"Yeah."
"It's expensive?" She sounded honestly interested.
"Yeah," Julie said. "Mine's about three hundred a dose. I bet Sin's is worse since he's got more."
"Five," he admitted. "Every four days."
"I don't pay nearly as much," Davis admitted. "Just about two hundred a month for my leg."
Rissa nodded, accepting all of that. "Does protecting the weak mean things like making those medications more affordable?"
"How are you gonna do that?" Trent wanted to know. "Pharmacon isn't going to just cut the cost of the meds to be nice."
"Medical applications, pharmaceuticals, patents," Rissa looked at Sin. "Would curing your need for the injections count as a miracle?"
"Yeah," he said, not even ashamed to show how much he hated them.
"Well, then that answers one part of the problem. The download is done." Rissa pushed her feet over the edge of the bed. "Pull it up, Zan?"
The kid nodded and opened the file. It took a while, then a strange conglomeration of shapes and angles appeared. It looked like nothing more than garbage.
"You sure that decoded right?" Zan asked.
"Yes," Rissa breathed. "Dear God."
"Hey!" Julie snapped. "None of that."
Rissa just pointed at the screen.
"I still don't know what it is," Zan said.
"That is the active bend of a complex protein," Rissa told them. "The molecule is huge. Fourteen Ingénue, at least, have carried a portion, but this was the heaviest piece I've had so far."
"You're talking Greek again," Sin said.
"They broke it up," she explained, nodding at Zan. "Save that and let me unplug?"
"You're good," the kid assured her. "Gonna miss your mind, though. Fucking impressive."
Rissa smiled and reached up for the cable, sighing as it released, then she turned back to them. "The shape on the screen? It's the actual chemical composition of the therapeutic portion of a new medication. The part that makes the drug work, basically. It's going to be unstable and will have a short shelf life, butthat," and she pointed at the screen again, "will make the body identify your implants as a part of itself. Basically, it will reset your immune system. It's not just a new drug."
"Ok?" Julie asked.
"This is acurefor cybernetic rejection," she said, trying to make them understand. "Take it once and never need another injection, pill, or patch. I don't know why they're running it through us, but that just went to City Hall for patent approval."
"So they'll get it," Davis said. "How does this affect us, and why is everyone acting like it's a bad thing?"
"More importantly, why is someone jacking Ingénue to get it?" Sin added.
Rissa closed her eyes and sighed. "Because they don't want to give it to people. Pharmacon has had this medication for a while. They've hidden it because it wouldn't be profitable. Recently, someone has decided to patent the active portion so no one else can discover it by accident." Lifting her lids, her eyes landed on Sin. "But this download wasn't from Pharmacon. The encryption was."
"Then who?" Sin asked.
"Making a lot of assumptions, I think this was stolen," she explained. "I can only guess the Legion has made some kind of deal with one of Pharmacon's competitors for limited use in exchange for assisting with the patent somehow. Pharmacon will turn in their application to find the active portion is already patented, and this other company will likely get some kind of Legion benefits in the end—but there's not enough information for me to be sure what."
"Ok…" Sin was nodding at her, encouraging her to keep going.
"So if only the church can cure rejection, it's a good way to 'prove' God is real—or at least that miracles are. If only the active bend is patented, it protects the medication without revealing what it actually is—or that it's complete. Pharmacon's competitor will be paid off, so they won't say a thing. But to make a chemical like this takes a lot of research, and that means a lot of people who know about it. Someone talked." Her eyes moved back to the molecule. "And the number of attempts at jacking it from Ingénue minds makes me believe someone else wants to get their hands on it. I don't know if that's for profit or to help others, but they're willing to kill the Ingénue to get it."
