*Fair warning, I don't science. So there is a LOT of dialogue copied directly from 1x09, Trials.

Chapter 6: I Am The Fire

December 2nd, 2013 - 0902 (9:02 am)

"Why did you do that?" Rachel asked simply, her voice quiet as she wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Tom's upper arm. He had taken his Navy issue jacket off when she'd given him the vaccine (hoping against hope that it would work the same as if he had received it pre-exposure), and was making himself comfortable, since it looked like he was going to be here for a while. The chaos had finally calmed down a little. Kara was sleeping peacefully, and Rachel had moved Tom into the far end of the lab, away from the beds that the other six were inhabiting. She knew it was futile; he had already been exposed, and it didn't matter how far away she moved him.

"Because Kara needed help, and I could help her," he said simply, and Rachel couldn't argue with that. Without the ice, she didn't think she would have been able to get Kara's fever down. Bertrise obviously would have been the ideal one to deliver the ice, but they had sent her off to sleep only a few hours before. Going to get her would have taken just as long, if not longer, than one of them decontaminating and getting the ice themselves.

"But you've exposed yourself now. Tom..."

He smiled at her, reaching out and pressing two fingers under her chin to raise her gaze to his.

"I believe in you," he said simply, as a single tear slipped free from her eye. He wanted very badly to brush the tear away, but her suit - the suit that was keeping her safe - was in his way. He settled for brushing his hand over her shoulder. "This will work. I trust you."

She sniffled, nodding, and continued taking his vitals. Pulse, blood pressure, blood oxygen levels - the measurements that would let her know when he started declining. Because it was a matter of when, and not if.

"Hey," he said, and she looked up at him again. "Stop worrying about me. I'm hours behind the others. I'm fine for now, Rachel. Go. Work. Save the world. Check on Tex, he's been staring in this direction for the last ten minutes."

Rachel laughed wetly, sniffling to try and hold further tears at bay. She was scared. What was happening with Kara wasn't supposed to be happening. The others seemed OK for now, but she wondered if it was just a matter of time now.

"OK," she said, and then, more quietly to herself, "OK. Yes, I do need to repeat blood work. Repeat CBCs and Lytes on everyone. Add on L.F.T.s and endocrine panels. That should tell me more than their blood work."

"Good girl," Tom smiled, leaning back in the office chair he had claimed as his own. He watched as she walked back over to the others.

December 2nd, 2013 - 1200 (12:00 noon)

It was less than three hours later that the next concerning symptoms began appearing.

Rachel was with Tex, noting his vitals in his chart when she noticed a line of red, raised bumps on his neck. Grabbing her flashlight, she clicked it on and turned it to get a better look.

"Tex, I need to lift up your shirt."

"Well, all you had to do was ask, sugar!" he responded, bending forward to help her out. In the next bed, Kara chuckled weakly. Her fever had come down, but she was still exhausted and mostly unable to move. Rachel offered Tex a small smile for his efforts to keep the mood light, and then sucked in a gasp when she lifted his shirt. His back was spider-webbed with a raw looking, red rash. Near his shoulder blades were raised bumps - the same ones that she had seen all over the bodies of the deceased.

"Tex, do you have any idea when this rash started?"

He shook his head weakly. "No. It doesn't itch."

"All right. Well you let me know if that changes. Try and get some rest." She smiled, trying to placate him, and patted his shoulder gently, mindful of the rash and the pain he must be in.

Tex nodded, laying gingerly back on his cot. Rachel's eyes swept over the other five, noting that they were all in similarly rough condition, and then turned to walk back to her computer. Of course, Tom was there, sitting in her chair and anxiously wringing his hands as he took in the condition of everyone else in the lab. Quincy noticed her walking away from their patients and stalked toward her, fear written clearly across his features.

"I think you need to consider the possibility that the vaccine isn't working," he hissed in a whisper. Tom's head snapped up at that, looking between the two scientists.

"We've never seen the virus behave this way," Rachel argued. "It could still be the vaccine."

"But we haven't been in the field with the virus for a very long time. We can't know how the symptoms have evolved," Quincy shot back, and Rachel sighed. Her head hurt, and the feelings of panic were beginning to claw at her chest again.

It couldn't be the virus! It couldn't be!

Quincy continued, "A 104 degree fever like Kara's can't be from the prototype."

"So what does that mean?" Tom asked. "Is it the virus?"

"It's possible that we didn't build a strong enough copy of Bertrise's receptors," Quincy admitted, hands on his hips as he swiveled his gaze back toward Dr. Scott. "The decoys could be breaking down."

"We checked it a dozen times, we must have missed something in Kara's medical history."

"Then how do you explain the others? Tex's rash? Garnett's loss of feeling in her fingers? Maya's delirium?" Quincy asked.

Rachel shook her head, at a loss. "I don't know," she whispered. "I don't know, but I'm afraid- "

"DOCTOR!" came a hoarse cry from Lt. Miller's bed. "Doctor! Come quick! Something's wrong with Maya!"

Rachel bolted toward the cot of the sick ensign, dropping to her knees beside the bed. Her pulse quickened and whatever hope she had managed to hold onto during the beginning phases of the trials were dashed when she saw Maya's face.

The woman's eyes were open, unseeing, and blood trickled from her nose and her mouth.

"Maya! Maya, can you hear me?" she asked, searching for a pulse and listening for breath sounds. She knew it was pointless, could recognize when someone was gone and not coming back, but she had to try. "Maya, please," she begged, and then hung her head, closing her eyes in defeat.

"Doctor...?" Lt. Miller asked from the next bed, his eyes wide with fear.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, and then stood to her feet shakily, drawing in a breath as she noticed that all eyes were on her. Tex, Kara, Garnett, the Lieutenant, Tom, and the other doctors were all staring at her. From outside of the lab, Mike was staring, too. All of them, she knew, were looking for answers or reassurance.

She didn't have any to give them.

December 2nd, 2013 - 18:43 (6:43 pm)

Rachel stared at herself in the mirror of the small bathroom, splashing water on her face to try and wake herself from the nightmare she was living in. She studied her reflection; dark bags under her eyes, cheekbones sharper and more prominent than she remembered, cheeks flushed from exhaustion and anxiety. Her tears were mixing in with the water dripping down her face, but she knew that she had started crying again. Scoffing at herself, at how weakly she was behaving when the people in the next room were literally dying because of her, she grabbed a towel to dry her face off.

It wasn't until she heard Tom's voice through the plastic lab that she drew herself out of her thoughts.

"So these aren't side effects of the vaccine, it's the virus. You're certain?" the Captain asked.

"Yes," Quincy said confidently.

"No, he can't be certain," Rachel argued, opening the door to the bathroom in the lab and stalking out. "Maya died from a heart attack, which is not a symptom of the virus."

"But liver failure is, and that's what caused her pressures to drop!" Quincy turned his body back to Tom, who was watching them both with his arms crossed over his chest. Rachel could just make out a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and her stomach clenched as she realized that he, too, was beginning to show symptoms. "The fevers, the delirium, the hemorrhaging. I mean, there is no other explanation."

Rachel stalked across the room, pacing back and forth. "There is one, we just haven't found it yet!"

"No, there-"

"Woah, woah, woah!" Tom interrupted, holding up both hands (thought here wasn't much he could do to stop the fight from his prison inside the lab). He paused, then turned to Quincy. "What would your solution be?"

Quincy crossed his arms. "I.V.I.G. Passive immunization."

"It could kill her!" Rachel argued.

"Kill who?" Tom asked, confused.

"Bertrise." At Tom's continued look of confusion, Rachel added, "He wants to use the plasma from her blood and inject it directly into the patients. Into you."

"To give them her antibodies!" he argued, gesturing to the six remaining, sick people behind the curtain.

"No, Quincy! The amount of blood we would need to take from Bertrise... I am not willing to risk her life!"

"Well I'm not going to sit here and watch them die," a new voice interjected, and all three - Tom, Quincy, and Rachel - turned around to see Bertrise standing in the doorway. She was wearing a pair of sweatpants and a yellow Navy t-shirt, and had clearly been standing there for several minutes, taking in everything she had missed while she had been sleeping.

"You are too important, Bertrise," Rachel said, walking over to her and holding on to both of her arms. She leaned down to stare into the girl's eyes, begging her silently. "And if it's not the virus causing this, then it won't make the slightest bit of difference anyway."

"But if it is the virus, we can save them," Quincy argued, and Rachel was torn.

On one hand, she currently didn't have an explanation for what was happening. She knew (she wasn't sure how she knew, but she knew) that it wasn't the virus. But she didn't know how to communicate that to the people who were currently suffering. She could only expect them to trust her so far. They could hear every word of the fight currently happening, and how would they be feeling if they heard there was hope to help them and she refused to take it?

"Rachel," Tom said, cutting off her internal debate. "I trust you. What do you want to do?"

Looking up at him, from the wrong side of the plastic, her heart broke a little bit. He was willing to do exactly what she said, even if the other doctors in the room disagreed with her, because he trusted her. Didn't she owe him - and all of the others - that chance?

"I... I don't believe it's the virus. Truly, I don't. But," she paused, and then looked back at Bertrise, getting ready to apologize to her, when Bertrise cut her off.

"I am willing, Dr. Scott. I am. I want to help."

She nodded, biting the inside of her cheek, and then turned back to Tom. "If there's a chance, I think we have to take it."

Quincy sprang immediately into action, herding Bertrise to the back corner of the lab to set her up on the plasma collection machine.

Rachel turned back to stare at her Captain, the one who had done so much for her over the past 48 hours.

"Hey," he said, holding a hand out and pressing it against the plastic. "You've got this."

She touched her fingers to his through the barrier between them. She didn't even try to smile. She just stared at him with fear plain in her eyes, letting him see how scared and unsure she was.

"I'm literally betting my life on this, sweetheart," he said gently, pulling his hand back. "So go get to work."

Rachel nodded, and moved to follow Quincy.

December 3rd, 2013 - 0012 (12:12 am)

The I.V.I.G wasn't working.

Every single person had taken a turn for the worse, including the Captain. Tex had been curled into a ball, shivering beneath his blankets, for hours at this point, and Garnett and Kara weren't even responsive. Tom had given up trying to help Rios and Quincy with the others and had retreated to the desk chair he had been sitting in before, sitting down weakly and dropping his head onto the table. At last check, his temperature had been 103.2, and he felt so tired.

Rachel felt like there was a huge weight sitting on her chest. She was sure she was going to start panicking again any moment, and she didn't want any of the crew to see her. Without saying a word, she turned on her heel and stalked to the far corner of the helo bay, far away from the lab, and found a corner to curl up in that couldn't be seen by the others.

She dropped down to the floor, curling her knees up against her chest. She hugged her knees to herself, and let the first sob out.

What had she done? She wondered, rocking herself back and forth, trying to hold back the panic. This was nothing like when Tom had held her while she was panicking. This time, she couldn't breathe, and she didn't have anyone left to comfort her. Her whole body was warm, and each breath she took was getting shorter and shorter.

Panic attack, she thought, and then dropped her head to her knees, trying to hold it back.

"Rachel," Quincy called out, his footsteps drawing closer to her hiding place as he searched for her.

She sighed, wringing her hands together anxiously, sucking in air as quickly as she could. "I just needed somewhere to clear my head," she said.

Quincy stopped and stared at her. She looked so small, curled up on the floor between two large boxes. He admitted, "You were right. The I.V.I.G hasn't worked. Their symptoms, they're getting even worse."

Rachel brushed away more tears. "And Bertrise?"

Quincy shrugged. "Rios is pumping her full of saline and F.F.P; she'll be all right."

Well, thank goodness for small miracles, she thought. That would be one less person's death on her hands. She scoffed, shaking her head and dropping it into her hands. "Who did I think I was? That I could solve this," she whispered.

"You're the best there is."

"And yet I've failed."

"Come on," Quincy begged her. "We'll find another way."

Rachel shook her head and didn't move. She wasn't entirely sure she could move. She couldn't make herself stand, couldn't make herself walk back to the lab and watch her friends, her Captain, waste away slowly. It would be bad, she knew, when it came time for Tom's turn. Slowly, the other five would pass away, and he would have to watch it all before it started happening to him. He was about twelve hours behind the rest of the volunteers; he would get to see them all die, get to see what was about to happen to him, beforehand.

And she couldn't even hold him.

She sniffed and leaned her head back, letting it thump painfully against the crate behind her head. She watched Quincy walk away, presumably to go back to try and save their friends. As he walked, though, he passed the crate that the little monkey was still sitting in. He was chattering away noisily as usual, perfectly healthy.

"Why did it work on you?" she whispered.

December 3rd, 2013 - 0240 (2:40 am)

"All we can do for them now is pain management," Quincy said, pushing a small cart toward the beds of his sickest patients. Honestly, a massive dose of morphine would be the kindest thing they could do right now. He wasn't sure that they were there yet, but he knew that it was getting close. He paused next to Kara's bed. She was the sickest of them, struggling to breathe. Her boyfriend, Danny, was sitting next to her in a bio-hazard suit. Mike had gone and gotten the Lieutenant as soon as it had started looking like there would be no coming back from this.

"Quincy!"

He paused in drawing up the morphine, and turned his attention to the outside of the lab. Tom, who had taken to laying on Maya's bed after her body had been moved to the back of the lab, turned his head, too.

On the other side of the plastic, Rachel was pacing in front of Mike, her words coming fast.

"Micro cellular inflammation. Oxidative stress, immune vascular dysfunction. And Bertrise, she was always sick as a kid and yet immune to this! How could I have missed this?"

"Can't say I'm following you," Mike said cautiously, not wanting to let himself hope.

Tom, in the lab, had forced himself to his feet. He walked over to the edge of the lab, and watched quietly as Rachel began explaining.

"What we're seeing is an autoimmune response. The rashes, the liver failure, the poor circulation. What happened to Maya was her own body attacking itself."

"The virus is adapting. Once it attached to the decoy, it changed shape," Quincy said from beside Tom, understanding flashing in his eyes. "Of course!"

"And that signaled to their immune systems to launch an attack on every cell in their body. The monkey doesn't have any human genes, so it didn't have the same reaction!"

"So how to you stop it?" Tom asked weakly, letting himself lean on a nearby metal rod. He was flushed, weak, and only a few minutes ago had started developing some of the nastier side effects. There was a cluster of raised sores on his neck, and he had started having to wipe blood from his nose every few minutes.

Rachel stared at him, her heart racing because she knew, she knew how to save them all now!

"I need to modify the decoy. If our immune systems can't see it, it can't react."

Quincy shook his head, "No, no, no, there is no way to get their bodies to to manufacture the modified decoy on their own."

But Rachel just smiled. "Yes, there is. We use the arctic strain as a Trojan horse."

Tom smiled and chuckled lightly. "Thank God we let you spend all that time playing with birds up in the Arctic!" he said, and Rachel smiled for the first time in hours. "Like I said, you're gonna save us all. Now get to work. I think I need a nap."

Rachel chuckled. The urge to touch him, to run her hands through his hair and comfort him for a change, was so strong she almost couldn't keep herself from reaching out.

But she had work to do.

"Hang on. Just a little longer," she whispered, brushing her fingers along the plastic as she walked toward the decontamination chamber. "Just a little longer."