“Bureau 7 takes you seriously. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have paid for you to move to Greece and agreed to pay for school. You just have to finish your tour in ‘work study.’ All of us working class folk have to do whatever we can to pay our way. I believe in you.”
Margie hugged her. “Don’t forget, this weekend you’re coming to the mainland with me for Tony’s birthday party.”
“I wouldn’t miss it.”
“Ah, we have company?” Dr. John Polidori emerged from his office and into the lab, smiling his too wide grin.
Margie shivered. “I was just leaving.”
“No tray for me, I see? I feel you just don’t like me anymore, Margie, my love.”
“We both know you wouldn’t eat it.” Margie turned to her. “I’ll let you get back to work. See you Saturday.”
Elizabeth smelled the salmon and took a bite. She saw that Margie had tucked a couple gyros and pita chips with saganaki inside as well. Luckily, the saganaki wasn’t still on fire. The flaming cheese dish was one of her favorites.
“I get the feeling she doesn’t like me.”
“I get the feeling you like that she doesn’t like you.”
“You may be right there.” He peered over her plate and wrinkled his nose. “You know, you really should go eat in the mess. Get away from the lab now and then. Nothing will happen without you. I promise.”
“I know,” she answered, but Elizabeth had been too fascinated by the war being fought under the electron microscope to stop for lunch.
She’d been working with prions, proteins that were thought to act as a protector for cells in the central nervous system. When these proteins became misfolded, the end result was damage to cells that culminated in neurodegenerative diseases like Creutzfeldt-Jakob in humans and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or “mad cow,” as it was more commonly called.
Her work had reached a brick wall until she’d been tapped by Bureau 7 to work for their science division. Since coming to Kythnos, she’d seen results. Elizabeth supposed working for a secret government agency that handled ghosts, goblins, and everything that went bump in the night had to have its bennies.
With Bureau 7 resources, she’d managed to reprogram those misfolded proteins. Basically, to remind them of their purpose, so they’d continue doing their job. Instead of interfering with synapse function, they’d cause new pathways to be built.
Right now, the newly programmed prions were attacking cells she’d taken from a glioblastoma, a malignant brain tumor. They weren’t just attacking, they were consuming, devouring, and what they left in its place were healthy astrocytes, the cells that formed the glioblastoma.
Euphoria washed over her in waves. Making this kind of discovery, it was better than sex. Better than anything. It was why she worked in the field that she did. She wanted to make a difference.
And she wanted the Wollstonecraft name to bring more to the table than visions of a tragic girl who wrote about an even more tragic monster. Her mother was a noted activist, but no one remembered her name. Not until interns went digging to come up with “10 Facts You Didn’t Know About XYZ.”
Elizabeth was determined to make her mark, to create something the world couldn’t ignore. The headline wouldn’t read “Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Descendent Cures Disease.” It would be “Dr. Elizabeth Wollstonecraft Cures Brain Cancer.”
Most anything would be better than that. Especially going into the medical field, she’d taken her share of jeers about her name. For med students, they hadn’t been very bright. Elizabeth had corrected them on more than one occasion that it wasn’t a “Frankenstein.” That was the name of the doctor, not the monster. And of course, it had been tossed back at her that she would know.
And she did know. She knew a lot of things.
Success was so close; she could taste it on the tip of her tongue like spun sugar.
She peered down into the electron microscope again.
“From the look on your face, I’d say we have some new data.” Dr. John Polidori said.
“We do! Those vampire stem cells have had an amazing impact. Look!” She offered her place in front of the microscope to John.
A year ago, she’d never have thought to say anything about vampires in conjunction with science. Vampires weren’t real. Or so she’d believed then.
Yeah, no. Wrong. They were as real as she was. It hadn’t taken her long to accept it as fact because, as a scientist and a doctor, when one was faced with an inconvertible truth, one adapted. It was the only logical answer.
She’d seen vampires, met them. Elizabeth was sure the doctor she worked with now was one. She’d recognized his name. Elizabeth hadn’t called him on it, because he hadn’t said anything about her name. So, why bring it up? His dead or undead status didn’t make him any less of a man of science.
The comm link buzzed and Elizabeth and Polidori exchanged a nervous glance.
“Seems they do keep up on things here.” His hand hovered over the button. “Ready?”