The Life Engine by Rick Baker

Author:Rick Baker [Baker, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Life Engine
Publisher: eBookIt.com
Published: 2015-09-04T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26

Shaman’s Blood

Basement Lab, First Medical

Dr. Ethan Jones, senior team leader at First Medical, stared through the electronic microscope at a group of red blood cells. A monochrome paisley sea of vibrant red swam before his bleary eyes. Human blood never failed to fascinate him. Ethan had been at his station studying April Gentry’s blood work for the last ten hours.

In the first battery of tests, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Ethan knew he and his team were facing a unique compound. A delayed-action poison was a rare thing indeed. Even if the compounds from which the poison was derived had been documented carefully, the effects often took years to analyze, antidotes even longer to formulate. According to Sebastian’s ultimatum, Ethan had barely a week.

It sounded cold and analytical, but whatever the outcome—whether April lived or died—Ethan knew the documentation he compiled would be important for future research. Still, he had no intention of writing the post-mortem white paper on April’s cause of death. He had been given leadership over one of the military’s most respected bio-terror response units because of his intellect and his tenacity. Human life mattered. Whether a soldier needed emergency care or a small child faced an unknown infection, he had the reputation of outworking everyone around him. Ethan also possessed the innate ability to make good decisions and remain flexible as the situation shifted hour by hour.

It was time for one of those tough decisions. Ethan knew from the nurses’ report that April was awake and medically vital. He dialed her room and requested that she be brought to his lab.

Josie, a lab tech in her mid fifties, pulled one of the tubes from the centrifuge separator. “Ethan, we might be seeing a slight drop in the platelet count. White cells on the rise. I wish we had an earlier baseline.”

“Mark sample two at the expiration of the sodium pentathol.” Ethan turned to his youngest and brightest member of the team. “Dennis, get the next shift here by 06:00. We’ll overlap for a few hours.”

Dennis had come to Ethan by way of the Institute for Bio Security at St. Louis University, School for Public Health. He had done two tours in Iraq before being assigned to an Anthrax study at First Medical.

“This is going to be a nasty business,” Dennis said. “I’m cross-referencing every delayed action injectable in the database. One candidate is a cousin to the Amanita Mushroom. It grows across Brasilia. Once ingested, the mushrooms produce increasing hypoglycemia, followed by weakening of the kidney, liver, and heart muscles. Since symptoms are slow to develop, sometimes as long as forty-eight hours, the victim won’t know anything is wrong until it’s too late. By the time symptoms appear, the victim will feel sudden and extreme stomach pain, violent vomiting, intense thirst, and bloody diarrhea. Victims will remain conscious almost to the end before finally lapsing into a coma. The damage to the liver is so severe that, in some cases, the only way to save the victim is with a full liver transplant.

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