His Wings (D.D. fanfiction)

Chapter 36

Denise and I were diligently engrossed in our latest theory, tirelessly striving to pinpoint the cause of the virus. I hung up my coat, donned my lab coat, and made my way over to where she was fervently jotting down ideas on the board.

"Hey, Denise!"

"Alex!" Her face lit up with excitement, and she rushed over to greet me. With unwavering passion, she grasped my shoulders, her eyes brimming with passion.

"Yesterday I spent some time looking at the different molecules from bottled and fresh water under the microscope, they are all contaminated with a certain parasite, but it's like nothing I've seen before." She informed me. I stopped in my tracks, taken aback.

"Have a look." She beckoned me over to the microscope. I jogged over and peered through the eyepiece as she placed one of the samples on the microscope slide.

"Oh my god." I muttered as sure enough along with the normal bacteria you would see in water was this strange looking creature. The parasite's body revealed an almost unnatural symmetry, as if it were meticulously designed. Its body was divided into hexagonal sections, giving it an unsettling geometric quality, as if it was designed by a human.

"This parasite only seems to measures between 100 and 300 nanometers in diameter. How could it cause so much damage?" I withdrew my eye from the microscope. Denise prepared another slide and inserted it for me to view. I looked through the microscope again, and in the second sample, the same parasite was present.

"The virus has a lipid envelope that surrounds its genetic material, which is composed of single-stranded RNA." Denise informed me.

"Its lipid envelope looks bumpy, and the outer layer seems to be spiked." I pulled away and stared at Denise in disbelief.

"Ah I have a theory for that as well." Denise eagerly smiled and moved over to the whiteboard. She flipped it over, revealing notes I hadn't seen before.

"Did you stay up all night, Denise?" I asked, bewildered.

"Maybe but that's beside the point. These spikes play a crucial role in the virus's ability to attach to and enter human cells. The virus's genetic material, the single-stranded RNA, is a twisted, coiled structure within the viral particle. It contains the genetic instructions necessary for the virus to hijack the host's cellular machinery and replicate itself. Of course that's just my theory." Denise pushed up her glasses and gestured to the board.

"You're serious?"

"Yes, that means our theory has a platform." She smiled, I gripped onto the lab table beside me and felt like I was going to pass out. Did we really find how the parasite works?

"I have never seen such a distinct design before on a parasite, as if it was manmade." I informed her, to which she nodded in agreement. 

"I also got one of the men to grab two rats and I did a study on it,"  she beckoned me forward, showing me a dead rat in box A and a alive rat in box B.

"I injected the walker virus into the live rat in box A, and it got the infection. It was only alive for 5 seconds before it died, and it didn't come back. I haven't done Rat B yet," She explained.

Denise retrieved a syringe and began injecting the walker virus into the live rat B. The rat started spasming and then died.

"It seems that the walker virus can't infect mammals in the sense of bringing them back, it just kills them." Denise said, turning to observe my shocked expression.

"So what makes humans carry the walker gene?" I asked Denise, my mind racing for answers.

"Perhaps" She interjected, "It may have evolved or been engineered to target specific receptors or molecules that are unique to humans."