Page 99 of Anatomy of the Immortal Species

The room went quiet. Everyone’s faces twisted in concentration, as if they were trying to solve a complex puzzle.

“Well… nobody?” Zacharia said.

Constantine almost laughed but kept his jaw clenched. He asked Alex, “Does anyone else know about the mummy?”

She raised her chin. “Absolutely not.”

“She makes mistakes, but she doesn’t lie about them.” Viktor took a defensive stance beside Alex. “If she’d told anyone, she’d have admitted it by now.”

Constantine’s thoughts swirled. What would Mikhail do?

Block all exits and search every room, car, and creature for the mummy? Too late for that.

Call in the Tribunal to hunt for a stolen mummy from the Temple of the Dead Immortals? That would just ensure he got a cell right next to Mikhail in the ice prison.

Act like the missing mummy, known only to this supposedly trustworthy group, wasn’t a big deal? Reasonable.

“It must be the Beduin vampires. They found out we took the mummy and came back for it,” Viktor said, sounding confident enough that Constantine almost believed him.

“Look on the bright side. At least now all evidence of us stealing it is gone,” Zacharia said.

“And the genetic tests?” Constantine asked Helena.

The nymph, who’d been quiet for the last minutes, spoke up. “We don’t need the mummy anymore. We have the results.”

“What? And you haven’t said anything?!” Nyavolski shouted.

“I just got them, for heaven’s sake!”

“Out with it,” Constantine demanded.

Her lips tightened. “I suggest we move to the Council meeting room. You’re going to want to sit down for this…”

37

Helena paced up and down the length of the room as Constantine and the others took their seats.

“We did a comparative DNA test between the mummy, a living immortal, and a human,” she said. “Of course, we confirmed what we already know – that immortal species have two extra base pairs not found throughout the genome, but only in specific genes. These extra pairs determine the species affiliation and the so-called ‘supernatural’ abilities of these creatures. Those nucleotides are absent in humans…”

“Nucleotides are those letters that genes are coded with, right?” Viktor asked.

Constantine shifted in his seat. The head of the table felt just as uncomfortable for him as trying to decipher genetic terminology.

Helena halted behind her husband, forcing him to twist his neck to face her.

“Yes. Each nucleotide contains a nitrogenous base, orletter.It’s like an alphabet, and each person iswrittenin one. While the human alphabet contains only four letters, the immortal one consists of six. The mummy is also coded with six, so in that regard, we can deduce nothing has changed. This is not new information. We’ve known for a while that the DNA structure of immortals pre-1744 and those post-1744 has remained the same. The interesting thing is what follows.”

Constantine tapped the table with his fingers. “Which is?”

Helena smiled. “We discovered the fourth chromosomecontains a DNA sequence that is different across all three DNA specimens I compared! Yes, if these differences were seen just in humans, we would accept that they are natural and species-specific… But all three DNA sequences are different. And although the human sequence is significantly different – meaning the order of the letters is completely rearranged – the mummy and the contemporary immortal share a much greater resemblance, with one enormous, essential difference: methylated DNA!”

Constantine sighed. “Explain, Helena.”

“I’m about to, necromancer. The letters are arranged the same way, but some of them have been structurally altered. If I must compare it, we have the same sentence, but the letters are written differently. At the end of the day, the gene is active, but it has a different expression, a different activity.”

“That different activity is what led to the Changes?” Viktor asked.

Helena lifted a palm in the air. “This is where it gets even more interesting. The gene we’re speaking of is known to humans as well. In scientific texts, they call it MORPH4 or thegene of immortality. Of course, they’re only speculating, because humans don’t believe immortality is possible…”