Sid Rhodes
Sid's well enough to leave Luke's
practice, which she did briefly yesterday, but she returned soon after.
For one thing there was that odd happening over at Cheesman Park, and
for another being out in the open like that scared her more than a
little. Eric said they lost her, which must have meant the wards were
working, so she returned.
Now she's busy preparing things for her
"meeting" with Callum. She doesn't need Grace to tell her that the man
is dangerous, she's known that for a while. Like she said via Ginger,
his offer of assistance seemed genuine, but he himself was suspect.
She's treating tonight's meeting in the same vein. Luke has given her a
few things that might come in handy, but really, Sid knows, what will
help her most is her brain. So she's headed over to check on Grace in
one of the rooms to the back of the practice to see where she's at, as
well.
Grace
The nausea was the latest symptom to
go. It no longer seems futile to eat, there's no more cramps in her gut,
so Grace is enjoying her dinner tonight for the first time in many
days. It's yogurt and soup, with some crackers, so not exactly the most
likely of dinners, but hey...
She's in her room, where she's been
spending most of her time at Luke's. She doesn't mind being alone,
really, as there's always her laptop to keep her company. Lately she's
stopped browsing the news and has engaged in some prepwork of her own.
Hydra
Some
days of the year tended to attract notable events, and given that it
was the eve before Halloween, perhaps it was not entirely imagined that
the air outside felt more... alive than usual. Like it was humming with
some sort of tense anticipation. Already there had been reports of a
haunting.
And now Sid and Grace were about to meet with a man who
might either be an ally or an enemy. After so very nearly escaping the
claws of death, it was a bit like jumping out of the frying pan and into
the fire. But Lena and Sera were missing, and what other leads did
they have?
Sid and Grace waited, feeling the hours to tick by as
the meeting time grew closer. The practice was closed and locked for
the day, and inside the building, all was quiet.
Then a knock came
at the front door. Hard enough to have a sense of urgency. Whoever it
was hit the glass three times in slow, deliberate succession, and the
sound echoed through the smallish, near-empty building.
Sid Rhodes
Grace
hasn't been alone very much today. Sid comes into her room frequently,
the safeguards on their quarantine having gone down a notch or two
since the Verbena doctor injected the Virtual Adept with the cure to
Hydra. Today it's where Sid's bag is with its few new belongings
prepared for later, which she adds to when she thinks of something that
might be useful. Syringes in sealed packages, small unlabeled vials
with different colored liquids, at least a few of which are red.
When
she hears the knock she freezes, unsure for a moment if she really
heard something. She looks at Grace and goes to her bag, flips up the
front flap, and pulls out one of those syringes. Thanks, Eric, for the
brilliant idea, and thanks Luke for being a doctor with access to
anesthetics. Quickly, Sid fills the syringe to a dangerous level from
one of her vials and caps the needle before slipping it into a pocket.
Then she goes to the table and picks up a pen. Pulling back the sleeve
covering her forearm, Sid begins to make the first quick lines of a
diagram, little lines connecting to the tattoo on the inside of her
wrist as she steps out into the hallway.
[Life scan I s'pose!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Grace
That
shared look, that unspoken 'oh shit' -- we've all done it. "Sid. Do you
think... have they found us? I thought Luke had this place... you
know... firewalled. Maybe it's just some random person?"
She'd say 'warded' but no... Not today. Today she's still sick and words are slow in her taxed brain.
"Sid,
be careful. Want me to go with you?" she asks, like the sick girl is
going to be much help. What would she do, hit em over the head with her
laptop?
Hydra
The knock happened again, more
insistent this time. It would seem that the person on the other side
had no intention of giving up. Finally she yelled something. The
muffled sound could be vaguely heard from where Sid stood in the
hallway, but most of the words were unintelligible.
It sounded something like: "...quickly!" And then "Sera..."
Sid Rhodes
Sid
has nothing to say at the moment. Could be someone's just hoping to
speak to the closest doctor and is hoping someone's still around. Why
they wouldn't go to the ER isn't something Sid can begin to fathom. As
to how they found them if they are bad? Well, could be they followed
Sid after her brief escape yesterday. They didn't keep tabs on her
before, but then she hadn't disappeared off the grid then, either.
She
stands just outside the door, and she breathes, feeling the pulse of
the universe, that heartbeat Luke has talked to her about. She focuses
on her own heartbeat, listening to the cadence and using it to find
other, similar beats. And when she's found it she goes a little deeper,
finds out a little more about the person on the other side of the
door. What she picks up doesn't make her relax.
Poking her head
back in the door, she says to Grace, "It's a woman, she's infected with
the virus." Her eyes flick to the side, then back to the apprentice.
Grace is not yet one hundred percent well, but what could it hurt to
have an extra person? Her mind works quickly through the possibilities,
analyzing the alternatives in a matter of seconds. If the woman
outside isn't determined she may even give up on them.
"I'm going
to see who it is," she says in her quiet voice. "Come if you're up to
it." Because she's certainly not going to push the woman. She hears
the yell and she tenses up completely, every muscle tightening. Still,
it doesn't make her run for the door.
"I only picked up one
woman," she says to Grace as a warning before she heads down the
darkened hallway quietly. As she goes, she slips the syringe from her
pocket, uncapping it as she gets to the door. Keeping her hand tight
against her side, Sid cautiously peers through the window.
Sid Rhodes
[percept+awareness]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Grace
Grace
shifts her dinner off her lap, and lets herself to the floor. She's
wearing normal clothes, but ones with bleach stains where the blood had
been washed away. Thankfully no new red today. Just white.
"I'm right behind you, Sid."
True
to her words, she followed down the hall, coughing a little as she went
(the little bit of exertion perhaps?) She stays behind Sid though.
Sid's got the needle. Sid's a bit more healthy.
Grace
[perception + awareness too!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Hydra
[Nothing to see (or rather, sense) here - the woman appears to be unawake.]
Hydra
This
woman, she had eyes that were difficult to forget. Maybe Sid
remembered them from a night just under a week ago, looking out from
beneath the same dark hooded sweatshirt the woman was wearing now.
Sid didn't know her name, but Grace did. (Katie. Or at least that's what she called herself.)
When
she saw someone approach on the other side of the glass, Katie looked
up quickly and pushed the hood back from her head. Her eyes were a
little bloodshot, shadowed circles showing beneath them from lack of
sleep. Compared to the night Grace had met her, she was almost a
different person.
"Can I come in?" she called out. "Please. I know where your friends are."
Grace
"Oh my God, oh my God, Sid get away from the door!"
In her still-sick voice, her panicked shout was desperate, but not loud. She just didn't have the lungs yet, or the vocal cords.
"Shit..."
she said, breath coming in fast and shallow, backing up steadily. "I'm
not hallucinating again, am I? Sid, that's Katie. That's the one who did
this to Lena and I. They are back, and they're trying to kill us
again!"
Sid Rhodes
Sid's recollection of events
right at the time she dropped unconscious is a bit hazy. What she
remembers most is that she succeeded in giving Eric back a little of
what he'd given to her. She'd infected him, hah! take that,
asshole. There had been someone else, though, someone standing over him
as he dropped over Sid. Someone had left her in her truck, had even
covered her with a blanket. Was this her?
She looks back at
Grace, panicking as she backs away. A shadow forms between Sid's
reddish brows. "I don't blame you," she says quietly. "But I think she
helped me. And...you know...strength in numbers." Meaning the two of
them versus the one of her. With Sid healthy and Grace probably
healthier at this point than the girl on the other side of the door.
And the fact that they are Awakened and she is not. They have the
advantage.
That doesn't mean Sid trusts the girl on the other side, but if she has information on where to find their friends...
Glancing
down, she focuses on that shot of fear that tenses up her spine, and
she shifts so that her hands are hidden on their side of the door as she
retraces the lines on her arm. Grace may be able to feel it, the swell
and song and clawing desperation of Sid's resonance as she Works. Or
maybe Grace has made her escape. Sid doesn't stop her if she goes, but
the Orphan will do whatever it takes, get help from whatever quarter if
it means finding Sera and Lena.
Then she unlocks the door. If this girl is genuine, or if every word that comes out of her mouth is a lie, Sid will know.
"Where are they?" she demands, and this time her voice is not so quiet.
[Human
Lie Detector [Entropy 1, Life 1, coincidental]By monitoring the
target's Life Pattern and "checking" it against Fate/Probability around
them, the Mage can determine if the target's statements are true or
false.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (2, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Hydra
When
Sid opened the door, Katie's eyes tracked between her and Grace. There
was evident relief, followed closely by a moment of tense anxiety. It
was clear that Katie didn't feel any safer around them than they felt
around her, but something had drawn her there regardless.
"Whatever
address Callum gave you, it wasn't the right one. They're being held
in a building out near the airport. I've spoken to both of them. Sera
told me..." Katie swallowed, pausing to remember the words exactly.
"She told me that everyone deserves a chance to be something other than
what they are. Like Leah. I don't... know what she meant, exactly.
But I imagine you do. Either way, there are things you need to know.
Callum and the others... they're setting a trap for you right now.
This is the only good chance we'll have to get Lena and Sera out of
there."
Grace
[WP! Because Grace is facing down the woman who's performed a vivisection on her... in hallucinations]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Sid Rhodes
The
corner of Sid's mouth flickers, like she might smile, or frown, or
something. Instead her mouth, a curving bow of Cupid at rest, is
pressed into a line. There are so many questions she wants to ask, that
she should ask. Who are you people, why did you do this, what the fuck is wrong with you, et cetera et cetera.
The
truth, though, is that she's telling the truth. she's blocking the
door with her body, but she turns her head to look at Grace. When she
looks at her, her expression softens. "She's telling the truth." She's
spoken to them, she's spoken to Sera and Lena, she knows where they
are. The rest, well. It doesn't take a genius to know Callum was
likely going to be up to something, hence Sid's preparations.
Before
she goes back to the room for her bag, though, she does have one
question that needs to be answered. "Why are you doing this?"
Grace
Sid
says to be strong, and Grace finds her breath again. It's just... It's
only been a few days since she'd experienced vivisection at the hands of
a hallucinatory Katie.
She's staring the woman down, and she's
also watching, listening for the buzz of a wasp. She advances, fists
clenched, shaking in fight-or-flight.
"Sid? Is this the woman who helped you at the university?"
She
looked at Katie with such pain in her eyes, this woman who introduced
her to death. "Why are you helping us, when you tried to kill us before?
This doesn't. make. sense."
Hydra
Katie looked at
Grace like she honestly expected to get hit, and when she let out her
breath, a look of guilt and acceptance came over her face. Pained and
complicated.
She knew what she'd done. If she hadn't fully understood before, she did now.
"I
wish I had time to explain everything. Grace... I know what I did was
unforgivable. If you're trying to understand, it's not... a simple
thing. Someone like you murdered my son, because he was just... in the
way. And then I met Callum and he showed us things and... it's the same
old story, really. Why does anyone do unforgivable things? Bitterness
and desperation. But I've regretted it since the beginning, even
before I knew that you weren't who I thought you were. And now... I
just want to make things right. Please. I know you have no reason to
but you have to believe me."
The strain of her desperation showed
in Katie's voice, and she bent over suddenly to cough into her hand.
There was blood there when she lifted it away.
Sid Rhodes
"I
don't know for sure," is all Sid can say when Grace asks if this woman
helped her. She doesn't know for certain, but she seems vaguely
familiar.
Sid steps to the side in a way that makes way for Grace
more than it invites Katie in. If Grace is going to hit this woman, Sid
is the last person who would stand in her way. If she didn't have an
effect hanging over the woman she probably would have driven her syringe
into her somewhere by now.
She listens, and she says again,
"She's telling the truth." Whether Grace trusts her or not is up to
her. Sid's own expression when she looks at the woman, though, is
harder than anyone she's known in this life will have seen. Well,
except for maybe Eric. If she hated it since before this thing
started...But that was then, and now is now.
She looks at Grace,
leaving it up to her whether or not the woman comes inside for a
moment. She could be given help, she could be given the cure, but,
well. God knows Sid wouldn't do the same for Eric.
Grace
"So you went and played Dr. Mengele with Callum? For vengeance? And oh, yes, here's something you brilliant people never considered. You can't put life in a box. Life always finds a way out. Viruses. Mutate.
I
mean, if you're going to be evil, at least don't be stupid evil. Now,
we'd be facing a God-damned pandemic, maybe even the end of the human
race, if Sid here hadn't figured something out."
She's shaking
with rage now, shaking with the insufferable unfairness of it all.
"Which means... we have to cure you. But know I'm not saying that to
spare you alone. Just your future victims in case you managed to spread
it around to the entirety of Denver."
Hydra
"Not for vengeance.
What use is that? Will it bring back the dead?" Tears were showing
at the corners of Katie's eyes, threatening to spill over. "We were
trying to find a way to stop more innocent people from being hurt. I
didn't want to do it this way, I told him..."
She snapped
her jaw shut and put her hand up to her face. "I'm sorry. You're
right, I have no defense. I didn't come here for myself. I came
because Sera will be dead by tomorrow if we don't help her. We need to
go now, before Callum figures out that something is wrong. There's only
three guards left at the lab. I can get you in there."
Sid Rhodes
Sid
stands there a little longer, listening until Grace says her name. Her
eyes widen and her brows constrict, and she jerks her head away. Sid
doesn't like to talk about herself or the things she can do because she
can't explain it to anyone. She can't tell people why it is that a
college freshman who only has her GED and is getting on in years
(comparatively speaking of course) can cure an unknown virus while it is killing her in less than two weeks.
Not
wanting to be asked now, she turns away and heads down the hallway.
Katie isn't going to hurt Grace, and even if she tried the Mage is
healthier, stronger even if she's still a little unsteady. Even so, Sid
moves quickly to get her bag and Grace's laptop and whatever else they
might need (Grace's shoes, a jacket, so on, so forth). It takes her
long enough that they've stopped talking by the time she returns.
"How
did you get here?" she asks Katie. Sid has her truck, but it'll be
tough to squeeze four of them in the cab. It's too cold for someone to
hang out in the bed, not in this weather.
Grace
Grace's
breath comes quickly in the tension, and this causes a wheezing cough.
She's still bringing up the occasional bloody mouthful. But she recovers
quickly, almost like she's in the same room with a viper, and must stay alert.
"You keep mentioning Sera. What about Lena? Is she... Is she dead?"
When
Sid comes with her jacket and her laptop bag, Grace immediately dons
the jacket. Not like it did much before, but hey. It's like a security
blanket, see? Grey and shiny, like armor. She looks like somebody tried
bleach tie-dye on their outfit and failed miserably, but maybe the
jacket will cover that. Laptop bag goes on next.
"We should
probably use her car, less suspicious," she says with that cold logic,
and then wipes the fear-sweat off of her face. "I can't believe I'm
doing this. Sid, you sure she's telling the truth?"
Grace
[Ahh forgot Katie had mentioned Lena before. So, change that 'dead' to 'okay']
Hydra
"Lena's a little better than Sera, but not much. Their hallucinations have gotten... bad. We need to get them out of there."
Sid
asked how Katie got there, and Katie glanced over her shoulder toward
the clinic's parking lot. "I have a car. It can fit five people,
though it'll be tight on the way back."
She'd asked to come in,
but now that it looked as though Sid and Grace were willing to go with
her, she remained at the doorway, hovering just inside the frame as she
glanced between the two mages and the street outside (perhaps
half-expecting someone to show up.) She reached into the pocket of her
jacket and withdrew a tissue that she used to wipe the blood from her
hand and mouth.
"It's the black Audi. Please hurry. And bring the cure, if you have it. The sooner we can give it to them, the better."
Sid Rhodes
Sid
is so far ahead of Katie that when she returns with Grace's things she
pauses to take out and unpackage a clean syringe. This one gets stabbed
into a different vial, though it'd be difficult for someone else to
know. Sid knows because she knows what she's brought and can
differentiate them by their color and viscosity. Without a word she
holds out her hand for Katie's. She's become a bit more talkative the
more she's gotten comfortable with certain people, but Katie is clearly
not one of those people. And why would she be?
"I'm sure," she says to Grace.
"The
cure," she says if Katie hesitates. And, should she question her, Sid
answers her with her eyes on the woman's arm, her voice low, heated,
angry, "I'm not doing it for you." Sera wants this woman to have a
second chance, so she's going to get another chance. Flicking her gaze
upward, she says, "Don't make me regret it."
Looking at Grace, she nods toward the car. "You can ask her more questions in the car, but we have to go."
There's urgency in her voice, in her mannerisms as she caps and
contains the used syringe in her bag-within-her-bag, the little black
nylon case that usually carries a student's idea of a portable lab. It
has real and dangerous chemicals in it now, to help and to harm. "Give
me the keys," she says to Katie of course. Sid is the only one who is
healthy, the only one in whom the virus is a decaying memory. It'll be a
while before the other two catch up to her, health-wise.
Grace
Grace nods to Sid, heads for the car. But she is not done yet. She is livid.
"You
want to talk bad hallucinations," Grace says, her voice quivering with
malice. "I had one once where a pretty little girl with a yellow dress
and blue eyes came at me with a scalpel and peeled me apart. And then
came the fucking bone saw. You were sad though. You cried when you took
my sternum out. Little bloody tears, drip drip."
"Wouldn't want you to miss out on all the fun. It's a shame you'll never get to experience that, Katie."
Hydra
Katie
accepted the syringe from Sid, but when she looked down at it, her
expression was strangely blank. Nothing like the wash of relief that
one might expect of someone in her position who'd just been offered the
life-saving treatment she needed. But whatever she was feeling, this
was no time for bleak or self-destructive thoughts. (Sid was right -
this wasn't about her.) So Katie took the needle and injected herself
with the virophage. She didn't ask if it was safe, if there would be
side effects... she didn't try to check to see if Sid was lying to her.
She just did it. Then she wrapped the syringe in a handful of tissue
and placed it inside her jacket pocket, to be discarded safely later.
Then
she took out a car key and handed it to Sid, before leading them in the
direction of a black Audi sedan. She didn't put up any argument to Sid
driving, and let Grace choose whether she wanted to be in front or in
the back. The car was new and freshly cleaned, with nothing inside to
give any clues to the disposition of its owner (if the car was even
hers.)
When everyone was settled, Katie gave Sid an address and
some directions, and they left to free their friends from the
claustrophobic horror of white rooms and blood-soaked fever-dreams.
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