First a thank you to my reviewers:
Soraya - I have been told that I need to have more bare-chested Wyatt and/or Chris scenes. I've also been told I need to do so in more detail. Since I usually do such things from some point of view, and usually it's just them or just one of them, that has not happened. However, in time it could happen. *Amusing myself with the idea of how various characters might react to that* Maybe I need to take them swimming or something. We'll see. Siblings are fun. As to serious sibling fights, you will get those. The first one that comes to mind is more one sided, since the other brother is . . . unconscious at the time. *Imagines Chris reaction to something . . . yeah, that could cause some issues. Oh! I know. In one episode coming up in a while, Wyatt leaves while they are trying to find someone. Chris thinks one thing and Wyatt doesn't think he should risk telling Chris what he is up to. I'm sure there will be plenty of fights. So far I think the most I've gotten of that is the chapter with Emily and her brothers, but that's not anywhere near what you . . . oh! Yes, if we aren't being picky about what set of siblings, there is definitely something coming up. I'm glad you found the scenes with Cassia and the others enlightening. As to the other elder, you will eventually learn who he is and he's not actually being mean . . . well, not in the long run. He knows things that Kevin doesn't and you will see how that turns out. And yes, Ron is definitely one messed up dude. Since he got put into a mental hospital not once but twice (first as Cassia, then as himself) I needed to do that. He's older than Jen and Alex and twenty years in a girl's body did not sit well with him.
No, that is not correct. The Warren line has not at any point (other than maybe P. Russell) been warlocks. The Richmond family is using the blood of Rebecca and her daughter, Caroline, to turn the Richmond family into Warlocks. And the Richmonds did not lose their powers. They just gained immortality and more or less lost their souls. I say more or less, because it's not complete . . . not that you would know from Elisa. That girl is creepy. I have a rather long backstory for the Warren line prior to Melinda Warren. It is far too long to put here and I have an entire planned to explain it. That story cannot be told at present, because there are some secrets in it. I will sprinkle details around here and there. There is at least one in "My Curse on You", but you will likely have to figure out what that is in retrospect. For the purpose of this story what is relevant is that Rebecca's family is from a long line of witches and due to something that happened a very long time before (part of the story) only the women in her family have magical powers. The last man to have magical powers in her line was named Atticus. Occationally a man will slip into their line that has magical powers, but only when there is some other magical line directly involved. The sons can pass on the magical heritage. Anyway, Rebecca married Patrick Warren, a man with no magical abilities and they had three children. David and Samuel with the usual lack of abilities and Caroline with an ability that isn't needed for this story (considering she was dead even before the prologue.) I'm not sure that explains everything, but the warlocks are definitely the Richmonds not the Warrens.
Stacey - *Smilies* Glad you enjoyed the last chapter. Those are always fun. Yes, Ron is very messed up. As to the elder, you might like him by the end of this all. Grant you what he did was definitely mean in the short term, but if you knew why he did it . . . unfortunately for now I won't be revealing that because it would open too many questions that are very far in the future. I will tell you something about him, though. In part two of "Morality Bites 2: Biting Back" Hank spoke of an elder who rescued him from other elders. This is the same elder. I'm with you on the scene Andrew told, but unfortunately there was something that didn't work quite right. Right now, I forget just what it was. But since I did enjoy it so much, I wanted to share it. Emily and Addison. I am going to have so much fun with those two. Emily is absolutely sure that something is wrong with Addison, but she has no idea that Addison is a witch. Addison on the other hand couldn't care less about Emily's opinion of her and she knows Emily knows about magic, so it will be a lot of fun for me. I'm glad that you think my usage of the language wasn't too terribly done. As there is a little more of such langague in chapters yet written, I will keep in mind what you said.
In this story, time is a very important thing. This next chapter takes place over the course of several days and sets up the stage for the rest of the story. For this chapter dates will be printed about each section to show the passage of time. There are a lot of important and very subtle things. Something that at first seems perfectly innocent might be the clue that is needed to solve everything. In the chapters following this one, each will have an approximate time. If the chapter takes place somewhere other than San Francisco, there will be a second time in parenthasis that tells you what time it is wherever the scene is. There are some times that are exact, but most are just approximate.
Each of the scenes in this chapter are chosen for a reason. They show the progession of both the "disease" as well as how the situation affects the Halliwells. Hope you enjoy it.
Chapter One – Until the Whole World Dies
Tuesday, April 27, 2027
Time has a way of bringing decay. An old shack a mile or so outside of Duxbury, Massachusetts looked like it had seen its fair amount of time. Everything within it was old and broken down.
There was a table that have lost two of its legs. Broken pottery and food so molded even the mold had died lay on the floor at the broken end. Most of the items lay broken or decayed. Time had not been good to them.
One a wobbly end table a clock that had long since quit ticking sat perched. It looked as if it would begin a downward decent any second, but it moved not an inch.
Then, a curious think happened. The hands of the clock started to move. Slowly at first and then faster with every second that past, the clock turned in a counter clockwise direction. The backward movement counted back seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years until thirteen decades had been counted. And when it had counted back the last second of those thirteen decades it stopped as suddenly as it had started.
Through the broken glass of the window a well could be seen and from it a purple smoke drifted out. At the window, as if she had always been there, a tiny girl peered out. Through her body objects on her other side could be just made out as if she wasn't quite there. She turned her little head, sadness in her eyes, and to a woman who had most certainly not been there a minute before she said, "Mama, 'tis 'ap'nin', 'gain."
Friday, April 30, 2027
The Trudeau residence was rather quiet as Vicki Trudeau made her way into the kitchen. She stretched up and opened the cupboard to grab out a bowl. Over the next couple of minutes she collected a spoon, a box of her favorite cereal, a jug of milk, and a glass. She carried the items into the living room and spread them out on the floor.
"Time?" she absently asked.
A clock in the wall of the apartment flickered on and a voice stated, "The time is now oh five-hundred-fifty-nine."
"Perfect," she practically purred as she flopped down onto a bean pillow she had arranged on the floor. "TV on. Volume fifteen. Station four-ninety-seven. Begin."
She was about five minutes into her favorite television show, a show that had never aired in the other reality, but had been running only reruns for over fifteen years, when it was interrupted. Vicki glared at the screen as a map of eastern Massachusetts filled it.
"The area in and around Duxbury has been put under quarantine," a disembodied voice announced. "It is unknown what is causing the quick spreading disease, but it has been only two days since the first case was spotted and there are already over six hundred confirmed cases. Be advised to avoid the city until further notice. Doctor's are doing everything they can to contain and diagnose the disease."
Vicki stared at the screen startled. Duxbury was less than an hour's drive from there. The man on the screen described the symptoms and then he listed off disease after disease that had already been eliminated. It seemed that the medical community couldn't even figure out how the disease was spread.
As soon as the announcement finished Vicki ordered the TV off as she ran out of the room, down the hall, and into her parents' room. Her parents would keep her safe, wouldn't they?
Tuesday, May 4, 2027
Wyatt had been at the hospital for over ten hours. He slipped into the break room and sank down into a chair.
"Coffee?" Helen Hensley, one of the hospital's nurses, asked him.
Wyatt took it from her with a smile.
"I heard they roped you in here," she commented. "Did your boss mind?"
Wyatt shook his head. "Half the museum staff is here in the hospital. Hal closed down until further notice. It's not like anyone was breaking down the door to get in anyway." He took a sip of the coffee and put the cup down on the end table next to him.
"How're you holding up?" she asked. "I heard your uncle's got a pretty bad case."
Wyatt hung his head down and sighed. "My aunt Prue's going pretty crazy. She wanted to bring my cousins out here, but there aren't any airlines running." He looked up at her, sadly. "You?"
"My family's all out here," she informed him, "but yeah, a few of them have come down with it. People quit saying how lucky we were that they just had mild cases, when people started dying yesterday."
Wyatt nodded, dejected. "Hard to think anyone's lucky after that."
"The death count just keeps getting bigger and nothing we do helps," she moaned. "They still don't even know how people are getting it. And it doesn't match up with anything in their database."
"Four-hundred-seventeen," Wyatt mumbled.
"What?"
"That's the latest death count," he informed her. "A four-year-old died in Weymouth five minutes ago." He looked so tired, so weary.
"The last I had heard was three-sixty-four," she whispered. "That was less than an hour ago."
He took another sip of the coffee and said nothing.
"I got to get back to work," Helen announced suddenly. "I hope your uncle gets better."
Wyatt offered her a weak smile. "Thanks, Helen. Your family, too."
"Thanks," she replied before she headed back into the hospital to see to the comfort of the sick. There was nothing they could do to heal them, because they had no idea what was making them sick.
As she closed the door behind her Wyatt sipped the rest of the coffee. This had better be regular, because it was going to be a while before he had time for sleep. He looked down at his hands. He'd been told that sometimes whitelighters could heal disease, but if it weren't for the broken leg he'd accidentally healed earlier, he would have thought his healing power was broken. It hadn't affected anyone who was sick.
Thursday, May 6, 2027 4AM
The attic in the manor was unusually busy or rather unusually full. Half a dozen teenagers lay sound asleep on the couch and the floor. Hank Mitchell stood in front of the podium that held the Book of Shadows. As of five minutes before he had looked at every page in the book twice. That didn't, of course, mean that he had read them all, but he'd looked at them.
"Want me to take over?" Hank's cousin, Hope Halliwell offered.
Hank shook his head. "There's nothing in here, no point in you wasting time looking. We'll need to find another source."
"What if there is no other source?" she looked at him concerned. "Not every demon or evil spell out there has shown up before. There's a first time for everything."
He closed the Book and looked at her. "It's not new. This has happened before."
But where's your proof," she asked. "We asked Uncle Leo and he didn't remember anything like this."
"He also didn't remember when James Thomas kidnapped all those kids in 1927," he pointed out.
"He wasn't even three yet," she protested.
"Exactly," Hank agreed. "If this happened when he was young or before he was born, he wouldn't know anything about it."
"Yow asked Ava's kids," she added. "They're pretty old."
"Yes, but they didn't spend much time out of the alternate dimension James Thomas created," Hank pointed out.
Hope frowned as she thought. "Well, what about your grandpa? What did he say?"
"I haven't been able to reach him," Hank admitted. "He doesn't exactly have a phone number."
Hope sighed. "Do we know anyone older than that?"
"The elders," was his mumbled reply.
She wrinkled her nose. "That means going Up There. I sure can't do that."
"Neither can I," he informed her.
"But I thought . . ."
He shrugged. "I can orb. I just can't seem to orb Up There."
"Have you ever tried before?"
He shook his head. "I've never had that need before."
"Your mom's downstairs," Hope pointed out. "We can ask her to go Up There and ask. If you'll do that, I'm going to wake Cilly so I can ask her to go see the cupids. They've been around a very long time. Maybe they know something."
"According to your dad they don't pay a whole lot of attention to world events unless they pertain directly to love," he reminded her.
Hope frowned. "Well, I think nearly two thousand dead in the eastern US and Canada along with over four million sick from an unknown disease would catch their attention."
Hank moaned. "Every day just gets worse."
"We can't let this go on another day," she moaned. "All these people. A week ago no one was sick. Now there are millions scattered over the entire continent. How soon before South America's infected, too?"
"I'd say that's a sure bet," Hank informed her. "There have been cases reported on the western coast of Europe. There's little doubt that people in South America are either infected or will be soon."
Hope's bottom lip quivered. "I don't want to lose Uncle Leo or Uncle Andy."
Hank wrapped her up in his arms. "We know this is magical, that's a start."
"Only if we find a cure," she looked up at him sadly. "Every hour more people die and every minute more people get sick."
"Then, let's quit looking through the Book of Shadows for something we know isn't there," he decided. "You wake your sisters and have Cilly go ask the cupids. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they know something. Then, go find out where Chris is. He's going to start calling a lot of whitelighters until we find someone who knows something useful. I'll go get my mom and ask her to go Up There. Then, I'll wake my sisters. We don't just sit idly by and do nothing. We are going to find this cure and we are going to do it today."
Hope smiled up at him and wiggled out of his arms. He let go of her instantly and she headed over to where Cilly lay asleep on the floor by the couch.
As Hank headed toward the attic door he tried to hide his feelings. Please let me be right. Besides his two uncles, he had classmates who were sick, neighbors, and there was a girl he liked who was sick. He didn't know what was going on, but he couldn't let his cousin see just how scared he was.
In the course of just over a week, millions of people are sick with some unknown disease that has something to do with what happened in 1637. So in recap: In the Halliwell family no one magical is sick. Leo and Andy are sick, but not Victor or Henry. Despite a lack of any magical powers Hope and Pat still count as magical. If you want to know about any specific non magical character's health, just ask . . . I've got a list of who's sick and who's not.
As of the end of this chapter the Halliwells are in the following places:
Prue is at the hospital at Andy's bedside. The girls are asleep in the lobby of the hospital. They are still in Boston.
Piper is at Leo's side in the hospital in San Francisco. Wyatt is volunteering there, helping try to keep people at least comfortable. (Helen, the nurse he was talking to, is now among the sick.) Chris is at the hospital to visit Leo. Melinda got him to orb her back to San Francisco. She has been at the hospital for the last twenty hours.
Phoebe's still missing (no surprise there) along with Coop, but all three of their girls are in the attic.
Paige is in the manor, currently trying to make something for herself and the six teens to eat for breakfast (despite the early hour. She figured everyone's up, so why not). All three of her kids are also upstairs. Henry, however, is at the police department, where they only have had two officers come down with whatever this is.
I have not determined Victor's location other than to know he is not sick and Sam is missing.
In the next chapter, we see what Chris is doing.
