Black Blood Analytics

Posted on Tue Jul 4th, 2017 @ 8:33pm by Petty Officer 2nd Class Ila Dedjoy & Staff Warrant Officer Nexi

Mission: Death is in the Details
Location: Science Lab 3
Timeline: After "Savoring the Past"

Science lab 3 had been set aside as mostly a bioanalysis setting, but Crewman Ila Dedjoy was there working on recalibrating a few of the spectral analysis arrays after they had been knocked from their housing in the blast earlier. As the science labs' maintenance was her sole responsibility, they normally kept her busy enough so at times like this she was thankfully excluded from the repair team duties like other science officers were.

Given the nature of their missions, it was standard procedure for a brief isolation to follow with the return of an Away team, a quarantine, to ensure that they weren't bringing back any contaminants. But since the teams had been beamed back using shuttles, the usual protocols weren't in place, giving Nexi the opportunity to break away and head straight for the labs. That wasn't to say that Nexi was careless; taking a chance that whatever caused the Master's blood to be black was not transmissible from the air, she simply bellowed her way through the corridors, warning other Officers away that she might be carrying something potentially dangerous. When she came to the bio lab, she barged in with little warning.

"You, science chick, I've got something for you," Nexi said, holding up the bloodied throwing daggers. "Black blood ain't normal with Vulcans, Romulans, or Vulcanoid-Rigelians, though I'm pretty sure the owner of this blood is Vulcan. Anyway, I need an analysis of this with full bio-hazard procedures. And once you've got that in containment, give me a good once over; I took some damage, I ain't taking any chances with contamination."

Startled, Crewman Dedjoy wanged her head on an open console as she tried to extract herself from her work. "OW!"

She then looked over the situation as best she could. "Staff Warrant Officer Nexi, is that you? My specialty is Geology and Intel, but I'll do my best. Please place the blades in the central containment unit and I'll start the quarantine and analysis. Where were you hurt and what kind of weapon was it?" Ila asked as she started prepping a level ten isolation field.

Nexi placed the knives in the indicated bin, then gestured to her shoulder, being careful not to bring her bloodied hand into contact with the open wound. It looked like a normal blade cut, deep and bleeding freely down her arm, but the blood was thus far the normal shade of red for a Brekkian or Betazoid. "He had a knife of his own, got a lucky shot. I don't think it's been contaminated, but I didn't want to take the chance the transporter bio-filters might-a missed something. We've all seen what this guy is capable of doing, so better safe than sorry."

"I agree," Ila grunted as she grabbed the medkit off the wall and cracked it open. Taking the tricorder and a dermal regenerator, she started scanning the wound for foreign pathogens and anomalous readings. "I'm not seeing anything the tricorder is saying is outside of normal for either Brekkian or Betazoid but when you get a chance, I'd get sickbay to scan you as well, just in case."

Ila then started treatment with the dermal regenerator and within a couple minutes had the knife wound sealed up well enough that the tricorder barely had a trace of it. "There's an emergency sonic in the back if you want to get cleaned up. It's made for removing hazardous chemicals so that blood shouldn't be an issue. I'll keep the tricorder handy to make sure it's all off when you're done, if you want."

"Right," Nexi said, then made her way to the emergency sonic and stepped in fully clothed. "Any ideas on what can turn blood black?" she asked as the shower hummed away.

"Well... There are some cephalopods that have black blood, but they live at the bottom of oceans. I also know of a certain being that looks like our Captain that has black blood... a few varieties of Horta have black blood... According to a few legends, Iconians had black blood..." Ila rattled off as she watched the computer run through the scans of the blood on the knives.

"No, that wasn't what I asked," Nexi said with a deadpan expression. "I didn't ask what species had black blood, I asked what could cause a person's blood to turn black," she reiterated.

"I know Bolian blood can turn black with iodine poisoning... I'm looking it up in the computer now but it might take a few seconds." Ila replied as she started a computer search. "You're not bleeding black blood in there, are you?"

"You saw the cut, it was still bleeding red," Nexi pointed out, though she did make a point of checking herself for any other injuries she might not have seen before, but for the moment it looked like she was clean. Ish. Clean-ish, but the shower was doing a good job cleaning away the blood, both hers and the Master's. "Bolians bleed blue, Vulcans bleed green, I bleed red... Even if I was contaminated, there's no guarantee it would change the color like it would for a Vulcan," Nexi mused aloud. Maybe she was just being paranoid, but she was definitely getting another scan once she was out of the shower!

"The scanners are getting some crazy readings from this blood. I'm picking up traces of Rigelian, Vulcan, Human, Romulan, Cervan... Even Orion DNA in it. The dominant DNA seems to definitely be Vulcan but the vast majority is just..." Ila punched up some more analysis data. "It's having trouble. It's going to have to keep scanning for a while longer."

The sonic cycle completed and Nexi stepped out of the shower, blood-free. "Right..." Nexi said uneasily. "But no other contaminants aside from the extra genetic traces?" she asked, just to be sure.

"Let me put this another way..." Ila began. "If this were a pool of lava, the Vulcan DNA would be a contaminant and the other DNA I mentioned would be contaminating it. And yet, the Vulcan DNA is what's registering as dominant in that hostile of an environment."

"Yeah, I don't know shit about science, but even I can tell that ain't right..." Nexi said with concern. "If that black shit is so volatile, how the hell ain't he dead?"

"I have no idea," Just then, the computer sounded a completion to its search and Ila reported the results. "And the computer reports that it knows of no way to turn Vulcanoid blood black like this."

"Shit," Nexi said, looking at the blades sitting in the containment analysis unit. She opened her mouth to say something else, when a call came over the comm.

=/\="Staff Warrant Officer Nexi, please report to the main shuttlebay, maintenance platform one."=/\=

Nexi sighed as she tapped her earpiece in acknowledgement. "She's probably pissed I ducked out on the debrief... But this is important, so keep at it. See if you can isolate the Vulcan genetics, maybe we can use it to identify him, and put a priority on the black shit, we need to know what it is and what it does," Nexi ordered as she made her way towards the door.

"Roger that," Ila replied as she keyed in a few more scans she thought might be helpful.