Fruit of Misfortune (19 page)

“There was an incident,” said Dr. Gunn.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

“Oh dear.” Gunn’s blinking tick set in. “Ow.”
He winced. “You won’t be happy about this, Mr. Chios. I’d like to
begin by apologizing.”

David’s jaw tightened as he stared at the
doctor, already upset by his words. “What happened to the two
reports, Gunn?”

The scientist withdrew a pink binder from his
messenger bag. “This is Mrs. Chios’ report.” He turned to look at
me. “Are we still calling you that?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Just call me
Isis.”

Gunn nodded, and then turned his apologetic
stare to David. “
Your
file…” Gunn cleared his throat. “Well,
it’s… I don’t have it.” Gunn grimaced. “I’m sorry.”

“Come again?” David furrowed his brow.

“Someone else has your file, Mr. Chios.”

“What?” I glared at the doctor.

David’s mouth was as wide as his eyes. Gunn
lowered his head.

“Please tell me you’re joking,” I said, and
Gunn shook his head. “Oh my God.” I stared at David. “What are we
going to do?”

David took a few steps back and landed on a
small sofa. His eyes were set on a portrait of his family that hung
on the wall above a mahogany credenza.

“If the Council finds out that my identity
has been exposed, they’ll begin an investigation. They’ll find out
that we’ve been protecting Isis and my entire family will die.” He
turned to me with consternation in his stare, “And her entire
family will, too.”

It felt like someone had punched me in the
gut, and I exhaled the air in my lungs. The thought of offing
myself couldn’t have been more attractive at the moment, but this
wasn’t just about David and me, anymore. It was about our families.
My mother, who was ignorant of what was happening, would suffer the
consequences of bearing me.

I walked to the sofa where David was seated
and took a place next to him, lacing my fingers with his.

“We can’t let the Council find out,” I said
with a knot in my throat.

“Dr. Gunn.” David looked across the room “Who
has my file?”

“Gío Carboné,” Gunn said. “I know where he
lives, if that helps.”

“It does.” David nodded. “Do you have
anything left of my case study?”

Gunn tapped the top of the laptop’s screen.
“It’s all backed up here. Hidden and encrypted.”

David rubbed the ridge of his nose in
apparent frustration. Still, he managed to hold his tone under
control when he spoke to Dr. Gunn.

“Tell us what we need to know,” David said.
“Then we’re going to find Gío Carboné.”

“I was hoping I wouldn’t be involved.” The
geneticist blinked nervously, wincing at the pain that it produced
on his wounded eye.

“I meant my brothers and me,” David said.

“Thank you.” Gunn nodded in relief. “I don’t
want to deal with him or his men again.” He patted his brown plaid
coat pockets and pulled out his eyeglasses. One of the lenses was
cracked. He waved in a gesture to join him at the desk. “I’ll begin
with your file, Isis.”

We hovered around the computer. The scientist
opened a picture on the screen of what looked like a human
blueprint. Its chest and stomach rose and dropped, simulating
breathing. Gunn pressed a button and the top layer of the body
flipped open like a lid and exposed the organs. They appeared to be
in full function.

“Wow,” I said.

“Indeed.” David nodded.

“Thank you. It’s my own design,” Gunn said.
He zoomed the blueprint to one of the main arteries. “These are
cells. But they’re not human cells,” he explained. “I call them
Isis cells.” He smiled at me. He then clicked and zoomed again and
again until there was a DNA chain, like the one we had seen on his
lab coat. “This is your DNA, Isis. This makes you who you are and
what you look like. Even to the trained eye it looks normal, but if
we click it one more time, it takes us deeper into the DNA
sequencing.” He pointed to small particles. “These are proteins and
within these proteins are genes that have been splicing.” He
glanced at David and me. “That isn’t normal, by the way. These are
almost impossible to detect in a standard DNA test, but I’ve dug
deeper and found that, somehow, these proteins have been splicing
for years. My guess is that these changes have been happening since
the onset of puberty.

“Females reach maturity between the ages of
sixteen and twenty-one. According to your file, you’re eighteen. Is
that your correct age?” he asked, and I nodded. “Have you grown
taller in the past year?”

“No. Not that I’ve noticed.”

“Your maturity is bringing on changes unlike
any I’ve ever seen.”

“Can you give us an example?” David
asked.

“Yes.” Gunn zoomed out of the
protein-splicing screen and zoomed back into one of the organs.
“This is your stomach.” His finger circled over a small area on the
screen where the stomach connected to the esophagus. “And this
here, this is a membrane across the sphincter.” Gunn stopped to
look for a reaction from David and me.

Even with the simple explanation, I didn’t
understand what the heck the doctor was saying.

“Maybe this will help me explain better.”
From the pink folder, he pulled out a printed diagram of the human
stomach and slid it across the desk for me to study. “In a normal
human anatomy, there’s no membrane on the sphincter. At some point
in your life, you grew new tissue.”

“What purpose does it have?” David leaned
into the computer screen.

“It’s a selectively permeable membrane. It
only accepts nutrients that the body needs. If the body needs iron,
it only takes iron; however, when Isis ingests things that her body
has no use for, such as unhealthy fats, the enzymes in the gastric
juices concentrate the fats, pulling them from the blood stream and
rejecting them.”

“So this…” David tapped the computer screen
with his index finger. “Is this why she can’t keep any food
down?”

“It is. That’s what the vomit specimen
was—fat.”

“Hold on.” I touched my stomach. “You’re
telling me I have a fat filter? Does that mean I can’t eat pizza or
any type of fast food?”

“Yes.” Gunn’s eyes widened with excitement.
“It’s extraordinary. Revolutionary even. But that’s not all…”

“More good news?” I asked.

“Yes,” Gunn said, not noticing my sarcasm. He
clicked away at the computer, zooming into another part of the
human blueprint. “Here,” Gunn said, pointing to what looked like a
layered cake. “This line right here is an extra layer of epidermis.
I don’t know its purpose, but there must be one. And over here,”
the doctor continued, moving the cursor down and clicking, “are
ovules that are being released by the millions. I’m concerned
because this doesn’t tie in with the rest of the changes.” Gunn
clicked on the laptop’s keys. “And look at this.”

David and I exchanged a glance when the
screen filled with a series of numbers and letters.

“What are we looking at?” David asked, with a
furrowed brow.

“These are my calculations for when the
physical transformation will be completed. You do know you’re
changing, don’t you?”

“We know.” David’s hand squeezed my
shoulder.

“You’ll be different. A whole other species.”
The doctor’s sparkled with excitement. “And it won’t be long
now.”

“How long does she have?”

“One second.” Gunn said.

“
What?”
I shriek.

“Oh no, no… I meant, one second while I
calculate.” The doctor squinted and stared at the ceiling as he
mumbled numbers and counted with his fingers. “As of today, nine
days.” He clicked the computer. “And twelve for you, Mr. Chios.
You’re changing too, but I’m sure you knew that.”

“Is there anything you can do to prevent it
from occurring?” David asked.

“I’m sorry.” Gunn shook his head. “It’s like
trying to prevent a caterpillar from transforming into a butterfly.
It’s nature. There are laws that can’t be broken.”

“Doctor Gunn,” I sighed, “this change that’s
coming over us, it’s not a good one.”

“Although I find this transformation
extraordinary, I guessed that it wasn’t pleasant when you asked for
my help. And I know that you were hopeful that I’d find a way to
stop it. But your body has created new organs. How does one reverse
that? You simply can’t. The change is too advanced. It’s like
terminal cancer. This is the last stage. There’s nothing I can
do.”

I wiped the tears that had formed in the
inner corners of my eyes. “What about David? Can you help him?”

Gunn’s face was contrite as he spoke. “The
changes in David are different from yours. David’s blood—this
superhuman blood of his—it’s weakening and his blood cells are
being replaced by two other types: Isis Cells, the ones present in
your blood stream, and normal human cells. With this change going
on in his body, it could cause his entire system to go into shock,
like when the wrong blood is used for a transfusion.”

“The reason for the seizure a couple of days
ago,” David said.

“Most likely.” Gunn tugged on his lightning
bolt earring. “That will continue to happen until one cell type has
won, and right now it looks like the Isis Cell is winning.”

David paced the room, both hands behind his
head. I sat on the couch hugging myself.

“Are there any internal changes in me—extra
organs, like in Isis?” David asked.

“Not yet, but…” The doctor clicked on his
computer and turned the computer around toward David. “This here—”
He pointed to the screen. “It’s the beginning of the formation of
the membrane in your sphincter. Your body is working at such a
rapid rate that I wouldn’t be surprised if you collapsed while it
completes the change.”

“I have to bring Galen in here,” David said,
rubbing his forehead. “He needs to know about this, and we need a
plan to get that file back from Carboné.”

“Your brother?” Gunn straightened his back,
and placed his hand on his chin in thought. “If Mr. Galen is truly
your biological brother, does that mean that he’s also a superhuman
being?”

“No,” David said. “I’m the only one that’s
like this.”

“David, there’s no point in lying. He’s
trying to help us,” I said.

David stared at me and thought for a moment.
He walked to the wall, unhooked the portrait that hung over the
credenza, and handed it to the scientist.

“This is my family. They’re all like me.”

“Amazing.” A smile formed on Dr. Gunn’s lips,
his eyesight bouncing from one Chios member to the next as he
viewed the picture. “Mr. Chios, I think I can help you.” He shook
the portrait between his hands. “I think I have a way.”

David
excused himself so that he could call Galen into the den before Dr.
Gunn explained any of the details of his plan. I took it as an
opportunity to question the doctor in private. I closed the door
and faced him.

“How sure are you that you can stop David
from turning into—whatever?”

“Good question.”

Gunn dug his hand in his coat pocket and
produced a scientific calculator. I couldn’t decide if that
qualified him as a total geek or a true professional. He tapped the
keys on the instrument, and then held it out so that I could see
the display.

“Eighty-three point seven percent,” he said.
“That’s the likelihood of success.”

I felt the last droplet of hope evaporate
when I heard the factor of probability. “So it’s not the full
one-hundred?”

“It’s a high number,” he said, trying to
sound reassuring. “His odds are favorable.”

“But that number isn’t high enough.” I paced
the room. “There’s still that chance that it won’t work at
all.”

“I understand your concern. The problem is I
only have four potential donors for the transfusion—a blood
transfusion is what Mr. David needs, but I’m a person short.” He
took a deep breath and exhaled. “And to be honest, I don’t know
what to do about you. I want to help you, but I…” He dropped his
shoulders.

“Forget about me. You know as well as I do
there’s nothing more to do. Focus on David and help him.
Please.”

“I intend to. That’s the main reason I became
a doctor—to help people.”

“Thank you,” I said, leaning on the desk. “So
this plan of yours involves a blood transfusion from his
family?”

“Yes,” Gunn nodded. “But I have to do it as
soon as possible, before that extra organ and the extra layer of
skin develop any further. Are all of Mr. Chios’ family members in
Athens?”

“His dad isn’t here, but I’m sure he’ll come
as soon as he’s told the news.”

The door to the den swung open. Galen walked
in before David and charged toward Dr. Gunn.

“No! No! Galen, wait!” I said, pushing the
scientist behind the desk and using it as a barricade. Galen placed
both arms on the desk, and then slammed his fist on it, leaving a
visible dent. Gunn’s blinking tick kicked in at warp speed.