The lower level of the home was a stark comparison to the upper level.  Henry Wyatt scanned the dimly lit corridor, “Whatever is powering this…isn’t standard issue for this kind of colony.”  He drew his phaser has he walked forward, the two security officers at his side. The light overhead began to flicker until they clicked on, flooding the corridor with subdued lighting.  A large door loomed large out of the dimly lit darkness.  As they approached, it began to rumble open, creaking in protest of long abandoned maintenance.  They entered and found a large laboratory area with lights activating in their presence.

Fowler was dumbfounded as she walked. The desks were immaculate. The consoles slowly powered up as she walked, and doors creaked open as she passed them. She reached the end of the wide hallway and turned to face Wyatt. “What is this place?”

He tapped a nearby keyboard and scanned the bootup screen. “I recognize some of this—it’s older tech…much older than me and my memories of home.”

Vocast spoke in Sadie’s head, “I sense the strongest connection here.  Something is calling out to me.  Surely, you must feel it.”  Fowler shared this with Henry, “I feel…something.  Nothing as strong as she’s feeling…but…something is buzzing in the back of my mind…like I’m hearing something every so often but can’t figure out where it’s coming from.”  She found a nearby chair with a console, “It’s a lot, Mr. Wyatt.”

Henry stared at the screen as the operation system finished booting.  He began to work the keys as he accessed records.  “I don’t mean to alarm you, but I think there will be much more when we finish here.”  He carefully read each detail, and Fowler slid her chair over to him.  He pointed at the archaic screen, “There’s a lot of details here – we’re going to need to get your team down here to catalog it all…but there’s a name that keeps coming up.  Galdrid Ahon.”  He slipped his PADD from his belt, tapping into the databases he had maintained over the years, “Her name sounds El-Aurian…there she is.”  He turned the PADD to Fowler.

She read from the screen, “Dr. Galdrid Ahon – noted geneticist and DNA researcher who had been rebuked several times by the Science Council until she fled pending her removal from the Council.  Upon investigation, her remaining files were found to contain controversial and illegal scenarios involving eugenics.”  

He tapped at the PADD, “She was long before my time.”  Wyatt glanced around, “Whatever she was doing here was not allowed on our home planet.”

Sadie stood and walked from station to station, peeking in each of the large side rooms. She stopped at the second doorway. “Wyatt!” she stepped back, shaking her head.

Henry bounded up, phaser drawn, and stepped through the door.  It was a room filled with bodies secured within cryogenic units.  Men and women, old and young…he counted ten units that were still functioning and five that were dark.  He moved from one to another, tricorder at work.  “They’re not in stasis – this is preserving experimental data.”  Wyatt continued to check each body.  “They have a similar makeup to yours – but these are predominantly El-Aurian with more significant amounts of other genetic material from different species.  How long they’ve been here – I can’t begin to estimate.”

At the doorway, Fowler remained just outside the room, “What was she doing here?  Playing God?”  She was starting to put pieces together, but it wasn’t feeling good.

He walked past her, “I need to see the other rooms.”

“Ten other rooms.  Five with bodies in preservation units.  Five with old high-end scientific experimentation gear.”  Wyatt stood in the main room, speaking into his badge.  Captain Dread was on the other end.

He could hear her annoyed sigh, “What do we think she was doing here?”

Henry glanced at the notes he had furiously made in his journey throughout the facility, “Without her here to tell me…I think she was trying to make the perfect being using El Aurians as her base.  Romulan, Klingon, Ferengi, Tholian, Cardassian, Human – every kind of genetic material from a humanoid species…she was using it.  The bodies she preserved look like a map of her progress – every one of them failures.  Each shows death by various ailments, given how she was mixing and matching.  She was careful – precise measurements and scenarios were used.”

There was a pregnant pause as Dread digested the conversation.  “You’re going to ask me to get our science and medical teams down there to take a look, aren’t you.”

He replied, “Questions – I have plenty of them, captain.  We’re running low on answers.  Only a couple of ways to get them.”

“I’ll start putting teams together.  Douglas out.”

Sadie turned to him, her face a mixture of roiling emotions, “What do you think I am, Mr. Wyatt?”

“You and the other children they fought so hard to protect?  I think you’re the perfection Dr. Ahon was chasing.  Why they were protecting you so hard…that’s the mystery I’m not sure I want the answer to.  What if whoever or whatever was hunting you is still out there?”  He didn’t like where his thoughts were going.

Fowler went there herself, “What if she’s still out there?  Or if she was the one searching for us?  We both know your people can live a long time.”

He dismissed it, “1000 years is a long time to live, even for us.”

Fowler thought on it for a moment before she turned around and took the entirety of the facility in, her mind working out why they hadn’t found the good doctor in her facility, “Mr. Wyatt – you said she was experimenting with genetics and eugenics…what if she was doing it to herself as well – testing out more successful treatments.”

Wyatt grumbled, “That does not make me feel better about our situation.”

“I’m starting to wonder if she’s out there…and if she’s noticed what we’re up to.”

Henry tapped his badge, “Then we’d better start preparing for the worst.”