Inside, the reception area was spacious and comfortable. The walls and floors were clad in white marble and two large, purple sofas dominated the area for guests to sit on. There was a reception desk on the far wall with a lady behind it and on the adjacent wall, two lift doors set into brushed chrome. The receptionist welcomed us warmly.
"Ah yes. Dr. Celex is expecting you. Please take a seat and I'll let him know that you have arrived."
We had barely sat down before a lift pinged, and the doors slid open. A young Denobulan man in a white coat emerged, his eyes immediately locking onto Peter.
"Peter!" he shouted warmly, holding his arms wide.
Peter stood up and met his friend, taking him in a hearty embrace. I saw his face crease with pain from the hug, but he said nothing.
"It's good to see you again. How's your recovery doing?"
"Very good, Celex, but that's not why I'm here, remember?"
"Indeed I do. And this must be Cadet Terran," he said, holding out his hand to me. I took it and we shook hands. His skin was warmer than I had anticipated, soft and smooth too.
"Come. I'll take you to one of the labs. Do you have the samples?" he asked.
I nodded.
On the way to the lab, the two men chatted but I didn't really listen. I was feeling too nervous about this whole thing.
"Here," Celex said, opening a door with a traditional handle. "Lab Three is free and has the right sort of equipment, and I can also access the DNA database from there."
The laboratory was particularly well equipped. I'm sure even Rosie would have envied some of the facilities there, purely because there was so much of it. On a starship, there is a limited amount of room, and this one lab was probably four times the size of the Earhart's sickbay.
Celex led us to a station.
"Now what have you got for me?" he asked, eagerly rubbing his hands together.
I handed him the hairbrush as he snapped on a pair of surgical gloves and donned a pair of magnifying goggles. Tilting his head to the light, he began to examine it.
"Hmm ... I see two donors here, I think."
"Oh! Yes. Sorry. That'll be me. After my brush was stolen, I didn't really have much choice but to use Lizzy's. Sorry. Shouldn't be a problem though, should it?"
"Not at all, but I'll need a sample of your hair for elimination purposes."
I leant forward so that he could take what he needed. He plucked three hairs and placed them carefully on a sample plate on the side. He then hooked his ankle around the leg of a nearby tall stool and dragged it over before perching on it. Huddling over the hairbrush with a pair of long nosed tweezers, he began pulling strands from it, isolating them into two piles. He began to scowl, one side of his mouth stretching amazingly wide across his face.
He hesitated from his work and looked up at us.
"Are you sure this is Lizzy's hairbrush?" he asked.
"Yes. Why? What is it? What's wrong?" I asked, but he ignored me.
He took the lighter hairs he had collected and placed them under a scanner and shut the lid. The three he had taken from my head, he placed on a similar device and pressed a few buttons. A large monitor burst into life on the wall with images of the two samples beside each other. He tapped at the control panel again and a DNA analysis displayed at the bottom.
"So those are all your hairs, Jenny," he said.
"So they must be Lizzy's." I pointed to the other pile.
"If you say so."
"What does that mean?"
Celex took one of the hair and twisted it between his thumb and forefinger. To my horror, he then put it between his lips and slid it through. He scowled even harder.
"I take it Lizzy wore a wig," he said.
I looked at Peter and Peter looked at me, both of us confused.
"No. Not that I know of, and I shared a room with her, so if she did, it was the best kept secret in the world. Why?"
"Because this hair isn't Human."
"Oh. I admit that I had always assumed she was Human, but she could be part Romulan or Vulcan or something, I suppose."
"No, you don't understand. It's not a natural fibre. This didn't come off any living thing. It's synthetic. It's very good, but it's definitely manmade."
He picked the brush up and examined it again, continually plucking individual strands from it and holding them up to the light.
"And you can tell that, what, by the taste?" Even I heard the mocking in my voice and chastised myself for it. It was rude and unnecessary, but Celex just laughed.
"And the texture but, here, let me show you."
Celex cleared one of the scanners, cleaned it down and placed samples of the synthetic hair onto the plate. He pointed to the new image on the monitor.
"The one on the left is yours Jenny—Human hair. Note how the cuticle—that's the outer layer, has growth patterns on it, whereas the artificial one on the right is smooth."
"Maybe she wore hair extensions?" I suggested.
"In which case I should be finding a mixture of both natural and manmade."
Celex then immersed himself back into the hairbrush pulling off strands one by one, examining them and discarding them. Peter and I backed off in the hope that with more space, he'd get better results.
Finally, after a good thirty minutes, he lay the tweezers onto the bench, looked at us both and shook his head. We stared at him not quite sure what to say.
"The toothbrush!" shouted Peter suddenly, startling us both.
With renewed hope, I dipped into my bag and produced it.
"And this one definitely won't have my DNA on it."
"Excellent," said Celex taking it from me.
He took a pair of small scissors, snipped off the bristles and prepared his samples.
"This should be very easy," he explained. "As a Starfleet cadet, her DNA will be in the database even if she's not in the civilian registers."
Having prepared his samples in little capped test tubes, he placed them in a little rack that was then drawn into another machine.
"Just a few moments now," he smiled, his mouth stretching into one of those wonderful, full Denobulan smiles.
My stomach churned with trepidation and I found myself biting down on my lip. The machine pipped and I jumped.
Celex grinned in amusement, then studied the results.
"Oh!" Celex exclaimed in disappointment.
"What?" cried Peter and I in unison.
Celex shook his head and scowled afresh.
"But ... I don't understand."
He scratched his head.
"What?" we demanded again.
"There's no DNA here."
"But that's impossible! It's Lizzy's toothbrush."
Celex's head suddenly jerked alert.
"That's odd," he said.
"What?" but he ignored us.
"What?" we demanded again.
"I have a chemical analysis though."
"Chemical. What sort of chemical?" asked Peter.
"Kazium."
"Kazium? What's kazium?" I asked, turning to Peter. His face had drained to a deathly white. My stomach filled with dread.
"What?" I asked him.
He swallowed hard before he spoke. He was obviously shocked at what he knew.
"Kazium ... it's umm ... it's a complex combined lubricant and nutrient used in cybernetics to nourish and maintain robotic and android units."
My jaw dropped.
"You mean ..."
"Lizzy is an android," finished Celex.
