Logs:Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.
| Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin. | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2024-07-19 "There is still danger." (followed by recruiting help.) |
| Location
<BOM> Jenner Ruins - Leo's Cell Room/Biohazard Lab | |
When it was operational, this section of the facility met BSL-4 standards, and the complicated series of airlocked chambers for chemical showers and donning and doffing pressure suits and regular showers marks that fact. With its BSL-4 approval years since revoked, it is no longer operational -- as a lab, at least. It still has one back chamber set up for inhabitance; undecorated and minimally furnished, it doesn't look particularly homey, even if its sparse furniture is comfortable enough. Leo is, at the moment, tucked cross-legged on his bed. He's in a boldly colorful sarong and an old soft and contrastingly drab Boston University tee. Part of his attention is on his tablet, propped up and playing What We Do in the Shadows, and part is on the laptop he is nominally working on. He still looks decidedly worse than baseline, far too thin and somewhat too colorless. Past this he does at least appear to be more intact than he was in weeks past, only some faint pockmarked scarring peppered lightly across his face and arms serves as lingering evidence of his recent trials. Destiny works quietly, though not usually silently, and she can be heard rustling about just outside the airlock. When she enters, she enters with beverages and crackers on a tray which she sets on the beside table before shifting her cane back to her newly freed left hand. "Thank you," she says simply, her eyes tracking to but not quite locking onto the tablet screen. "For curing my wife. I know you did all of this at great pains to yourself." "I've been through worse." Leo pauses his show when Destiny enters, and sets his laptop aside. "I get the feeling that so has Mystique. She mostly did heal herself. She's..." His hesitation is small but manages to be awkward all the same. "Doing. Good, then?" "She can heal herself, but she can't cure herself." Destiny sounds perhaps shockingly blasé about her beloved wife's near-death experience. "Or, at least, she hasn't yet figured out how. She is doing good." She tilts her head as if listening for something barely audible. "Are you doing good, then? Now." Leo is shifting where he sits, a little bit fidgety as he smooths down and edge of his sarong. For a time he doesn't answer, and when he does, it's quiet. "It was very successful." "You are distressed." Destiny sits down on the edge of the bed. "For ethical reasons? Existential ones? That is understandable." Though she herself seems minimally distressed about the ethics or existential horror of the vengeance they wrought on HAMMER, even when she adds, "It was more successful than we had intended. It has escaped quarantine." "Is it? They were genocidal fascists, who --" Leo is starting to say, but his words trail off at Destiny's last piece of information. His fingers scrunch hard into his sarong, and then he goes very still. It takes a moment before he starts drawing in slow breaths, again. "-- how -- bad?" "Most people do not like killing. Even when it is necessary." Destiny sounds kind of detached about this, though not particularly superior. It's not just as if she were not "most people", but as if she were not "people" at all. She shows no impatience with Leo's delay. "It is hard for me to tell for certain. I do not see things as they are, only as they might be, and disease propagation is chaotic. The government is trying to contain it." She pauses, her sightless eyes tracking things unseen in quick, minute ticks. "They may succeed." "It's chaotic," Leo agrees, still very low. "Hard to predict -- hard to tailor it. One-hundred percent. I didn't want --" He cuts himself off sharply, with a small shake of his head. "... but I knew it could happen. Chaotic. Everyone's immune system reacts differently and it just takes one person who can carry it asymptomatically, or who dies much slower, and --" He's been looking steadily down at his hands, but now lifts his eyes to watch Destiny. "They may not." "They may not." Destiny is still gazing off at -- the future, presumably. "But you can." She does look back at Leo, now, her huge black pupils unnaturally still. "They know that, and they want your help more than they want you." She blinks. It seems like the first time she's done it in forever. "There is still danger." "I can." Leo hesitates, his brow wrinkling as Destiny turns back to him. "And they could disappear me as soon as I'm done." His eyes are fixed on her sightless ones, head tilting curiously. "I -- don't suppose you have some. Government contacts. In a position to make any deals." "We have people who can broker a deal." Destiny hasn't looked away. She might not have blinked again, either. "They may not be able to enforce it, if the feds try to take you after all. But you can bring an escort, ideally one under the public eye and under no suspicion of Brotherhood membership." One of her hands, draped at the end of her cane, rotates it meditatively. "You could also give the feds some information that implicates Magneto in this outbreak." Leo's brows hike high up. His fingers are relaxing from where they've scrunched part of his sarong into a crumpled ball, and he is fussily smoothing out the thin fabric. "I feel like a lot of my friends maybe would end up going under the suspicion of terrorism just from showing up with me." He doesn't sound quite as uneasy as he has until now, and he's definitely more casual as he stands up -- finally taking one of Destiny's crackers to munch on as he starts (also fussily) picking out clothing. "But I think I know just the person." | |
