Disclaimer: It's all somebody else's. No money made. Suing will profit no one.
Want?: Take ... Have ... just lemme know where it's going :)
Thanks: To the lovely Mitchy for Betaing again. She makes I speling goud.
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"Look at it" Adam breathed out with something near awe as he watched the virus multiply on the big screen feed from the microscope. "Just look at it." Implications aside, there was an undeniable beauty to the form they viewed. Perfect replication, perfect construction. Just, well, perfect.
But it hadn't been the perfection of the virus that had led him to his conclusion on its origins, though it had given him cause to wonder. Nature was the truest example of check and balance there was, nothing capable of this destruction could be anything but man-made.
He just hadn't realised quite how accurate that hypothesis had been. Not until the view through the microscope had shown, not a group of mindlessly moving cells and strands, but two clearly spelt words.
Help Me.
"I'm looking Adam, but I fail to share your regard. Perhaps there will be time to give it flowers and go on bended knee later, but do you think we might perhaps attempt to stop it first?"
Before he could reply to Eckhart, another voice carried over in a slightly harried tone as it drew closer. "Mr Xero, we haven't been able to raise your people on the radio, and the METAR reports a huge electrical storm back in the area. There was another power spike about five minutes ago."
Jude forestalled his next question by raising her hand and speaking over his obvious question as she approached closer. "They can't be more precise than that, it took out their monitory equipment, including heat measurements. They have no idea if anyone is alive down there, but certainly anyone on the surface would have been crispy fried."
After a beat, she handed him the report with a pleasantly empty smile. "I'm sorry, that was tactless. They would have been immolated."
Adam's jaw worked as Eckhart covered his mouth with his hand and looked down to check his shoes for non-existent scuffs before looking to his subordinate. "Thank you, Ms Riley, for your timely report. If you could please take a Task Unit out there to ensure the correct care of any survivors?"
Now it was Jude's turn to smooth a scowl from her face and set it once more into the obedient mask. It seemed her harsh delivery hadn't been enough to get her out of the job she was hoping to avoid. Damn. "Of course sir, I'll leave with U Seventeen immediately."
Adam remained silent; having no doubt at all about what Eckhart's definition of 'the correct care' would be, but having little he could say about it. What possible threat could he make? 'Hurt them and I'll let the race become extinct' didn't sound overly convincing.
They were alive, he would not let himself believe otherwise, and they would be able to do more for themselves than he could. In any case, if he didn't find a cure soon, the point would be moot.
One screen in the lab was switched to CNN, making almost non-stop emergency broadcasts about the destruction caused by increasing numbers of Genomex' children unable to help themselves. It was a matter of time before the rest of the population began to fall ill, and then they would be finished.
The clicking of Riley's heels on the sterile floor signalled the despicable female was leaving and a glance back up showed Eckhart had also gone. He put his mind back into the near Zen calm he entered when working. What was he missing?
After those two words there had been no more messages and his attempts to communicate in turn had shown no results that he could measure. Another approach was clearly in order.
"Sanchez? Take a Telempath out of stasis, one in the earliest stages."
-o-
"Ow." Hey, he had a voice. He tried it again. "Ow". Yeah, okay, now he was on a roll. Actually, from the rocks painfully digging into his back, he guessed he was outside Sanctuary, but the important thing was that he was actually alive to give a certain amount of voice to his pain. "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow". Brennan rolled to his side and struggled to his knees.
It was raining, and it hurt. Little drops of water felt like acid, burning him as they hit and trickling hissing fire down his skin. There seemed to be a lot of skin. He blinked and looked down at the tattered remnants of his shirt and jeans. The phrase 'sartorial tragedy' flashed across his mind, something he'd read once, a long time ago. Or maybe just a couple of days ago. It had been a long week.
He had been given perhaps two hours grace before he pulsed again, time to check on the others, try and contact Adam. Find shoes. Raising a hand to his still sluggishly bleeding neck he tacked sedating Shalimar onto the end of the list as he staggered upright.
The slide down the vent was short and painful, unlike the crawl up, which had been long and painful. He crouched at the bottom catching his breath and deciding where he would demand Adam sent the team for R&R when this was over. Somewhere warm. And flat. No large cats. Or sudden unexpected explosions.
The tremors of the blast knocked him back to the ground as even the walls shook. A quick mental run down of anything likely to go critical without monitoring produced no short list, and it had sounded like it came from the hanger before the echoes reverberating through the halls had ensured it couldn't be placed so easily. Someone had blasted open the landing doors and probably trashed the Double Helix in the process.
Aiming for a run and settling for a shamble, he made his way towards the med lab by touch and memory alone, trying to hear for sounds of intrudors above his own harsh breathing. At last there was light, a flickering arc of yellow on the floor outside his destination. Not bright or steady enough to be torches, someone had lit a candle or two.
The sound of talking from the room ahead drifted to him, it sounded like Jesse conversing in low tones with … Jesse. Oh, the explanation for this should be good. The world tilted as he moved faster, but the sound of jogging jack boots was coming closer, he couldn't stop and simply half fell the final few feet to lean against the door and hold himself upright.
Four or five candles provided slight illumination on the scene, Emma utterly unmoving on the bed, Jesse standing by her side and mechanically stroking her hair as he talked.
"No cure."
"No."
"Where did you come from?"
"We don't know."
"Are you meant to kill everyone?"
"We don't know."
"So, anyone good at I Spy?"
"Brennan."
Jesse opened his mouth to opinion that Brennan probably wasn't a big fan of the game, and then closed it as he turned to see the long form of the man himself slouching against the doorframe. Shadows masked a lot, but not so much he couldn't tell the man was running on fumes. Torn clothing, blood everywhere, patches of burnt black on his skin and pale blue eyes spilling an electric fire weren't making for an inspiring sight. Then again, he probably wasn't exactly a picture himself.
"How did you know I was here?" Even the voice crackled with electricity, it wouldn't be long now for Brennan now. But he was still alive, and for that Jesse gave a tired grin that gave 'faded' an entirely literal meaning.
"I didn't man, she did, not her though, she's too mad. And they don't really deal in names ... was the big bang earlier you?"
Brennan debated an extended conversation that let him understand more than fifty percent of what Jesse was saying, but the sound of running shook him back to priorities.
"We got visitors, someone blew the hanger."
"That's a problem." Jesse's head tilted slightly as he watched Brennan come further into the room and attempt to close the door. "Why bother? They can come through the hangar, they can get in here. It'll just irritate them."
Brennan grunted as he managed to free the door from its semi-welded open state and push it closed. "Because I like irritating people that are probably trying to kill me. It's a tradition, it gives me a warm glow." With a sigh he allowed gravity to pull him down to sit on the floor with his back to the door that was doubtless imminently about to be kicked in. And, then, with a little smile, he bought his arm up to rest his hand on the metal frame. "I also live to shock." Hopefully he'd have time to reflect on how bad that was later, but Jesse for once didn't groan. So, things really were that dire.
The first of the Task Unit to try the handle of the door had a split second to realise something was wrong before his body began to convulse with the current that ran through it, the hand with a death grip on the metal. Another two were lost trying to drag him away before Jude managed to tell her testosterone driven idiots to back away and, at some point, read a physics book that had big pictures.
She stepped up to the door, trying to ignore the nauseating stench of charred flesh, and spoke loud enough, she hoped, to be heard inside.
"Mr. Mulwray, Brennan, we're here to help. Let us in!"
After a few seconds, a voice that cracked at every word came back, sounding morbidly amused. "Are you going to huff and puff and blow the door down?"
"Nooo, but I will just release some cyanide and wait. Let us in and no one else has to die. We have masks, Mr Mulwray, do you?"
"Would you believe me if I said yes?"
Brennan motioned for Jesse to pick Emma up and retreat to the far side of the room, but the other man simply shook his head and stepped into the thin light. He was completely see-through, losing his form around the edges and even the finer details of his features. Just visible were what appeared to be two beating hearts inside him.
"Ah … on second thoughts, mi casa es su casa."
He rolled away from the door, not bothering to assure them of its safety, and hauled himself to his feet once more into a fighting stance that wouldn't have fooled a six year old.
-o-
The Telempath that he'd hurridly been introduced to, Marcus, lay sweating on the floor, fingers clawed into it as if trying to hold on. His smile had been bright when they had released him from the long captivity, but became hard on hearing he was infected with a deadly virus, and there was as yet no cure. Still, he had agreed to help despite the risks and, for that Adam swore he would ensure the man would not be making the potential sacrifice in vain.
They had tried to make him comfortable on one of the beds but he fell off it so often, despite the restraints, that they ended up simply leaving him and bringing the blankets and monitoring equipment down.
In the centre of Marcus' forehead a darkly pulsing red light glowed, occasionally sending a bolt of some form of pure mental force towards the ceiling. There were three holes already, punched through the building and out the roof.
Adam crouched beside him with the petri dish and tried to get through to the rapidly declining young man.
"Marcus, what do you see? Can you understand it?"
In a series of chokes an answer came. "Scared. Tired. Can't stop."
"He? It's a he. Does he have a name?"
"Bob." The Telempath's eyes opened balefully, aware enough to shoot Adam a sardonic expression. "He's a virus. Now. What the hell would he. Be doing. With. A name."
Adam's mouth twitched with a smile, obscurely proud of the young man's response. He'd had nothing to do with it, but it said something still that the Children of Genomex, for good or ill, rarely knew how to say die. "Sorry. Okay, he said to help him, how can we help him?"
Slowly, pausing often to give Marcus more water, the answer came. About a child of Genomex who's Molecular abilities had mutated further still to eventually give him the form of a virus. He had been benign, simply jumping from host to host and using their bodies for a short time and altering their physiognomy to make them stronger in case he were attacked.
And then he had made the mistake of jumping into another Molecular, and had mutated once more. Now he left infection in his wake, 'children' with the simple goal to take over their host, and maximise its potential, killing it in the process. They had jumped into a Feral and mutated themselves further into a larger life-form, a parasite that simply killed. It, like him, could inhabit only one body at a time, but unlike he, could exist without a host. A macro-virus on the loose.
But the original children were still airborne and breeding constantly. He had contact with them of a sort, was able to take over any one of them, but there was no control.
Marcus' eyes glazed as the machines connected to him began to flat line. With one last pulse of energy towards the sky he seemed to cave in on himself and then, with one last rattle of breath, he died.
Adam leaned over to close the young man's eyes and hung his head for a long moment before his lips thinned and he looked up at the technician standing closest.
"We need more information, take another Telempath out of stasis."
Above them in his office, Eckhart smiled. It was so nice to see the old Adam back. It would be even nicer to have the opportunity to remind him of this moment of callousness. Again and again. And, preferably, in front of witnesses. Perhaps, later, they could have that little talk about ends and means again.
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Notes: Two chapters in one day and the 10th - and final - chapter nearly finished. Yeah, I'm in shock too.
Want?: Take ... Have ... just lemme know where it's going :)
Thanks: To the lovely Mitchy for Betaing again. She makes I speling goud.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
"Look at it" Adam breathed out with something near awe as he watched the virus multiply on the big screen feed from the microscope. "Just look at it." Implications aside, there was an undeniable beauty to the form they viewed. Perfect replication, perfect construction. Just, well, perfect.
But it hadn't been the perfection of the virus that had led him to his conclusion on its origins, though it had given him cause to wonder. Nature was the truest example of check and balance there was, nothing capable of this destruction could be anything but man-made.
He just hadn't realised quite how accurate that hypothesis had been. Not until the view through the microscope had shown, not a group of mindlessly moving cells and strands, but two clearly spelt words.
Help Me.
"I'm looking Adam, but I fail to share your regard. Perhaps there will be time to give it flowers and go on bended knee later, but do you think we might perhaps attempt to stop it first?"
Before he could reply to Eckhart, another voice carried over in a slightly harried tone as it drew closer. "Mr Xero, we haven't been able to raise your people on the radio, and the METAR reports a huge electrical storm back in the area. There was another power spike about five minutes ago."
Jude forestalled his next question by raising her hand and speaking over his obvious question as she approached closer. "They can't be more precise than that, it took out their monitory equipment, including heat measurements. They have no idea if anyone is alive down there, but certainly anyone on the surface would have been crispy fried."
After a beat, she handed him the report with a pleasantly empty smile. "I'm sorry, that was tactless. They would have been immolated."
Adam's jaw worked as Eckhart covered his mouth with his hand and looked down to check his shoes for non-existent scuffs before looking to his subordinate. "Thank you, Ms Riley, for your timely report. If you could please take a Task Unit out there to ensure the correct care of any survivors?"
Now it was Jude's turn to smooth a scowl from her face and set it once more into the obedient mask. It seemed her harsh delivery hadn't been enough to get her out of the job she was hoping to avoid. Damn. "Of course sir, I'll leave with U Seventeen immediately."
Adam remained silent; having no doubt at all about what Eckhart's definition of 'the correct care' would be, but having little he could say about it. What possible threat could he make? 'Hurt them and I'll let the race become extinct' didn't sound overly convincing.
They were alive, he would not let himself believe otherwise, and they would be able to do more for themselves than he could. In any case, if he didn't find a cure soon, the point would be moot.
One screen in the lab was switched to CNN, making almost non-stop emergency broadcasts about the destruction caused by increasing numbers of Genomex' children unable to help themselves. It was a matter of time before the rest of the population began to fall ill, and then they would be finished.
The clicking of Riley's heels on the sterile floor signalled the despicable female was leaving and a glance back up showed Eckhart had also gone. He put his mind back into the near Zen calm he entered when working. What was he missing?
After those two words there had been no more messages and his attempts to communicate in turn had shown no results that he could measure. Another approach was clearly in order.
"Sanchez? Take a Telempath out of stasis, one in the earliest stages."
-o-
"Ow." Hey, he had a voice. He tried it again. "Ow". Yeah, okay, now he was on a roll. Actually, from the rocks painfully digging into his back, he guessed he was outside Sanctuary, but the important thing was that he was actually alive to give a certain amount of voice to his pain. "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow". Brennan rolled to his side and struggled to his knees.
It was raining, and it hurt. Little drops of water felt like acid, burning him as they hit and trickling hissing fire down his skin. There seemed to be a lot of skin. He blinked and looked down at the tattered remnants of his shirt and jeans. The phrase 'sartorial tragedy' flashed across his mind, something he'd read once, a long time ago. Or maybe just a couple of days ago. It had been a long week.
He had been given perhaps two hours grace before he pulsed again, time to check on the others, try and contact Adam. Find shoes. Raising a hand to his still sluggishly bleeding neck he tacked sedating Shalimar onto the end of the list as he staggered upright.
The slide down the vent was short and painful, unlike the crawl up, which had been long and painful. He crouched at the bottom catching his breath and deciding where he would demand Adam sent the team for R&R when this was over. Somewhere warm. And flat. No large cats. Or sudden unexpected explosions.
The tremors of the blast knocked him back to the ground as even the walls shook. A quick mental run down of anything likely to go critical without monitoring produced no short list, and it had sounded like it came from the hanger before the echoes reverberating through the halls had ensured it couldn't be placed so easily. Someone had blasted open the landing doors and probably trashed the Double Helix in the process.
Aiming for a run and settling for a shamble, he made his way towards the med lab by touch and memory alone, trying to hear for sounds of intrudors above his own harsh breathing. At last there was light, a flickering arc of yellow on the floor outside his destination. Not bright or steady enough to be torches, someone had lit a candle or two.
The sound of talking from the room ahead drifted to him, it sounded like Jesse conversing in low tones with … Jesse. Oh, the explanation for this should be good. The world tilted as he moved faster, but the sound of jogging jack boots was coming closer, he couldn't stop and simply half fell the final few feet to lean against the door and hold himself upright.
Four or five candles provided slight illumination on the scene, Emma utterly unmoving on the bed, Jesse standing by her side and mechanically stroking her hair as he talked.
"No cure."
"No."
"Where did you come from?"
"We don't know."
"Are you meant to kill everyone?"
"We don't know."
"So, anyone good at I Spy?"
"Brennan."
Jesse opened his mouth to opinion that Brennan probably wasn't a big fan of the game, and then closed it as he turned to see the long form of the man himself slouching against the doorframe. Shadows masked a lot, but not so much he couldn't tell the man was running on fumes. Torn clothing, blood everywhere, patches of burnt black on his skin and pale blue eyes spilling an electric fire weren't making for an inspiring sight. Then again, he probably wasn't exactly a picture himself.
"How did you know I was here?" Even the voice crackled with electricity, it wouldn't be long now for Brennan now. But he was still alive, and for that Jesse gave a tired grin that gave 'faded' an entirely literal meaning.
"I didn't man, she did, not her though, she's too mad. And they don't really deal in names ... was the big bang earlier you?"
Brennan debated an extended conversation that let him understand more than fifty percent of what Jesse was saying, but the sound of running shook him back to priorities.
"We got visitors, someone blew the hanger."
"That's a problem." Jesse's head tilted slightly as he watched Brennan come further into the room and attempt to close the door. "Why bother? They can come through the hangar, they can get in here. It'll just irritate them."
Brennan grunted as he managed to free the door from its semi-welded open state and push it closed. "Because I like irritating people that are probably trying to kill me. It's a tradition, it gives me a warm glow." With a sigh he allowed gravity to pull him down to sit on the floor with his back to the door that was doubtless imminently about to be kicked in. And, then, with a little smile, he bought his arm up to rest his hand on the metal frame. "I also live to shock." Hopefully he'd have time to reflect on how bad that was later, but Jesse for once didn't groan. So, things really were that dire.
The first of the Task Unit to try the handle of the door had a split second to realise something was wrong before his body began to convulse with the current that ran through it, the hand with a death grip on the metal. Another two were lost trying to drag him away before Jude managed to tell her testosterone driven idiots to back away and, at some point, read a physics book that had big pictures.
She stepped up to the door, trying to ignore the nauseating stench of charred flesh, and spoke loud enough, she hoped, to be heard inside.
"Mr. Mulwray, Brennan, we're here to help. Let us in!"
After a few seconds, a voice that cracked at every word came back, sounding morbidly amused. "Are you going to huff and puff and blow the door down?"
"Nooo, but I will just release some cyanide and wait. Let us in and no one else has to die. We have masks, Mr Mulwray, do you?"
"Would you believe me if I said yes?"
Brennan motioned for Jesse to pick Emma up and retreat to the far side of the room, but the other man simply shook his head and stepped into the thin light. He was completely see-through, losing his form around the edges and even the finer details of his features. Just visible were what appeared to be two beating hearts inside him.
"Ah … on second thoughts, mi casa es su casa."
He rolled away from the door, not bothering to assure them of its safety, and hauled himself to his feet once more into a fighting stance that wouldn't have fooled a six year old.
-o-
The Telempath that he'd hurridly been introduced to, Marcus, lay sweating on the floor, fingers clawed into it as if trying to hold on. His smile had been bright when they had released him from the long captivity, but became hard on hearing he was infected with a deadly virus, and there was as yet no cure. Still, he had agreed to help despite the risks and, for that Adam swore he would ensure the man would not be making the potential sacrifice in vain.
They had tried to make him comfortable on one of the beds but he fell off it so often, despite the restraints, that they ended up simply leaving him and bringing the blankets and monitoring equipment down.
In the centre of Marcus' forehead a darkly pulsing red light glowed, occasionally sending a bolt of some form of pure mental force towards the ceiling. There were three holes already, punched through the building and out the roof.
Adam crouched beside him with the petri dish and tried to get through to the rapidly declining young man.
"Marcus, what do you see? Can you understand it?"
In a series of chokes an answer came. "Scared. Tired. Can't stop."
"He? It's a he. Does he have a name?"
"Bob." The Telempath's eyes opened balefully, aware enough to shoot Adam a sardonic expression. "He's a virus. Now. What the hell would he. Be doing. With. A name."
Adam's mouth twitched with a smile, obscurely proud of the young man's response. He'd had nothing to do with it, but it said something still that the Children of Genomex, for good or ill, rarely knew how to say die. "Sorry. Okay, he said to help him, how can we help him?"
Slowly, pausing often to give Marcus more water, the answer came. About a child of Genomex who's Molecular abilities had mutated further still to eventually give him the form of a virus. He had been benign, simply jumping from host to host and using their bodies for a short time and altering their physiognomy to make them stronger in case he were attacked.
And then he had made the mistake of jumping into another Molecular, and had mutated once more. Now he left infection in his wake, 'children' with the simple goal to take over their host, and maximise its potential, killing it in the process. They had jumped into a Feral and mutated themselves further into a larger life-form, a parasite that simply killed. It, like him, could inhabit only one body at a time, but unlike he, could exist without a host. A macro-virus on the loose.
But the original children were still airborne and breeding constantly. He had contact with them of a sort, was able to take over any one of them, but there was no control.
Marcus' eyes glazed as the machines connected to him began to flat line. With one last pulse of energy towards the sky he seemed to cave in on himself and then, with one last rattle of breath, he died.
Adam leaned over to close the young man's eyes and hung his head for a long moment before his lips thinned and he looked up at the technician standing closest.
"We need more information, take another Telempath out of stasis."
Above them in his office, Eckhart smiled. It was so nice to see the old Adam back. It would be even nicer to have the opportunity to remind him of this moment of callousness. Again and again. And, preferably, in front of witnesses. Perhaps, later, they could have that little talk about ends and means again.
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Notes: Two chapters in one day and the 10th - and final - chapter nearly finished. Yeah, I'm in shock too.