The CEO's Unplanned Heir novel Chapter 709

Leopold was growing more and more certain that Aurelia had contracted the superbug Medusa.

“What do we do if it's Medusa?” he asked.

“There’s only one way to treat it,” Skyler said, leaning back on the faded couch, “Phage therapy.”

“Where can we find these phages?” Leopold pressed.

The Amazon was vast; searching for these microscopic lifesavers was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

“Phages parasitize bacteria,” Skyler explained, “Each phage is specific to one type of bacteria. Medusa’s host is this tiny hedgehog. To find the phage, we gotta find the hedgehog.”

Leopold’s eyes lit up. No wonder the search teams had come up empty-handed, and they hadn’t been looking for the right host.

“What’s special about this hedgehog?”

“It’s tiny, even smaller than a pygmy hedgehog, and it’s a master at hide and seek in the jungle,” Skyler said, “Its spines are tri-colored—white at the base, brown in the middle, and black at the tips. It has pure black claws too. I heard Geoffrey found one near the thickets by the Paraná River.”

Leopold whipped out his smartphone and sent the description to the search team. A direction to search was better than a wild goose chase.

“Can phages be cultivated artificially?”

Skyler’s eyes held a hint of mystery, “To cultivate phages, you’ve gotta grow Medusa itself. In Geoffrey’s experiments, these tiny hedgehogs are the perfect Medusa hosts. They coexist without the hedgehog succumbing. But in humans, without phage balance, Medusa is lethal within days. You’ve got a week to inject the right amount of phages after infection.”