2132:Phoenix

Chapter 27

     "Do you know how much money we dumped into that girl?" Hivac looked ready to shred the reports on his lap. Vinnepus seemed unfazed, she had been a thorn in his side since the beginning. I could not be so calm though. The sponsors would not be happy. We lost our best male and the strongest female we had. I knew it would be better if they were gone, but I'm unsure the people in charge would feel that way.

"She was a festering wound. There's no guarantee her child would've been any different." Vinnepus might have realized the line he was walking if he pulled his head from his work. I didn't know what he was doing but he seemed enthralled.

"Do you have any leads on who got them out, Captain?"

"The wiring on their door was tampered with from the inside. The ship was preparing to go on patrol. It seems they escaped during the human stir up"

"But of course, there were no cameras in that wing, and Calepus destroyed the ship's tracking system." Hivac threw the manual at the back of Vinnepus's head but the doctor was already ducked to work with a processor. "What is so divinely interesting that you can not bother to look away from your work doctor," Hivac roared, but stayed seated.

"Alexia's DNA. I sequenced some from when she first arrived, and some from right before her escape, and now I'm not even sure she is human." Hivac and I were silenced and Vinnepus finally looked from his work. "It's strange, some of her DNA has been completely altered, yet she didn't display any physical changes."

"What could have caused something like that?"

"At first, I suspected viral transmission, but it's far too precise to be accidental. Then I thought perhaps it was all of the drugs we gave her and it induced some sort of mutation, but it's still too controlled to have been an accident."

"Are you saying she was sabotaged?" Hivac looked like he was about to pounce on a new lead, thankfully Vinnepus didn't give him the chance.

"It's likely that somewhere in her family line there was a non-human. The mutations could come with age, or they could have been induced. Whatever the case, I'd have to run the DNA against everything we have in the system."

"And that will take you how long?"

"With little narrowing parameters. A month at best." I was about to sigh in relief. "But if we found her I could run some tests to narrow it down to a couple dozen species."

"Start your tests, I'll see what we can do about locating the girl." They'd have every bounty hunter in the system after her if he offered enough money. She wasn't just a slap in the face, she was an oddity. If aliens had bread with humans successfully before she was the perfect example. She'd be worth fortunes to every species for study.

"This stays in this room," I growl. The Torrex was only one species. If even 50 of the intelligent species in the galaxy were looking for her she'd never be able to hide. What do I care? I didn't know why I was worried for her, but I was. She would have been worse off here though.

"Agreed. We will not start a galaxy-wide panic. Human hybrids need to be controlled. If Alexia has proven anything it's that hybrids are not meant for this galaxy."

"Aren't you glad we didn't kill her," Vinnepus taunted. Hivac looked like he wanted to throw something else but he left. I should've killed her. Would have saved her a lot of trouble.