November 29th 2013
David groaned at the incessant ringing; he was not ready to get up yet. They had stayed up late last night to play board games. Henry had insisted on having Regina on his team and the duo had beaten everyone else all night. Their guests had left around midnight and Henry had not gone to bed for another hour, challenging David to a sword fight. The adults had humored him, hoping that he would have then been tired enough to go to bed. No such luck. Regina had to promise him a visit at the stables in the morning and David had desperately watched Regina set a seven am alarm.
His foggy mind could still not process that the ringing was coming from his phone rather than Regina's alarm clock. "David?" Regina groaned as she rolled over to grab his cell phone from the nightstand. She shook him gently. "It's probably the station."
David groaned once more and grabbed his phone. He barked a greeting into the phone. However, the person on the other side of the line did not seem to care. After listening to his interlocutor for a few seconds, David sat up on the bed fully awake. "We'll be there in half an hour." He hung up, his heart hammering in his chest.
Exactly twenty eight minutes after David told Whale that he and Regina would meet him at the hospital, the couple walked through the front door, worries etched on both of their features. They were greeted by the receptionist who had been told to show them to the doctor's office immediately upon their arrival. As they entered the office, David and Regina scanned the faces of the people assembled to discuss the urgent - and deadly - matter at end. Regina realized that all of them had been laughing in her home less than twelve hours ago.
Whale shook David's hand. "Thank you for coming."
David did not want to waste time on niceties. "Are you sure, Viktor?"
The doctor closed the door to his office. Only a few people knew the truth and he did not want the news to spread yet. It would only create panic, making their job more difficult. "Yes. We found the rash after… after the boy died early this morning." Sarah placed her hand in front of her mouth, she could not believe they had missed the most obvious sign when the boy had come to the hospital three days earlier.
David closed his eyes and ran his hand over his face. "How is this even possible?"
Whale sat on the edge of his desk. "This is why I wanted you to bring Regina here. Could it have come with the Dark Curse?"
Regina shook her head. "I don't know. But even if it did… the curse broke over nine months ago… time restarted over a year and half ago... We would have seen an epidemic much sooner than this."
Whale nodded. "That's what I thought." He shifted on the desk. "I've heard of the disease before… when I was… jumping with Jefferson. But as far as I know it only affected your world. I doubt it is in this one."
"It's not." Everyone turned toward the man sitting next to Emma on the couch. Neal raised his head and clarified his statement. "It's not just a disease… it's a curse." He then proceeded on telling them the story of the man who had come to his village all these years ago when he was just a boy. "After he left, people started getting sick. Exactly eights days after they had showed the first signs of fatigue, ninety percent died."
Emma gasped. "Ninety percent of Storybrooke is going to die?"
Jonas finally spoke. He knew the disease. As a doctor in the Enchanted Forest, he had studied the Blaze - at least, as much as their limited scientific knowledge had allowed him to. "Not exactly. Not everyone who comes in contact with a sick patient becomes infected."
Whale continued for him. "It's not unusual for a disease to affect people different ways." He pointed toward David. "Our Prince, here, is a good example. He took care of Regina while she had the flu but never developed symptoms."
Emma was losing patience. "You took great care of not letting the news spread too fast… how many people, Whale?"
Jonas was the one to answer her question. "The Blaze could kill sixty percent of a village in less than a month."
Emma gasped. "Sixty percent are going to die?"
Whale looked away when he answered her. "I don't know how accurate the numbers are. The… research done in the Enchanted Forest is probably not reliable: no equipment, no rigorous data analysis… and we have better medicine available to us here."
Regina finally spoke. "It won't matter."
Everyone in the room gasped in shock at the bold statement. Neal was the first one to qualify Regina's statement. "It's not just a disease… it's also a curse. The medicine of this world may be able to help us with the disease but…"
Emma finished for him. "... we also need to break the curse."
Regina and Neal nodded once. Emma stood up. She hated to be passive; she needed something to do, something to fight. Regina tried to suppress a smile: like father, like daughter apparently. She addressed Neal directly. "You said you were with your father when the man came to your village?"
Neal nodded. "It was a few months before he became the Dark One. I… I never got sick. And I was sent through a magic portal shortly after the epidemic ended."
David interrupted, knowing where Regina was going with her line of questioning. "Rumple won't help."
Regina looked at him in surprise. "What makes you so sure?"
David took a shaky breath. "This disease has been around for hundreds of years. It's as old as Rumple himself apparently. Surely, someone must have gone to the Dark One for help… and if Rumple had a cure, he would have sold it at a price."
Regina raised her eyebrows. "For the right price. Maybe nobody offered him anything he valued. Rumple didn't care if people died… he would have never parted from the cure until his demands were met."
David shook his head. He had not wanted to reveal this secret but he was not given a choice. "He doesn't have a cure, Regina. The fairies offered him the Pixie Dust necessary to make the Black Fairy's Wand functional during the last epidemic… Don't you think this was more than a fair price?"
Regina gasped loudly. "This means Blue has no idea on how to stop this either."
David shook his head. "It's a curse but…"
Regina finished for him. "... it's also a disease. We need to vanquish both. We couldn't do so in the Enchanted Forest because we didn't have the medical knowledge or equipment… but in this land we have both science and magic."
"So what do we do?" Emma was ready for action.
Regina looked at her. "You are not going to do anything. You are going to take Henry and run as far away from here as you can."
Emma started protesting. "But…"
David stopped her. "Regina is right. You and Henry can leave… and you should." He turned toward the man slumped on the couch. "You too, Neal. You were spared once; you may not be so lucky this time. If the tale is right, only those who have already been infected are spared forever." He finally turned toward the woman he loved. "You too, Regina."
Regina looked at him with tears in her eyes. "It won't be necessary. I've already had it."
Both Jonas and Sarah gasped loudly. "When… when were you sick?" Sarah's eyes were filling with tears. She knew how painful the disease was; she had seen countless succumb from it. She hated to think that Regina had been alone to fight it, and being fully aware of Regina's past, the nurse was afraid to be right.
Regina shook her head. "It doesn't matter… All that matters is that I can't get sick again. I'll stay here and help as much as I can… as much as the town will let me anyway." Regina leaned into David and whispered so only he could hear her. "You're not doing this alone." David took her hand and gave it a light squeeze.
Whale looked directly at her. "I could use some blood samples… You may have something in your blood that may help us fight the disease." Regina nodded, a shiver going down her spine at the thought of a needle piercing her skin.
David wrapped his arm around her waist. He knew how much Regina hated needles and the reason why. He placed a soft kiss on her temple before addressing the room. "Emma, you and Neal should start packing. You need to leave town as soon as possible."
Emma grumbled. "We are trying to stop a mass panic. The Sheriff leaving town is not going to help us. These people… they have accepted me… for the first time, I have a place where I belong… I can't just abandon everyone… I can't abandon you." She looked at her father.
David's heart was racing in his chest. He had hoped to distract Emma enough with Henry that she would not ask him the dreaded question: He had never contracted the disease. He was as much as risk as anyone else in town. David shook his head. "You're not. You're heading to New York."
Emma frowned. "New York?"
David nodded. "Where the CEO of KFTech lives."
Whale threw his hands in the air in exasperation. "What does KFTech have to do with all this, David? If anything, we need to ask them for more anti-viral drugs or antibiotics. I don't even know if this thing is a virus, a bacteria, a fungi…" He waved his arms, unable to finish his sentence. Sometimes, the doctor wished his friend would admit that he was wrong about the deal George had facilitated.
"Viktor, you asked Regina if the curse could have brought the disease. Assuming it didn't, then it had to be coming from somewhere. We haven't brought anything new from the outside world since Emma came to town…"
"... except for the shipment from KFTech." Jonas finished for David. He shuddered at the thought that their medical supplies may have been tainted with the Blaze.
But Whale was still not buying the argument. "David, if it was in any of the food or medical supplies, we would have more than one case by now… the whole town would be infected."
David shook his head. "When we already have a flu epidemic on our hands? Who knows how many cases of the flu were mistaken for the Blaze!"
Whale was starting to get angry. He had only three hours of sleep last night and he did not want to deal with David's crusade against KFTech. "We don't have bodies lining up the corridors yet!"
Regina frowned, suddenly realizing that the timeline did not fit with the arrival of the KFTech supplies. She placed her hand on David's arm. "David, Viktor is right. The shipment arrived barely seven days ago. The disease takes eight days to kill…"
Emma interrupted Regina. "Not everyone dies on the same schedule, Regina."
Regina looked at the blonde in exasperation. "If it was a normal disease, I would agree with you but…"
Emma finished for the Queen. "It's also a curse. The eight-day schedule is immutable."
Regina nodded. "Exactly."
David groaned while Emma continued. "It doesn't make sense! We haven't brought anything new to town!"
Viktor stood from the desk. "No… that's not exactly true. As commodities were becoming less available, we had to rely on some of our reserves. So not exactly new to town… but new to being circulated in town."
Regina shook her head. "But our situation became desperate over a month ago! The reserved items were distributed at the beginning of this month! David is right, we should have had a lot more sick people by now."
Viktor shook his head. "Unless it was mistaken for the flu as the Sheriff pointed out. Twenty people died in the flu epidemic. We never looked for a rash… I would have never looked for it on the boy if it had not been so obvious. If it was in only one of the reserved item, then it is possible that we don't have a full epidemic yet. Just the beginning of one."
Emma sprang into action. "There is no point in arguing now. We don't have enough information about the disease, the people who died, or KFTech itself. David is right. The timing is highly suspicious. Maybe it warrants a trip to New York after all…"
David smiled. "Thank you."
Viktor shook his head. "How would they have gotten their hands on the disease itself? Don't you think this world would have a record of a deadly disease if it had struck before?"
Regina was the one to respond. "Not necessarily… perhaps it was mistaken for the flu in this world. Besides, I doubt people outside of Storybrooke would get sick."
David was genuinely surprised. "Why?"
Emma answered him. "Because it's a curse. It needs magic… which means even if it was brought from the Enchanted Forest, it would not have been active until the last nine months."
Regina nodded. "Still a long time for it to stay dormant in a fairly confined little town."
Viktor agreed with the assessment. "We need to go over the boy's schedule over the past few months. Figure out who he's been in contact with. If anything was different after the curse broke."
Jonas grabbed his white coat. "In the meantime, I'll examine the people who died from the flu... Look for the rash." The doctor was already on his way out.
Sarah followed after him. "I'll help you."
Viktor stopped them as they both reached the door. "No. I need you to draw some of Regina's blood. I don't want anyone asking questions. Not until we know more." He turned toward his colleague. "Jonas, we also need to prepare the quarantine area for the family of the victim." The younger doctor nodded.
Regina shudders at the mention of the blood test. David pulled her closer to him and whispered in her ear. "I'll stay with you."
Regina shook her head. "No. You need to help Neal, Emma, and Henry pack. They need to leave town as soon as possible." David could see the fear in her eyes. "David, I know what this disease does to people… I lived through it… I don't want Henry..."
David leaned his forehead against hers and cupped her face. "He won't get sick. Neither will Emma. I promise you that." Regina simply nodded. She tried to refrain the question that was burning on her lips. David had not mentioned whether he had already been exposed or contracted the disease.
Neal stood up from the couch. "Regina is right. We need to make sure Henry is safe. Where is he?"
Regina answered him after a long pause. Time was of the essence but she hoped she would have enough to say goodbye to her little boy. "At Granny's."
Neal swallowed hard. A crowded diner was not the best place to be at the brink of an epidemic. "I'll go get him. Emma, go home and pack our stuff. I'll go to the mansion and help Henry with his."
Regina cleared her throat. "Thank you… just… Just take care of him."
Emma hugged the shivering woman. "We will, Regina. We will be fine. We won't leave until we say goodbye."
Regina nodded. "I know… I know it's his best chance. Your best chance."
Whale cleared his throat. Although he did not wish to interrupt the family moment, they had other pressing issues they needed to attend to. "David, we need to organize a council meeting. We need to vote on appropriate measures to prevent the spread of the disease."
David sighed, parting from Regina reluctantly. "I'll call George. Get it set-up for this afternoon."
"Good. That will give me some time to finish going over the few facts we have about the Blaze."
Jonas finished. "And for me to have a look at the victims of the flu we still have at the morgue."