Mercedes Carpenter sat in a secure lab in the Task Force Section, a rather obscure part of the facility labeled "Medical Security". It was where the mysterious alien being taken captive at Narendra was been kept in prolonged stasis while Mercedes tried to determine just exactly what it was and where it came from.
For the past several weeks she'd been trying to do just that, running endless hours of tests and comparing them with every genetic record in the Federation database, which was a mammoth task by any means and the reason it was taking so long to get any results. What was most intriguing about the creature was its triple-helix DNA structure. While a triple-helix itself wasn't that out of the ordinary, what was extraordinary was the amount of genes it contained, number well over a million, the most recorded for any biological organism.
The work was sometimes mundane; Mercedes had to sit and wait for a lot of the tests to be completed before she could move on with her work. During the times she waited she tried to keep herself occupied, but her thoughts often drifted to Scott unwillingly. She had seen him the other day in a coffee shop with a young woman. Who it was she didn't know. He hadn't mentioned that he was seeing someone when they spoke last, but why would he have? Mercedes sighed. She couldn't just expect to waltz back into his life and having him show immediate interest. There was a lot of bridge under the water. Maybe he just wanted to get to know her as a friend again.
She made a mental note to drop by Sickbay again and talk with Sally, just casually asking in conversation what Scott was up to. Sally was sometimes more effective than the Federation News Network.
Catching herself as her thoughts drifted off, she got up and stretched her legs, walking over to the group of monitors in the lab that displayed readings from the stasis chamber where the alien was kept. Mercedes didn't like being in the same room with it. Whenever she entered the room she got an icy cold feeling about her, as if she'd never be happy again. The creature was clearly strongly telepathic, and even in stasis it seemed to have some power.
A beeping drew her attention and she returned to the terminal where her latest comparison test series had just completed. She had cross-referenced some of the details within the classified R&D database that she had been granted access to. Although she could search, she couldn't access the files herself however and needed higher clearance for that.
The results indicated that a biological sample recovered from an archaeological expedition on the restricted planet of Sitiva matched the parameters she had input, a biological sample that was almost a million years old according to the records.
"Sitiva..." she said the name out loud, glad that finally she had some sort of result at least. Though what it meant she had no idea.
= End Log =