Disclaimer: Me no own YGO or bookie. Bookie owned by Robert Preston. Bookie is the glorious Hot Zone. All must read. XD
Note: As of 4/28/05 this fanfic was seriously overhauled. Original format can be found on mediaminer(dot)org.
Notes: //…// is yami to hikari; /…/ is hikari to yami. Things in italics are an impassive, third-person, narrator-ish viewpoint the biology outlook at that point. Aka me, bio-geek. XD
From here I'm going to get a bit technical on math and biology. Another reason why this is PG-13 (now "T") – you need to understand the math and biology, and I highly doubt eight-year-olds would understand exponents and all that. I'll try to explain it clearly, but after reading the book, I might go a little too fast. Sorry. Try getting a calculator or a biology book on hand when you read this – just kidding.
Explosions are fun. Really.
Chapter Three: Extreme Amplification
Everyone stared at the quickly dispersing Ebola viruses. They had learned the meaning of "fear."
Kaiba whirled around towards Shadi. This had to be a stupid joke. Or a highly sophisticated hologram. What they had just seen couldn't be real. "What kind of game are you playing, Shadi?"
"This is not a game. This is truth."
Kaiba stalked over to where Shadi was standing. He didn't know who the heck this guy was, but he was not going to stand for any more tricks. He grabbed Shadi and hissed, "I don't care about truth. I don't care about your hocus pocus. I don't care about any of this. Just end this and stop messing with my mind!"
The Millenium Ankh around Shadi's neck glowed briefly, and Kaiba was thrown back off his feet.
"I do not know why my Millenium Ankh had allowed you to enter, but the past cannot be changed. You are here, Seto Kaiba, and nothing you do can alter that. The Millenium Ankh has brought us here, and it will take us back, but only after the task has been completed. Until then, Seto Kaiba, you will remain here."
Kaiba got up and brushed himself off. "Fine. I'll play your game. I'll stick around. But don't think that I'll be all happy and all that junk, stranger, because I play by my own rules."
Ker-plewie!
Joey jumped. "What was that?"
Kaiba looked around. He jabbed his thumb at the remaining pieces of a cell. "An exploding cell, what else, Wheeler? Are you scared?"
Joey glared at Kaiba. "Yeah right, Kaiba."
Ker-plewie! Ker-plewie!
Tea looked around. "It's happening a lot faster, you guys."
KER-PLEWIE! KER-PLEWIE!
"Wow, and that was a lot louder." Tristan observed.
Ryou was attempting to be smaller, somehow. He didn't like all of these explosions. "Why are they louder?"
Kaiba snorted. They couldn't even do simple math. "Huh. Obviously, the Ebola viruses are destroying cells exponentially more and more. As more cells die, more viruses are unleashed, which creates a chain reaction." Kaiba looked at Joey, who seemed to be confused, as usual. "I suppose I'll have to make things a bit more concrete for slower people. If one Ebola virus can multiply to around five hundred viruses from just one cell, this means five hundred more cells can be destroyed. Those five hundred cells die, and out comes around 250,000 Ebola viruses, or five hundred times five hundred. All of those cells dying create plenty of explosions."
KA-BOOM!
Kaiba continued with the math lesson, unfazed. Kaiba seems to like calculations. Must be from all those statistics from KaibaCorp. "The human body generally has 20 to 30 trillion cells. If Ebola multiplies at the rate I just described, then to completely destroy someone, Ebola goes through about five generations. One virus, to five hundred, to 250,000, to 125,000,000, to 63 billion, and then 31 trillion."
KA-BOOM!
Shadi thankfully ended Kaiba's lecture. "We have about 24 hours until Yugi dies. We must find the cure before then, but preferably sooner before permanent damage occurs."
When Ebola multiplies in a victim, it can flood the body with virus particles, stuffing the blood vessels with packaged protein coats and DNA. The military term for this is extreme amplification. At this point, a single drop of the victim's blood may contain a hundred million virus particles. The body's cells have been subverted to producing millions of these viruses. In essence, the victim is possessed by a life form that is attempting to convert the host into itself. This transformation is not successful, however, and the end result is a mass of liquefied flesh oozing with virus. A little biological accident in the world scheme of things.
The group looked around. The blood around them was beginning to have bits and pieces of cells instead of whole ones, and a whole lot of Ebola virus.
The threads were multiplying and swarming the bloodstream. A thread enters a cell, and then, ker-plewie! it was dead and more viruses were coming out. The threads became almost like a tangled spool. You could barely tell where one virus ended and another began – it was just a mumbo jumbo mass of filovirus. There were shaped like pigtails, snakes, Ys, 6s, Os, and Us. The prominent shape of the virus was the shepherd's crook. A crooked shepherd, perhaps, leading its flock astray…
KA-BOOM!
x x x x x
Yugi was lying in his bed, resting. He certainly didn't feel too great. Aspirin wasn't making his headache go away, and the nurse said he was getting a fever.
He thought about the bizarre situation he was in.
A situation is code for a hot agent.
For one, he had been bitten by a monkey, and that is just something that doesn't occur frequently in Domino. Two, he just happened to be a victim of one of the rarest and most lethal viruses of all time. Three, he had seven people inside his body looking for a cure for the virus that was killing him. Things were definitely weird.
Yugi wondered what Yami was thinking about all of this.
//Not well, aibou.//
/You knew what I was thinking?/ Yugi asked in surprise.
//We are connected, Yugi. I can sense what you are feeling. And yes, I believe that this is a very…interesting…condition that we are in.// Yami paused. //I do not like what I am seeing.//
Yugi waited for an answer. When he didn't get one, he asked/Which is…what?/
//Ebola viruses destroying cells. They look…familiar, somehow.//
This was all too strange for Yugi. A recent virus just discovered was familiar to a 3000 year old pharaoh? Didn't make much sense, but then again, nothing made sense now.
/Whatever, Yami. I'm tired./;;
Yugi could somehow sense Yami smiling, even when he was inside his own body.
//Well then, rest, aibou. Rest and hope. I will be here.//
All that Yugi could do was lie in his bed, and hope that the gang inside of him could somehow pull a miracle. The doctors believed he would only last another 24 hours.
x x x x x
24 hours. The clock was ticking…
Tick. Tock. Tick.