Chương 51: Immunity Protocol

"Is your mother Megan Rogers?" Mary lifted her chin and looked at me with a faint squint, the kind of condescension people usually reserved for annoying children.

"Yeah. So what?" Honestly, I had expected a different reaction. I thought she would deny it, shut down, or throw one of her usual barbed remarks at me. Instead, I ran straight into complete indifference. Technically, I had gotten my answer, but the lingering silence felt awkward, so I decided to keep the conversation going out of simple politeness.

"You're not even curious how I know?"

"Not really," she said with a brief shrug, without even turning her head.

"One of the instructors let it slip? Maybe Aunt Selina?" Aunt Selina?! Then again, she could have visited the Rogers family back in civilian life. That explained why Mary's file on superpowers was so thin. Selina had probably already covered everything out loud over Sunday dinner.

"No, nobody told me anything," I said, shaking my head.

"It's your shield. Megan had the exact same one." For a second, I was pulled back into the past. A gray, damp day in Los Angeles rose before my eyes.

"We were twelve back then," I said, sharing a fragment of my childhood.

"We were hanging around the playground after school. The old swing chains kept creaking in the wind, and then this heavy downpour hit out of nowhere. But instead of soaking Megan to the bone, the raindrops suddenly froze in midair, started spinning into a wild wall around her, and turned into a perfect cocoon of compressed water. It cut her off from the rest of the world, exactly like your gravity field today."

I fell silent, almost physically feeling that cold California air again and that pure childish awe that left you breathless. I remembered how I spent that entire night glued to the house phone, talking to her nonstop about her powers and how the two of us were going to clean up the city together. Then, at dawn, dark military SUVs rolled up to her house. I never saw her again.

"Mom's got hydrokinesis," Mary replied, completely unmoved by my nostalgic rambling.

"It's not gravity manipulation, but the physics behind some of the tricks overlap."

"She trained you at home." The pieces finally clicked together, and the picture in my head snapped into focus.

"You awakened way more than a week ago, didn't you?"

"A long time ago," she cut in, then deliberately glanced at her wristwatch, making it very clear she was getting sick of this trip down memory lane.

"One last question." I caught her drifting gaze.

"Did Megan ever talk about me?"

"Yeah," she tossed back casually, and somewhere deep inside me, my heart gave one stupid, completely unjustified jolt.

"Mom saw your name on the Corps assignment list. Said you used to live next door when you were kids."

"That's it?"

"That's it." Mary spun sharply on her heel and headed toward the women's barracks, her heavy combat boots scraping dryly against the gravel. I stayed behind alone on the darkening parade ground. That miserable feeling stirred in my chest, the kind where anger starts boiling inside you even though the rational part of your brain knows perfectly well how stupid and pointless it is. It was like getting angry at a sudden rainstorm or at a bird for crapping on your windshield. Pure biology and coincidence.

Wasting emotional energy on it was ridiculous. To me, Megan Rogers had remained this bright flash from childhood, my best friend and a living comic book hero. To her, I was just some kid from across the street whose last name had randomly surfaced in a dry military registry twenty years later. Cruel, maybe, but honest. I took a long, slow breath, letting the cold night air cool my lungs, then exhaled the last traces of that ridiculous resentment. An old method, but an effective one.

It cleared the noise out of your head when your thoughts started spiraling. Besides, I was hardly innocent myself. There had been plenty of people in my life who considered me a close friend while I quietly kept them in the category of casual acquaintances. After putting some distance between myself and the women's barracks, I started walking along the perimeter of the camp. Movement helped organize my thoughts and sort the new information into place. So, Mary had awakened in early childhood.

The exact age did not really matter. The important part was the principle itself. As Danny kept insisting, and as Selina later confirmed, early awakening guaranteed a massive starting reserve of S-Power. Add a family of career military officers who had probably been drilling reserve expansion techniques into the girl since childhood, and her absurdly high numbers stopped looking like an anomaly. It also explained why the training program here came so easily to her.

She had basically arrived with a fully developed foundation already in place. One detail still remained: why had they not dragged her straight into military training the moment she awakened? Although the answer was pretty obvious there too. Either Megan used her connections and veteran status to secure a delay for her daughter, or there was some loophole in federal law that prohibited drafting minors before a certain age. Even her cold, borderline hostile personality made perfect sense now.

When your parents were officers with twenty years of combat experience, bedtime stories were probably replaced with tactical debriefings and chronicles of the first portal breaches. The only thing left was the confusion with the last names. I closed my eyes and mentally dove into my memory palace, straight toward the archive shelf I had deliberately avoided touching for more than twelve years: Megan's wedding. Back then, specialized forums had been buzzing about it for weeks.

I had consciously stopped following her life after that. It felt too much like pure masochism. At twenty, she was already wearing a captain's insignia, starting a family, and appearing in news reports while I sat through boring college lectures and wasted evenings playing video games. Well, time to dig through the old files. I mentally pulled out the right card. Husband's name: Steven Summers. And there it was. Mystery solved. Mary simply carried her father's last name.

I closed the case with a clear understanding that this information changed absolutely nothing for me. I was not about to pester the girl with questions about her mother, and I definitely was not going to force my way back into an old connection through third parties. That chapter of my life had been sealed shut a very long time ago. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

In just twenty-four hours, a modular chemical and biological defense unit had appeared on the edge of the camp. A snow-white, airtight cube made of reinforced plastic, barely larger than my old city apartment. Another day went into setting up the internal equipment while Selina calibrated everything inside. The following morning, I received an official clearance notice granting me access. Security here relied on a standard two-stage negative-pressure airlock system.

The moment I stepped through the first massive door, it sealed shut behind me with a heavy clunk, and a powerful stream of fine aerosol blasted over my body. The sharp sterilizing smell of isopropyl alcohol and ozone hit my nose hard enough to leave a faint sting in my throat. Once the automated system flashed green, the second seal opened, and I stepped into a spacious sterile chamber.

Everything inside was built around strict functionality: a standard military cot, an isolated bathroom, a pair of metal tables, several chairs, and a ruggedized laptop inside a bulky protective casing. Above me, powerful ventilation turbines hummed with a low mechanical vibration, forcing air through a complex filtration network and ventilation ducts. At the center of that surgically clean space, standing beside the workstation, was Selina.

She wore a heavy Level A hazmat suit, and her face was hidden behind the reflective visor of a massive sealed helmet.

"I already know what you're going to say, but protocol says I've gotta ask," Selina replied dully. The airtight suit distorted her voice so heavily that it came out as a flat mechanical baritone.

"Are you sure you wanna do this?"

"If I was planning to back out, I wouldn't be here." I lowered myself into the stiff metal chair and glanced around the room.

"This looks exactly like one of those isolation wards from viral apocalypse movies. Hard to believe they put this box together in just a day."

"The Corps budget solves any logistical problem," she said as she sat down across from me, the thick fabric of her suit rustling heavily.

"When General Crowley personally backs a project, the entire military machine starts moving ten times faster. You can basically assume we've got unlimited authorization." I leaned forward slightly at the mention of the name.

"Wait a second. General Crowley himself knows about our little medical experiment?"

"Unlike your last initiative with cadet physical training, virology's major league science, Tom. This is pure research with potentially global implications." A familiar mentor-like excitement crept into her voice, the tone of a scientist obsessed with her work.

"If your adaptive ability can successfully process specialized alien virus strains, and if I can synthesize a universal serum from your blood, we could save thousands of lives on the front lines. Trust me, command cares a lot more about that than a few extra super soldiers."

"Sounds like a pretty solid investment." I leaned back in my chair, already calculating the possible benefits.

"Hopefully I'm getting something tangible in return for this modest contribution to saving humanity?"

"Oh, definitely. I've got nothing to do with personnel management, but after ten years in the Corps, I know how the higher-ups think. If we confirm resistance to truly nasty extraterrestrial pathogens, lieutenant bars and a very respectable bonus check would be the bare minimum you could expect."

"Fair enough. Then let's not waste time."

"Not so fast, Tom. First comes the paperwork. I'm required to read you the conditions for the record." Selina pointed a gloved hand toward the matte medical case sitting between us.

"Inside's a dengue virus strain. According to your medical records, you've got zero antibodies against it."

"Of course. It's a tropical disease," I said.

"I grew up in the city. Never crawled through jungles, never got vaccinated against exotic stuff."

"That actually works in our favor. Dengue's a perfect marker. It's not some ordinary cold. It's aggressive, systemic, and extremely well studied. If anything goes wrong, I've got established hospital protocols and antidotes ready to go." She popped open the latches on the case.

"I'll administer it intramuscularly to simulate a carrier bite. Standard incubation time's about four days. After that, you'll get the classic symptoms: sudden fatigue, joint pain, migraines, and the characteristic rash on your chest and arms."

"Sounds miserable."

"Occupational hazard, Tom. If the progression becomes dangerous, I'll inject the serum immediately."

"Very reassuring. What's the containment protocol?"

"Complete isolation for the duration of the test. You don't leave this chamber for any reason. I'll be the only one coming in, three times a day for biomaterial collection and meal delivery."

"And how exactly am I supposed to kill time in here for an entire week?"

"With this." She nodded toward the heavy military laptop.

"I loaded it with a movie library and the full archive of my lectures for independent study. That way you won't lose your edge or start climbing the walls from boredom. You'll have to pause the field training for now, but all your instructors agree you're already ahead of schedule anyway, so a week off won't hurt your performance."

"So this is basically a warm-up round before the real game." I held out my arm.

"Fine. I'm in."

"One last thing. Without this paperwork, legal'll crucify me." Selina pulled a thick stack of glossy military forms out from under the laptop.

"Sign the liability waiver in case of unforeseen complications." I skimmed through the pages. Standard bureaucratic jargon, carefully describing every delightful symptom she had just warned me about. Once I confirmed there were no hidden traps buried in the text, I signed my name across the required lines with a broad stroke. Selina broke the seal on a plastic container, removed a disposable syringe filled with clear liquid, and drove the needle into my deltoid with a sharp, practiced motion.

At that exact moment, bright system notifications flashed across my vision: [Warning! Familiar has contracted an illness] [Trainer presence accelerates recovery by 400%]"Whoa," I muttered involuntarily. I blinked at the fading green letters.

"Selina, I think my system already kicked in. I'm gonna recover completely in a couple of minutes."

"In a couple of minutes?" Her helmet jerked sharply upward.

"The incubation period's supposed to last for days! That completely breaks the biological model... Ah, screw the theory! Activate [Special Command] immediately before your metabolism burns through the strain I spent weeks fighting to obtain from the lab!" I focused, mentally shaping a precise and absolute command for my own body: [Special Command: develop permanent immunity to the dengue virus and clap hands immediately upon completion of the process] The reaction hit instantly and hard.

A suffocating wave of leaden exhaustion crashed over me, and it felt like somebody had poured burning sand directly into my eyes. Looking at the fluorescent lights above the chamber became unbearable. Unable to hold myself upright, I dropped my head onto my crossed arms against the cold metal surface of the table and closed my eyes.

"Tom? Did you pass out?" A thread of alarm rang through Selina's muffled voice.

"No," I forced out through clenched teeth.

"My ears are ringing. Hit me harder than I expected."

"That makes sense. Your immune response is accelerating at absurd speeds right now. Your body's redirecting every hidden reserve toward rebuilding cellular structures, which explains the massive energy drain."

"Mmm... Keep talking," I muttered, feeling my consciousness slowly sinking into a thick gray haze between sleep and awareness.

"Tell me about the mechanics of immunity. Helps me stay focused."

"Really? Well... all right. Technically, the term immunity comes from Latin, where immunitas originally meant exemption from duty..." Her monotone voice, distorted by the suit's filters, drifted from somewhere far away, acting like an anchor for my fading concentration. I lost all sense of time as I slipped into that strange borderline state between waking and sleep. Then suddenly, as if someone had flipped a switch, the haze vanished from my vision.

Strength flooded back into my body, dense and heavy, while the weakness disappeared without a trace. I straightened abruptly in my chair and brought my hands together in a sharp, ringing clap. Startled, Selina jerked backward and nearly tipped over her chair, swearing loudly inside the suit.

"Jesus Christ, Tom! What the hell was that for?"

"Trigger worked." I clenched and unclenched my fists several times, listening to my body. My head felt perfectly clear, and the ache in my joints was completely gone.

"I built a physical completion marker into the command. Just like you taught me. Layered command chains."

"Right. The method works. I don't give bad advice," she replied automatically with her usual professor-like pride, but then abruptly stopped. The meaning of what had happened finally caught up with her, and the plastic visor of her helmet ended up inches from my face.

"Wait. You're telling me... that's it? You neutralized a highly complex virus and developed full immunity in, what, half an hour?"

"Looks that way. I feel perfectly fine."

"All right, stay still. I'm drawing blood immediately." Selina was already frantically tearing open sterile vacutainer packaging.

"If the rapid test confirms antibody titers... Tom, this isn't just a success. This is a goddamn revolution in applied medicine."