Disclaimer: I do not own Prototype.
Note: set post-game, follows on from the first drabble. Rambling train-of-thought Dana ahead.
All the King's Horses
Dana sat on the toilet lid, staring fixedly at the bathtub. Red and black coils rippled from one side of the tub to the other, like wavelets. Like breathing.
It had been two days already, and the, the thing- 'Alex,' she corrected herself firmly. It- he was still Alex, still her brother… but human? No.
She'd thought she was dealing with it, with having her brother infected like this, a living virus. After coming out of the coma, he'd treated her like spun glass until she'd finally snapped and ripped him up one side and down the other, declaring that she a grown girl, that she could take care of herself, and other meaningless bullshit. And even as he growled and grumbled, he'd looked so… so happy.
She hadn't seen him look that happy since they were kids, and even then only rarely. It wasn't like Alex. Alex wasn't like Alex. She stared at the mess of infectious virus in her bathtub and felt her breathing grow heavy, erratic. Was he Alex? Really? Clearly he wasn't human. There was no body hidden away in that tub, it was all formless, heaving, feverish biomass, through and through. Was it like those horror movies, where people who get turned into vampires automatically become slaving, bloodthirsty, and cruel? Only, that wasn't it, was it. She felt… fuck, she felt safer around her brother the monstrous, murderous, infectious terrorist than she'd felt around her brother the rising star of science for, for years.
She reached out and put a firm hand on her spastically bouncing knee. Fuck, how much coffee had she had? Better yet, how long had she been awake? Rubbing her eyes, she leaned back against the toilet's tank.
After Alex's dramatic entrance, she'd stood there nervously for an hour, then decided that she couldn't help and was just driving herself nuts, and shouldn't she get something constructive done or, better yet, go back to bed? Yeah, that had lasted all of five minutes before she was back in the bathroom again.
At first, the biomass had writhed and turned, a couple of strands boiling over the side only to be slurped back in. When it finally quieted down, Dana had scraped up her courage and leaned in for a closer look, curious despite herself.
A thin oily film, semi-opaque, had formed over the red-and-black, and she'd reached out one hand without thinking. Before she could even blink, her wrist had been caught by a feverishly warm curl of biomass. She thought she might have squeaked, but the icy flood of fear – instinctive and immediate – made it hard to remember. It had held her wrist for a moment, then relaxed, sinking back into the main body.
Okay, no touchy.
The biomass had felt almost like a snake without skin, pure squeezing muscle and squelchy gobs of- of- Y'know what, she wasn't going to think about it. That had been her first coffee. Black. Lots of sugar.
Once, she'd decided she was fed up with the whole thing, drawn the shower curtain and stomped out. Ten minutes later she was back, unable to get the drawn shower curtain out of her mind. She'd actually hesitated before jerking it open again, a hundred late-night horror movies suddenly raising her hackles in sick dread. Nothing had changed. Then, as now, Alex-the-virus still lay in the tub like an obscene black-and-red bowl of string cheese.
She huffed a punch-drunk laugh, thinking back on it. "string cheese," she muttered to herself, not knowing or caring that her eyes were already drifting closed.