A Heartbeat Away - Michael Palmer [136]
You’re Genesis, you son of bitch, he thought. I know you are.
Rappaport appeared relatively calm.
“We’re counting on you, Rhodes,” was all that he said as Griff started his journey downward.
You’re counting on me to fail, Griff said to himself. But win or lose, I’m going to bring you down. And when I do, there’s going to be a photo of Melvin Forbush in your coffin.
Sergeant Stafford coordinated the security detail assigned to cover Griff, and barked out instructions that kept his team on constant alert. Stafford and some troops accompanied Griff down to the lab level. Because of the exposure risk, they guarded only the entrance to the Kitchen, not the Kitchen itself. Griff passed into the restricted area alone, carrying with him, in a large cooler lined with icepacks, six liters of Johnny Ray Davis’s anticoagulated blood.
Carefully, Griff decanted some plasma into four test tubes and set each tube in one of four wells of a large centrifuge. The instrument whirled in excess of three thousand revolutions per minute, separating cellular debris from the serum.
Seven hundred lives rested on his finding an elusive antigen, or some unusual enzyme in that serum—something that had allowed Davis to survive, while others exposed to WRX3883 had died. Seven hundred lives were running out of time.
Griff used gel electrophoresis to separate the treated serum into DNA, RNA, and protein molecules for further analysis. Police forensics used the technique to amplify DNA for their criminal investigations, but Griff was interested in every component of the serum—most specifically, something unique to J.R. Davis.
Hours passed. Frustration and apprehension grew. Fatigue became a mortal enemy. Then, suddenly, it was there.
Interleukin 6.
Davis’s serum contained ten times the normal level of the protein Interleukin 6.
Ten times the norm.
Griff checked and rechecked his technique and his calculations. He felt a vibration at the base of his neck and down his spine. He knew the sensation well. It occurred whenever an idea had begun to take hold and grow.
What, exactly, was it that the warden said about Davis? Griff tried to recall. The man could run straight to California without becoming winded—something like that. Never gets tired jogging in the yard.… Never.
It had been a simple, off-topic conversation that Griff had nearly forgotten about. But suddenly, when viewed in a different context, that comment took on an enormous new significance.
Griff knew a great deal about the IL-6 protein. It was secreted by T-cells and functioned in part to stimulate the body’s response to trauma—burns, tissue damage, and such. He was also aware that IL-6, for reasons still unknown, became elevated during periods of physical stress. He conducted some quick research on the Internet and found a study of Fuchs heterochromic iridocyclitis that linked patients with the different-colored irises to elevated levels of IL-6 in the blood. The Fuchs variant of heterochromia was associated with viral illness, probably measles.
Griff began to wonder what would happen if he added an adjuvant to Orion—a biochemical booster that amplified IL-6 production.
But which one?
More research online. More poring through his grad school notes and his files of articles.
Bless you, Melvin, for keeping everything in order. Bless you, old friend.
One possibility kept arising: antisense oligodeoxynucleotides, more commonly called ODNs. The odd name was also known by geneticists as “negative sense.” Sense and antisense proteins were increasingly being used to battle complex diseases such as AIDS, asthma, and even muscular dystrophy. In theory, a synthetic strand of the nucleic acid could bind to messenger RNA and effectively alter its behavior.
Griff powered up his computer. He modified Orion’s programming to include an ODN adjuvant that stimulated IL-6 production from the body’s lymph nodes and spleen. In his program, Griff magnified the production of IL-6 until the levels cranked out by the body treated