ArchivedLogs:Capabilities

Capabilities
Dramatis Personae Iolaus, Jackson, Lucien, Parley, Rasheed
In Absentia	2013-11-08 (Followed immediately by Jax returning home.) (Part of Infected TP.)
Location <NYC> The Mendel Clinic - Lower East Side
With its sharp crystalline edges and sleek lines knifing up into the sky, this building is one of the most /distinctive/ new additions to the neighborhood. An angular structure in glass and steel, the tall tower has a deceptively slender look to it that is belied by the heavy security as soon as you enter the doors. The front doors are frosted with the Clinic's logo -- a rising sun over a rod of Asclepius -- a motif echoed in many places throughout the building. Visitors to the clinic must first pass through a small mantrap, guarded by some of the Clinic's security guards; once they make it through the metal detector and airlock's double doors they emerge into the much more hospitable lobby. With dark wood floors underneath and comfortable black and red couches at its edges, the high windows give the room an airy feel. A bank of elevators to one side carry visitors to the many destination floors, while the wide welcome desk at the other side is manned by a security guard ready to help point visitors in the right direction. It's been a long few days. Daiki is still down here, no longer dead but his intermittent bouts of aggression and agitation make being near him a rollercoaster. /Desi/, on the other hand, has made a full recovery in the previous day -- after which treatment Lucien finally took a /nap/. A much-needed one, too; with his mutation working overtime he's not just exhausted so much as /seizing/ frequently. And then back to work -- this time armed with the knowledge that, at least working in concert, Lucien and Parley can successfully /cure/ this thing in a person. For all the immediate good it does to have a cure that takes a long stretch of intensive work from two people in tandem that can't subsequently be repeated until they've had a good while to rest. But it's a start, at least; a knowledge of one /way/ to attack this. Even if it still needs intensive work to figure out how to mass-reproduce it. Lucien is not, at the moment, doing intensive work. He's ventured out into the city in tandem with Jackson to retrieve more /food/ for everyone; he returns with an enormous bag of Indian takeout. Because in the middle of all this chaos, some New Yorkers are /stubbornly/ determined to keep going. Lucien sits, now, in one of the patient rooms -- with Desirée cured, he's moved his /family/ into her room, the children asleep now but his work able to continue more uninterrupted without having to return home to care for a five and a ten year old. At the moment, he looks -- certainly like he's seen /better/ days, though he's had a shower and a change of clothes he's kind of shaky, kind of pale. Nursing a sharply agonizing stab of headache that pounds through his usual mental tranquility, though all that makes it onto his expression is a faintly thinned press of lips. He pours some goat curry onto a plate of rice. And then just stares at it like he's forgotten quite what he's supposed to be doing with it. The door to the secure lab opens, emitting a tired Iolaus into the room. He looks quite more bedraggled than Lucien does, looking over the children with an affectionate smile. "Hey, Lucien," Iolaus says softly, stepping over to smile at the other man. "How was your trip into the city? City. City. City. City." His head shakes, rapidly, once, and he looks around. "Uh. How was your trip?" Parley has grown progressively more quiet, focusing his energy and concentration into monitoring the subjects (Jackson included), broadcasting to Lucien and probably Iolaus during testing times, or any time a change occurs, a fugue hits, a spike in emotion or a drop in spirit. Which, for a group of people struggling with a terminal illness, is… often. There is no time another experiment has come up that he hasn't accompanied, collapsing into naps at different times than Lucien to leave someone capable of looking into the minds of the sick awake at any time. Blessedly spared of seizure, his drawn-out mind has, from time to time, been coming with a subtle rusty-tin… /chafed/ taste to it, friction-sore and tender from being open and exposed for such long periods. But there isn't much to do about that right now. He's taken up residence in one of the empty rooms, though it's not as though he brought anything to store in it. His bed is made with hospital-style of care, his movements in and out of the quarters as instantly familiar and at home as the way he already knows how tie his scrubs pants at just the right height for comfort and mobility. Right now, he's seated sideways in a chair, vaguely wan and shadow-eyed behind his glasses, legs crossed over one arm rest. He's munching on a samosa in slow motion, staring at that same tired list of words – City, Night, Water, Sorry, Weird and possibly 'Heal' by now. Written over and over. In different order. Broken up into strange anagrams. Written in synonym. Antonym – or those that /have/ an antonym, words like CITY have a lot of questionmarks around them. He's written them in hiragana, katakana, kanji. At the moment, he's not writing anything. Not looking up he murmurs, "Will it get worse, the longer you push yourself?" "Iolaus, we are already in the --" Lucien's softly accented voice has dropped from its usual gentle cadence into a dull heavy monotone. "-- Manhattan. I could walk from my house to here, on a clear day." Clear weather, clear of /zombies/, these things that would make the two and a half miles more of a punishment. His lips twitch faintly. "Desi drove, today. She is unlicensed as yet but I think the police have more pressing issues on their hands." And frequent seizures do not make for a safe driving condition, zombies or no. He speaks quietly, too, glancing back from the table he sits at over to the sleeping quarters behind glass where the children have sort of sprawled in a HEAP on the bed. "... yes," he answers Parley after this, still just staring down at his curry before finally he reaches for a fork and spoon. His lips twitch at the chunks of goat in its sauce. "Jackson," he comments mildly quiet, "took my tandoori chicken wraps." "Jackson?" this does manage to drag Parley away from /word/ crunching, swallowing his last bite of samosa and looking over at Lucien. While sadly there's no further questions about his state, certainly no suggestions he take it easy. Instead, "—he doesn't eat chicken." It's somewhat a question, allowing that /maybe/ he's misunderstanding what's been said. Lucien's mind /is/ uniquely difficult to gain purchase on. He rolls back his head, exposing his throat to the room, to look to Iolaus, "Doctor. Say 'the velocity of the Knights of the Round Table.' And then 'gomen-'" except it almost feels like he's saying 'sorry-'. He makes a hard /exhale/ and instead turns down to his notebook. Writes the words 'gomenasai' and, next to it simply 'gomen' in a sharp, neat penmanship, and holds it up for Iolaus to see. "Good practice, I suppose," Iolaus says, looking over at Desiree with a warm, affectionate smile - and a quiet ping of something almost like longing. He looks back down to the ground, and then turns over to look at Lucien and Parley. "Hunger is hunger. I suspect he is feeling a craving for meat, and the chicken is preferable to any of us." Even despite his condition, his smile still flashes, albeit briefly. "The velocity of the Knights of the Round Table. Gomenasai, gomen. And, for that matter, lo siento, signomi." Iolaus says, giving Lucien and Parley a look. "I've started thinking in Spanish as much as possible. I notice I've not found any words I've gotten stuck on, there, yet. Greek either. But I don't know if that's interesting, or just that I haven't started /yet/." There's a small bit of forewarning before Rasheed's arrival down in the basement -- the quiet distant whoosh of the elevator doors, the muted sound of voices in conversation outside the secure labs as he stops to greet Jackson. His mind, orderly analytic presence fraying at its edges into disarray with a host of stresses and worries that likely characterise /most/ minds in the city these days. He enters after Jackson badges him into the back, dressed -- well. Slacks and a dress shirt. But no tie. It is an apocalypse, after all. He has a backpack on his back, a large metal briefcase sort of case held in one hand, and he puts both these things down outside the room before he enters to greet with quiet reserve: "Io. Lucien. -- Ah." Just 'ah'; for a moment he stops with a blink. A slow greeting dip of his head, those fraying edges of his mind tightening back up into crisper stitching. His dark eyes study Parley for the briefest moment, in which he's thinking back to a day of laboratory inspections with no small measure of irritation. Then quiet mental static in a low hum of Arabic (not chosen for /language/ obfuscation so much as the familiar repetitive droning of /prayers/) and a very small, tired smile on his face. "Good evening." Lucien's eyebrows tick upwards at Iolaus's smile, eying it blandly. "I suspect he is," he murmurs in agreement, "rather acutely; I have known him long enough to know that his ethical stance on the matter is quite strong. Unfortunately, he does not yet have the constitution of the dead. Meat after not touching it for years disagrees with him." He reaches upwards, when Parley gives his instructions, fingers resting at Iolaus's wrist to monitor him through these words. "Nothing," he tells Parley, curiosity dragging him a little more upright, pulling his tired expression a little more alert. "Perhaps a widespread shift away from English might buy a little time, at least. -- Ah. Doctor." There's brief warmth in his tone but it soon fades back to dull; he manages a nod of his head but not a smile. "Here," he reaches past his food to drag closer a tablet computer, tapping at its screen; time for /formalities/ is evidently passed because that is all the greeting Rasheed gets before he slips down into work, "let me show you what notes we have so far gathered. You are not yourself sick, are you?" He reaches out a hand for Rasheed like he isn't willing to just /trust/ whatever answer is given. "Heightened appetite is different from specific cravings. If Jackson is losing this much of himself already we may need to… mnh." He's saying this mostly to Iolaus, though his eyes are slipped towards Lucien. Sitting with his back to the door, the approach of one more perfectly well-shaped mind, bare of any noticeable fury or /static/ that might signify the approach of an invading hoard of walking dead, fails to get much immediate attention from Parley. He's shaking his head briefly to Lucien, conveying no, there isn't any response in Iolaus to these words from his end either. He does make a sort of dry twitch at the side of his mouth on the topic of shifting away from English, "Abilities like mine might cause some complications in that plan--." His head turns, here, to look idly up towards the new arrival. His expression doesn't change much, eyelids remaining at halfmast behind his glasses, mouth slightly open as though he were also on the verge of saying 'ah' right back. Slowly, one of his hands is moving towards the back of his own neck, to absently smooth down the fur there, "—Parley," he says, after a split second delay. "Hello." And then, in the same tone, "Read these words out loud, please." His notebook is extended. In a smoky curl, that manicured Arabic shield will feel the faintest cool brush, echo-shimmering with fragment-understandings of the rote words. The amalgamate voice speaking with it is brisk, considerably less soft. Cooldry. Reserved. << if (your pulse)(accelerates) >> Lucien's extending hand is indicated, without urgency. << (he will) likely (notice.) >> "Ah, Rasheed." Iolaus says, turning to him. "I've got a hell of a puzzle for you, when they're done with you. And… careful not to repeat anything, yeah? I need at least one of the two of us to be able to finish this thing off." He shakes his head and glances back to Lucien. "Perhaps. I think I have discovered a way to slow down the course of the infection - hopefully significantly. But I need Rasheed to confirm that I'm not just losing what little is left of my mind, and I can actually start heal-- heal… heal…" He pauses, glancing down at the ground. "Mm. Helping people." Rasheed doesn't immediately take Lucien's hand, looking instead to the notebook. << I'm well aware, >> comes back, quietly crisp, << of his capabilities. >> He glances at the words, plucking the book out of Parley's fingers to draw in a breath, reach out to rest fingers against Lucien's. What Lucien will find there is not unexpected; fatigue, a mild throb of headache, a note of strain in the attempt to stay on task during heightened stress. He looks over the list of words, reading them out smoothly with no evidence that they are affecting him in any way. He drops his hand from Lucien's and returns the notebook to Parley, moving in closer to the table to pick up the tablet and read it over, slowly. "Abilities like yours?" His words are a quiet murmur as his eyes scan the notes. "So far this has seemed nothing /but/ complication. -- Mmm. I've noted these neurological changes as well. Shall I show you the scans I've taken?" Lucien's hand rests against Rasheed through this reading, dropping afterwards back to his spoon. "Clean. You have been lucky, then. Or perhaps we /all/ have; if anyone can solve this, I imagine it would be Dr. Toure. Parley and I," Lucien's fingers uncurl towards the other man, "seem to have reversed the illness entirely. In one patient. What we need is a way to export that to /many/ -- he and I are unfortunately," his lips give a small dry twitch, "not mass-producible." "Things can always get more complicated," Parley folds fingers around the side of the notebook, looking up towards Rasheed's face with something, for one passing moment, that compresses his mouth as Lucien explains their - well, technical success. Maybe the position is jabbing the arm of his chair into a muscle cluster of his back. With the notebook back in his lap, he uncrosses his ankles to reknit them in opposite formation, to coax a better bloodflow. His eyes have traveled to Iolaus for his casually presented /news/, freeing the pen he'd tucked behind an ear. "Zolpidem. I read a paper that it helps treat aphasia in people with strokes affecting Wernicke's area, and it seems to have helped slow down things in my... trials." The last word is said with no small dose of sarcasm, and Iolaus' smile is wry as he turns to look at Rasheed. "It certainly doesn't make me feel particularly tired, though that could be the modafinil. And it definitely helps me break out of those loops faster than normal. I think we should start giving it to everyone who is infected. What do you think, Rasheed? A stop-gap, while we try and figure out what the hell Lucien and Parley are actually doing?" Rasheed's lips compress at the answer from Iolaus, though his eyes do not leave the tablet. "/May/ help treat aphasia," he murmurs, "in /some/ people. If the brains of the dead are still as variant as the brains of the living, it will be unhelpful in a majority of cases and immediately efficacious in a handful. -- It is, though, an interesting tack." And then quiet; there is some stirrings of misgiving beneath the quiet litany in his mind but these are largely at the moment quelled beneath plain and simple /focus/ on the task at hand. "-- Some years back I developed a drug that gave far more /consistent/ effects in reversing neural damage. With some modification it may prove useful. I'll get started straightaway, once we figure out -- well." He turns to Lucien and Parley, eyebrows lifting in mild expectation. "-- What exactly is it that you are doing?" Lucien actually finally starts in on his food, while Rasheed reads over the carefully detailed notes of their progress thus far that are held in his tablet. His teeth work slowly against the goat, scraping meat from bone before taking bites of the rice. It's only when he is directly addressed that he dabs his lips with a napkin and looks up. "This illness ravages certain centers of the brain. We are undoing that damage. In most cases it is highlighted most during the patients' -- episodes, but working with Parley he can bring the damaged parts to the forefront long enough for me to work on setting them straight again." He washes down his curry with a swig of hot chai. "-- We are doing, I imagine, much what your treatment might do, if it repairs neural degeneration." "Especially if it can repair them," Parley arches out his spine to extend his reach for the bag of samosas, "as they arrive, without needing to prompt further episodes to locate the affected areas." He uses a finger to isolate the excess fried outer structure of his gained prize, snapping a piece off to tuck in the side of a cheek. "It would take longer. But it would likely be less taxing on the infected. If," there's that word, of course. Crunch. "It works, of course." He tips back his head to add to Iolaus with a twitch at the outer side of his brow, "If you'd told us you were going to begun medication trials, we could have been monitoring its progress. I'd be interested in seeing the scans." "Trials are too strong of a word. Taking a bunch of medications myself is hardly a /trial/." Iolaus says, wrinkling his nose up. "Except, perhaps, on seeing how drug-drug interactions work on my liver." The doctor taps at his nose for a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek thoughtfully. "I'd love to see them do that under an fMRI. May give you more of an insight, Rasheed. The magnet is live, and we should have contrast, if you want it. The radiologist isn't coming in, obviously, but… I'm sure you can do without." "It can inhibit further degeneration and repair the damage already done. Well." Rasheed exhales, a soft almost-laugh. "In theory. I imagine I will need to hole up in your lab for some while. After, perhaps --" He nods towards Lucien and Parley. "Further demonstration of your method." There is a quiet knock at the doorframe, a single bright-blue eye peering in the open door. Jackson looks unwell -- extremely pale, a harsh shimmer of light around him only adding to the washed-out look. His mind is strained, cracking at its vivid-coloured surface; he's making a concerted /effort/ to hold it in some semblance of One Piece though through the cracks all that shows is a growing /hunger/. "Sir," he's not looking at anyone but Iolaus, "I just wanted to let you know Jane's comin' to relieve me shortly. You'll be alone down here for a few but she'll be in ASAP." He doesn't actually wait for a response to this before he's turning to go again. Lucien closes his eyes at the thought of further demonstration, his fingers tightening around the handle of his spoon. He exhales slowly, the sharp stabbing in his head pounding more acutely. "Further demonstration," he agrees. "Shortly. We can --" He opens his eyes to look up at Iolaus, but whatever he might have said next is curtailed by Jackson's arrival. His eyes fix on the artist (with a /fiercer/ throb of pain as he looks at the light around Jax); his hand lifts to rub palm slowly against his stubbled cheek. "How long do you imagine," he asks this of Rasheed without really taking his eyes /from/ the now-empty doorway, "it would take you to alter your drug for this situation?" "We can't wait until shortly." Without any specific transition, Parley has gone from sitting back with eyes closed, massaging a temple with the heel of his palm - to, abruptly, being on his feet and moving briskly towards the door Jackson had just vanished from. "I don't suppose," only a passing twitch of head towards Lucien as he passes, "any of those medications can mitigate your own side effects…?" He sounds light, but to catch his smile isn't. His eyes are glazed and fixed forward. As he slips around the corner, his posture crouches low and his presence thins out and washes deeper into obscurity. Iolaus turns to look at Jax, and concern sparks on his face as his eyes roam over the other man's disheveled figure. "Uh… alright, Jax. Thanks for letting me know." He turns and gives Lucien and Parley a meaningful look. "Perhaps another demonstration is in more immediate order?" he says, voice slightly hushed. "I can prep the MRI very quickly, and we can be scanning in five minutes or less." "Five minutes or less," Rasheed echoes this, watching Jackson go with a faintly troubled expression though inwardly he's less contemplating Jax's well-being and more that of the clinic -- or the entire /city/ -- if he turns. "How long do you think it will take him to shed all that metal?" He steps further into the room and away from the door as Parley slips out of it. His eyes drop, studying Lucien's pallor critically. The heavy laboratory door is shutting already when Parley slips out of the room; beyond that there's little beside a thump of footsteps (no longer a hurried walk but a /sprint/ once that door is shut) that disappear into the stairwell and up. "No." Lucien answers this tersely. His palm presses to his temple, too, eyes following Jackson and Parley out. He exhales a shaky breath, pushing his food aside so that he can prop his elbows on the table, rest his head in his palms. "Perhaps you will have to be our demonstration patient yourself," he murmurs to Iolaus. Parley returns a moment later, like a fogbank at night, picking up the colors of street lamps and stoplights, his thin barrier of personal space is still taking on the colors of those in the room heavily. "-we're just going to let him go, then." There is little conveyed in these words, neatly pronounced while his locomotion is vaguely /less/ neat, a hand pressing down on the back of a chair as he passes it. He runs eyes over Lucien's stooped figure, then vaguely over either doctor while… sinking back into his seat. Leaning back, he pulls off his glasses to dig a crustie from the inner corner of an eye. "Perhaps longer, because of the piercings," Iolaus admits, frowning. "Though, certainly, many of them are titanium and aren't ferromagnetic. We could leave those in. Maybe even some of them on his face." The doctor's arms cross over his chest and he turns to give Lucien a hard look. "Why not him? I'm much less far along than he is, and there's no guarantee that girl will be willing or able to help him, if we don't help him now." "Because unless I am mistaken, Iolaus, he has just fled," Rasheed points out mildly, hand tipping towards the door. He looks towards Parley at the question, brows raising. "Not happily. But are /you/ equipped to stop him?" Lucien's head lifts, chin rather than forehead propped in his palm now. He flicks a glance towards the door, then to Parley, then back down to the table in front of him. "You were the one with the submachine gun." "He was already up the stair," Parley's eyes are rolled up, watching the ceiling above. "I somehow think I might have given Dr. Saavedro's guard upstairs the wrong impression if I came bursting out of the stairwell, open firing on a fleeing Jackson Holland. Very… Malthus Rogers." There's a last beat, and he lowers his eyes from the ceiling. "He's out of my range." "Fucking hell. Jane could stop him." But even as he says it, Iolaus shakes his head and sighs, once. "She's probably not close enough. We'll just have to send someone after him. Let me get one of the guards on the phone to track him down. He can't have gone far," he says, running a hand through his hair. "Then you can cure me. I'd like to be able to say the word 'metropolitan' without my mind snapping." With that, the doctor turns and heads through the door, walking quickly out of the room towards the lab - and the phone. "-- A demonstration shortly, then." Whether on Jackson or on Iolaus, Rasheed isn't picky. But he slips out as well, picking up his things to go set himself up in a /lab/. In Lucien's mind there is for a moment only blankness. Not the glassy calm of its usual state or the static-fuzz of the infected, but a much more mundane seizure-blip the lines of which he has been experiencing frequently, the past few days. When he manages to collect himself again, he adds nothing else to the conversation. Just turns himself to his food, stocking up on it while he can. Because all too soon, work will come bearing down again. Parley, like so many other items of lab equipment, follows suit.