What? Another chapter so quickly? You got that right! :) I wanna finish this so bad, I hope I can keep this pace up! Happy reading! XOXO
Chapter 7
Central City, S.T.A.R. Labs, 8:10 pm
Caitlin brought up the video she kept of the mice she had experimented on before she started. "Okay, so I exposed a number of mice to the toxin a week ago. They were okay until today. Then this happened," she narrated as she showed them the segment when the mice started dying a few hours ago. "Most of the mice died within a two-hour timeframe. On necropsy, cause of death was asphyxia due to respiratory muscle spasm secondary to anaphylactic shock. I found no trace of the toxin anywhere else except for the primary exposure sites and the blood but there were antibodies present."
"It looks as if someone was pulling an invisible trigger on them," Felicity commented as all of them continued to watch the mice fall one after the other.
She doesn't know just how right she is, Caitlin thought but instead, she continued relaying her results, "I was able to rescue the ones I've exposed to the lowest concentration of the toxin but one already died. I've just opened it up and found traces of the toxin in all of its organs – brain, lungs, liver, kidneys. Cause of death was multiple organ failure. I've extracted the toxin from the different sites and compared them for any changes. I used a FRET ligand-binding assay to investigate if there are differences between the native toxin and the toxin that was allowed to work on the mouse for a longer period of time. I designed the assay to detect changes in the samples' ability to bind to the antibodies I've found on the mice that expired earlier.
"So, basically if the assay glows, then the antibody wasn't able to bind the toxin and means that the toxin has since changed from its original conformation. This is what I found," she said as she flashed her results. The assay was marked based on the source organ of the toxin and all of it, except for the ones marked primary site, glowed to some extent.
"We can infer from this that either each organ processes the toxin differently or that the changes happen serially as the toxin travels through the body via the blood. And going back to what Felicity said, I thought the same thing. There must have been a trigger of some sort – a molecular one that changes an inert protein into a deadly toxin that kills uniformly above a certain concentration threshold regardless of route of exposure. So, I looked further and studied the protein conformations of the toxin on the original swab and the ones I've taken from the rash vesicles. It seems that the toxin becomes 'primed' when immune cells in the body first attack it. These immune cells try to destroy the toxin by releasing chemicals that unfortunately injure the healthy skin cells instead – hence the nasty rash.
"And since the first line of cells didn't work, the body calls up several other types of immune cells to try and stop the toxin. That's when all hell breaks loose. The binding of other immune cells triggers a conformational or shape change that 'weaponizes' the toxin, exposing a domain that acts like an anaphylatoxin similar to but infinitely more potent than araD – the causative agent of extreme peanut allergies. So, even if you didn't have an existing allergic condition, this can kill you just the same because it can activate all the downstream effectors of the allergic cascade. If you happen to have one, it kills even faster."
"This explains why the other businessmen died even if they didn't have any allergies like the alderman," Cisco said, as he reviewed the details of the case in his head.
"And also explains why Barry had a faster reaction because of his hyperactive immune system," Digg said.
"So you're saying that if the toxin acts like those…" Felicity mused then asked Oliver, "What do you call those Russian dolls that pop out of each other?"
"Matryoshka dolls," Oliver supplied.
"So if this toxin works like a Matryoshka doll," Felicity continued, "it could just keep popping out nasty little buggers until it kills its victim?"
"Not quite, but close enough," Caitlin nodded. "Instead of popping out, I think it continues to shed only the top layers where the antibodies and cells bind while it keeps the base or core intact. And it kills by turning our immune system against us. So our biggest problem right now is if the best our immune system can do is trigger change upon change upon change into deadlier and deadlier subforms, I don't know what else we can use to stop this toxin from doing its job so well. And the longer we wait…" she trailed, as everyone else reached the same sinister conclusion on their own.
"So, in English, good news: we now know how the toxin works. Bad news: we're on a clock with nothing to fight it," Oliver summarized. He can now understand the depth of Caitlin's fear and frustration. And here he thought –
"…all was sunny and bright in Central City," Oliver heard Felicity mutter under her breathy sigh, unaware that she was giving voice to his unspoken comment.
There was a moment of tense silence as everybody processed the information.
The beeping from the mass spectrometer prompted Felicity to her feet. On the way over to retrieve the results, she asked, "What sort of timeline do we have?"
Caitlin sighed as she relayed more bad news. "If we take the assay like a timeline of serial changes, it means that the toxin attacks the skin first, then the lungs, the digestive system and the brain, before it trashes the kidneys. Barry threw up bile hours ago, so now we're basically trying to stop it from getting to his brain. I've placed him in a medically induced coma, plus Digg and I have been infusing him with cold IV solutions to slow his metabolism down. But the fact that we found those bumps just now means that his immune system may have slowed but it's still active enough to do some damage."
"We may have another problem," Felicity commented as she walked back over to Caitlin.
Really? Really?! Caitlin's unspoken rant was threatening to spill from her mouth as she took the paper Felicity handed to her.
"Those barbs contained scopolamine," Felicity reported to the rest while Caitlin mentally ran the calculations in her head. Scopolamine had an elimination half-life of roughly 2.8 to 6.2 hours. With Barry's hypermetabolism, that could have been cut down to about an hour or less.
"Barry was roofied?" Cisco exclaimed as he recognized the chemical from the list of the world's scariest drugs. Well, 'zombified' was a more accurate term since they were talking about a scary zombie drug here, but he wasn't about to mince words.
"About that, we found something in the security footage that indicates that Barry may have been drugged," Oliver added. He knew very well just what scopolamine can do. It's a neurotransmitter that's isolated from the South American borrachero tree, or its distant cousin, the votura plant and can make someone highly susceptible to suggestion.
"His toxicology reports from the hospital and here were both clean," Caitlin said as her brows furrowed. "His body could have metabolized it by the time we got a sample of his blood and urine in the ER."
"Does this affect him now in any way?" Digg asked.
"If he's cleared it by now, which I think he has" – because there were no signs and symptoms she could attribute to the drug – "there are no immediate concerns except figuring out the why," she answered.
"Then I think our time will be better served by focusing on Barry right now," Digg concluded.
Caitlin agreed with him, but then that was about all she had left. She tried everything she had but all her experiments and simulations have failed. "I've never seen anything like this before. All my models predict the same doomsday scenario. I don't know what else to do," she grumbled as her frustration surfaced.
"Wait," Digg said, "what if we flush it out? You asked me to be on stand-by for dialysis."
"That was if Barry's kidneys stopped working properly because of his unstable cardiovascular status and before I knew the toxin could cross the blood-brain barrier. Now, we know it's small enough to pass through any filtration system in the human body and any of the dialysis membranes I know," she huffed as she sat herself down on the work bench.
"How about we improvise with my nanofilters?" Cisco suggested.
Caitlin had already attempted that – and failed. "The nanopores are too small," she countered as her eyes began to well up again.
"So, if we can't filter it out, can't we find a way to contain it instead?" Oliver asked.
"Yeah, like coat it or something so it couldn't work its mojo," Cisco seconded.
"I tried that with agglutinating antibodies I've manufactured from the original samples. These antibodies signal others like it to coat the toxin and clump them together so the body could flush it out," Caitlin said as she showed the images she had captured with an atomic force microscope. "But before the antibodies could adequately coat the toxin, the toxin changes its conformation and destroys the coating," she said as her tears began to fall. "I'm so sorry. I don't mean to be like this," she sniffled. She hated herself right now because she knew crying wasn't helping Barry one bit.
Felicity crossed to her and sat beside her. Caitlin leaned against her friend. She needed all the help she could get.
Digg silently passed his hankie to her.
Caitlin had to fight another wave of tears when she accepted it – because yes, Digg was the kind of guy to have a hankie in his pocket – just like Barry, she thought . "Thanks," she said as she began wiping her eyes with it.
"What do you need to make this work, Caitlin?" Oliver asked after giving her a few seconds to recover. This was way more complicated than chewing a couple of leaves and washing it down with water. He kind of missed the simplicity of his herbs.
"Basically something that bolts together to cage the toxin faster than it can change its shape," Caitlin responded, "and does it without binding too much of the protein to trigger the change in the first place."
Felicity perked up and started talking with her hands. "I think we just might have something," she said as she commandeered Caitlin's tablet and looked something up in her private server within S.T.A.R. Labs. That encrypted server made it easier for her to send big files to Cisco, as well as serve as her off-site data dump.
Cisco's eyes widened as he began snapping his fingers. "You mean Ray's nanotech?" he asked as it clicked.
Felicity looked up from the tablet, surprised that he knew about it but she nodded her head anyway.
Cisco scampered from the room to retrieve the package Ray had sent him just before he died. "You mean this?" he asked as he returned and produced two vials of the stuff.
Felicity wanted to know how he got it but it wasn't important right then. Instead, she took the vials from Cisco and gave it, together with the tablet showing Ray's notes, to Caitlin, "I know it's experimental, but it's better than nothing."
"This hasn't even been tried on an animal before," Caitlin remarked as she scanned the document.
"Officially, it hasn't but unofficially, it has. Well, on a human to be more exact because I kinda' used a vial of it on Ray… illegally… to clear a clot in his brain when we were given the choice between brain damage and sudden death," Felicity confessed, aware that this potentially life-saving technology could be yanked from production because she and Ray had circumvented several mandatory steps in the FDA approval process. They promised each other to keep it a secret but this could potentially save another life now, so she sent a silent apology to Ray wherever he was.
"And?" the doctor prompted.
"He lived. He did have a seizure but he lived," Felicity answered as she jumped down from her perch.
"This could work. We just have to reconfigure it to track our toxin instead of platelets," Caitlin said as she read more of Ray's remarks.
"I could help you with that," Cisco volunteered. "Ray gave me a copy of the source code just before he uhm…," he stuttered, "uh... He wanted me to look it over and see if I could instruct the units to self-assemble into discrete forms."
"Okay," Caitlin approved as she marched towards Barry and started to give him a quick check. This was only going to work if she could keep him alive until they were ready to implement this potential cure.
Cisco had already gone back to his station to retrieve the code and start cracking when Digg asked, "Would two vials be enough?" If Felicity used a vial for one clot then surely, they were on the short side of things, he thought.
"We'll have to make do with four," he heard Felicity say as she retrieved two more vials from his – well, Team Arrow's – med kit. "These are the last four of these babies. Applied Sciences suspended production pending the execution of Ray's estate."
"We're going to have to get creative then," Caitlin said as she laid her palm gently, almost longingly, against Barry's chest, comforting herself with the reassuring beat of his heart. Galvanized with renewed hope, she looked at Digg, "Come with me. We're going shopping in the Biomedical Wing."
xxxxXXXXxxxx
Oliver took over Barry's care when Digg left with Caitlin, while Felicity finished extracting DNA from the barbs they had gotten out of their friend's neck.
You better stay alive, buddy, he thought as he replaced Barry's IV with a new bag of cold saline. There are people here who need you – namely one Dr. Caitlin Snow. He strongly suspected that there were deeper feelings on her part where his speedster friend was concerned. You better not break her heart because Felicity is going to come after you. She'll find a way, I tell you - even go to hell and back. And you know, where Felicity goes, I follow. So you better damn well keep breathing, he silently threatened his patient, because I don't want to have to beat you up after this!
Oliver shook his head because he knew he was talking to himself and not making a lick of sense. He was beside himself with anger and guilt and fear, and heaping it on anyone else was not productive in any way. He was angry at the world because he didn't want this shit to keep touching anyone he cared about. And he was being eaten up with guilt because Barry was like a brother to him – the kid brother who never ceases to annoy but for whom he would do everything to protect. But mostly, he was scared shitless because he didn't think he could handle losing another part of his family again. He expelled a deep breath. His brooding wasn't helping. He focused instead on regulating the IV's drip rate.
He was just about done when he felt Felicity hug him from behind. It was a wordless plea for comfort – one that he realized he needed as well – so he turned within the circle of her arms. He hugged her closer to him as he felt her fingers rub small circles against his chest, right over his heart. He sighed and pressed closer to her. "Hi," he said as he nuzzled her hair.
Felicity had sensed the tension radiating from Oliver. She felt it too – the nerves, the uncertainty, the fear, and the guilt – because she had wished for something more than the mundane, more than the everyday. When she had asked Oliver all those weeks ago if life without the Arrow would be enough for him, she wasn't asking because she wanted him to quit – no. She had asked because she was terrified that he might quit altogether and that it would have been a deal breaker for her. So when he himself was uncertain, she had given a sigh of relief. But now? She huffed. Thanks, but no thanks.
"Hi," she responded, as she felt him squeeze her nape. She relaxed and placed a kiss on the vee of his neck. And because she couldn't help it, she burrowed further into the warmth of his chest. "I hope this works," she sighed, "I hope it really does."
He kissed her forehead then and held her tighter to him as he felt the uncertainty tremble through her. "It will," he whispered into her hair, "It must."
They stood there, seeking and giving comfort in each other's arms until they were jolted apart by her program's urgent alarm.
"Felicity!" they heard Cisco bellow from the cortex, "I think we just found the reason why Barry got drugged!"
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