trans_9 | Melting Clock: Quarantine

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Melting Clock: Quarantine

After Sam Henderson's announcement, the Contagion Containment and Treatment lab was going to get busy. Anyone suspected of being affected by the mysterious affliction would be brought here, and put into one of the large bubbles that would keep any potential contagious diseases in - and the patients themselves. Once in inside, they wouldn't be able to get out again until the Medical staff had cleared them.

And before they could do that, they needed to find out what was causing this - and why.

They had a lot of hard work ahead of them.

[[ooc: Just start your own sub threads under the main threads, guys! And if you're happy to have anyone tag in, put "Open" in the subject line. If you've already got plans for who you're threading with, put "Closed" instead.]]

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He couldn't help but smile a little, hearing Amy's nickname echoed from someone who had never met her. "He's good at figuring these things out. Expert, like I said, if time travel has such things. We may also try Miranda's method, see if we can hold you in place for a little while. Anything that gives us more time to figure things out."

He frowned, lowering the file. "You look, what, sixteen maybe a little younger? More time than some have. What's bothering you?"

"I'm physically sixteen. Mentally, I'm a little older, since I got stuck at sixteen for a bit due to nearly melting into a pile of ooze from having my genes unzipped--which is no picnic, by the way, and you look more like something that'd make the people charf at a picnic." He added, "But I digress."

Kon explained. "I'm a clone of Superman--well, it's more like I had my DNA spliced, diced, and julienned a bit to be like him. The cloning process itself was fast, and all my knowledge was programmed in to match my physical age."

Kon clicked his teeth together. "What I'm trying to say here is I went from single cell to single guy in under a week. I broke out of my test tube when I was physically and mentally fifteen. Even with the added time from being stuck at age sixteen for a while, if this thing just steals straight-up time, I've only got about two years of it left."

He swallowed.

"Then I...you know."

Die. Backwards.

"So, uh, let's hope your guy knows what he's doing, right? Or that whatever this is decides to stretch that week out for a good long while."

Not that he was saying this because he was scared or anything. Nope. He totally wasn't scared.

Rory was quiet for awhile, taking the information in.

A clone? His world was years off from human cloning, they were still working with sheep and dogs and trying everything out. But...

But it was a very legitimate concern, from someone who was trying to put on a brave face when faced with non-existence. "You don't have to worry, he does. And we'll figure this out. We won't allow you to die, Conner." The words were firm, leaving no room for doubt.

Though that word, programing. That was a disturbing one. Treating human beings like computer chips and writing everything they were from the ground up.

"Yeah. I--I know."

He nodded.

"I know."

The brave face cracked just a little bit, but he hid it by scratching his nose rather obviously.

"So what'd you say your name was again? Not sure I ever caught it."

He pretended not to see, allowing the kid his pride. There wasn't anything to be ashamed of, being afraid. He'd only had a few moments to face the prospect of dying, and he'd been absolutely terrified. Kon was handling it much better than he had.

"Rory, Rory Williams. I'm actually just a nurse, but things keep happening. I'd say 'like this', but really the only thing they have in common is one mad man and the impossible nature of their occurrence." He smiled faintly, trying to be reassuring.

Kon smirked.

"You'd be surprised at the kinds of things there are out there to be dragged into. For instance, I totally made out with a mermaid once. Didn't even realize they existed. That's life for ya': you're flying along, minding your own business, then--" He made a popping sound with his mouth. "--mermaids exist, you're whipping a sea monster's sorry scaly tail, and hey, now you're macking on a mythological creature. (Who incidentally was an awesome kisser)."

The teen made a little airy gesture with his hand, as if trying to represent the sheer flippy-dippiness of it all. "The only thing that's predictable about life is the unpredictability."

Edited 2011-04-30 08:23 (UTC)

Rory laughed. "Met a mermaid once, or at least a fish person. Ended up fighting it with a broom. He had a sword. It didn't work out so well. Of course, that was the first time I'd ever time traveled as well, so there I am, grabbed from my stag night, in Venice, in 1580, fighting an alien fish person who was trying rather hard to turn the young women in Venice into something like him. And all I had was a broom."

He shifted. "I'm getting used to it, that whole, dropping out of the sky, everything changes, and then five minutes later it changes again. The only thing to do is try to adapt and hope you make it through, really. Not like it'll stop to let you catch your breath."

Kon actually laughed at the broom story.

"I think I made out better on my end there, when it comes to fish-people," he said. "And that's been my whole life. Two years of never catching my breath."

Casually, he leaned back against the wall of his bubble, against his hands.

"But the stuff I've seen? The stuff I've done? Tussling with man-sharks, flying around the world, traveling to the future, cruising to other planets? Wouldn't trade it for anything."

Edited 2011-04-30 08:51 (UTC)

"Well, I wasn't looking for a snog, either. Just a chance to get away." He smiled. "At least it was never dull."

Though to be fair, Amy hadn't allowed his to be dull either. So driven to do everything and wait for the Doctor. Always waiting for the Doctor.

"Yeah, I get that. Much stress as it causes, taking it back...just not worth it. Sounds like you've packed an interesting life into such a short time."

"Packed it in like Oprah trying to hide her jelly rolls. More life lived per cubic inch than most people could cram into three lifetimes."

There was a shift again. Kon suddenly got even thinner and leaner. He was changing before Rory's eyes, his face getting rounder and more boyish, his hair sweeping back into a fade haircut. There was a visible hole in his ear where it was pierced that usually held a gold hoop earring.

Then he shifted again and looked older, like Superman, then younger again, back to that boyish look.

Now he looked... well...

...Radical.

"Tends to wind up that way when it starts so interestin'. One second I'm asleep, and the next I'm bustin' loose out of a glass tube in some secret lab, and ready to face the whole world. Wild!"

"Nothing wrong with a well lived life. Most people never have the chance to do that."

Rory's eyebrows jerked, watching the changes and waiting for him to settle, an unsettling sinking feeling starting in his stomach.

It was starting again.

They were running out of time, literally. Faster than he'd thought. "I imagine. Were you aware while you were asleep?"

"Would'ja believe it, but I was?"

He was louder like this, more bombastic, more vivacious. A teenager certainly, there was no mistake about that, but there was a Peter Pannish quality, a boyish liveliness that came with the presumed immortality of youth. He fidgeted a lot as he sat there, clearly tired of his surroundings and wanting to move around, even though he was fine with the conversation.

"'Least some of the time. I remember the programming the clearest, and Director Westfield on the other side of the glass, talkin' 'bout how I was gonna be their Superman. Then cartoons, TV, movies, pop culture stuff, math, science, history, literature--it all comes pourin' into the ol' noggin', no school necessary. I know Vader's Luke Skywalker's pop and I ain't ever actually seen the movie!"

It was fascinating to watch, and almost sickening to listen to. Like a computer chip or a robot, they had written everything from the ground up and he hadn't been allowed to live a moment of it.

"They included pop culture?"

A tool designed to blend? A tool designed to appear no different than any other human, with everything compressed down to nothing, never allowed to live any of it. "Maybe we can fix that, once you're cleared you from quarantine."

Superman talked to people, smiled for the cameras, put people at east. Cadmus's Superman had to have all the skills necessary to do the same.

"Hey, don't knock it--I got a busy life kickin' bad guy bootie and it saves me the time actually watching it all." The excuse. There are plenty at this age, plenty of front for his insecurities.

"'Sides, I'm losin' time, right? Bet I'm missing time where I caught up on all that. Plus, I already caught up on some! Cadmus ain't so bad now--they let me rent anything I want from Blockbuster. They know how to take care of their coolest clone."

"Still." How did you explain how..wrong it felt to listen to someone explain how their life had been written out like a book on cocktail napkins?

"It does sound like you kept yourself busy, though." But if it hadn't been for the programing, would it have even been the life he choose?

"Probably, once we fix it, you'll remember it. Better to do it than to just have the memory of seeing it, really. Doesn't stand up to the real thing. Ah, Cadmus? Are they the...?"

Something shuttered in his face, carefully closing off to hide the reaction to the almost flippant statement. "Coolest" implied that there was more than one. More than one child who had been fast raised for whatever their purposes were. People like that didn't deserve mercy.

"Cadmus were the ones that cloned me, yeah. Never thought I'd go back when I busted out, but cloning people's illegal now, so they just do gene research. They offered me a chance to sign up with them, and Superman thought it'd be a good idea if I were there to be his eyes. Make sure they keep on the straight and narrow, yanno?"

He sat up straighter, clearly enthusiastic about his job.

"It keeps me busy. A lot of their genetic experiments got on the loose and somebody's gotta track 'em down and bring 'em in. I was Project 13--13 on account of it took 'em twelve tries before me to get a clone that even worked right, but that's just my project and not all their other experiments are people like me. There's all kinds of gribblies that got loose from their other experiments! Now that Cadmus is under new management with Mickey, they're trying to track 'em all down and clean up their act."

"So he sent you back there?" The arch of his eyebrow implied that he didn't think much of that decision. If they had programed Conner once, and knew how his programing work, what would have stopped them from changing their minds and doing it again if their 'redemption' wasn't as true as they wanted to claim?

"Ah, what's a gribble?" It was a simple thing to latch onto, something that ignored the implication of failed clones and the lingering, horrible question of what they did with the ones that hadn't been good enough. "It sounds like they're trying at least."

"Gribblies," Superboy laughed. "Beasties. Things that go bump in the night. Cloned monsters--although they're not all that bad. Some are more bark than bite, and are just dumb as doorstops. Can't let 'em roam free or they'll wreck anything they touch, but they're not all bad. Just need to be reigned in."

"That's not exactly descriptive, is it? I means, there's a lot of beasties out there. Not just ones that go bump in the night. So they cloned animals as well? What were they even trying to do?"

He felt bad, really bad. Unable to completely explain why, but the fact that Conner had not been allowed to even grow up properly, had instead woken at 15 with an entire life time worth of memories crammed into his head to serve their purposes best.

He shrugged.

"Who knows, with Cadmus. The old director and some of the guys behind the project were everything from bugnuts bonkers to just plain sleazy. I was the only project with a really clear purpose--and that got ruined when the newsboys, little kid clones of the directors, helped me bust out of the joint before they put my control programming in."

Rory's face went still again, moral outrage at war with professional training that said he had to listen to and not judge the patient. It was very hard not to judge the patients situation, though.

"Ah-Newsboys? How'd that work out, exactly? Did the government approve of this?"

So there had been a plan to keep him under control, and even if they hadn't been able to implant it, they had still formed the person he was from the ground up. That mean he was still the sort of person who would listen to them, who would have no choice but to listen to them. It was disgusting, what had been done.

No, he had a choice. That was the miracle of the whole thing, wasn't it? He'd chosen to run away from Cadmus, he'd chosen to come back to make sure they didn't create others like him. If it had gotten bad, he'd have chosen to run again. In the end, though he couldn't remember it, they'd left him rather than the other way around, but still, that was the miracle of the thing.

He chose. That's what the Newsboy Legion had given him, a chance to leave when he could still choose to.

"Well yeah! It was a secret government project. Probably like a bazillion taxpayer dollars went into making me."

The sinking feeling in his stomach solidified into a hard knot of disgust and tension.

Someone had written off on this, someone had signed something to make this ok. No just a private citizen, a mad-man, but an elected official. Someone people had trusted to look after their interests had done this. "That's...Wow."

Disgusting.

"I didn't think places like that could exist." And he had seen enough that he should know better than to expect the best of humanity.

Superboy tilted his head at Rory curiously.

"Well, it was a secret government project. That's just what the government does. Bad stuff that it covers up all the time and pretends isn't there."

It was said so matter of fact, like it was simply the way the world was. Didn't you know, Rory?

"That's why I ran the first time. That's also why I went to the news and blew the lid on the whole project, which is why they're not secret now and part of why they can't do anything illegal. I only came back 'cause--"

You know, he didn't want to talk about that. About having nowhere else to go.

"Uh, you know, to keep an eye on 'em," he finished lamely. "But the first time, I ran and I didn't look back. They would'a totally cramped my style with that whole mind control thing."

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