“Electric, eh?”
“Don’t tell me you’re surprised. An environmental girl like me?”
Neely chuckled and lifted her suitcase in. “Not surprised at all.”
Alison grinned, closing the trunk. The rain began to pick up, prompting them both to open their doors and climb in.
Inside, Alison relaxed and turned in her seat. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I guess I’m as well as can be under the circumstances. Thank you, though. To be honest, I think your call was just the distraction I needed.” She leveled her eyes at Alison. “Even if a little cryptic.”
“Sorry about that. I wasn’t in a position to say much on the phone. There’s something important I need your help with.”
Neely brushed a strand of damp hair away from her face. “What kind of work? You said it was something similar to what was aboard the Bowditch.”
“I think so.”
Neely’s voice rose with some excitement. “Where did you get it?”
“Well, that’s where things get a little… interesting. I don’t actually have anything per se. That’s what I need your help with.”
“What does that mean? You don’t have anything?”
“I don’t have an actual specimen. But I think there’s a strong relationship here.”
Alison could see the look of excitement on Neely’s face begin to fade.
“I don’t understand. If you don’t have a specimen, what exactly do you think is related?”
Alison bit her bottom lip momentarily, thinking. “I think I need to explain a few things first. To catch you up.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not a sample exactly. It’s more like… a reaction.”
“A reaction.”
“Right.”
“A reaction of what?”
“It’s a reaction to something,” Alison replied. “It’s the reaction itself that’s similar. When we were on the Bowditch, that sample you had was growing. Faster than normal, right?”
“Much faster. The growth rate was remarkable, and it had a DNA sequence we’d never seen before. But the sample was lost when we were attacked.” She then looked at Alison curiously. “Where exactly is this going?”
“Neely, when you were explaining to us what the DNA did to the plant, I believe you said it was actually regenerating.”
“That’s right.”
“Which no other plant can do.”
“Not to that extent, no.”
“Regenerating as in healing, correct?”
“It was more than just healing. The entire structure was being regenerated by cells that were lost or nearly dead.”
“Like cancer cells.”
Neely raised an eyebrow. How did Alison know that? It was a comparison she’d used on a call with Admiral Langford.
“Not exactly like cancer cells. Regeneration implies a coordinated function of cells and tissues with a goal of restoring form and function. Cancer cells don’t do that. They destroy the cells. But they can, however, live for a very long time. Some even live forever under the right conditions. What was similar in those plants wasn’t necessarily their cellular restoration but their growth rate. Those plant cells were growing almost exponentially. Faster than most cancers.”
Neely stopped to consider something. “Actually, I suppose cancer cells do have a sort of healing effect, which is the constant creation of newly infected tumors cells. So in a strange way they could be healing, but they’re healing the tumor, which in the end is trying to kill its host. The healing properties of the plants we found were much more powerful, and they were far more constructive than destructive.”
Alison nodded. “That’s what I thought. And that’s why I asked Admiral Langford for your help.” She sighed. “Okay. Now what I’m about to tell you might sound a little strange, so hear me out.”
Neely raised her eyebrows but said nothing.
“A couple weeks after I got back, a woman named Lara Santiago came to our lab. She was almost in tears. Her daughter Sofia has leukemia and asked if we could arrange to have her in for a private visit.”
“That was nice.”
“It was nothing,” Alison shrugged. “Well, maybe not nothing, but arranging for her to swim with the dolphins was worth it. This is where it gets a little strange though. Sofia came back a couple days later. And when Dee and I saw her, we were shocked.”
Neely’s eyebrows suddenly furrowed, curious. “Shocked good or shocked bad?”
“Good! Really good,” she said. “Almost… too good.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means when she came back, she was noticeably better. And stronger.”
Neely thought it over. “Well, that’s not overly unusual. Partial remissions are well-documented in cancer patients. Short windows of mental clarity, improved dexterity, and even a sudden surge in strength are very common.” Neely frowned. “Is this related to the healing effects you were asking about? If so, then what you saw in the girl’s condition may not be what you think it is.”
Alison considered Neely’s point. The last thing she wanted was to be wrong on this. Eventually though, her head began to shake. “No, this is not a temporary remission. I’m sure of it. I’ve been doing research and this is beyond any of the similarities I’ve read about. She wasn’t just more coordinated or clearheaded. When she came in the first time, she was in a wheelchair and had to be lifted in and out of it. But when she came back, that little girl was standing.”
“Standing?”
“Standing,” Alison confirmed. “On her own.”
Neely was surprised. “Are you suggesting something happened when the girl was in the water?”
Alison absently rested a hand on her steering wheel and nodded at Neely. “I think so.”
“Like what?”
“Before I answer that I need to tell you something else. Something that may actually shock you.”
Amused, Neely gave a slight smirk. “Okay, let me have it.”
Alison took another deep breath. “You remember what happened to our boat not too far from Trinidad?”
“Yes.” Neely’s nod was slow. She hadn’t been there, but she’d heard what happened to Alison and her team. Pirates had savagely beaten both Chris and Lee before turning their attention to Alison and her colleague, Kelly. If it hadn’t been for John Clay and Steve Caesare, things would have no doubt turned out very differently.
“The reason we were out there in the first place was because of Dirk and Sally.”
“Your dolphins?”
“Yes. We were following them to a place they wanted to show us. We thought it was something nearby, like a local habitat or migration. But it wasn’t. It was much bigger.”
Neely continued listening.
“About a hundred miles east of Trinidad, we found something we’d never dreamed of. By then, we were expecting a large breeding ground with maybe a couple hundred dolphins. What we found was something else, and instead of hundreds there were thousands.”
Neely Lawton’s eyes widened. “Thousands?”
Alison smiled. “Tens of thousands. From the boat, dolphins were all we could see. Everywhere. In every direction.”
“My God. What-”
“I don’t know exactly what it is. But there’s definitely something there and it’s very important to them. And now… I think it may be related not just to Sofia’s sudden change, but to the plants you were studying as well.”
Neely blinked. “I’m afraid I’m not seeing the connection.”
“John told me about the plant he retrieved from one of those Chinese trucks. He said the sample he gave you was larger than almost anything he’d seen before.”