July 21, 2010.
A/N: Solacers, my sincerest apologies for the massive hiatus there. Exam period started, and then I jetted off to England for three weeks, so FF net sort of got neglected for a while there. I hope you'll all forgive me XD;;
Results from the poll: So, on the topic of Morgan's indefinite death...
- Keep her alive. Her character strength is imperative to the storyline. (60 percent) WINNER~!
- Kill her off. Her death is necessary for future plot developments. (40 percent)
Sorry, everyone who wanted her killed off. Looks like Morgan's sticking around for a while ;) Thanks everyone for voting!
Anyway. Here's the next chapter of SfS! Hope you enjoy :)
Searching for Solace
- THIRTEEN -
March 17 – 09:56
"What the fuck are we doing?"
Morgan shivered and rubbed her hands along her arms. It was an unusually cool morning for March. Autumn in Melbourne was normally about as hot as summer. The breeze was a little on the chilly side, uncomfortably so. She stalked along the footpath, trying to pretend Emma and the glowing Chimera Anima weren't really there.
"You want to know what's going on at the Alfred," Amy replied shortly. "So do they. It's logical for us to go together."
Daniel looked about as happy with this arrangement as Emma. He glowered occasionally at Morgan, as though he held her personally responsible for everything bad that had happened to them. Morgan ignored him, too. Matt trotted along at the back with Nick. Neither of them said anything the entire way.
After a ten minute walk, the Alfred loomed ahead. The sight of it reinforced Morgan's feeling that something very strange was afoot inside. She swallowed the unexplainable nerves that were rising and followed Brody and Amy through the sliding doors. Emma immediately peeled away and headed in the opposite direction.
"What are you doing?" Amy hissed. The receptionist behind the counter glanced up, a suspicious expression on her face.
"We're here now," Emma replied, still walking, not bothering to lower her voice. In Morgan's opinion, she was being very childish and unreasonable. "That was the deal. We don't have to follow them like puppies anymore."
With a sigh, Brody started after her. The two disappeared up the corridor, Nick trailing hesitantly behind them. Amy propped her hands on her hips and turned to face the awaiting trio with an apologetic look.
"Sorry," she said. "Looks like we're splitting up. We'll meet back here at the end of visiting hours, okay?"
"Okay," Morgan agreed, and they parted ways.
Yesterday, the peaceful interior of the Alfred had been comforting and relieving. Now, it was suspicious and threatening. Morgan walked down the corridor to Max and Terry's room, trying not to look shifty, and tip-toeing, though she had no idea why. It was as though she expected their enemies to leap out from inside cupboards or store rooms as they passed by. It was an irrational fear, she knew, but it was there nonetheless.
Terry was sleeping heavily, snoring quietly. Max slowly shifted as Morgan sat on the end of her bed, her eyes fluttering open weakly. She blinked languidly for a few seconds, gazing groggily at Morgan, then looked around, her forehead furrowing as she focused on Daniel.
Her expression said more than words could have.
"Yeah," Morgan said, clearing her throat. "Daniel Palmer is actually standing there." She smiled happily when Max returned her gaze, her eyes unhappy. "And you're actually awake."
Max managed to nod her head a little, her lips curling in a weak attempt at a smile.
"You're at the Alfred," Morgan informed her, watching her glance around the white room in confusion. "We had to move you from Box Hill. Lots of hospitals have been attacked recently. Hey, guess what?" Morgan grinned widely. "I transformed!"
"Shut up!" Daniel growled, glancing around anxiously in case any strangers were listening in.
Morgan rolled her eyes at him and flicked her short, dark hair pettily, turning back to Max. "It was really cool. I absolutely obliterated a huge-ass spider! The thing was like a mammoth!"
Max paled considerably, which Morgan didn't think was even possible, given how sallow her face already was. She quickly changed the subject, in fear that Max was about to faint.
"Are you hungry?"
Max stretched her neck a little – it seemed to require a huge amount of effort – and shook her head slowly. It was really scary, Morgan thought, how quickly her health had deteriorated. The Mackenzie she was talking to and looking at now was a mere shadow of her former self. If someone had told her before the invasion that this was going to happen, she simply wouldn't have believed it.
The doors opened and all three visitors turned expectantly. A nurse hurried in, hardly acknowledging their presence. She checked the records of the three other patients before reaching Max. Only after examining her progress notes did she glance at Morgan and Daniel.
"I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to wait out in the waiting room," she said in a clipped voice. "She needs to have her scan now."
"Scan?" Morgan leeched onto the tidbit of information immediately. "Like an x-ray?"
"Yes," the nurse replied, seemingly without even thinking. Warning bells rang loudly in Morgan's head. She frowned sharply.
"But there's nothing wrong with her bones," she said, hearing how sharp her voice sounded. "There are no fractures, splints, breaks or fissures. How do you x-ray an immune system?"
The nurse froze and looked at her, as though seeing her for the first time. In her expression, Morgan read suspicion, alarm and a touch of worry. Aha!, she thought victoriously, we're onto something here.
"Please wait outside," the nurse decided simply. "I don't have time to explain it to you. Your sister will be back very soon. It's a quick procedure."
As she wheeled Max away, Morgan's brain quickly formulated ideas.
"Can I come?" The nurse paused and glanced back incredulously. Morgan's heart hammered in her chest; she could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks, but she continued with her lie, feeding it as steadily and calmly as if it were solid truth. "Family members can come along for support, can't they? The doctor before told me I could go if she wanted me to."
Max was staring in open disbelief, clearly confused. Morgan glanced at her, sending her a subtle, pointed look. She prayed furiously that the nurse didn't check with Max for confirmation. To her immense relief, luck seemed to be on her side that day.
"You can come," the nurse caved reluctantly. "But you have to wait in the imaging department waiting room while she has the scan."
"That's fine," Morgan replied quickly, shooting Daniel a warning glance as she passed into the corridor behind the stretcher. He shrugged simply and stopped following, turning back to wait beside Terry's bed with Matt.
March 17 – 10:27
Morgan's knee was bouncing impatiently again. The waiting room was cold and empty. The two receptionists had left the desk and slipped into the kitchen for a coffee break, and were chatting away about things Morgan wasn't interested in. Max had disappeared into a theatre, and she'd heard a passing radiologist mention that she was being set up for the scan.
A pair of doctors emerged from a room down the end of the corridor, talking quietly. One of them glanced dismissively at Morgan. She listened to their sharp footsteps echoing away until silence fell once more, and gazed restlessly around the imaging department. She hated sitting out here doing nothing while possibly sinister things could be happening to Max.
Another minute dragged by. Morgan's knee was bouncing more violently when a surprise door swung open just down the corridor, revealing a short, dark staircase behind. A young Asian woman – perhaps a few years older than Morgan – hurried down the steps and glanced up, lookingg alarmed when she spotted Morgan sitting there. She was dressed in a green top and matching pants; intern scrubs. She shut the door quickly, glanced back with obvious worry at Morgan and scurried away, her blue-mesh-bootied feet scuffing against the linoleum.
Morgan stared after her for a moment, then got up, suspicion brewing in her mind. Basically every medical show she'd ever watched had viewing rooms above the operation theatres. While Max wasn't being operated on, surely there would be a viewing room for the interns to watch the radiologists doing their stuff. Glancing up and down the corridor in case someone came around the corner, Morgan pulled the door open and darted up the staircase.
She found herself at the end of a long, narrow corridor lined with windows. It was dimly lit, and she had trouble adjusting her eyes, but the rooms below the glass were brighter; inside the nearest she could see fancy-looking machines and clinical equipment. She wandered along the corridor, peering down curiously into the different rooms. The first two were empty and the third was being set up by two interns, but the fourth was more interesting. Morgan stopped and peered down.
A figure was lying on the bed in the middle – not Mackenzie, but another teenager; a boy. He was sleeping, or unconscious, lying perfectly still. Even from high above, Morgan could see the ghastly pale of his face, the gauntness of his cheeks and the dark rings around his closed eyes. He looked like Max. A radiologist in navy-blue scrubs was preparing a machine, calling instructions to an intern that was either helping or learning. The intern was standing right in the corner, looking oddly tense about whatever was happening.
After a series of technical whirs and beeps, the machine was moving, its arm slowly running the length of the boy's body. A thin beam of red passed over his snowy skin, all the way to his toes, and back to the top of his head. It went through one cycle, then was quiet.
"Done," the radiologist said, her voice surprisingly loud and clear. There were obviously microphones in the room. "In a few minutes, the results will pop up on the screen. While we're waiting, we'll get the bloods."
Wait a second… bloods? In a radiology scan? Morgan's stomach wriggled in a funny way. Something wasn't sitting right. Her heart beating with the adrenaline of being somewhere she knew she shouldn't, she stepped closer to the glass, almost squishing her nose against the pane as she tried to see what was happening below.
The intern reluctantly moved bedside, a large, plastic syringe and a little glass vial in his rubber-gloved hands. As he turned the unconscious boy's arm palm-up and searched with delicate, practised precision for a vein on the inside of his elbow, it suddenly clicked to Morgan that he might not actually be there to learn the ways of radiography. Clearly, he was medically trained, so he was probably a nurse, or on work experience to become a doctor. She watched him draw blood easily from the boy's arm, her suspicions growing to the point where she started to feel worried.
The intern stoppered the vial, removed the syringe and labelled the tiny glass of black-red blood, dropping the whole lot in a green kidney-shaped dish.
"Finished," he said, frowning unpleasantly. The radiologist paid him no attention. She was focusing on the computer screen, tapping one foot impatiently.
"Right," she said finally. "Here we are. Results are in."
The intern chose not to look at the screen, which Morgan found odd. What medically-in-training person wouldn't be curious about their patients' results?
Something that sounded suspiciously like a triumphant sort of snort sounded from the radiologist. She turned back to the intern and clapped her hands once.
"Poor Andy Fisher. Positive for mutant genes," she said, sounding ironically unsympathetic, for a doctor. "You can process the bloods if you really want, for confirmation. To save time and money, however, I suggest you trust the gene scan and just prepare the shot. Leave it in the fridge for now."
What the hell was a gene scan?
The intern tensed visibly.
"If you can't stomach it, you'd better rethink your career path," the radiologist said sharply. "It's your job. Go and do it before you get sacked."
Without even glancing at the boy on the bed, she swept from the room. The door slammed shut behind her, and the intern was left by himself, staring wordlessly at the bed. Morgan watched him keenly. It was difficult to tell in the dimness, but she could have sworn his expression was sad; pitiful. Whatever it was his job to do, he most certainly didn't like having to do it – that much was obvious. He stood there for a long time, eventually sighing heavily and walking miserably from the room.
Morgan stood at the window, clicking her tongue thoughtfully as she ran over everything she'd just witnessed. Suddenly, something moved sharply in her peripheral vision, and she jumped violently, whipping around in fright.
The Asian intern started, alarmed. Her almond-shaped eyes widened; she'd only just spotted Morgan standing there. And now she was looking utterly terrified, like Morgan had sprouted three heads, or something equally horrifying.
"Get out," she hissed, her words cropped by her broken English. "You're not allowed up here!"
"Sorry!" Morgan stammered. Shit. Now she was in trouble. Her heart hammered furiously. "I-I got lost…" It sounded pathetic even as she said it.
"Just leave now," the intern muttered, bustling behind her and pushing her towards the staircase. "Do not come back here. If anyone else catches you…"
Morgan turned to look at her incredulously. "You're not telling on me?"
"Telling on…?" The girl's expression was blank. She brushed it off and pushed her down the stairs, out into the corridor. "Go, go! Do not go up there! It is off-limits."
"Okay," Morgan replied, unable to believe she was getting off scot-free after what she'd just seen. The intern waved her hand, urging her away and glancing anxiously up and down the corridor. Morgan caught her eye. "Uh… Thanks."
The intern simply scurried away again, and Morgan obediently hurried off down the corridor, her mind whirling with her unbelievably narrow escape from serious trouble, and the monstrous suspicion regarding the activities taking place in the imaging department. Something was definitely not normal about what they were doing, and Morgan was getting a very, very bad feeling about it.
CULTURE NOTE
Autumn: The seasons in Australia are kind of backwards. So autumn (fall) is in March, April and May for us. Winter is June, July, August. Spring is September, October and November. And Summer is December, January and February. :)
Telling on: Basically, taddling.
A/N: Well, well, well. What has Morgan stumbled upon? Is it all as suspicious as she thinks? And what is a gene scan?
Well, you'll find out if you keep reading! :)
Thanks, everybody, for keeping up with us. I promise you updates will come more frequently again from now on :)
Reviews are love! S2
Until the next update,
Cherrie x