Revamped!
Chapter 56: Symbiosis Part Nine
SHIELD Recovery Room - 8:28 AM
Daniel sits on his laptop again. He has been up for most of the night with a possible and brand new idea for how to solve this problem. Was it good that he was awake when his immune system is failing? No, but he wasn't going to waste any time. The only obstacles in his way are that he doesn't have access to anything he needs, SHIELD wants him in their custody, and he got a message that his team and his dad are heading to the Hulk spotting.
Daniel curses to himself. He knows that his friends and father will get killed since they will not go to the extent of their abilities for his own sake.
Then he gets a message from SHIELD Officials that they're coming to get him this instance.
"Fuck!" Daniel yells.
He doesn't know what to do. All he's got are his degrees and the motivation of everyone telling him fluff. He needs to fight this. He can't live without it...and they're right. He needs all of it, the fluff and his degrees. Daniel begins speed typing on his laptop, spurting out a murder board of information on a simple word document because there was no time for diagrams.
He isn't done his plan. He needs more time and the right resources. If he tries to tell SHIELD that he knows what to do, they won't believe him and he wouldn't blame them. He doesn't believe what he came up with either. He'd call himself crazy.
Daniel quickly downloads what he has on a USB and hides it on him, disconnects himself from the IV, and jumps off his bed. He falls to the floor since this is his first time on his feet in days. He quickly walks out of the room and sees the SHIELD Officials coming for him, so he just goes the other way
"Agent Banner, you're coming with us," they tell him.
"I know," he says, "and I won't argue. Could you just let me talk to Emily first? It's fair that she knows where I'm going or else you'll have to deal with her looking for me"
"Five minutes."
Daniel thanks them as he turns around and runs to find Emily. He eventually finds her but it took him two-and-a-half of those five minutes to find her, giving him less time to talk to her, and he's out of breath which isn't ideal or good for his current health state. Emily has only seen him for five seconds and is already frowning at him.
"If you don't have a plan then I'm not talking to you," Emily firmly states.
"Emily, please," he begs. "I need more time."
"Then why the hell are you coming to me if you need more time? You're just wasting what you have."
"You know what? I get it. You don't want to talk to me and that's fine. I have nothing to say to you either. I came for something else and I'm sorry for being aggressive but, ah hell."
Emily straightens up. "I don't care what you - !"
Daniel approaches her in a single stride, his hands suddenly buried in her hair as he presses her against the wall. His mouth stifles her surprised cry and angry scream. She tries to shove him off her but he holds her tightly. Daniel's grip is firm and gentle but the kiss itself is nothing like that. It's aggressive and demanding. She wants to hate it but she loves it.
Emily's eyes go wide as she feels Daniel's tongue enter her mouth and in the flash of a second, she feels something else in her mouth during this kiss. Something metal and rectangular is being pressed into her mouth from his. Every muscle in her body goes taut.
"Times up, Agent Banner," he gets told by the Officials. "By the order of SHIELD, you're under arrest."
Daniel pulls away from her. His grip softens, cradling her head. Emily finds herself lost for words.
"Finish it..." He says quietly to her, almost inaudible.
Daniel gets escorted out by SHIELD's officials. Emily quickly runs the other way, covering her mouth with one hand. Once she stops, she smashes her free hand against the wall. She spits into her hand to see the foreign object Daniel put in there and stares at it.
It's a USB.
-o-
SHIELD Holding Cell - 9:57 AM
Daniel sits in a holding cell, bored out of his mind and anxious. He hopes that Emily plugged that USB into a computer to see what he came up with (and that the passionate kiss he gave her helped her to forget that she was mad and giving him the silent treatment - given that their kiss didn't screw up the USB). He hopes that his friends and Dad are not dead at the hands of his Hulk. He's alive so he knows the Hulk is fine. He also hopes that the stupid-sounding plan he came up with while having a desperate mindset works.
All he could do is hope.
Daniel straightens up at the sound of coming in. He sits up and sees two masked agents walk in. Daniel immediately stands and knows that he's being taken somewhere else so he follows them without arguing.
"Where are we going?" Daniel asks them.
They don't answer.
Daniel looks around him and sees nearby SHIELD agents knocked unconscious. His heart starts racing at the possibility that he's going to be killed. Then, he's brought onto a quinjet so he thinks that he's going to be dropped in the middle of nowhere and left to die. Great.
"Please don't tell me you killed them," Daniel says about the SHIELD agents he saw earlier as the quinjet takes off.
The masked agents reveal themselves and he sees that they're only Emily and Betty so to answer his question, those agents are not dead. They're knocked out with icers. He sighs out of relief as Emily hugs him tightly.
"Daniel, this plan of yours," Betty starts, "what the hell is it?"
"Nuclear fission," Daniel says, "the Ph.D. I didn't even want and thought I only needed it to be a TA in The Academy."
"Yeah, you'll have to explain that," Emily says.
Daniel nods. "The law about molecules combining at a nuclear level. James would probably get it."
Betty and Emily look at each other, both feeling offended.
Daniel clears his throat. "Listen, the process for nuclear fission is when the nuclear of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei as the fission's byproducts."
"Elemental transmutation," Betty states.
"Exactly. Now remember that and think of a nuclear fission power plant. There are five factors to consider when managing a plant: Control - keep the nuclear reaction from dying out or exploding; Safety - containing the problem when something goes wrong; Refuelling - adding more nuclear fuel without stopping the reactor; Waste production - the byproducts of the reaction must be manageable; Efficiency - capture as much heat as possible."
Emily nods. "Yeah, your document had all that as an acronym which is where you lost me but now I'm caught up. So, the virus is the power plant and the by-products are you and your Hulk."
"Right. Anyways, control is the most important part because the plant has to continue functioning. When uranium from a nuclear atom absorbs a neutron, the uranium fissions and splits into two. So, now we have three variables: me, my hulk, and the virus. Basically, if the next set of neutrons has nothing to absorb into, then the reaction dies out."
Betty steps in. "So you're saying that if we inject the virus back into you and the Hulk, the Hulk will reabsorb into your body."
Daniel nods. "The virus is like any other virus, it needs a host."
Betty looks at him skeptically but, at the same time, she's a proud mom. "That is almost as intelligent as this pathogen but like any other virus or your uranium analogy, too much of it will grow quickly and explode. It will kill you."
"Mom, I have a Ph.D. in nuclear physics and fission, I know what I'm doing."
"And I have a Ph.D. in cellular biology. You're dealing with a human body, not a nuclear power plant."
"Yes, a human body with substantial amounts of gamma rays which is what an exothermic reaction in nuclear fission releases as useful energy. It's energy that is self-sustainable."
Emily's jaw drops. That's her fiancé, a fucking genius.
Betty grins slyly. "You really are your father's son."
Daniel laughs once they've made sense of his crazy plan. He's luminescent with joy although his story had so many jumps that the two women had to take a moment to make sure they were following him correctly. Plus, he couldn't seem to stop laughing. It's the laugh of a mad scientist on the brink of death who finally found his winning experiment, and partly the laugh of someone who thinks he could tell his greatest fear he told him so.
"But what happens if it doesn't work?" Emily asks just to be sure. She still changes the quinjet's course back to the lab in Antarctica.
Daniel shrugs, still grinning from his laugh. "It's worth a shot. I mean, what else do I have to lose? My life?
[That kiss got me all excited]. [2020: Yup, yup, yup!]
[I'll be honest, I thought of a plan for how this will all be solved halfway through writing this chapter. For this whole story arc, I just came up with the solution now]. [2020: *pats self on the back because that's not the first or last time and it's honestly genius*]
[2020: Also, I read so many webpages on nuclear fission and tries to make sense of it so don't come after me if the science is incorrect. I was never good at science in high school].
