Note: This is a "re-imagined" version of the Season 2 episode "Old Friend New Enemy", which I swear has the lamest title in the world. Seriously - a mad scientist turns into a giant snake monster, and the best they can come up with is that? (Not that "Once Bitten" is so incredibly creative, but whatever - at least you know there's a snake.) I posted this elsewhere last year, but totally forgot to put it up here. Oops.
For Blackrose, who asked for some angst. Oh, man, did you get your angst. ;)
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Jefferson Smith gets the med team scrambled and to the hangar just as the Hawk touches down.
The normal organized chaos of the hangar has been shoved to the side for the emergency inbound. It's still full of noise and the burned-in stink of oil and ozone – but the main deck is clear.
The Hawk's canopy opens – it's on fly-by-wire, a bad sign – and three members of the team clamber up onto the wings, ignoring the hot metal and hotter engines. It will take, on average, two hours until the engines are cool to the touch. They don't have half that long.
In the rear seat of the jet is their patient. She's strapped into the harness; no remote-open for that. Looks unconscious. Pale and sheened with heavy sweat.
One of the medics checks her pulse and respiration. The other two try to get her harness off so they can transfer her to the gurney waiting on the deck.
Problem. She's slumped forward against the harness. Her weight engages the safety failsafe. It won't unlock.
"It's jammed!" the medic calls down.
"Cut it!" comes the reply, crisp and curt.
A laser pen is tossed up. The medic catches it, cuts through the tough polycarb straps. Their patient groans and comes to when they lift her from the plane.
"Max," she says. Mumbles. Her speech is slurred, tough to understand.
"It's okay," one of the medics says. "You're okay."
She isn't.
"Sorry," she mumble-slurs. "Stupid…"
She's spiked a fever, can't coordinate her limbs. Her eyes – they check when she's on the gurney – aren't dilating properly.
"What happened?" the lead medic asks. There wasn't time for a briefing. There was barely time to alert the team, prep sickbay, get to the hangar.
Jefferson looks at the agent on the gurney: feverish, incoherent, sweating. He knows that less than twenty minutes ago she was walking and talking normally. He knows that she's running out of time already.
"Snakebite," he says.