Demicore

Chapter 13

Sonya checked his vitals, which were normal for sleep. Instead of trying to wake him, they hooked him up to several monitors and set up a set of scans to run on him while they waited. They strapped him down to the gurney just in case he decided to wake or have a nightmare while in the middle of the scan. They were not working furiously, they were just working. Stephanie assessed the situation, decided that it was under control and continued on her own work. It made it appear to Elizabeth that this kind of thing happened on a semi regular basis. She was concerned, but tried to calm herself with the assurance that they knew what they were doing and why.

Erik fell into disjointed dreams. Hunting like a great cat in the jungle, flying as a bird of prey, still as a statue watching Elizabeth sleep... then they went darker walking in to find her body, finding Andy missing with that horrible note thirty years later. Andy. She had been taken prisoner by the same man that tried to kill Elizabeth. Joey... time had given him power as a drug lord, but not enough power to escape. He had burned out Andy's eyes before Erik and the girls had been able to track down where she was being kept. It felt as though Andy's red silk scarf drifted across his face, obscuring his vision of anything else and her voice drifted into his ears.

Find the cat and find a piece of this puzzle.

"Where do I look? How do I find this cat?"

Trust yourself. You already know the way.

His dreams shifted again to things he did not recognize and couldn't grasp. Beeping, constant beeping came through everything else but did not belong there. He made a peace treaty in a time and place he couldn't comprehend. He walked and talked in languages he could not recognize. Images that felt both familiar and foreign. Always the beeping that did not belong there.

His dreams faded into blackness and still the beeping did not stop. Instead it was joined by far off voices that he couldn't discern. The beeping seemed to fit with the voices. It belonged with them, so he tried to concentrate on them and bring them closer to him. It made his head hurt and his body refused to move. The beeping increased. He stopped straining to make his body move and concentrated on the words the voices were saying.

"He should be coming around soon, there is different activity in his brain now," one of the voices said.

"I've isolated three completely different strands of DNA inside his and the arm the replicator made if anyone is interested," another chimed in to the conversation.

"Three?! Not possible."

"We had better wait for him to be more conscious before we discuss them in any detail..." another voice trailed off and he wasn't sure if his ears had stopped working or if she had really just left it open ended. Something pungent waved under his nose.

"Ugh!" his voice worked and the room around him started coming into focus.

"They should work, you are the one who synthesized the smelling salts," this time he knew the voice. Sonya. She and Katlin started to undo the restraints they had put on him to hold him in place.

"That doesn't mean I meant for me to be a test subject."

"Why not, you test everything else on yourself first?" he was sure that voice would have pulled him out of his sleep faster if it had spoken sooner: Elizabeth. And he could hear the disapproval over his choice of test subjects. "How are you feeling? You still look terrible."

"Improving, I think. Nothing great yet but I'm sure I will get there. How long was I out?" he asked, rubbing his eyes and several sore muscles.

"Six hours," Katlin replied, "Which amounts almost to several days for you since you just don't need that much anymore. To be honest, we were beginning to wonder what was going on in that head of yours and if you had made it to another hour yet, we would have hooked your brain up to the projector to see for ourselves that you were functioning as usual." Her words and tones were full of sass and concern but her smile took out all the sting.

He mocked being taken aback, "And showed all my private thoughts and images to the room at large?"

"Hmm... your wife, your daughters, and your assistant who would really only take a scientific interest in them. Yeah, travesty. It's a good thing we didn't have to do that," Katlin retorted.

"Who ever said I wanted to be a science experiment?" he tried you ask with a straight face.

"You did!" they all replied in unison before Sonya volunteered, "Every time you use yourself first. Which has been how many times in just this lab alone?" Not able to handle it anymore, the room at large burst into laughter. Even Steve, who found her mentor endearing and considered him a close, true friend.

Some merriment having been shared to lighten the mood from Erik having been out for a long period of time, Steve decided to get everyone back on track for the task at hand. "Homo sapien, panthera onca - specifically melanistic, and falco peregrinus," She blurted into the room.

"All carnivorous predators," Erik threw back at her and when she gave him a dirty look he added, "What? Wasn't the question 'what do these three things have in common’?”

"In which case, the answer would be you." The room fell into such a hush that even Elizabeth could almost hear the electrical and data currents running through the computers while they tried to decide if she was joking or serious.

In the end it was Sonya who broke the silence, "Steve, that really isn't possible. One being can only have one set of DNA - its own. It cannot also contain the DNA of others. Life doesn't work that way. You have been a scientist for far too long for this theory, what's going on?"

"Look, I know it's an impossible theorem but for a moment lets pretend that God has a bigger sense of humor than the platypus," she paused for effect, making sure she had all of their attention while she walked back toward the several monitors hooked up to the massive computer network and started rapidly pressing keys. "I ran his blood through the DNA scanner, the arm the replicator created this time and the first time, then went to the storage room and pulled some blood we had in there from our reserves and it all came out the same. So when I couldn't find a flaw in the calculations on the machine, I started analyzing the DNA itself.

"Finding that it wasn't entirely human DNA in his way too long and complex strand, I looked to isolate the differences. Having successfully identified three completely different intertwined strands, I did a search comparing them to every living creature known to man. And this is what I came up with," she hit one final key and the complete encyclopedic listing for each animal came up, including habitat, nesting, mating, and hunting areas but most notably including the DNA strands attached to them and where it overlapped in his.

"It's a good thing you are most of the government labs, Erik," she said looking straight at him, "because in the name of national security they would try to make a guinea pig out of you even with all the laws you've helped pass against it."

This time the silence in the room was so complete that the noises the machines made were deafening. Erik looked at the screens before him while the other three simply tried to grasp the proof that had just been laid before them that this impossible thing was Erik. Still he stared at the screens. His dreams imposed themselves on his wakeful consciousness. Memories. But they couldn't possibly be his own... could they? He flew like he had wings and climbed like he had claws and swam like it was second nature.

"Something triggered when I opened the portal," he announced, not really knowing what that could be. He wasn't even sure it was his voice, or rather, he wasn't sure it was his brain controlling it.

"The first time or the second time?" Sonya asked, ever the one to analyze.

"Both."

"That's informative," Katlin chimed sarcastically, "can you tell us anything about what was triggered?"

"It's a puzzle," Erik said more to himself than anyone, remembering Andy's words in his dream. Was it a dream? Was it a vision? It didn't seem to matter. What she has said sparked in him a need to find the cat.