“Think about it,” said Lien. “If this is a retrovirus, then going through the effort to infect a host that already has the viral DNA would be a total waste.”
Naresh thought for a moment. “But, we’ve tested the virus on dozens of human tissue samples. It deactivates every time. We assumed most humans were immune. But this would mean …”
He trailed off, so Lien finished for him. “Most humans are already infected.”
Ninety-eight percent?” Tuan asked. Lien was in her hotel room video-chatting with her husband.
“Yeah. That’s how many of our human samples tested positive.”
“So if your theory is correct …”
“Then this is a much bigger problem than we realized. We still haven’t finished analyzing the data from the genome sequencer. Hopefully we’ll learn something useful.”
“When I was bitten,
