“Could it look like this? The virus attack?”
He nods. “It’s hard to know the exact symptoms, but yes. That looks like something brain-related.”
Peggy paces the room. “You said that the protein thing . . .”
“Moiety,” says Raj.
“Thank you,” says Peggy. “You said it needs to be displaced for the virus to work. What could cause that displacement?”
“Any one of hundreds of triggers,” he says.
I think about the two guys who I just watched get incinerated at the morgue. Somehow, they were “triggered” with perfect timing before they could give any information to the police. And now over a hundred girls and Riya are exposed to probably the same thing. My hand slams down onto the desk before me, hard enough to make Raj jump.
“Like what?” I demand. “You have to give us a list, a full list, of every possible trigger.”
He’s taken aback but answers, spreading his hands.
“It could be something in the food supply, the water . . .” He trails off.
Well, that’s a huge task to manage on its own. “What else?” I press.
“Another particle could be introduced through a ventilation system, or into the general air supply; something that could be inhaled. . . . Basically, it has to affect the girls internally. But it wouldn’t have the slightest effect on people who aren’t carrying the toxin.”
It’s just too vague. There’s nothing I can catch hold of. My desperate look meets Peggy’s frown. She shakes her head at the doctor.
“We really need a list. What else could trigger it?”
“Perhaps we are not explaining this well,” Ajay interrupts with a sigh. “The science around virus delivery has grown exponentially in the past few years. And that’s the science we know about, not the top-secret work that governments get up to, that terror groups could steal.”
Raj nods. “We don’t have a corresponding sample, or a list of characteristics, for this particular particle. It’s specifically engineered.”
“So, there must be a specific trigger?” I ask, almost pleading.
“Yes, that’s true. It won’t be any one of a hundred things; it will be one specific thing. But it’s not like we can just guess or do one single test to find out. There are any number of ways it could be triggered, depending on the nature of the particle. It’s never happened before, but there’s even a theoretical possibility that something like a microwave could trigger it, if the particle is engineered that way.”
“So, tell us how the particle is engineered,” I snap.
“I should be able to do that,” Raj says, eager to be able to finally toss us some hope. “My initial tests have been to figure out what this virus is meant to do, not how it does it. That alone often takes days. We’ve done it in under twenty hours.”
“And we are extremely grateful.” Peggy nods, waiting for more.
“There is good news,” he says. “Once we pull apart the structure of this nanoparticle, the chances are very high that we can defuse it. We can construct a new particle which conjugates with the first one but has a targeted antiviral.”
I glance at Peggy. I’ll literally give this guy my life if he’ll stop talking like he swallowed a medical dictionary.
“Do you mean you can make an antibody?” Peggy clarifies.
“In a manner of speaking,” Raj says.
It’s like I can breathe again. There’s hope. Some hope.
“How soon can you do it?”
“If we work round the clock and everything breaks in our favor—twenty to thirty hours. But that’s never been done before. It would be miraculous. But worst case, double that.”
Maybe it would be a miracle, but it feels like an eternity. Peggy puts a calming hand on my arm.
“That’s a day or two,” she tells me. “We can work with that.”
“Then, if you have no more questions,” Raj says apologetically, “I will get back to my team and I will call you the moment I have anything that could possibly help.”
25
PEGGY AND I GET BACK to our hotel just after 8:30 a.m. and, with Kit in tow, we join the Athena team in London by video. Hala and Caitlin link in by audio from outside Jingo’s home, where Hala has just arrived to take over from Caitlin in watching the place.
“We have one clear focus over the next several hours,” says Peggy after she’s summarized our visit to the lab. “To figure out what the trigger for the nanoparticle might be.”
“Thomas is leaving messages at all of the top research universities here in London,” says Li. “He’ll find any brain virus or neurotoxin experts and track them down in person as soon as he can.”
“Well, it is four in the morning over there,” says Kit, with understanding.
“Oh, I’m having him hunt down their home addresses and phone numbers,” says Li briskly. “We can’t wait for London to open for normal working hours. Meanwhile, I have calls in to my contacts in nanotechnology in San Francisco and in Beijing.”
“Needless to say, I’m researching too,” says Amber.
Kit asks Caitlin about the school, since she’s been spending the most time there.
“Those girls are well protected,” Caitlin tells us. “But I’ll talk to Luca and Ethan right now about tightening up security and what other kinds of safeguards we can place around the girls.”
“Hala, anything from Jingo ahead of his deadline?” asks Peggy.
“Not yet,” says Hala through a mouthful of something that’s presumably her breakfast. I’m still waiting to find the stressor that would cause her to lose her appetite. “I got a text ten minutes ago saying he’s working on it,” she continues.
Peggy turns to me. “Jessie? Go and meet with Hala. In case you need to strong-arm Jingo again.”
The call ends, leaving me alone with Kit and Peggy in the hotel room. Hastily, I get up to go to Jingo’s, trying to move past the helplessness I feel inside. But I have to ask permission for something first.
“Someone needs to tell Riya what’s going on,” I say. “What she’s carrying.”
“Perhaps the lab would be best placed to explain it?” Peggy suggests kindly.
But Kit’s looking at
