Callum

Hydra
One of the worst things about sickness is the way it makes the victim feel powerless.  It robs them of any sense of control over that which is most basic and fundamental - their own body.  Maybe Grace will have been feeling a little bit of that powerlessness during the past week, feeling the virus take hold and spread through her body.  Growing weaker and more helpless every day.  And with it, feeling the hope for improvement slipping slowly and steadily away.

She was not getting better.  Maybe she never would.  Maybe this is how she was going to die, wasted and alone in a pool of her own blood.

Today she was faring no better than yesterday, but at least there were no new symptoms to contend with.  Given the way things had been progressing, who knew what the hell she had to look forward to tomorrow.  No wonder she'd grown desperate enough to burn her own flesh with a candle.  One could go mad like this... sitting and waiting for a cure that might never come.

At least Whitney had been there with her.  It was better not to be alone all the time, even if the Euthanatos couldn't do much to ease her suffering.  But Whitney was gone now, leaving Grace alone in her apartment with nothing but morbid thoughts to keep her company.

The blood in her cough had been bad today.  At times she would breath in and feel the liquid bubbling in her chest and realize that this was her own body breaking down.

Dying.

Maybe she was resting, or maybe she was doing what she could to keep herself distracted.  Whatever she was doing, at some point late on Sunday evening, she'd be interrupted by the sound of the door buzzer.

Grace Evans
Grace expects it to be Whitney, even though the girl's been gone only a little while. Maybe she forgot something? In any case, sweat-stained sheets and a laptop are tossed aside with the unremarkable strength of a sick person, and she stumbled out of bed.

She doesn't exactly run to the door. It's hard to breathe. She takes it slow, makes it to the console on the wall, and hits the intercom. "Whitney?" she asks, in wretched scraping voice.

She clears her throat, covering her mouth with a bit of tissue. She does that every time now, just in case. The bloody tissue pile has increased so much that Whitney had to go out for more, and also for some Gatorade and such. So very important to keep up the fluids. At least it might buy her some time.

Hydra
The person - the man - on the other end didn't introduce himself.  He didn't offer a name or a reason for his visit.  What he said was this:

"It's called the Hydra virus, and if you don't do something to slow it down, you'll be dead by the end of the week.  I can help keep you alive.  Will you let me in?"

Such a message was no doubt hopeful and suspicious all at once.  And here Grace was, relatively powerless to protect herself.  But then, if whoever had given her the virus had wanted to kill her quickly, no doubt they would have taken a different tactic from the get-go.

Grace Evans
Dead by the end of the week. Okay, calm down. Breathing heavy isn't going to help...

In the excitement, she had another coughing fit, and snapped that tissue up to her mouth. When she recovered, she pushed the button again. "Who are you?"

He said dead by the end of the week, not dead right now. She can stand the time to ask some questions.

Hydra
The man had an unusual voice, soft and raspy and ethereal.  It was difficult to make out his exact words over the intercom.

"My name's Callum.  Callum Grey.  You don't know me or my colleagues, but we're tracking the people who gave this thing to you."  There was a long pause before he said, "We shouldn't be having this conversation on the intercom."

Grace Evans
Well, no shit. However, she hadn't set up a hidden camera in her apartment for nothing. Something like this had been... expected.

Option one, he was bad, and about to do something terrible to her. In that case, Whitney would be back soon, and there might just be video evidence of what transpired, so... at least the others would have warning.
Option two, he was what he said, and in that case, right on.

She buzzed him in. Silently. And then, it was back off to bed, because the air on her sheened skin felt like it was going to freeze her solid.

When Callum arrives, he'll find that she lives in the smallest apartment this complex offers. It's built for one, with a tiny kitchen off to the side of the one main room, and one bedroom. It also looks less than lived in. There's nothing on the walls, no paint, no paintings, no rugs on the floor. Furniture is mismatched, and looks to have been chosen for utility rather than looks.

She'd prefer to view it as lacking distractions. But it seems more like an apartment into which someone has not yet moved in.

Hydra
When Callum arrived at the door, he knocked once, briefly, then turned the latch himself.  As he stepped inside, he scanned the space slowly with his eyes, taking in the layout of the apartment as though he half-expected something horrible to jump out and maim him.

The man's appearance fit his voice.  He was tall and willowy, with exceptionally pale, freckled skin.  His shoulder-length red hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail, and his clothes were plain and colorless: grey jeans and a white buttoned shirt.  He carried his jacket underneath one arm.

The guy looked young.  Probably early twenties, and closer to Grace's age than she might have expected.  When he saw her, he shut the door behind himself and walked over to the bed.

"Grace Evans, I assume?"

He pulled a small, unlabeled prescription bottle out of his jacket pocket and set it down beside her.  "These are immunosuppressants.  You should take one daily.  It'll slow down the cycle."

As though suddenly remembering his bedside manner, he added, a little awkwardly, "How um... how are you feeling?"

Grace Evans
She was back in bed by the time he arrived, and busy getting comfortable again. She just nods at his question of her name, not even asking how he found her, or her name. She supposes he has ways.

She takes the bottle, and puts it on the little table by her bedside, now a bit crowded with drink cup, tissues, and a plate of half-eaten food (banana and yogurt) that she has yet to work her way through. The nausea is... well...

"I'm drowning in my own blood, throwing up blood, my temperature is through the roof, and I can't keep food down. It's not going well. But then, you probably knew that."

She looks up at him with those tired (but tirelessly curious) eyes and asks, "How did you know that?"

Hydra
If Callum was any kind of doctor (med student, more likely,) he was probably one of those doctors who knew the human body inside-out but never really knew what to do with the actual human.  His reaction to Grace's declaration of her deteriorating state was little more than a nod, and he crouched down beside her bed, not to comfort her, but to look her over with a clinical and cautiously curious gaze.

Like he was more interested in the disease than her.  But he'd come to help (presumably,) so maybe a bit of social awkwardness was forgivable.

He didn't answer her question right away.  Perhaps he was weighing in his mind just how much information he wanted to give away.  "I knew the person who made the virus."

Someone actually made this thing.  Intentionally.  One had to wonder what sort of person ever could or would create something like this.

"The people who gave this thing to you.  They're... I guess the antiquated term would be witch-hunters.  They've got resources, but they're young and stupid and they don't understand what they're playing with.  This thing isn't just some virus that someone cooked up in a military lab.  It's a fucking masterwork."  After a moment he seemed to realize how horrific that probably sounded to Grace, and he ran a hand over the back of his neck, changing his tone to one slightly more sympathetic.  "You need to be in a hospital.  I've got a place... we set it up out in the mountains.  Nobody knows we're there.  You and your friends are in real danger.  Not just from the hunters.  If the technocrats find out you've been infected with this, you and everyone you've come into contact with will be neutralized.  They're not going to bother trying to cure you.  But I will."

Grace Evans
"I don't trust you. I figured the makers of this thing might try to come and make sure that their targets got what was coming... maybe after a few days, wait until we're all too weak to fight?

And now you say, you have a place in the mountains that I need..." her rapid-fire talk in rasped voice was caught in her throat, and proceeded to have another coughing fit. She grabbed the almost-empty box of tissues by the side of her bed almost like it was an instinct by now.

"That I need to go to. Can you understand why I might be a little uneasy about that?" She just kept right on going, like the coughing spell never happened.

The bloody tissue gets thrown to the waste bin, again with almost instinctual accuracy.

"Who are you, who are you with... just... how can I trust you? I want to. God I want this to be real, but you're going to have to do more than words."

[Perception + Awarepathy = Are you for real?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

Grace Evans
[Ahh it should have been 7, but same result anyway]

Hydra
[Manip+Subterfuge]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Hydra
Grace was right, of course.  She really had no way of knowing if this man was trustworthy.  Maybe he was on her side, or maybe he was part of those who'd infected her.  Maybe he was something else entirely.

When she asked for proof, Callum pursed his lips and looked at the ground.  When he looked up again, he met her gaze with an unblinking intensity.  "If I do nothing, you'll die, so if that was what I wanted, then I've already won.  So maybe you come with me and die anyway.  Or maybe you come and live another few weeks and help us find a cure for the next people that get infected with this thing.  Or maybe you come and we save your life.  Far as I can tell, those are the options."

A moment later, he sighed, releasing some of his coiled energy.  "If it helps, I don't trust you either.  You might be weak, but you still have the advantage.  You're... what you are.  And I'm human."  He his arms out to the side as though in surrender.  "My friends and I.  We're not with anyone, but we used to be.  That's over now, and that's all I'm going to say."

Hydra
As far as Grace could tell, Callum wasn't lying.  He had his suspicious behaviors, certainly.  But the words that came out of his mouth felt like the truth.  If it seemed perhaps that he was too good to be true, well, maybe that just meant that he was a man with a complicated past.  Or maybe he was what she feared him to be, and he was just a very good storyteller.  Whatever the truth, ultimately she had no way of being certain, but it certainly felt as though he meant what he'd said.

Hydra
[Edit: "he held his arms out to the side"]

Grace Evans
"I am... what I am? I didn't really have a choice in the matter, okay? It just happened to me out of the blue in July, and I'm not so advantaged compared to you. I am human, Callum. I never stopped being human just because... because..."

The hacking cough returned again, and again she covered it with a tissue.

"Because I see the world a bit differently."

She made a little movement for her phone, picked it up off that crowded side-table. "There's others who are sick you know? And another friend of mine will be up here soon. If she needs to hide from the Technocracy too, from being in contact with me, then she should come with."

Whatever Callum makes of that movement, whether he thinks that Grace is about to fry him with a heat ray or just call somebody, she doesn't really care. The others need to know. And she wants guidance.

Hydra
Callum seemed fairly unresponsive to Grace's argument for her humanity, perhaps out of skepticism, though neither did he try to argue.  Whatever his thoughts on the matter, they would remain ambiguous.  But he seemed to understand that Grace needed time to process what he'd offered.

"Look, you don't have to come now.  I'll give you my number, and you can think it over.  Call your friends if you need to.  But decide quickly, because none of you have much time left."

He pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket and grabbed the nearest pen, scribbling down a phone number and the initials "CG."

"Have a good night, Grace.  I'll show myself out."  He handed her the slip of paper and managed a thin smile, not so much disingenuous as perhaps lacking in hope.  Then he walked to the door, nodded, and left.
Leaving Grace alone with her thoughts.

Grace Evans
"Wait.. Wait!" she managed, raising that raspy voice to where she could be heard while he turned to leave.
If he stopped, she'd pull up on her elbows, like this is something important. "Is any of your people a woman who wears a hooded... a hood?"

She's not going to say anything about the bloody field, or the blood hydra... the strange visions her friends have been having. But that woman, from Whitney's description, telling her she needed to hurry...

Hydra
Callum stopped on his way out, blinking as he looked at Grace.  As though he wasn't entirely sure if her question wasn't just some fevered outburst.  But he answered all the same.  "There are women working with us.  I'm sure at least one of them has a hooded jacket.  Why?"

Grace Evans
"Nothing.... a dream," she lied. "Sorry."

With that, she returned to her cell phone.

Hydra
Grace picked up her phone, and Callum gave her an odd look, but said nothing.  By the time she looked up again, he'd be gone.