Seven Wonders Book 3 by Peter Lerangis

“I was devastated. Furious. I thought about tracking him. But that wouldn’t have brought her back. So instead I doubled down—I became obsessed with finding a way to save you.”
    â€œWhich is why you were out of town so much,” I said. “You were setting up this place. In secret. But why here?”
    â€œThis country is paradise for geneticists,” Dad said. “Mongolians share more common genes than any other human beings on the planet. Statistically, almost all descend from one ancestor dating to about 1200. We believe this to be Genghis Khan, one of the greatest conquerors in history. His achievements were superhuman. If anyone in history was a Select, he would be it. And he lived way past the age of fourteen. Which means there must be others like him, still alive.”
    â€œSo you came here on a guess?” Cass said.
    â€œI came here after a lock of the Genghis’s hair was discovered,” Dad said, stepping out of the car, “and genetic analysis suggested some abnormalities in the G7W area. An incredible finding! The problem was, the DNA was degraded. When I visited, I discovered a country with great natural resources, isolated from the rest of the world. It appealed to me as a location for a secret project. It wasn’t easy, but we were able to collect more hair and bone samples. We have just completed a thorough mapping of the great khan’s genetic code and are waiting for the findings. If we find the mechanism that kept Genghis Khan alive, maybe we have the cure for you.”
    As we all piled out, Aly said, “I’d like to see the genome.”
    â€œIt’s bewildering to a layperson,” Dad said, walking toward the building. “A human genome has billions of lines of code. I’ll show you when we get inside. But I have a few questions myself.” He pulled a cell phone from his pocket. “What are your phone numbers? While we’re waiting to hear about Bhegad, I’ll call your parents.”
    â€œNo!” Cass and Aly shouted at the same time.
    â€œThey can’t know,” I said. “If Aly’s parents find out about the Karai Institute, they’ll come after her.”
    â€œJack, I’m a parent, and you mean everything to me,” he replied. “I can’t not call these other parents, knowing what they’re going through.”
    â€œBut she’ll miss her treatments,” I said, “and—”
    â€œTreatments?” Dad stopped and turned toward us. “What exactly was Bhegad doing to you?”
    Before I could answer, Dad’s phone beeped. “McKinley,” he said. “He what? Be right there.”
    He shoved the phone back in his pocket. “There’s been a complication,” he said. “Professor Bhegad has had a heart attack.”
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    I’d seen Torquin fuss, fight, joke, and operate machinery, but I’d never seen him fret.
    He had taken Cass’s worry beads and was flipping them, one by one, down their string. I was feeling pretty worried myself. Bhegad was in the operating room and we were helpless in a small office down a glass-walled corridor. I sipped from a cup of warm liquid Dad called milk tea, but I could barely taste anything. My head ached, my stomach burned, and my legs felt weak. Dad had told me the tea would make me feel better, but it wasn’t true.
    â€œBhegad strong . . .” Torquin was muttering to no one in particular. “Very strong . . .”
    Cass and Aly were hunched over a desktop monitor, where Dad was showing a section of Genghis Khan’s genome. The letters and numbers looked blurry to me and I had to blink a few times. “All these tiny combinations of As, Ts, Gs, and Cs?” Dad said. “They’re amino acids—adenine, thymine, guanine, cytosine. The building blocks of life.” He pointed to a spot on the screen. “Here’s where the G7W gene resides. If our