The Cyanide Process by Jennifer Rahn

Author:Jennifer Rahn [Rahn, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781927881217
Publisher: Bundoran Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19: Anaerobe

Two extremely large bioreactors were being installed while Gina sat fuming in her office. She and Dobson had been locked out of the area where they were being placed, and were offered no information about the installers—who looked suspiciously like soldiers rather than bioreactor techs. In reality, she didn’t want to be anywhere near the people installing ‘her’ bioreactors. What had her so angry was, of course, Samuel. He’d sent her a chirpy little note asking her to prepare a phenomenal amount of bacterial culture that was not Wolbachia. The culture wasn’t from Xuizo, but something engineered by another scientist she did not know, with several clear cautions that the material was infectious. Level three biohazard. The little cryovial of starter material sat crackling and steaming as it melted on her bench. The supplies—everything she could possibly need to grow bacteria, but not sequence their genomes—sat in one of the laboratories off to her left, having been brought in from the crates that had sat floating outside this whole time.

Fine. Gina gowned and gloved up, took the vial to a biosafety cabinet and dumped the thawed bacteria into an anaerobic growth vessel with the media she’d optimized on Xuizo, not at all surprised to come back a few hours later and find that the two were completely compatible. She made a small prep of the plasmid extracted from the bacteria, ran a few restriction digests from memory, and surmised that the zenoferric reductase enzyme was indeed encoded on the plasmid. But what did the rest of the DNA code for?

A knock on her doorframe announced Dobson’s arrival. “Gina? Didn’t want to startle you again, but they’ve brought the Delacroix fellow back and he’s in bad shape. They’ve gone and dumped him in medical. I don’t want to be a hypochondriac, but that’s a bit too close to us, if you know what I mean, when we’re essentially trapped here and he’s that sick.”

Gina pulled off her gloves, removed her lab coat and went to wash her hands. “Are they still here? Were you able to talk to them?”

“No. These people are probably the unfriendliest, most stuck-up bunch I’ve ever come across. Not a word to me, and even distinctly avoiding any contact. And what are they doing to that man anyway? Surely prisoners have some rights. Regardless of what he may have done, I don’t think…”

Gina didn’t hear the rest of what Dobson had to say. She rushed out of the lab and headed for the poorly equipped medical section only to find the doors sealed off with a plaque carrying a biohazard warning. Dobson came puffing up behind her. Behind the glas, Jason had been callously dumped on one of the metal tables, hooked up to an IV drip and a series of monitoring machines, his breathing obviously laboured.

“Do you see what I mean?” Dobson demanded, waving a finger at the glas. “Look at him!”

“Can we talk to him,” Gina asked. “Is there an intercom?”

“Oh, yes.” Dobson blustered off somewhere.

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