarah stuck a syringe into a vein in her arm and withdrew a sample of her own blood. Today, she would turn the microscope on herself. With a hitch in her breath, she watched the plunger fill with her blood, AB negative, the rarest type, at least in the United States. That gave Sarah pause. Maybe her rare blood type played a factor in why she became immortal, and others didn't with Ocean Blue and Roland Zanderthal's serum? Maybe not. Who knew?

She squeezed a crimson drop into a petri dish and slid it under the viewing light. Under magnification, she stared at her own red blood cells. This wasn't the first time she had examined her tiny circles that made up her life force. It still caused her lashes to twitch over the eyepiece. If she wasn't mistaken, she could hear her own heart pounding in her chest.