I couldn't figure out where the time had gone. We had been here for a month already. It was halfway through September and the days were cooling off. Ninette was still using information from the samples she had taken when we first came. She still came for an occasional blood sample, but that was it.
I yawned as I looked around our room. Diane wasn't back yet. It had taken a lot of discussion, but she had convinced me to stay inside and sleep while she ran at night. There were three locks on the door just in case. I still had my walkie talkie, so Diane was just a call away and she had promised to keep her runs close by.
Ninette hadn't had any more breakthroughs, although she had several possible leads she was testing. She had spent an entire week trying to see if she could infect anyone else's blood or skin samples with the virus Diane carried without it attacking their cells. She had no success in that area, which she said was very unusual since viruses were usually contagious as rule. Ninette had decided to call the stubborn virus the 'Heartfire Virus'. Diane thought that it was a very fitting name for it.
I yawned and snuggled back into my blankets. It wasn't quite morning yet. Once Diane returned, I would tag along with her as we helped out with various chores around the settlement while Ninette wrestled with her lab equipment.
I sat on a rock while I watched Diane try out a new weapon that the blacksmith had given her. He called it a glaive. It was longer than Diane was tall and very light. It looked like a long staff with a big knife blade embedded into the top section. The shaft was an odd dark dull grey color. It had some sort of faint pattern beat into the entire shaft for grip.
The blade was a long as Diane's forearm and a third of it stuck above the shaft while the rest was seamlessly embedded into the shaft. It looked razor sharp. Even if it wasn't, it would be by the time Diane finished sharpening it. The blacksmith had proclaimed that Diane wouldn't be able to break it and that it was an excellent weapon to fight zombies while staying out of their reach.
Despite the fact that Diane had never held a glaive before, you wouldn't know it by how quickly she moved it through various practice patterns. The glaive was an insubstantial blur and Diane was a more solid blur. Her speed was phenomenal when she wanted to use it.
I recognized some of the moves from her training with Ace, but most of the time she was moving much too fast for me to follow. She didn't just concentrate on the glaive either, she did flips, spun, and kicked at imaginary targets. Her feet were in the air so much that I was beginning to wonder if she was levitating.
I bet if Ace saw that weapon that he would ban it from their practice fighting matches. She had a lot of reach with it. Diane did a blurring flipping spin before landing on both feet and letting the glaive slip through her hand until the butt hit the ground by her feet.
She grinned at me, "So, what do you think?"
I tilted my head, "Were you pretending to catch a rabbit for supper?"
Diane chuckled at my cheeky reply, "Not quite, but it could be used for that. Feel like getting some supper?"
I nodded and hopped off the rock I was sitting on. In all honesty, I wanted to know how her sword, dagger, bow, and arrows hadn't come loose in that display. As if she needed another weapon, she could start scaring the guards at this rate. She had already tried sparring against some of them, but even I could tell that they weren't nearly as good as the regular Guards back at Wainwright Fort.
I was happy to head back, we had been in the shade of the trees and it was cold enough that I had goosebumps.
Diane buttered a cheese roll as she asked Ninette, "So, did you learn anything new today?"
Ninette nodded thoughtfully as she chewed, "Mmm.... Yes, I think I finally found a dye that worked the way I wanted it to. Now I can see what I had been missing previously."
Ninette started pulling up pictures and pointing to them while talking with Diane. Most of it was gibberish to me, but Diane seemed to be following it just fine. I had learned a lot about cells during the last months, although I wasn't sure it was sufficient to follow this conversation.
Ninette had discovered that Diane's virus wasn't exactly a true virus since it had the ability to actually turn into a cell to create more Heartfire Viruses. These cells were capable of using almost anything for energy, even wastes in the blood. It then crammed all that energy into the viruses as it made them.
Each cell had hundreds of viruses stored in it waiting to be released. Ninette was currently pointing to a blown up picture of the Heartfire cell. Diane was watching in shock, "There are so many and just in that one cell... How many is one cell producing?"
Ninette leaned back in her chair, "That is actually hard to answer since the rate widely varies depending on what you are doing. In this picture, you can see them tightly packed together and they are not being released since there is a high enough concentration of viruses outside the cell to prevent their release. If the virus number drops, the wider area of the cell is able to open to release a few more. Here is an interesting shot I managed to get."
Ninette changed the picture to show a cell releasing viruses, "This is an interesting scenario that occurs whenever your blood turns silver. The viruses that are already outside the cell are able to release an alarm chemical that causes more viruses to be released. The more chemical they produce, the more that are released."
She tapped on the screen with a finger, "These viruses are actually a very shiny silver color that happens to reflect light very well. That is why your blood turns silver. It represents how much of the virus is present in your blood. The heat you feel is actually an indication of the Heartfire virus level in your blood."
Diane looked shocked, "So every time I have been pulling the heat, I have been releasing millions of viruses into my blood?" She paused and narrowed her eyes, "Wait a moment, that doesn't make any sense. Otherwise my blood would be pure silver all the time. Where are the viruses going then?"
Ninette sighed, "That is a big part of what I have been working on for so long. The Heartfire cell stuffs the Heartfire virus full of various chemicals that act a lot like adrenaline without the 'rush' associated with it. These chemicals contain way more energy than what your normal cells usually use.
"That is why you are able to run so fast and lift so much with little effort. Normal body cells can only absorb and use energy sources so fast and the stuff in the virus is like comparing gasoline to coal. Your cells can use it much more easily and efficiently."
Diane gave her a quizzical look, "If the energy is inside of the virus, how are the other cells using it?"
Ninette opened up more pictures, "Your muscles are able to actually absorb the viruses and use the energy within them. Since your cells are still producing the same amount of energy as they did before, the addition of those Heartfire viruses is why you rarely get tired."
Diane rubbed her eyes, "And where does the burning and pain come from?"
With a few clicks Ninette zoomed in on a picture of the virus being absorbed by a muscle, "That is what I have been trying to find out the last two weeks until discovering it today. Remember those tiny spines on the Heartfire virus? Well, when the virus is absorbed, the cell strips them off."
I could see a few small clumps of tiny spines free-floating, "Where did those spines go?"
Ninette glanced at me, as if she had forgotten I was here, "A very good question. They actually float around between the cells until they break down. They break down in about five minutes once they are free floating, but during that time they can touch and irritate the nerve endings if there are too many spines. Those loose spines are what cause the afterburn that Diane describes. It isn't causing any true damage, just a bit of irritation to the nerve."
Diane leaned back in her chair, "So what causes the pain if I don't move enough? If I am not doing anything, then I am not using up those viruses so there shouldn't be lots of spines floating around."
Ninette nodded, "Your cells have adapted to the virus' presence remarkably well. In fact, they constantly try to absorb the viruses. The problem is that the virus is about a tenth of the size of your cells, so if a cell uses 3% of its contents, it still does not have room for an additional 10%. But that does not stop it from trying. The cell starts to absorb it, but since there is not enough room inside the cell, the virus gets stuck when half absorbed."
Ninette pointed at the screen, "The spines start rubbing along the cell's own membrane causing pain and discomfort. If you aren't doing anything, the cell has a lot of energy already stored in it so the virus remains stuck and causes the cell distress. As more cells run into the same problem, the pain builds to something that you can actually feel. It just continues to build until you start moving and use enough energy to allow the cells to absorb the virus completely and strip off those spines. Then the pain stops, but the sudden surge of spines then leaves the afterburn."
Diane was silent. It even kind of made sense to me. Diane glanced over at Ninette, "So why do my eyes glow? Why did they change color?"
Ninette glanced at Diane's eyes, "The virus may have built up quickly, but it took time for your body to adapt to its presence, hence the many slower changes. Brown eyes have a brown substance called melanin in the pigment cell in the iris. Blue eyes actually lack the ability to generate that pigment, which is why blue eyes are recessive. Blue is the natural color of the structure in the iris itself. The virus somehow destroyed the ability for your pigment cells to generate this pigment. Without that pigment, your eyes are blue.
"Since the virus is shiny, it is capable of reflecting light very well, which is why your vision on a normal day is so sharp. One chemical in the virus is also capable of glowing, just like a firefly."
Ninette sighed, "But I am having no luck in getting this virus to accept another host in either blood or tissue samples. Since it is the Heartfire virus itself that is killing the zombie virus, there are no antibodies or anything we can even try to synthesize for a cure or vaccine. I have tried almost everything I can think of. I have never heard of a virus that couldn't be transferred."
Diane grinned, "So I gave you a couple months worth of entertainment, but still didn't help with a cure."
Ninette chuckled, "I needed a bit of excitement and a few new ways to test the waters. At least now we know it is possible to survive. You were also a great help, I have never had anyone so diligent in bringing me meals." We all laughed at that one. She got distracted and engrossed in her work so easily...
Ninette shook her head still chuckling, "Oh, I forgot to mention that one of the ladies in charge of the food did approach me to see how much I needed you. She wanted to see if she could arrange a schedule so she could have you whenever I didn't need you since you knew so many edible plants. That is if you don't mind."
Diane grinned, "Works for me. Just let me know where I am supposed to be."
I smiled happily, picking plants before the snow fell sounded much more fun than sitting in a lab watching Ninette play with bizarre pieces of equipment.