DNA strands in my hair [quite open]

[notlewis]

Luis had acquired a new thing in a jar.

Well, really, two new things in a jar, two long organic objects a little less than two feet long that looked like large segmented legs, the type you'd find on an insect. One of them sat on the back end of his desk, frozen in stasis in a chemical designed for doing just that. The other he kept in a different jar and he was currently in the middle of testing some of the tissue he'd scraped off of it. It was placed in an airtight contaminant observation box while he performed various experiments on it.

It was susceptible to various types of damage but also had remarkable regenerative capabilities, growing back quickly when he burned or sliced it away. The real interesting part came when he applied an electrical current to it. The slice of flesh looked like it was sizzling and then suddenly burst into action, growing into a pulsating mass several times its original size and quivering until it exploded, coating the inside of the box with a nasty greenish-purplish-yellow fluid that began to ooze and drip.

Luis stared at it for a few good seconds, then pulled off his glasses, ripped off his gloves and began packing up his supplies, shaking his head with a heavy sigh. He looked exhausted and desperately in need of a distraction.

It was time for a drink. Or to at least find something, or someone, that could get him out of this lab for the rest of the night.

Comments

[governorkang]

Kang had heard that Luis spent most of his time in the contagion containment area of the ship. He'd never been there, but it was easy enough to find with help from the map, and lucky for him, the human happened to be there.

...he did look like he needed a distraction. And, he was about to get one.

Eyeing the box with the strange fluid in it warily for a moment, he cleared his throat to get the man's attention, "Luis. You look like you've been working too hard. How about a drink down in the tavern?"

[notlewis]

Luis would have replied that he always worked too hard and thus always looked that way, but he was too irritable at the state of the universe to say so.

"Dios ayudame, God yes," he replied. "One more minute in here tonight and I'm going to turn into a mad scientist."

[governorkang]

"Then hurry up so we can get out of here before that happens," Kang laughed, leaning on the wall with his good arm to wait for Luis to finish cleaning up. He had an actual cast and sling for his other arm, and a more permanent binding for his wing; he'd obviously gotten one of the actual doctors to check it out as well.

"I picked up some new stuff down on Zokez II, before the attack. It's pretty good."

[notlewis]

Since his samples were all inside the box (past tense "were", there) there was little to do but put his notes in some semblance of order and throw his tools off to the side.

"Sounds great to me," he murmured. "I feel like I haven't slept since Zokez II. Even my vacations turn into work, work, work."

[governorkang]

"What have you been working on, besides helping out in the medbay?" Kang asked, curious about the stuff in that box. He started off towards the tavern at a leisurely pace, not wanting to jar his injuries; the painkillers worked far better than anything he'd ever used on Krynn, but because of his being a reptile, he had to be careful how much he took, so it wasn't completely numbed.

[notlewis]

"Oh..." Luis had a list of excuses prepared. This one was pretty close to the truth. "Still studying some of the old samples back from that outbreak a couple months ago. Still trying to find cures. Still getting every theory I come up with smashed into the ground by a smug little virus that defies the laws of nature, possibly just to piss me off."

He thumped the side of the box, dearly wishing he could punch it and that Alexia Ashford would feel it too, wherever in the multiverse her charred mutant carcass had ended up, splattered into teeny weeny pieces by a linear launcher and then exploded in a continent-shaking destruction sequence.

Then his voice turned pleasant as could be. "But enough about me, how are you doing?"

[governorkang]

...Luis wasn't telling the whole truth, Kang could tell, but he wasn't going to press for more information. It wasn't his business, after all.

Shrugging his good wing, he smiled, "Healing up. I'm already starting to get a little restless. I got used to the training classes, and I can't stand having nothing to do. Never have been able to."

[notlewis]

"I'll tell you what. I'll trade you," Luis offered as he finished packing up, then turned around and motioned for Kang to follow him out. "You can have my job for a week or so and I will catch up on those two days of shore leave I missed out on."

Leaving the lab for the first time in what felt like weeks, Luis seemed to blink in the unfamiliar light of the corridor. "God dammit, I'm going to kill myself in there one of these days."

[governorkang]

"I don't think that's a good idea. I'm an engineer, not a biologist," Kang chuckled. "I might end up creating some new virus and unleashing it on the entire ship by accident. I do need to find something to do, though. Help take my mind off of things."

[fieldpromoted]

Trudy had been putting this off for a while - it wasn't a conversation she really wanted to have, given that a small part of her was actually grateful Luis had doped her up so she couldn't go back out there and get herself killed.

Still, it couldn't happen again. She had to know that the next time she came to the medbay, she'd be back in the cockpit as soon as possible.

She had intended to come right in, but she could read the exhaustion in his body language all the way from the doorway. He looked like he was having a hard time of it - she hated to pile on. Still. "You work too hard," she said simply.

[notlewis]

He was in the middle of trying to figure out what to do with the box now coated with the sample. He wanted to throw the whole damn thing in the incinerator, a voice that he rather wanted to strangle at the moment spoke up in his head and told him he should wait for it to try and test to see if it was infectious. More work!

"I know," he replied over his shoulder at the sound of Trudy's voice, wearily. "It's one of my worst habits."

[fieldpromoted]

"Well stop working for a couple of seconds," she said, coming in the doorway and crossing over to the workstation that he'd plainly made his. She didn't wait for an invitation to sit but hoisted herself up until she was sitting on the table. "I have to talk to you."

Trudy knew that most men would turn around and run screaming at those words, and she hoped it wouldn't give him too bad of a heart attack.

[notlewis]

He quickly moved the box away from her as she sat down, looking almost defensive of it. It was more he didn't especially want to answer what he'd been exploding today.

Luis reached up and rubbed his eyes behind his glasses, looking up at Trudy and trying to process all this social interaction stuff after who knew how many hours of thinking by himself. "Talk to me?" he repeated. "What about?"

It could go many directions from here.

[fieldpromoted]

"About the medbay, and about it being kind of a dick move to dope me when I could have still been flying."

Trudy was not the kind of person to beat around the bush when she had a problem with someone. She liked Luis - liked his company, appreciated his conversation and his... other things - but she wasn't going to let him off the hook on this.

[notlewis]

"Oh."

Luis pulled off his glasses and let out a heavy sigh. Well, at least she wasn't pregnant (he had made doubly sure he got the shot when the time had come for it, after all!)

"I couldn't be sure the extent of your injuries without a more extensive look at you," he said. "I'd rather be safe than sorry with something like that. But I'm sorry I went about it like that, if you'd rather I hadn't."

[fieldpromoted]

"I'd rather you hadn't, yeah," Trudy said. "I realize you've never been a combat medic so here's a quick rundown - if I can walk, talk, see straight and move my arms, I can fly." She tapped her rib, healed now thanks to the wonders of modern medicine. "This was nothing. Now if I can't do any of that and I still insist on going back out there, it's because I'm slap-happy and I need to be dropped like a ton of bricks, otherwise I'll get someone killed."

[notlewis]

He sighed again. "I guess I'm just not much of a risktaker anymore," he said, and looked back to his papers. "Honestly, knowing me, I shouldn't even be acting as a medic."

Luis left that unelaborated and tossed the papers back in their pile. "Anyway. I'm sorry for the inconvenience."

[governmentninja]

Leon knocked lightly on the wall, not wanting to startle Luis as he entered.

"Hey." He took a second to glance around the workspace. "Make any progress?"

[notlewis]

"Well, I've got some new things in a jar. But unless you count the amazing discovery that the application of a certain amount of electrical current causes Veronica cells to go haywire and explode messily, not really."

Luis glanced over his shoulder miserably at Leon. "Hola, amigo. What brings you all the way down here?"

[governmentninja]

"You look like shit." Yes, he had to point that out. "You never did take that nap, did you?"

They can discuss why he was there in a few minutes.

[notlewis]

"Nope," he confessed, and pulled off his glasses to rub his eyes. "Do you ever get the feeling if you stop working, everything is going to go to hell and explode all around you, so you work forever? I think I need to see somebody about that."

He shoved the box full o' dripping goo off to the side. "I'm done for tonight, though, I've had enough of watching some smartass virus stomp all over every one of my theories for one..." he glanced at his watch, "35 hour period."

[governmentninja]

"Story of my life." Literally. "You think I put in fifty and sixty hour days because I love my job that much?" Pfft, thirty-five hours. Lightweight.

"C'mon, I'll get you a drink. Then add to your workload."

[notlewis]

Oh no, that was just the period of time he'd been working on this particular part of his work. Luis honestly could not remember the last time he left the lab.

"A drink would be great," he said, shoving the rest of his work aside and standing up. "But I swear to god, Leon, if you give me any more stupid god damned mutant viruses to work on, I'm going to do something very drastic, possibly involving myself and an airlock."

[governmentninja]

"Believe me, I'm as tired of the damned things as you are." He really, really wanted to be rid of the damn things once and for all. Out of all the things to survive the extermination of their world...

"This is a little different."

[notlewis]

"Fantastic."

He shoved his hair out of his face and let out a heavy sigh. "Is this going to be something I will want the alcohol after I hear about? Timing is important with this kind of thing."