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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"Dude, wouldn't it be easier if I just made a list of places I went to?" Marco said, rolling his eyes.

"Yes, actually, that would be helpful. Would you be willing to write it down? Places in common could help us a great deal." He ignored the eye roll, calm and direct and dealing with him as passively as possible.

"Sure, as long as you give me something to actually write with," Marco said dryly. "Unless you want me to graffiti it all over the bubble wall?"

"I don't have a pad of paper." And he wasn't going to pass his terminal in. The last thing this teenager needed was access to the crew's medical files.

"But I do have a marker, we can start with that." He opened the tiny pass through, setting the marker inside and shutting the door on his side.

Getting up, Marco moved towards the hatch and grabbed the marker. He stared back at Rory for a moment, eyes narrowed. "If anyone asks about this, it's totally your fault by the way."

And then he started to write on the bubble's wall.

A lot of the paces listed were things like video game shops, comic book stalls, electronics stores. Also some food stores - cause he sure wasn't going to live off of gloop if he didn't have to - and a couple of clothing shops. Also, oddly enough, a bookstore (even though Marco wasn't the type to ever walk into a bookstore). And a whole bunch of other, random places. One of which what a stall selling weird clocks.

It also just happened that all of it was written with completely atrocious spelling. And backwards, to Rory's eyes.

"If anyone asks, it's entirely my fault." He nodded, agreeing. Fairly certian that the living pod wouldn't be harmed by a bit of marker.

The backwards bit was a little bothersome, though it didn't take him long to figure it out and start inputting the information, neatly, precisely, and spell checked for his report. "Now, at the food stores, did you sample anything that you didn't bring back to the ship?"

"No way are you testing any of our food. Do you know how hard it is just to hide that stuff from Ax?" Marco said. "And dude, there were like those food stalls all over the place. I probably went to at least three of them a day." After all that time stuck with Stacy's food, no way was Marco going to pass up the opportunity to get real food.

"Settle. We need to test anything that might have been contaminated. Would you rather eat slop for another month or deage out of existence?"

"Deage out of existence," Marco said promptly.

"That's really not an option we're willing to explore, Marco." The words were dry, Rory's face skeptical.

"Good, because telling you where we keep our food is also not an option we're going to explore," Marco said, challenging. "You want food? Get it from the others."

"If I were a betting man, which I am not, I would probably assume that your food is kept in the house. We need to test it, Marco, if it is contaminated, other people could get sick as well." He sighed, shaking his head.

"Except also living in our house is an Andalite who'll eat anything and everything he can get his hands on. You'd heard Kang's little announcement, right?" Marco said, staring almost accusingly at Rory. "You know about morphing. Ax has got a whole range of morphs available to him, and he hasn't found it yet. What makes you think you could?"

"I heard it, yes. Or read it, as the case may be. It was relevant to your condition." He paused, thoughtful, then wrote a note on his pad. "I'll ask your mother about childhood ailments and for samples of any food in the house."

At the mention of his mother, Marco recoiled. Up until that point he'd been doing alright at just shoving all of his confusion and conflicting emotions about her in a box and pretending that it didn't exist, except then the guy had to go mentioning her and opening up that box all over again.

"You stay the fuck away from her!" he hissed, not even sure if he was warning him away from his mother or from Visser One.

Rory took a step back, eying the patient curiously. "Why? If you won't help us treat you, she's the best person to help us. I'll hardly hurt your mother, Marco."

"She's not my mother, you idiot," Marco snapped. Or at least she wasn't, until Marco could be certain of otherwise. Safer to assume that she was Visser One when maybe she wasn't, then to assume that she was his mother when maybe she was the Visser.

"No? The DNA matches." Rory watched him, lips pressed as he glanced back down at the file. "Why wouldn't you think she was your mother?"

He could have been adopted and Ms. Salazar was simply his birth mother, but there was nothing to imply that in the file. Better to not state anything until Marco offered more information.

"Listen here Nurse Joy, that slug might be infesting my mother's body but that sure as hell doesn't make her my mother," Marco growled. Visser One had pretended to be his mother for who knows how long before she faked his mother's death. Thinking back on all those times when she wasn't really her still made Marco's skin crawl.

Rory paused, he knew about the Yeerks, of course. He'd been reading the files on most of the alien species in order to get a better idea of how best to treat them. "I have a brain scan that says she isn't infested and hasn't been since she came on board, if she was in the past, she isn't any longer. If you have other information, it would be good to make a report to security, we can bring her in and have another brain scan done, just to make certian." He ignored the nickname, far too used to the bluster of teenagers to really be bothered by it.

Marco's evaluation had come up completely clean, the young man was in absolutely perfect health, even with a few odd hiccups in his blood sample. Eva's was a mess of scars and broken bones and barely pieced together physiology. He'd seen similar scans from abuse victims. Perhaps torture? It looked very deliberate, not simple wholesale pain.

"You expect me to believe some brain scan?" Marco said, dubious. "Like you couldn't just scan someone else completely and pretend that it had been her."

That must have been what happened...right? There was something in his memory about a brain scan, but he just couldn't hold onto it...

"Do you really expect medical to lie to you over something that could be harmful to the crew? Patient confidentiality aside, I have no interest in letting alien parasitic brain slugs gain a secret foothold on the ship. Lying to you only exacerbates an existing problem." Rory frowned at the patient, shaking his head. "You don't trust us, I can understand that, but at least give us some credit, Marco. We're not idiots. It doesn't matter that you think you're the only one with any intelligence on board, we've actually been trained for this."

Not this particular situation, but some of them had even dealt with stranger things. He sighed. "Now, unless you have directions to your secret stash of food so that we can test it and make certain it wasn't a common element consumed among the lot of you, I think we're done here. Thank you for the information, I'm sure it will be helpful in finding a solution."

"Right, like you can't be tricked or blackmailed just because you did a course in nursing," Marco muttered, eying Rory. "Next time you need questions, send Barbie instead. At least she doesn't try to tell me that her shiny medical training makes her every word 'the truth'," Marco made quotation marks with his fingers in the air, before turning away from Rory.

If they were done, then Marco sure as hell didn't need to pay attention to this guy anymore.

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Melting Clock: Quarantine

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