Warning: Rated for language, some violence and adult behavior.
The main characters of this story are based on characters from the cartoon 'Code Lyoko.' I do not own, nor do I claim, any copyright to these characters.
That's odd, she thought to herself. She turned the barrel of the microscope, changing the magnification, then looked again. That's definitely strange.
"Doctor, could you come here a sec," she called to her supervisor, the shift pathologist.
"What's up, Tina," he said as he walked over.
"Take a look at this," she said to him, "it's that spinal fluid sample that came in from the ER last night. What do you make of that?"
The doctor looked into the microscope. After a second, he too adjusted the magnification. He looked for a little longer, the stood back up, scratching his head.
"I haven't got a clue," he told the girl, "they look dead, though. You say this came in last night?"
"Yeah," the assistant said, "Ishiyama. The cops are involved too. She's up on fourth floor."
"Anything else on her?"
"They did a rape kit on her. Blood work. She had a blood alcohol level three times legal minimum, high white count, and traces of Ketamine in her system."
"Ketamine?"
"Must have been a wild party, that's all I can say."
"Well," the doctor finally said, "get a sample of that prepped and sent to CDC. Maybe they'll know something about this."
Saturday morning brought sunshine and visitors. The sunlight bothered her for a bit, but Yumi soon got over it. She was feeling a lot better this morning, the pain in her head and spine gone, and her fever almost dissipated.
Along with her breakfast, Allen and Sandy Maxwell arrived. Sandy rushed over and gave Yumi a hug and Allen just stood on the other side with a father's stern/worried look on his face.
"So, young lady," he started, "what popped into your head that made you go out last night without me?"
Yumi smiled sheepishly, realizing for the first time just how much Allen and Sandy cared for her.
"I got an invitation from Chloe Peterson, and I thought it would be a good idea if I went alone," she replied, "I never expected anything like this to happen. I'm alright, really."
"The fact you are laying in a hospital bed, with an IV with two bottles hooked up to it, with an EKG rig, looking like death warmed over kind of belies that statement," he said, "now, tell me what happened."
Yumi recounted the events of last night as well as how she was rescued, leaving out the part about Ulrich and the Host.
"Well, the police will definitely be wanting to question you," he said, "go ahead and tell them everything, but leave out our business if at all possible. I'll make some calls and make sure everything gets routed to Desmond. Now, have you called your parents?"
"No, I just woke up," she replied, "and I didn't have a cell phone with me last night. Plus those guys took my purse and all of my ID."
"We'll take care of that, too," Allen said.
"Excuse me," a doctor said as he knocked at Yumi's door, "I need to speak to Ms. Ishiyama a moment. Could you step outside please?"
"They can stay," Yumi said, "they my guardians."
"Well, okay," he said, "I've got some results back from the tests we did last night. You know the preliminary results, the high white cell count, the alcohol level. Well, this morning your white cell count is back to normal. The alcohol is about out of your system, but I bet you're feeling it anyway. Something else that came back this morning was there were trace amounts of Ketamine in your blood. Do you know how it got there?"
"Ketamine?" Yumi asked.
"Yes, it's a powerful tranquilizer, authorized for veterinary use only. In other words, horses can have it, but people can't. Now, how did it get there?"
"I don't know... Wait! When one of the men grabbed me at the party last night, I felt a prick on my arm, a needle sticking me, I mean. The man then whispered that it was to make sure I'd cooperate. A little bit after that, I passed out in his car, and didn't wake up until I was at that cabin. That must be it."
"Hmm, curiouser and curiouser. That's not the most interesting thing we found though. We found something strange in the spinal fluid we took. Something our pathologist has never seen before."
"What?"
"That's the question, we don't know. From what I was told, it was a single celled organism, and it was all through your spinal fluid. Whatever it was, it's dead, but that may be the reason why your white count was so high."
"Excuse me, doctor," Allen interjected, "are you saying that she has or had a new disease?"
"Right now, yes," was the reply, "we are sending a sample to the Centers for Disease Control to see what they make of it, so it might be identified, but as of right now, it looks like Ms. Ishiyama has found her way into the medical history books. She's the first person we've seen with this thing."
"I'm not the first," Yumi said, "there are at least two other people who've got it. One of them gave it to me."
"Well, we'll just have to see what develops," said the doctor, "anyway, we'll be monitoring you for the rest of the weekend, keep you on the IV and the antibiotics, and see what happens. If you don't relapse, we'll probably release you on Monday. If you start feeling bad or unusual, call a nurse. I'll check back later."
The next person to drop by was the police detective who was there when they did the rape kit on her.
"Morning miss, I'm Detective Barns, and I'm handling the investigation," he said by way of introduction, "first of all, I want to apologize for asking you to go through that procedure last night. The situation looked like a sexual assault and we need to get evidence as quickly as we can. I know it was unpleasant, but it will help us greatly. Now, could you tell me what happened last night?"
Yumi went through her story again, relating everything that happened.
"And the two mens names were?" Detective Barns asked.
"One was name René, he was a French man, and the other was an American, Raymond."
"No last names, I take it."
"None that I heard."
"And you say that this René was the one that took you from the party?"
"Yes. He was also the one who did whatever they did to me."
"What do you mean?"
"When I woke up, I had a taste like blood in my mouth. The doctor who examined me last night said it looked like there were cuts on my tongue. I also found out this morning I've got some kind of organism in me, something they've never seen before. That's what I mean."
Detective Barns wrote in his notebook for a moment then asked, "René forces you to drink vodka, drenches you with water, then leaves you to freeze to death in that cabin."
"Yes."
"Why? There are a lot of quicker and surer ways of killing someone, why do something like that?"
"Find René and ask him."
Detective Barns questioned Yumi for a while longer then left, promising to let her know if anything else came up. Now only Allen and Sandy remained.
"This changes things," Allen said, "if René is one of XANA's followers, we've got to find him quick, before he has another crack at killing you. You didn't tell him anything, did you?"
"No, he already knew enough to want me dead," Yumi replied, "XANA knew all six of us, and has tried to kill us on many occasions. The reason it's especially pissed off at me is because I was there when it was trapped for almost a year. That was just a little while before we first met."
"So what you're telling me is that XANA has got a real hard on for you," Allen said, "but that still doesn't explain why René tried killing you the way he did. I mean, he could have done a lot of things that would have been more painful and prolonged, and more certain."
"That's one thing about XANA," Yumi said, "it always did things in a grandiose and ridiculous manner; you know, kinda like a cartoon villain."
"Great. Well, I'd better get this off to Desmond. We'll see what we can do to get more information about that bug they infected you with. I'll also see what we can find about those two guys. It seems, my dear, you may have stumbled onto the very thing you were supposed to be on the look out for. Good job, but next time, try and not get yourself killed doing it."
In her dreams that Saturday night, they lay together in each others arms. She held him tight, her Love, her Life, held him like it was their first time.
"God, I love you," she told him, "I almost lost you last night."
"No you didn't," Ulrich replied, "I will stand against the Hordes Of Hell itself to protect you. Never forget that."
With that, he kissed her deeply.
