“Of course, sir.”

They all took their seats at the table, and Binghamton began the meeting by summarizing everything that was known to date. Though Juan was familiar with most of this, some of the details were new to him—such as the fact that agents were scouring databases at hospitals worldwide, trying to track down where the unauthorized cancer treatments had been taking place.

When Binghamton was done, the director turned to Juan. “Dr. Gutierrez, can you give me a layman’s view of what you think is going on? What exactly are we dealing with? I understand that it’s some kind of genetic mutation through a virus being used on cancer patients?”

Juan cracked open the Diet Coke and took a long swig, trying to relax his nerves. “Sir, it’s not really a mutation. These viruses are different than your normal viruses that gives you a cold. These are the kinds of viruses we use for gene therapy. They target cells and modify the genetic material within in order to fix whatever is ailing a given patient. Unfortunately, with these viruses… I can’t really say what they’re doing. Almost two thousand genes are being modified at once, and that’s going to cause cascading effects.”

“Would one sip of this water mean you’re infected?”

“I can’t say for certain yet. It could be. But I suspect you’d have to get a regular infusion of these viruses and as time goes on, more and more of your cells are modified.”

The director nodded. “It’s similar to chemotherapy where you inject a targeted poison of sorts that attempts to eliminate the cancer in the body.”

“Yes, that’s exactly right.” Juan was impressed with the apt analogy. This man was no idiot.

“And how does what you saw this morning relate to that? According to my briefing, the adult mice weren’t affected by the virus at all, just the babies. Do you have any theories on that?”

“I do. Gene therapy has traditionally been limited to somatic cells, meaning the genetic modifications are not inherited by the child. But clearly this virus has some germline modification in place, meaning it does affect the sperm and ovum. That being said, we observed no effect at all on the adults who ingested the virus, other than a slight fever. Yet clearly something dramatic happened in the babies. As soon as those babies were in the open air, the mother began convulsing. Only seconds later the father, who was at least a foot away in a separate cage, began to convulse too.”

“How that’s even possible?” one of the men sitting across from Juan asked.