James Axler - Doom Helix

“Give me a progress report,” Auriel said, lowering the scanner. “Have you found another way to kill them?”

“Tracking the planted endospores with radiation markers hasn’t proved as useful as I’d hoped,” the whitecoat said. “They appear to locate in the body randomly, whether they are inhaled, swallowed, or absorbed through the skin. Once inside a host, they don’t concentrate in any particular organ that can be targeted. They migrate through the tissues and eventually fill all the available empty space inside the torso. This makes removing specters in the endospore stage a very complex, whole-body problem. The level of X-ray radiation necessary to guarantee their complete destruction would certainly destroy the host.

“As we’ve already determined, the specters are vulnerable after they emerge from the endospores and before they break out of the host’s body. If the host is killed while they are still inside it, the specters also die.”

“But have you figured out why that happens?” Mero asked.

“The reasons for the simultaneous die-offs remain unclear,” Dr. Huth said.

“We’ve been through all this before,” Auriel said, her impatience growing. “Killing every infected host on a planet is logistically and technically impossible. Just as identifying every infected host on an entire planet is impossible. In order to wipe out this threat, we have to be able to destroy the specters in all three of their life stages. To that end what exactly have you accomplished?”

“My attempts to extract tissue and DNA from entities inside the test subjects have so far been unsuccessful,” Dr. Huth said. “The samples only contain the tissue and DNA of the host. The specters seem able to avoid a probe inside the host’s body same way they avoid laser beams after they break out.”

“And what way is that?” Auriel said.

“I’m afraid that, too, is unclear at this point,” Dr. Huth admitted. He hurried to add, “I do, however, have some working hypotheses….”

Auriel cut him off before he could elaborate further. “Tell me something you know for certain,” she said.

“Unfortunately, most of what there is to tell is negative,” Dr. Huth said. “The term ‘endospore’ that we’ve been using to describe the protostage is technically inaccurate. The encystation that contains the initial egg form of the specters isn’t like the protein coat of a bacterium. Instead of being the organic product of DNA, it’s an unusual compound of metallic silica. The fully grown specters appear to have no internal organs or nervous systems, and no external structures such as mouths or eyes. Or at least none that are discernible with the instruments I have at my disposal, and that has become a major focus of concern. These entities are certainly not of this universe, possibly not of any ‘universe’ that we humans can comprehend. They don’t seem to obey the same physical rules as we do. Because of the limitations, perhaps incompatibilities, in our existing technology we may be blind to what’s right under our noses.

“For example, I haven’t been able to determine how the specters acquire raw materials for growth. From the blood tests I’ve completed, they don’t appear to be taking anything from the hosts except a protected, dark, temperature-controlled environment in which to grow. The incubation time from implantation of endospore to breakout varies widely from species to species, and to a lesser degree from individual to individual. They seem to grow and mature faster inside mutants like stickies. Whether it has to do with their higher normal body temperature or their unique biochemistry is unknown.”

“If they aren’t taking anything from their victims,” Mero said, “why do they go on a kill rampage after they break out and divide?”

“That’s another unknown,” Dr. Huth said. “Again, it could be the fault of the instruments. The specters may be acquiring something that I can’t yet measure.”

It was a poor whitecoat who blamed his tech-gear, Auriel thought.

Her mother had never fully trusted Dr. Huth, perhaps because on their home planet his every breakthrough, his every innovation, had had an unforeseen and catastrophic downside. Auriel had more personal reasons for doubting and despising the man. She could never forget the look on his face was he peered in at her while she, a mere child, lay strapped, helpless in the Level Four isolation tank. The gap-toothed, self-absorbed “genius” had been deaf to her cries of pain and terror as her infant bone, muscle and neurosystem were reengineered, cell by cell. She might as well have been a baby lab rat, or a stickie. And it had been his latex-gloved hands that had excised her nascent reproductive organs. Thanks to Dr. Huth, she would never be a mother, nor even an egg donor.

Thanks to him, she was one of a kind.

Intellectually, Auriel understood the reasons her ovaries had been sacrificed. The male and female sexes each had built-in bioengineering limits, which were dependent upon the amount of body space and chemistry devoted to reproductive functions. Much more of a female’s biological potential—hormonally, metabolically, neurologically—was taken up by reproductive duties. If the biochemical obligations of motherhood were removed, there was room for the system to change and grow, and ultimately to evolve. Because a male’s reproductive functions took up very little of the body’s overall capacity, removing those functions had virtually no effect on biological potential. In other words, the other half of the human species had long since peaked.

Dr. Huth was a normal, genetic male, and that was part of the problem. Biologically, evolutionarily, he was a dead-ender—and he knew it.

As much as the commander loathed the sight of him, he was the only whitecoat they had, and at this point the only whitecoat they were ever likely to find. Whether his scientific expertise was better than none at all, whether it was worth enduring his continued presence, time would tell.

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