Leader Candidates

Matt held the pinecone in his hand and was very confused. Rather than the typical looking pinecone, it was more like a fresh one that hadn't released its seeds and turned brown yet. It was still green and full of moisture. Alexis wondered what he was holding and looked over in a confused manner. Once his connection with Martha was formed, he began to converse with her.

Apparently, this was normal for her. Every now and then, she needed to release excess energy in the form of seeds. She had indeed been growing a lot more recently, but not in size. Her weight had doubled yet again. Matt wondered what exactly was causing her density to increase so much. Any more and he was afraid she would begin to create a gravitational force.

Matt took a blade and sliced the pinecone in half. Inside were various pods that contained seeds. He used a more precise blade to cut a paper-thin sheet of the seed and looked at it under the microscope. It turned out that the seed was exactly like the membrane that held Martha's cat-like body in the past. This must be the viable seed that Dr. Bradshaw had mentioned. No wonder they were able to create so many chimera's, this pod has at least fifty seeds.

Matt took another seed and ground it up. Then, he placed the mixture in his spectrometer and tested it. While he was at it, he took out the capsules of drug he had been meaning to test. They said it was an iodine supplement and another drug meant to reduce the damage from radiation. However, he didn't need either of those things so he decided to check in his paranoia.

"Those are the drugs they gave out the other day. Do you think they lied about the contents? That is a felony…"

"I don't think Shephard cares about breaking the law. Also, we are so far from Earth at this point."

Once he finished preparing the medications for analysis, the spectrometer was finished analyzing the seed sample. It contained eighty-five percent elements that were part of genetic material and fifteen percent of a depleted radioactive isotope. This must be how the other plants are able to initiate the same nuclear bioreaction. Suddenly, he realized he had been forgetting something from a long time ago.

Matt took out his personal device and brought up all of the photos he took. There were many of him and Alexis he had to go through, but eventually he found the several pages of Dr. Bradshaw's notebook he had taken. He ordered them chronologically and began to read through them. Alexis took the drug sample and operated the spectrometer while he was reading.

Fortunately, the bulk of the notebook was filled with hand drawn tables and charts. The data in the charts wasn't very important to Matt since it was mainly growth markers and other measurements that would be necessary for a paper but not what Matt was looking for. He finally reached a large section with notes that talked about Project Synapse. He was about to start reading when the spectrometer beeped that it was finished.

He put his reading on pause and walked over to the machine. The chemical composition was written on the screen with the different ratios of components. He ran a quick check on the database and came up with only three possible drugs that could contain these ratios. Two of them didn't make any sense, but the third one was a very powerful anthelmintic, stronger than the one he used before. This drug was used to treat serious cases of parasitic infection. The second drug was likely to be a drug that covers up the side effects of taking such a high dose drug.

"Sigh, this a big headache." Matt said while leaning back in his chair.

"What's the issue? It wasn't poison was it?"

Matt gave her a meaningful look and sent her a telepathic message.

{Not to normal people, but to someone recently infected with a parasite, well. A normal person would call it a treatment.}

{Does that mean Shephard was targeting you, or perhaps targeting this missing subject?}

{He likely used the radiation incident as a way to spread this high dose drug around the ship in hopes to severely weaken the escaped subject. At least this means the subject is definitely parasitic in nature.} Matt brushed his hair back and realized how long it had gotten. He had already spent over a month in this world, yet he had no clues as to what brought his consciousness here.

{This probably isn't a good time to say this, but something Willard said didn't make sense to me.}

{Hm? Which one of the many wrong things he said didn't make sense?} Matt replied slightly jokingly.

{Well, the way he talked seemed strange. When you asked him why he revealed himself, he instead shifted it to you and you answered Project Synapse and Martha. However, he never once mentioned Martha after what you said. Although he talked about Project Synapse and the biotronic brain, he never explicitly mentioned Martha again.}

{It seems like he came in through the ventilation shaft. He had plenty of time to do something with Martha…} Matt changed his target and asked Martha to share what happened before they came. What Matt saw from Martha were a series of images that created something like a movie.

Willard arrived from the vent and dusted himself off. Martha immediately reacted badly and tried to attack him. However, he released some device that played a high pitch sound which made Martha lose all strength. Then, he injected something in her body. The images stopped, and when Martha woke up, she had created two pinecones. One was still within her but the other was already sprouted from her tail. Willard snatched it and stuffed it in his pocket and then Alexis arrived around the corner.

{That bastard injected something into her. Whatever it was stimulated her to create these pinecones. He took one with him.}

{There's nothing we can do about it now. We still need to figure out a temporary leader for the First Strike squad. Do you want to accompany me to check people with your power?}

{Yeah, lets go. The sooner we take care of that the sooner we can lay low.}

Matt nodded and placed everything back that he had used. He pocketed the pinecone and said bye to Martha. While the two of them were on their way out, Matt received an encrypted file that opened to his biometrics. It contained a list of personnel with varying degrees of connection to Shephard.

"It seems we have something to go off of now."

The situation was a lot more stressful than when they left the meeting earlier that morning. Alexis only had a short amount of time playing with Martha before they decided to leave the lab. They were careful not to give away any information while in the lab. They tried to use telepathic speaking as much as possible so that Willard wouldn't have a record of what they said.

Matt looked through the personnel sheet and discovered someone familiar. It was the soldier that he encountered during the test. The one that had essentially helped him find the hiding place of Lorenz and the other candidate. His name was Finley Maguire. According to Willard's observations, he was a completely neutral person on the ship. Matt gave him another thought but then moved on. At least this person was not against him.

"There are four candidates that would be a good choice."

Matt showed her the personnel files of the four. Alexis recognized three of them and the other she had never met. The first one was Megan Cirillo. She always placed in the top ten in all parameters in the First Strike squad which secured her position. Due to her personality, she is difficult to talk to and even more difficult to coerce. She would be a great choice minus her unsociable nature.

The next was Diana Martin. She did not place nearly as high as Megan, but consistently stayed out of the elimination criteria. Her main benefits were clearly not being part of Shephard's faction. In fact, she was the Captain's cousin. Aside from that, she had a good personality and was easy to talk to.

The third candidate which Alexis did not recognize was Markus Deville. He was in the middle of rankings almost every time. His personality was normal. His build was average and didn't have anything remarkable about him. Additionally, it seemed that many didn't even know he existed, like Alexis. He was a wall flower wherever he went. Willard's analysis showed that he was over ninety percent not working for Shephard, which was the highest of any other person that wasn't in the captain's faction.

"The last person is Ren. She is great. Last year, she was first in the skirmish and was promoted to the First Strike squad. We were really close back on Earth. Unfortunately, I heard she got into an accident during training sometime this last year which pushed her down the rankings." Alexis said when she saw the fourth candidate.

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Thank you CrownofFangs for the generous gift. Enjoy the bonus chapter!