Smiths & Joneses
by Soledad
Author's note: For disclaimer, rating, etc. see the Introduction.
The alien lie detector is the one from the episode "Adam", of course. Although I'm omitting those events from this alternate season, I don't see why I couldn't use the cool tech. ;)
Warning: disturbing images in this chapter.
Chapter 09
Tosh was understandably shocked to find Jenny out of her cell, although if she was honest to herself she shouldn't have been. Not really. After all, the Doctor was a master at breaking out of any prison or trap imaginable – so why should be another Gallifreyan, whether his daughter or not, be any different?
What shocked her even more was the fact that Jenny had not fled the Hub. Instead she was kneeling in front of Janet's cell, reaching through one of the round air holes in the transparent door and petting Janet's monstrous head affectionatedly. Although perhaps that shouldn't have surprised her, either. The Doctor was always gentle with bizarre aliens, too. He'd even tried to save that poor, fake space pig over the corpse of which Tosh had first met him.
The only creature he'd ever been cruel was Jack. Shockingly enough, as Jack had always been willing to leave everything – and everyone – behind for him. Well, hopefully not any longer, but the respect was decidedly one-sided.
She pushed away the thought. She had more urgent problems right now and no idea how to solve them. She realized that it was no use to try getting Jenny back to her cell; not when she could – and apparently did – leave at will. It would be better to take her back up to the main Hub area, where she might even offer some insight – but how could that be done safely?
Tosh barely dared to breathe, lest she startled Janet who then could bite off the girl's hand, out of sheer fright. There was no proof that Jenny could grow a new hand as the Doctor had done, even if she was his daughter. That might be a common Gallifreyan ability – or one of the Doctor's personal tricks. Better not put it on the probe.
Jenny must have felt her presence, because she withdrew her hand after a last pat on Janet's head and turned to her, grinning.
"Have your instruments told you that I've bolted?"
Tosh shook her head. "No, I actually came to check on you; to see if you needed anything… What were you doing here with Janet?" she blurted out. "She could have maimed you beyond help!"
Jenny's grin turned into a genuine, fond smile. "Oh, no, she'd never do that, not to me!"
"And you can be sure about that because…" Tosh trailed off doubtfully.
"We… communicated," Jenny explained. "You see, your Doctor Harper was right; they are mildly telepathic. And so are Gallifreyans, to a certain extent, or else we couldn't communicate with the TARDISes."
"I know," Tosh said. "I used to be a companion, remember? So, what were the two of you talking about?"
"We weren't," Jenny said. "Their minds are not so organized. All they can transmit are images and emotions. She was showing me her home planet."
"Really?" Tosh could barely control her excitement. "What was it like?"
"Rather unremarkable," Jenny admitted. "A large planet orbiting a red dwarf, covered with swamps and ferns. Four per cent higher gravity than here, thick fog everywhere. The flora seems to match that of Earth's carbon period, and apparently the Weevils are the highest form of life over there."
"I always thought red dwarves couldn't sustain life," commented Tosh thoughtfully.
Jenny shrugged. "In theory, they shouldn't. But the universe is full of surprises."
Tosh laughed at that. "That sounded like something your Dad would say."
"Like father like daughter, eh?" Jenny grinned.
"Seems so, yeah," Tosh agreed. "Did you also see how they got to Earth?" she then asked, returning to the topic of Weevils. Jenny nodded.
"Through some sort of spatio-temporal anomaly, I think. It opened out of nowhere and hung in the air like… like a shattered mirror. A few of the Weevils – the ones that hadn't fled in terror – came through it. Then it simply closed and was gone, just like that."
"Just like a Rift spike," Tosh added thoughtfully. "It must have been one. We have no idea to which times or places the Rift connects us when it spikes; see how far in space and time it has brought you."
Jenny nodded. "True. It must open on the Weevil homeworld semi-regularly, though. I only saw a few of them cross the anomaly, but Janet seems to have knowledge of what it looks like when it closes. Her people are clearly familiar with the phenomenon."
"Besides, no matter how long they live, the few you've seen couldn't have populated the sewers of Cardiff in the hundred-and-some years since the first opening of the Rift," Tosh pointed out. "Whoa! You've learned more about them than we had in more than a century! Owen's gonna be so jealous. He's worked with them for years and found out nothing beyond physical characteristics."
"They don't like Owen," Jenny told her. "They're afraid of him, although I don't know why. They prefer Ianto; and they've accepted Mickey by now."
"Well, he likes them, too; and he's the one who feeds them now, that has to count," Tosh said logically. "Tell me, though: where were you heading when you stopped for a little chat with Janet?"
"I don't know," Jenny admitted with disarming honesty. "Just out. I was bored to death, and I want to help. If this murderer is someone he Xithian Alliance sent after me, you will need my help. I'm the only one who's familiar with them… well, sort of."
"Perhaps," Tosh allowed reluctantly. "Well, since you've broken out already, you can come with me just as well."
Jenny beamed at her. "I thought you'd never ask!"
In the meantime Mickey had arrived with a still unconscious Ianto. The rest of he Torchwood team had come back, too, and Martha and Owen were hooking Ianto up on various medical equipment, very little of which originated from twenty-first century Earth.
"How is he doing?" Jack asked anxiously.
Owen checked the monitors at the head of Ianto's bed and sucked in his lower lip.
"Aside from the unusual brain activity, all his readings show up normal," he said. "Or what counts as normal for a sleep-deprived, anal-retentive Welshman. Whatever. Physically he's okay, just exhausted. His brain… that's a different matter."
"What's wrong with his brain?" Jack blanched.
Martha glared at Owen in a manner that promised retaliation.
"Nothing is wrong with his brain," she said soothingly. "It's just so…"
"…that the human brain ain't supposed to work with such intensity," Owen interrupted. "Not even Teaboy's organic computer should do that. So, if we can't make him slow down a bit, his brain will either cook in his skull, or all that activity will trigger that nice little implant of his, making it think that someone's trying to extract info from him – and then he'll be deader than dead in a millisecond."
"Not funny, Owen!" Jack growled, but the haunted eyes of their chief medical officer were deadly serious.
"I ain't joking, Harkness! It was bad enough after the first… episode; now it's a hundred per cent worse. Either we find a way to stop his brain from overworking, or Teaboy will be dead within the next forty-eight hours."
"Well, do something then!" Jack demanded. Owen rolled his eyes.
"Do what? Jack, if anything, this is a telepathic attack. How am I supposed to stop that?"
"What about the vaults?" Martha suggested. "Their shielding…"
"… is against temporal shifts," Jack interrupted. They won't help. Not with this. I wonder why this alien would pick Ianto, of all people. Why not someone with a more agreeable mind?"
"Probably because he was in the wrong place when the first murder happened," Jenny said, entering the sick room with Tosh. "Hithon erasers like a challenge."
"What's an eraser?" Jack asked. "And, by the way, what the hell is she doing here?"
He shot Tosh an unfriendly look, but the times when he could intimidate her were long over.
"She'd already opened the cell door when I got down," Tosh explained matter-of-factly. "I found her playing with Janet."
"You found her doing what?"
"Later, Jack. Let's focus on Ianto now. Jenny, how can we stop the telepathic attack?"
"By killing the eraser," Jenny replied promptly. "Unfortunately, that's easier said than done. Erasers are tough bastards."
"For the second time: what is an eraser?" Jack asked, his patience failing rapidly.
"Highly trained Hithon assassins," Jenny explained. "Specially trained to operate outside the Hive – something the average Hithon couldn't do. They are skilled, merciless – and expendable, often assigned to missions with no return. They operate under cover and if caught, they blow themselves up, so that they can't be traced back to the Hive. The bomb they use had a five hundred meter radius, so better corner it somewhere outside the well-populated areas."
Mickey looked at Jack. "Have you stopped the signal?"
"Yeah, but it wasn't easy. We had to melt it down, together with the wing it was attached to."
"Then the crash site would be where the assassin starts to search for Jenny," Mickey said. "Unless the signal had gotten through the Hub's defences, in which case we're all dead."
"Let's hope it hadn't," Jack said. "Do you have an idea how to trap the assassin?"
Mickey nodded. As a former freedom fighter, he was good at guerrilla warfare. "Yeah. We'll need a bait, though."
Nobody looked at Jenny, but she knew what they were expecting from her.
"I'll do it," she said. "It's me it wants anyway."
"You mean you're the one it wants to kill," Tosh corrected.
"One way or another, I won't be safe as long as it's alive," Jenny said soberly. "The sooner we take it out, the better for us all."
"There's that," Jack admitted. "We can give it a try if you're sure you want to do it. But what are we gonna do with Ianto in the meantime? We must find out the truth. Owen would it be safe to wake him up?"
"I can do it, but I won't suggest it. The pressure could cause him snap."
"I know, I know;" Jack grabbed handfuls of his own hair as if he were about to tear it out in sheer frustration. "But if his brain is about to explode anyway, we don't have a chance. Mickey, go down to the Archives and bring me up this item," he handed their resident smartass a slip of paper with a long code number.
"You really want to give that alien lie detector a try?" Tosh asked, clearly uncomfortable with the idea. Jack shrugged.
"Want to? No, I sure as hell don't want to. But that's the only way to prove Ianto's innocence; besides, the tech is completely safe."
"Completely safe for someone in good health," Owen scowled. "Fuck only knows what it's gonna do to Teaboy's brain, addled by this telepathic mojo as it already is."
Jack was about to say something really unfriendly when his phone rang. He looked at the display: it was Swanson. He sighed and answered the call; he listened, gave a few monosyllabic answers, and then disconnected.
"Well, people," he looked at the others," we're out of options. Kathy's coming over, and she wants to interrogate Ianto."
To say that Detective Swanson was angry would have been an understatement; she was furious. She was positively fuming as she descended into the Hub via invisible lift. She'd been very cooperative. She'd covered their arses as far as she could afford – and then some. She'd taken great personal risks to protect them – and this was how they repaid her? By going behind her back and playing her for a fool?
They thought they could get away with everything, just because they were Torchwood, eh? Well, they were wrong. Nobody played Katherine Swanson for a fool and got away with it to tell the tale. They were going to learn that the hard way today.
It wasn't so that she wouldn't like Jones – she did. But if he was the one who'd murdered those poor girls whose only fault had been to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, not even the personal intervention of Her Majesty the Queen could save him, Torchwood or no Torchwood. Nobody stood above the law, no matter what Jack Harkness seemed to believe.
She stepped down from the lift platform, forcing the dizziness to go away – she hated the stupid lift, but it was the fastest and easiest way to get in – and glared at the blonde Rift technician on duty.
"Where's Jones?" she demanded without preamble.
Sally Jacobs didn't seem the least intimidated; but again, she rarely did.
"Why, in the interrogation room, of course," she replied calmly. "Go right through, Detective; you know the way. Captain Harkness is waiting for you."
"Has he bugged my car or what?" Swanson frowned.
"Of course not," Jacobs said. "But we constantly watch the Plass through CCTV, just in case," and she turned one of the security monitors, so that Swanson could see Roald Dahl Plass from different angles on the split screen.
Right. She should have remembered that. Big Brother was nothing compared with Torchwood – especially since Jones had taken over. Jones, who might be a serial killer. Swanson briefly wondered whether the young Torchwood director's obsessive hang to detail was somehow related to other, more dangerous obsessions.
Like murdering harmless blonde girls for no apparent reason.
She stomped down on that thought immediately. Speculations led nowhere. She owed Jones the benefit of the doubt – until she found hard proof for his guilt.
She hurried over to the interrogation room – a small and rather Spartan concrete chamber accessed from stairs at the end of Harkness' former office space (now used by Jones mostly). It had two windows, a large wall grating, a table and two chairs, as well as a small balcony above that allowed people to watch the interrogations. A single, old-fashioned lamp hung from the centre of the ceiling, casting a yellow disc of light at the middle of the table.
When Swanson reached the observation balcony, Jones – paler than usual and looking rather out of it – was already sitting on one side of the table… in a wheelchair, mind you so his condition had to be fairly serious. He was wearing a hospital scrub again, under a terrycloth robe, and Dr. Harper was fussing around him, checking his blood pressure and controlling his pupils with a penlight.
Harkness was sitting on the opposite side of the table, tinkering with some sort of alien gizmo that looked like a shoe box. Like a black, plastic shoe box with green lights on that beeped from time to time.
From her vantage point, Swanson could see and hear everything without being seen. She didn't doubt that the Rift technician had already warned Harkness about her arrival; his occasional upward glances revealed that much. He gave no sign of it, though, just kept tinkering.
"All set," he finally said. "Now, get out. This is better done between just Ianto and me."
"As if they wouldn't watch us from the balcony anyway," Jones muttered. "This is like a bloody reality show. Always hated those."
"It doesn't matter, Ianto," Harkness said gently while Toshiko and her right hand, that Howard character, joined Swanson on the observation balcony. Dr. Harper stayed outside the door, just in case. "Forget about them. Talk to me. Tell me what happened."
Jones eyed the shoebox doubtfully. "And this is supposed to tell whether I'm saying the truth or not?"
Harkness nodded. "Best lie detector on the planet – or outside it, as a matter of fact. If something's untrue, the light turns red. Go on. Tell me what you've done."
"I killed three girls, that's what I've done," Jones replied flatly.
"Stop kidding around!" Harkness snorted, clearly not believing him.
"I'm serious," Jones said, still in that flat voice. "Look at your wonder box: the light's green, so I'm telling the truth, right? I murdered them in cold blood. Strangled them and left their bodies on the street."
"I thought it was Jenny you killed," Harkness said, seemingly unfazed, while Swanson's head was spinning from the speed with her mind worked. There was a third victim somewhere? Why wasn't if found yet? She'd have to order search parties…
"It was Jenny whom I wanted to kill," Jones' voice was barely a whisper. "The others; that was a terrible mistake. Blonde girls look all alike. Like puppets in a shop window, waiting to be broken. You have to lock me up in the vaults, Jack… or execute me before I turn on Sally… or Emma… or Lloyd… They're all blonde; they're not safe around me!"
Harkness stood, walked around the table and hugged the dejected young man tightly. "Hey, hey, c'me here, c'me here. What happened to you?"
By then, Jones was crying silently into his shoulder. "I'm a monster, Jack. Something in me craves flesh… wants to kill."
Swanson felt a cold shiver run down her spine. Could it be true? They said it was always the quiet ones you had to be careful around, but Jones? He seemed so harmless, so collected, so sane. Could he have a hidden side that was a monster indeed?
"I don't believe that for a moment," Harkness declared, as if answering to her thoughts. "But I think you should get it off your chest. So tell me about the first victim. How did you find her?"
"I don't know," Jones whispered. "I was going home… the street was so dark, and it was raining… I saw that blonde hair of hers glittering in the rain… then my hands were on her throat, squeezing the life out of her – and it felt good, so good! I thought it was Jenny, but it wasn't, so I had to keep looking for her… to kill her."
Harkness shook his head while Swanson was fighting her nausea.
"Nonsense. Tell me about the other girl.
"She tried to get away," Jones whispered. "But I was faster. She screamed and screamed… I wanted her to stop making so much noise, it made my head hurt… so I choked her until she was finally silent. Look at your box: it reads as truth."
"No," Harkness said grimly. "It reads as truth because you believe it to be true; that doesn't mean it is true. You're not a murderer."
"Don't be so sure about that," Jones murmured. "After Lisa, I would have killed you in delight."
"But you didn't."
"Only because I knew it wouldn't last. Could you stay dead, you would be dead by now… by my hand."
"Perhaps," Harkness said with eerie calmness. "But you have no reason to kill Jenny. Why would you do that?"
"She's dangerous," Jones murmured. "A risk. We can't ignore a risk like her."
"We?" Harkness repeated, realizing – just like Swanson – that they were finally getting closer to the truth. "Who are we?"
But Jones no longer heard him. He tensed in the wheelchair, arched his back and started spasming uncontrollably, with such a force that he nearly tipped the chair over. His hands balled to fists, the ligaments standing out white, his eyes rolled upwards until only the white of them could be seen, and Swanson could hear the gnashing of his teeth up to the balcony.
"Owen!" Harkness shouted, panic evident in his voice. "Do something!"
Dr. Harper was already running in, with Dr. Milligan in tow, opening his med-kit single-handedly.
"Hold him down before he breaks any bones!" he snapped. "He's having a brain seizure; Milligan, you'll have to give him the shot, my hand isn't steady enough!"
He and Harkness practically threw themselves on Jones, needing all their strength to keep him immobilized, while Dr. Milligan injected something right into the big vein in his neck. Swanson winced in sympathy; that must have hurt like a bitch. She counted the seconds. By twenty-six, the seizure stopped and Jones went limp, his eyes wide open and unresponsive.
Damn, but that had been one scary scene!
Dr. Harper fished something small, round and metallic out of his medkit and pressed it onto Jones' forehead. Surprisingly enough, it stayed in place.
"Molecular adhesion," he explained curtly, and Harkness nodded in understanding.
"Cortical monitor?" he then asked. It sounded ridiculously like a quote from Star Trek, but Harper just nodded, pulled out a hand-held scanner – and swore.
"Brain activity is off the scale," he showed the readout to Dr. Milligan. "And I have no idea how to stop it. He won't survive another seizure. The neural pathways have already begun to break down."
"Meaning what?" Harkness asked impatiently.
"Meaning that even if he does wake up, he'll be paralysed on the left side," Dr. Harper told him bluntly. "And if we don't take out that fucking alien before the next seizure, we won't have to worry about his reconvalescence at all."
For a moment it seemed as if Harkness would faint. But he pulled himself together almost immediately.
"All right," he said. "Talk to me, Owen. What can we do?"
"We can't do anything," Dr. Harper replied sourly. "Not a flying fuck; and neither can all the sodding tech piled up in the Archives. I wish we'd run into some nice aliens once in a while. You know, friendly ones who'd be, well, helpful."
"Hey!" the blonde girl with Toshiko protested. "What about me?"
Swanson knew she was staring but she couldn't help. The girl was an alien? She didn't look like one.
"Are you a neurosurgeon now?" Dr. Harper asked, his voice heavy with sarcasm. "Can you heal brain damage caused by a telepathic attack? Or rather a whole fucking string of telepathic attacks?"
"Language, Owen," Toshiko warned him, while the girl shook her head dejectedly.
The doctor shrugged. "Just stating the obvious."
"Yeah, 'cos we've got so much time to waste," Harkness growled; then he snipped with his fingers. "Of course! The Butterfly People!"
Identical blank looks answered him from all present.
"Mary's people," he explained, which still didn't say Swanson anything, but the others seemed to know what he was talking about. "That's what they're usually called, cos they're so fragile and beautiful."
"Until they start ripping out your heart for breakfast," Dr. Harper muttered darkly. Harkness shook his head.
"Nah, that one was a criminal and likely crazed, too. The rest of their people are very gentle and spiritual. They're great poets, artists… and healers."
"Yeah, but how can we get one of them here?" Dr. Milligan asked.
"I know of one who visits an old friend of mine from time to time," Harkness said. "She even has the means to call it. I'll ask her to help," he whipped out his cell phone and hit the speed dial. "Sarah Jane? Yeah, it's me. Sorry for calling you so late, but…Listen, I need your help in a delicate and very urgent matter. Or rather the help of your poet friend; you can contact her in case of an emergency, right? No not that sort of emergency… Ask Mr. Smith to scramble this call, and I'll tell you…"
He walked over to his – Ianto's – office to talk with his friend in private. Less than a moment later he came back, looking carefully optimistic.
"Well, let's hope that this works out," he said.
"And what are we gonna do with Teaboy in the meantime?" Dr. Harper asked. "Or if it isn't gonna work?"
Harkness sighed. "I hate to suggest it, but in his current condition there's only one place where he can be safe and contained."
"Flat Holm," Dr. Harper stated blandly. Harkness nodded.
"They have the facilities and the personnel to deal with Rift victims; or those attacked by aliens. It's not an ideal solution, but it's the only one we currently have."
"If he survives, he'll need counselling, though," Dr. Harper warned. "He can deal with a lot, but I doubt that even he'd be able to put this away and return to his daily routine as if nothing had happened."
"He'd hate it," Harkness said. "And where would we find anyone fit to work with him anyway?"
"What about Emilia?" Dr. Milligan suggested. "She's already worked with the survivors of Canary Wharf; and she has a high enough security clearance to know about such things. Besides, she's already in Cardiff, working with the soldiers on the UNIT base."
"That's another problem for another day," Harkness said. "Let's deal with first things first."
"You mean getting him locked up in a cell on Flat Holm," Dr. Milligan said.
Harkness shrugged. "We can't keep him in St. Helen's, as we've seen. And we don't have the facilities here to treat somebody in his condition."
"He'll have to be monitored around the clock," Dr. Harper said. "Call in Rhys; I'll go with them and stay with Teaboy."
"And I'll have to start the search for the third victim," Swanson sighed. "Keep me informed, Harkness, or so God help me you'll wish you could stay dead."
"What makes you think I don't wish it already?" Harkness returned. "I promised to share with you everything we might find, and I will. But if your bosses think they can snatch Ianto from Flat Holm, they're mistaken. The place has a security grid that can stop armies – alien armies – and we won't hesitate to use it. You can tell Henderson that."
"Is that a threat, Captain Harkness?" Swanson asked coldly.
"No, it's a warning," Harkness replied in a similar tone. "We protect our own. And now if you'll excuse me – I have to see that Ianto gets locked up in a high security room on Flat Holm."
He stormed off, and Dr. Harper began to disconnect Jones from the alien lie detector.
"He's taking his very hard," Swanson commented. "I've never seen him so out of it before."
"He may not show it, but Ianto means a great deal to him," Toshiko replied quietly. "They've just begun to rebuild their relationship – and it was a complicated one from the start – and now this. If Ianto dies, part of Jack will die with him… the better part, I'd say, because he won't have anyone to keep him from falling to pieces."
"What about the rest of you?" Swanson asked.
Toshiko shook her head. "We're just his friends; his colleagues. We'll do what we can, of course, but… You must know, Kathy, that Jack's gone through horrible things while he was missing: captivity, torture, more deaths than I can count. He needs Ianto to deal with the trauma; given who – what – he is, he can't really go to a shrink to be treated for PTDS."
"No, I can't imagine that he could," Swanson agreed.
"Without Ianto, I fear for his sanity," Toshiko added. "He doesn't have the luxury to kill himself when it becomes too much. Well… not permanently."
Swanson needed a moment for that to sink in.
"You mean he's tried to…?" she trailed off, guessing the answer already. Toshiko nodded.
"Ianto keeps track on the numbers, and he covers the trails, but one notices things," she murmured. "Right after his return, it was almost every day. It's become gradually less frequent, but once in a fortnight he still shoots himself in the head."
"And that counts here as normal?" Swanson was shocked.
Toshiko sighed. "I confronted him about it once. He told me that in those few moments before he comes back he can have peace. Asked If I'd begrudge him that little peace, too. We never talked about it again. But there's a reason we aren't supposed to enter that little bunker of his under the office."
"To allow Jones to clean up after such… episodes," Swanson nodded in understanding. "But I thought he no longer lives on the base. He's got a penthouse now, hasn't he?"
"He moved into Owen's old place, yes, but he'd never off himself there," Toshiko replied grimly. "For him, suicide is a private matter; he always commits it here. Whenever he stays for the night, unless it's work-related, the dry cleaner bills usually skyrocket on the next day."
"So if Jones dies…"
"…we'll be back to cleaning blood and brain tissue from the walls on a daily basis," Toshiko finished for her. "Only that we won't have Ianto to do it. I'm not looking forward to that."
"And I'm gonna be sick, I think," Swanson muttered. "When I think you can't shock me anymore, you always prove me wrong. How can you people live like this?"
"That's Torchwood for you," Toshiko said with a shrug. "People often complain about our attitude; that we behave as if we'd own the whole city. But they'd be running away, screaming, if asked to do the things we have to do."
In the solitude of her lab – even though it wasn't much bigger than a walk-in closet – Sara Lloyd felt supremely content. Here she could shut out the outside world, including her colleagues with their unsolved emotional problems and complicated relationships, and concentrate on the only thing that really counted in an investigation: facts. Hard scientific facts.
As a scientist and an ex-SOCO-member, she was used to work with facts. She left the wild theories to the others; Captain Harkness in particular. Theories could easily mislead one. Facts, if seen in the right context, could not.
Of course, finding the right context was not always easy.
She placed the sample Dr. Jones had brought back from the crime scene – the strange, greyish white substance from under the dead girl's fingernails – under the microscope. The structure was… interesting, to say the least. She knew she'd seen something like that before, but she couldn't remember where. She'd worked on so many cases with SOCO, and she didn't have a memory like her new boss.
Fortunately, she had all sorts of cool alien tech at her disposal. She could perform a molecular scan and measure any possible energy readings the sample might emit. And she could test its reaction to various chemicals.
Molecular scan first, she decided. She removed the object glass from under the microscope and laid it into the narrow vertical slot of the molecular scanner. She adjusted the settings, asked for a complete analysis, then she left the scanner to do its thing and turned her attention to the blood sample of the unknown victim.
The identification of the blood type took only minutes. The girl had been 0-negative; that would narrow down the search for her ID considerably. The DNA-analysis would take a lot longer. Fortunately, their alien-enhanced equipment could analyse several blood samples simultaneously. Lloyd started the DNA analysis on the victim's blood, and then she brought forth the sample of unknown, viscous white liquid also found at the crime scene.
"It seems to be organic," she muttered, filling a tiny amount of it into a phial to ready it for the centrifuge. "Let's see what it's made of."
She put the phial into the centrifuge and started it. At the same moment the molecular scanner beeped, having finished its cycle. She stood to check the results; then she took a second look.
"Chitin?" she murmured in surprise.
~TBC~