"A girl was brought into my clinic, suffering from some sort of horrible mutation caused by a chemical spill. I brought a sample of it and I would like you to analyze it," Mao said.

"Interesting," said Flask.  "Yes, let me see that.  It's hard to imagine a mutagen that acts that quickly..."

He took the sample and began some tests.

"...Do you want to wait here, or shall I send a message when I'm done?"

"Send me a message, please. I have to set somethings up in case," Mao said, "But thanks a lot. I owe you one."

Mao headed to meet with Enrico.

Soon Mao was at Flask's place.

Mao knocked at the door.

"Hey, you're back!" said Flask.  Was he making soup?  It looked like soup.  It smelled like soup.  But...

"What is that?" Mao asked.

"Atropine soup," Flask said.  "I'm concerned that nerve agents may be used in the near future, and I want to be ready."

"I found an unopened barrel of the chemical," Mao said. "It also seemed to be alive. I have no idea what is going on with it."

"Alive, you say?" said Flask.  "Show me!"

"When I opened it, part of it was moving," Mao said. "And I took a sample from it."

"That, I'd definitely like to see," said Flask.

Mao placed the sample down on the table.

"All right, I'll take a look," said Flask.  "Probably going to take me a day or two, though."

"That's fine. Just be careful. I doubt I'll be able to get another one," Mao said.

"All right," said Flask.  "...although having a larger sample might help.  Well, I'll see what I can do."

"I got what I could, it wasn't exactly a legal way I got this," Mao said.

"Oh, sure," said Flask.  "Not a criticism.  Let me see what I can figure out here.  Do you have any, ah, healing magic that could work with what I find?  Or are we doing straight medicine?"

"If you can stop it from growing anymore, I could do some ritual healing. It is a long process though," Mao said.

"Oh, sure," said Flask.  "...the tricky part is that it's inside someone you don't want to kill, right?  Much easier to stop this stuff if you don't have to be gentle to the patient."

"If worse comes to worse, I could amputate the leg, but that could cause even more problems. No  telling if it'd get everything," Mao said.

"I'll see if I can find a way to halt the processes," said Flask.  "I think it should be possible..."

"Thanks, I need to get some sleep. Let me know when you have something," Mao said with a yawn.

"Will do," said Flask.

What was Mao's next move?

Mao headed back home to check on her patients.