Mosaic (Breakthrough Book 5)

by Michael C. Grumley

  Which meant making it out of Dugway in one piece.

  He had to believe. Not just in Caesare and the team, but in himself. Because the same hope Neely was desperately holding onto had nothing to do with the helicopter outside on the tarmac or the large team of Navy SEALs it brought. Instead, it had to do with one single idea. And one extraordinary chance worth taking.

  A gamble that Clay knew he had to be right about.

  113

  “My God. Look at that!”

  Janice Talbot stood in front of the brightly lit monitor in rapt fascination. Before her on the display was a close-up view of a small sample of muscle tissue extracted from Li Na Wei’s right leg. On a small glass plate in the live video feed, the tissue could be seen repairing its outer perimeter, where the tiny fibers had been cut. The cells extended outward in branches of three or four, resembling tiny fingers that had found each other. And began weaving themselves back together.

  Behind Talbot stood Neely Lawton. Arms at her side, she watched over her captor’s shoulder with disdain. Neely didn’t know where she was, but judging from the outside, it was clearly some kind of military installation. And everyone appeared to be American.

  “That is remarkable!” Talbot spun back around. “And this happens in every organ?”

  “I don’t know,” Neely responded flatly. When Talbot raised an eyebrow, she added, “I haven’t studied every type of cell.”

  “Which have you studied?”

  Neely shrugged. “Skin. Heart. Brain.”

  “And did they all respond the same way?”

  “Yes.”

  Talbot shook her head. “Incredible, absolutely incredible. Most human cells take almost a day to divide. But these are happening within minutes. My God, look. You can actually watch the mitosis take place!” Her eyes returned to the screen. “How many cycles have you witnessed?”

  “Maybe a hundred.”

  “And did you compare them?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “There was no change in the base pairs of the telomeres.”

  Talbot nearly gasped. “What?!”

  “You heard me.”

  “No reduction at all?”

  “No.”

  Talbot stared at Neely as if transfixed, almost wondering if she had heard the words correctly. Telomeres were the veritable lynchpin of the entire process—of cellular division, and more importantly, the elasticity and longevity of cell replication. Every time a cell divided or copied itself, anywhere from 30 to 200 base pairs from its telomeres were lost. Perpetually shortening itself, it eventually ensured the cell’s own death. When all the base pairs were lost, the ability of the telomeres to protect the genetic content of the chromosomes was also forfeited, resulting in the cessation of the cell’s replication. But if what Lawton had just said was true, if the telomeres were no longer losing their base pairs with each replication, the implications were…almost beyond comprehension.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Talbot remained still, thinking. Finally, she asked Neely, “How’s the girl’s heart now?”

  She was referring to Li Na’s earlier heart condition, the one that almost killed her. “It’s been repaired.”

  “Completely?”

  “Yes.” Neely did not expand. She was determined to provide only the information needed to keep her and Li Na alive. She would not volunteer anything, particularly the fact that Li Na’s heart now appeared to be even stronger than it probably was before the illness. Because the bacterium not only repaired cells, which would keep them in their current state, it actually improved them. More than just halting the loss of pairs from the telomeres, the bacterium was adding some back.

  “And the brain cells?” Talbot asked.

  “I observed the same behavior. In mice. But like I said before, there was a drawback.”

  “Synaptic overload?”

  “Yes.”

  “You couldn’t turn them off.”

  “Only by putting her in a coma.”

  “Fascinating,” the older woman whispered. The same mutation not only regenerated cells back to a healthy state, it also supercharged the cells in the brain.

  “Have you done an STR analysis on the bacterium?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the girl?”

  “Only partially.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Several common DNA loci were missing or deactivated. At least for someone with her ancestry and background. But others were activated.”

  Talbot nodded. Reactivation of some base pairs in the DNA loci or locations were not uncommon. She had seen it in her own work. Especially in the test subjects that did not survive.

  “Any changes near the skin?”

  “I hadn’t gotten that far yet.”

  Talbot folded her arms and nodded. She then stepped forward and pulled the chair away from the desk. “Then that’s where we start. Find out if any of the loci could be involved in what’s causing her episodes. Because something tells me she won’t survive many more of those.”

  Neely complied without saying a word. She reached the chair and lowered herself into it.

  Talbot held down the button on a desk phone located next to the monitor. “Send in my staff.”

  Letting go of the button, she stared intently at Neely. “I do hope you’re ready to educate us.”

  ***

  Li Na looked up nervously when her door opened again but immediately relaxed at the sight of Neely’s face. Drawn and tired, her friend stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

  Neely approached and stopped near the end of the bed, studying the teenager now situated in a chair next to it. “How are you, Li Na?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “Any more pain?”

  “Not since yesterday. How are you?”

  Neely smiled and nodded. “Fine.” She glanced over her shoulder at the camera before returning her attention to Li Na. She sat down on the bed.

  “Li Na, I’d like to ask you some questions,” she said softly. “About yesterday. About what happened.”

  “Okay.”

  She thought for a moment. “How many times has this happened to you?”

  “There have been many small things. But only three very bad ones.”

  “Where was the first?”

  “In the forest. When I was being chased. But it wasn’t as bad as the next two.”

  It was getting worse. “What do you feel when it happens?”

  Li Na thought for a moment. “The first time didn’t hurt so much but yesterday was the most bad.”

  “I see,” Neely replied. “When it happened yesterday, where did it hurt exactly?”

  “Everywhere. All over my body. Mostly on the outside.”

  “Like your skin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it sharp or dull?”

  “I don’t know what that word is.”

  “Dull? It means something blunt.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Neely frowned, trying to come up with another way to describe it. “Maybe like a lower, heavier pain.”

  “No,” Li Na said. “It was not heavy. It was the sharp one.”

  “A sharp pain. In your skin?”

  “Yes. And beneath. And my lungs too.”

  Neely raised her brow curiously. “Your lungs?”

  “Yes. Deep in here.” She touched her chest bone lightly between her breasts. “When I was trying to breathe.”

  “You had trouble breathing too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you feel anything else?”

  “Um,” Li Na shrugged, “there might be something wrong with my eyes.”

  “Your eyes?”

  The teenager nodded. “Sometimes I see things.”

  “What things are you seeing?”

  “Lines. Very…what is the word you use? Not dark, but very light.”

  “Faint?”

&nbs
p; “Yes. I see faint lines.”

  “How often?”

  “They just started.”

  “What do they look like?”

  “Thin. Up and down. And moving like this.” She used her hand to make a wave motion.

  “If I get you a piece of paper could you draw it?”

  “I think so.”

  ***

  The depiction did not match the picture in Neely’s head. What Li Na had drawn were only a few lines, vertical and very far apart, with a slight curve back and forth. Each line was as faint as the girl was probably able to make it using the pencil.

  What was also striking was Li Na’s natural drawing ability. She had included simple objects from her room in her picture––part of the bed and some of the door in the background. And while not exactly a Rembrandt, it was clear the girl had some innate skill. Making the unusual lines in her picture even more interesting. And oddly familiar. Something in what Li Na had captured on the page triggered Neely’s subconsciousness. An image she’d seen before but couldn’t recall where.

  “You see these everywhere you look?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Are they clear or blurry?”

  “They are not clear.”

  “Do they always look the same?”

  “No,” Li Na turned to the white wall furthest from them. “There’s only one over there.” She twisted around to another wall. “And none there.”

  Neely followed the girl’s head, curiously. Her first thought was that something was indeed wrong with Li Na’s eyes. Or at least one of them. Perhaps damage inflicted somewhere along the way when escaping from the hospital in China. Or maybe while she was on the run.

  But if it was something wrong with the eye itself, the aberration should appear the same no matter where she looked.

  “Li Na,” she said, moving between the girl and the first wall. “Look back this way and then focus on me. Closely. Do you still see it when you look at me?”

  The teenager studied the far white wall followed by Neely for a long time. But shook her head. She blinked and looked around the room again. “The lines are gone now.”

  “They’re gone. Completely?”

  “Yes. But they usually come back.”

  “I see.”

  Li Na continued watching her. “You look tired.”

  Neely sighed and forced herself to grin. “I’ve been worse.”

  “Are they making you help them?”

  “For this, I want to help. I want to find out how to stop what’s happening to you.”

  Instead of replying, Li Na raised her feet up onto the chair, wrapped her arms around her legs, and stared at the floor.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  The teenager shook her head sadly.

  Neely Lawton slid forward and placed a hand on the girl’s arm. “I’m not leaving you, Li Na. I mean it. Neither of us is leaving here without the other.”

  All she received was a nod.

  114

  Back in the room, Talbot’s research staff had arrived, comprised of four people––two men and two women. All were younger than both Neely and Talbot, and three of them had been in Li Na’s room the day before, helping to hold the girl down during her outbreak.

  Now they were positioned on either side of Neely, sitting at their own computers and running through the same chromosomal analysis. Although each focused on different sections of Li Na’s DNA.

  One man, tall and skinny, studied his screen through a pair of thin round glasses.

  “I’ve got a group of proteins that don’t match any of the Chinese ethnic groups in our database.”

  “None?” Talbot asked.

  “Nope. Han, Zhuang, Hui, Man, none of them.” He used his mouse to highlight several markers located in the left-hand column on his screen. “Could be a set of newly activated genes.”

  “Good. Mark each one and save them.”

  Talbot watched Neely stare at the man before eventually meeting her eyes. Seeing Talbot’s hardened face, Neely decidedly focused her attention back to the man and asked, “Do any of those contain locis for the skin?”

  “Not sure yet,” he replied dryly. “I need to compare the strings.”

  Neely waited. Comparing strings of genetic code was one of the fastest ways to establish relationships in loci inside a human genome. The same process made headlines just a few years earlier when a group of researchers used a deductive comparison process, called double-barreled, with several DNA strings to prove that modern-day humans still held some Neanderthal traits within their genome. The study, in fact, clearly showed that an astonishing four to six percent of human DNA today had originated from Neanderthals. An idea deemed ridiculous by most scientific communities until the discovery.

  Most of the Neanderthal traits were determined to be related to external features such as skin and hair, thereby creating a rush of international research into those same genome locations. All that research had since been documented and shared within an international database, accessible to everyone.

  At least if Li Na’s problems were skin related, Neely thought to herself, it was one of the most thoroughly documented areas to search.

  One of the women seated on her other side spoke up several minutes later. “Two more base pair.” She looked at Talbot. “In the lungs.”

  Talbot glanced at Neely. “Sounds encouraging.”

  “Maybe.”

  The older woman placed her hands behind her back. “Trust me. We just need to isolate the changes, then trace them back until we can establish a relatable behavior. It’s something we’ve done many times. And we’ve become exceedingly good at it.”

  Neely turned back to her own screen. Yes, first and foremost she was a scientist. And yes, chromosomal analysis could eventually identify the changes, and potentially their behaviors. But for Neely, something didn’t feel right. It wasn’t the analysis. Comparing genes was a straightforward, proven tactic, even if it took time. She recognized that nearly all of the changes in Li Na’s genome would ultimately be found, either sooner or later.

  Neely knew it wasn’t the process that was bothering her. There was something else. Something more…internal. A feeling that she’d had for several days, telling her she was missing something significant. That they were all missing it. A more intuitive connection the computers would not and could not provide, no matter how many strings they compared.

  A message, speaking to her from her gut. Although unclear, it was embedded deeply within her intuition like a stubborn thorn.

  ***

  Neely’s first small victory was convincing Talbot to allow her to act as an intermediate with Li Na. She pitched the idea as an effort to keep the teenager from receding too far emotionally, which was already occurring. Psychologically speaking, if Li Na could not see Neely as someone who could help her, they might lose the girl altogether. Leaving them with even less to bargain with.

  A few hours later, Neely returned with a tray of food and knocked gently on the door.

  The short hallway in which she stood was painted a slightly darker white, framed by gray doors and light gray speckled linoleum. Several steps behind her, a guard watched silently with his rifle in front of his chest.

  The knock was not necessary since the lock was on the outside of the door. But it allowed Neely to afford the girl at least some semblance of privacy. And control.

  Light footsteps were heard inside before Li Na cracked open the door a few inches. Upon seeing Neely, she immediately opened it wider.

  “Still feeling okay?”

  “Yes.”

  Neely stepped inside and placed Li Na’s tray on a small white table. She frowned at the breakfast tray she’d brought earlier, still untouched.

  “You haven’t eaten anything.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  She picked up the breakfast and lowered her voice. “Li Na, you need to maintain your strength.”

  The teenager stared down wistfully at the new tray. “I’
ll try.”

  “Thank you.”

  “They haven’t come back.”

  Neely glanced at the door. “They’re allowing me to be your primary contact.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I promised to help them.”

  Li Na gave Neely a soft smile, followed by a curious expression. “Why…are you helping me?”

  “Because you’ve been through a lot.”

  “So have you.”

  It was hard to argue with that. “I guess I think we owe it to you.”

  Li Na frowned. “But why?”

  “I think in a way you’re collateral damage in all of this.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that I’m not sure you’d be here if it weren’t for us.”

  She shook her head of dark hair. “I would be with them if it were not for John Clay.”

  Even though her English was quite good, Li Na’s distinct pronunciation of Clay’s name made Neely smile.

  “That may be true.”

  “And you,” Li Na emphasized. “You are good inside. I can feel it.”

  “I hope so. It doesn’t always feel like it.”

  “Everyone has some badness inside. But for you it is small.”

  Neely peered at her intently. “You can feel that?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not sure. It started when I woke up in the hospital. Back home.”

  “After your father came?”

  “Yes. I knew something was different when I woke up. Something inside. But it was very weak then.” The girl remained quiet for a few moments, then looked up with soft, sad eyes. “Will they stop what is happening to me?”

  “You mean like yesterday?”

  She nodded.

  “Yes, we will.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because,” Neely replied, “I don’t give up.” When the girl smiled in response, Neely faked a stern look. “But you need to eat something.”

  “I will. It just feels like lately I get sick whenever I eat.”

  “I know, but you–” Neely was heading toward the door when she stopped in her tracks. “What?”