Chương 52: Immunity Threshold

The rapid test results confirmed what Selina had refused to believe until the very end: the Dengue virus in my bloodstream had been wiped out completely, leaving behind nothing but a dense trail of fresh, highly aggressive antibodies. Even so, the airlock doors remained closed to me. Before returning my humble person back to the barracks and the Corps' invaluable personnel, Selina needed to run another dozen verification checks. Pure scientific bureaucracy and risk management.

I took the forced confinement philosophically and had absolutely no objections. I was not eager to return to a society of teenagers, even though we got along fine. Besides, the isolation box provided an enviable level of autonomous comfort: a private bathroom, regular ration deliveries, a hard but reasonably comfortable bunk, and a laptop. In a way, I almost felt at home. I settled down at the desk and pulled the massive military laptop closer. I had never come across models like this before.

The thing looked like it could hammer fence posts into the ground or stop handgun rounds without much trouble. A complete opposite of civilian ultrabooks whose weight barely registered inside a backpack. This brutal slab of titanium and carbon fiber had to weigh a good ten pounds. No way you could rest a monster like this on your stomach and comfortably browse through pages while lying in bed. Hardcore only. Desk mandatory.

After booting up the operating system, I found a spartan interface on the desktop and only two root folders: Media and Lectures. The first contained a carefully selected hundred Hollywood blockbusters. If Selina had personally assembled the list, she clearly had not bothered with artistic taste and had simply downloaded IMDb's Top 100.

The second folder held the video materials she used during group lessons along with detailed tactical manuals covering the anatomy and behavioral patterns of every known alien creature. A perfect substrate for work. I immediately began methodically loading the entire data archive into my memory palace. During the self-study process, I caught myself experiencing a strange duality. On one hand, my productivity was through the roof.

No routine greetings, no jokes from the back rows, no organizational noise or pointless pauses. My speed of visual processing and text absorption exceeded the pace at which Selina read material from the podium several times over. In a single hour, I could fully process and mentally catalog a volume of information that normally took at least three or four classroom hours.

On the other hand, without live discussion and the breakdown of other people's mistakes through practical examples, the overall picture felt slightly flat. The issue was not memorization. My memory palace functioned flawlessly there. The problem was the absence of all those small, unscripted details and nuances that usually surfaced only through cross-questions from the audience. Lacking alternatives, I continued grinding through the academic workload from home.

By morning, I realized it felt unusual not having a sergeant screaming next to my ear. My internal clock still woke me on time, and although I rationally understood that the local physical training program was already a completed stage for my body, simply lying in bed waiting for breakfast felt deeply wrong, almost destructive. At exactly eight hundred hours, the airlock hissed open, and Selina entered the room in her usual biohazard suit.

In one hand she carried a plastic case painfully similar to the one they had used yesterday to retrieve the syringe containing the pathogen. I carefully lowered the laptop lid and fixed her with a heavy stare.

"Judging by the size, that's not my breakfast ration."

"Your observational skills haven't failed you yet, Tom," she replied, pleased purring notes slipping into her muffled voice. She set the case down on the metal table with a short knock.

"Inside's a target duplicate. Another dose of Dengue." I frowned, not sharing her research enthusiasm.

"What's the objective of round two?"

"Your current titers are completely clean, and the concentration of specific antibodies skyrocketed to peak levels only thirty minutes after infection!" she blurted out excitedly, and through the dense mask filters the emotional outburst sounded almost comical.

"Now I need a clean control test. We need to verify in practice whether the formed immune barrier'll hold against a direct repeat attack from the strain or whether the immune system'll fail."

"If it has to be done, it has to be done." I grunted, seeing no reason to argue, and calmly rolled up the thick sleeve of my uniform shirt, exposing my shoulder.

"Go ahead."

"It's refreshing working with someone who doesn't throw obstacles in the path of progress." Selina rested a gloved hand on top of the case but made no move to open the locks.

"Just keep in mind, even if your readings remain perfect a minute after the injection, the safety protocol's absolute. I'll still have to keep you in isolation for at least another twenty-four hours."

"No problem. I'm fine with that."

"Seriously?" The plastic visor of her helmet tilted slightly as she studied my reaction.

"You're really not bothered by the idea of spending another twenty-four hours inside four walls alone with a chunk of metal and absolutely zero human interaction? What're you, one of those hardcore shut-ins?"

"I prefer the classic term introvert," I answered without the slightest discomfort at her diagnosis.

"And it's not about being antisocial. I'm just pragmatic, and I don't see any real value in attending the general classes. My current physical condition leaves the local sergeant staff far behind. I cleared the basic S-Armor piloting course during the very first practical session. I absorb your xenobiology theory through this terminal three times faster. Frankly speaking, using [Special Commands], I could compress the entire Corps program into a single day."

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. Selina froze, tilting her head to the side like a curious cat.

"Then why haven't you done it already? In your case, if those learning speeds're confirmed, command might consider an accelerated external certification."

"I needed time to look around and assess the situation," I admitted honestly.

"But after ten days in this training facility, I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm just spinning my wheels and wasting my time inefficiently."

"What about our experiments?" A trace of playful, spoiled offense slipped into her voice.

"Your extracurricular sessions are probably the best thing this backwater dump has to offer."

"Oh, Tom, you're making me blush," she said flirtatiously. Her face was impossible to make out beneath the bulky plastic helmet, but my inner skeptic told me she'd taken the routine compliment with the appropriate amount of irony.

"Let me guess: it's not just boredom. You're fundamentally exhausted from being stuck around teenagers twenty-four seven, aren't you?"

"What incredible insight," I grunted without sounding particularly surprised.

"It's simple. I used to be stuck in the same mess myself. I'd barely turned eighteen when the program detected my superpower manifestation. Almost nineteen, technically."

"So you jumped aboard the last train out?" I raised an interested eyebrow.

"People older than eighteen almost never awaken. Well, except me."

"Exactly. They yanked me straight out of a university lecture hall where I was working through matrix equations and dumped me into a barracks full of snot-nosed kids who couldn't tell sine from cosine."

"And how'd you survive that nightmare?" I leaned forward slightly, resting my elbows on the table.

"I worked like hell so I could pass everything on the first try and get the hell out of here," Selina replied with a brief, dry chuckle.

"The local basic course is designed for exactly thirty days. It ends with a brutal qualification exam. Pass, and you're officially registered for portal deployment duty. Fail, and you stay stuck in camp until everything's drilled into your head by pure muscle memory."

"So I've already served a third of my sentence." I tapped my fingers thoughtfully against the table.

"What do you think? Worth pushing command for early certification? Or's it smarter to stay under the radar and finish everything on schedule?"

"There's a solid corporate survival instinct in that question," she said approvingly.

"My advice? Stick to the standard track. Early certification won't give you any bonuses or career advantages. In your file, it'll end up as nothing more than a dry little footnote. Besides, we've got our own parallel process going here. If the control test goes smoothly, I'll get Crowley to expand my authorization limits. Then we'll start stress-loading your immune system in bulk. I'll bring in entire batches of unrelated strains at once and squeeze every last drop out of your adaptive potential."

"And after that we finally move on to extraterrestrial microbiology?"

"No, not that fast. Think bigger, Tom!" The hungry excitement of a results-obsessed researcher flared up inside her again.

"First we'll run your body through terrestrial pathogens modern medicine still can't truly eliminate, only suppress. Chronic markers: HIV, hepatitis B, severe retroviruses. If we synthesize a fully functional treatment from your blood, it won't just advance science. It'll flip the entire global pharmaceutical market upside down. We're talking hundreds of billions of dollars."

"Sounds like someone's already writing us a check for that amount," I remarked skeptically, long since cured of believing in the selfless generosity of corporations.

"Don't tell me they'll hand us a Nobel Prize too."

"Theoretically? Maybe. In practice, you'd first need to defend a specialized doctoral dissertation and sign the standard state secrecy agreements." She answered with confident finality, like someone who'd researched the issue exhaustively.

"Nobody's ever going to officially acknowledge that a revolutionary medical treatment came from the biological anomaly of one specific awakened individual. The administration tightly controls information about the Corps' contribution to civilian science. Ordinary researchers can't be allowed to feel like evolutionary dead weight. Otherwise you get institutional crises, strikes, and collapsing trust in traditional education. Nobody wants that kind of turbulence."

"Fair enough. Rules of the game understood." I nodded, accepting the cynical but perfectly logical balance-of-power system.

"I seriously doubt corporations'll support our pharmaceutical revolution, but I'm willing to play along."

"That's all I'm asking for," she purred.

"Even if our vaccine never reaches the market, your initiative'll still be noted in your file. People don't casually throw away specialists this valuable, you know?"

"Oh, I understand perfectly." I nodded again, feeling the stakes climbing higher.

"Once this phase is over, do we finally move into the alien sector?"

"Wrong again. Next comes the list of completely incurable Earth-based strains with near one-hundred-percent mortality rates. We'll push your immune system to its absolute limit. Only after we clear the internal catalog will we move on to xenovirology." The glasses behind her protective visor glinted slyly.

"You think I didn't figure out why you're in such a hurry? You're hoping direct exposure to aggressive alien biology'll act as a catalyst and forcibly trigger another stage of your personal evolution."

"I'm not denying it." I spread my hands calmly, fully aware there was no point pretending otherwise.

"Anyone in my position with half a brain would want to know where the actual ceiling of human potential is and where this road might lead."

"You don't necessarily have to stuff yourself full of alien rot to find out," Selina replied more gently this time, with an unmistakable hint in her voice.

"Give me a couple of days to organize my working notes on the mechanics behind unlocking hidden evolutionary parameters. Then we'll sit down and go through every point methodically."

"I'll hold you to that." I felt the corners of my mouth rise on their own. I definitely liked this woman's ruthless pragmatism.

"All right, hand over your Dengue. I'm ready for round two." Selina moved with her usual polished professionalism: a quick snap, the cold swipe of alcohol, and a precise injection into the deltoid. The interface reacted immediately, spitting updated system notifications across my retina: [Warning! Attempted infection of the Familiar detected] [Familiar immunity is neutralizing the threat independently]"Well?"

Selina nearly leaned forward with her entire body from sheer anticipation, breathing loudly inside the mask.

"What've you got? Is [Trainer] burning out the strain at the cellular level again?"

"This time [Trainer] didn't even bother reacting." I allowed myself a brief, satisfied smirk and pulled my sleeve back down.

"My body handled it automatically using its own internal resources. Control test complete. Objective achieved."