No Time to Die by Kira Peikoff Read Free Book Online

lungs, and bones are in peak condition.”
    â€œMy God.” She closed her eyes again. “I was about to . . . I don’t know what . . .”
    â€œI understand. This is all very overwhelming.” He paused. “But once things settle down, I hope you’ll realize how valuable a contribution you could help make. You’re nearly unprecedented, Zoe.”
    She withdrew her hand from his and wiped her tear-stained face. “Nearly?”
    â€œThere’s only one other case in the literature that comes close. A girl, Victoria Janzen, born in 1980 in Australia, whose growth stopped completely at around nine months old. She lived eighteen years as a baby, and no one could figure out why. Just like you, the only things that grew were her hair and nails. They called it Syndrome X. Unfortunately she passed away after a sudden seizure in 1998, about two years before the first human genome was sequenced. They didn’t have the antiepileptic medication then that you’re taking today. But many of my colleagues today believe she was the one and only recorded case of a disruption of the master regulator gene.”
    Zoe exhaled a deep breath she didn’t know she was holding. Dr. Carlyle watched her, allowing her to absorb the full weight of his words.
    â€œWhy did Victoria stop aging as a baby, and I stopped at fourteen?”
    He shrugged. “It’s a good question. I would guess that the idiopathic metabolic disorder that prevented you from reaching puberty somehow partially turned off your master gene.”
    â€œOnly partially?”
    â€œYour cognitive growth has not been severely affected, so whatever mutation you have, it’s pretty much just compromised the physiological part of the gene’s expression. In other words, your mental age has been able to advance somewhat beyond your physical age.”
    â€œBut not Victoria’s?”
    â€œRight. I’m guessing she had a mutation that turned off the entire gene. But I can’t say for sure.”
    A more pressing concern was already spilling out of her lips. “If they had the medicine, could Victoria have lived forever?”
    â€œForever is a very long time,” he said, rubbing his chin. “What we do know is that there’s no known upper limit of human longevity. Every generation pushes the boundary. There’s nothing in nature that says we have to age.”
    She balked. “So you’re saying I might live to be a thousand?”
    â€œI wouldn’t necessarily go that far. Even if you’re not susceptible to aging, there’s still a million other ways to die—sicknesses, injuries, et cetera. It’s not as if you’re immortal. And anyway, we don’t know what effect this condition will have on your organs long-term”—Zoe opened her mouth to interrupt, but he beat her to it—“though how long is long-term, I really can’t say.”
    â€œHow could I be only fourteen ?” She squeezed her throbbing temples with the heels of her hands. “I have a driver’s license, a high school diploma. I just babysat a girl that age last week!”
    Dr. Carlyle tilted his head, eyes widening. “What was that like?”
    The girl, Bethany, was the daughter of her parents’ friends, and Zoe had been doing them a favor by staying the evening while they went out. But it had felt less like a chore than a get-together—watching Harry Potter on Blu-ray, baking brownies, and paging through a titillating copy of Seventeen magazine. Zoe had felt so comfortable that night, never once feeling self-conscious about her lack of alcoholic tolerance, political interests, or a boyfriend—the triple threat of grief in college—but thought little of it afterward.
    â€œIt was fun,” she admitted. “But . . . still . . . this is crazy. I can’t wrap my head around it.”
    â€œTake your time,” he said gently. “I have a