<div class="floatleft">(http://24.media.tumblr.com/aaad5c32a1cc5158823b021e3fd7c3f4/tumblr_mmppuna0xf1rlxy60o1_500.jpg)</div><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Maybelline (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=173794.msg8210032#msg8210032)<br/><strong>Occupation/Status:</strong>Zhayedan Squad / Human Interface Specialist<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Training Room 4 / Briefing Room<br/><strong>Action Summary:</strong>Genetic Material Detection and Assimilation Trial 130515-a / Reporting to Briefing Room<br/><strong>Tagged Characters:</strong>None<br/><strong> Open to Others?:</strong>All<br/><br/><br/><hr/><strong>Training Room 4 - Genetic Material Detection and Assimilation Trial 130515-a</strong><br/><br/>"This was recovered four hours ago."  A hand with a transparent biohazard labeled bag entered Maybelline's field of vision from the left, followed by an arm in a white lab coat.  It was all she could see with her head strapped into the examination chair.  Dense foam pads on either side prevented Maybelline from twisting her head, all the better to keep the dead, unwinking black glass eyes of the retinal scanner precisely focused on her own.  Likewise her left hand was strapped down to the arm of the chair, optical scanners originally developed for the AFIS - Automated Fingerprint Identification System - attached to four fingers and a thumb.  The right was left free for Maybelline to open the bag and remove the sample.<br/><br/>A tube of lipstick, the cap missing and dirt or dust sticking to the cosmetic itself, as if it had been carelessly dropped.  As her finger touched the black plastic base, Maybelline heard the labcoat's owner, a man, announce "Commence timing."<br/><br/>Sitting behind a bank of monitors off to the side, hidden from her view but not her hearing, Maybelline heard two other voices, both women, talking.  Stupid.  Baseline humans were so ignorant sometimes.  They equated line of sight with range of hearing and often forgot how superior Maybelline's was.  "Ugly color."<br/><br/>"Violet Frenzy.  Sounds like a lesbian catfight."  The two female researchers shared a short laugh.<br/><br/>"Okay," the first one said.  "Nothing so far in the retinal pattern."<br/><br/>Why would there be?  Maybelline hadn't found any genetic material yet.  Plastic.  Black, shiny plastic, like some of the shoes the researchers wore.  The tube, like a disassembled pistol's barrel, was shiny gold colored and had a different specific heat.  Maybelline knew because it felt incrementally cooler than the plastic, showing it was a better conductor, stealing heat out of her fingertips-<br/><br/>"Negative telemetry on left index.  Adjust the sensor," the second one said.<br/><br/>-and making them feel cold.  Ignored, his presence as normal as breathing, the male technician who'd delivered the sample repositioned the sensor over Maybelline's finger.<br/><br/>"That's good."<br/><br/>Waxy, smooth, slippery smooth not sleek smooth.  As she moved her fingers along the lipstick itself, specialized receptors in micropores on Maybelline's skin searched for the sugar, phosphate and nitrogen sequences of genetic material; DNA.  Drawing it in, the DNA was subjected to a series of genetically engineered restriction enzymes that sought out and slashed apart any that wasn't human.  They were so precisely made that even bonobo DNA, so very similar to human, was torn apart.<br/><br/>"Endonuclease activity ramping up.  She's found something."<br/><br/>"What's she doing?"<br/><br/>Heedless of the dirt stuck to it, Maybelline was brushing the lipstick on.  Having never used it before, never playing with it as a little girl or experimenting with it to Teen Vogue How Tos or Youtube videos with her girlfriends then giggling over the results, Maybelline applied it carelessly like lip balm.  A moment later her lips were a smeary mess.  Atop them her tongue slid, exploring the feeling, the texture, the taste of the lipstick.  Below, her lips drank in hundreds of thousands of base pairs per pore per second, flooding Maybelline's physiology with the target's DNA.<br/><br/>"Whoa.  Look at that.  Her assimilation levels are way above optimum.  What's going on?  Is it the sensors?"<br/><br/>"She's fixating."<br/><br/>"Code word her?"<br/><br/>"N...no.  Not yet.  It's, it's like she's heterodyning because of it.  This may be of interest.  Watch your instruments."<br/><br/>Fixation.  A simple word for a complex phenomenon.  To Maybelline it was as if nothing else in the world existed but the lipstick.  It was the most amazing thing in the world, ever, ever!  It tasted like sunshine and sin and smelled like long chain hydrocarbons looked and the feel of it, the feel was steel ice skate blades sliding over ice and she brought in a big flake of it to smear on her teeth and-<br/><br/>"Retinal adoption complete.  100% match.  How are the fingerprints?"<br/><br/>"AFIS picked her out as the target.  48 point match.  Better than the card itself."<br/><br/>"Damn.  This is very interesting.  This could be..."<br/><br/>"Not now.  Code word her."<br/><br/>Maybelline hadn't heard any of it, lost in the wonder of lipstick.  She reached to lift the tube up to her eye to really look at the color and bumped into the arm of the retinal scanner.  Carelessly she grabbed it and bent it backwards like a goosenecked lamp.  Aluminum tubing bent then tore under her strength and $40,000 worth of instrument dropped to the floor.<br/><br/>"Dammit!  Code her now!"<br/><br/>She never heard the words, never remembered them.  To Maybelline the behavioral routine activated by her code words caused her brain to dump neurochemical inhibitors.  It was as if a heavy crystal shield slid between her and the object of her fixation, freezing it, locking it away and making it interesting but no longer obsessive.  Blue eyes blinked, and again, as she came back.<br/><br/>"End test," the man's voice announced just a bit wryly.  "And we're going to need a tech in here to replace the retinal scanner."<br/><br/><hr/><strong>Briefing Room</strong><br/><br/>Maybelline's mouth still bore faint traces of the lipstick, though the techs had cleaned it off her cheeks before releasing Maybelline from the chair.  She was the first one to arrive in the briefing room since the test room was nearby.  Montgomery was there, so technically Maybelline wasn't the first, but she ignored him and sat down near the middle of the table, so other Prototypes would have no choice but to crowd in on either side.  Physical contact was something she craved, really craved from her fellow Prototypes and Maybelline made use of every opportunity to get it.  It wasn't unusual for her to try and hold hands with the other Prototypes during briefings, under the table, or rest her fingertips on the back of their wrists, their clothed thighs, around their waists.  She was like one of Harlow's monkeys desperate for a mother's touch.<br/><br/>Even if the mother was sometimes shaped like Wicked and a huge slab of astonishingly dense muscle and barely held in check violence.