Kill or Cure
What has gone on before
Cynthia Halverston was poisoned in a lab accident and turned into a sexual chameleon, who becomes the sexual dream of every man she meets. Being kidnapped by meth dealers took her memories and left her unable to survive in the world except by working as a prostitute. Mentored by a kindly experienced hooker, she is able to make her way, giving johns what they really want. A psycho's attempt to murder her brings her memories back, enabling her to return to the world she was torn from. The return is bittersweet. Her friend Dave accepts her back and begins to work to help her find a potential cure, or at least a partial one. Her boyfriend, Rob, having learned of her time as a hooker, rejects her, sending her into a fit of depression where she gives in to her sexual alter ego and takes on the entire frat house. Only Dave's intervention stops the orgy and gets her back to her apartment, where she sleeps, under his protection...
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Dave's watch alarm went off at 5AM. Rousing, he took a moment to remember where he was and why. Getting up, his clothes rumpled, he peeked in Cynthia's door, verifying that she was still in bed. He puttered around her kitchen, fixing coffee and a light breakfast. He knew that there was little time to find a cure of some sort. With the repeated shocks to her emotions, she was close to mental breakdown. What the poison didn't finish, the rejections she was facing would. He prayed a silent prayer that something would come from the rat tests they had set up.
As the bacon and eggs cooked, the aroma of coffee woke Cynthia up. She remembered the previous night and more tears came, tears for the loss of Rob and of her innocence. She dressed with little regard for how she looked, feeling that it wasn't important anymore. She did not know what she would do if Dave turned his back on her as well. She marveled at his self control in ignoring the opportunity her condition had presented him. She was realizing just how rare a true friend was.
Dressed, she popped a cough drop and went into the kitchen. "Hi Dave. That smelled good from the bedroom."
"It will be done in a minute. I made the coffee strong. Maybe it will let you eat something without the eucalyptus after smell."
She poured a cup and set the cough drop on the table. Head over the cup, she could smell the over strong French roast prevailing over other scents. "Yeah, it seems to be working. Of course, if I drink coffee all day, I'll be on the toilet more often than not. But it will be nice to enjoy breakfast."
Dave came over and put a plate in front of her. "Eat up. I made them spicy. Figured the stronger the taste the better."
"I did the same thing on the street. Gloria loved 7-11 nachos and I smothered them with jalapenos. By the time I had been out sucking a Halls all night, my taste buds were shot. And the spicy aroma worked as well as the drops." She could begin to detect a hint of Dave in the air, not enough to cause a problem yet. "Dave, you had better go home and take a shower. You're strong enough that it will cause issues in the lab."
"Will you be all right for an hour or so?"
"Yes. I won't even answer the door before you get back."
"Okay. I'll call when I'm downstairs."
Dave finished his breakfast and headed out the door. Undoing the chain, he cut himself. "Ow. Your chain lock bit me."
"I'm sorry, it was replaced recently and the new one is pretty sharp."
"That's okay. Be sure to put it back after I leave."
"I will."
Dave left and Cynthia locked the door behind him. With Dave gone, she was left alone with her thoughts. Rob's violent rejection of her was still weighing on her heart. Where was the guy that had patiently waited for her, respecting her choice to put off sex? Where was the love that she had been raised to believe in? It was a love that accepted others for who they were and did not judge solely because of what a person did. She thought that if Dave had cheated on her for any reason, she would hear him out before making a decision. He had given her no chance to explain, or even try. She could have understood if he had not been able to believe her story, but he had not even given her the chance. Was this all she had left to look forward to, mindless fucks with both friends and strangers, eking out an existence without meaning? She knew she could not live her life this way.
She made a decision. She wrote Dave a note. "Dave, I can't live my life this way. There is no hope. I will spend the rest of my life having to seek out nameless men for random sex to stay alive. That is not living, it is existing as an animal. I wish I had not recovered my memories. Then I could still be living the blissfully ignorant life of a hooker, unaware of what I was missing and what I have lost forever. Please do not try to find me. I'm going back to the streets in the hope that I will die there, soon. I can't bring myself to take my own life, but I can let someone else do it for me. You've been the best friend anyone could ask for. Thank you for your friendship and chivalry. Cynthia." She put the note in an envelope and taped it to the outside of her door. She left the door cracked, took only the things she would need for a life on the streets and left.
Outside, she hailed a cab and had herself taken to the Bel-Ayre motel again. Her old room was still available and she paid it up for two weeks. At the corner grocery, she restocked her foodstuffs and cough drops. She had become enough of a fixture that no one gave her a second glance. Back in her room, she lay on the bed, crying at the sadness her life had become, a thing without hope or meaning. In emotional exhaustion, she fell into a fitful sleep, not waking until it had become dark.
45 minutes after Cynthia left her apartment, Dave returned. Anxiety hit him full force when she did not answer her phone. Racing up the stairs, her found her note and the cracked door. Reading the note, he shook his head, muttering, "Cynthia, Cynthia. There's always hope. I'll find a way." He knew that going and getting her now would be fruitless. Without hope, she would simply leave again. He had to have something to give her hope in before he could expect her to come back. He took the key she had left behind, made sure that her rent was paid for another month and headed back to the lab.
In the lab, he found that all six rats had died, though not all of the same apparent cause. He sought out Gwen again, presenting her with six more necropsies. While they were not unusual circumstances, he impressed on her that there was a time sensitivity on them. She promise to have them all done in a couple of days and to forward her conclusions on a case by case basis. He asked her to start with the rats that had the non-potassium chlorinate compounds first. With the mice in capable hands, Dave went back to his own lab and decided to run some tests on the compounds in the tube, as it were.
Much of good science is instinct, that gut feeling of knowing where to start. His gut told him that the potassium chlorinate was instrumental in the death of brain cells, not the hyper-activating of them. That was why he asked for the order he did from Gwen. He himself started with the two hormonal compound and observed the actions that the compound had on mouse brain cells. He had difficulty at first in getting a small enough concentration to observe the effects over time.
Three hours after he started, he saw that the two hormonal compound did just what his gut told him. It caused the cells to fire off impulses at an increased rate. Based on the dilution he needed, he predicted that the mouse with this compound in it had died of olfactory overload of some kind. His next step was to break scientific protocols and ignore the other samples for now. Cynthia needed help fast and he had to take chances. If the necropsy showed different, he could adjust.
He prepared another sample of the compound, much diluted and exposed another mouse to it. Setting up a recorder, he went to lunch while the mouse was slowly poisoned. He came back an hour later and saw that the mouse was agitated, but not dead. There was also a message waiting from Gwen. She indicated that the first mouse, the one that had been given the two hormonal compound had apparently died from a fatal allergic reaction, several actually. As near as she could determine, it had become allergic to just about everything in the air, as if its sense of smell had become too powerful to handle normal air.
Some short tests later, he determined that his current mouse had an enhanced sense of smell, able to detect a finger swipe of cheese residue through seven glass barriers at a distance of several feet. He called up the computer results of the test Cynthia had referred to earlier about slicing disease genes to a viral DNA marker. He was thankful that the results of student research was open on the closed server for the science building. He found that the process had been surprisingly successful, but had not been useful in Carl's research. The process was somewhat complex, but doable by someone with a master's in chemistry, such as Cynthia.
The rats that had been the basis of Cynthia's work had been from his lab. Their genetic code had been partially mapped. Fortunately, the mapped portions included the portions responsible for hormone production, so he was able to get samples of those genetic bits. Then he got samples of the DNA for one particular female white mouse that he identified as subject alpha. Finally, a viral carrier with a time bomb in it that would cause it to die off in twelve hours. Now all he needed was a chemistry whiz, and he knew just who to call.
Dialing his campus phone, he called Jarvin Engals. Jarvin was a prodigy. He had been a running start student who graduated high school with a bachelor's in chemistry and biology. The boy, now 19, was working on his master's and would have already finished, except that his research project was a longitudinal study. He was a well known rule breaker and loved to get involved in other people's work. Best of all, he was gay and would have no interest in Cynthia herself.
"Jarvin, this is Dave, Dave Reston. I've got a sticky problem that needs a delicate chemical touch. Would you be interested in giving me a hand? Yes? How about now? Cool. I'll see you in thirty."
He laid out his plan to present and waited. The gangly teen came in with his usual silly grin on his face. In the labs, he was like a kid in a candy store. Dave explained what he wanted to do, slicing two different genes sequences into a time bomb virus using the Menthe method. Jarvin was all over it. He had been left out of that research and was chomping at the bit to be able to lend his talents to the problem. He indicated that the process would take the rest of the day, and that the viral compound would be ready by the morning. Dave left him alone and went off to take care of some of his own work that had been piling up. As much as he wanted to go look for Cynthia, he had to wait until he had something to give her hope. That night, he slept fitfully while Cynthia woke and returned to the streets.
When Cynthia woke, she dressed in her hooker outfit and headed out onto the street. She was no longer interested in working with Gloria, who would try to convince her that there was still something worth living for. Wanting to be as dangerous as possible, to commit suicide by john, she sought out the one person she was sure would maximize the danger she would face.
