Fever (Book 1) by Dee Shulman

Author:Dee Shulman [Shulman, Dee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141972183
Publisher: Penguin Random House Children's UK
Published: 2011-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

35

Blind Alleys

London

AD 2012

It was when Dr Franklin was talking about unusual monocyte responses in biology that I suddenly wondered if I had been missing something vital. To tell the truth I was frustrated. I had been drawing one blank after another on my virus hunt, and I wasn’t used to this kind of failure. My research strategies had been meticulously thorough. And I had now literally trawled through every independent research institute in the world. I had to be missing something. However close I got to symptom and virion shape, two hours’ incubation was proving too hard an act to follow.

Even the Hong Kong Institute of Biochemical Medicine, where they were doing some incredible research on some pretty sensational (scary) viruses, offered me nothing. Which was deeply annoying considering how long it took me to hack into their system.

So where was my virus?

I gazed back at the board. Dr Franklin was drawing a diagram of a typical immune response. The immune system had actually been one of the things that turned me on to microbiology when I was eleven. I’d loved the idea of this microscopic army doing its best to defend its world (me) against alien invasion. And then when I discovered how many different microscopic jobs there were for the cells to do, I was even more blown away.

And I hadn’t stopped finding it distractingly cool. So as I watched Dr Franklin drawing her T-cells and monocytes attacking the invading infection, I suddenly wondered why I hadn’t seen any sign of defensive action when I’d witnessed the cell invasion with Professor Ambrose. No T-cell activation, no B-cell activation, no macrophagic action and definitely no monocyte response.

I put up my hand.

‘Dr Franklin, could speed of infection suppress an immune response?’

‘I think all infections would induce some sort of immune response, Eva. As you know, lymphocytes sense an invasion and head off to meet it. If the infection proliferates too fast, obviously the attackers can get overwhelmed, but there will always be evidence of raised numbers of white cells during and after an infection.’

But the attack I’d witnessed hadn’t obeyed any of the usual rules. It had been so focused … so deliberate … so specifically targeted …

‘Dr Franklin,’ I gasped, ‘what if the infection directly bombards the T-cell itself – would that deactivate its defence response?’

‘Stealth attack? Nice. A pre-emptive strike directly on the defence cells … Hmmm. There is only one virus I know that goes straight for the T-cell …’

I held my breath.

‘The HIV virus.’

I sighed. I knew for sure that my virus wasn’t anything like HIV.

So clearly HIV wasn’t the only cunning virus.

The bell rang. End of lesson. End of day. I packed up my books, wondering if there was another tack I should be taking in this dead-end research of mine. I stood up and bumped straight into Harry, who was standing just behind me.

‘Oops, sorry, Harry,’ I said, trying to stay upright. He had reached out his hands to steady me.

‘Hey, Eva, you were miles away.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.