Amazonia

“Any estimate of the onset of the oral cancer?” the pathologist asked.

“It’s hard to say with certainty, but I’d estimate it started between six to eight weeks ago.”

A whistle of appreciation sounded over the line. “That’s damn fast!”

“I know. And so far, most of the other slides I’ve reviewed show a similar high degree of malignancy. I can’t find a single cancer that looks older than three months.” She fingered the stack before her. “But then again, I’ve still got quite a few slides to review.”

“What about the teratomas?”

“They’re the same. All between one to three months. But—”

Dr. Hibbert interrupted. “My God, it makes no sense. I’ve never seen so many cancers in one body. Especially teratomas.”

Lauren understood his consternation. Teratomas were cystic tumors of the body’s embryonic stem cells, those rare germ cells that could mature into any bodily tissue: muscle, hair, bone. Tumors of these cells were usually only found in a few organs, such as the thymus or testes. But in Gerald Clark’s body, they were everywhere—and that wasn’t the oddest detail.

“Stanley, they aren’t just teratomas. They’re teratocarcinomas.”

“What? All of them?”

She nodded, then realized she was on the phone. “Every single one of them.” Teratocarcinomas were the malignant form of the teratoma, a riotous cancer that sprouted a mix of muscle, hair, teeth, bone, and nerves. “I’ve never seen such samples. I’ve found sections with partly formed livers, testicular tissue, even ganglia spindles.”

“Then that might explain what we found down here,” Stanley said.

“What do you mean?”

“Like I said when I first called, you really should come and see this for yourself.”

“Fine,” she said with an exasperated sigh. “I’ll be right down.”

Lauren ended the connection and pushed away from the microscope table. She stretched the kink out of her back from the two hours spent stooped over the slides. She considered calling her husband, but he was surely just as busy over at CIA headquarters. Besides, she’d catch up with him in another hour when they conferenced with Frank and Kelly in the field.

Grabbing her lab smock, Lauren headed out the door and descended the stairs to the institute’s morgue. A bit of trepidation coursed through her. Though she was a doctor and had worked as an ER clinician for ten years, she still grew queasy during gross necropsies. She preferred the clean histology suite to the morgue’s bone saws, stainless steel tables, and hanging scales. But she had no choice today.

As she crossed down the long hall toward the double doors, she distracted herself with the mystery of the case. Gerald Clark had been missing for four years, then walked out of the jungle with a new arm, undoubtedly a miraculous cure. But contrarily, his body had been ravaged by tumors, a cancerous onslaught that had started no more than three months prior. So why the sudden burst of cancer? Why the preponderance of the monstrous teratocarcinomas? And ultimately, where the hell had Gerald Clark been these past four years?

She shook her head. It was too soon for answers. But she had faith in modern science. Between her own research and the fieldwork being done by her children, the mystery would be solved.

Lauren pushed into the locker room, slipped blue paper booties over her shoes, then smeared a dab of Vicks VapoRub under her nose to offset the smells and donned a surgical mask. Once ready, she entered the lab.

It looked like a bad horror movie. Gerald Clark’s body lay splayed open like a frog in biology class. Half the contents of his body cavities lay either wrapped in red-and-orange hazardous-waste bags or were resting atop steel scales. Across the room, samples were being prepped in both formaldehyde and liquid nitrogen. Eventually Lauren would see the end result as a pile of neatly inscribed microscope slides, stained and ready for her review, just the way she preferred it.

As Lauren entered the room, some of the stronger smells cut through the mentholated jelly: bleach, blood, bowel, and necrotic gases. She tried to concentrate on breathing through her mouth.

Around her, men and women in bloody aprons worked throughout the lab, oblivious to the horror. It was an efficient operation, a macabre dance of medical professionals.

A tall man, skeletally thin, lifted an arm in greeting and waved her over. Lauren nodded and slipped past a woman tilting a hanging tray and sliding Gerald Clark’s liver into a waste bag.

“What did you find, Stanley?” Lauren asked as she approached the worktable.

Dr. Hibbert pointed down, his voice muffled by his surgical mask. “I wanted you to see this before we cut it out.”

They stood at the head of the slanted table holding Gerald Clark’s body. Bile, blood, and other bodily fluids flowed in trickles to the catch bucket at the other end. Closer at hand, the top of Gerald Clark’s skull had been sawed open, exposing the brain beneath.

“Look here,” Stanley said, leaning closer to the purplish brain.

With a thumb forceps, the pathologist carefully pulled back the outer meningeal membranes, as if drawing back a curtain. Beneath the membranes, the gyri and folds of the cerebral cortex were plainly visible, traced with darker arteries and veins.

“While dissecting the brain from the cranium, we found this.”

Dr. Hibbert separated the right and left hemispheres of the cerebrum. In the groove between the two sections of the brain lay a walnut-size mass. It seemed to be nestled atop the corpus callosum, a whitish channel of nerves and vessels that connected the two hemispheres.

Stanley glanced at her. “It’s another teratoma…or maybe a teratocarcinoma, if it’s like all the others. But watch this. I’ve never seen anything like this.” Using his thumb forceps, he touched the mass.

“Dear God!” Lauren jumped as the tumor flinched away from the tip of his forceps. “It…it’s moving!”

“Amazing, isn’t it? That’s why I wanted you to see it. I’ve read about this property of some teratomic masses. An ability to respond to external stimuli. There was one case even of a well-differentiated teratoma that had enough cardiac muscle to beat like a heart.”

Lauren finally found her voice. “But Gerald Clark’s been dead for two weeks.”

Stanley shrugged. “I imagine, considering where it’s located, that it’s rich with nerve cells. And a good portion of them must still be viable enough to respond weakly to stimulation. But I expect this ability will quickly fade as the nerves lose juice and the tiny muscles exhaust their reserve calcium.”