The Billionaire Scientists’ System:Ten Geniuses. One Mission

Chapter 8: The Alchemist’s Price

The stillness in the makeshift lab was brittle, broken only by the hum of the DNA synthesizer and the ragged rhythm of Adrian’s heartbeat. In the sterile petri dish before him lay not just a sample—it was the fragile salvation of a child, shadowed by the ghosts of every failure he had carried here.

The boy was from Kwale district, one of the first to receive food delivered through Jua’s surprisingly disciplined “logistics team.” He hadn’t fallen sick from the food, but from the cruel world it was meant to outpace. A cut on his foot, left untreated, had festered into a raging Klebsiella infection—resistant to every known antibiotic. The local clinic had exhausted its options. By the time he reached the Zone’s medical wing, he was a burning bundle of fever and shallow breaths.

Dr. Sofia Delgado’s face was grave. “It’s a pan-resistant strain. My surgical bots can cut away the infected tissue, but I can’t stop the sepsis. The last-line antibiotics cost more than his family earns in a year. Even if I had them here, it wouldn’t be enough.”

The injustice hit Adrian like a physical blow. He could turn sewage into steak, yet here he stood powerless before a microbe. The System wanted poverty eradicated, but disease was the claw that dragged people back down. Food meant nothing if infection claimed the body.

Then the notification struck:

<< URGENT SIDE QUEST: THE COST OF A LIFE >>

Objective: Develop a broad-spectrum antimicrobial effective against pan-resistant bacteria. Cost per dose must not exceed $1.

Time Limit: 48 hours.

Reward: Tier 2 Knowledge Injection – Medical Nanotech. 10,000 System Credits.

Penalty for Failure: Termination of Subject ‘KWALE-032’. Morale loss in Zone.

The designation—“KWALE-032”—felt like a knife. To the System, the boy was data. To Adrian, he was flesh, breath, and hope.

He plunged into the work, his Unyielding Resolve trait igniting like cold fire. His biotech mastery gave him the language of genes and cells, but this demanded more: materials science, pharmacology, and physics, all under a brutal clock. Chemistry alone would fail—bacteria would always evolve around molecules. He needed something elemental, uncheatable.

The idea came from nature: bacteriophages, viruses that preyed on bacteria. But instead of a virus, he would build a machine.

For thirty-six hours he didn’t sleep. The lab became chaos—holographic schematics, rejected prototypes, the stale tang of coffee. Using the System’s simulation suite, he modeled thousands of nanoscale constructs until one design held: a star-shaped polymer particle, simple and cheap.

“You’re building a drone,” Voss observed from the doorway, his voice tinged with intrigue.

“A dumb drone,” Adrian rasped, bloodshot eyes locked on the model. “No poison. No programming. Just physics.”

The six-pointed star was atomically precise. Once swallowed by a bacterium, it would tumble until its rigid edges pierced the fragile inner membrane. A shear force greater than the cell could withstand would rip it apart from within.

“Elegant,” Voss admitted. “And the cost?”

“Eighty-three cents a dose. Cheap polymer. One-step synthesis. Mass-producible.”

Targeting was crude but effective—topical application or local injection. Human cells, far less permeable, would be spared. Mostly. Delgado paled but agreed: the choice was between a calculated risk and certain death.

They named it Stardust.

The first batch looked like nothing—dull gray powder. But under an electron scope, it glittered with deadly perfection. Adrian carried it himself to the medical wing. The boy’s mother clutched his sleeve, eyes raw with desperate hope. Delgado irrigated the wound with a Stardust solution.

They waited.

One hour: nothing. Fever raged.

Two hours: the boy’s shivering eased.

Six hours: his fever broke. The swelling receded.

Delgado scanned his blood and whispered, almost disbelieving, “Ninety percent bacterial load reduction. It’s working.”

The System’s glow surged in Adrian’s vision:

<< SIDE QUEST COMPLETE >>

Reward: Tier 2 Medical Nanotech Knowledge Injection. 10,000 System Credits.

Knowledge slammed into his mind like a second heartbeat: nanofabrication, targeted delivery, immunological engineering. He didn’t just understand Stardust—he saw how to evolve it, how to weaponize it against cancers, how to thread cures through the veins of the dying.

The boy lived. The miracle cost less than a dollar.

Adrian staggered outside and vomited into the dust. Not from fatigue, but from the crushing weight of what he’d unleashed. He could save millions with miracles like this. But each miracle deepened the abyss of ethical nightmares he was forced to walk.

The path to ten million lives was paved with salvation bought cheap—yet each step left him heavier.

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The lull in the makeshift lab was brittle, broken only by the hum of the DNA synthesizer and the ragged rhythm of Adrian’s heartbeat. In the sterile petri dish before him lay not just a sample—it was the fragile salvation of a child, shadowed by the ghosts of every failure he had carried here.

The boy was from Kwale district, one of the first to receive food delivered through Jua’s surprisingly disciplined “logistics team.” He hadn’t fallen sick from the food, but from the cruel world it was meant to outpace. A cut on his foot, left untreated, had festered into a raging Klebsiella infection—resistant to every known antibiotic. The local clinic had exhausted its options. By the time he reached the Zone’s medical wing, he was a burning bundle of fever and shallow breaths.

Dr. Sofia Delgado’s face was grave. “It’s a pan-resistant strain. My surgical bots can cut away the infected tissue, but I can’t stop the sepsis. The last-line antibiotics cost more than his family earns in a year. Even if I had them here, it wouldn’t be enough.”

The injustice hit Adrian like a physical blow. He could turn sewage into steak, yet here he stood powerless before a microbe. The System wanted poverty eradicated, but disease was the claw that dragged people back down. Food meant nothing if infection claimed the body.

Then the notification struck:

 URGENT SIDE QUEST: THE COST OF A LIFE 

Objective: Develop a broad-spectrum antimicrobial effective against pan-resistant bacteria. Cost per dose must not exceed $1.

Time Limit: 48 hours.

Reward: Tier 2 Knowledge Injection – Medical Nanotech. 10,000 System Credits.

Penalty for Failure: Termination of Subject ‘KWALE-032’. Morale loss in Zone.

The designation—“KWALE-032”—felt like a knife. To the System, the boy was data. To Adrian, he was flesh, breath, and hope.

He plunged into the work, his Unyielding Resolve trait igniting like cold fire. His biotech mastery gave him the language of genes and cells, but this demanded more: materials science, pharmacology, and physics, all under a brutal clock. Chemistry alone would fail—bacteria would always evolve around molecules. He needed something elemental, unbeatable.

The idea came from nature: bacteriophages, viruses that preyed on bacteria. But instead of a virus, he would build a machine.

For thirty-six hours he didn’t sleep. The lab became chaos—holographic schematics, rejected prototypes, the stale tang of coffee. Using the System’s simulation suite, he modeled thousands of nanoscale constructs until one design held: a star-shaped polymer particle, simple and cheap.

“You’re building a drone,” Voss observed from the doorway, his voice tinged with intrigue.

“A dumb drone,” Adrian rasped, bloodshot eyes locked on the model. “No poison. No programming. Just physics.”

The six-pointed star was atomically precise. Once swallowed by a bacterium, it would tumble until its rigid edges pierced the fragile inner membrane. A shear force greater than the cell could withstand would rip it apart from within.

“Elegant,” Voss admitted. “And the cost?”

“Eighty-three cents a dose. Cheap polymer. One-step synthesis. Mass-producible.”

Targeting was crude but effective—topical application or local injection. Human cells, far less permeable, would be spared. Mostly. Delgado paled but agreed: the choice was between a calculated risk and certain death.

They named it Stardust.

The first batch looked like nothing—dull gray powder. But under an electron scope, it glittered with deadly perfection. Adrian carried it himself to the medical wing. The boy’s mother clutched his sleeve, eyes raw with desperate hope. Delgado irrigated the wound with a Stardust solution.

They waited.

One hour: nothing. Fever raged.

Two hours: the boy’s shivering eased.

Six hours: his fever broke. The swelling receded.

Delgado scanned his blood and whispered, almost disbelieving, “Ninety percent bacterial load reduction. It’s working.”

The System’s glow surged in Adrian’s vision:

SIDE QUEST COMPLETE 

Reward: Tier 2 Medical Nanotech Knowledge Injection. 10,000 System Credits.

Knowledge slammed into his mind like a second heartbeat: nanofabrication, targeted delivery, immunological engineering. He didn’t just understand Stardust—he saw how to evolve it, how to weaponize it against cancers, how to thread cures through the veins of the dying.

The boy lived. The miracle cost less than a dollar.

Adrian staggered outside and vomited into the dust. Not from fatigue, but from the crushing weight of what he’d unleashed. He could save millions with miracles like this. But each miracle deepened the abyss of ethical nightmares he was forced to walk.

The path to ten million lives was paved with salvation bought cheap—yet each step left him heavier.

---