NOVEL NEXT Nobel, here we come! part 1
"She's cool," Bobby summed up when the three of us were alone.
"Why do you trust her so much?" Wilson turns to me with interest, "She knows everything about us, and she hasn't even taken off her mask. Is there anything we don't know about you two?"
I guess I'll have to explain. After all, this is her house, she has a right to know who crosses its threshold. It would have been a lot easier if I'd had time to prepare a more independent place for my lab, but I had no choice in the time pressure.
"If you promise not to talk big..." I paused for a moment, waiting for the two listeners to nod, "the secret identity of the Spiderwoman is no big secret to me, but she doesn't know it yet. You can just take my word for it: she wouldn't do anything to hurt us, that's for sure."
"That's right!" Wilson leans back in his chair, putting his feet up on the table, "You're kind of her boyfriend, aren't you? You've been in the papers. So, are you going to wait until she tells you her secret herself, or do you just get turned on by it..."
"Wanda!" Trying to yell at the mercenary, Bobby.
"What? She's got a sexy costume, if I was a guy I'd get hard just looking at her ass!"
"Stop," I interrupted the mercenary, "It's all terribly interesting, of course, but some other time, better tell me, have you ever dealt with the IceBox prison?"
"I had to teach the guards some manners, those bitches don't know shit about foreplay, so what?"
"In that case, are you know about the suppression devices used in that prison?"
"Not just know, baby, I had one dangling around my neck when I jumped out through a hole in that asshole to go deep-sea diving under the ice."
"Even so! That's great, where did you put the suppressor after you escaped?"
"I left it as a present for the seals," the mercenary shrugged.
"It's a pity. Could you get another sample of that suppressor?"
"Actually, after I escaped, I raided the convoy in which they transported the prisoners. I've had a couple of collars collecting dust ever since, unless she sold them to someone else, of course. So, what, you want me to rush out and get the collar?"
"That'd be nice."
"Okay, I will, if Maggie still has them, I'll come back tomorrow, and if not, I'll think of something."
"And you won't even ask what I need them for?" Wanda stood up, stretching her whole body with her arms behind her back. Damn, she looked pretty erotic at that moment! Not as hot as Gwen in her costume, but still, if I didn't know what condition her body was in...although, no, even then, I still remember Wade Wilson too well to want Wanda. That would be weird.
"I don't care," Wilson retorted.
"All right," I let it be a surprise to her.
Since there wasn't much time left, I followed Gwen's lead and headed home in time for the girls' rehearsal.
It would seem that after the Osborne problem was solved, life should have gone back to normal, but in fact, I had a lot to do every day. I just didn't want to find myself with my pants down again in the face of the next incident in town... and sooner or later something was bound to happen.
This world is much more generous with strange things than my own. During the next two weeks I showed up at school only once, but I didn't make it to the end of class and left my last lesson, because I wanted to get to the lawyer's office before lunch to finalize the patent on the web and consult the legal guru about my future plans.
Most of my time was naturally spent in the lab. For several days I examined plasma and blood cells taken from elephants. It was much more pleasant and easier to work with the equipment bought with OzCorp money.
Soon the first results appeared. I discovered an interesting feature in the genes of these remarkable animals. They had several dozen spare copies of the p53 gene, which is responsible for preventing the division of cells with dangerous errors in their DNA. Whereas humans and most other animals contained a similar gene in far fewer copies.
If my theory is correct, all that remains is to isolate this gene and create a vaccine that will increase its concentration in the human body. Not such a trivial task, because it is not easy to teach the body to produce the right gene in the quantity required to successfully fight cancer. Practically impossible for current medicine, for that matter.
This brings me back to Connors' ideas. After all, her serum ended up successfully crossing two species, the problem was that along with the right genes responsible for regeneration, an extra load was taken, which led to the unfortunate result. Karen could not accurately isolate the necessary genes. After all, the mechanism of regeneration is much more complex than the mechanism for fighting cancer.
A couple of days later, when I had the first batches of drugs ready, Wanda returned with two badly damaged blockers.
"All that was left," she explained, "all the working collars were scattered like condoms before Oktoberfest."
Apparently Wilson's friend couldn't fix the blockers herself, but she couldn't throw them away either, which was very convenient for me. The inner workings of these collars were based on an unknown substance, with a rather strange structure. I must admit that I was very interested in this material. Under the influence of the electromagnetic field of certain characteristics, it could block the work of the X-gene in the mutant's body. I wondered if this mineral could prevent other abilities, not related to X-gene, but I left it for later.
"So, who do you want to chain?" Wanda asked, watching from behind me as I dismantled the collars.
"You," I grinned, pulling the faintly glowing blue mineral out of the collar.
"You just looked like a typical villain about to betray the main character, you know? Don't tell me that Bobby is already standing behind me to attack me unexpectedly!"
"You really have such a low opinion of me, don't you?" I pretend to be exasperated, "You know, if there's anything you need to do, now would be a good time to do it."
"Why should I?"
"Because you're going to be in a hospital bed for the next few weeks, maybe months. With as many tumors as you have, curing cancer will be fucking difficult... and painful."
Wanda looks at me in shock. She even stops breathing for a while while she thinks about it.
"You're not kidding?" At last the mercenary lets the air out of her lungs.
"I'm deadly serious. This," I showed her the flask with the serum, "is what can cure cancer. At least I hope so."
"So fast! Fuck, I didn't even hope for it... shit, kid, you really did it."
The woman, who had lost all her eloquence in an instant, collapsed in the chair next to me. It was like she didn't know whether to cry or laugh.
"Hey, it's not certain that it's going to work the first time. It's quite possible that your body won't be able to handle the workload and we'll have to start all over again. You see, the problem is your mutation, as long as it works, your body will interfere with the cure, so we need a suppressor. But once the healing factor goes off... you know, the cancer cells are already all over your body."
"I don't care! I once walked for three days with this thing, I can take it."
"Seriously?" I whistled, "three days? At least, that means that your ability partially continued to work even under the blocker, a normal person with this level of spreading disease wouldn't last even an hour! But three days is still not long enough. My serum prevents the formation of new cancer cells, but the old tumors are not going anywhere. So we will have to keep you artificially alive and stimulate cell regeneration in other ways until all your cells are renewed. We may have to use a symbiote to keep you alive."
"Parker, do whatever it takes, I don't care how hard or dangerous it is."
"All right. But about the danger, don't worry. If I feel we can't handle it, I'll just take the blocker off, and regeneration will bring everything back to normal."