Hi. Very short, epilogue to follow.
48: Bed Rest
Unhappily confined to the Tracy Island infirmary-
Occasional visits from TinTin, Alan, Fermat and his smuggled dog helped to enliven matters, but otherwise, Gordon Tracy was at wit's end and no mistake. Back on Thunderbird 2, he'd at last thought to check his public email. Rather stupid to wait so long, but he'd been ill, and wasn't particularly clever to begin with. (In his own estimation, at least. Others might have said different.)
At any rate, there'd been nothing at all from Royce, Erik, Damien or the rest of his team; not even the usual badly spelt 'Where the bloody hell are you, for F's sake?' letter from McMahon. Anika had written him, though, the day after he'd been picked up by Virgil in Thunderbird 2. English was not her first language, so the phrasing took a bit of working out, but the gist of her letter was this:
Gordon, everyone is being very sick, and we are told to evacuate. I have been hurriedly to your dorm, but there is no one there who will come to the door for my knocking. Are you well? Please, please write me quickly back and say. I love you and will not go from Madrid until I learn where you are.
With very much for always love,
Your Anika
Of course, he'd replied the instant he opened and read her message, with TinTin beside to offer critical 'love you, too' advice. And...nothing.
Sick as two sorts of wretched, scabby dog, he'd checked his email every few hours since, but there came no reply. Nor could he get through to her cell phone, or Royce's, because the system was overwhelmed by a right tidal wave of attempted calls. Gordon Tracy was far from the only one with friends and loved ones in Europe, damn the luck. Adding to his unease, Cindy Taylor's WNN broadcasts had ceased, together with Spain's state media. A few Ham radio operators were still messaging from Andorra, but they had very little information about Madrid.
John or Brains might have managed something, but both were otherwise engaged, and his father had made it known that Gordon was not to trouble himself with anything but healing up. Right, then. Nothing for it, but to haul himself up by the bootstraps and head to Madrid. She needed him. He knew it, and with a bit of help from Alan, Gordon meant to respond.
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A small observation room at a government medical research facility-
The two astronauts' progress was being monitored by representatives of Springfield Pharmaceutical, NASA, USAMRID, the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control. Nor were they the only interested parties. Acting President Murasaki was following events here and in Europe by satellite link, with terrible decisions riding on the success of Kim Cho's engineered viruses and the immune response of Roger Thorpe and John Tracy.
The result wasn't pretty, for several reasons. First, neither man was an ideal patient. The Marine was big and powerful, while John never turned sick gracefully. Not once had he simply lain there with a folded towel on his forehead, looking wanly attractive while his ouchies were attended to by adoring females. (Though it would have been nice.) Also, there were marked side effects.
See... everything was good, until suddenly it wasn't. A fever started like a bomb in his chest and spread outward from there, violently fast. His skin grew bright red and began to prickle. His heart rate trebled and his muscles started cramping like he'd been shot up with cryo-protectant, again.
Heat rose up, so intense that he threw off the sheets and then flung himself out of bed for bruising contact with the cold tile floor. Raging thirst followed after, and John would have ripped open the IV bag and gulped its contents, if he could have reached the damned thing.
Other stuff going on, though. Alarms shrilled and doors slammed open. He heard running footsteps and, somewhere, Roger's voice shouting wildly in English, Klingon and Samoan. Not the only thing happening, either, because the heart monitor was overhead and it stopped beeping to display a blurry text message. Something about Taylor and Doctor Floyd.
"What…?"
People were trying to lift him off that nice, cold tile. Bastards.
"Hell, no! Screw that. Bring them out of there, now. Dispatch team… if you have to… with some of the… phage."
His bed was like an inferno and he wanted nothing touching him, especially a goddam orderly. Struggling, John managed to hit somebody, or maybe just the IV stand. Hard to tell.
He heard,
"Delirious…"
But they didn't know about Five. Didn't know (because he hadn't told anyone) that she'd been shadowing Cho's work and, by his order, had commandeered an automated bio-chem lab. There were gallons of bootleg cure virus available, if… say… the stuff actually worked. Had to hope so, because it seemed that time was just about up for Gordon, Taylor and Doctor Floyd. Maybe everyone else, too.
"Execute," he said to the heart monitor, before heat like reentry made thought and speech impossible. Before pain from knotted muscles, and stupid effing doctors with shots got in the way. She'd comply though, the best way she knew how.
One of the few, pure things he knew was this: Five loved him, and would do whatever he said.
