They saw Dr. Holtz zipping around to all the different stations with his bucket o’coffee. As Webb and Priest walked in, he noticed them with a look of annoyance on his face. He didn’t stop to address, but kept on doing what he was doing. Webb and Priest looked at each other with a smirk.
“I think we ought to get our update from Caulfield,” Webb said.
“Agreed.” They walked over to Dr. Caulfield, who was now out of his splint.
“Hello gentlemen. What can I do for you?” Caulfield greeted them.
“Just came down to see how things are going,” Webb said.
“Well, we are making some progress in reverse engineering this virus but we keep hitting a brick wall.”
“How so?”
“We can reverse engineer the virus, find all the chemical components, the composition strings and compound links. The issue is we still need to know how all this works with the human body. We have a theory that the virus interacts and alters the chemicals in the brain to elicit specific behaviors and reactions. We don’t know that for sure, but we are speculating. What we don’t know is the complete affects the virus has on the body. How it affects specific organs, what does it do to the cells in the blood? Does it mutate a person’s DNA? Based on the things we have seen with the infected, this is much more than just a chemical imbalance in the brain. Where does the strength come from? What about the indestructibility and the extreme rage, while maintaining the coordination and instincts to work together? Bottom line, there is still so much we do not know.”
“Ok Doc, so hearing everything you are saying, it sounds to me you don’t have everything you need. So, let’s hear it,” Webb prodded.
“You will not like it.”
“Probably not, but spit it out,” Priest interjected.
“We need a viable infected specimen.” Both Webb and Priest did a face plant.
Priest spoke up, “When you say viable, am I to assume you mean “live” specimen?”
“You assume correctly, Sargent. If you were to acquire a dead specimen, then we would have no way to measure any electrical impulses from the brain, which is one of the big mysteries we need to solve.”
“Shit, I knew he was going to say that,” Webb groaned. He looked at Dr. Caulfield, “You are sure that it is that important or are you just satisfying your curiosity?”
Dr. Caulfield looked at him for a minute and said, “Yes.”
“Damn, that will be a cluster fuck,” Priest said.
The two left the lab and were walking back toward the CC when they ran into Izzy.
“Hey babe, what kind of trouble are you doing getting into today?”
“We just had a conversation with Dr. Caulfield and he said you have no more viable samples.”
“Well, that is true.”
“We are discussing getting a specimen for you today.”
She looked at him, “You guys are really going to trap an infected?”
“Well, Caulfield says you guys have to have one. Is that not true?”
Izzy let out a breath, “I don’t know if we exactly have to have one, but it would probably cut our time significantly, if we did.”
“So, when you say cut time, what do you mean?”
She looked up at the ceiling and then back to Webb, “I’d say weeks, maybe a couple months versus 6-8 months.”
Webb’s eyes got bit, “That much impact?”
“Afraid so.”
“Well, I guess that confirms it. We go out today and capture a specimen.”