Catalyst (Breakthrough Book 3)(40)
Sally stared at her.
No understand Alison. You not happy?
She folded her arms in front of her, catching her breath. “It’s hard to explain.”
Alison you mad?
“No, Dirk. I’m not mad. I-” She stopped when she saw an image appear in the reflection behind her and turned to face a solemn DeeAnn Draper. She reached back to turn off the voice translation.
“Something weird is happening.”
DeeAnn nodded. “I’ll say. Sofia is suddenly standing just two days after we saw her.”
“That’s not all. Chris’s bruises are gone and Lee can’t feel his injuries anymore either.”
“What’s going on here, Alison?”
“I don’t know.” She fell quiet, thinking. The truth was she did know. She knew what Clay and Caesare had found in the jungle. What the Chinese had found. Those plants. The same plants Neely Lawton was studying aboard the Bowditch when it sank. Plants with a mysterious piece of DNA that allowed them to regenerate at an accelerated rate. But she couldn’t see or understand how those abilities could possibly be connected with them, or for that matter, Sofia.
None of them had come in contact with the sample Lawton had shown them in her lab. In fact, Chris and Lee hadn’t even been in the lab. Which meant that Alison was the variable.
Was it possible she’d come in contact with the bacteria without realizing it? She couldn’t see how.
Alison began backing herself out of her thought process. If there was no link then what was happening to them now had to be unrelated. Something different. But what else could explain it? If Sofia was suddenly healing too, what could cause it in all three of them at the same time?
She looked at her own arm again. She’d already removed the bandage but raised her wrist and yet again moved it back and forth. There was still no pain in either direction. What was happening?!
DeeAnn was watching her, silently. Finally, she frowned and took a deep breath. “I guess you’d better tell me what you all found up on that mountain.”
“What?”
“What you and Steve wanted to tell me the other day.”
“I thought you didn’t want to know.”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes. Just like that.”
“Does that mean you’re going with Steve?”
“It means I want to know more before I decide.”
“Okay,” Alison nodded. “Then you may want to sit down.”
DeeAnn smiled, but when she realized Alison was serious she grabbed a chair from next to the table, lowering herself into it.
Still standing and with arms crossed, Alison thought for a moment. “You remember when we were all on Alves’ helicopter?”
“Of course. I woke up when John and Steve were raiding the inside.”
“That’s right. Unfortunately, things changed when we left the helicopter. We were able to track those compounds back to the source, where a high concentration originated near a cliff wall. But the water wasn’t coming down the wall. It was coming from within it.”
“Within the wall?”
“Yes.”
“You mean like inside the rock?”
“I mean like on the other side of it. There was a cavern carved inside of the mountain, Dee. And the wall was a giant door.”
“What do you mean the wall was a door?”
“I mean the wall opened!”
“What?”
“The cliff wall. It opened. And on the other side there was a giant room. The water had leaked inside and by the time it seeped back out, it was changed.”
“Changed how?”
Alison took a deep breath. “Okay, this is the part that might sound a little…hard to believe. Inside the wall were giant columns. All standing like pillars in this pitch-black cavern. They were made of some kind of glass because you could see what was inside them. It was a greenish-looking liquid and each of the columns were holding thousands of little spheres inside, like large bubbles. And inside those spheres were what looked to be seeds…and embryos.”
DeeAnn raised her eyebrows and spoke slowly. “Did you say embryos?”
“Yes.”
“You found embryos hidden inside this place?!”
“Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. And that water was seeping inside and being changed by those things. The same water that changed those plants after seeping back outside.”
From her chair, DeeAnn stared motionlessly up at Alison, her large eyes blinking repeatedly.
“The water wasn’t the source. The source was the things inside that giant cave. The columns and whatever was inside them.” Alison lowered her voice without realizing it. “The Chinese found the plants, Dee. They grabbed as much as they could and then burned the rest. But I don’t think they knew about the water. And they sure as hell didn’t know what was hidden in that cliff.”