Day 60
Shego looked up from her book as Drakken yawned. She watched him stretch and roll over to look at her, tossing the blankets back.
"So what's it gonna be today? Back on the road to recovery, or another relapse?"
The day after his apparent resurgence of strength he'd suddenly had an attack of fever more vicious than the disease had been with him so far. He had trembled under his blankets even after taking medicine to combat the fever, and she stayed awake all night trying to cool him down with ice pack after ice pack and waking him up to drink more water as he sweated all his fluids away.
She had recalled the way her own fever came and went, and it was a sobering reminder that sometimes disease kills like a thief in the night—without warning. She hadn't lowered her guard for a moment since then and set her own feelings aside as she cared for him. Survival was the first priority. She could worry about her desperate new feelings for him later.
A day and a half later things had started to look up again, and so Shego was back to passing the time with reading and watching him sleep. Usually when he woke up he did nothing, or complained. Actually getting up on his own was hopefully a good sign.
"Um...I feel better, I think," he replied, just before coughing into his pillow.
"Yeah... Well, I'll get you some water and then you're going back to sleep. Don't want to overtax whatever remnant of an immune response you do have," she said as she set her book down and started toward the door.
Drakken pushed himself up to lean on his side and re-adjusted the blankets. "Shego... Can you also bring me my notes, and my laptop computer...oh, and those Petri dishes I was working with."
Shego blinked at him through narrowed eyes. "Are you kidding? You could have mutated something worse than the disease in one of those things. I should burn the whole lab down!"
"No! I need my notes!" he cried desperately.
"No way, everything in there is contaminated. What do you want them for anyway?"
"To continue my work," he pleaded.
"Doc...news flash. You can't cure a virus. I've been doing a little research myself," she said, pointing to the book on her chair. He glanced at the title of the medical text before turning back to her.
"But I could still create a vaccine."
"To help prevent it in other people?"
He nodded. "Yes."
"That's awfully...nice of you, Mr. Evil Mad Scientist."
Drakken frowned. "How many people have died so far?"
Shego shuffled her feet slightly and glanced away. "Just over 3,000."
Drakken pushed himself upright. "Do you remember my projections? If the growth continues at this rate..." he paused, and she watched him do some mental calculations, "almost 100,000 people could be dead by next month."
Shego shuffled her feet again. "Yeah..."
"Just bring me my notes?"
"No way. The lab has to be disinfected. But..." she said as he looked at her in devastation, "...do we still have hazmat suits?"
He leaned back on his side and nodded as he began to cough.
"I'll take pictures of everything for you, okay? And you can...load them on my laptop and do something with that."
Drakken lay down with a sigh. "Okay..."
After delivering his water, Shego had found a spare hazmat suit down in the henchmen's quarters. The regular hazmat suits were, of course, in the lab. She also discovered that Drakken had ordered the henchmen to self-quarantine back while she was still on vacation, so they were all thankfully unharmed and safe in their quarters.
She wondered at herself, that she hadn't given the henchmen a single thought in the days Drakken had been ill.
She found the lab eerie without Drakken there humming or grumbling as he worked, but she dutifully took pictures of everything he had been working on, including the images still flashing on the computer screen.
The Petri dishes had indeed grown cultures like she suspected. She gave each of them a longer look than she had given the notes. There were two labeled with their names, which she knew were his initial tests to see if they had been infected. Then there were dishes labeled AVD-1 through AVD-4, and then others starting at V-1 with numbers increasing through eleven. She had no idea what they were, but she took photos of them as they were and then put each under his microscope and took magnified photos—a task that turned her stomach as much as the morning sickness did.
She hurried out of the lab as quickly as she could and discarded the hazmat suit. She really should just set fire to all of it... But, maybe it would in fact help Drakken come up with something.
She didn't actually want people to die from the disease. She still couldn't think about Señor Senior Sr. for even the briefest moment without feeling heartsick. She really needed to call Junior again, now that she was thinking about it. She had been so focused on keeping Drakken alive that she had forgotten about everything and everyone else.
After getting her laptop from her room, she brought it and the camera back into his and set them both on the bed next to him. He was sitting up and sipping his water while watching the news.
"Feeling better?" she asked a bit apprehensively. The last time she had asked, he'd relapsed within hours.
"I think so," he said, setting the water down and grabbing the laptop.
"I need to make a phone call. I'll be right back," she said, leaving him blinking after her curiously.
"Shego?" Junior's voice came through the phone.
"Hey...how are you holding up?" she asked, sitting on the sofa and holding the phone firmly against her ear.
"Why are you calling?"
Shego blinked in surprise. "To see how you're doing," she repeated.
"You ignore me for days after my beloved father's death and only now do you care to 'see how I am doing'?" he snapped at her.
Shego leaned forward anxiously. "Hey, I had my own problems. Drakken still isn't out of the woods, and I'm—" She stopped short of saying she was pregnant, but she wasn't quite sure why.
"Oh! ...You mean Drakken has the horrible disease as well?"
"Yes."
"Oh, please forgive me. My heart is still aching so much in missing my poor father!"
"I'm sorry... Do you need anything?" she asked.
"Do I ever! Oh Shego, it is awful! So many of Father's associates have succumbed."
"What?" she asked, feeling suddenly queasy.
"Yes! He employed so many people and had so many friends who were of a mature age. They are all dropping like flies! And I do not know how to, shall we say...run the business. He stopped training me to take over for him after he started training me in villainy."
Shego leaned back and smacked herself in the forehead. Of course Senior wouldn't have... Her eyes flew open as it hit her again that Senior was dead. The turning of her stomach increased.
"Well...um. There are professionals who do that sort of thing, you know?"
"But they will all be jealous of my millions! How can I trust any of them?"
"Good point..." Shego said. But she didn't know anyone trustworthy either. "Um... I'll think about it. And if I think of something I'll call you."
"Thank you Shego. You will give my hopes for recovery to Drakken?"
"Yeah. Thanks."
"Oh wouldn't that be awful, if we were both to lose the ones who are dearest to us?"
"Yeah."
"I hope it does not happen to you."
Shego returned to Drakken's room and found him frowning over the laptop, which had the camera plugged into it.
"Most of these aren't usable anymore..." he grumbled.
Shego sat down on the bed and shifted over to be near enough to see the laptop, but then she lay down and set a hand over her stomach.
Drakken looked at her and raised an eyebrow. "Feeling all right?"
She shook her head. "No."
"It's...um...morning sickness?" he asked.
"Mm," she said with a nod.
She watched him peripherally as he stared at her, his frown softening and quickly morphing into a thoughtful gaze.
She looked up at him, and when his eyes met hers he blushed and looked away, his frown returning. She found her cheeks coloring slightly too, but the nausea kept away any thoughts that might have led to more embarrassment. He looked like he wanted to say something, but she knew the way he was chewing his lip meant he wouldn't.
"I don't think I told you..." she said, keeping her eyes on him. "Señor Senior Sr. caught the disease."
"You did tell me."
"He...he died twelve days ago."
Drakken looked at her with wide eyes. "What?"
"Yeah. Junior's pretty... Well, you know."
Drakken coughed into his elbow, and Shego watched him worriedly. She wondered what Senior's last days had been like... Had they been spent in half-delirious fever like Drakken had experienced? Had Junior stayed by his father's side to tend him?
How many others had died in a similar fashion, with their loved ones by their side?
How many had died alone?
"So you're gonna...create a vaccine to stop the spread of this thing?" she asked, rolling toward Drakken who had refocused on the computer with a frown.
"Mm...or this..."
She peered at the screen and at the columns of data that meant absolutely nothing to her.
"My degree is in Child Development. Little help?"
One corner of Drakken's mouth turned down. "It might be possible to create an antiviral drug... It's not as effective as a vaccine."
"Does it stop it?"
"Not really. It prevents its reproduction."
He sighed and set the laptop aside as he coughed and slid down lower into the bed. She looked at his troubled expression.
"What?" she asked.
He looked up at her a bit hesitantly. "I'm hungry."
She sighed and sat up. "Well, that's a good sign... But, bad news—we're out of food."
Drakken grimaced. "I was afraid of that."
Shego sighed again and glanced around the room, which had become very familiar to her in the last several days. Drakken coughed heavily into his pillow and Shego set a hand on his arm sympathetically. When he finished he turned to face her.
"It will be better if...you go now, rather than later."
Shego's eyes narrowed. "What?"
"To get more food... Before the spread of the virus gets worse."
Shego crossed her arms. "I'm not leaving you," she scoffed.
"We have to eat... And the henchmen have to eat."
Shego frowned and looked down at her knees.
"I'll make a list," Drakken said, scooting up and grabbing her laptop again.
"I'm not leaving you," Shego repeated.
"We have to eat," Drakken frowned back at her. "But...make sure you wear a respirator."
Shego sighed and moved closer to him as he typed up the shopping list. She wanted to argue with him more, but... She was hungry too.
Shego parked the hover-car behind the Smarty Mart and then put on the respirator mask Drakken had insisted she wear. She had argued that she was smart enough not to cough on anyone, but he reminded her that no one had coughed on her before she was infected. So she agreed. And the mask was more about preventing her from infecting others, than anything.
Feeling ridiculous, she hurried along the back of the building and started around the corner toward the front to get a shopping cart—and then her eyes widened. There was a line stretching from the front of the building around the entire side, and then curving in a U-shape around the parking lot. Most of the people already had their carts, and about half were wearing some form of mask like she was.
She brushed her hair back self-consciously and jogged over to the back of the line and decided she had made the right decision to dress casually instead of in her suit. As she joined the line she noticed that atypically, people were standing awkwardly far away from others. It made the line appear longer than it was.
The sun was hot that day, and very soon she found herself sweating and holding her hair up to let her back and neck breathe. Finally, she pulled a pen out of her purse and used it to pin her hair up into a massive bun. She grabbed her phone and dialed Drakken's number.
"Shego? What's wrong?"
She sighed in relief. "Nothing...it's just...this line at Smarty Mart is ridiculously long."
"Oh...people are probably panic-buying."
Shego considered for a moment. Would that mean there wouldn't be any food? At Smarty Mart?
"So...if they don't have everything on the list, what do I get?"
"Best substitute. Or go someplace else."
She heard him cough and she gripped the phone more tightly.
"How are you feeling?"
"Not dead yet," he replied. She could almost hear him smirking.
She opened her mouth to make a sarcastic retort about him only being alive because of her, but she couldn't do it.
"I'll call you again after I'm done."
"You don't have to," he said.
"I'll call you," she said, hanging up.
The line was moving quickly, to her great relief. As she got closer and saw the full carts of people leaving she began to worry that there may not in fact be enough food for everyone waiting. Especially since it was still early morning. What about the people who went shopping later in the day?
A quick burst from a police siren sent her hands and those of the people around her up to cover their ears. She and the others turned as a police car slowly drove up, and they all stepped back to allow the car to pass. She watched it as it drove toward the back of the building where she had parked the hover-car.
She felt a frustrated growl rising in her chest, and she turned to an older woman standing behind her.
"Can you hold my spot? I sort of parked illegally back there," she said and pointed after the vanishing police car.
The woman—who Shego thought looked far too old to be out shopping at all, let alone without a respirator—smiled at her a bit uncertainly.
"Go on ahead," she said.
"Thanks."
Shego tried to look casual as she jogged in the direction the car had gone. It would be her luck to have to deal with the police on a day she was actually out for legitimate reasons.
She rounded the corner and then stopped. The police car hadn't gone all the way to the hover-car, but had stopped next to a dumpster. An orange-vested Smarty Mart employee was there pointing at something on the ground with his blue-gloved finger, and the police officer was approaching. Shego noticed the officer wore a respirator similar to hers.
She watched as the officer nudged something with his foot. Shego narrowed her eyes and realized...it was a person lying on the ground. Probably homeless. The officer stepped back and began speaking into his radio. His eyes lifted and he saw Shego. She started to back away.
"Ma'am!" the officer said, walking toward her briskly as the Smarty Mart employee lingered near the police car.
Shego debated running, or complying. The need for groceries was dire, so...she decided on compliance. She could still take out both men if she needed to.
"Sorry, I just got turned around," she said innocently through her respirator.
"This area is off limits to the public," the officer said. "Go back around to the front of the store."
Shego could see the hover-car peripherally.
"Um...is that man okay?" she asked, stalling.
"A woman actually. No... She's dead."
Shego felt a little sick at the thought.
"Do you think it was the disease?"
"Probably just exposure. And starvation, with everything closing," the officer said sadly. "But we have to investigate regardless."
Shego wondered what he meant about 'everything closing,' but chose not to ask. She didn't need to draw more attention to herself. But apparently she already had as the officer began to look guarded.
"Did you need help with something?"
Shego mentally rolled her eyes. "I just need to move my car. I parked over there," she pointed. And if the police were about to come in with a forensics team, she really did need to move the car.
Shego saw the officer glance at the hover-car, and then do a double take and look back at her with wide eyes.
"So...yeah, see ya," she said as she sprinted toward the car. She didn't look back as the officer shouted at her and hoped that with the epidemic, the police wouldn't bother with a villain out grocery shopping.
She leapt into the hover-car and once it was in gear, flew it around the side of the building and out of sight. Then she quickly moved it up and parked it on the roof. At least there...it was less likely to be noticed.
When Shego returned to the line, the older woman she had been in front of was nearly to the door.
"Thanks!" she said to the woman gratefully as she wiped the sweat off her brow with the back of her sleeve.
The woman smiled a bit uneasily. "You're welcome."
As Shego grabbed a cart and pushed it inside the store, she saw that each person was stopping at a station that had been set up where wet wipes were being given to each shopper. When it was her turn she accepted the damp cloth with a quiet 'Thank you' and quickly pushed the cart into the loud, crowded store.
She used the wet wipe to clean the handles of the cart and frowned at herself. There wasn't any reason to panic... People were overreacting.
As she lifted her eyes to the store, she began to wonder if she was wrong. Ahead of her people were crowding and pushing their way past four employees who were standing in front of an aisle labeled 'bottled water.' To Shego's right were two women at the checkout pulling back and forth on a package of toilet paper.
'Toilet paper?' Shego thought incredulously. 'Do we need toilet paper?' She looked at Drakken's list. They did.
She pushed her cart around to the side of the aisles where there were fewer people and started looking for all of the things on Drakken's list. She very quickly realized that even if there wasn't a reason to panic...people clearly were.
Most of the shelves were near-empty. She was thankfully able to find every perishable food item and ingredient Drakken had listed, but there were no frozen foods whatsoever left in the store. Signs hung above their shelves instructing 'one item per customer' which caused Shego's brow to rise.
The aisle with paper products was also completely bare, and Shego wandered through it wondering if they could order toilet paper over the Internet somehow. When she got to the aisle with vitamins and minerals she nearly started laughing. It was fully stocked.
She gathered up all of the things Drakken had listed and realized as she looked at the rapidly-filling cart that there were many things he had listed that they didn't usually buy. She wondered if it was for their health, or for experiments.
She also realized that the henchmen might have to leave the lair and try to find some things on their own. Such as toilet paper.
"Ugh, I never shop for the henchmen..." she muttered as she continued trying to find things on the list. Household cleaners were next, but that aisle was completely empty as well.
She sighed and headed to the checkout. Maybe she should try other stores for the things Smarty Mart didn't have...
Joining the long line to pay, she was surprised to find the elderly woman who had been behind her outside now directly ahead of her. Her cart was nearly empty and Shego realized that she probably wasn't out panic-buying, but just doing her regular shopping. Shego watched with a raised brow as the woman dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. When she moved to replace the handkerchief in her purse, she turned slightly and saw Shego.
"Oh. It's you."
Shego grinned weakly and took a step back. Less because she didn't want to talk to the woman, she realized, and more because she suddenly had alarms screaming 'high risk' in her head.
"Did you find everything you needed?" the woman asked.
"No," she said through her respirator mask. "You?"
"No," the woman said and glanced at Shego's full cart compared to her own lightly stacked one.
"I'm shopping for a lot of people," Shego explained.
"Big family?"
"Uh...yeah."
The woman coughed once into her elbow and Shego took another step back.
"My daughter just called me. Her wedding was supposed to be this weekend, but it has to be postponed."
"Oh...why?" Shego asked, mentally kicking herself for engaging. Why was she engaging?
"The church cancelled on us. They don't know when they can reschedule. I can't believe even the church closed its doors..."
"Oh... Well...are you getting your money back?"
The woman shook her head. "Ashley didn't say."
"Well...I'm sure you will. It would be insane to make you pay when they're the ones who cancelled."
"It's not that..." the woman sniffled. "It's just that Ashley and Joey have been waiting so long... Now they'll have to wait longer."
Shego thought of Drakken and their newfound love, and the cold reality that the disease might still separate them. She took another step back from the woman as she suddenly realized...she shouldn't have left the lair at all. She was far too contagious, the way Drakken was still coughing. She glanced in her cart for the wet wipe the employees had given her at the entrance, but it must have fallen out somewhere.
A commotion ahead of them in the line suddenly drew their attention. A middle-aged woman was yelling at the teenage cashier as the younger girl explained that only one package of toilet paper was allowed, removing the second from the yelling woman's cart. The irate customer then grabbed a package of gum off the nearby rack and threw it point-blank at the teenager's face.
An older, male cashier from the next lane quickly stepped over to deal with the situation as the poor teenage cashier stood looking shell-shocked, and rubbing the reddening spot on her face where the gum had hit.
The elderly woman in front of Shego had her mouth hanging open and was shaking her head in disbelief. Shego cleared her throat and got the woman's attention again.
"Well...your daughter, her fiance... They're healthy, right?" she fairly stammered as she stepped further back to give the woman a safer distance.
The woman smiled. "Yes, thank God."
Shego felt something grip her chest. She still had no guarantee about Drakken. "Then...they'll have forever."
When Shego left the store with several bags over her arms she followed the crowd absentmindedly, lost in thought. Assuming all would end well...what might 'forever' look like for she and Drakken?
The person walking in front of her stopped short, and she just barely avoided bumping into them as she held tighter to her bags and looked up. She quickly followed the gaze of the other shoppers and found what had drawn their attention. Police tape was blocking off the entire side of the building where the long line had been, restricting access as they investigated the death of the homeless woman.
Shego turned around and hurried to the other side of the building and toward the hover-car.
Four hours and six phone calls to Drakken later—her phone battery had died during her attempt to make a seventh call—Shego returned to the lair exhausted. She had only found a few of the other items on the shopping list at the other stores she checked, and she'd finally given up in futility.
When she'd tried to eat out for lunch she learned what the police officer meant by everything closing; businesses were shutting down left and right with the exception of grocery stores and hospitals and a few 'non-essential' hold-outs. She had flown the hover-car lower than she usually would, staring in fascination at the abandoned highways. It was like something out of an apocalyptic movie. And as she had flown over the darkened neon signs of Cow & Chow and Bueno Nacho, she wondered where the poor would get their meals.
After putting away the groceries and other things, she tiredly made her way back to Drakken's room. She found him asleep with the TV on and the laptop sitting open on the chair she usually occupied.
She yanked off her respirator and crawled across the bed, laying down about a foot away from him. He opened his eyes slightly, peered at her sleepily, and then began coughing. She reached across the bed and found his hand, gripping it tightly. He offered her a weak smile once the coughs had subsided and his eyes fell closed. It was only minutes before she was asleep, too.
Day 65
Drakken's fever was lower. He was sitting in her usual chair working on her laptop as she remade the bed with clean sheets. The routine she had fallen into during his illness was somehow relaxing, she thought, as she tucked the sheet corners under the heavy mattress. Probably because it meant he was still alive.
She had gone out twice more in the past few days—with the respirator and wearing sterile gloves—and blessedly found one tiny package of toilet paper at a mom-and-pop type of store on one of the smaller islands. But all of the electrolyte-laden drinks were sold out everywhere, as was the water and all non-perishable food items.
She had learned from the TV that they were actually in something of a hot spot for the epidemic, and that other areas were likely to follow their example soon and shut down non-essential businesses. Various countries were starting to restrict entrance to foreigners from the specified hot zones, which she found interesting—an 'every man for themselves' mentality. She couldn't decide if it was wise, or just a bit evil.
Drakken told her that morning that the world economy was going to crash, and they had argued for a while about whether it was a big deal or not. He insisted it was, but she was of the mind that when the epidemic was over that businesses would need to hire their employees back in order to survive. It might be annoying for awhile, but not dire.
He reminded her that the rest of the world wasn't as financially secure as two super-villains were.
The argument had ended when Drakken broke into a coughing fit, and once the shaking of his frame had abated she'd shooed him into the chair so she could change the bedding. As she watched him alternate between frowning at whatever was on her laptop and the statistics on the TV screen, something else occurred to her.
"Hey...Doc?"
"Mm?" he glanced up and then coughed into his elbow. She waited until the fit had passed.
"Is there any research yet about...what the disease does to pregnant women?"
Drakken's frown deepened. "No."
Shego looked away as she stuffed a pillow into a clean case so he couldn't see her worried expression.
"I need to get into the lab..." he muttered.
"Oh no," she whirled around. "Not until it's been disinfected. You were definitely mutating something horrible in there."
"Trying to find a cure..." he argued quietly.
She looked at his darkened expression and felt a wave of nausea. She set a hand on her stomach. The morning sickness wasn't quite as bad as it had first been.
She sighed. "The stores are still out of cleaning products, but...I could burn it," she offered. "Clean it that way."
Drakken shook his head. "Too much equipment would be damaged. "I'll think of something..."
Shego smoothed out the blankets on the clean bed and Drakken's brow rose in longing. He shakily set the laptop on the bed and started to stand.
"Nope, not yet," Shego said, hurrying to his side. "Bath, and clean jammies first."
Drakken groaned and let her push him toward the bathroom.
"I'm going to wash all of the immunity off of my epidermis and I'll die from...from an infection in a paper cut."
"Shut up. Now get started while I disinfect the laptop."
"Shego..." Drakken whined.