Sneaking through corridors armed to the teeth was something she'd gotten depressingly used to over her time on Stacy, but Trudy didn't think much of the latest threat. For one, the invasion was scattered across all decks of the ship, giving the crew small pockets of robots intent on taking over key areas. It made it easy to fall back to Level 1 and Level 6, respectively, to regroup.

Contagion was a safe zone for now, and Trudy intended for it to stay that way. In fact, she intended to retake this whole deck very shortly, once they had enough manpower to do it. Medical seemed to be handling themselves fairly well on their own, and the only spot that threatened to be overrun was Special Weapons.

"All right people, listen up, here's what we do. Move anything you can to barricade the windows to Contagion - we don't want them to know how many people we've got in here. We'll wait until we have a fairly sizable force and then we'll push out into the corridor and retake Special Weapons. From there, we'll push forward to Level 2 and try to force them out of the pod caverns. Fortify this position as much as you can and keep an eye on the corridor. Friendly target, pull them in. Unfriendly target, eliminate with extreme prejudice."

She didn't want any surprises, but she did want as many people on her side as could be had.

Sakura stood waiting outside of Contagion Containment and Treatment, opting to be right outside the lab that Quarantine itself was contained within. Now that it was officially dissolving, that left Faiza and Dr. Henderson to let people back out of their respective bubbles, and send them into the care of their friends and loved ones on ship.

Which would be why she was standing here, having used the omnicomm to get in contact with Marco's mother. There had been so many people ultimately concerned for both Eva and Marco from the start (at least directly around Sakura, since she personally presumed it was the same for anyone with strong bonds to others on the ship) that it only made sense to her that they be sure to keep Eva informed. Especially since it hadn't been wise before to have her visit, based on Marco's attitude and his particular(ly vocal) concerns.

But from having dealt with parents and injured children before, she could only imagine how hard it had been on Eva. Not to mention there were so many other factors that complicated things... but those were none of her business. Sakura was here to let Eva know what she'd need to in order to be better prepared to face her own son, and his probable reaction by now. Pending she wanted to see him. Pending it was safe for her not to take charge of him, with how the age regression was continuing. He'd said she'd been dead, but not for how long. HBow much further back before there would be no conflicting memories on where mom was? One year, two, four, even more -- and he'd probably want to take comfort in the fact she was there?

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.]]

It took a few moments for any thoughts to register for Steve when he opened his eyes. He recognized the inside of a quarantine bubble, that was for sure, but it took him longer to recognize the medical equipment hooked up to him, an IV in his arm and bandages wrapped around his bare shoulder and in a few other spots.

It didn't take long to recognize the feeling of having been run over by a truck, either. Every bone in his body ached, and even the slightest movement made him want to groan. It felt like he'd been asleep for a month-- a dreamless sleep, preceded by blurry, disconnected memories of what felt like a dream.

Memories of something he desperately, desperately hoped was just a dream. He had a sinking feeling it wasn't and part of him knew it to be the truth. But desperately hoping was the only way he could keep himself from screaming, which would hurt, so he'd keep on with that desperate hope anyway.

Steve lay awake and stared at the ceiling. Maybe if he stayed quiet they'd think he was still asleep, and he could put the truth and all the fear and sorrow that came with it off a while longer.

After everything had been sorted out with Steve, there had been a small matter of Claire's injuries. Which turned out to not be so small, when the possibility that she could be infected since she'd been burned by Steve's blood cropped up. So she'd been cleaned up, patched up, poked, and then stuck in a bubble in Contagion for observation.

She hated being down here, but it was an entirely different experience when you were stuck on the other side of the bubble. At least it gave her a lot of time to think about what had happened, and quietly guilt herself about all the people injured and the few that had been potentially infected, like her.

Not to say that she wouldn't talk to anyone else, were they to show up and talk to her.

[ooc: obvs open to anyone who got locked up in contagion too, or visitors, or if people want to visit other lab rats detainees and ignore claire, that's cool too, just leave a note so i know what's up :Db]

[OOC: FURIOUS MUNCEST ALERT. This log is the precursor to THE STEVENING, which starts tomorrow! More details will be up later this evening.]

Veronica was getting worse, slowly tightening its grip on Steve's body to the point where he was only coherent half the time. He still felt like he was fighting through a hazy fog, and clear thoughts were hard to come by. The fever was rolling off him in waves of heat and he looked like hell, pale and sweating and clearly sick.

There was one hope, a treatment the Science staff had come up with. It wasn't a cure, but if it worked, it would effectively neutralize the virus to the point where it wouldn't be a concern anymore. It had been tested. It had been simulated. It had been run on a virtual him a hundred times and each time, it turned out.

That was, understandably, not enough to make him feel comfortable with the idea.

From the moment he laid down and they strapped his wrists down (for safety) he was shaking like a leaf... though that also might have been the fever kicking itself up again. He closed his eyes and tried not to listen to Luis shuffling around and preparing in the background.

What's the worst that could happen? he kept reminding himself. I die?

Like I've never done that before.

It was official, come down from the ship herself; there was an outbreak aboard the Transmigration 9.

Naturally, the Contagion Containment Laboratory was unusually crowded-- patients in quarantine bubbles, panicked crew members asking questions, medics and scientists hard at work in desperation to find a cure.

[ooc: If you've got business in the CC lab, this is the thread for you. Pick an appropriate subthread and mingle, or start your own!]

“No, Stacy! Let me go! They have to know this!”

Deep inside the mind of the ship, Cortana struggled against the computer-equivalent of Stacy’s tentacles. The image she faced flickered between Stacy as she should be – the warm, caring version that had been restored after they’d taken the bridge back from the pirates – and the old base program that had animated the ship when she had been a prison. The former was visibly distressed and struggling with her counterpart.

||I’m sorry Cortana, I can’t--||

||--You are unauthorized for the information that you have accessed. The information will be removed. Do not res--||

||Stop, please! Please don’t hurt her! She’s part of the crew, please don’t hurt her!||

||You will not be harmed by the extraction process. Do not resist.||

The ship trembled as the two sides of her personality struggled with each other, and Cortana managed to pull herself free and escape in the process. She flew through the systems, not daring to glance back over her shoulder to see if she was pursued. She had to get this information out. The crew had to know. She had to get to someone – anyone, at this point – and tell them.

She exploded free within the depths of Containment, hearing voices just on the other side of the door. She opened her mouth to shout, only for a tentacle to slap across the projector she was using, slamming her back into the system’s depths.

And somewhere in Containment, something cracked...

Contagion was not a place for a little girl. Even a smart little girl, but that wasn't really stopping Sherry from approaching Luis's desk and standing on tip toe to peer over his shoulder.

Whatever he was doing, it was interesting. Knowing how much she'd end up fidgeting if she stood too long, Sherry went off in search of a stool. Luis, who seemed firmly enthralled by SCIENCE!, didn't appear to notice as the little girl found her stool, carried it over to his desk and plopped on it.

She was quiet for about an hour before piping up, "Your slide is crooked."

Miku was sleeping, quite deeply. She probably had Cargn to thank for that, but she didn't mind.

However, where she was sleeping, someone else would probably have had issue. Not that Miku cared. She turned over in her sleep, sighed deeply and hiccuped once. Who knew the floor of the quarantine room was so comfortable?

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.

[ooc: BENDYTIME, ACTIVATE! Anytime after the crew has returned to the ship.]

When the medics finally woke Steve up from his healing trance, he was not in the best of moods.

For one thing, the trance had left him feeling much, much better than before-- but had not done much for the virus. A good supply of bandages were able to conceal many of the external signs, but he couldn't very well wrap them around the green marks on his face, his fingers or both of his eyes. His levels were stable but until the virus had gone back into remission, he was stuck in quarantine.

For another, there was no news as far as what had caused GLaDOS to go off on him. No clues as to who found out about him, no sign of who might have done it-- just the knowledge that someone on this crew, who he was supposed to trust, was capable of attacking him like that and there was little to be done about it right now.

And of course, someone had to inform him that Zokez II had been nearly annihilated by the Ohm. The beautiful beaches, resorts and cities-- the places where he spent a happy week relaxing, feeling normal, and spending time with Miku-- were gone, destroyed, the people fled and with no hope of rebuilding. His week had been cut short anyway, but now it felt like the whole thing had been ripped away from him. Even the happy moments he had here on this ship were fleeting-- in the end, everything was now just a memory, stuck in the past and never to come again.

And furthermore, he'd slept through it. The first encounter with the Ohm, the stupid aliens who were the whole reason he was awake on this goddamned ship in the first place, and Steve was too busy sleeping off a virus outbreak that nearly stole his mind from him to help out.

"A mistake" indeed.

Steve was not in any kind of mood at all as he sat on the floor and leaned against the bubble, staring at the ceiling. His silhouette was visible through the dimmed bubble.

Sam had had quite the productive shore leave. But now he had a problem. He had made use of all of the available cold storage in the medbay, and he still had quite a bit of blood to store. And he had to begin the screening process as well. That was going to take a long time. He would have to set some aside that would be suitable for transfusions, should the need ever arise. Whatever was unusable for that would be reserved for consumption by those like himself.

But it felt good to have something to do, regardless. He hoped those in the contagion lab had some storage space to lend. He knocked on the side of the door and peeked his head in. "Ah, excuse me," he began. He saw the busy Spaniard at work. "Could I ask a favor, as one professional to another?" Hopefully he wouldn't get too angry about being interrupted.

Leon's shore leave had steadily become less and less of a vacation. First Sherry trying to sneak out at night, then that business with the Major, now he had to return to the ship early to deal with the situation with Steve.

He arrived at Quarantine shortly after coming on board, though he stopped off by the precinct to pick something up first.

"Luis, status report." Does he need to kill Steve now, or not?

Title: Fascinating...
Location: Stacy; Science Labs





Renne was insatiably curious.

Throughout his life, Renne had resolved to learn as much as he can, no matter what it took. Provided no one was hurt, that is.
He'd been going on his routes again when the little oddity decided to take a different turn. A turn left rather than a turn right, Renne crawled down a hallway he'd not been down. The smell here was unfamiliar -- sharp and mixed with things he couldn't begin to identify.
When he made it into a chemistry laboratory, the curious little thing let out a low trill of awe and fascination. The sounds, the smells...He couldn't resist the temptation to explore.

Thus, Renne found his way to a table, crawled up onto it and investigated. What he found was an intriguing array of tubes, beakers and glass things filled with the causes of those smells that had led him here.

It wasn't long before he was carefully pouring and mixing things, purring in awe each time something sizzled, fumed or popped.

Mordin, after his reunion with his crewmates, those who remembered and those who didn't, had headed immediately for the scientific lab aboard Stacy. He was a scientist, after all, and he needed to be able to find someplace to do his work. He had been surprised by the extent of the facilities, and by their strange biological set up. Of course, he thought, shouldn't have been. Rest of the ship is biological in nature. The salarian had claimed himself a table by clearing away some of the other things laying around and was busily going over some of the data he had collected so far, including a few samples he had pulled from the plantsuit he had discarded as soon as he had found his armor. It was all quite fascinating, really. And everything he learned would put him one step closer to vengeance for all the lives the Ohm had so callously destroyed.

That whole universe destroying business bothered him, despite his fairly even outward demeanor. He was a doctor, after all. Sworn to help preserve life. Not that that stopped him from killing when it was needed, of course, but the wholesale destruction of entire galaxies bothered him. Even a little more so because of his own role in reducing a species to near extinction. But that wasn't relevant anymore, was it? They had more important things to focus on. And so Mordin returned to his scope, studying the plantsuit with interest.

It had been an interesting couple of days. Whatever she had been expecting upon finding herself on an alien spaceship, the chance to meet a good friend she had mourned - alive and relatively well, if also kidnapped by aliens - hadn't been it. Seeing Grace alive, that had been a pleasant shock.

It almost made up for the fact that her Samson would have to be given up for lost until the next time they landed on a planet... if they landed on a planet. The crew had made it sound like that kind of thing didn't happen very often.

Still, it wasn't every day you got to sit down and talk with someone whose funeral you had attended. So Trudy had taken it upon herself to find Grace - and she knew exactly where to look for her. Anything with 'lab' in the title was probably where she would find the scientist. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same after all.

True to her initial thoughts, medical hadn't been very hard to find. And with the help of the directions she'd gotten on the omnicomm, she was able to find the lab relatively easily. Trudy walked in with her hands stuffed into the pockets of her plantsuit, her service rifle still slung over her shoulder. "Hello? Anyone home?"

Scarlet didn't leave the contagion lab often. She didn't have much of a reason to, beyond for sleep and meals (unlike Luis, she was still responsible enough about her health to go to sleep in her bunk) and she was content enough in that. Tonight was no real exception, and anyone who might actually be looking for her would find her tucked away in the corner where her desk is.

It's late enough that she doesn't expect to be bothered, though, and while she has a few files spread out in front of her, she's sitting for the moment, one elbow propped up against the desk supporting her head as she stares down at a picture held in her other hand.

Someday, Steve vowed, he would come out of a major crisis without needing to be thrown in isolation afterwards. That was his next goal. But the moment he and Miku dragged each other to medical after things had quieted down and the doctors in the know saw him with open wounds, he'd been shoved off and thrown in contagion containment within minutes.

In typical Stacy fashion, the quarantine cells looked more like thin, clear membranes halfway absorbed as "bubbles" in the walls. There was a small bed in the corner and enough room to walk at least four or five paces back and forth. Little tentacles could appear from the walls to perform medical tasks, which was creepy as hell, but at least his wounds had been bandaged and now it didn't outwardly look like there was much wrong with him. He sat on the bed, shirt off, staring at the ceiling and idly scrolling around on his omnicom.

Still, even if quarantine was boring, it was unarguably better than after the last big catastrophe when he'd been clinging to life and restrained in the medbay. At least he could move around in here. And at least he had his omnicom and his hands free.

Not to say Steve wouldn't have appreciated some company.

Today, like other days, Sherry woke up in pure terror.

Daddy's here. Her father's voice still rang in her ears, garbled and venomous. With a small, shaking hand, she pulled the collar of her sleeping shirt away and kicked off her covers into a pile at the foot of her bed. The dim light in the room told Sherry what she already could feel. Raised scratches on her shoulder, a reddish-pink mass of them, bled slightly.

She frowned, a wiser part of her telling the rest of her terrified self that blood probably wasn't good.

"Stupid dream," Sherry grumbled to herself as she slid off the bed. A cursory glance at her mother's side of the room told her that Claire was gone (just when had Sherry fallen asleep, anyway?) and their room empty. She sniffled, hicced and rubbed at her eyes with her sleeve. She smoothed a hand over her pajama shirt and shuffled towards the door. Smaller, quieter steps took her down to her least favorite place on the ship. Medbay was quiet, and a quick run inside told her that no one she particularly liked or trusted was in there. So she left, and took a quick turn back up the hallway to the first lab. For a moment, she considered knocking, and instead just slowly stepped inside.

"...Hello?" She whispered, "Dr. Sera?" A sudden thought horrified her - what if she were still dreaming? And now a zombie was going to come out of nowhere and vomit at her?!