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[Irene Mincine 0]

Irene Mincine’s face was shining with sweat. She was wearing short-sleeved gray exercise outfit and armed with a bat’leth, mowing down holographic Klingon warriors in a familiar-looking cave. She had been cooped up in her sickbay prison for over a week, trapped inside the blue glow of the temporal stabilization field. Now she was free… and she had plenty of rage to work out.

Where did the foreign DNA come from? She thought she had an idea before, but its self-repair mechanism was far beyond anything she had ever seen. It wasn’t from any of the major Alpha or Beta Quadrant powers – the technology for hiding messages in protein sequences was well-known but messages didn’t try to keep themselves alive! The Dominion in the Gamma Quadrant had extremely advanced genetic engineering capabilities, but this didn’t have any of their hallmarks. 

Could the DNA be from the future, or an alternate timeline? Could it have something to do with the cause of the anomaly that sent them back in time in the first place?

Irene deftly dodged a dagger thrust, planting her bat’leth square in the assaulter’s chest. She was trying her hardest to ignore the stiffness in her back, as well. The wound she received when they entered this timeframe had mostly healed, other than the removed organ. Thanks to her hybrid biology, she wouldn’t be able to get a replacement except at a starbase – the operation was just too advanced and the available synthetics on board wouldn’t suffice. Worse, the nephralamine treatments she had to take always made her mouth taste like battery acid.

Irene had detailed all of her theories in a report she had given to Hakran, her superior. But that’s all she had – theories. It drove her mad. She needed a solution and she needed to know who did this to her. Irene, whose curiosity outpaced only her anger, would not be satisfied until this case was solved.