Mei Meng (TV)

This page is about the TV character. For the books incarnation, see Mei Meng (Books).

Books character	TV character

Mei Meng is the daughter of Praxideke Meng. She suffers from a rare genetic disorder that made her of particular interest to Lawrence Strickland in his experiments to study and control the protomolecule.

Appearances[]

Season 2[]

Season 3[]

Biography[]

Background[]

She is four years old and lives on Ganymede with her father, Prax. Her mother, Nicola, left them to live on Ceres. Prior to the Ganymede incident, she was abducted by her pediatrician, Dr. Strickland, as part of the Caliban project, which sought out the creation of supersoldiers by entangling human DNA with protomolecule.

Because of her kidnapping, she survived the battle on Ganymede and was presumed to be alive. She and other children like her were taken to Io for experimentation by Dr. Strickland. Mei, however, was saved by the Roci crew and her father during the Io Campaign and before she was experimented upon. Following those events, she and her father went back to live on Ganymede.

Throughout the Series[]

In "Pyre", it is revealed that Mei is missing. Later, her pediatrician, Lawrence Strickland is seen to supposedly have ties to Protogen. It is suspected that the defunct company is somehow connected with the catastrophe on Ganymede because the scientist Paolo Cortázar had been receiving protomolecule signals from there. As suggested by Naomi Nagata, Prax accesses footage from the clinic that reveals the pediatrician actually extracted his daughter from the clinic well before the collapse of the orbital mirrors. Realizing his daughter might have yet survived, her father resolves to return to the moon with the crew of the Rocinante to find Mei.

During "Cascade", Basia, the father of Katoa, who is another child with the same immune disorder as Mei, is seen as one of the few survivors of the Ganymede Incident. He directs Prax and Amos to seek out an unscrupulous bartering computer hacker, Roma, to find video that could help locate the children. Despite initial reluctance, following some brute physical coercion courtesy of Amos, Roma is convinced to work for free. The hacker's probes ultimately are fruitful with the retrieval of surveillance which shows Strickland lead Mei into an old secluded part of the station where all video coverage ends. That is the next piece of the trail Prax and company must follow to find his daughter and the mysterious Strickland.

As the episode "Here There Be Dragons" unfolds, Prax is seen tracking through the old tunnels of Ganymede, accompanied by Holden, Naomi and Amos. As they proceed, he finds evidence of Mei's trail. Flashbacks cut back to Strickland coaxing Mei to disregard her apprehensions and follow him farther until they reach the lab. Along the way, Mei repeatedly re-asserted her concerns, while Strickland also resists Umea's warnings about the risk of accelerating the project. At the lab, we find a line of other young children strapped to inclined experimental procedure tables. Mei is visibly shocked, frightened and speechless. This flashblack shows her get strapped to another table at the end. In the present, the Roci crew finds a room with Umea and a mix of researchers and armed guards sitting down for pizza. Umea tries to negotiate with Holden, but Prax spots Mei's backpack. Prax advances abruptedly with his weapon pointed and demands to learn what they have done with her at which point gunfire erupts. Umea escapes through the far door, and, once again, Holden and company are stuck locked on the outside. As Prax examines Mei's backpack, they discover a dead child in an incineration room, and there are growths symptomatic of the protomolecule infection. After firing up the incinerator to eliminate the traces of protomolecule, the far door briefly opens again and Amos watches an explosive device get tossed through to the room the crew is still in. Reacting quickly, he tosses the device back through the door in time. Everyone listens to the mayhem that ensues on the other side as the explosion triggers a vicious feral attack, and there is more gunfire. When the crew enters the room, they realize a containment cage has been damaged, freeing something and the outer airlock door was breached. Once again, Umea is found having now sustained a severe trauma to her neck and is bleeding. Holden refuses to deliver first-aid, demanding instead an explanation of what the children are being used for, and where they've been taken. Umea dies telling Holden there are more of the creatures, and they were trying to make some great technology with the protomolecule. She, however, will not say where Mei is. They are left needing to figure it out from the few clues they find there at the secret facility on Ganymede which includes the computer core Prax takes from the creature's containment case.

During the final moments of the season finale, "Caliban's War", Lawrence Strickland is revealed in a dark secret facility on a Jovian moon. Mei, despite her eyes being open, is shown motionless as Strickland closes her cold stasis chamber, wishes her "sweet dreams", stows her away and whistles as he walks away to the camera panning out on a catacomb with hundreds of similar stasis chambers.

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