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Junjie also shifted a step, then flinched. “Look!”
Heng turned back. Inside, nothing had changed. The brain and cord continued to contort in the tub. It took him another breath to realize what had alarmed the sublieutenant.
Beyond the wire-draped table, the other two calcified bodies now trembled atop their steel gurneys. The skull of the closest fractured like a ripe melon. Tendrils writhed through the cracks, waving and battering. The fissures widened. Chunks of calcareous pieces fell to the floor.
From within, the brain pushed out of its casing, like a butterfly from a chrysalis. The gray lump toppled free and fell over the table’s edge, but it remained hanging, still attached by the rooted spinal cord. More tendrils unfurled, frilling over the brain.
The other body also cracked open, tremoring its length on the table.
Closer at hand, the violence worsened in the tub. The spinal cord lifted from the saline solution like a cobra. With a final wrench, its length split into three pieces that tangled and whipped against one another.
“Get back!” Captain Tse shouted into the airlock.
Still transfixed by the sight, Heng could not move. Min retreated, and Junjie grabbed Heng’s shoulder and tugged him away from the window. The motion snapped Heng’s attention around.
Realizing what Tse intended, he shouted, “Don’t!”
Tse ignored him. She punched a large red button outside. A low whoosh sounded from the morgue, followed by an explosive roar. Flames shot from nozzles across the roof. The heat, trapped by the cement block walls, seared past the airlock’s inner door.
Heng shielded his eyes from the blaze and backed with the others. A fire door lowered over the window, transforming the morgue into a crematorium. The roaring inferno raged for several long minutes.
When the incineration ended, the morgue remained sealed.
Heng panted through his respirator. The airlock had turned into an oven. Before exiting, he had his group strip out of their biohazard suits. They abandoned their gear inside, and Heng closed the door behind them.
He then glared at Captain Tse in the hallway. “There was no need for that overreaction. The morgue was well contained.”
“You don’t know that. The safety of this installation ismyresponsibility. Until we better understand what we’re dealing with, I will proceed with utmost caution.” She pointed a finger at him. “Any loss here is due to your ineffectiveness, for failing to offer any insight into what happened to these men.”
One of the newcomers—the young man in a uniform—fixed Heng with his gaze. The PLA major looked to be in his late twenties. His dark hair had been buzzed short. His eyes had an intensity that was hard to stare at for long.
“Not everything was destroyed by the fire,” the man reminded Heng. “There remains another subject for study. Petty Officer Wong.”
“My son is right,” the older gentleman said. “With all that we’ve witnessed, the submariner has become critically important. We must see him.”
Heng glanced between the two men, recognizing now the family resemblance in their strong jawlines and sharp cheekbones. “He remains in a coma,” Heng warned. “But you can view him from the main lab.”
As Heng led the party into the next room, introductions were made. The young man—Major Choi Xue—stayed beside him. Tse whispered with the man’s father, a former lieutenant-general with the PLA Strategic Support Force and now a consultant with a Chinese space agency.
Heng struggled to understand what members from such groups were doing here. Min shared a worried look with him, too. He gritted his teeth, again panged by guilt for involving her in a matter that hadgrown more tense and involved. It felt as if they were falling deeper into quicksand that had no bottom.
Xue must have noted his consternation. “We will explain as best we can,” the man promised with a solemnity that felt authentic. “Perhaps first you could share what you’ve learned about the strange affliction.”
Heng nodded. He still had trouble meeting the man’s eyes. He sensed a brilliance behind that intensity. This assessment grew clearer as Heng related all that his team had learned. Xue listened with his head tilted, as if memorizing every syllable. Unlike Tse, the man asked pointed questions, inquiries that required intuitive leaps of understanding.
Xue leaned over the computer and studied the various polymorphs of carbonate on the monitor. “The afflicted bodies are infiltrated byaragonite.” He pointed at the orthorhombic crystal on the screen. “And carbonate crystalizes into aragonite in the presence of seawater. To me, that suggests that whatever afflicted the men likely came from the seas versus a biotoxin loosed upon the crew prior to them shipping off.”
Heng lifted a brow. “That’s my current hypothesis, too. A seaborne pathogen. Nothing else makes sense.” He grabbed the mouse and shifted through files. “Let me show you this. I performed a punch biopsy on Officer Wong’s skin, then vacuum desiccated the cells to getter a better view of the pattern of calcification. This is what scanning electron microscopy revealed.”
On the screen, a grayish layering of the crystallization appeared. It formed distinct thin crinkled sheets.
Heng started to explain, but Xue nodded.
“It looks like the layering of aragonite found in seashells,” the major said.
Heng glanced quizzically at the man. “That’s what I thought. Mollusk shells or maybe the calcareous skeletons of corals. They’re all comprised of aragonite.”
“Which would further support a seaborne source of this disease.” Xue looked in the direction of the morgue. “It’s as if the process is using our body’s raw materials—our salty blood, our calcium-rich bones—as a means of propagating itself. Turning bone into an exoskeleton of aragonite, while simultaneously preserving the neurological tissue as a media to grow... something else.”
