Queen

Chapter 4

Queen- Chapter 4

Nanette Flores had been particularly tired all day. She scanned the inventory of the last 24 hours and couldn't place a specific reason why that might be. She had been spending more time on assignment in the lab across town. The commute was a bitch, but not so much as to account for this marked fatigue. She wondered if it was going to be safe for her to ride home on her small electric cycle, (Cars had been long ago regulated and rigid restrictions were imposed for personal use). She hadn't been this tired since her first trimester when she was pregnant with her daughter, Hannah.

The new assignment and the lab were both top secret and high priority. In some ways she knew more about the mysterious DNA she had been studying for the past year and in some ways she knew less. She had managed to piece the puzzle together enough from what little she had in order to provide an outline of the animal they were looking at. She had no definitive conclusions yet, but she managed to explain the coexistence of genetic material from two different species as a mutation formed as a result of toxic contamination from a munitions manufacturing facility in the US. It had taken nearly 80 years for the soil and the groundwater surrounding the area to begin releasing the toxins created in those bunkers during the second world war. No one knew until fairly recently it was possible for some chemical compounds to remain inert and essentially hidden within other cells until released by either degeneration or environmental change.

Something about this electroreception situation picked at her mind like a scab off a mosquito bite. She found what she needed to know about what it could do with it, but could only conjecture in what way the animal would use it. She knew they were looking at a highly intelligent animal, maybe not capable of verbal communication as such but certainly capable of complex thought and self awareness. As it were, this animal could have capabilities that would blow the roof off of what the human race thinks it knows about communication. Similarly, if this animal uses it's abilities as a weapon, the CIA would be chomping at the bit to get it's mitts on it. Nanette guessed this of course was the focus of the study of this animal. She felt a sudden and intense pang of sadness. The government would use every last scrap of intel she could extract from this project to for its own agenda. Of course it was her job to assist in growing the defense department's assets and capabilities. Not just her job, but her duty, she swore an oath. She had contributed to plenty of projects similar to this one, but this particular project had her feelings in knots. Somehow it was different from the others, she couldn't separate the exploitation of this... "being" was the word whispered in her head when she thought about it. Not just an animal, a being.

She pushed her chair back from the long stainless table. Another in a long line of stainless tables in sterile laboratories where she had spent most of her waking hours hunched over equipment designed to autopsy cellular materials. As she arched her back and stretched the biggest stretch she could muster, her thoughts wandered to Stan and Hannah. Summoning his communicator by name, Nan waited for his smiling face to materialize. Instead she got a voice message. "Hi, this is Stan! Hannah and I can't answer your call right now but we'll call you back as soon as we can! Say goodbye, Hannah..." Nan smiled a broad smile as Hannah's tiny voice projected from her communicator: "Bye! Hope you have a good day today!" Her heart flooded with warmth. And then she slid from the chair to the sterile floor.