Chapter 11

The next several hours passed in a blur of activity. Lucas had made tracks for his own quarters to find out where Gen-Med had obtained the stem cells as soon as things seemed to be under control. Alex had stayed behind with Dr. Smith to try and figure out what exactly was wrong with Sam and try making head way with the research into exactly what the stem cells were doing. Bridger had disappeared off to his own quarters to check in with UEO Headquarters. He hoped it would give them some sort of lead into this confused mess they were in.

Lucas sat back in his chair and shoved the keyboard away in frustration. He had managed to find out where Gen-Med had gotten the stem cells, even who. But none of it made the least bit of sense. If they came from the person and location the files claimed they had there was no reason for them to behave so oddly.

It didn't help that some of what Samantha had said still rang in his head. She had said Alex talked about missing him and still wouldn't stay on seaQuest with him? She even talked to Samantha about it but not him? Why? He could not understand it. He shoved the thoughts aside as he so often did before his brain drifted from the task at hand. As soon as he and Alex got a free moment, he fully intended to find out but right now he would just have to wonder.

Deciding to dig deeper he dove back into the miasma of code in front of him, a long drought of soda and a mouthful of candy giving him fuel for his renewed endeavor. If it didn't make sense it was time he pushed a little further and tried to find out why. Maybe the who would give him the answers he needed.

#**#

"That can't be right Wendy. It's just not possible." Alex reasoned for the third time in five minutes. She was sitting at one of the lab workstations with a ream of reports in front of her reading along with the doctor and flat refused to believe what she was seeing.

Wendy shrugged and shook her head; at a loss to explain it any better than she already had. It made as much sense to her as it did to Alex.

"It's not probable but it is possible. Unheard of but it is theoretically possible." she insisted. Alex sat down the report she was reading and ran her hands over her face in frustration.

"You don't just become schizophrenic in a matter of a few hours. The UEO would never have cleared her psych profile if she even exhibited the slightest signs of it," Alex rebutted. They had been going over and over reports, tests analysis and scans for hours and they all came to the same conclusion. Sam was perfectly fine physically, but somehow in the course of the last forty-eight hours she had become schizophrenic. The only discrepancy was a small amount of elevated proteins in her blood stream and they didn't seem to indicate anything abnormal except perhaps that Sam might need to change her diet.

"I know it doesn't make any sense. But the tests support it and so do my mental scans of her. She scanned perfectly fine this morning when she woke up and now she's mentally unstable. Stress can trigger it if the predisposition was already there. It's the only thing that remotely makes sense. It's like a maelstrom in there now," Wendy said casting a glance back in the direction of the patient area. Sam still slept, sedated and strapped down to the bed. She had managed to fight off the initial dose of sedatives and Wendy had been forced to increase the dosage and secure her before she managed to hurt herself or someone else.

Alex's gaze followed Wendy's and she let out an agitated and depressed sigh. Between trying to figure out what was wrong with Samantha and figure out what was going on with the stem cells that landed them both here to begin with her temper was growing increasingly short. Everything about Sam's condition made no sense and the limited information the stem cell analysis had yielded so far wasn't any better. It didn't make a bit of sense either.

"So what now? We dose her with anti-psychotics and hope for the best? Implant her with a psych chip? Call her parents and tell them their daughter has lost her mind? None of this makes any sense Wendy. None of it. Her parents aren't schizophrenic and neither are any of her immediate relatives. She has three siblings and not one of them shows any signs of it. Schizophrenia is genetic. You know that, I know that. It runs in families, even if schizophrenia isn't present there are always other members of the immediate family with some sort of mental illness and there's not one," Alex shot back her voice sharp edged from an inability to do anything about what was happening.

"Anti-psychotics, yes, we start her on those until we know anything different. If we don't things will only get worse. We have no choice," Wendy told her, her eyes full of sympathy and concern for the girl on a bed in her medical bay who had suddenly lost her mind for what seemed like no reason.

Alex said nothing but her eyes said everything words didn't. She felt like this was her fault and somehow she had to make it right and couldn't. Before Wendy could confront her about it, tell her there was no way this could be her fault, the comm panel beeped and Captain Bridger's voice echoed into the room

"Wendy, Alex meet me in the Ward Room. Lucas has found some information for us. I hope you have something on your end."

#**#

Again, the bridge crew had gathered to hear what Lucas and hopefully Wendy and Alex had to report. Everyone sat around the table of the ward room apprehensively. It hadn't taken long for news of Samantha's psychotic break to make its rounds. With a crew compliment of only two hundred and forty two, news traveled fast on the seaQuest.

"Lucas has found some information that might, and I say this with reservation because it makes no sense, give us a lead. Alex, Wendy have you got anything?" Bridger said not bothering to waste time with pleasantries. Wendy nodded her head but the reluctance in her expression was obvious.

"Yes we have something. It just doesn't make any sense either. We know what's wrong with Sam, we just don't know why. She's schizophrenic and we can't find a reasonable explanation for it other than the rather implausible idea that stress has triggered a latent potential for it. I have her on anti-psychotics until we know more but that's all we can do right now," she answered. Bridger leaned forward on the table and considered them both for a moment. Lucas sat by Alex quietly hoping something they said might make what he had found make some sense. Alex looked down trodden and rather hopeless, her eyes diverting anytime he tried to make eye contact.

"Can it be reversed?" Tony asked but Wendy only shook her head.

"I don't know yet. Mental illness can be treated, even controlled, so the person functions normally in most cases. If it's being caused by something else making it a symptom and not the disease, maybe it can be reversed. But we just don't know right now," she answered unable to give him a better answer.

"Have you made any further progress on the stem cells?" Nathan asked grasping for something to make sense. Nothing any of them had come up with so far made any. UEO Headquarters hadn't even been able to shed any light on any of this, though he had at least managed to head off the media spectacle that threatened over Alex's and Sam's alleged involvement in the whole fiasco.

"No not really. The analysis is still going. The machine is working at a snail's pace; it just can't make sense of anything its reading. Until it finishes I can't tell you anything about them that I haven't already. Wendy was right; the DNA counts are off the charts. It's claiming there are ninety two strands of DNA per cell. Human cells are only supposed to contain forty six," Alex put in. Lucas's eyebrows quirked in mild surprise.

"That's twice the number there should be," he observed.

"What would cause that?" Lonnie piped from her seat. Alex shrugged.

"I can't be sure, not until I have the full analysis in front of me. It could be a mutation, a fluke. It could be engineered. I can't say," Alex admitted. Bridger listened closely to every word, his mind working overtime to make sense of it.

"Speculate Alex. You're a scientist. Your specialty is biomedical engineering and genetics. What do you think it most likely is?" Ford put in. Alex shot him an annoyed glance. Ford simply gave her a pointed look in response, unfazed.

"I can't, not without the information I need. I could be wildly off base if I do," she insisted.

"Try. You're thinking too much like a researcher and not enough like someone with a, probably, criminal agenda. If this was just a random mutation do you really think someone would be trying to kill you over it?" Bridger prodded. Alex sighed in resignation.

"Alright. If I had to speculate I'd say that yes it could be a mutation. Even if I had a criminal agenda if the mutation facilitated whatever my plans were I wouldn't want anyone to find out about it. If it is a mutation, there is going to be some imperfection somewhere however minute. On the other hand, if it's engineered and the cells are really as perfect as they seem to be down to the DNA level. I'd say someone is trying to engineer something to facilitate that plan. But I have no idea what that plan could be and I can't even give you an idea until I know for certain what the DNA says."

"There are forty thousand five hundred and ninety genes in the human genome. Do you have any idea how long it's going to take to sequence and analyze that many genes?" she said trying to satisfy Bridger's desire for some sort of logic in all of this. She couldn't blame him she couldn't make sense of it either. None of them could but her inability to fix the whole thing made her shorter than usual. Nathan didn't look happy with her answer.

"Fine so there's what we know on your end. Lucas tell us what you have," he ordered with irritation at the whole ordeal. Lucas cocked his head in assent.

"Well, the stem cells came from Mendel Laboratory and were headed for UEO Headquarters. Which isn't odd since the scientists regularly sends them samples for their own analysis of their work. Mendel Laboratory is a state of the art, underwater research lab on the Koko sea mount, just north of Hawaii. The whole thing is headed up by Dr. Michael Ward, one of the UEO's top scientists. He's been conducting research into gene therapy for the P-Core-A Virus for years as a pet project that the UEO funds to keep him on board despite the fact he hasn't made any progress in over a decade. Apparently his son died of it as a kid and he's been obsessed with finding a cure ever since." Lucas told them. Brody winced in sympathy. If anyone would understand Dr. Ward's obsession he would. His mother lay in cryo-stasis afflicted with the same disease.

"Right now his official project is research into the possible uses of stem cells in the regrowth of spinal cord tissue and he's had some limited success considering he's only been working on it for four months," he added.

"He came up with the vaccine for the Sahelian Virus in 2008. This is not the kind of guy who gets involved in criminal activity. He essentially saved the entire planet when he developed that vaccine," he explained as he keyed through a series of reports and files on the vidscreen to illustrate his point.

"The Sahelian Virus? That virus was so virulent it threatened everyone if it got out of control. It never spread to more than a few hundred people before he developed that vaccine. It's not a good way to die," Ortiz observed. O'Neill looked like he might actually be sick at the thought.

"Oh yeah, hysteria, mania and psychosis because the virus is eating your brain cells. Leading to death by massive brain hemorrhage. It's a real joy ride," he muttered in a low voice.

"It's all just a bad memory now Tim. I don't think there's a human alive who hasn't received the vaccine. It's gone the way of small pox and polio," Wendy offered with a comforting smile.

"Thank God," he agreed but he still looked slightly disturbed by the idea that it could have killed millions even billions and one of those might have been him. Tim had a habit of letting his imagination get the better of him.

"I've read some of Dr. Ward's work. I agree that he's not the type to kill someone over something like this, he saves lives he doesn't take them, but someone under him might. If he doesn't have reason to suspect anyone he might not even know what's going on," Bridger pointed out pacing alongside the table. Everyone tracked his movement as he walked.

"I spoke with Admiral Noyce. Bill said they have no idea why or what is going on. They haven't come up with anything more than we have, in fact they have less information than we do. They haven't been able to identify or find the men who came after you or figure out who they work for but he said he will ensure the public is made aware Alex and Samantha are not the perpetrators of this whole thing. When we have more information maybe we can help each other figure this mess out. Right now, we're heading for Mendel Laboratory to see if we can't get some answers. I think we better keep this under our hats until we know who is responsible. We don't want to tip them off any more than we already have," Nathan reasoned.