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Over the past days, the affliction had spread and climbed his body. It now covered half of his chest and left shoulder and had seeped halfway down the same arm. No regimen of drugs or radiation therapy had been able to stem its spread. Only one treatment showed any efficacy. It required lowering the patient’s body temperature in ice baths and acidifying his blood. Still, it only slowed the progress and did not stop it.
“We’ve had to resuscitate him twice overnight,” Heng reported with a lilt of fury. “He won’t last much longer, not even with the heroic efforts we’ve employed.”
Daiyu read sympathetic pain in the doctor’s face. Heng had requested that she let the man die three days ago, but she had instructed Heng to keep him alive for as long as possible—or at least until they had more answers. At this point, no one knew if his affliction was due to the accidental exposure to an unknown toxin or if it was evidence of the deployment of an exotic bioweapon against the crew. Answers were needed, especially as recovery efforts were about to start on the lost vessel.
“What progress have you made while I’ve been gone?” Daiyu pressed him.
“It’s a mixed bag at best. We’ve made some headway in terms ofwhatis happening to his body. As towhyorhowit’s happening, that continues to defy us.”
“Show me what you’ve learned,” she ordered him.
He drew her to a computer station. “His body is clearly undergoing a process of biomineralization. Take a look at this centrifuged sample of cerebrospinal fluid.”
A pair of microscope images appeared on the screen. One showed a close-up of small crystals floating in a diffuse haze.
“What are they?” she asked.
“Calcium carbonate crystals.”
She frowned. “Are those normally found in cerebral spinal fluid?”
“Definitely not.” Heng glanced at her. “While carbonate naturally makes up about eight percent of our bodies, that’s not where these crystals are coming from.”
“Then where?”
“They’re derived from the victim’sbones.”
“What?”
“The process seems to dissolve and scavenge the calcium from skeletal bones to produce these crystals—which are then densely deposited into the cell membranes throughout the body. The interior of the cell remains intact, but it makes the outer walls brittle and hard.”
“Turning the body stone-like.”
“Exactly. There’s a condition called scleroderma, an autoimmune disease that produces too much fibrous tissue between cells, making the sufferer’s skin and organs turn hard and unpliable. But in this case, it’s not fibrous tissue that’s causing it, but calcium deposits.”
“And what of the bones themselves?”
Heng turned to the petty officer in the other room. “We took multiple scans of his legs. Though his limbs are stiff and solid, there arenobones beneath that hard shell. It’s as if the process is terraforming his body, turning his internal skeletal structure into an exoskeleton.”
Daiyu grimaced. “And you have no idea how this is happening?”
“All I know is that it’s a brutal process, deriving most of the energy to fuel it from the victim. When Petty Officer Wong arrived here, his body temperature was 107, but as his condition worsened, it rose to 122 degrees. It’s what sent him into a deep coma and maybe why the ice baths helped. Still, whatever is happening seems capable of unleashing the potential energy stored in a body—which is a tremendous amount. Our bodies are very efficient batteries for storing energy. It would take a car battery weighing a full ton to hold the same amount of energy retained in the fat stores of a healthy man.”
“And something is tapping into it?”
“Not just tapping into it but unleashing it all at once—a biological nuclear explosion.”
“But why? What’s causing it?”
Heng shrugged in confusion. “I have no idea. I’ve identified no bacterium, virus, or chemical agent that could be triggering all of this. I don’t know if what’s happening is some form of bodilypreservationor a new form ofpredation. Maybe both. I’ve studied the crystal’s microstructure, looking for answers. The results were puzzling.”
“How so?”
“Calcium carbonate is mainly found in two polymorphs, two different configurations of crystalline structure. It most often forms ascalcite, like in limestone, where the crystals have a trigonal configuration.” He pointed to the screen. “But using X-ray crystallography, it’s clear these crystals are orthorhombic, a form calledaragonite. This shape is less stable, but it’s how calcium carbonate crystallizes out in the presence ofseawater.”
“Seawater?” Daiyu pictured theChangzheng 24sinking and crushing in the ocean depths. “Is that significant?”
“Maybe not. The concentration of salt and other ions in seawater is remarkably similar to what’s found in our blood’s serum. It mightexplain why the carbonate crystalizes into aragonite. But I can’t be certain.”
