Chapter 29

Sir Henry steadied his glasses again to see what was written in the results.

"This must not be true!" He whispered to himself as he glanced through the paper.

"What is it Sir" Amelia asked anxiously.

"It's not prion..."

He could only manage to say.

"What?" They asked together as they stared at him with confusion.

"It's not prion. It's something more dangerous, highly aggressive and instantly spreadable." He looked at them worriedly.

"You were right Amelia."

"It did not just appear in the brain."

"It appeared in the liver too."

"And what about the HAV and HEV viruses?"

David asked curiously as he listened to him.

"It seems like the A and E viruses are just covering the real culprit."

"As we said earlier. It is a mere distraction."

" The real work is carried out by Priealto as I may name it now."

"Priealto?" They all asked in unison.

"Yes not Alto but Priealto..." he said with a pause still looking down at the paper.

"It is a kind of protease resistant, highly aggressive protein which quickly spread throughout the nervous system not just disabling the neurons rather encapsulating their cell bodies resulting in explosion." He exhaled with a long breath as he finished his words.

They all gawked at him with silence.

He knew whatever he divulged was anticipated but was still hard enough to sink in.

"I assume the zombie like symptoms appear when Priealto starts damaging the brain's cerebral and frontal cortex." He said.

"And what about their eyes." David asked with knitted eyebrows.

"The yellowed eyes may have seemed to be a work of A and E viruses but I am afraid it is also due to Priealto."

He stressed on the present dangers of Priealto virus unveiling them one by one.

"It distorts the balance in hepatic nervous system by effecting the efferent and afferent neurons resulting in chronic liver inflammation rendering their unusual yellow coloration."

"Hepatitis A and E is used as a guise for them to work peacefully achieving its goals." He continued.

"Sir it is beyond imagination." Olivia asked with extreme fear in her voice.

"I know..."

He said rubbing her shoulder.

"It has been intelligently done." He chuckled.

"What do you mean Sir?" David seemed visibly shocked.

"I mean..."

He said but was unable to continue.

"You mean what Sir?" Amelia asked again.

"I presume it's something more than just a disease."

"There could be others involved." They all gazed at him with astonishment.

Avoiding their stares he looked away trying to hide behind the paper that he had earlier put down on the table.

"I feel like it has been produced intentionally or unintentionally and then introduced into either their food or their drinking water system."

He said furrowing his eyebrows as if unsure about the repercussions it could have on the minds of newly enrolled doctors.

"Intentionally or unintentionally? What does that mean?" Asked Peter.

They all nodded their heads as if they all were desperate to know about the same question.

"Look maybe someone or maybe a team of scientists were trying to experiment on new techniques of let's suppose recycling the drinking water or increasing the food yield maybe but has apparently made something more harmful than what they considered beneficial." He said breathlessly.

"But food i assume is less likely as it takes time to digest and then spread throughout the body."

"Water seems a valid medium to spread the disease" Amelia said abruptly.

"And because Olivia's aunt has been using bottled water since the outbreak so she is absolutely fine." She continued.

Olivia nodded her head in acquiesance.

"Yes.. That seems quite a reason," sir Henry shrugged his shoulders.

"And what about intentional outbreak?" Peter asked as if still hung over the previous assumptions.

"Well, some people might have deliberately inculcated Priealto in their sources of food or water to achieve the required goals."

"Goals?" They asked.

"I don't know. Maybe killing people was their motive." He said incredulously.

"Killing?" Peter asked shakingly.

"Yes, why do murderers kill?"

"They are being paid."

"But why would someone kill on such a huge masses?" He asked again.

He kept saying with rhythmic pauses.

"Murderers have their own theories which is beyond our understanding. So don't go into that. Because i might be wrong."

"Why Priealto?" David asked as if he was sure that it was certainly the work of a group of people.

"Why would they choose Priealto to kill people?"

"Because one of the quality of Priealto is that it goes unnoticed." Henry answered.

"Like you could see that we thought it was HAV or HEV alone in the liver doing all the harm but it wansn't."

"The second quality is that it has the ability to mimick other proteins and act accordingly. For instance, prion... initially coded as protease resistant protein and then evolves into something more aggressive."

"Thirdly, it has the ability to disguise itself with other viruses. It attaches to them and uses them as shield from external attacks."

"Even if it does get noticed there is no enzyme available to break the peptide bonds in these proteins."

"One of the intelligent features ever created on earth." He said.

"So you mean Priealto is deliberate but HAV and HEV are also deliberately infused to avoid being noticed to achieve their goals?

"Yes, the only possible and rational explanation right now," he agreed with David.

"But how?"

Olivia was confused.

"That is what you are going to find out." He smiled tiredly.

"Sir, what if Priealto thrives on the genome of A and E viruses. And that their incultation is not merely for distraction but a surviving mechanism for Priealto." Amelia added her opinion.

"What if Priealto uses the RNA of other viruses for its own replication unlike Prion which is self-replicating." She said.

"Hmm..."

Sir Henry was impressed to hear that. After so much ponderance this could not occur to him.

There was a moment of silence and everyone seemed to agree to what Amelia said.

"No doubt why it is spreading so quickly."

"Sir how can we destroy Priealto?" Peter asked hopefully.

"There must be some way to get rid of it?" David asked too.

"Look if Amelia is right and that it is thriving on the other viruses then the only way to get rid of Priealto is to disintegrate it from A and E viruses."

"That is the source on which it is feeding for information."

"Once they cling to each other then it is difficult to separate them and even kill them together."

"And even if you try to kill these viruses with let's suppose high intensity radiotherapy that would kill the person but not the virus." He said with apprehension.

"There is a kind of symbiotic relationship between them which is imparting power to their survival." Amelia added.

"There has to be a way to amicably break them rather than killing them. Once they are broken. Then it would be easy to tackle Priealto with highly penetrating proteolytic enzyme." Sir Henry's voice transformed into a hopeful pitch that ameliorated their desperation to some extent.

"Let's see how can we go about it?" "But we will do it" he said with encouraging tone.