Melting Clock: Quarantine

[cityship]

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.]]

Comments

[closed to whoever wants in first. again.]

[pretty_lethal]

Nice Rachel, unlike her counterpart, was much, much quieter-- in fact, no real noise was escaping her at all, at the time. She felt awful, though-- it was terrible being stuck in Quarantine. She didn't want to be sick, and she didn't really know what was going on, not entirely. What if something happened? What if she got sick for real? This was totally gross and scary.

She'd just have to wait until someone came and helped figure things out-- for her as well as themselves.

Re: [closed to whoever wants in first. again.]

[8wings.livejournal.com]

The patients were fissioning. They weren't supposed to do that! No, it must be something to do with the shape-changing that Kang had mentioned. She hoped. She really, really hoped this wasn't alternate timelines causing multiple instances of the same people.

She'd talked to Rachel when Ax had first brought her in, so she was the logical choice to talk to her again.

"Hello," she said, touching one hand to the containment bubble. Her clipboard was ready in the other hand to take notes. "Do you remember me?"

[pretty_lethal]

"Hey," Nice Rachel sniffed, looking up at the doctor who was coming to talk to her once again. This was like, totally awful and she'd been awful, but Anwei was still willing to talk to her and help.

"I do," she said, earnestly. "I'm, like, sorry I didn't listen to you! That was totally terrible of me..."

[8wings.livejournal.com]

Rachel looked - frailer. Not just younger, the skin a little softer, but the way she carried herself, the wide fear in her eyes, the way she held her arms close to herself rather than tense - she looked scared out of her wits.

She could hear the 'other' Rachel yelling from across the ward. Well, maybe she had more reason than most to be scared.

"No, no, we should have left someone with you. It made sense that you'd talk to Marco and leave with him. We didn't know enough about what was going on." And we didn't know that you two could change shape and vanish - no, you three.

"I'd like to talk to you about what's happening, if you're ready."

[pretty_lethal]

Nice Rachel nodded to Anwei's request-- a little bit meek, but agreeing. She didn't like being here one bit, but what else could she do, now? At least they were being nice and helping. She should at least try to be helpful, if the other her was going to keep being scary and awful.

"But, like, we shouldn't have just run away," she said, frowning. "Marco and I were just worried, I guess." They hadn't trusted it, frankly.

"I'll try to help however I can, though."

[8wings.livejournal.com]

She kept her expression attentive and pleasant, but inside Anwei, something twitched at Rachel's meekness. It was a bit irritating, and also a little sad. She hoped that the two of them would recombine at some point. It would probably be best to think of Rachel as an AI who had Instanced and not gotten the emotional balance quite right.

"We weren't exactly certain of what was happening when you first arrived. Now we know more. And we want to help you understand, so that you can help us.

"Here's a first step. When you came on board Stacy, when you came out of the pods - you probably thought about where you had last been, back on your homeworld. Who you were with, and where. Do you remember that?"

[pretty_lethal]

Rachel nodded quietly to Anwei. It was true that they hadn't really understood it. But the Doctor had explained things (in a rather scary way) and convinced her that it was best to come to Quarantine. She just didn't want something scary and awful to happen, now.

"Um, yeah," she agreed thinking back on it. Thinking about it now, coming out of the pods seemed so much scarier than it had then. But she remembered trying to think about what had just been happening trying to reconcile it. Only... something seemed off. "I, like, remember thinking about it and stuff."

[encourage]

Sakura looked up from her data pad, mulling over something as she moved through Quarantine. She smiled at Anwei and the calmer Rachel, looking between her associate and their patient. "Hello, Rachel." She nodded to Anwei. "Anwei. Is everything going all right?"

[8wings.livejournal.com]

Anwei looked at the other woman with great relief, which she carefully kept off her face. "I could use some help, actually. Rachel was here before, but left before she could talk to any of the doctors. And now she's," she darted a glance at the isolation bubble holding a very angry second Rachel, "showing some novel effects."

She looked back at Rachel. "Is it all right with you if you talk to Sakura?" Because if it was, Anwei could get right back to the test results analysis.

[pretty_lethal]

Rachel sniffled a little bit at that, and nodded. As it was, she had no memory of meeting Sakura in the past, beyond their conversation on the comms-- but she had seemed really nice, to her!

"That's alright," she said to Anwei. "I totally don't want to bother you or anything."

[8wings.livejournal.com]

"Rachel, you are not a bother, ever. I only want what's best for you, so I want you to talk to the best people here. People more qualified than I am."

She turned to Sakura, gave a brief gesture of 'your patient,' and stepped back.

[encourage]

Sakura inclined her head to Anwei, smiling again for Rachel's benefit. "Things have been a little scary around here, haven't they? I'm sorry about that." She was, honestly. "Did Anwei get a chance to hear about XaXing from you yet? The kinds of places you went, the peoples you saw?"

[pretty_lethal]

Rachel nodded to Sakura. "A little," she said. "Like, all this awful stuff is happening! Anwei was totally nice, though." She shook her head, and then answered the question asked of her. "Not really, no. Like, we were talking about remembering and stuff."

Of course, it'd helped that she hadn't been very calm. She felt so bad for not being more helpful!

[encourage]

"Anwei is very nice," Sakura allowed, orienting herself for this conversation. "Are you able to remember XaXing? Busy planet, XaXing. There was a lot going on down planetside when we were all there."

[pretty_lethal]

"Yeah," Nice Rachel said, quietly. "I, like, went shopping and stuff."

[encourage]

"Do you feel you'd be able to show me the places you went on a map of the area around the hotel?" She smiled a little. "Do any of the stores you visited stand out in your mind?"

[pretty_lethal]

"Um, I think so, yeah," she said, a bit sheepishly. "I, like, don't remember every store or anything, because I kind of went to a lot, but I can try at least, right?" Then she paused a bit, "I dunno. There were a lot of weird shops. Some with some, like, really awful clothes, or weird clocks and gadgets, or food that smelt really gross and stuff!"

[encourage]

"That's right," Sakura said with an encouraging smile, nodding along as Rachel started listing places. She made mental notes over anything on the data pad, comfortable enough following Rachel's meandering for now. "There was a lot of gross stuff down there, really. People eat the strangest things. I had something that tasted like pudding and looked like a thick jelly molded into a funny shape."

Another friendly smile. "What's this about weird clocks and gadgets? Remember anything that made them really different?"

[pretty_lethal]

"Oh, gross," Rachel said at the description with a scrunched up face and a frown to match. "I, like, really don't like jellies and things anyway! Their texture is so gross!" They reminded her of other, extra gross things that she'd seen now, but she didn't want to think or talk about that. It was scary to recount that kind of thing.

"Um, yeah, I guess so," she said, thinking a little. "There was like, one that was super flat and drippy, you know?"

[encourage]

"Kind of like it was left in a fire too long and started melting?" She smiled, trying to be as open seeming as possible.

[pretty_lethal]

"Um, yeah, I guess kind of like that," Rachel said, after a moment, frowning still. "It was, like, kind of ugly looking, you know? It'd freak me out to have."

[encourage]

"Glad you didn't win it as a take-home prize, huh?" Sakura smiled, making note of something on her data pad. "Anything else that sticks out in your mind, thinking back to then?"

[pretty_lethal]

"Um, yeah, definitely," she said, pouting a bit at Sakura, despite her smile. "It'd, like, look way too weird in my room." Not that her room was currently decorated to her taste anyway. She totally should have picked up some cute posters on the planet, when she'd had the chance! "Um, I guess. Some things that smelt weird, and stuff like that. Not much, anyway."

[encourage]

Another nod, as Sakura noted that as well. "Thank you for working with us, Rachel," she said, sounding sincere enough. "We'll get down to the root of the problem before long, and get you out of there. Sound good to you?"

[pretty_lethal]

Rachel nodded quietly, and managed a little smile. Sakura was such a nice person! "Um, okay! Thank you, I hope that I, you know, helped a little."