"I dunno what it is. It looks like Human semen, but it's.....not. I don't know -- like she said, maybe a mutation."

"What in Hell does that mean?" Quint Tomlinson exploded. "You sound like you're talking about an alien -- or a monster or something."

Sam looked down. "Maybe I am," he whispered. "Or something. I don't know exactly what I'm talking about just yet, Quint."

Brianna's computer hummed for a long time, the microscope's image of the semen sample glowing on the screen. Finally a dialog box opened up.

"Unable to find a match," she said, frustrated. She typed in a new command.

'Find closest matches.'

Her laptop whirred...