He woke to the sound of metal settling.For a few seconds he couldn't place the room—the shelves, the faint smell of canned corn, the thin rectangle of light at the pantry door.Then memory returned in pieces: the burner, the
barricade, the leather book.He sat up, bones clicking, and listened.Silence,
layered with a low electrical breath working its way through the walls.He
ate a few spoonfuls of cold beans with the door half-open, then slid the cart
aside and stepped into the kitchen.The journal waited where he'd left it on
the table, a dark shape that seemed to carry its own gravity.He turned to the
next page and found a new sequence of entries beginning with the day the
animals arrived.
He read.
[ Excerpt — Doctor's Journal — 20 May 2032, 07:13 hrs — Arrival of Cohort M]
The mice came in thirty ventilated cages, clean and nervous, genetically
uniform except for the induced lines in the oncology group.Two technicians
checked tags while I verified quarantine seals.I felt steady for the first time
in months.We were beginning. Today's plan: establish baseline behavior
and vitals, conduct mock injections, confirm containment, and run the
first serum exposures on the cancer group.HRV-13 Batch A prepared at
10 PFU/ml in buffered medium.The vials look like nothing.Everything
looks like nothing until you ask it to live.
[Excerpt — Doctor's Journal — 20 May 2032, 19:54 hrs — First Exposure]
Eight oncology mice received micro-dosed intrathecal injections under anesthesia.All recovered without incident.Within six hours,serum markers of tumor activity dropped in three cases; within twelve, all eight.Imaging at eighteen hours shows early necrotic
collapse of malignant regions and sharp borders where healthy tissue remained untouched.I made the mistake of smiling in front of the techs.They smiled back.For a moment the room felt like a
place where something good could happen. The survivor touched
the margin and noticed a faint indentation where the doctor's pen
had pressed too hard.
He turned the page.
[Excerpt — Doctor's Journal — 21 May 2032, 06:05 hrs — Spinal Lesion Protocol]
Second series today: controlled lesions in the lumbar cord of the non-oncology cohort, followed by HRV-13 exposure directed to the lesion cavity. The plan is brutal and necessary.If the vector can bridge a cut path, it can do anything.By late afternoon,EMG signals returned across the gap in four of six, weak
present.At twenty hours, all six show motor response to plantar stimulation.Under microscope, conductive filaments span the lesion
like silver roots.It feels obscene to call them beautiful, and yet they are.Replication appears restricted to the damaged region.Regulatory
loop holding.Self-limiting, as designed.
He paused to listen.A far door clicked somewhere in the corridors, then a
dull clang as if a loose bar settled into place.He turned the light toward the
kitchen entrance and half closed the pantry again before he realized he was
doing it.
He read on.
[Excerpt — Doctor's Journal — 21 May 2032, 23:41 hrs — Night Observations]
I stayed late to watch them sleep.
In the oncology group, respiration slow and regular.In the spinal cohort, periodic twitching of the hind limbs during non-REM cycles, more coordinated than a simple jerk yet not complex enough to call purposeful.I recorded the movements and reviewed them frame by frame.Working hypothesis: the re-patterned reflex arcs are testing themselves during low cortical activity just like a fetus in a womans body that learns to use the new nervs to move the extremities .I am cataloguing it as benign sleep tremor.The techs teased me for filming mice dreams.I laughed with them and did not stop the camera.
[Excerpt — Doctor's Journal — 22 May 2032, 09:18 hrs— Remission Confirmed] Oncology cohort: PET/CT confirms
total remission in seven of eight, near-total in the eighth.Bloodwork clean.Histology shows malignant matrices replaced by orderly, viable
tissue with unexpected conductivity profiles.If the scaffolding persists
without dysplasia, we may have rewritten a rule I thought was iron.I printed the scans and pinned them above my desk.Then I took them down.Superstition is only unscientific when it doesn't work.
[ Excerpt — Doctor's Journal — 22 May 2032, 20:11 hrs —Behavior Log]
Anomalies minor but persistent. Two subjects show rhythmic whisker movement while apparently asleep; one repeated a paw-to-mouth motion after feeding had stopped.None of this qualifies as pathology. The new circuitry explains it: available pathways seek current.Bodies are rivers;electricity wants somewhere to go.I am not concerned.
The survivor stopped and looked up, letting the words flatten against the
quiet.Bodies are rivers.Electricity wants somewhere to go.He turned another
page.The ink here ran a little more at the edges, like the pen had paused longer
between strokes.
[Excerpt — Doctor's Journal — 23 May 2032, 07:02 hrs — Second Series Outcomes]
Twenty-four hours post-exposure in the spinal cohort: full weight-bearing in three; near-full in two; partial in one.EMG crossing the lesion normalized in amplitudes I did not expect to see for another week.The self-limiting loop appears to have disengaged replication as soon as conduction stabilized.I felt something like grief when the numbers
printed.Not sorrow—grief's cousin, the one that arrives with relief.It said:
you were right to try.
[Excerpt — Doctor's Journal — 23 May 2032, 22:39 hrs — Lights Out]
A short power fluctuation at 21:17 hrs tripped the emergency lighting.During the outage, motion detectors registered low-level activity in three cages in the spinal cohort.On review, the movements match previously recorded sleep tremors but clustered during the moment of
darkness.I am logging this as coincidence.I refuse to build rituals around electricity.
The survivor raised his head.As if on cue, the emergency strip above the kitchen door flickered once, then steadied.He listened for footsteps and heard only the slow iteration of the ventilation system, a pulse translated into air.He returned to the page.
[Excerpt — Doctor's Journal — 24 May 2032, 06:48 hrs —Internal Note]
This morning I found a technician watching the cages before shift.He said
the mice were calmer when he spoke softly to them.I told him voice has
no bearing on reflex arcs.He nodded and kept speaking anyway.We are
building a miracle and everyone wants to carry some part of it with their hands.
[Excerpt — Doctor's Journal — 24 May 2032, 18:23 hrs —Interim Summary]
HRV-13 demonstrates selective activity at sites of pathology and
injury.In oncology subjects, malignant tissue collapses and is replaced
by structured,viable cells.In spinal-lesion subjects, conductive scaffolding
forms across the gap and normalizes motor conduction.Replication down-
regulates on completion of functional repair.Observed sleep tremors likely
represent non-cognitive rehearsal within re-wired reflex pathways.No
evidence of awareness.No sign of dysregulation.Recommendation: prepare primate protocol.
He stared at the last line for a long time.It was written straighter than
the rest, the word prepare pressed into the paper so hard it dented the
page beneath.He closed the journal and listened to the room.The faint hum
continued, unbothered.Somewhere down the corridor, a panel clicked as if
settling from one decision toanother.He stood, stretched the stiffness from
his shoulders, and slid the book back into his pack.The canteen felt suddenly
smaller, the ceiling lower, the walls closer than he remembered."Primate
protocol," he said aloud, testing the sound of it.The word seemed too large for the air. He turned off the burner, checked the door, and looked once more
at the poster by the elevator as he left the kitchen.WASH HANDS.DO NOT
TOUCH YOUR FACE.The letters had blurred into rivers.He followed the
corridor toward the stairs that led deeper.