A/N: Well, it took a while, but this is the seventh chapter. I'm working on several other projects at the moment, so I will try to update as fast as possible, but I really don't know when I'll have the next chapter up. I'm also having a few problems with the plot of the story. Any suggestions as to what should happen would be great and helpful.

Salazar

Chapter 7

A human lab

Sighing loudly, a young woman shoved bubblegum pink hair out of her eyes as she tapped out long complicated formulas on her laptop. All around her, her "underlings" scurried about and did what she told them to. Empty Styrofoam cups littered the floor around the island counter that sat in the middle of her personal lab. The phone next to her had been ringing for five minutes straight without her hearing it, much less acknowledging the caller. The others in the room were too scared of the consequences of annoying her to come within a five-foot radius. She had been given a very complex and hard project to complete by someone near the top of the food chain, and many had lost their jobs from questioning her in the past few days.

Yanking a pen out a coffee cup, she knocked it over, but ignored that as she chomped down on the cap of the writing utensil, jerking it off and spitting it out. Expertly, she twirled it between her slim digits before putting it to paper and jotting out a note that looked to be incomprehensible. The phone rang on, her slaves kept working, and her little world kept revolving. Silence abruptly took over the room as a man in a uniform stalked across the lab to where the pink haired lady was preoccupied with her symbols and numbers. He looked painstakingly annoyed as he came to a halt in front of her desk, crunching on cups; spotting the mug, he picked it up and read the message on it. Letting out a snort of amusement, he slammed it down on the tabletop of her desk, trying to get her attention.

Growling to herself as she noticed the phone ringing, she shoved the electronic device off her table, not bothering to see whether or not it broke. Finishing off the note, she called out for someone to come and get it, but didn't lift her eyes from the table. A guy scurried over and snatched it from her before rushing back over to where he had come from. Deciding that enough was enough, the military officer reached out and closed her laptop. Ice blue eyes narrowed on the hand that still rested on her computer; slowly, they traveled up the arm to the man's shoulders, to finally land on his face.

"What the hell do you want?" she demanded, pulling the headphones out of her ears and dropping them on the tabletop. "If you're here to bitch about the project not being done, go do it to someone who cares."

"I think you should care, Amadine, because you're about to be fired from this assignment if you can't come up with anything." The man spoke through clenched teeth.

"Did you eat shit for breakfast this morning? You know that I am the only one on this planet who is smart enough to do this project with the insignificant shit you give me to work with! You want something that can be pumped into the earth, sprayed into the air and not harm the environment, BUT at the same time it has to be strong enough to wipe out the entire Predator populace." Amadine was bracing herself on the counter as she leaned closer and closer to her prey. "You, Colonel Peltew, need to stop jumping up my ass about everything and get a new goddamned hobby!" With that she collapsed back into her chair, shoved his hand off her laptop, and popped it back open.

The colonel was more than a little shocked at what had just taken place; he had been warned that she was temperamental, but had been assured she was the best. No one had mentioned she ate people for breakfast and never answered her phone. There had to be a way to deal with her, but whatever it was, it eluded Joseph, utterly and completely. Watching her talk to herself under her breath, Joseph couldn't help but wonder why anyone would dye their hair that shade pink. As he had walked in, he had heard someone talking about Amadine losing a bet with her brother but as soon as they had seen him the person had shut up.

"Little shit!" Amadine hissed, clicking something open on her laptop before rummaging around in a bag that hung on her chair. She came up with a notebook that was old and tattered. Flipping through it, she found what she was looking for and grinned. "Stew!"

"Yes?" A pimply youth popped up next to her, looking eager to please.

"I need you to go to the main lab and get me sample number 34552. You got that? Sample number 34552, and if you're not back in a half an hour, you're fired." She then began rifling through her notebook some more, muttering happily to herself. Realizing that hanging around was futile, the colonel went to leave, but was stopped by the scientist.

"Do you know what sample number 34552 is?" She questioned, popping up and off of her chair. "Well?" She walked over to him.

"No, what is it?" He growled, glowering down at the female.

"A drop of blood from a Predator, from which I can get a DNA sequence," Amadine crowed. "You do know what that means?"

"Something good, hopefully," he grumbled.

"Oh yes, it means I can then pick it apart and figure out their entire layout." The lady rubbed her hands together in excitement. "It was stored away years ago because no one had been able to puzzle it out because they were way too complicated, but now you have me and that means it'll get figured out. The sample is almost completely unknown due to the fact that it was deemed useless."

"How did you know about it then?" Peltew demanded sharply.

"It was on my challenge list, number four actually, if you must know. I just finished organizing my list yesterday while I was waiting for some test results to come in." Amadine placed her hands on her back and used pressure to crack it and relieve the tension. "But you know what would be fucking awesome?"

"No, what?" Peltew's tone was dry and the sarcasm wasn't lost on Amadine.

"Well, if you don't want accurate information that's fine with me." She graced him with a smirk before striding off in the direction of the coffee pot. Almost instantly, five or six people appeared out of no where and quickly cleaned up her work area, being careful not to disturb anything important. Peltew stormed after the ill clad woman, who was the only hope for colonies.

"What do you need?" Peltew followed her into the kitchenette, where the coffee was sitting on the heating pad. A grunt was the only warning he got before she socked him in the testis and called him a name that would have shocked his soldiers. Efficiently, Amadine poured the sludge from the pot into a styrofoam cup and stuck a spoon in it as she began to hunt for something. Much to the colonel's surprise and horror, the spoon stuck straight up in the coffee due to the thickness of the liquid. Seven scoops of sugar were dumped in the beverage, along with a liberal amount of something that Peltew was sure was some sort of alcohol.

"Amadine, you try my patience!" Peltew snarled, lifting himself from the place he had fallen. Amadine took a healthy slug of the poison she had created.

"Who made this horse piss!" She screamed; a meek squeak was heard nearby. "Well keep it up; it's better than the last pot." After downing the rest of it and dumping the cup, she turned to face the colonel.

"I want a new, fresh sample of Predator blood; if you can't get it, that's ok. I understand how incompetent you guys are; you can't even pick a planet where there are no aliens, you cum-guzzling testicle-ticklers…" Something rang in her pocket and she withdrew a cell phone to look at the number being displayed. "Persistent little bugger." She stuck it back in her pocket, not even bothering to turn off the phone. "By the way, if you really want to make my day, it would help if you brought in a live specimen, or a corpse, but live would be preferred."

"You want a live Predator?" Peltew was incredulous.

"But as I said before, I understand that you spineless pushovers can't get me everything I need, so I will be content with what you are able to bring me." Amadine scratched an itch on her nose as the phone in her pocket rang on.

"Fine, I'll get you what you need!" Peltew stormed off with the object of his irritation waving quite happily at his retreating figure.

One month later

"So that means…" Amadine was bent over her laptop as she scrolled through the extremely complicated DNA layout of a Predator. She had plotted it out herself and was now going through and looking for faulty parts, weak links. There didn't seem to be any, but she wasn't giving up. There was no way she'd fail at the task given to her. The sea of Styrofoam cups around her indicated that she hadn't left her desk in a long, long while, and her bubblegum pink hair had grown out to reveal her pale blond roots. Blindly, she reached out and scrabbled around the top of her workspace for a writing utensil of any sort. After a few minutes of not finding anything she growled and ripped her gaze away from the computer to actually look for a pen.

"Genie!" She schreeched, and a pretty brunette popped up next to her.

"Yes?" She smiled in the face of her boss's rage. "Is there something that you need?"

"Where are my damn pens!" Amadine demanded, her ice blue eyes burning like frosted embers in her pale and withdrawn face. "Didn't I tell you to make sure I always had something to write with!"

"Yes you did," Genie reassured her as she reached past the sleep deprived woman and pulled a black pen out from under a stack of reports. "Here you go, do you need more coffee?"

"I need something to eat," Amadine admitted, taking the pen and jotting something out on a legal pad. "Umm…I think a bagel would be nice. And coffee."

"Ok. You have had multiple calls from Colonel Peltew. I think there's something urgent he needs to talk to you about." Genie was dumping cups into the waste bin as she relayed the message.

"It must not be that important." Amadine dismissed Genie's concerns easily. "If it was really important he would come over and bug the shit out of me like he usually does."

"Well, he told me that he would be stopping by later to tell you what he needed to tell you, since you weren't answering any calls from any phone or letters or memos or anything like that." Genie reached out and detangled a pencil from Amadine's lank mop of hair. "When was the last time you had a full night's sleep?"

"Who cares?" Amadine muttered, snatching the pencil up and sticking it behind her ear.

"You'll collapse if you keep this up; you're no good to the team if you're in the hospital for malnutrition and fatigue," Genie reprimanded her sternly.

"Amadine!" a male shouted, and the scientist groaned loudly and buried her face in her hands.

"What do you want?" she wailed loudly, and everyone stared at her in shock; she sounded like she was about to cry and it was a well known fact that Amadine didn't cry.

"What's your problem?" Peltew gave her a sharp look, taking in her ragged appearance and the state of her workspace.

"I'll tell you what my problem is! I haven't had a shower in God knows how long, I haven't had a real meal in longer and I haven't had a full night's sleep since the beginning of this project! Then you come waltzing in and bitch at me! I'm this close to killing you right here and now! JUST SO YOU KNOW!" Amadine howled at him. Her face went from pale to a deep puce color. "Oh God." Then it drained of color and she fell over in a dead faint.

"Amadine!" Genie bent over her and felt for her pulse and checked her breathing. "She's still alive. Someone help me carry her over to the couch in the lounge!" Growling in annoyance, Peltew picked her up and followed Genie to the lounge.

"What's wrong with her?" He demanded of the secretary as he set the limp woman on the couch. "She weighs less than a child!"

"She just got done telling you," Genie told him as she wet a towel and draped it over Amadine's forehead. The shock of the cold water on her forehead jolted Amadine out of her faint. For a minute everything swam around her before settling down and allowing her to focus.

"What happened?" She moaned and Genie rushed to inform her that she had fainted. "Well hell! What do you want Peltew?"

"I got what you wanted."

"The blood sample?"

"The live specimen."

Amadine fainted for the second time in her life.