Daddy/Daughter Data

Posted on Mon Jun 3, 2019 @ 4:50am by Lieutenant Nicole Anderson

414 words; about a 2 minute read

Mission: Plaga Navis
Location: Quarantine Lab

Nicole returned to the lab to find her...the Professor alone, going through a scan of the virus. Replicated dishes were scattered around him and he looked like he'd been sitting there for hours, most likely because he had.

"Professor? Were is Camille?"

Thomas turned around, looking like he'd forgotten any other beings existed. He stared wide-eyed and then said, "oh, Nicole. Good." He snapped his fingers and beckoned her over. "Come see this."

Nicole walked over cautiously. "What is it?"

"I think...it's why the virus isn't replicating," he said, admiringly. He pulled up a chemical compound and a diagram of the virus. "I think the virus doesn't replicate, because that's not its function. I think it's utilizing an enzyme common to humanoids to engineer a toxin. It's basically a poison factory on the cellular level. It's...brilliant, but horrifying."

*No wonder you admire it,* she thought. "How does that relate to the prion failure?"

"It shouldn't," he said. "But now that we know how it works, we can try from another angle."

"Why did we not detect this toxin in the samples?"

The professor pointed at one of the scans. "It breaks down almost immediately. I barely sampled enough to get this scan."

"So the 40 hour incubation is the virus taking time to produce the toxin until it reaches lethal levels," Nicole said slowly.

"And the toxin is spread among different cell groups making it difficult to detect until it's too late," Thomas concluded.

"Okay," Nicole said, sitting down next to him. She brought up the scans on her monitor. "So if we can't stop the virus, we could stop the toxin, or neutralize it somehow."

"Although given our failure to affect the virus, I'm not holding out hope with the toxin," Thomas said.

"It looks like a fairly simple compound," she said, reviewing the initial scan.

"Produced by a 'fairly simple' virus," Thomas reminded her.

"So we don't underestimate it," she said, her fingers flying over the controls. "We'll need samples of the toxin if we can, and a complete chemical workup. I'll have Camille--"

"Medical emergency. Doctor Anderson report to Sickbay."

Nicole was already out of her chair before the comm ended, grabbing her bag and rushing out the door.

Thomas turned back to the screen, sighing and setting up another round of scans and contemplated the mess he was about to tidy up, and the nap he desperately needed. "I'm getting too old for this," he said to himself.

 

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