Gotc: Well you guys all have me super self-conscious now. Don't get me wrong, the outpouring of support for the fic was incredible and the volume was certainly unexpected. Except now I really feel like I need to step up my game to make sure you guys get what you supported! At any rate I will certainly do my best, not only to live up to your expectations, but to extend my respect to the crisis currently at hand. I only hope I do you all proud!
Disclaimer: Gotc does not own JL or "The Hot Zone". All quotes from the aforementioned book do not belong to me and will be in bold italicized font.
Warnings: Ebola is a disease not for the faint of heart. Out of respect for Richard Preston's work, and of the nature of the virus itself, I will be describing its effects, both in my own words and Mr. Preston's. While I will attempt to keep this tasteful, I have no intention of downplaying the effects of this disease.
Quarantine
CHAPTER 11: Origins
As she materialized in the lair of the Batman, the first thing to assault Diana's senses was the harsh smell of disinfectant and any number of cleaning agents. The shrieking of bats, rustled from their activities by the whir of the teleporter, were markedly absent. Every light the Cave possessed was on, illuminating every nook and cranny from the catwalks, to the expansive platforms that housed the majority of Batman's crime fighting tools.
It only took Diana a minute to recognize the drastic change in atmosphere in the Cave for what it was: Decontamination.
It should have been impressive to see a place as foreboding as the Batcave suddenly more sterile than even a hospital, especially when Batman, or perhaps Alfred more likely, kept everything in such meticulous order as it stood. But instead, the harsh smells of the chemicals only made Diana's stomach drop into her feet, as her heart fluttered almost in panic. She knew they were only working to scour the Cave of any possible trace of the virus, to prevent anyone else, especially one of the Bat Clan from following their patriarch to his fate. But at the same time, they were removing every trace of Bruce.
The bats that kept him company during all hours of the day and night had all been rounded up to be checked for any trace of the disease. The cases that housed the infamous Batsuits were empty, and even the subtle scent of his blood, sweat and cologne had been scrubbed away by the acrid smell of bleach in the air. Even Alfred, a man that rivaled Bruce's own perception of activities that took place on the Manor grounds, was markedly absent.
When Diana had received Zatanna's call, she'd almost been relieved to have an excuse to retreat to the Cave, if only to submerge herself in the world Bruce operated so well in. She'd hoped for a moment where, just maybe, she could pretend that Batman was out on patrol and would return at any moment to tell her to get the hell out of his city instead of dying in a hospital bed on-board the Watchtower from a foe she had no means to fight. However, it was all too clear that even that fantasy would be lost to her. There was no ignoring the tang of the cleaners on the air, or pretending that the people that made the Cave what it was were no where to be found.
"Diana!"
Wonder Woman looked up at the sound of her name, frowning at the way it was faintly muffled, before she spotted the figure in a bio-hazard suit waving at her from the main platform. She lifted off of the walkway and floated up to the Cray Supercomputer, unable to shake off enough of her unease by the time she lighted in front of the vacuum sealed Zatanna. It seemed like an age ago they had been talking over sub-par commissary pasta about how to bring the Batman out of his self-constructed shell, and now they were separated by a layer of thick plastic and canvas trying to piece together how the whole world had been turned upside down. It was just another way the world had gone wrong.
"Who started cleaning?" Diana asked looking back around at the uncharacteristically bright Cave.
"Would you believe Batman wrote a protocol to decontaminate the Cave in the event of something like this?" Zatanna smirked, gesturing down to a little circular drone moving along the floor on a nearby walkway.
Diana couldn't help the small smile that came to her face as she watched the jet black drone hum along as it finished it's task. But it was short lived. The little bot's presence, as indicative of Batman's paranoid personality as it was, still only served to underline the fact the man himself was gone. Zatanna was quick to pick up the sudden slump in Diana's shoulders and rested a gloved hand on her shoulder.
"They told me it was Ebola," Zatanna said somberly, "But they didn't say how bad-"
"It's bad Zee." Diana snapped, cutting her off. She didn't mean to be so harsh, but already she could feel the encroaching burn in her throat that threatened to bring tears to her eyes. It was easier for the hardened warrior in her to stay in control, to keep her focused on the task at hand.
It's what Batman would do after all.
"You said you had a lead?" She asked, glancing up at the screen of the supercomputer next to them.
"Sort of." Zatanna said, tapping a few keys, "I was hoping you'd be able to help me sort through some of it though, cause it's not all making sense."
"What do you mean? I thought you were working on a locator spell?" Diana said, a frown etched deep on her face.
"I was." Zatanna tried folding her arms, but was impeded by the confines of the bio-hazard suit, "It wasn't exactly helpful. I'm not sure if I had bad ingredients, but it kept trying to tell me the knife came from the Watchtower."
"Do you think someone on board might have been responsible?" Diana balked, the very idea someone they had trusted could have been the cause of Bruce's condition.
"That's why I came down to the Cave." Zatanna tried to reassure her, adjusting the inflated helmet on her head to see out of it more clearly, "I figured Batman would have had better information recorded about what happened that day at Lex Corp I could use to cross-reference profiles with. But if I'd have known the place was being scoured..."
"Did any personnel give you a match?" Diana asked, the sudden anxiety and anger mixing nauseatingly in her stomach.
"Well Batman already beat me to it. Looks like he had three possibles on the list based on the description of the woman, people matching body type, height, weight, and stature." Zatanna said without looking up from the monitor, "But he ruled them out. Solid alibis for all three, checked and verified by Batman himself."
Diana had to swallow the knot that had formed in her throat. They were still just playing catch up to things Batman had figured out already. It did nothing to help ease the thought that Batman would have been on his way to solving this case, instead of floundering like she was had their roles been reversed. She was a warrior, a fighter where his greatest asset was his mind; and his was an asset they sorely needed now, but had been suspended beyond their reach by the virus that ravaged his body.
"So we're still at square one then?" Diana sighed dejectedly.
"I wouldn't have called you down here if I didn't have something, Di." Zatanna said with mock offense, "I started analyzing the knife itself to see if I could trace it's origins. Turns out the knife is made with iron mined out of the area around Laurium. More so, carbon dating placed the date the knife was forged somewhere around 430 BC."
"The knife is Greek in origin?" Diana frowned, a new and wholly unwelcome feeling of unease settling over her.
"Ancient Greek." Zatanna emphasized, "There's more. I did some digging into the history of Greece at the time."
"There was a war going on." Diana nodded thoughtfully, trying to recall the details, "Athens against Sparta and her Allies. If I'm not mistaken, Athens fell to the Spartans after a prolonged siege of the city."
"Right." Zatanna said, still typing away at the keyboard, "But do you know why the Spartans won?"
"Arrogant men who were more interested in power than proper tactics in battle." Diana shrugged, "The better warriors came out on top, and Athens is lucky they were shown such mercy in the end."
"That was part of it," Zatanna agreed, tapping one last key and bringing up an image on the screen. "But around 430 BC, in the same time frame the knife was created, Athens was hit with a plague that killed almost 2/3rds of the population."
Diana had to keep her jaw from falling open at the scenes that suddenly filled the massive computer screens in front of her. In every one of them, people were dead or dying in the streets, their faces frozen forever in masks of terror and agony, as the ground they laid upon was awash with blood. People were throwing themselves off of the buildings to escape the grip of the virus, retching into the gutters, or simply gasping for air as they looked for gods that were not there. In fact, in every depiction, the gods were plainly absent.
But one drew Diana's attention more than the rest. Images of people tending to the sick and the dying people trying to stem the flow of blood and death. There were men sprawled in agony on some beds, and in others, mothers-to-be were giving birth to children bathed in crimson as they took their last breaths.
The virus is a catastrophe for a pregnant woman: the child is aborted spontaneously and is usually infected with Ebola virus, born with red eyes and a bloody nose. This is the red chamber of virus queen at the end of the earth, where the life form had amplified through mothers and their unborn children.
Diana had to look away from the pictures. She knew Bruce was suffering. She didn't need to see any more of what still lay in wait for him.
"I knew people had become sick within the walls..." Diana shook her head, trying to block the images from her mind so she could think, "But I didn't know it was this..."
"There's still some debate about whether or not it was Ebola that killed the people of Athens during the war, but I'm convinced myself." Zatanna said, visibly shuddering even within the safety of the bio-hazard suit.
"How does this help us though?" Diana sighed, "A plague that happened thousands of years ago doesn't help us save Batman now!"
There was a pregnant pause in the air, Diana's voice echoing against the vacant walls of the Cave louder than she would have liked. Zatanna only looked at her sadly, closing some of the windows on the computer and hiding the horrendous images from sight.
"No." She agreed with no joy in her voice, "But it just might help us save others."
Diana felt her throat tighten uncomfortably, and she almost couldn't pull in enough air to keep the edges of her vision from going black. She swayed slightly on her feet, but the edge of the desk provided the stability she needed, even if she left a hand-sized imprint in the metal when she finally let go.
"It can't be a coincidence that the knife used to infect Batman came from an era afflicted by the same disease." Zatanna reasoned, not noticing Diana's struggling as she continued to talk. "That means we have to be looking for someone with a pretty substantial background in ancient Greek history, though I doubt the virus would have lasted for so long on its own like that..."
"There was a breach of security in Gorilla City." Diana said, more regurgitating information than actually thinking about it, "We confirmed there was a sample of Ebola stolen, and J'onn is testing it to see if it's the same strain Batman is infected with."
"Gorilla city?" Zatanna frowned, repeating Diana, "I didn't think anyone could break into that place? Aren't the Watchtower shields modeled after their tech?"
"Yes. Solovar is looking into it, but he says that there's no way to get into the city without help." Diana intoned back.
"So we're looking for more than one person then?" Zatanna said, a spark of hope in her voice.
Diana looked up at the sudden change in the female Leaguer's tone, almost confused as her brain worked to catch up to Zatanna's line of thinking.
"There's like three people out side of the League that even know Gorilla City exists!" Zatanna tried to explain, "So how would this assassin have even known there was a sample there for her to steal if someone hadn't told her about it in the first place! Someone who knows the city inside and out!"
"Grodd!" Diana nearly shouted, rushing forward and catching Zatanna up in a hug. Zatanna wheezed audibly through the plastic helmet as Diana squeezed, before the Amazon finally set her back on the ground with a smile that stretched from ear to ear. "Zee, do you think you can find Grodd with another locator spell?!"
"I wish I could, but there's no way I can get a hold of the ingredients I'd need to do a second one so soon." Zatanna coughed, trying to catch her breath again.
"That's fine." Diana nodded, her mind turning furiously with a solid lead to hold onto, "Someone has to know where he is. I may not be Bruce, but I'll find someone who'll be willing to talk to keep their fingers in once piece."
"Grodd won't be exactly easy to find you know," Zatanna warned Diana, worried the Amazon was so desperate for any good news that she would take it too far to keep it from fading away, "There won't be many people who know where he'd be."
"There's enough." Diana said firmly, almost pushing Zatanna out and away from the keyboard, "Giganta is close to him. Even if he didn't tell her, she might have overheard something or might have an idea of where he'd be operating from."
Diana was immensely glad to see Bruce had kept an exceedingly close eye on the villainess, and had kept an updated log on her last know whereabouts that was current right up until he'd fallen ill. She'd been laying low in New York for some time according to his information, so that's where she'd start looking.
"I'm going after her." Diana said, ripping off the printed sheet with the information she needed.
"I'll stay here and keep digging and see if I can't turn up anything else about this knife." Zatanna said watching Diana turn to leave, "Maybe I can still find out something about our mystery woman."
She only gave Zatanna a brief nod over her shoulder as she headed for the teleporter pads, before the magician stopped her.
"Di."
Diana turned mid air to look a bit more fully at Zatanna, only to find her staring up at her with a concerned intensity.
"He's not gone yet, Di." She said quietly, even with the Cave amplifying her voice, "He's still got a chance to fight his way through this. Don't do anything he wouldn't."
Diana frowned at the implication, but Zatanna wasn't backing down or looking away. Both of them knew full well that if there was even the slightest chance to spare Batman from the monster that had a hold of him, she would take it in a heartbeat. Consequences be damned.
"I'm not going to let him die if I don't have to." Diana said resolutely, before she turned to fly to the teleporter and vanished in flash of light, leaving Zatanna utterly alone in the Cave.
"Yeah." Zatanna sighed, tapping her communicator through the suit, "That's what I'm worried about."
"How much longer do we sit and wait? They have to be getting close by now. We aren't ready yet, and if they find us, we'll never be able to-"
"My dear, if I have to remind you that 'Patience is a virtue' again, I'll be making a recording of it for you to play instead. We are right on schedule. The Dark Knight is down, and the rest of the League is floundering."
"They've pulled through without him before."
"Perhaps, but it has them off-balance. Now it's time to take full advantage of that."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, my dear, that you didn't steal that virus simply to infect one person..."
Gotc: BUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! God I'm mean. I'm trying to be sensitive, and I still can't help myself. Sorry again folks, I know this chapter wasn't NEARLY long enough for the waiting you all have done, but it is a real chapter this time!
I can't thank you all enough for the outpouring of support again! You guys are certainly my inspiration to keep writing, and I hope to not only continue to make this fic live up to your standards, but help provide information on this disease during the outbreak. As always, your feedback is what I live for, so if you have a critique, or just want to say good job, let me know while I work on the next installment!
Laters!