Dragon Gold

Chapter 6

Six

Saturday, December 18

Sternberg Center for Cancer Cures

Thomas hustled up the stairs to his penthouse lab, taking two steps at a time. He loved his new lab. His old lab had been in the hospital basement and featured ancient equipment. Now he had actual windows, not to mention state-of-the-art equipment including an electron microscope that didn’t take up half the room but sat efficiently on the counter.

He found Ivan removing a tray of test tubes from a cooler loaded with dry ice.

Ivan looked up from the fog, placing the samples into the freezer. “I have your calculations done.” A genius, Ivan had stacked a post-doc in gene sequencing onto his math PhD.

“Already? On all the new patients from today?” Thomas asked.

Ivan wagged a finger. “You know I prioritize fractal dimensions.”

Thomas’s gene therapy study involved calculating the fractal dimensions of cancers—a measurement of the roughness of the malignancy’s DNA patterns. Just like a more irregular mole was more concerning for cancer, the more irregularity in the DNA pattern meant a worse cancer prognosis—at least, when using traditional cancer therapies. Ironically, these high-grade cancers actually responded the best to Thomas’s new CRISPR therapies. It turned out the ultra-malignant cancers were different enough from their human hosts’ cells that Thomas could more easily engineer the CRISPR-Cas9 system to chop these cancers up and kill them.

“So what do you have, Mr. Math?”

Ivan handed the results to Thomas. “Good news for these kids and bad news for their cancers. Lots of high fractal dimensions. I think all these patients will be viable candidates for the study.”

Thomas was glad to hear it. The truth was, if these kids didn’t qualify for the study, they would probably die. Given the experimental nature of his therapies, Thomas typically only got consults for children with terminal prognoses, where traditional therapies had already failed.

“I’ll get consents from the parents,” he said. “Go ahead and start sequencing, and start thinking about what to plug into CRISPR for each one.” CRISPR required customization for each patient’s cancer.

“Will do. I’ll get that done before the CRISPR conference. And I’ll be on the outlook at the conference for ways to apply CUTR.” CUTR was the new enzyme Ivan had extracted from Roatan’s red tide. The hope was that it would lead to more efficient cures, maybe even enable them to automate the process so they could save more children and make this treatment available to kids worldwide. “I just hope we can make that work. If it doesn’t, I don’t know what our next step is.”

“Nature will provide us with another way,” Thomas said. “After all, nobody could have predicted the gene-editing capabilities of CRISPR. We just keep moving forward, and keep our eye out for opportunities.”

Ivan chuckled. “You are forever optimistic.”

“I prefer the term confident.”

A knock sounded on the door, and heels tapped on the tiled floor. Even before turning, Thomas knew who it was: his ex-girlfriend, Dr. Kat Stephenson. She wore a tight sweater, leggings, and high-heeled boots. Her blond wavy hair flowed over one shoulder. Thomas had always thought Kat resembled what Marilyn Monroe might have looked like had she been a pediatric infectious disease specialist.

“Hey, guys,” she said. “I saw the lights on from the children’s hospital. Okay if I hang out and order takeout for all of us? I have some articles to review.”

“That sounds great,” said Thomas. Ever since he’d returned from Roatan with another potential cancer cure and plenty of funding for his research, Kat had been paying him a lot of attention. He enjoyed the company of a beautiful woman, but didn’t know if he could trust her again.

She still didn’t know that when she had broken up with him, after he lost his job at the Children’s Hospital ten months ago, he had been planning to propose. He still had the sapphire ring in his safe at home. She broke his heart that day. But, he had to admit, he’d recovered quickly. Eva had had something to do with that.

Kat pointed at the cooler with steaming dry ice. “What’s with the samples?”

Thomas turned to Ivan, wanting to know too.

Ivan’s Slovakian accent thickened when he spoke to Kat, as if the gorgeous physician made him nervous. “Dolphin biopsies from Virginia. As soon as I sequence these cancers, I’ll run those too.”

Kat lifted her eyebrows. “You guys are still doing pro bono work for the environmental agencies?”

Thomas nodded. “The biopsies from last year were from North Carolina. If these look like lobomycosis then it’s clearly moving north, a sign of global warming.”

Lobomycosis was a fungal infection that affected dolphins. DARPA, in an effort to keep an eye on the health of the wild dolphin population, funneled Thomas samples from sick wild dolphins who had breached themselves.

“It’s very important Order of the Dolphin work,” Ivan added.

Thomas shook his head. “No, this is Delphi Force work. Eva’s research is Order of the Dolphin work.”

Kat rolled her eyes. “If that’s what you guys want to do with your cutting-edge equipment, that’s your call, but it seems like a waste of time to me. There’s no effective treatment for that fungal infection anyway.”

Thomas recalled the gulf between them. When Kat walked in looking like she did, it was easy to forget what had driven them apart. Kat might be a super-smart beauty, but she would never understand his work with the dolphins. Occasionally she would even belittle his notions of Taffy’s intelligence, and she usually referred to Dr. Eva Paz as that dolphin girl despite Eva’s breakthroughs in understanding dolphin communication.

Thomas took a box breath, trying to calm himself. “Well, feel free to make yourself comfortable in the lounge while Ivan and I finish up. What kind of takeout did you have in mind?”

“Vietnamese?” Kat suggested.

“Sounds perfect.”

Before the food arrived, the phone in Thomas’s lab rang. Ivan answered, then passed Thomas the phone.

“It’s a Julian Gulliver,” Ivan said.

It can’t be.

Thomas took the phone. “This is Dr. Thomas Sternberg.”

“Hello, Dr. Sternberg. Long time no see.”

Thomas remained silent. He had no stomach for small talk with Julian, of all people.

“Chatty as ever, I see,” said Julian. “I hear you’re doing very well for yourself these days. From unemployed pediatrician to curing brats from all over the country. My… I can see why your grandmother would be proud. It’s been interesting to note how quickly you’ve risen. That must have required a lot of funding.”

Thomas took a deep breath. “What do you want, Julian?”

“Just what’s mine. I’ve already spoken with Eva about it. In fact, I’m on my way back to Roatan now. I plan to say hello to Mel for you. But I’m sure I’ll see you in person soon enough. One way or the other.”

Before Thomas could say another word, Julian ended the call.

What was that all about?

Thomas wasn’t entirely sure. But one thing had been abundantly clear.

That was definitely a threat.