ArchivedLogs:The Scientific Method

The Scientific Method
Dramatis Personae Dusk, Jackson, Lucien, Micah, Parley, Rasheed, Regan
In Absentia	Friday thru Sunday, 8 Nov - 11 Nov (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. 23:15. Friday. In the clinic hallways outside, there has been chaos. Gunfire. Attacks. Yelling. Some of it filters through, muffled and remote, to the lab, breaking into its crisp sterility. Introducing a touch of chaos into its quiet order. Chaos largely ignored, relegated squarely to the realm of Not Their Problem. The lab has its own noises, quiet, muted. The soft whir of a centrifuge, the running of the computer fans. Rasheed's voice making quiet notes. Regan's over top of it: "More promising." The model she's running shows more progress than the last. In simulation. In practice -- well. It takes only a hard /grimace/ from Lucien, shaking his hand as he pulls back like he can /flick/ the unpleasantness from his fingertips, to tell them they are back to the drawing board. 03:23. Saturday. Curfew is still in order but some things are worth the risk. With heads drooping, gazes unfocusing, the dark shadows gathering under the researchers' eyes -- well. Desperate times. Dark wings at night help with avoiding too much notice. /Flying/ helps avoid the hordes. A whole large /box/ of energy shots is (somewhat /irritably/) deposited in the labs before Dusk goes back to sleep. 04:27. Saturday It is quiet enough, in this room. The thudding down the hall is, by now, a known thing. Like the heat turning on. The squeak of a floor board. Water in the pipes. Not worth noticing. Micah moves closer to the sleeping form beside him, pressing lips to forehead. The newest scar there is a round depression beneath his lips. The room is not cold, yet he shivers. He brings his cheek up in front of Jax's mouth. Warm breath there. Alive. 06:43. Saturday. The photokinetic was still curled into bed with his partner. Likely no less volatile, for the flawed medicine they dosed him with, but safely sedated for the moment, at least. Rasheed has been looking at notes, looking at scans (it's a /familiar/ brain even in its current anomalous state of disarray.) Looking at the young man asleep on the bed. Just one or two small tweaks to the next experimental dose. It would be alarmingly simple. Seated nearby, Parley's dark eyes move to him idly for a moment, and then back to the subject. "We should run him through the trigger words again. It's been five hours." He says. Rasheed's eyes move back to his tablet, stylus tapping against its screen. His expression changes little, nor the inscrutable mental static of his mind. "Again," is all he agrees, simply. 07:11. Saturday. The water runs. It is quiet and clear. Soothing. Micah stares at it for a moment with a bleary-eyed lack of comprehension. Water. He puts his hands in it and it reddens briefly. Scrubs under his fingernails. Red. Again. Someone found him a toothbrush. Toothpaste. Normal, basic things. Cap, squeeze, brush. And the water is red. Again. 09:27. Saturday. Breakfast is a pack of Cheez-Its and a Coke from the cafeteria vending machines. So freshly restocked, and no patients or staff yet to diminish its supplies. The pop-hiss of the opening can is such a refreshingly /normal/ sound. Somewhere in its distant background: ThumpTHUMPthumpTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPthumpthumpTHUMP. 12:09. Saturday. Micah looks down at the phone in his hand, uncertain how it came to be there. There is a text window open. A message to Dusk: "I'm so sorry." His eyes scan over the message, still unsent. The static buzzes in his mind. He looks down at the phone in his hand, uncertain how it came to be there. 13:51. Saturday. << (well.) >> A disembodied voice murmurs. << (it's not)(getting)(worse.) >> From Lucien there is no initial response. A little vacant-eyed, headache throbbing, dizzy even while sitting down, one hand dropping kind of limply to his lap. He blinks, slowly reorienting his attention to the man in the bed in front of him, fingers twitching against an arm. "Hm? I'm s-- s--" He stops, frowning with a brief wash of confusion, his ensuing grimace oddly lopsided. When he speaks -- when he stutters on that one word -- his sister looks up in sudden alarm. Wide-eyed with a distinct discomfort. "Oh -- oh no. Did he --" << (no.) >> Answers from nowhere. Rasheed watches this, too, fingers splayed out long and spindly against his cheek. He hfffs a brief displeased sound through his nose, heading to his bag to dig out a bottle of aspirin and set the pills in front of Lucien. Lucien rests his hand back down once he has downed the pills, eyes closing as his mind turns inward to begin repairing its /own/ damage. "-- It's not," he answers mildly, words still faintly slurred, "getting better, either." 18:33. Saturday. A plastic cup of water filled from the fountain comes slowly to room temperature. Small bubbles form along the inside. There's been no mental commentary for an hour; though intervals of psychic feedback from the subjects drift in and out like background radio. From a corner, Parley would look asleep if his eyes weren't open. It's been four hours and even out of sedation, signs of aggression from their current test subjects -- dosed and re-dosed and re-dosed, it's hardly the kind of clinical trial that would meet accepted /standards/ for either method or /humaneness/ -- have been muted and farther between. Lucien is making the rounds to check. Make notes of his own, jotted into a tablet to overlay Rasheed's scans. Check them and recheck them. For a moment, a glimmer of hope bubbles up to break the tranquil surface of his mind; it's a foreign feel against its cool placidity and it doesn't make it out at far as his /face/ before he pops it to let the ripples settle back down. And wait. 21:03. Saturday. "The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well." Lucien's voice is soft; by now it's lost most of its slurring, exchanged instead for a constant throbbing pain so deep it twists his stomach into nausea. Beyond, Regan watches him with the children quietly through the observation window, fingers tapping at the crook of her arm. Her expression might be thoughtful or might simply just be numbed by exhaustion. Or might be listening to the bedtime story. "It's different," Parley says, not looking up from the tablet he's scanning. "When a mind is sleeping naturally." There's been no psionic transmissions for the past twenty minutes. And won't be for ten more. His phone is timing it. "There isn't a way to describe it." Regan doesn't look at him for some while. Eyes fixed on the family through the glass. But eventually she looks down -- at her watch, at Parley's tablet. At the door to the patient room opposite. And at her lab, where more tests are waiting to be run, more results waiting to be analysed. Her fingers tap against the crook of her arm again before she heads back in to her work. "Find one." Parley lifts eyes to her. Then drifts them back down to the images of brain scans, head tipped to the side. He thoughtfully flips back to the beginning again. 22:47. Saturday. From one of the bathrooms, only retching. Dusk's wings can barely fit inside, even widened as it is for handicap access. His fingers tighten where they grip the bowl. Regan watches from outside the just-ajar door. Records this quietly, and moves on. 00:29. Sunday. The lights in the room shiver-flicker-shudder, restless and unstable. Shadows ghost around the edges of the room, hazily forming and reforming in almost-shapes, but over by the bed it is brighter. Chaotically so. Jax's mind, also chaotic. But it's not the blind static aggression of the ill so much as the sick-panicked restlessness of nightmare. Needles stuck in his arm, over and over. The cool sterile clinic walls. The calm detached voices. "Again." When he wakes the shadows disappear. But the lights continue jittering when he reaches to touch the IV stuck into his arm, heart racing until he drops his hand to feel Micah's form beside him. Only then does the uneasy flickering calm. He doesn't fall back asleep. 2:29. Sunday. The constant mechanical whirring of lab equipment has drilled itself deep into his brain. Normally these sounds are a comfort. Today they sound like a countdown clock. "Twelve hours." Perhaps he's speaking to Regan but he doesn't look to her, only to his notes. Perhaps at this Regan should be pleased. Hopeful. Optimistic. Instead she just presses her lips together thin, pushing out of her seat. "I'll tell the scanners. And administer a second dose." 8:19. Sunday." Jax's fingers press to the small raised dots on the ring around his finger. One and then two and then three, ring turning slowly beneath forefinger and thumb. One Hail Mary and then two and then three. Quiet, repetitive. He stops to trace his thumb slowly against the cross at the center of the ring once he's gotten to ten. Inside him a flicker of anger stirs. Shuddering up as his fingers clamp down slowly on the rosary ring. He can /feel/ as his mind starts to slip into static. His finger stays pressed to the cross. "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning --" For once, a concerted effort pushes the rising anger back down, washing it away in the calm serenity of prayer. Idly, he wonders if his church is even running services today. Maybe he's not missing anything. "-- is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen." 9:23. Sunday. Underground, when it's dark, it's too dark. And when it isn't too dark, it's not dark enough. Because there's always a light on somewhere. Human language was one of the first features that set them apart from their fellow roaming creatures on the Earth. It could be said the X gene takes it the next step from there. There's a cruel poetry in an illness that spreads with a spoken word. And bends to the cold hard spine of modern science. Watching Iolaus and Rasheed across the room, their heads bent together, Parley considers that there is no point in asking how living things survived in a world before doctors. Quite simply, they didn't. 10:53. Sunday Micah blinks his eyes entirely more times than would usually be necessary, enormously glad for the lack of visuals over the phone. He manages to keep his tone steady, even light. "No, sugar, ain't nobody dead. No. He's feelin' better, too. Promise. I—honey. Honey. Spencer. No, we can't leave yet. I'll—I'll go get him t'talk t'you right now, love." He swallows hard and stands from his chair. 12:51. Sunday. ThumpTHUMP, thumpTHUMPTHUMP. THUMPTHUMPTHUMP. Fists hammer now like rain against the sturdy glass out front and inside, Jackson stands with palm slowly rubbing against his cheek. Watching the eyes that all focus in on him, the mouths gaping open and closed against the thick sturdy glass. His single eye watches them right back. "Everyone still has t'get home from here." His hand keeps its rubbing. "Eventually." Lucien doesn't seem in a great hurry. Perhaps for his exhaustion. Perhaps for his family of children nice and /safe/ in the basement of this medical fortress. "S'more, since yesterday. Last supply run musta drawn 'em on." Rub, rub, rub. "Outta food again though. One man can only carry so much." He moves closer, towards the window. Presses his hand right up against it. Fingerspan for fingerspan it nearly matches up with the hand thumping back on the other side. His eye closes, and he draws in a deep breath like he is breathing /in/ the afternoon sun streaming through the window. The glass pushes /outward/. It doesn't, of course, but for a moment that's what it /looks/ like, a slow expanding sheet of translucence that only at second glance shimmers with a prismatic shift of colors. Jax's teeth grit. Fists hammer on prismy-shield, now, mouths chomp endlessly at its warm unyielding surface. He pushes. Back, back, back, a growing bubble of safe space at which the dead throng. In a quick staccato drum his fingers roll against the pane in front of him. "-- Hive built this clinic t'withstand bombing, y'know." "Mmm." Lucien is still watching the throng of dead outside. "Wisely, I'm sure." Jax straightens, moving to the door. Stepping outside, into the bubble of space created, and letting the door close firm behind him. He's still breathing slow and deep as he moves to the center of the dome, tipping his face outward to watch the chomping mouths of the dead pressing in. His hand moves -- forehead, chest, one shoulder and the other. His hands join as if in prayer. When they push outward, the shield /explodes/ outward with them, a sudden blinding burst of light that ripples away from him, shattering what /remains/ of the windows of a few adjacent buildings. Behind him, the clinic /shudders/. And leaving in its wake a sizzling mess of blood and viscera, skin and crisping clothing, carpeting the street around him. Through it, here and there, a mouth still chomps. Half a torso. Only a head. They'll be picked off in due time. But just right now, Jackson drops to his knees, a pose that looks like prayer save for the constant shuddering tremble of his muscles. 14:31. Sunday. Twenty-four hours. Four patients, poked and prodded at until their arms are stippled red with needle marks. It's hardly the trial they need but it's the one they have. Rasheed picks up the phone, and puts a call in to his uncle. His family's pharmaceutical company manufactures a /wealth/ of products. For the next few days, though, their resources will only be turned to one. There is no sign of Parley to be found. But then, there rarely is. 17:11. Sunday. Regan rubs hands against her eyes. Stifles a yawn. "It still clear outside?" "No," Lucien answers. "But largely." "Good. This basement's driving me crazy." She gets up, grabbing her jacket before she heads out. 23:23. Sunday. Rasheed steeples his fingers under his chin, resting his head down on his fingertips. He studies the screen of his tablet a long time. And then shuts it off. And goes to sleep.