I waited until 10 superrevs and 197,110,800 revs to make my move. At that time, the entire crew of the Macromolecular Facilities changed shifts. I dressed in one of their uniforms and slipped in with the crowd, easily hidden by the amount of people.

Once in, the group split into 4 smaller, but still large, groups that each went to a different elevator. My group went to the third level (DNA Research and Experimentation).

I waited for everybody to go into a lab, then went to one that nobody had entered.

Inside, I put on an anticontamination suit and entered the main chamber, which had the machine used to test samples. I took out the talon lining from a pocket, clipped a piece from the base, where it was thinnest, and placed the piece on the detecting plate, inserting it into the machine's main chamber.

I activated the chamber and watched as it scanned the sample and printed out the results on a roll of seismograph paper.

I sat down and took out a book. This part was the longest. It could take up to an hour for the information to fully process.

After a while, the machine's slow, rhythmic beeping lulled me to sleep, the same way the sun had done earlier, during the day.

I was woken by somebody tapping on my shoulder. My eyes snapped open, and another person in an anticontamination suit stood there, backing up a little when I woke up.

''Hey there. I don't think I've seen you here before. Are you new?'' she said with a soft Japo-Oriental accent. Her face was hidden by the tinted visor, so I couldn't see it.

I sat up. ''I'm not here for long. I just have something I'm working on-''

The girl's head raised a little. ''Oh, the DNA test! Well, you might want to see the results. I took a peek at them (Out of curiosity, I swear), and they're really strange. Well, the intact parts are.''

She handed me a packet of paper that was at least 10 pounds total. ''Here's the information. I left the sample in the machine for you.''

I took the packet. ''You're a geneticist?'' I asked. The girl nodded.

''Karen Wu, recently transferred to the Level 3 Macromolecular Facilities DNA research team and the medical offices here after graduating from Japo-Oriental University as valedictorian with a PhD in bioengineering and genetic sciences.''

She held a hand out, which I shook.

I introduced myself as well. ''David Nazo Ashe, graduated from Cambridge University with a PhD in biophysics and a Master's Degree in genetic physics. I work as Nova CERN's only field agent, patrolling the area to ensure that the facilities haven't damaged the environment.''

Karen nodded. ''How long have you worked here?'' she asked.

''I've been here since the complex was built. When I was a kid, I lived over at CERN before the incident.''

Karen cringed. ''Ah. I heard about that, but I wasn't around then. Volcanic activity, wasn't it?'' she said. I nodded.

''That and an earthquake. The real damage happened when the Large Hadron Collider ruptured.'' I corrected.

Karen nodded again. ''Must have been terrible.'' she said. I shrugged.

''I was seven. I don't remember much from before it happened. And I was gone then, so I didn't experience it, and that's how I'm here now. Anyway, I don't look back, since there's no point in it.''

Karen nodded thoughtfully. ''Very wise. It's never good to be stuck in the past.'' she said, a little sadly. I decided not to ask why.

She sat down next to me. I was glad my suit hid my face, or she would have seen me blushing. I had never been so close to somebody else, especially a girl, before.

We didn't say anything for about 0.2 superrevs, and then I decided it was time for me to leave.

I stood up. ''I have to go now. Sorry for stopping whatever you were going to do...'' I said. Karen laughed.

''It's fine. I was planning for a delay anyway.'' she said. I smiled and went to the test chamber, removed the talon sample, tossed it in an incinerator (it had no use now), and repocketed the talon lining itself. I picked up the stack of seismograph paper and prepared to leave.

I turned to Karen. ''Do you mind keeping this a secret? I'm not technically supposed to be here...''

Karen laughed again and ran an index finger over her visor where her mouth was. ''Your secret's safe with me. Don't worry.''

I thanked her and went out the door, beginning to run down the hallway, then stopped when Karen shouted something from the room.

''Hey, try to come back sometime! Same room!'' she called.

I smiled. ''Okay, I will!'' I shouted back, then turned back around and continued running, turning a corner and entering the elevator.


It found a large mass of metal stretching across several mountains. It looked around. There were humans walking everywhere on the metal, going in and out of buildings.

It looked up at the second level, and couldn't see anything. It climbed a couple dozen feet up a mountain and latched itself onto the bottom of the walkway, looking out from the side.

It saw a single light on in one of the buildings, and decided to explore further.

It made its way to the light, easily blending into the darkness to avoid unwanted eyes. It hooked a hand onto the side of the building and looked inside.

It drew its head back in surprise. Inside sat the human it kept running into on the mountain, the person with its talon lining. The human was holding a packet of papers, skimming through them and occasionally writing something down in a notebook or on the papers.


I exited the MF and stopped running, since the outer walkways were by no means perfectly level and uniform and it was far more likely that I would trip and fall here.

I walked back to my apartment with the stack of paper and opened the door. I walked in and set the paper onto the couch on my side, sitting down between it and the window.

I flipped the stack upside-down and began studying the results.

Right away, I noticed something highly unusual. This animal, whatever it is, doesn't have the typical DNA structure. This thing had 3 helixes!

I gawked at the paper, instantly amazed. First of all, I didn't know the length of its DNA, so I couldn't get the exact number of pairing sequences it had. And with the addition of this third helix, any number of possibilities exist for its characteristics.

I made a note at the beginning of the strand.

SPECIMEN HAS TRIOXYRIBONUCLEIC ACID, NOT DEOXYRIBONUCLEIC ACID.

ALL NOTES AND SUBSEQUENT RESEARCH MADE PERTAINING TO SPECIMEN ARE PURELY SPECULATION.

I flipped through a couple of the pages, and noticed a relative trend. At least the two strands seemed to follow the exact same pattern. I skimmed through the pages with my scanner on, scanning the graphs for discrepancies.

My scanner beeped for the first time at page 592, telling me that, if the information was the same as a typical double-helix, there were no differences between it and DNA up to the Kingdom level. A quick backtrack confirmed that it was, as I thought, a member of Eukaryota (multicellular organisms), and, also as expected, in the Animalia Kingdom.

I looked at the first several discrepancies, which began at the phylum level.

The normal double-helix half suggested that this animal was in the Chordata phylum, but the third helix suggested that it wasn't a member of Chordata. In fact, the third helix was a completely unknown phylum. It suggested a vast number of possible variations, which, according to the rules of life and the age of the fossil I found, means that several hundred thousand different species must exist of this phylum.

I made a note that pointed to the phylum pages.

UNKNOWN PHYLUM, ASSUMED CHORDATA

FURTHER RESEARCH REQUIRED

I decided to separate the first 591 pages, since they just confirmed for me that it was indeed a living thing, a multicellular organism, and an animal.

I set aside that half for later study and continued studying Phylum and after.

The subphylum section of both graphs agreed that the animal was a member of Vertebrata, which I labelled accordingly.

The class was also unanimous, deeming it Mammalia. This surprised me. In both cases, the talon I found was reptilian, and yet, its TNA very clearly said it was a mammal.

I wondered if it was because of its triple helix that this happened, then decided against that. So far, other than the phylum discrepancy, it had remained true to normal DNA rules. I supposed that it wasn't too unusual, since there was a living example of a mammal with long talons similar to this: the ungulate superorder.

I paused and got up. I went to my room, got out a notebook, and came back, summarizing all the notes I had made so far.

TRIOXYRIBONUCLEIC ACID

DOMAIN: EUKARYOTA

KINGDOM: ANIMALIA

PHYLUM: UNKNOWN, ASSUMED CHORDATA

SUBPHYLUM: VERTEBRATA

CLASS: MAMMALIA

I continued studying the information. I went through the last 160 pages and labelled what I had found.

SUBCLASS: THERIIFORMES

INFRACLASS: HOLOTHERIA
SUPERCOHORT: THERIA

COHORT: PLACENTALIA

ORDER: UNKNOWN

FAMILY: UNKNOWN

GENUS: UNKNOWN

SPECIES: UNKNOWN

I wasn't able to fill out the Order and farther because several sections of the helices weren't listed, most likely deemed impossible to retrieve by the computer. I put down those notes in their respective places in the packet of paper.

I then went through and assessed each section more closely, writing down major characteristics, but the only ones I could find were those that could be considered obvious.

DIET: UNKNOWN

SKIN COVERING: UNKNOWN, ASSUMED DENSE FUR

BODY SHAPE: UNKNOWN

HEIGHT: UNKNOWN

WEIGHT: UNKNOWN

LIFE SPAN: UNKNOWN

HABITAT: SWISS ALPS

I decided to take a break, since I had already looked through most of the available graphs. I put my notebook and pen in the page I was on, then closed the packet.

I yawned. This was the third night that I had been up this late, and I needed sleep anyway. I stood up to go back to my room.


It watched the human close the stack of papers it was looking at. The human stood up, surprising it. It accidentally ripped its hand out of the wall and fell, too quickly to grab onto anything.


I heard a ripping sound coming from outside. I opened the window and looked out, but didn't see anything in the darkness. I shrugged and closed the window, then shut the blinds.

I went back to the couch and gathered up the stacks of paper, then went into my room.

I set the paper down on my computer, then went to my bed, laid down, and immediately fell asleep.