Logs:And have mercy on some who are wavering; save others by snatching them out of the fire; and have mercy on still others with fear, hating even the tunic defiled by their bodies.
| And have mercy on some who are wavering; save others by snatching them out of the fire; and have mercy on still others with fear, hating even the tunic defiled by their bodies. | |
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| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia
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2021-10-15 "And you know as well as I do there will be no justice if we turn him in. Maybe better than I know." (set some time after vampire hunting.) |
| Location
<PRV> Bruce's Lab - Midtown East | |
Bruce's apartment has its own state-of-the art laboratory, but this one makes that look like an elementary school science classroom. It is actually a sprawling complex of several different labs plus an office and an actual infirmary, all filled with equipment and supplies most researchers can only dream of for their specialized areas, ranging from high-energy particle physics to molecular genetics. There is also a large, heavily reinforced chamber that is startlingly well-appointed for what is essentially a prison cell, with a large fluffy bed in one corner heaped with stuffed animals, an excellent sound system, a television screen that takes up most of one wall, and an art corner with an oversized easel and stool. The tanks of powerful sedative gasses directly attached to the air vents in readiness are just a bonus.  The reinforced chamber in Bruce's lab has had a new guest today. Dusk is still a mess. Spatters of blood and spatters of paint splotched liberally over his skin and clothes, his wings hanging in ragged tatters of skin from their long sharp bones. For a good amount of the time since he was brought in he's been sleeping. Waking up has been a slow process, and he doesn't seem particularly happy it's happened. A soft growl has started up in his chest; he's curled up into a corner of the room, wings curled around a very large floppy lop-eared rabbit with soft blue fur that he's clutched to his chest, claws dug into it to squish it close. His normally everpresent hunger has -- for perhaps the first time in Hive's living memory -- been quieted; instead what's foremost in his mind is a stark clawing panic as he takes in the laboratory setting beyond the cage, at once familiar and so very not. The growling is steadily getting deeper, but it doesn't seem to much impede his actual speech, layered over top of it: "The fuck?" (edited) Hulk had insisted on waiting in the observation room after they returned, but after a bit of drawing he'd fallen asleep curled up on the floor. It is Bruce who wakes up now, draped in a blanket that could easily cover four of him. He's covered in the paint and plaster dust that Hulk had not bothered to wash off, but seems a little worse for wear as he levers himself up and retrieves a spare set of his clothing (and glasses, and phone, and notebook) from a cubby. As he dresses he sets about sorting his thoughts into their proper order, resuming streams that had spun down in his absence and collating new information--where are they, how much time did he lose, do they need food or water, etc. << Why did I go along with this? He's not even my Tony... >> He glances at the pastel drawing secured to a board that Hulk had left leaning against the wall, hands going still on the buttons of his sage green shirt. The picture is expressionistic as is typical of his alter ego's work, but far less colorful than usual: a small indistinct human figure curled in the fetal position, encircled by massive dark, batlike wings that curl inward toward the viewer, the talons tipping each digit fanglike, dripping with blood. He is still struggling to fit the unexpectedly disturbing artwork into one of his neat braided thought streams when he walks up to the one-way window. All of the processes he's been methodically setting up topple into chaos, and for a moment he is paralyzed by the sight of the man inside the isolation chamber. Then he's fumbling the phone from his pocket and typing feverishly.
<< Yeah, >> a voice that is Hive's and entirely unlike Hive's, not his usual abrasive bludgeon but a soft rustling whisper of a thousand overlapping voices at once echoing in Bruce's mind -- though they carry something of his usual gruff, his usual bastard accent, << rabies. We're on it. >> Even now the door is opening -- though it's not Hive who walks in. Tony probably hasn't slept, though he's changed the quick-dry clothes he'd had on under his suit for a fresh set, faint glow of the arc reactor visible beneath the thin grey fabric. His mind is a livewire buzz whose current mix of chemical stimulants is making his usual truncated decision-tree processes even sparser. Shunted to the upper branches for the moment, several ongoing projects deemed of (... only slightly) lesser importance than the angry vampire in his best friend's home: he's considered and discarded turning Dusk over to the police, though largely only because he's Quite Certain the NYPD's holding cells aren't up to the task. Currently: considering building them a new holding cell. Note to self: pitch that contract to the mayor. A second later (perhaps out of realizing the foolishness of this) he's addendum'd the note to *Friday* instead; Have Pepper pitch that contract to the mayor. This all by the time he enters -- with terrorist (he's only just remembered the terrorist: how did this day get *weirder*?) in tow. "Rabies," he's announcing to Bruce, coincidentally just shortly after Hive's text comes through. "*Rabid* vampire. Are we sure someone's not making a movie?" The terrorist in question is kind of wide-eyed. Kind of unassuming. Leo is trying not to hunch in Tony's wake, though a hunch keeps *creeping* back into his posture before he reminds himself to straighten it out, which puts an odd sort of bob in his gait. His outfit (diagonally color-blocked button-down, black on the upper left and hunter green on the lower right, with jaunty upturned cuffs and a spread collar, cigarette-cut black jeans, black ankle boots) has a rumple to it that suggests he's been in it a *while* now; the faint bags under his eyes back this up. His shoulders wilt when he sees Dusk, mouth goldfishing open-closed for a silent second as he looks through the glass. Tries hard *not* to look at the lab around him lest the same panic coils into him as well (and where would that lead? More rabies?) "Oh -- oh. Oh, he won't like this at all." Dusk doesn't like this! He's still growling. Still gripping the bunny tight. The panic in his mind is growing. This definitely doesn't look Quite Like Prometheus but it's *extremely* laboratorial all the same. One of his claws tears a little too hard into the bunny, a trail of stuffing springing from it. This adds a sudden surge of dismay to his panic. "Fuck," he says again, "fuck, fuck, fuck." Hive's response comes quick enough to not by any means forestall, but certainly slow Bruce's spiral into panic. "Rabies? Rabies?" He has to clamp his mouth firmly shut to stop himself saying it a third time (<< Rabies?! >>), all the while rifling through his admittedly rusty zoonotic epidemiology. Even without reviewing that he offers, "After neurological symptom onset the survival rate is statistically insignificant, but there are two cases..." But his eyes are defocusing now. A raft of research papers he's read over the years, statistics on infuriating barriers to vaccine access, desperate families willing to pay any price for a vanishingly small hope, a teenage girl in an induced coma--all this and more spins up into a braid of streams in discordant minor keys. It's barely a second later that Bruce blinks and looks back at Tony. "If we're going to use try the Milwaukee Protocol we need to start now. Tony, how quickly can you get access to--" He breaks off, noticing Leo for the first time, then keeps going, waving the holographic display at the nearest work station to life. "--will need a cocktail of antivirals and something that can--" He suddenly looks back at Leo and comes up short, his nearly overloaded attention management stuttering. "Wait. Aren't you. Leonid Concepcion?" "Leave a trail of bodies through the city, you lose the right to weigh in right now. -- I have access to this." Tony is gesturing in Leo's direction with a whole lot more nonchalance than he's really feeling, mind ticking over what happens if the vampire bites Leo (<< whole lot worse than some dead bikers >>) together with what it would take to upgrade the biosafety level in here. "Hear he's the whole cocktail." "I am." Leo's head dips in acknowledgment -- first at his name and then Tony's comment about the Whole Cocktail of antivirals, "and I am. But I -- may have to go in there. " He doesn't sound nonchalant what so ever, timid and apprehensive. "How long has he been -- how did you get him here?" Bruce's mouth drops open. << I have so many questions for this man. >> He that newly blossomed stream aside rapidly. What replaces it is a quick series of tasks--close mouth, consult with colleagues, consult with patient--there and gone on a fast orbit that will lap most of the other streams until its items are resolved. He closes his mouth and gives Leo a serious nod. "Induced coma during antiviral therapy is generally indicated, though I question the therapeutic benefit." Then he cringes. "The care provider's safety is--also a benefit, of course." << Can you do it? >> He suspends the thread of that question in his working memory. "I wasn't here when he arrived, but I assume it happened under sedation." The very next stream pulls his focus back to Dusk. He taps a few controls and starts a video chat via the screen embedded into the wall of the chamber. "Hi, ah..." Bruce waves. Then lowers his hand slowly. "Dusk? It's--Bruce. Banner?" He probably didn't mean for that to come out as a question. "I apologize for your confinement, it is a safety measure."  "There was a bit of, ah. Eating. People. Rather you didn't. You planning on --" Tony lifts a hand, making a small chomping motion in the air. "Got someone here to help you with the whole. Rabies problem." Leo hesitates before stepping up to the monitor. His hands are wringing slowly together, knuckles grinding against the opposite palm. "Dusk, I -- I'm sorry. I'm here to help but it -- will be a process. I'd appreciate not being bitten. If you can manage that." He sounds a bit dubious. "You're only in there for now, once you're better..." But here he trails off, uncertainly glancing to his hosts. Dusk snarls at this, rough and raw. He's on his feet in a moment, fists slamming against the screen as the men talk through it. Added to the panic is an inchoate anger at being called rabid by Some Rich Flatscan, a frustration at being unable to hit him directly, an uncertainty if this is even *real* why is *Tony Stark* on his television. "Be better when I'm *out* of here." Bruce's mouth presses into a thin line as Dusk pounds on the screen. He takes a deep breath and clears the scratchy threads of his fear into its own stream. "I know this is stressful, but the illness is affecting your nervous system. It is fatal if untreated, and until then, it will--change your cognition and behavior." He takes off his glasses and fidgets with them. "You've lost control and hurt people and I--really don't think you want that." He licks his lips. "Please, let Mr. Concepcion help you." Tony shuts the screen off for a moment, looking at the others in the observation room with his brows raised. "Do we even know yet how many people that man killed? I don't know where you think he's going afterwards but it's not -- where is home, actually?" Inwardly he's extremely skeptical how well a rabies plea would *work* for a mutant vampire. His suspicion: not well. He switches the screen back on a moment later. "You want to, ah, nap through this, we can arrange that too." << He can't send him to the cops, >> Hive's voice slips back into Bruce's head, soft but insistent; somewhere in the background there's a memory of other cages, bright operating theatre lights, a stab of pain and fear both. << he's *sick*, he's not like this. >> Leo pushes down a flare of nausea. His hands clench together tighter. "You can't send him to the police, they don't -- put people like us. In *jail*." The thump at the screen makes him flinch even with the reinforced barriers between them. His arms curl across his chest, and he's reluctant when he asks: "It will be safer, I think. If he's sleeping." Dusk just pounds the screen again, wings flaring out as wide as they can before they hit the walls to either side of him. The stuffed bunny falls to the ground, stuffing spilling out of its side. "***OUT***," he roars again, this time considerably more edged with fear. Bruce does not flinch when Dusk's wings stretch out, but he does look back at Hulk's pastel. The frightful image finally settles into his ongoing stream for understanding his alter ego's psyche. He shakes his head. "I don't know. But I do know at this stage of the disease's progression--it wasn't him, Tony. Not really." He swallows hard. "And you know as well as I do there will be no justice if we turn him in. Maybe better than I know." His eyes fix on Tony steadily, longer than he can usually manage, before flicking away, back to the winged man frantically trying to escape the isolation chamber. He wraps the Heart Mantra carefully around the swelling stream of fear in him. "You want him cured because he will be less dangerous when he's well. So do I, but--" He swallows, suddenly angry with himself for being so anxious about speaking the plain truth. "But I don't see how we're saving him if we cure the disease only to--to damn him to something worse. So..." Slipping his glasses back on, he looks back at the two other men before calling up the chamber's sedation controls. "...let's actually save a life." Tony's eyes have fixed on the one-way glass, but his mind is somewhere else entirely -- footage of another Dusk, haggard and emaciated, emerging from a cell into a sea of carnage together with a number of refugee children. His eyes lower, avoiding Leo entirely as his gaze shifts. He's thinking of Riverdale -- the dead Purifier -- of so many sensationalized news stories from home of any mutant attack made to seem like an epidemic. Of DJ, in a hospital somewhere bruised and broken long before Dusk got to him. "Yeah," he finally mutters, hitting the gas in the next room, "Probably more than the one." | |
