Dna 9419

By A. J. Caro

Following the death of his mother due to cancer, Dr. Ryan Carter made a promise to himself that he would cure the odious disease and save the world from further pain. It took time, but finally, he has done it. He has found the cure for cancer, with the help of his ever-present teamLiz, a skilled geneticist, and Ethan, Ryans second-in-command. Now, he is ready to announce his amazing discovery to the world.

Liz has other things on her mind. Not only does she harbor a mysterious secret, but she has developed feelings for the good doctor over the course of their work together. Of course, Ryan is too focused on his recent achievement to notice her, so she has resigned herself to living in his shadowuntil there is a murder attempt that threatens both their lives.

Now in protective custody, Liz and Ryans relationship begins to bloom, but theres no time to enjoy their newfound love. Questions abound, and they have no idea who wants them dead. Ryan is also working on cures for diseases like HIV and cystic fibrosis. He has the power to save mankind from disease and death, but first he must outlive his pursuers. But do the death threats really relate to Ryans cure, or is Lizs secret putting them both in danger?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475905649

A. J. Caro

A. J. Caro is a serial entrepreneur who owns several successful businesses that have made Inc. Magazine’s fastest growing company list. He is also the author of the novel DNA 9419 and a completed screenplay. Caro and his wife, Karin, have four children and reside in Long Island, New York.

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Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

AGE 14

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

AGE 15

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

AGE 14

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

AGE 21

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

AGE 21

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

AGE 18

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

PROLOGUE

Ryan was trying hard to slow his breathing, but there was nothing he could do. The panic attack would come, just as it had nearly twenty years before when his mother died. Not since then had he felt such loss, such despair, and such determination. His strong frame suddenly lengthened and tensed with confidence. Ryan would not let this ruin him; he would not let them ruin him. He had worked too hard for too long, and he would destroy them if that’s what it took.

Ryan took a moment to consider the last twenty years—his accomplishments, failures, triumphs, and sleepless nights. He remembered coming to the realization that he was in fact different from those around him—better. He had a gift to give humanity, and he would not let fanatics destroy his legacy, his gift, his genius.

He glowered at the leveled city block that was once his lab. It was still alive and angry with red-orange flames, vomiting gray smoke into the sky. At that moment, he made the decision. This was not over. They had tried to take everything away from him, but they had failed.

He did not know how to survive this. He just knew that he would.

CHAPTER 1

It was torture.

Liz wondered if a meeting had ever been so excruciating. She was fidgeting, lightly tapping her pen on the gargantuan bundle of research, notes, summaries, and reports spread before her on the conference table. Not only was she bored, but she also could not stop looking at Ryan.

Curing cancer was very interesting, but something about Ryan was much more intriguing to her. It annoyed Liz that such feelings were even possible, that a man, another person just like her, could be so much more interesting than curing cancer.

Liz allowed herself a disgusted grimace. She felt an itch at her knee pit and lowered her hand away from the mass of papers to scratch it. Immediately the papers slid, threatening to spill across the floor. She jerked her hand back in time to prevent an embarrassing upset, but she had not scratched the itch. She made the decision not to. She decided it would be the punishment for her distraction.

She shuffled through the research packet, looking for the paper that had been on top, the one Ryan was talking about. She found it and let her eyes meander over it. It was not long before they were back on Ryan.

Ryan was leading the meeting. He was talking excitedly, which was rare for him. Ryan did not allow himself to show frustration, excitement, or any other emotion until he had explored, dissected, and solved every possible issue and quirk and believed that whatever the problem was had been sufficiently dealt with. He was certain, then, that they had cured cancer. This was it. Finally—magically—the disease actually had a cure. Not treatments, not hopeful results—a cure.

Ryan was exulting on the results of the latest, and final, round of experimentation. Their nonpathogenic delivery system worked. Their broad-based recombinant agent had completely reversed even advanced metastasis. And their mitotic recovery booster had led to a total recovery in all test subjects. Ryan was proud.

Liz could see it in his green-gray eyes. She realized that part of the draw she felt today was enthusiasm—pure, unadulterated, childlike enthusiasm. Ryan was giddy—as giddy as a child on his birthday—about this cure.

If she were normal, she would be giddy too. It seemed like an amazing accomplishment. It was an amazing accomplishment.

But in the back of her mind there was that nagging voice—that tingle of dangerous responsibility. This was still a slippery slope, with the constant danger of a tumble. It was not dissimilar to how she had spilled the research packet, she noticed, straightening the stack of papers once again. Curing cancer was incredible, yes, but the research it had taken to get there could be used for so much more . . .

That is why I am here, she thought. She was to watch, wait and see, and ensure it did not come to that. She was there to guarantee that the slippery slope stayed safely in the distance.

She almost envied Ryan for his optimism, his focus on the enlightening goals he had set out, his disregard for the slope, and his faith in humanity to take advantage of their scientific power and their ability to change fate, cheat death, and manipulate nature for the better. She sometimes wished she shared that faith.

As she gazed into Ryan’s stone- and grass-colored eyes, she let the thought fade. His eyes were beautiful.

All of Ryan was beautiful. He was large at six feet tall, handsome, and muscular. His dirty-blond hair framed his face in a way that highlighted his chiseled features and drew attention right to his green-gray eyes. He was lean, and though Liz would guess that he weighed every bit of two hundred pounds, it was obvious to her that the weight was mostly muscle.

Suddenly, Ryan’s tall frame shifted toward the projector screen behind him. He used a small, black, green-laser pointer to highlight the important bits of his presentation, of which there were apparently many, as that little green dot had been hovering all over the screen for the last—what? Three hours? Liz had lost track of time.

This time Ryan lifted a muscular arm and caressed the screen. Liz shook her head, as if trying hard to jostle herself out of a daydream. That had actually happened. Ryan was so pleased with what they had accomplished that he had actually caressed the screen. Liz broke a shy smile as the room descended into a brief, low chorus of chuckles. Ryan gently stroked the hugely oversized electron-microscope image of their delivery virus, a neon-blue polyhedral object that looked like nothing so much as a disco ball.

The carrier virus was a tool used in genetic research to introduce new sequences of DNA into living cells. An average virus was a naturally evolved life-form that had become very, very good at reproducing itself by injecting its genetic material into living cells. In the case of most average viruses, the cell in question would be reprogrammed to produce more viruses, which would then destroy the cell and escape to infect others when they matured. Because of the difficulty of manufacturing an artificial way to introduce genetic material into living cells, scientists often used viruses. Nature had already developed a tried and true way of introducing and reprogramming genetic material into living cells; science had merely appropriated it as a method of its own. Except, of course, the engineered viruses carried genetic reprogramming that was meant to be helpful to the cell to achieve a specific end and had no viral reproduction involved in it at all.

Liz had always found it very interesting that there was some debate as to whether viruses could actually be considered alive. They were able to reproduce, certainly, but in order to do so, they required the resources of a larger, living cell. Viruses themselves generally did not have the same processes as a living cell and were merely chemically attracted to the outer wall of a cell. They could not swim, see, or die. Viruses could live forever, if they were alive at all.

Ryan shared the humor of anthropomorphizing the carrier virus. The chuckle died away, and Ryan clicked to the next slide, which was full of facts, figures, and nonsense.

As busy as he was with his research, as focused as he always seemed to be, Liz was not sure how Ryan ever found the time to exercise. Of course, he was often running all over the lab and office, never using e-mail or the phone to communicate in-building. He was a sucker for face-to-face communication.

There were times when Ryan preferred no communication whatsoever. He was an intensely focused person, which, Liz knew, was how he had gotten to his lofty position in the scientific and commercial community. When he focused on solving scientific problems (and to Ryan, any problem could be made scientific), he seemed to have a switch that would allow him to go and go and go, neglecting rest and food. Liz had seen him go for days without rest or food, but without slowing down or seeming tired either. Everyone in the lab and office knew that when Ryan was like that—in the zone, as they called it—you did not get in the way.

Ryan had gone into one of his notorious trances for nearly a week the previous month when he was proving ideas, organizing the results of clinical trials, and perfecting reports. Essentially, he had worked nonstop for days to create the huge packet all the people in the conference room had before them. The company had submitted the packet to the Food and Drug Administration and received approval. Soon, marketing would begin. Hospitals and pharmaceutical companies would receive and replicate the cure, and it would get to as many people who were suffering from cancer as possible relatively quickly. During that time, Ryan had lived and breathed nothing but the cure.

Liz recalled with amusement that Ryan had been so caught up in the approval process and the documentation that he had not bothered to give the cure a name. Perhaps he thought it did not need one.

Liz felt the itch in her right knee pit flare again. With one hand tenderly holding the tremulous research packet stable, she reached down with the other and gently, quietly scratched at the nylon covering the back of her knee. The itch died slowly, but she knew it would be back.

According to my calculations, continued Ryan, not bothering to clear his throat between topics, the cure will be fully accessible to the entire American public by the end of this quarter. But I do not want to stop there. We have held off submitting the cure to the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technology in Health until we had Food and Drug Administration approval. We have to pick up the pace. We need approval from the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technology in Health, European Medicines Agency, the ICH, the Koro-sho—

He was suddenly interrupted by a voice from the table. He squinted against the projector’s glare to see who it was.

John. Of course.

Whoa, boss, that is quite an alphabet soup, grunted John. What is the Koro—

It is the Japanese Ministry of Health, said Ryan, not allowing John to finish his jab. I want complete submissions to be prepared for global administration of the cure to be run through all the international agencies before the end of the fiscal year. Think you can handle that, Ethan?

Ethan, who was sitting near the back of the room, waved a hand in dismissal. End of the year. Right, right.

Ryan scowled. Fiscal year, Ethan—

Ethan leaned back in his chair, waving the hand again. We will have them out by Labor Day.

Ryan smiled inwardly and went on with the presentation. This was normal. Most of his staff were engaged and frequently participated, often with humorous jabs or little reminders that they were the most competent, gifted group of scientists in the world, and he did not need to hand-hold them all the time.

Ryan shot a glance to Liz, who was one of his chief geneticists. She looked like she was in a different world. Her eyes were unfocused and blank, and he could tell she was trying hard not to fidget.

He wondered why she looked like that. Was she bored? She had been very involved in the development of the new cure, so it would stand to reason that she would be interested in the final presentation and collection of all the work, not just her own. After all, she was the one who constantly reminded Ryan that they were a team of scientists working together and each person was responsible for a different aspect of the research. Liz was always making comments about Ryan’s obsessive behavior, making sure he knew that they were all in it together and he did not have to do everything.

Ryan rotated his gaze around the room and noticed that everyone else appeared to be interested in his presentation. What was with Liz? Ryan turned to Ethan, indicating it was time for him to take over. Ethan always opened and closed meetings. Ethan rose from his chair as Ryan strode to his. Ryan’s seat was at the head of the long conference table, so Ryan had to walk past everyone on his staff to make it to his seat. Ethan began to speak from the front of the room once Ryan sat down.

Dr. Ethan Teller was a short and stout man who tended to remind people of a young Santa Claus. He had a fair bit of paunch in his midsection and dark brown hair that he wore long and a little messy. While he did not care much for maintaining the hair on his head, Ethan was obsessive over his facial hair. He had a full beard and a mustache to complement it. His head was a contradiction. Ethan’s dark brown hair had a mind of its own and was nothing like his bright red facial hair, which was well-kept and groomed. Ethan’s personality was kind, and everyone liked him. He was Ryan’s right-hand man. He made up for Ryan’s brashness and lack of concern when he was focused, and because he was so kind and funny, he was perfect for starting and ending meetings. Everyone laughed at one of Ethan’s jokes before Ryan took over, and then Ethan’s lighthearted recap of the meetings left everyone with a spring in their step, forgetting the apparently dry part in the middle.

Ryan wondered if he had spoken for too long and if that was why Liz looked so disconnected. He studied Liz, pondering why he cared if she was bored. It was not as if she were missing any information. Why did she always seem to grab his attention? He found Liz’s personality surprising. He didn’t understand how someone so beautiful could be so kind, funny, generous, and intimidatingly intelligent. She was also comfortable working in the good old boys’ club of genetic science and engineering, which even today was rare for women.

Before he had met Liz, Ryan thought only plain women had personalities like that. All the beautiful women he had met before were selfish and rude to people they considered to be below them. Ryan had theorized that beautiful women had never needed to learn kindness and compassion because it was not necessary for them to get what they desired. People liked them anyway because of their good looks, and it was easy to get what you wanted with good looks alone.

But Liz—like his mother—was both beautiful and kind to everyone.

Liz was a petite woman, towering only over four-year-olds at about five feet. She was thin but not obsessive over her weight. Ryan was sure Liz would be just as confident and beautiful if she weighed three hundred pounds. Liz had shoulder-length hair that looked brown in winter, blonde in summer, and somewhere in between the rest of the time. She had blue eyes that reminded Ryan of a mountain spring he had swum in as a child during summer break. Unlike many of the women Ryan had worked with over the last twelve years, Liz did not dress to distract the men around her—but she was distracting anyway.

Ryan realized in that moment that she was sexier than any woman he had known before, just because she did not try to advertise her beauty to everyone. She did not need to. It was an unavoidable part of who she was.

Ryan? Liz?

They both jumped as Ethan called their names.

We’re late for our operations meeting. John, you with us?

As the rest of the staff filed out of the conference room, the three scientists moved to circle their boss. Ryan stayed seated at the end of the table. Ethan came to sit at his left side, Liz on his right, and John, of course, next to Liz. Dr. John Stenter reminded everyone of a football quarterback, though he insisted he was not athletic. At six foot five, he towered over even Ryan, who was not a short man. John’s muscles always seemed to be attempting an escape from his clothing. They were so obvious he might as well be wearing a Speedo. John always wanted to sit near Liz. He was married but wanted Liz purely because she showed no interest in him. For John, it was about the hunt, the conquest. Though his friends constantly reminded him that he was married, he would not be deterred. John was not used to such disinterest, so he continued to vie for Liz’s attention. And she continued to not give it.

Ethan began the sub-meeting matter-of-factly. Ethan viewed words as a sort of limited commodity, using them sparingly, as if he were afraid to run out. He came right to the point.

Well, what’s next? Ethan wanted to have something big to announce all the time.

John groaned. "Look, we just worked our asses off on this cancer thing, and now you want more? Why don’t we take a break and let everyone go on vacation? The wife wants to visit the Maldives. Cancer will