Chapter 99 - A Breakthrough?
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The mouse didn\'t look frail anymore, but instead, its body was becoming more robust and energetic.
Each of these mouse cages had scanners to provide an in-depth view and structure of these mice\'s bodies on a large screen before Taya.
"Subject P4 is showing signs of restoration of healthy functions! It is becoming vigorous and healthy, making it appear younger and stronger. And clearly, we can see by looking at its eyes that it is no longer blind. The subject is also showing no signs of discomfort or any rejection of the drug so far. Could this turn out into a breakthrough?!" Taya could hardly suppress her excitement since it would not be an understatement to say that this was her life\'s work which she had been working on for way more than a decade.
And after witnessing countless failures without any results, this was the first time she ever got this far. She lost count of the number of sleepless nights she spent on developing and testing her own drug for all these years.
Sometimes she would even forget to go home and instead use supplements to keep herself awake to work overtime.
She wished more than anything for her own drug to be a success so that she could fulfill the one wish she always wanted to.
As the changes continued to take place, Taya\'s eyes were quivering as she held her breath in anticipation to see if everything would end well. She also continuously kept glancing at the screen to see the changes in its organs, muscles, and bones.
Her eyes gleamed when she saw its muscles becoming sturdier and denser, its brain neuron activity becoming faster, and its bone density increasing.
But as she continued to stare on the screen, her brows slowly pulled together to form a frown upon seeing red blinks on the screen and warning messages.
"No...no...please...you can\'t fail me!" Although her mental state was becoming chaotic, she was still a doctor and researcher at heart and began to read out the changes she was seeing on the computer screen so that she could document them.
"The subject is undergoing too much increase in muscle and bone mass, putting too much pressure on its heart. Its neurons are becoming over-excited, leading to the firing of incorrect signals too rapidly, resulting in proteins in target muscle cells becoming stressed, misfolding, and becoming non-functional leading to eventual muscle failure."
Taya\'s eyes were becoming wet, seeing her work slowly resulting in a failure yet again as she painfully stared at the screen.
Still, in a shaking voice, she continued to document her observations, "The subject\'s body temperature is rising and—"
*Splat!*
The sound of flesh exploding and blood splashing on the glass startled Taya just as she saw how the mouse\'s whole body was highlighted with danger signs on the screen suddenly.
[ Subject P4 deceased. Complete failure of bodily functions. Rupturing of organs and nerves. ]
Seeing this message on the screen made her feel even more disappointed in herself and sad.
She slowly turned her gaze towards the bloodied glass cage only to look away as a glint of pain flashed across her eyes. This was the first time a rat exploded because of her experiment, and even if she was experimenting on rats that were suffering chronic or incurable diseases or ones that were about to die, she still couldn\'t help but feel pity and bad seeing how it died.
She quickly cleaned up everything herself and finished her experimentation for today since she no longer felt the mood to continue for today.
However, the only silver lining was that she knew she got a bit closer to what she wanted since the changes that took place in the mouse\'s body were indeed a breakthrough but were too unstable.
"I am definitely missing something important for my drug...only if I could find out what it needs, then it would definitely be a success…" Taya mumbled as she took one last look at the emptied Vial of Rebirth.
So far, in simple words, what she observed was that her latest prototype drug was too strong and unstable for these rats to handle.
She decided to stop experimenting on live rats from now on and decided to do it through AI simulation, which she had already planned since the start but was taking time for the program to be made ready for her to use.
\'I should contact and pressure them again to quickly send it to me…\' Taya thought as she decided to return to her official office by taking the elevator.
If it wasn\'t for how desperate she was, especially as years passed, she would have taken a gradual and slow approach.
As soon as Taya reached her office, she received a notification on the glass screen on her table.
It was showing her a reminder about a meeting she was having with a certain person from a huge organization at 3 PM. And this person was someone she worked with years ago, especially researching things common people couldn\'t fathom.
\'I almost forgot about it, sigh...But still, what does he want this time…\'
Suddenly she heard the telephone in her office ringing and tapped her smartwatch to answer it, "Yes?"
"Dr. Snow, this is just a call to remind you about the 3 PM meeting. The Director of Vision BioSolutions and his team have already arrived early, and they have been waiting here for ten minutes already. I tried to contact you before, but you were unavailable. Should I escort them to your office if you are free?"
Taya narrowed her gaze and said, "No. Escort them to the conference hall and tell them I will come by 3 PM as agreed."
"Sure, Dr. Snow. I will inform them."
Taya\'s brows were slightly creased as she shook her head and sat down on her chair, having a bad feeling about the people who came to see her.