"What's going on? What happened? Why is it so noisy out there?" Austin barraged the security guard with questions.
"Reporting, sir... It seems... there's a serum! They found a serum!" The guard was incredibly agitated, his words tumbling out incoherently. It took him a moment to articulate what he meant, his face flushed red.
"What serum? Catch your breath, speak slowly!" Austin loosened his grip on the man's uniform.
"Just now... the public address system broadcasted an emergency bulletin. The scientists have developed a curative serum! An antiviral! The critical patients are already starting to recover!" The guard explained with frantic gestures, finally making himself clear.
"Thank God... that's incredible." Hearing this, Austin stood stunned for a moment before letting out a massive sigh of relief.
Although the Information Department wasn't under his direct purview, the ship's command structure was tight. They wouldn't broadcast unverified, chaotic news to the general public.
If the announcement was live, it was the real deal. Austin, of course, knew the classified details behind the scenes; Jason's Enhanced physiology must have been the key. Good. Thank God, he thought, the heavy weight in his chest finally lifting.
Mars Base, Biology Laboratory.
Professor Dennis, the newly appointed head of the department, was meticulously observing the patients in the critical ward. After receiving the antiviral serum, all infected individuals showed significant signs of improvement. The effects were immediate and undeniable.
However, Dennis's face remained utterly impassive.
"Pay attention. Vitals must be checked every three hours, on the dot."
"Administer the serum intravenously every six hours, and strictly monitor the total dosage."
"Cellular growth of the immune response must continue around the clock. Do not relax!"
Dennis was notoriously demanding; praise rarely crossed his lips. Whether speaking to colleagues or subordinates, the words used to describe him were always the same: demanding, perfectionist, strict.
But Dennis hadn't always been this way. In the past, he had been known for his smooth charisma, possessing both a brilliant intellect and exceptionally high emotional intelligence.
Back on Earth, as a world-renowned scientist, Dennis ran his own independent laboratory. He regularly met with Federation officials, pharmaceutical executives, and global medical organizations. In every boardroom, he charmed his way to successful grants and partnerships, using his eloquence and social grace to win over the most skeptical investors.
Just before the evacuation, Dennis had been a frontrunner for the Nobel Prize in Medicine. He had just closed negotiations with several major bio-tech conglomerates. Thanks to their stellar track record, his lab was slated to receive record-breaking funding for the next fiscal year.
He had been at the pinnacle of his career.
At the time, Dennis had been planning to fire a few rebellious, socially awkward junior researchers from his team. In his eyes, no one liked a troublemaker who couldn't play the corporate game.
In this industry, emotional intelligence is far more valuable than raw IQ. Those who can't even hold a polite conversation need a few years of harsh reality to set them straight, he had thought while sitting in his plush office, sipping coffee and reading the morning reports.
And then, the disaster struck. Dennis witnessed the great fire, the inferno that would forever scar his soul.
He had been dragged from the rubble, battered and half-dead. The man who pulled him out was none other than Mark, the socially awkward junior researcher he had planned to fire. He would never forget that name.
"Doctor, our research data is still inside! I'll go get it!" Mark had shouted over the roar of the flames, turning back and sprinting into the inferno. It was the last thing he ever said.
That day, Dennis watched his laboratory and Mark collapse into ash.
From that day forward, Dennis fundamentally changed. He became cold, ruthless, and uncompromisingly strict. The very next day, he fired every single researcher who prioritized flattery over facts, replacing them with raw, dedicated interns who were blank slates ready to be molded.
His opening speech to any new hire was always the same: "You are not here to socialize, nor are you here to build a comfortable career. You are here to do the science. I will hold you to the absolute strictest standards. If you cannot handle the pressure, the door is behind you."
He was relentless, often pushing his interns to their breaking points.
"In my laboratory, you can contradict me, you can question me, and you can criticize my theories. But you must never make a careless mistake. Carelessness is unforgivable." Those were his exact words.
His peers held polarized views of him. Collaborating with Dennis meant enduring endless nitpicking; even the slightest statistical error would result in a brutal, humiliating dressing-down, regardless of whether the offender was a junior lab tech or a fellow department head.
Consequently, most of the research staff feared him like the plague.
But it was undeniable that Dennis was brilliant. Because of his fanatical strictness, his lab's data was considered the gold standard of reliability.
In medicine, there is no margin for error. A single mistake translates to a medical disaster; it translates to lost lives. Dennis became an ironclad guarantee, nothing that passed through his hands would ever fail due to human error. He had staked his decades-long reputation on it.
This uncompromising standard built his immense prestige, making him one of the most respected and feared minds aboard the ship.
After reviewing the latest vitals from the ward, Dennis gave a microscopic nod. The serum was working exceptionally well.
Yet, he was not satisfied. They had a cure, but they still didn't fully understand the underlying biochemical mechanism of the antiviral serum. To a true scientist, relying on a black-box miracle was tantamount to failure.
He immediately began prepping the next phase of experiments. The serum's composition was a chaotic soup: various complex proteins, lipids, polypeptides, and growth factors. Isolating the exact active compound was a monumental task.
"Listen up, everyone. Our next objective is to isolate exactly which white blood cells synthesized these specific antibodies and map out every step of the immune cascade," Dennis announced to his team.
The assistants surrounding him were all prodigies who had survived his grueling crucible. They were elite, meticulous, and virtually flawless in their methodology.
"If we can synthesize a treatment that triggers ordinary patients to produce memory T-cells, they will develop active immunity. They won't have to fear this pathogen anymore," Dennis explained sharply. "If we rely purely on passive immunity from the serum, the moment it metabolizes out of their system, they will be entirely vulnerable to a secondary infection."
"It would be perfect if we could synthesize a viable vaccine..." one research assistant mused aloud. "With a vaccine, the entire civilian population could be inoculated. But realistically, the normal human immune system might simply be incapable of defeating this Martian biology. It might require an Superhuman physiology..."
"No, that is a flawed assumption," Dennis interrupted, shaking his head. "I've reviewed the Captain's physiological data. The structural baseline of his immune system is nearly identical to an ordinary human's. The difference lies solely in cellular metabolic activity and reaction speed."
"You must remember, these Martian pathogens are not evolutionarily superior to us. Their biochemical structure is simply foreign to terrestrial life. When confronted with an alien pathogen, the baseline immune system is too slow to recognize the threat."
Dennis tapped a screen, bringing up the clinical data from the first hundred infected subjects. "Look here. The patients' initial symptoms strongly resemble an acute allergic response. Our bodies are misinterpreting the virus as a mild, non-lethal allergen. Because it doesn't immediately trigger a full-scale immune alarm, the physiological response is sluggish."
"But there are statistical outliers." Dennis pointed to a specific cluster of data points. "In the very first batch of patients, the vast majority deteriorated rapidly. However, a small fraction showed signs of slow, natural stabilization. I hypothesize that even without the serum, a minority of the population might have survived. This proves that the baseline human immune system is effective; it's simply too slow to mount a defense before the neurotoxin does irreversible damage."
"By the time the body realizes it's under attack, the patient is already braindead. But the biological mechanisms are there. I firmly believe a mass-producible vaccine is possible."
Hearing this, an assistant's eyes lit up with sudden realization. "Then we just need to artificially induce the body's threat-recognition protocols. We can train the immune system to flag the virus immediately and produce specific antibodies..."