Broken Chain

by Lisa von Biela

  “—I think I’ll be lucky to last a few more months.”

  Kyle realized she’d been talking while he’d been caught up in his train of thought. “I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

  She frowned. “I was saying, if things don’t change, I don’t think I’m going to last much longer here.”

  “I’m really sorry to hear that.” Kyle suddenly wanted to get back to work, to follow his train of thought to see if it took him anywhere useful. He glanced at his watch. “I’m sorry, I just realized I need to get going.”

  “Sure, I’ll get your check. Thanks for coming by.” She gave him a tired smile, rose stiffly from her chair, and returned to the counter to ring up his order.

  Kyle watched her, wondering what made her look so much older than her actual age. She seemed to be supplementing her diet properly. Could be anything, he supposed. Maybe she had some chronic condition.

  Right now, he had a feeling he might have a lead—and he needed to make the most of it.

  CHAPTER 26

  Dr. Lucy Sloane stood by the exam room counter and peered at her computer screen as if willing it to reveal a secret to her. At last she straightened and faced Daphne with a puzzled frown on her face.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this before. Your initial lab results were normal—for a fifty-year-old. This newer set also reads normal—for a seventy-year-old, and it’s only been a few weeks since we ran the first tests.” She folded her arms. “I really don’t know what else to do but to refer you out to Mayo. If there’s any place that has seen something like this, it would have to be them.”

  Daphne wanted to reject Dr. Sloane’s words as if they had physical presence. She wanted to snatch them, hurl them across the room, watch them crash into the wall and break apart. This couldn’t be happening. Not to her.

  But she couldn’t deny the lab results, no matter how strange they were. She’d known something wasn’t right, or she wouldn’t have gone to the doctor in the first place. And she’d only felt worse and worse in the ensuing weeks, mirroring the decline in her labs. Something was going on in her body, and it was serious. She could tell that much. But what? Dr. Sloane was an experienced, well-respected doctor in the Twin Cities. If she was baffled enough to throw in the towel and refer her to Mayo, it had to be a tough case.

  “Daphne, I think you should get an appointment scheduled as soon as possible. Whatever is going on, it’s clearly progressing quite quickly. If there’s a way to stop it, you need to find out right away … while there is still time.”

  If there’s a way to stop it … oh, that’s just great. Daphne raised her hands, palms out. “I’m sure you’re right. I just can’t think about it right now. I feel completely overwhelmed.”

  Dr. Sloane moved closer and placed her hand on Daphne’s shoulder. She leaned down, looked into her eyes, and spoke gently. “Would you like me to make the arrangements for you? I can do that if it would help. In fact, I can probably get you in a little faster if I make that initial contact for you. May I?”

  Daphne trembled, feeling vulnerable in her paper exam gown, her bare legs hanging off the side of the exam table. She stared down, allowing her eyes to follow the patterns in the faux wood flooring while she mustered the courage to even look at Dr. Sloane, let alone answer her.

  “Daphne? Can I get you some water?”

  She looked up to see Dr. Sloane staring at her with a concerned look on her face. She knew she had to get to the bottom of this, but was terrified of what she’d find.

  She spoke in a whisper. “All right. Go ahead and call Mayo for me. My schedule is flexible.”

  Daphne lingered in her Prius, not yet ready to face much of anything, let alone the outside world. She’d closed her eyes and rested her forehead on the steering wheel while she tried to pull herself together enough even to begin the drive home. For the moment, she was grateful for the cocoon-like feeling inside in her car in the dim light of the parking garage.

  She’d felt a heavy sense of foreboding after her first visit with Dr. Sloane, but she’d been able to cloak it in denial until today’s visit. Now she felt like she was being pushed down a path that could lead nowhere good. Mayo would either also be baffled, leaving her in the same hellish limbo—or they would find the problem. Daphne had a feeling the answer would not be a happy one. Her body seemed to have aged forty years in a matter of weeks. Even if Mayo figured it out, how could the damage be reversed?

  She sat up and examined her hands. The skin was leathery, alligator-wrinkled. She’d even developed those brown spots you see on older women who’d sunbathed indiscriminately in their youth. She glanced in the rearview mirror. Age lines traversed her face as if she’d suddenly turned into her grandmother. She shifted in her car seat. Her back, shoulder joints, hip joints—all were stiff and painful.

  And every day it got worse. As if she were disintegrating, as if her structure had begun to crumble. She wondered how much worse it would get, and what other frightening developments she had yet to face.

  CHAPTER 27

  Kyle pulled up to the hand-carved wooden sign at the end of the driveway that read LES ANDERSON, VETERINARIAN. Early morning light played across the sign, emphasizing the age and grain of the wood. The place was on the outskirts of St. Joe proper, and comprised what appeared to be a combination house/veterinary clinic, as well as a barn and corral, probably for those animals needing the farm animal equivalent of hospitalization. It looked like an efficient, well-designed setup.

  Dr. Anderson agreed to meet him there at 6 a.m., before he began his morning treatments and house-call rounds for the day. He’d said once he got started on those things, his day’s schedule could spiral right out of control, depending what presented itself. So first thing would be the best.

  Kyle was fine with that. The earlier the better. He was anxious to see if his hunch would yield the answer he needed. He went up to the front door and pressed the buzzer.

  Moments later, the door opened and an older man with a face that appeared both kindly and no-nonsense stood before him. “Hi, I’m Doc Anderson. Just call me Les. You must be—”

  “Kyle.” He smiled and extended his hand to shake.

  “Come on in. Let’s talk in my office.” Les led him into a room just to the right of the front door containing a desk stacked high with papers and texts, a small couch strewn with magazines, two aqua vinyl guest chairs that looked like originals from the ’50s, and walls of shelves jammed with books.

  Kyle took a seat and only then noticed that a computer did in fact lurk on the desk behind a particularly tall stack of papers. He’d briefly wondered how anyone could practice medicine of any sort without the Internet in this day and age.

  “So, how can I help you?” Les leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers.

  Kyle explained how he came to be in St. Joe and what he’d learned so far. “So now I’m trying to find out what causes B. metasonis to emit the chemical that suppresses serotonin production. It’s got to be something people are ingesting, but what? I’m wondering if there’s a connection with these reports of animal-product-related foods spoiling before their sell-by dates. Why are they going bad so quickly? I figured since you work with livestock, maybe you’ve seen something or have some ideas.”

  Les leaned forward, rested his forearms on the desk, and clasped his hands together. “Funny you should say that. I don’t do slaughterhouse or production inspections, so I can’t speak to the sell-by problem. But I have been seeing some disturbing things lately.”

  He rifled through a stack of papers until he found what he was looking for. “I’ve been getting reports of cattle, pigs, and poultry dying before their time. Now, these animals have been vaccinated; they’ve had proper supplements in their feed. No signs of obvious disease. Yet the animals are dying. The best way I can describe it is that they appear to be dying of premature old age. Very premature.”

  An image of the café’s owner appeared in Kyle’s mind. Premature decay. He leaned
forward in his chair, eager to hear more. “Why?”

  “Well, it was stumping me—and of course, the farmers were upset. The last thing they need is something killing their animals now, after last year’s drought. So I looked through all my texts, looked all over the Internet. Nothing. Finally, I took some samples and sent them off to a friend at the vet school up in the Cities. I wanted to keep it informal for the time being. No need to cause a panic.”

  “I see. And what did your friend say?”

  “That’s the hell of it. I just heard back from him. He did find something—and it’s consistent. He found it in beef, poultry, and pork tissue samples. He also spotted it in egg and milk samples.”

  “What was it?”

  “In all the samples, one of the key amino acids in the protein—valine—is malformed. It’s the mirror image of what it should be. Given the symptoms and manner of death I’ve seen in these animals, I’m thinking this malformed valine does something to destabilize proteins in the body’s tissues and products, so the animals essentially age much faster than they should. That’s my theory, anyway. I haven’t told anyone else about it yet, because I wasn’t sure what to do next.”

  Kyle could barely sit still in his chair. “That could explain the sell-by date problems, too, don’t you think? Destabilized proteins in the various types of animal-based products. Now I have two more questions: why is the valine improperly formed in the first place, and when it’s ingested by humans hosting B. metasonis, what happens? Is that what somehow triggers the bacteria to emit the serotonin-inhibiting chemical?”

  Les blew out a long breath as he considered Kyle’s questions. “Let’s think this through. Your second question sounds straightforward to test.”

  “I agree. I can arrange for that to be tested in the CDC labs easily enough. What about the first question?”

  “I can work on that one. My friend at the vet school can help. See, if it’s dietary, it may be easy to trace.”

  “How so?”

  “All the various types of livestock share something in common, whether on small private farms or BigAg operations. The primary feed is soy-based, supplemented with vitamins and antibiotics. If we have a problem with a component of animal protein, then it may well stem from a problem with the protein they’re being fed. And that would be in the soy.”

  “Really? What about corn or hay?”

  Les waved his hand. “Nah. Feed corn’s all taken up in ethanol production these days. Too expensive to use for animal feed. Hay? The drought did in the crop last year. Even if it hadn’t, the name of the game is quick development. So farmers use a GMO soy mix—usually with some growth hormones thrown in for good measure. Makes the livestock grow faster, so more money at the market. And GMO because GMO soy is all tricked out to grow faster and resist weeds in the first place, so the feed can be mass-produced cheaply. I can take care of testing the feed. What say I do that and you have your people test the flora’s response to the screwed-up valine? I can get you a sample of that to work with.”

  “Sounds good.” Kyle rose and extended his hand. “Thanks for taking the time, Les. I really appreciate it. We may be able to get to the bottom of two problems at once: your prematurely aging livestock and my crime wave.”

  “You’re quite welcome. Thanks for stopping by.”

  Kyle got into his car and sped home, anxious to email new test requests to the CDC lab. There had to be a connection, he could feel it.

  CHAPTER 28

  Marty stuffed his leather work gloves into his pocket and ambled over to the fence. “Hey, Paul. What brings you here?”

  “I heard back from Doc on some tests he ran.”

  Marty noticed that Paul looked about four shades too pale. “Which tests? What’s the matter?” He hoped there wasn’t some outbreak in the offing. His property adjoined Paul’s and any contagion would likely visit him quick enough. As if he didn’t have enough problems already.

  “I had some cows that died. Doc said it looked like from old age, but they were young.”

  Marty’s muscles tensed. “I’ve been having some of that, too. He took samples, but he told me the results were inconclusive.”

  “Yeah, he mentioned that to me. So this time he sent the samples out to some friend of his at the vet school up in the Cities, sort of on the QT. Results came back that one of the amino acids is twisted funny.”

  “Oh?”

  Paul slouched his lanky shoulders and leaned on the fence as he dug the toe of his boot around in the dirt. “Well, he didn’t know what to think at first, so he did more tests on some chickens and hogs that had the same problem. Same amino acid was wrong in all of them. He thinks it’s what’s causing them to age and die prematurely, because it screws up the protein structure in their muscles and other tissues.”

  “Well, how’d the amino acid get screwed up in the first place?”

  “He’s running more tests right now and said he’d let us all know. He’s thinking it’s something in the feed.”

  Marty smacked his hand on the fence post. “Christ! In the feed? We all use pretty much the same feed!”

  “That’s why he’s thinking it’s something in the feed. It’s affecting all different kinds of livestock, and it’s affecting more than just you and me.”

  Marty took off his cap and vigorously scratched his head. “Well, what the hell are we supposed to do? Last year’s hay crop failed. There’s nothing else to feed but the soy mix. Are you saying we could be killing ’em with their own feed?”

  “Could be. Let’s see what Doc comes up with. Gotta head back. I have another downer cow waiting for me as it is.” Grim-faced, Paul turned and headed back toward his property, his posture and gait weighed down with dread.

  Marty felt like he’d been kicked in the gut by a mule. If Doc was right, he might as well take a flamethrower to his spread. There’d be no saving it.

  CHAPTER 29

  Kyle gulped the last of his morning coffee and glanced at the kitchen clock. Eight already. The CDC lab may have emailed him the test results, and that vet had undoubtedly been up for hours by now. Maybe today would be the day he’d get the answers he needed.

  “Sorry. I need to get on the computer and see if anything’s come in for me.”

  Gretchen set Lara down in her playpen and gave him a sour look. “Thanks, I’ll just clean up the breakfast dishes and bathe Lara myself.”

  He barely bit back a cutting remark. What else did Gretchen have to do all day anyway? He had to solve this thing, yesterday. People were dying, and he’d be damned if he’d let what happened to Dad happen to him. He’d leave no stone unturned until he got to the bottom of this. Rather than waste even more time getting into an argument, he shrugged and strode out to his computer.

  Kyle flung himself into his chair and opened his laptop. He tapped the screen to force the email to sync, to be sure he had the most recent communications in front of him. An email from the vet appeared. He opened it.

  Kyle,

  I had my friend test samples from the three most popular brands of soy-based feed. Each of them contains the malformed valine in the soy protein. I’m going to have him test a couple more brands for good measure, but I can tell you these three brands make up the bulk of the feed used in these parts. So now we know the source of the malformed valine. It’s coming right from the GMO soy that’s the main ingredient in these feeds. Livestock take it in and metabolize it to produce and replenish their own protein-based bodily components. And that’s how it’s getting into the animal protein products. What have you found out?

  Les

  Kyle hunched over his PC, every muscle taut. With only one question left to answer, he had to be on the brink of figuring out the root cause and entire mechanism of the violence epidemic. He tapped Refresh again. And again. He stood and paced, then tapped Refresh again. Then he picked up his cell and called his contact in the CDC lab.

  “We were just finishing up the written report.”

  “Send it on when you
can. Tell me now. How does B. metasonis respond to the malformed valine?”

  “Pretty much as you’d suspected. Once exposed to the malformed valine, B. metasonis secretes the serotonin-inhibiting chemical—and it keeps on doing it, even when the faulty valine is removed from its environment. It’s like it turns on some gate that can’t be turned off. But, in fresh colonies of metasonis exposed only to normal valine, no serotonin-inhibiting chemical. The faulty valine is definitely the trigger—an irreversible trigger at that.”

  “Thank you.” Kyle hung up the phone. He sat at his desk, trembling, as the full meaning of his discovery hit him. He had it now, the entire mechanism.

  GMO soy had somehow developed a defective valine molecule, the mirror image of what it should be. This caused two related problems.

  When ingested by livestock in plant protein form in commercial feed, the metabolized valine formed unstable tissue proteins, leading to premature deaths of the animals themselves, as well as the abnormally short shelf lives of animal-based products. And all animal-protein-based products—meat, dairy, eggs—from these livestock incorporated the defective valine.

  In humans who harbored B. metasonis in their gut flora, the bad valine, when ingested in the form of these animal proteins, caused metasonis to secrete the serotonin-inhibiting chemical that triggered irreversible brain changes leading to extreme aggression.

  Kyle sat back in his chair, breathing shallowly as the implications unfolded in his mind. The food chain was broken, perhaps irretrievably. And it had broken in a way that had created the worst wave of violent crime ever. How on earth could this be stopped?

  Could it be stopped?

  CHAPTER 30