taxonomites | 008. [ accidental visual / location: helen's lab ] that you'll find me, that you'll see me.

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008. [ accidental visual / location: helen's lab ] that you'll find me, that you'll see me.

The Halloween Party had gone better than she hoped, even expected. The party ended and the events unfolded with the large green creature and retrieving Ashley. And then it was returning to work as normal. Rather, as it had been, as opposed to normal. Long hours going back and forth between her lab and her office. Hardly seeing anyone, except when Henry had found the Cabal Laboratory. Which had done little more than fan the flame.

Helen found herself up all night again. Continually testing the sample of blood that Claire had so kindly given her. Trying to learn how it worked when dealing with other samples. The results seemed to say that no matter the blood type, Claire's could bond with it and repair it. A universal donor. She then mixed a sample of Ashley's previous blood and Claire's, letting it settle before looking for the results.

Except she had fallen asleep with her forehead pressed to her hands. Having terrible sleep patterns were completely different from pure fatigue and exhaustion. Though her dreams were hardly ones that would lighten her mood, it took her a few moments to realize she had dozen off. And that it was now morning, given the sunlight coming in from the glass roof above.

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He nodded at her, and followed her closely, looking all around.

As with all buildings with high ceilings and large rooms, he felt a bit of a desire in the foyer to just rush up the wall and cling to the ceiling, just because he could. He would do his best to squash these feelings- what should have been enjoyment of his ability was marred by the fact that the urge had been mandatory once. It had been a mark of his insanity.

Still, he wondered vaguely what it would be like.

The two walked on until they reached the elevator. Tapping the button once, she smiled at him again as they waited. Her eyes glanced to where he was looking. "It's a rather imposing building, I'm afraid. Apparently most prefer not to have the Victorian Gothic look."

He smiled wide for just a moment at her comment. "Not at all. It's rather familiar to me, actually- I went to Oxford during my studies, spent all my time in my college's library."

He looked around at the architecture once more, then shrugged. "I have a lot of good memories there. So you've one vote for the style, at least."

"Oxford?" Helen turned towards him fully with a large smile. "You've been to Oxford? What is it like, these days?" She hadn't been to Oxford since the 1880s. As a student, of course.

"Beautiful- as always, I'd imagine," he replied, sounding fairly content. "It was the first time I'd ever been out of India, and I just found it all so fascinating. And then I joined the RFC and managed to get my face beaten in a few times." A smirk showed up on his face- if he'd played now, he'd be seriously cheating.

The elevator arrived and Mohinder was quick to walk into it. "So you're an Oxford alumnus, as well? What did you study?"

"Medical." She stepped inside and pressed a second button, smiling at him over her shoulder. "Though of course, that was quiet some time ago. Technology has certainly changed since I attended the school. And certainly I doubt they teach my other doctorates."

He gave her a bit of a discerning look at the mention of it being 'quite some time ago', wondering how long that was. She'd never mentioned if she was an 'abnormal' or not, but Mohinder wouldn't be surprised.

"Other doctorates?" he asked, curious. "Let me guess- is Xenobiology one of those?"

"Of course." Helen nodded. "Teratology and Crypto-zoology as well." Her eyes went to the top of the elevator for a moment before looking back at him. "The Royal Surgeons were rather close minded for being interested in the realm of science. I'm not sure if that has changed by now."

Mohinder actually snorted at that. "Hardly. Even before my arrival, my father attempted to present his findings on mitochondrial DNA and its ability to produce beneficial mutations- he wasn't exactly received well." He shook his head. "He was furious when I told him I still planned to go. Nearly cut off my financial support." Mohinder still would've gone, he would just be much poorer for it now.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to hear you've studied Teratology," he added. "Considering your work here, I imagine it's been invaluable."

"It certainly is. Without it, I wouldn't be able to help half of the patients I have in this Sanctuary, properly. Let alone the ones all over the world." Helen tilted her head slightly and her eyebrows perked up with a smile.

"We seem to have a lot in common. My father was also berated amongst the Royal Surgeons when he attempted to propose the idea of Abnormals. He even left them and started the beginnings of the Sanctuary. It took a great deal of convincing for him to allow me to follow in his footsteps. When he disappeared, I took over the establishment."

He hadn't studied Teratology in ages, but he was starting to think he might want to pick up some new books on the subject.

"You accomplished more than I did," he noted. "My father would never have allowed me into his work. If he knew I had carried it on after his death, he'd be livid." He shook his head and gave her a wry smile. "But to be fair, I've made more progress on it than he ever did." It does help when you treat your subjects like people.

"I am sorry to hear your father disappeared," he added, realizing he'd gotten stuck on the subject of Chandra Suresh once again.

Helen smiled softly and shook her head. "Don't be. I'm not quite sure how, but the Cabal managed to find him and... well, the last I spoke to him? He is doing fine. Free from their clutches and out hiding. He refused to stay with me in fear it would endanger me and Ashley."

Her smile fell though. Helen had thought her father dead for over a century. When she finally had him back, he had to leave her. It seemed like if she didn't outlive the people she loved, than she certainly didn't get to hold them close.

The doors to the elevator opened. She nodded at Mohinder to follow her, smiling again. A short walk down the hallway led them to a circular room (http://sanctuary-caps.com/displayimage.php?album=25&pos=1009) with tinted glass panels, red lights above them. Hanging down from a ring were a series of twelve screens that could fold up and down, and of course the desks in the center of the room. There were also other hallways that led to various other parts of the lab.

Mohinder had a response all put together, but as soon as the doors opened, he fell silent. Looking around at all the glass panels, the screens, and the desks, he seemed rather overwhelmed. He stared at the lights in particular. This was- it was everything Primatech Research was not, he felt. Those were clearly cells, and yet- everything in here was so much more benign. It almost made him more wary, as he was used to being shown everything as it was not. But considering Doctor Magnus, he'd imagine that she'd gotten it right after all.

"And I thought my lab in Manhattan was impressive," he finally said, rather breathlessly. He took a few steps forward, toward the screens. "This is quite extraordinary," he added, dumbly. Of course it was extraordinary, that was the point.

It made her laugh. Helen loved showing off the world she lived in. But, she was very careful of who was shown that world. It was dangerous and not everyone needed to see the true purpose of the Sanctuary. That was, the actual Sanctuary bit. Behind the tinted glasses were habitats given to Abnormals that needed certain conditions to live. Though, she had made sure the glasses were all tinted before showing Mohinder in. Not that she believed he didn't need to know. He just seemed well adjusted enough that he hardly needed the Sanctuary.

"It was based off my father's designs. Of course as technology improved, so did the things in my lab." She gestured for him to sit at the desk with the computer set up at it. "Please."

He looked rather sheepish at her laughter, fairly sure that would be a normal reaction. He was mostly just glad he managed to find words eventually.

He nodded at her guidance and sat down at the desk, pulling his messenger bag off. "Most of my notes are on my laptop. I can put them on a flash drive for you," he said, getting down to business. "The rest will have to be copied, I'm afraid. But there isn't much of Claire on those notes- I thought they could have relevance because it was also a case of sudden and forced genetic mutation, but it could be an entirely different method."

Helen stood next to the desk, bringing up the window on the computer that had back to back DNA patterns. Mohinder seemed very much like a business man when it came to these sort of things. There was no real point in delaying it then.

"These are Ashley's genetic patterns. Before the Source Blood, and then after it. Of course her DNA most likely won't look like a normal human's to begin with." After all, Ashley was the daughter of two Abnormals that were altered by the Source Blood. No other genetic code had to look like that in the world.

He looked up as Helen brought up Ashley's DNA. He didn't say anything for almost a full minute, looking over the differences he could make out between Ashley's original DNA and what he could remember of a completely normal work-up. There was quite a bit of twisting, yes, but the patterns far more resembled those who had used the serum to obtain their abilities than those who came by them naturally. The 'after' picture was indeed a mess, but was possibly the closest thing that came to resembling his own sorry state after he injected himself that he's seen before.

"No, I can't say it does. But that may make it easier for Claire's blood to form a true and correct bond, during the gene therapy attempts. You're certainly on the right path- if you injected her straight with it, she would simply remain in the same state. But if you bond it with her original blood first-" He thought about it, but then shook his head. "Unfortunately, the blood itself is hard to trick. There must be a way to keep it from reverting once it finds more of Ashley's current blood..." He shook his head, unsure of how that could be accomplished.

"That was the problem." Helen confirmed. "The problem is, creating a stabilization. I figure that one the therapy actually works, Ashley will need more than one therapy. Most likely three or so. It seems that there is so much damage it needs to repair, it becomes over burdened. That would be my assumption, though, as I know very little of how Claire's blood acts when it is healing another. My theory is that once it repairs what is damaged, her blood simply dissipates into the blood stream that is there. And there is so much to repair that it would almost be over whelmed."

Mohinder nodded along with her theory, still staring at the screen. "So you believe modification in steps is the solution? I think I agree with that. There is a method to bond the blood with a prior sample and thus change the way the it heals." He reached down and opened up his laptop, letting it go through the start-up process. "I have all that information here- I was bonding it to my blood in order to fortify antibodies for a virus. Ashley's changes are obviously much more involved than a virus, but I do believe the same technique will apply here."

He tapped at the screen, and then brought up an image of his original blood, and the structure of his and Claire's blood bonded together. "Once I put it through this process, it was nearly impossible to break the two apart. So the healing blood should react to the similar DNA and work to rewrite it where it can." He nodded his head in consolation. "As you said, it might not all take in one go, but-" He squinted, then looked up at Helen. "How much of Ashley's original blood do you have to work with?"

She shook her head. "Not much, I'm afraid. A few vials at most. I suppose I could replicate it through the hatch in theory... but I wouldn't trust that. I've already known that I won't be able to remove all of what has happened to Ashley. Hopefully just the more adverse damages can be undone."

Her eyes went back and forth between the two images he supplied. She pointed at the one of the structure. "How did you manage to get the two to bond and stay bonded?"

He'd never thought of trying to replicate the blood just by asking for it- god, what if that worked? He thought he should try it, at least, just to test. It would be extremely helpful to have more of this blood.

At the question, he smiled a little. He rarely got to explain how he did this. "It was easier than it looked, originally, because the nucleotides in the regenerative DNA seem to practically be looking for a bond. The blood has it's own genetic material, of course, but it seems to be constantly on the lookout for new genetic material to revert to a pristine state. If it only finds a small part, such as a vial's worth of blood, it remains in relative stasis. As you said, once it accomplishes its task in a whole body, it dissipated into the blood stream."

He straightened up in his seat and opened another window, this one showing a computer animation of how the bond is formed. "There's actually two processes at work, here. First, there's an endonucleolytic cleavage reaction which releases a terminal 5-GT dinucleotide. That can be accomplished by merely centrifuging the blood together with a oligonucleitide, which can be produced artificially. After the break is created, the regenerative blood forms it's own bonds to complete the broken DNA." He sounded incredibly pleased with the result. "I'd thought I was going to have to induce the bonding reaction, but it takes care of it on its own. Once you've achieved this level of bonding, I haven't found anything that will break it apart."

Helen watched the animation over and over as he explained. Claire's blood would naturally bond with anyone's as if it were looking for something to heal. She nodded slowly as she looked between the two monitors. It was a simple task in theory. The only problem seemed to be was to make enough of it to do the task they needed it to do.

"Then we need to find a way to not only make the bond stronger, but also steer it in the direction of exactly what it needs to repair." She bit her lip for a moment as she thought. "The Source Blood is very aggressive. As it comes from some of the oldest Abnormals known to human kind, it will dominate whatever it finds." Helen turned her attention to him. He would have to know exactly what it did. "When the Source Blood is injected into a normal human, it unlocks the potential Abnormal DNA that is written in every human. Ashley gained her father's ability of teleportation when they injected her the first time. The rest was caused by an overexposure to the blood.

"Now, my fear is that even when we get Ashley's and Claire's blood to bond perfectly, the Source Blood will be able to not only over burden it, but rewrite it." She sighed and looked back at the screens. "If Claire's antibodies can fix and fight anything that is naturally foreign... then maybe we need to introduce just a bit of Ashley's blood now, and see if the combined solution can even start to fight off and repair it."

"You mentioned wanted to stage down on the treatment, do it in sections." He looked between his laptop and the screens, then pulled up his hard notes on the subject and looked through them. "I think that introduction may be just what's needed. Even if it does partially break the bond, Claire's blood would likely bond with it again, which would be harder to break still. We could theoretically move her closer to her base DNA in steps, each one more stable than the last." Of course, the gap between theory and practice could sometimes be frustratingly wide.

"I'll run some simulations- and perhaps we could see if we could replicate her original blood? I doubt it would work, but it would make me breathe easier if we somehow had more to work with. I could be worth a try."

He looked up to Helen to see what she thought of the idea. He'd have to learn more about the exact traits of this Source DNA, but she'd given him enough to get started with. He could assist her without missing something vital.

She smiled. "It's better than shooting in the dark. And I certainly hate shooting in the dark. Thank you for your support and help, Dr. Suresh... it means a great deal to me."

"Well, I know that if anything like this had happened to Molly, I'd have moved heaven and earth to make it better." He looked up and stared at her for a moment, then smiled back. "And there's certainly no reason you have to do that alone, here. I'm just happy to be putting my expertise to use in some fashion."

He dug around in his bag and pulled out a flash drive. Setting it into the computer, he paused in contemplation, then just pulled and entire folder over, copying it. It had been a long time since he trusted anyone with more than just a small amount of his research- hell, it had been awhile since he trusted himself. "I'll give this to you before I forget," he said, watching it copy. "Then I'll attempt to replicate the blood. The hatches operate on thought, don't they? If I study Ashley's original genetic structure directly beforehand, perhaps there's a chance..."

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008. [ accidental visual / location: helen's lab ] that you'll find me, that you'll see me.

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