And Then There Will be Pancakes and Grief Counseling

Grace Evans
Grace's apartment complex is one of those types with electric locks. One must be buzzed in, however, most people can bypass that requirement by simply asking one of the (young, naive) students who live there to be let in. It's a fairly busy place in the middle of the day.

Grace herself is within, and if Kalen is aware enough, he can feel her presence -- that shifting sliding sensation that she is. Weak, but there.

Her apartment has one of the smallest floor plans this complex allows. It's little more than a dorm room, really, with a tiny kitchen and one small alcove off to the side for a bed. It's very clean, very white, very plain. What furniture exists is mismatched and obviously chosen for its practical use instead of form. There's no art on the walls, or even rugs on the floor. It's almost as if this is a place to exist, not a home.

Grace is lying in that bed, reading her Kindle. She spent the start of the day at one of the computer labs on campus ordering new equipment, but it won't be here for entirely too long. So instead of distracting herself with work, she distracts herself with fiction. Escapism exists for a reason.

Kalen Holliday
Kalen does drift in with the other students, because that is the most expedient way to get in.  He moves through the building until he finds the right room number, and then knocks lightly on her door.  He's dressed to blend into the students, jeans and a tawny gold hoodie, nothing particularly attention-catching.  Except, well, his Resonance.  And the way he moves through the halls like some kind of predatory cat, a hobbled predatory cat perhaps, but a predatory cat all the same.

Grace Evans
[Perception + Awareness = Does she sense Kalen?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 7) ( success x 1 )

Grace Evans
She's reading Dune for about the fortieth time perhaps. Liet Kynes is dying in the desert for that fortieth time now, leeching his water into the parched sand, his dream dying along with him. She knows how the end goes, but this part is harder to get through now.

And then she feels the oncoming storm of Kalen, the promise of rain, and for a moment she has hope for Kynes.

She shakes her head, slips out of her chair, and heads for the door, unlocks it, opens it...

Grace looks like shit, honestly. Pale and grayish, a bit thinner than normal. There are sores on her arm that look like they were gouged out by her own hands. She hasn't been sleeping well, and her eyes are dull things. Her mouth a line scratched into her face.

She's wearing jeans and a sweater that doesn't quite cover those sores, and fuzzy pink socks that look incredibly out of place on that drained girl.

"Hi," she says, but there's no mirth there. No smile to greet him.

Kalen Holliday
[Speaking of sleeping!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 3, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )

Kalen Holliday
Two years ago, Kalen would already have caught her to steady her.  Because he could.

No.  Two years ago, Kalen wouldn't have been quite so attached to Grace.  He would not be here at all.  Not because he didn't care at all, but because then Kalen had so many more people.  He would have sent flowers or something.  Sent a message indicating he would get her access to any chantry resources he could should she need them.  It would have been very polite.  It would have been less personal for all Kalen was less distant.

He would have.  Because he could.  If he had seen her.  Which he would not have.

There are possible worlds where they met years ago.  Where they both stayed in Arizona and met somewhere else and he never cared like this and it was easier and calmer and then one of them died.  Bled out in the sand.  And it was nothing but a footnote.  A moment in time.

They met here.  Now.  And Kalen knows, because he cannot help but know, that somewhere there are possible worlds where she died.  They radiate outward around some central hub like snowflakes and spreading frost and snail shells and rose petals.

And here -now- all Kalen says is, "Hi."

It sounds like less than all those things that might have been.  And it is completely the opposite.

He has to clear his throat before he can add, disapproval blunted by seeing her alive but so obviously not well, "Your building security is appalling."

Grace Evans
"Yeah, well..." she trails off. She knows the security in the building. But still, this place feels safe. Safer than outside, that's for sure. "You want to come in?" she offers, standing aside.

"I'm not contagious anymore," she adds, as though Kalen might even care. "The virus is gone."

Kalen Holliday
Kalen doesn't answer the question directly, but he does step into the tiny apartment.  He looks it over slowly, the mismatched but highly functional furniture, the lack of decoration, the tiny kitchen.

"Which is good."  He settles, carefully, onto a chair.  He leaves her the bed.  "I am sorry I couldn't come until now."

Grace Evans
"Oh, don't be sorry. I tried to keep everybody away. I didn't want to spread it around," she says. "I would have just told you to leave."

She wanders into the room after him, once she's done locking the door again. Slips onto her bed, cross-legged and curled-in.

"So, um... what's new with you?"

Oh, the pretense at normalcy. She's trying hard. But she picks at one of those sores with her fingernail before realizing that she's doing it. Crosses her arms after, to keep herself from it.

Kalen Holliday
"I found lots of information about Umberto Montanari and the Thakinyan.  Some information about the family.  You think you feel up to research soon?  I can remember I was half mad while I could barely get out of bed for anything.  Or...I could probably make other offers, I don't know.  Games?  I didn't really do much but really goal-oriented things or research.  I may not really know what to do here."

He shrugs, and smiles a little.  "Most of the Mages in Denver continue to be indifferent toward me.  Sid still seems to hate me, and I honestly don't even know why.  Shoshannah and I talked very carefully about why we shouldn't date, and she doesn't hate me but that's a little strained now.  Garrett's been my adopted father for the better part of a decade, but I think he's mad at me right now.  Shoshannah and I met a new Mage, at least to Denver just recently.

"And...that is my life.  Monster hunting and not really being great at having friends."  He seems amused, mostly.  Maybe, maybe, under layers of distance and amusement and more space...wistful.

Grace Evans
She listens, grateful for the news, for the reprieve in thinking about what happened to her. Imagine being Kalen, and having 'normal' things to deal with. Social problems and research and meeting new people. Yes.

"I can't really research anything right now. I'd have to use the college computers, and I'm not doing that with Montanari stuff." If Kalen notices, her laptop and her phone are on her desk, but she doesn't explain why she can't use them.

"Sid... I don't know. She saved us, you know? She's amazing. Just, might be a good idea to stay away for a while. Give her space."

Kalen Holliday
"I don't ever chase her.  She's just never been fond of me.  I didn't realize just how much that was true until the other day."  What the hell happened there?

"So...not using those?"  He waves at the laptop and the phone.

Grace Evans
"They're very dead," she says. Sighs.

In her replaying memory, a man uses his last words to tell her exactly how he wanted everyone in the world to die, and a woman fries every piece of electronic equipment in the building -- including the chips in their brains. They're very dead.

She curls that body up a little more.

"We had to go to this lab to get Sera and Lena out. They'd been imprisoned. There was a... thing there... it popped all the electronics in the area."

Kalen Holliday
Kalen sighs.  Frowns.  And then, because Kalen is better at actions half the time, he rises slowly, crosses the mercifully short distance between them, and carefully tugs the blankets up to rest around Grace's shoulders.

"I'm sorry it was difficult for you.  I was...my childhood lent itself to this.  And I had training.  I can't imagine what it would be like to have a relatively normal life and suddenly be forced to deal with all of this."

Grace Evans
When he gets close, Grace starts to look a bit uncomfortable, though she tries to hide it. Twitchy, like holding herself back from leaning away. But he doesn't try to hug her, or something equally horrible. Just pulls the blankets up around her, and that's okay.

"Kalen, I don't know... even with your training..." she trails off. "How do you train for something like that?"
She's asking herself, really. Kalen doesn't even know what 'something like that' could be.

Kalen Holliday
"If you want specifics, you'll have to tell me what happened."  He retreats back to where he was sitting and carefully resettles.  "And, if not with me, you probably should talk about it with someone.  If...it is not easy.  I do understand that.  Even if you just talk to someone who was there, where you don't have to explain what happened, just how you're processing it."

Grace Evans
She stares at the wall for a bit, processing who she might talk to about everything.

Sera? Sera's a mess. Lena's worse. But of course, they spent days down in that pit, being tortured. If anything, she should be listening to them.

Sid is probably the only one that went through it that she could talk to.

But Kalen's here. And he already knows some of it.

"Well... ahh... You know I was kind of out of it for a while. The blood hallucinations, right? They got worse before the end. I didn't really update Ginger much on that particular symptom. It's hard to explain how you keep experiencing your death over and over again."

She swallows hard, before continuing. "Are you sure you want to know specifics here? It wasn't like... normal dying. Think... vivisection."

Kalen Holliday
"I will tell you about my childhood and then my training and then you will understand better why this is, but you can discuss such things in as vivid and graphic detail as you see fit.  It will have little enough effect."

Grace Evans
She scratches her face, her neck.

"I uh... In one of them, I gave birth to a bunch of worms, and they started eating me, crawling under my skin. I tried to claw them out." she tilts her head to the side, as if to say, that really didn't work.

"Just... things like that. You know. And then, Sid found the cure to it, and we were both doing so much better. I kept thinking about Lena and Sera off in some lab somewhere, not surrounded by friends, and not getting better. Kalen, they're... I don't know if Lena's going to be okay."

Kalen Holliday
Kalen listens.  He does not look horrified.  He is not generally the person to come to if you want someone to let their eyes widen with some sort of shared trauma. If you want someone to cry with you.

But if you want someone who won't lose it, basically no matter what you say.  "Physically or mentally, for Lena?"  He asks, and his voice is gentle.

Grace Evans
"Yes."

She lowers her head. Lena's isn't her story to tell. But she's worried about them all, even Sid, who'd been spared so much.

"We almost didn't get there in time. One more day, and..."

Oh God, the thought of them finding Sera too late, of her melting like bloody wax out onto the floor...

Kalen Holliday
"People are stronger than you might think, Kit.  Look at me."  He waits, and then smiles a little if she does look at him.  He continues whether she does or does not.  "I know you must have been afraid.  For you.  For them.  I know it isn't going to feel like it's over for some time.  Maybe there will be things for at least of you that linger forever like scars that you feel instead of see.

"But you found a cure.  You are healing.  That is what people do.  However impossible it seems.  Whatever the odds are.  You are alive now.  You can recover."

Grace Evans
There is a bit of comfort in this, isn't there? Kalen's not the touchy-feely type to get all worked up over what she has to say, and that's just perfect. If he'd been squeamish or reacted badly, she'd feel bad.

But no, he calls her that nickname, and she looks up at him, and he's smiling at her with one of those rare Kalen smiles that she once joked would break his face (he should be careful). She doesn't return it, but she does nod at him when he says that recovery is possible.

"I know. I didn't have any hope for the longest time, and now I'm thinking about going back to class tomorrow. I missed all my midterms, and I'm going to be drowning in homework. But it's like, that kind of thing, that would have horrified me before. Now it's just like, eh. I'm not drowning in blood. At least there's that."

Kalen Holliday
"So, you asked what would prepare you for something like this."  He sighs, smiles a little, but this is forced.  "I never knew my father, I don't even know his name.  Considering the parade of men my mother had through the house though, I doubt I missed much.  She was never really interested in me or my sister, and even when we were very young we learned it was better to be out of the house than in it.

"We went out exploring one day.  I was six and she was nine.  She thought that ice skaters looked like princesses and so we tried to ice skate in our shoes on this pond.  Which would be a charming story if we hadn't fallen through the ice.  I was pulled out of the pond, barely in time.  She drowned.

"I was on my own after that.  It was much better still, to be out of the house.  I was young, and I was small, and I was weak - at least compared to most of the other kids around.  And I was alone.  So, I learned to hide. I found places to crawl into sewers and I found abandoned buildings and abandoned rooms in used buildings and places that I knew that no one else did.

"I went home less and less.  And then, eventually, not long after I turned sixteen, I didn't go home at all.  I wasn't alone then, I met Kharisma and Jack the night I Awakened, when I was fourteen.  They spent the next two years training me to do various things.  I mean, I learned a lot about magic from them, but I learned forgery from Jack.  How to hotwire cars.  Useful little life lessons."  He does smile a little there.

"They blew town when I was sixteen, which is when they introduced me to Marcellus, who was my mentor in the Order.  I met Garrett around then, he visited my chantry fairly often, he had very close friends there."
Kalen sighs again.  "So, I was trained to hunt monsters.  About history and the occult.  I learned a lot of practical skills there.  And then, I learned what it was like to belong in a place.  With people.  To have a family.  And then someone blew it up.  Almost everyone died.  As far as I know, only Jenna and I are alive."  He swallows.  "There could be others.  We were presumed dead, and that made it easier to run.  So I did, for a year.  Even Garrett didn't know I was alive until he ran into me here.

"So, I'm good at hunting monsters, Kit.  I'm good at stalking them and killing them and remaining dispassionate enough to stare straight at death.  But the thing is, you're going back to a life that I can't imagine.  Something, not normal, I guess.  Because after this nothing really is.  But, you point out how this changes your life, how it reorients things.  I don't have anything to go back to.  I have only this.

"That is how you get prepared.  I'm not sure that you should, Kit.  It isn't what I would want for you."

Grace Evans
She doesn't talk about her childhood much with anyone. But the way Kalen describes it, he escaped to a Chantry, and she escaped to a University, and she sincerely hopes that nobody goes and blows up UC Denver.

"Kalen, you're scaring me. I just found out what it's like to belong in a place too," she says. "Someplace where people don't find me so weird, because they're all weird, and they don't care. I've only been Awake for a few months, and I already have friends, good friends."

She looked up again, at him for one of those rare moments of eye-contact. "I don't want to lose them. I almost did. Just... Things were so good, for a while."

Kalen Holliday
"That isn't the most common experience.  I promise you that.  It is relatively rare for chantries to fall.  And, yes, you almost lost some friends.  You almost died.  But you are alive, and they are alive.  I know that it is very difficult to lose people.  I know that once you find people again it is terrifying to think of how you might lose them."

Kalen smiles again, haunted and faint maybe, but not forced.  "Things will be good again.  I promise, Kit.  You haven't lost everything.  We're all still here."

Grace Evans
"The Chantry here fell once already," she says, laying down some history for Kalen. "It was before I Awoke, but there's already been someone who came back and wanted to know where the hell all their friends were."
"We're all just kind of... cobbled together here. Newcomers. All of us."

She kind of unfolds herself a little, even though what she's talking about isn't all that great.

"You know. Those people who infected me. The virus, it started out targeted to only infect the Awakened. They were trying to kill all of us, everywhere. Just because of what we are... It never stops, does it?"

Kalen Holliday
There are a few seconds, just a few, where there is something pained in his eyes.  Sympathetic and wounded and so unlike anything Kalen lets people see it would seem wrong on his face if it weren't so completely unguarded.  Honest.  Real.

If he thought he could get away with it, he would hug her now.  He doesn't.

"You don't want things to stop.  Life is just a series of events, moments and seconds and the things that happen in them.  You don't want it to stop, you want it to change.  And it can.  That's what we're doing.  One thing, one moment, one second at a time.  That's what we're doing."

Grace Evans
Grace rolled her eyes at Kalen's emotional response. "You know what I mean. I'd just like to go a whole month without the world ending. Just one month. Would it be possible?"

"I'm not going to stop, Kalen. I promise."

Kalen Holliday
"Hey.  Don't look at it like that."  Kalen smiles.  "The world's always being saved.  Again and again.  Because people love it too much to give up hope.  And you're a part of that now.  When you look at them, at everything, remember it is here because we love it too much to give up, and before us, people loved it too much to give it up, and all around us people love it too much to give it up.  I bet it gets saved like seventy-five times a day.  Look at that.  Forget the rest.  It doesn't matter."

Grace Evans
"Seventy-five times a day?" she says, incredulous. Of course, he's (probably) exaggerating, but she didn't catch on. "How many horribly fucked up people are out there, that it needs saved..."

"Okay, yeah... okay..." she sighs. "I know the lesson I should be taking from this. Sid saved the day. She loved us to much to let us die. I should take comfort in that. Forget the Callums, remember the Sids. Right."

Kalen Holliday
"It's not easy, Kit.  I can't do it all the time.  I have nightmares.  Constantly."  His lips press together.  "I know so many ways that you can die.  So many ways that I can fail you.  Everyone.  Believe me, Kit.  I know how the world can be.  But you can't stay there and stay you.  So don't."

Grace Evans
Kalen's experiences, well... they aren't much of a comfort. He has nightmares, and knows the horrors of the world. But the comfort here is that he went through, well, whatever he went through, and made it across to the other side. And he's not crazy, at least, she doesn't think he is. Maybe a little.

"I'm going to try," she says. "Give me time."

"Thanks, for coming over. I did need to talk to someone."

Kalen Holliday
"Yeah.  You should...if you ever get to know him...Garrett.  He can help.  I know you might not want him to help you right now, but he has training.  He can talk to you.  If you want, he can...he can do other things.  You know, our kind of things.

"And, if you really think they need help, he can probably help Sera and Lena.  People who can do the things he can get a kinda scary reputation, but I trust almost no one and I trust him.  If he can help, he will.  He'll want to.  He's just...good."

Grace Evans
Her face kind of crinkles up. "Garrett? You mean Doctor Garrett, the blahsiblabla bani blahsibla von blah? I don't know, I couldn't keep up with all the names."

She licks her lips, realizing that Garrett is also Kalen's adoptive father, and maybe she shouldn't have been so flippant. Well, it's done now, anyway.

"Sorry. I just... Hermetics are kind of lengthy with the names, aren't they? He's not one of those kinds I'd just piss off, is he?"

Kalen Holliday
"He treats me like a son.  What does that tell you about that?"  Kalen smiles.  "Sometimes he is a little formal.  But mostly, he's just Garrett.  And, they aren't my stories to tell, but he's been through a lot too.  He still is, really.  He's raising his son on his own, he's in a new city where he knows almost no one, he lost two of his best friends a year ago when someone blew up my chantry.

"There are times he's formal.  There are some times he's really formal, but those have to do with codes and laws of the Order, you'll probably never see that.  He really cares about people though.  And...whatever you think of the Order and all its names and its traditions, he's in this to help people.  It's just who he is.  He'll judge when he has to, but he'd rather just teach and make you pancakes."

Grace Evans
"I don't really do well with formality. Pancakes, though..." she shrugs. Maybe a little of that old Grace comes shining through. And then she's back to closely inspecting her fingernails, a little shaky.

"I don't know if Sera or Lena would be... okay with him. Maybe Sera. She's okay with everybody, usually. I don't know. But, if you say he's a good guy, I'll believe you."

Kalen Holliday
"Well, what about this.  You can meet him, because it would be good for everyone I think if he had access to Ginger.  And you can see what you think then.  I..." He draws out the sound of the 'I' playfully.  "Will make sure it involves pancakes."

Grace Evans
"Kalen... I can't until... I lost all my gear. Ginger will have to wait for a while, until I can get it back. I ordered some stuff today, but it's not going to be here until next week."

She lost all of her important machines. Kindle's the only one left, and it reads books. Can't code on a Kindle. Can't Code either.

"I can't wait till next week. This sucks."

Kalen Holliday
"There isn't anything closer?"

Grace Evans
"What do you mean, closer?"

Kalen Holliday
Kalen shrugs.  "Aren't there stores that sell computers like...close by?  I would think that there are."

Grace Evans
"Well, okay, yeah I could go to the generic computer store and buy some piece of crap, or I could pick something out that's going to do what I need..."

She's got standards, basically. High ones. Her computers are Ferarris, don't you get it?

"I need a machine capable of rendering high resolution 3D spaces like that. You know, for my other software?"

Kalen Holliday
Kalen laughs, raising one hand in a lazy, playful defensive gesture.  "Okay.  I was just going to offer to go pick something up if there was something closer.  If they don't have what you need here and it will take that long, then I guess it will take that long."

Grace Evans
Grace looks like she's scanning the boundaries of the room with her eyes. She's thinking. "You know... If you're willing to just 'go pick something up' I know someone who could use it. You know, I get the thing for the week it's going to take me to get set up again, and then give it to her?"

"I mean, if you're okay with that. It would be nice if I could at least make sure my backups are good, and I could have Ginger abilities back."

She scans the room again. "Whitney. She's one of us. When she heard I was sick, she came over and took care of me for days. Slept in my computer chair. I told her if I didn't make it, she could have my laptop. Kinda... I feel like I owe her."

Yeah, Grace owes her, so she's going to use Kalen to pay her back? But whatever...

Kalen Holliday
"Sure.  Can you write down what you want, so I pick up something that you can use?  I know it won't be up to your usual standards, but at least you'll have whatever the next best thing we can get here is?"

Grace Evans
"Hmm... Not off the top of my head really. Asus isn't bad, I see a lot of them in my classes. So maybe one of them?" she fidgets in her nest of blankets. It's not like her to not have the answers. But she can't just Google anything right now.

Damnit. She can't just do anything right now.

"I'll pay you back. Just not right now..." she sighs. "I haven't been getting paid these past few weeks. I might have to beg to to get my job back. Luke wrote me a doctor's note, but... Toward the end, I wasn't exactly calling in every day."

Kalen Holliday
"Don't worry about it.  I'm pretty sure I can handle buying a computer."

Grace Evans
"Well, I'm sure you can..." she scratches her face again. "Just, you know, it's the principle?"

Kalen Holliday
"Ah.  Have I mentioned that being able to predict patterns in seemingly random things means I make pretty serious money on stock.  And I have other skills that will resume making me money as soon as I can move properly again.  Trust me, you shouldn't worry about it."

Grace Evans
"Really? Isn't that a bit... dangerous? Won't someone get suspicious that you're making a lot of really good bets?"

Someone, everyone, or the universe perhaps?

"But okay. I suppose you know what you're doing."

Kalen Holliday
"It's not as easy as you'd think to trace that.  Stocks aren't like Vegas bets.  Much quieter.  Less flashy.  Plus, the other jobs pay well.  Shouldn't be a thing."

Grace Evans
She nods. She's the novice here. And in any case... "Thanks."

"I mean it. for coming over, for the laptop, for everything. Makes me feel a little better."

Kalen Holliday
"You're welcome.  Why don't I go find you a laptop?  I'll be back soon."

Grace Evans
Grace tries a smile. It kind of works. "Okay."

She watches him leave, thankful that he didn't want her to go with. It's just not safe outside. Maybe he gets that, that she wouldn't want to go somewhere else just yet.

He's probably been there before.

And that's the thing about friends. They just know, don't they? Forget the Callums, remember the Sids, the Kalens, the Lukes. Look to the helpers. Until they're gone. The sharpness of the loss that Kalen must have felt...

She looks over to her Kindle, but decides that a nap might be better. Preferably one without dreams this time. Please, no dreams this time.

Hydra Dies in a Fire

Hydra
Given the urgency of their mission, the trip out to the lab probably felt longer for Sid and Grace than it actually was.  When they were about a minute away, Katie suggested they pull over and rearrange themselves in the car with the two mages ducked down in the back seat - the better to avoid notice from the security cameras in the lab's parking lot.  With only three guards left at the facility, they were bound to be on alert for anything unusual.  When they finally arrived, they parked at the far end of the lot.  Peering carefully out the windows, Sid and Grace would see what looked like a fairly nondescript red brick building.  They were on a relatively empty stretch of road, and every now and then a plane would soar past overhead on its way to or from the nearby airport.  The sign out front read "Lerna Laboratories."

Before exiting the vehicle, Katie turned to Grace and Sid to explain what she was about to do.  "I'm going to go take care of the guards.  When I get back, I'll take you to the basement cells where your friends are being kept.  We need to get them out of there as quickly as possible, so while you're doing that, I'm going to head up to the labs to activate the disinfection protocol.  Once I've done that, we'll have ten minutes to get out of the building before it locks down and burns everything inside, so it's very important that we exit as quickly as possible.  Understand?  It's very important that we destroy the lab, and any trace of the virus left inside."

------------

Meanwhile, in the basement, Lena and Sera were unaware of what was going on above.  It had not been a good week for the two of them, but they were hanging on.  Weak and sick, their days were full of waking nightmares that felt all too real.  Lena, in her concern for her Tradition-mate, had been sending out empathic projections of calm warmth and calm.  It allowed Sera a few precious moments of rest that she might not have otherwise had.

At that moment, they were both blessedly free of the trap of those waking dreams, though for how long?

Hydra
[Edit: "Understand? We have to destroy the lab, and any trace of the virus left inside."
Also: "projections of warmth and calm."  (Yeesh.)]

Lena Reilly
Since that moment when Katie appeared in her room a few days earlier, Lena has been like a caged animal.  The smart thing would have been to play it cool and act like everything was still the same, but the Ecstatic is past the point of such dissembling.  Like most of her Tradition, she is a creature who is both master and slave to the Nine Sacred Passions and with lucidity being constantly torn away from her with every waking nightmare, every bloody cough, she has lost the ability to act in her own best interests.  Lost the ability to play nice and let then just take her blood and serve her empty platitudes.

Lost her ability to give.  A.  SHIT.

She may not be terrorized by whatever hideous hallucinations this disease can combine with her mind at this moment, but let's be frank, ladies and gentlemen...there is nothing worse it can conjure than the fact that she's going to die here alone in this hell-hole, wasting away to fucking disease while her friend does the same elsewhere in this very facility.  They're Ecstatics who are about as far from Ecstasy as you can get and she has not made the life of Callum's little flunkies easy.  She's ranted and raved, yelling to the camera things like "You didn't think I would find out, you piece of shit?" and "Come in here and I'll show you what disease is all about."

That is, when she's not curled up in the corner, sobbing and scared.

At the moment she's lucid.  And at the moment, she's pacing, scratching at the sores that she's picked into her body.  (They only make her mental state worse; they're so similar in her blurry vision to the lesions that are a part of Karposi's sarcoma).  As much as her weakened body will allow; she's moving on pure Rage, pure Wrath.  It will get her through and so help her, if her friends die she will figure out a way from the other side to make those involved pay.

Sid
It is with reluctance and great trepidation that Sid listens to Katie.  She does so because she knows, she knew before she let her effect finally drift apart, fragile as a spider's web, that the woman told them the truth.  Her intentions are sincere, she has only been honest with her.  Sid still distrusts.  Katie may very well be telling the truth - as she sees it.  She may be helping her - because someone else is using her guilt to their purposes.  Because soon, very soon, all four infected Mages will be inside the facility.

Still, what choice does she have?  Her friends are inside and she and Grace will find them, they will save them, they will get them out.

While she's ducked down, tall body twisted uncomfortably so that she isn't seen, she sends a quick text.  There's no time to access Ginger and make a broadcast as wide as possible, so instead Sid sends a message.  It's a follow-up, actually, their more exact location sent to a Disciple Cultist just in case...well, just in case.

Sid is not the best at being sneaky, she's a scientist (or was, once upon a time) not a ninja.  Still, she can scan her surroundings and let them know if someone is near or coming near.  Hopefully.

Katie tells them they'll have ten minutes, and Sid frowns as she draws a small diagram on the inside of her wrist.

[Go go Gadget Life scan!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (1, 8) ( success x 1 )

Grace
After the adrenaline shock wore off, and Grace had finished venting her anger at Katie, there wasn't much to do but plan and wait on the car ride. She calmed down somewhat, but was still quite unnerved by the woman, and spent the time staring at her waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Oh I understand. If that shit leaks out of your lab..." she says. 'Your lab', like she's still thinking of Katie as being on the other side.

She listens to the plan, and it's not half bad. Maybe somebody in their group wasn't a complete idiot, because they did have a disinfection protocol. They thought ahead.

So she ducks down with Sid in the back, "You letting people know where we are?"

Serafi­ne
The room is white and the walls are white and the walls and concrete and there is a door; you remember the door when it opens.  It has a window that frames a view of the corridor.

The corridor is always the same.

The place has a rhythm that is internal and both unvaried but unpredictable.  There are pipes in the walls, wrapped in concrete block, framed by drywall and structural steel.  There is a hum.  The hum is not a human hum and may not be a hum at all.  It may well be the intense and immediate physical experience of soundlessness.  Except for the low, insistent beeping of the heart rate monitor when it is connected or its higher pitched objection after it has been disconnected there is a sort of ambient nothingness that feels round, pregnant and full.

Sometimes Sera remembers that she should try to leave the IV in her arm.  It is the only thing keeping her alive and she is now barely alive.  She has not eaten in two weeks.  Threw whatever they shoved through the prison-like hole in the door right back at those bastards when she was still capable of downing food, and has not been capable of eating for some time.

The lucid moments are the strangest.  Worse, somehow, than the waking nightmares where she is torn apart from within; where she tears herself apart; where she is ripped apart, scissored open, consumed and consuming.  Terrorized and terrified.

Lucid she is in a white room; alone, dying, so weak she can hardly stand.  Except, as long as she can hardly stand, as long as she has the strength to so much as crawl, Sera refuses to lay around in that bed. Sometimes she drags herself to the door, leans then, slapping her hand open and rhythmic against the metal.  Sometimes she curls up in the bathroom, between the sink and the toilet, taking some sort of comfort in the porcelain.

Its proximity.

Its familiarity.

That's where she is now; curled up in a semi-fetal position, shivering, involuntarily, from the climate-controlled cold in the room, wasted and spent.

Hydra
Katie had been quiet in the car, allowing Grace her outlet to vent.  There was no attempt made on her part to defend herself or her colleagues.  Everything about her appearance and manner suggested a woman weighted down with silent guilt.  What could she say, really?  Nothing.  So she didn't try.  Inside the lab, there were two dying women who'd spent the last week and a half in a world of sickening, claustrophobic torture.  They were there because of Hydra.  One of them from Katie's hand directly.

If Callum and the other members of Hydra (was the virus named after the group or the group named after the virus? did it matter really?) had found Lena's sudden change of heart suspicious, thankfully they hadn't seemed to pinpoint the source of it, because Katie's security access worked just as well as it always had.  She jogged across the parking lot, coughing into a tissue as she reached the door and let herself inside.
Then all was still, apart from the ubiquitous sonic echo of the planes.

Five minutes went by.  Maybe Sid and Grace would begin to expect some sort of trick.  Or perhaps Katie had been found out and captured by her own people.

Another minute.  Two.

Finally she reappeared, running quickly towards the Audi.  She gave a wave to indicate that they exit and follow her inside.  "I drugged the guards and turned off the cameras."

Assuming they were ready to follow, Katie led the way back inside the building, taking a path through a brightly lit welcoming area with an empty front desk and moving at a brisk pace down a long white hallway.  They passed a couple of closed doors on their way to the stairs, but Katie didn't stop to offer a tour.
At the end of the hall, another locked door led down into the basement.  Katie entered a code into the security system and the door unlocked, allowing them access.  Then it was down a flight of concrete steps into another long white hallway.

And there they were.  So close now that Sid, with her active life scan, would be able to feel the weak, unsteady pulses of her two friends in the locked cells.  Lena was closer, followed by Sera at the end of the hall.

Katie unlocked both doors, working quickly as she ran from one to the other, hiding her next coughing fit against the sleeve of a raised arm.

"Remember, you've got ten minutes once I activate the disinfection process, so get them to the car as soon as you've given them the injections.  I'll rejoin you as soon as I can."

This was what Sera and Lena heard as the locks on their cells clicked open.

Lena Reilly
Her attention snaps to the door when she hears that telltale click, eyes narrowed.  She's past the point of trusting anything she sees or hears now; the waking nightmares have made that basically impossible.  Even hearing Katie's words don't make her believe what she's hearing; her mind could easily be making this up in some fevered pitch of hope, or she could be the target of some new trick by Callum.

Frankly though, she doesn't much care.  As long as she's got a way out of this room, it could lead into a wall of gunmen ready to blast her into oblivion.  Callum well knows she's accept that over dying of this thing.

And so she takes slow, belabored steps, weezing as she does, toward the door.  Just in case someone might be coming who wants to keep her forced in here (she wouldn't put that kind of mind game past them), she spits a bloody mouthful that she just recently coughed up into the palm of her hand.  It may not be the most effective deterrent--she doesn't know if she'll be able to actually get it into someone's mouth or the life, and even if so they may be immunized against the Hydra virus--but people generally want to play it safe with HIV.  She leans weakly against the wall and, with her free hand, she reaches out to open the door.  Sure, her hand slips on the handle and she has to fumble a little, but she pushes it open and stumbles her way to
Freedom.  Even if it's not freedom from this place, it's a minor victory.  It's about all she's got.

Sid
When Grace asks her question Sid merely nods her head once, the movement very slight in the dark cramped back seat.  And then they are waiting.  A minute passes, two, but they might as well be hundreds, even thousands of years.  Sera and Lena are in there, they're dying and if something goes wrong they won't even know that their friends are right there, were there, are trying to get them out.

Sid is silent through the wait as she runs over again and again the contents of her bag.  What she has, what they look like, what she needs, what she hopes she doesn't need.  A sort of desperation rises all around her, radiating from her every pore as she reaches out and finds each living creature within a radius of them.  When Katie returns Sid does not relax.  Her shoulders remain tight, every muscle taut with tension as she makes her way out of the car.

She follows the woman through the maze of the building's interior, hoping Grace is taking notes on their passage because Sid is taking out a needle and poking it into a small vial.  Then she caps the needle in plastic and unwraps another, repeats the process.  They have to be ready to go, from reunion to injection to run-run-run in a matter of moments.

Down the stairs and to the keycode and Sid passes a needle to Grace outside Lena's door.  "Let her do it," she says, meaning Lena, who if she hasn't had to inject someone before has likely watched it done a hundred thousand times to herself.  They're all sick, though, with Grace a little better.  And Sid, the healthiest of them all, she beelines for the door to Sera's room, to Sera, shoving past Katie as soon as the door is open.

"Sera!" she calls, perhaps needlessly as she looks around, her heart hammering in her chest.  She knows because she can feel it what she can expect, but knowing only prepares her for the visual.  Sera, sick and curled up in the bathroom.  Sid goes to her quickly and drops to her side.

"Sera," she says, and her voice is strangled, her throat constricting at the sight of Sera, so vibrant even when she was fasting, wasting away, all for what?  Sid never asked.  This time it's different, she knows.  Sera is dying, but not for much longer, not anymore.  "It's me," she says as she fights back tears of relief and tears of pain, pulling Sera toward her as she thumbs off the protective cap of a needle.  "I'm sorry," she whispers, because she knows enough to know this, this place, it's bad to Sera and Sid's about to make it worse with one more needle's prick.

[extending that scan]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (4, 10) ( success x 1 )

Grace
Her friends had been imprisoned here, dying. Hallucinating their deaths over and over again. Grace was a little afraid of what she might find inside. Would they be lucid, or crazed? Would she be able to help them get out?

The doors click, and Grace takes one of them. Lena's door. "Lena? It's Grace," she says, right before the handle jags and she lets go. Her voice is scratchy from the cough still, and she does have to lean her face into her elbow and give it a good fresh blood stain. But she doesn't look that bad.

Lena does. For all that Grace has been through herself, she stares for a second at the state of the woman in front of her. And then, just holds up that syringe that Sid gave her. "Sid found a cure Lena. We're going to be okay," she says in that weak little sick voice. But there's more than sickness in that wavering. It's like she's telling herself it's going to be okay too.

Serafi­ne
The door, opening.  Or rather, first - the locks.  The low tumble of cylinders, the scrape of metal-on-metal and the quiet immediacy of Katie's voice.  The last handful of words, tossed over her shoulder to Sid and Grace.  Caution or admonishment and Sera breathes out, lifting her chin and swinging her head to watch the shadowed edge of the door against the white-washed concrete walls.  The vertigo is briefly overwhelming.
She fights the urge to retch.

There's nothing in her stomach, so the energy expenditure would be futile, anyway.

--

The wasted, skeletal creature that was Serafíne is struggling to stand as Sid pushes open that door.  Has both hands on the cold toilet set and her head bent over, her long hair lank, greasy and damp.  Dark roots clearly showing where the blonde dye ends, tangled ends falling forward over her shoulders into the bowl as, shaking, she pushes herself to try to stand.

Sid gets there first; sinks to her knees on the cold tiled floor of the small, industrial bathroom before Sera has done more than brace her hands over the toilet seat.  It is ridiculously easy for Sid to pull Sera close, to tug her away from the toilet, as there's next to no strength left in her body and her whip-lean frame has lost all fat and more than a bit of muscle in the days since she was brought here.

"Sid."  A drifting look, over her shoulder toward the open door.  "I'm not hallucinating."

Her voice is raw.  The words don't carry beyond the bathroom.  Sera's hands are covered with bruises and a smear of trail of dried blood trickles from her left nostril over the mobile mouth that so usually twists itself into some sort of edgy, knowing grin.  That spirit seems to be almost wholly eclipsed, but there's a spark of something brighter, seizing, angled but unbending at the shadow of the open door.

Sera endures the needle prick, then rises - rather heavily - with Sid's assistance, tearing out the IV for what one hopes is the last time.

They are half-way across the 'hospital' room when a sudden, geysering burst of raw something seizes Sera, and she reaches, grasps that rolling IV pole and throws it across the room.

Tries to throw it across the fucking room.

And then leaves it, god she's weak, the world spinning unpredictably all around her, working to remember how to breathe as Sid supports her on the way out of the room.

Hydra
This was the place that Sid and Lena had been living in since their disappearance: white concrete rooms (no, cells) with a hospital bed, a chair, a table and some medical equipment.  The doors used to lock them in were heavy metal things that creaked from their own weight when opened.  Inside, the rooms had once been clean and sterile, but now they reeked of disease and the coppery tang of blood and bile.  It'd been about 24 hours since the rooms had been cleaned, so likely there were dark red stains on the painted floor or the sheets on the beds.

Lena and Sera were dressed in matching white t-shirts and grey sweatpants, which they barely filled out anymore despite the small sizes.  They looked awful.  Worse even than Grace had looked toward the end.  Katie had been telling the truth when she'd said that both of them were close to death.  Sid would be able to sense it instantly, the way the disease had eaten at them from the inside.  The infection itself had reached a kind of climax point - like it was hovering on the brink of a final attack.  (And jesus, what did this thing look like at the end?  Did it waste its victims away to nothing, or was there some horrible finale in store?)

Katie didn't stick around to see the reunion.  She was already halfway up the stairs by the time Lena opened the door to her cell.  Soon, she'd disappeared, leaving the other four to their own devices.  Grace with Lena and Sid helping Sera up from her collapsed position on the bathroom floor.

And then those life-saving syringes were brought out...

Had Sid really found a cure?  It almost didn't seem possible.  But look - Sid herself seemed almost healthy, and Grace, though sick, was a far cry better than either of the Cultists.  So perhaps it really was true.

Lena Reilly
She narrows her eyes when she sees Grace, and she isn't sure within that spotty vision whether the woman she's seeing is really Grace, or just an overlay.  The Ecstatic is covered in those pick-marks over her skin; her eyes are red-rimmed and unfocused and she's lost more weight than a person really should.  Even in whatever amount of time it's been since she was last tended to, her clothes have been spattered with her own blood as she's coughed it out (itself even more dangerous than Hydra-tainted blood).  And there's a tense moment where Lena looks at Grace with all the rationality of a rabid animal, when it almost seems like she's about to decide fuck it and deliver the biohazardous payload in her hand anyway.

But...she doesn't.  This may not be Grace (c'mon Lena, be honest...probably isn't), but there is a sliver of chance that she might be.  And if not...maybe this will be the needle that finally kills her.  Dead or saved, she doesn't really care at this point.

So she reaches behind her into the room to flick the slimy, red-streaked phlegm in her hand into the room she just staggered out of, then shakes her head when Grace says We're going to be okay.

"Bullshit." She forces the word out through a raw throat, and takes the needle.  She looks at it a second, then rips the protective cap off of the end and feels around on her arm for a vein.  It probably takes longer than it should, but soon she pushes the sharp end in without reaction to however much it may or may not hurt, pushes the plunger down.  "Don't touch me.  Not safe."

"Where's Callum?" she asks as she drops the needle to the ground.  More hateful words have never been heard coming out of the woman's mouth.

Sid
Someone will find out what those final stages feel like.  There is at least one person infected who will not feel the pressure of a needle as Sid's cure is forced into his veins.  Sid had seen to that, because she knew things about this virus even its makers couldn't.  There is a good chance that it will still get out, who knows if someone Sleeping had somehow been infected while these four were still able to be out and about?  Who knows how it will spread out from Eric, who Sid hopes with all of her might is lying twisting writhing as his own immune system fails him and his own creation kills him from the inside out.  And Sid is fairly certain that someone is the one she senses upstairs.

Sid shouldn't take satisfaction in that, or at least most wouldn't expect it from her.  She's so quiet, seems so timid and so shy, that must mean she's a kind, soft-hearted soul, yes?  But these people, these strangers, they tried to kill her and her friends simply because of what they were and how they viewed the universe.  But when Sid looks upward at the ceiling as though she can see through the floor to the rooms above a smile twists the corners of her lips, small and satisfied.

She doesn't dwell on it, though.  No, Sid will not be completely satisified until they're sitting in Sera's kitchen again, eating cake and getting drunk or high or both, talking like there's nothing wrong.  That day will probably never come, really, things will never be the same after this.  They will never be okay again, not really.

Sid doesn't let herself think about that as she pushes the needle into Sera's arm, her veins all to easy to find now that there's so little between them and the surface of her skin.  Sid tries to sound light when she says to Sera, "I'm not a hallucination," rather than No you're not hallucinating.  She could still be for all the Sid knows.  When the needle's saving payload is delivered, Sid casts it aside and pulls one of Sera's arm around her shoulders, bracing her.  Together they head toward the door, but Sid pauses, waiting with Sera as that something courses through her, lets her get that out of her system.  Soon (hopefully, if Katie can really be trusted) this whole place will go up in flames.

"I'm sorry it took so long," she says, her heart breaking on the words even though she knows they got here only as fast as they could.  Still, there is guilt, because while they were here suffering who knows what Sid was in Luke's practice, protected.  "Katie brought us.  She said she's going to shut this place down.  We have to hurry."

Grace
Grace's clothes are spotted with large bleach stains, and the jacket she has on has a few spots of blood where she's coughed into it. She's been there. But not any more.

Lena's clearly not herself, and while Grace certainly has a lot of anger towards the man, there are more important things to do, other than trying to find Callum right now. Such as get the fuck out.

"Callum's off laying a trap for Sid. It's the only way we could get in here -- he emptied the lab trying to get to her. But Lena, we have like 10 minutes to get out of here. The hydra's going to die in fire all right? They've got a failsafe that's going to blow this place away."

Serafine
The room is going to peel itself apart from the inside out.  Something will go wrong.  Sometimes what you notice is the way the lines of the walls begin to weave themselves narrowly and of their own accord.  Sometimes it is simply the way the light shines back at you, as if it was waiting for you to notice.  The places where things go and where they go wrong are myriad and unsettling and each of these things has gone so very wrong for Sera lately. This room is distinct from every other hospital room and -

- god, in truth Sera hardly feels the prick of the needle through her skin.  It is the least of the wounds she has endured.  Sid assures Sera that she herself is not a hallucination and the only reason Sera believes her is that thus far Sid has burrowed her way through Sera's eyes to begin consuming her brain, or something just as shiveringly macabre.

So, Sera does not say anything else to Sid.  Just nods, the gesture rough and dry, leaning on Sid as they shuffle out of the room.  If Sera knew that there was someone else upstairs,

dying of this shit,

(yes, even Erich),

she might -

- oh, but she does not know.  All she knows is how to stumble forward, half-supported by her friend.

Hydra
Flames.  Sera had dreamed of flames - of fire.  Blazing and hot and humming with the deep, resonant sound of an inferno.  What she hadn't known at the time is what it meant - only that it held some connection to Katie's future.  Now she could put the pieces together.  This was it.  This was the end.

They were getting out.  They were going to destroy this place.  Burn it to the fucking ground.

Lena wanted to know where Callum was, but retribution would have to wait.  He was gone, along with most of the others.  Wherever Katie was - whatever she was doing - they had no time to wait.  She'd said she would meet them, and they'd have to trust her to do so.  It was time to leave.

Lena Reilly
She stares dully as Grace tells her that Callum's not here.  And she really doesn't pay attention to the rest of it--anything that Grace says after laying a trap for Sid.  She starts moving in that moment past Grace, toward the exit.  If he's not here, she doesn't want to be here.  And so she starts to walk, with as much speed as she can muster (but really, it's more determination than speed), with one hand against the wall to support her.

And in truth, she still doesn't really believe this.  Maybe it's the Technocracy; maybe they're Sid and Grace clones.  Maybe it's hallucinations.  Maybe she just injected herself with ebola to create the ultimate supervirus.  Either way, she's still moving forward.  There's just a point where your mind takes you to a space beyond fear.  Even for someone who lives in it the way Lena does.

Sid
They make their way out into the hallway, their progress as quick as Sera can manage but still painstakingly slow.  There are still hallways to get through and a car to reach and a Katie to (trust to) meet.  She said the car would be a tight squeeze on the way back, and it had taken some effort on Sid's part not to suggest leaving her behind.  But Sera.  Sera wanted her to have a second chance and so Sid is going to let her.  At least, she isn't going to hinder her, and to her, right now?  It's pretty much the same thing as helping her.
Out in the hall she sees Lena and that gives her strength.  Lena's alive, Lena's making her way out whether she knows it or believes it herself.  This is going to work.

All the while, Sid keeps that net cast.  She feels for the other patterns, already cataloging the ones she's found.  Three guards sleeping, one person very ill.  And those she knows.  So far, so good.

They make their way toward freedom from this toxic nightmare.

Grace
Well, so much for a happy, or even tearful reunion. Lena's ignoring her, shuffling her way along the wall. But then, it's Lena who's suffering. Who is Grace to argue with the way she's dealing with it? Instead, she tries to play along. As she walks alongside Lena, not touching as requested, she vents.

"Callum is such a god damned fuckup. Using a virus like this? He could have killed everyone in the world, we're talking human extinction here. Sid found out Hydra's figured out a way to jump hosts."

Serafi­ne
She wants out.  Out out out.  That desire to get out out out is growing stronger, gathering momentum the further they go.  There's the illusion of strength and Sid can feel Sera straightening, moving faster - which is not to say fast - but can feel the urgency of it beneath her skin.  And everything else she's holding inside her, which radiates from her in subtle tremors as they move.

Down the white hallway and toward or perhaps even up the stairs.  The threads of her vision are knitting themselves together in the back of her mind as Grace and Lena fall into a sort of step beside them, Lena holding herself up, Grace venting about Callum and the rest in ways that Sera herself can hardly comprehend right now.

"Are there other people here?"  Sera asks, as they pass other doors; other windows, other rooms.  The space has a haunting sameness to her and she cannot suppress the shudder that wracks her body as she says that, " - in the rooms.   They should have a chance."

To escape, Sera means.

To escape, too.

Hydra
They made their way up the stairs, limping and stumbling.  Sera asked after other prisoners, but there were no others.  The other cells were vacant.  Whatever the people here had been trying to accomplish, they'd started small.  Perhaps Katie had been right about this being an experiment of sorts.

Meanwhile, the lifesaving virophage began to do its work in the Cultists' bodies, swimming through their bloodstream to attach and embed itself within the Hydra virus.  It would take time for Lena and Sera to feel the effects of the cure, but Sid and Grace had reached them in time.

They would live.

At the top of the stairs, there was a (still-open) door leading to a long white hallway.  On the ground floor, the construction was cleaner - proper walls and wooden doors and a tiled floor.  The place looked just like the inside of any number of smaller science facilities.  Maybe it had been the property of the government or some research company at some point.

As the four of them began to make their way down the hallway, Sid would sense the nearness of Katie's now-familiar pattern, along with the threading, erratic pulse of another (the one she'd assumed - probably correctly - was Eric) approaching them from inside one of the rooms to the right.  A moment later the door pushed open, and Katie stumbled out into the hallway ahead of them with a man draped over her shoulder.
It was Eric.  But the way he looked now was a far-cry from the way Sid and Sera remembered him.  Not the beautiful wannabe actor with his just-perfect tan and gym-sculpted physique.  Gone was the easy confidence and the glow of health.  In the span of only one week (less time than it had taken for the others - perhaps the virus affected Sleepers differently, or perhaps, as Sid and Grace suspected, it was simply growing stronger) he'd become a pale ghost of himself, weakened and sickly and bleeding from nose and mouth and...

There was blood oozing from his ears, too.  And when he breathed, they could all hear the choking gurgle of fluid in his throat.

Katie stumbled - almost dropped him.  And when she righted them both she looked up with a panicked expression, knowing full well how the others were likely to react to the sight of the man leaning up against her in a barely-conscious daze.

"Please," she said.  "He's the only family I have left."

When she spoke, Eric lifted his head and blinked, as though noticing the others for the first time.  "What the fuck are they...!?"

Whatever he was going to say, it was drowned in a fit of coughing, and a fresh splatter of blood struck the wall.

"I'm trying to save your life!" Katie snapped.  "Leave them alone.  It's over.  This is all over."

But whatever impending argument was about to ensue... whatever reaction the others may have had to Eric's appearance, in the end it didn't matter.  It was too late.  The man gave another cough, so hard this time that it wracked his entire body.  He choked and coughed, and then he started to scream.  Katie couldn't hold him any longer, and he collapsed onto the floor, curling into a ball as some kind of spasm worked its way through his muscles.

When he screamed, it sounded like he was drowning.  And when he looked up and opened his eyes, bloody tears streaked their way down his cheeks.

"No no no no..." Katie started to cry as she crouched down beside him, pleading in desperation for some miracle that was never going to come.  "Please, just a little longer.  Eric!"

He gave one final scream, agonized and dying, and then an invisible vice clamped down on his throat and he could no longer take in breath.  What happened next would seem like another hallucination to Sera and Lena.  It so closely mimicked the nightmares they'd all been having.  Patches of red opened up on Eric's face and arms as the skin pulled open and began to melt away.

It kept going, dissolving away the epidermis and the muscle... literally eating him alive.  His eyes were huge and terrified as the spasms went through his body...

Until he literally melted away, leaving behind a bloody, skeletal corpse.

Katie didn't move.  She sat there, crouched in a pool of her brother's blood with tears rolling down her cheeks, and uttered a frail, broken sound.

Lena Reilly
She keeps walking.  Step by step.  One foot in front of the other, away from hell and toward freedom.  Of course, it was a temporary freedom at best for her because even if she did somehow make it out of here, one day she'll be back in a room just like it, looking much the same way and breathing her last.  But even a brief respite from that...it's something.

It's hard, getting up the stairs.  But she forces herself up.  She's not going to die here and even if she was being cured by this concoction that Sid--brilliant, amazing Sid--had come up with, she didn't really want to get blown up either.

And then, just like that, there's Katie and the man she'd never met before.  There's a moment's confusion in Lena's still-bleary mind before the whole scene starts to unfold.  She weaves there a moment, leaning against the wall.  She watches the whole thing unfold.

And when we say the whole thing, we mean the whole thing.  She stares dully as the disease eats Eric and rips him apart, dissolving him into nothing but a mess of blood and a skeleton.  Maybe deep down, she feels sorrow for the loss.  Maybe there's some empathy left in her for Katie, knowing what that must be like for her.

Right now, she's just too burned out to feel anything but Rage and Hate.  But it's telling (and perhaps encouraging) when she starts walking up to Katie, ducks down and struggles to slip her head under the broken girl's arm, to lift her up.

Forgiveness?  Hard to say.  But maybe, despite the fact that she does it all with the expression of a very angry zombie, the Ecstatic isn't completely gone off the deep end.

Grace
Grace hasn't watched a person die before. Not like this. There had been deaths at the theater, but she hadn't seen them really. And this, so much like one of her feverish hallucinations, really happening to someone else?
She can only make it a few steps before she starts to retch. It's not blood that comes up this time. This isn't the virus' doing. It's the terror of it all. That's what would have happened to her if not for Sid.

She would have been eaten like that.

Who does this, who makes a thing like Hydra? And then, who releases it, knowing that this is the result?
In between her spasms of nausea, she gets out the occasional "Oh God," as if she believed in a God, really. Who could, when this is a thing that exists.

Sid
When the door opened and Katie spilled out, Sid was already shifting closer toward the wall, and she was putting herself between the woman and her friend.  She would protect Sera until her dying breath if Katie turned on them, if the sick one lunged at them.

And there they are, the pretty siblings, only one of them is looking considerably worse for wear.  Sid knows she should feel bad, she should feel guilt for what she's done.  She did that to him.  She knew that the barrier that kept the Sleepers safe was breaking down.  The cold twist in her stomach comes from something else.  It comes from Katie trying to beg for her brother's life.  She must realize how that request will go with them.  Katie was spared because of Sera, and because she offered the aid they needed to get their friends out.  Eric?  Eric only tried to kill them.  Eric turned them into lab rats.  On purpose.  Willingly.  He'd said that it was nothing personal and maybe it wasn't, but probably it was.  He had some personal vendetta (his nephew maybe? what it had cost his sister?) against the Awakened.  If Katie wanted the cure for him, she could pry it from Sid's cold dead fingers.  Because that's the only way he could be helped, if they killed the Orphan to get to it.

He can't do that, though, and they watch what these people had planned for them happen to him in fast forward.  Sid watches, cold, satisfied, as Eric is torn apart by the virus.

And then her head snaps up, facing away from them.  "They're coming.  Three of them, two men and a woman," she says, and she looks at the others.  Five of them, one healthy, four in various stages of sickness, one of them not wholly on their side.  She looks at Grace.  "We need to get out of here before the fire starts."  She says it mostly to jar Katie, to remind her that their time is limited - provided she did as she said she would.  She doesn't wait for her, though, the woman can stay and die by her brother's mutilated corpse or leave with them.  Sid got what she came for, even got a little extra.

Serafi­ne
Strange how they all react up there, marooned in a bloodspattered hallway while a man is consumed from inside himself.  Sid puts herself between Sera and Katie and Sera's confused, muzzled, not entirely with it and -

- all of that, she'll remember later. Like Grace, Sera too starts to retch.  Unless Grace, what comes up from her abused body is little more than blood leached from the tissue lining her stomach, her throat, spat back into her mouth to spatter the flood with Eric's life's blood as he - dissolves, is eaten from the inside out.  It just gets worse and worse, a horror show.  Sid's attention snaps away Lena goes to help Katie rise and Sera, well, Sera disintangles herself from Sid's arms, slips in the blood and goes down to one knee, staring at Katie and crying with her bloodied tears and finding the spike in her own pain and Katie's pain, the atomized world, the net that knits them together.  Sera's tears are coming more quickly now and they are bloodied and blood tinged and the world is a whirring chaos and her heart is still beating, the pulse thready but loud in her ears.  Lena reaches to help Katie stand and Sera brushes the tears away from her cheeks with the edge of her palm leaving bloody streaks behind on her ashen skin.

Reaches out, and offers Katie a hand.

"We have to go."

[Empathy projection: Katie.  Hope  Difficulty 5  +1 [sick]  -1 practiced.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (1, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Hydra
Despite everything, Lena offered Katie a shoulder to lean against, attempting to help the shocked and traumatized woman to her feet.  But Katie pulled her arm back and shook her head, sliding in the spreading pool of blood as she crouched against the wall.  She didn't speak.  She just sat there, shivering and broken.
Then Sera offered a hand.  Did more than that - reached out with her mind to offer the only form of comfort she was able to give.  But it was no use - just as her effects had bounced off of Eric's shielded mind, so too did this one reflect away from Katie.  The thing that someone had implanted into her brain - the thing that was meant to protect her - now kept her from receiving human connection.

She looked at Sera and shook her head slowly.  Finally she mustered a few words.  "I just need... a few minutes.  With him.  Go."

Some of the others were already making their way past the ruined corpse, but they were moving both toward the exit and the three people who were making their way quickly toward them.  Three against five were decent odds, but how many of them were really capable of fighting, and what sorts of weapons did their enemies have?

It didn't matter.  They were already there.

Only moments after Sid uttered her warning, three people appeared at the end of the hall, closing off the route to the exit.  Two of them were unfamiliar: a man and a woman in their twenties, the former blond and the latter brunette.  The man in the middle was Callum.  All three of them had guns raised and pointed in their direction.

"Kathrine," Callum spoke without taking his eyes off of Sid and the others.  There was a cold, venomous finality to the word.  In his off-hand he held a phone, which he started to speak into, "I found them.  We're at the..."

He stopped cold and stared at Katie, who'd pulled something round and palm-sized out of her pocket.  I tiny LED light was flashing white just above where her thumb was pressed against what looked like some kind of trigger.

"Katie.  If you let go, we'll both die."

Callum was trying to reason with a woman who'd just watched her last surviving family member get eaten alive by a disease they'd all unleashed onto the world.

Sid
Sera lets go and for a moment Sid stands there, watching her and watching over her.  She's not going anywhere unless Sera and Lena and Grace are with her, but she will at least move to stand at the front.  She will be their shield for now.

Because here they come.  A man she's only seen on video and two others.  Sid stands between them, hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at her side.  Eric is the only one who has experienced what Sid is about to do, but Eric is a half-melted skeleton in a puddle of blood on the floor.

They may have guns, but these are Awakened Mages.  The universe exists to be bent to their Will.  And right now, Sid intends to bend Fate to hers.

[Unlucky Bastard: Entropy 2: Extending however long she can to get as many suxx as possible to target all three people: coincidental, -1 (hella practiced, thanks, people who are dicks to Shoshannah!)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (1, 5) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Lena Reilly
She gets pulled away from and for some reason, in that moment, she looks hurt.  Of course, she's not thinking clearly and there are a lot of things that could be (and are) running through her head.  But she draws away, her jaw hardening when her offer to help has been rejected.  She puts her hand against the wall and starts to walk.

But then, there is Callum.  And there is--

Oh, who the fuck cares.  THERE IS CALLUM.

She warned him.  She really did.  He chose to lie to her and to play on her good nature.  And so where her hand leans, her fingers rise and fall in a thump.

Thump-thump, thump.

A beat.  And she does it again.  And she focuses on that beat, letting the heartbeat connect them all.  Through time, through each other.  She's making herself a conduit for surface thoughts to go from one person into her and through to someone else.  Of course, one of those people is now dead.  But when you're a Time mage, that's not so impossible.  (Hey, what's a little more mental trauma in the sake of dishing some out?)
And so she shuts her eyes and opens her mind, attempting to connect past and present.  Cold life and bloody death.  Eric and Callum.  Of course, she doesn't know there are Mind shields to deal with, but ah, well.

[Mind 2, Time 2.  Diff 5+1 for sick -3 Quint to make diff 3, dumping WP in.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (5, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Serafi­ne
There's no connection.  Something hard, finite, physical, technological in the between skin and skin and mind and mind and atom and atom, dividing Katie neatly from the ineffable and the infinite and then -
- more chaos.  Someone just needs more time and other people have guns drawn and there's this strange, grim standoff in the once-sterile hallway around the corpse of the bright, animate man who thought his sister would get the joke about Sera's insane boots just a handful of weeks ago.

Sera does not remember getting back to her feet but somehow she's standing; she doesn't have the energy to say anything more to Katie than she said on one knee, blooded and sick-to-death, with an open hand and does not remember entirely how her mouth works except when the nausea overtakes her.

And now three people with guns are standing between them and the exit.  Between Sera and the exit to this place.

Sera grits her teeth and shoves all her panic, her fear, her need-to-escape, right at the male stranger.

[Mind 2: empathic projection.  Uh.  Fear, on dude she recognizes.  Dif: 5  +1 (sick)  -1 (resonance appropriate)  -1 (practiced)
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (4, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Grace
She gets a hold on herself. They don't have time. Certainly not enough time for her to fall apart. But then, Callum is there, and he's pointing a gun at them, and suddenly Grace really wishes she'd spent every weekend at Kalen's place learning how to use one.

Still, her fear doesn't stop her from engaging the man. "You... you did this," she says, and she means all of this. Lena and Sera drowning in blood and death, Eric being eaten alive. Not to mention her own tortures, or the future of a pandemic of Hydra. "How could you be so stupid?"

"You called it a masterwork. But it thinks it could do better. It's evolving, Callum. Look what your masterwork does," she says, and points to the bloody skeleton. "You'd see the whole world drown in blood before you'd be satisfied, is that it?"

Hydra
The air in the hallway grew charged with resonance as each of them in turn began to weave effects against the armed bioterrorists at the end of the hall.  Having tried so many times to breach the minds of her captors and failed, perhaps Sera half expected her projection to dissolve on contact as it had moments before with Katie.

But no.  She'd seen this man's thoughts before.  And now her will struck his mind like a thunderbolt of fear and panic, giving the guard a brief taste of what she'd been living with since she'd arrived in this horrible place.

It worked.

"We have to get out of here!" he hissed in a panicked rush, and they'd all see the flash of anger pass across Callum's eyes (he still had not torn them away from the flashing orb in Katie's hand) as the blond man beside him turned and bolted away as fast as he could, running toward the door.  He'd be out of the building in seconds.

Lena's effect was longer in the working.  The world around her dimmed as she pulled on the threads of time, looking back into the last moments of Eric's death.  Whatever had protected his mind before, it was gone, because Lena was able to sense and channel every horrible, visceral emotion surging through his mind in those final seconds.

But when she tried to channel them into Callum, she'd find the way blocked by what felt like a hard, heavy wall of iron.  She'd have to try harder if she wanted to breach it.

Sid could feel the early workings of her effect coming together, but it wasn't yet strong enough to release onto the man and woman still standing at the end of the hall.

Grace, new to her powers as she was, had no such assaults.  Nor did she have any weapons to protect herself with. But the fact that she didn't have a gun didn't stop her from confronting the man who'd done this to them all.  And Callum?  He still didn't look at her.

He was looking at that thing.  And Katie was staring right back at him.  As though everything they might need to say to each other could be said with a single look.

When Callum responded to Grace, his voice was soft and cold.  "Do you really think I would unleash something like this without knowing exactly what it was capable of?"

At that moment, Katie smiled.

"Wouldn't your dad be proud."

Then she pulled her thumb off the trigger of the device in her hand, and in the same moment, Callum shot her.  The bullet hit her in the center of her sternum, and blood began to bubble up from the wound as the thing in her hand emitted a hard sonic pulse.  The people standing in the hallway would feel more than hear it - the way it moved through their bones and rippled the air.

All at once these things happened:

Katie slumped to the ground, dead, blood seeping out of her nose and ears.

Something exploded in the guns that Callum and the woman held, and the woman dropped hers with a cry as it burned her hand.

In the room next door, there was a sound of electrical devices and computers sparking and popping and shorting out.  Anything electronic the mages were carrying with them sparked and died.

Callum's eyes rolled back into his head.  His body convulsed as he dropped to the floor, blood seeping out of his ears and nose as it had with Katie.  Something had burst inside of his head.

Then the lights in the hallway went out.

Serafine
Then it is dark; everything is chaos.  The background taste of ozone from the dead electronics is not enough to overcome the coil of bile and blood in the back of her throat but she is aware of it, and aware of the need to move.

Sera does not run.  Cannot run, but jesus fuck she comes close to it.  Charges for the door  as fast as she can, aching and bleeding and no-longer-dying and also spent, exhausted, emotionally rendered.

[Run for the door.  Dex + Ath -2]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 9, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Sid
Callum falls, the other man bolts, one remains.  Sid winces at the sound, tries to ignore the feel of her phone fizzling out in her pocket.  Then Sera is running, or charging at the door.  Good.  Good, get out, Sera.  Go and don't look back.

Because Sid is moving forward now, slowly as she twists the fates around the man who is running away.  With luck he'll find his shoes untied or the door stuck, barring his escape.  Something something, there's always something.

[extending, +1 for distraction probably, dropping her last quint to lower the diff to 4, now targeting only the guy and releasing, so whatever suxx go to increasing his difficulties]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (2, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Lena Reilly
It's traumatic to experience someone's death in a very real sense.  To have your mind connected to someone else's in the moments when it winks out is to experience the emotional trauma of their passing.  And when it's as horrible as Eric's death was...well, let's just say that Lena's mind buckles under the weight of dying from disease.  But it will all be worth it if she can deliver that pain, Eric Draven-style, onto the man who she hates so very much.  More than anything on this world currently, and possibly everything in the next.

And thus, to say that she is frustrated when it doesn't happen, when she comes up against a mind shield...well, frustrated doesn't begin to describe it.  Those thoughts jam up like traffic on an unexpectedly-closed overpass, an infinite-car pile-up on the Lena Mental Expressway.  She screams, in anger and frustration and panicked fear and pure, utter rage.

It's mostly instinct that her hand keeps that Thump, thump-thump, thump beat up, albeit frenetically now, like a frenzied butterfly rhythm.  Maybe this is how someone invented dubstep.  Certainly, you would have to be this wacked in the head to come up with such a thing.

And so she finds out the next closest target that isn't her friends.  And she unleashes it on them full-bore, probably with a triple dose of her own hatred and fear and pain.

[[Extending effect.  Out of Quint, +1 diff from before for extension.]]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 4) ( fail )

Grace
Her laptop and phone nestled into the bag on her shoulder popped and sputtered. On top of everything else, like a cherry, that.

Sera brushes past her, moving as fast as a nearly dead person can. And it's a damn good idea. Grace catches up to her, lends a hand, tries to help keep her up and running as much as she can.

"Come on, I'll get you to the car, lean on me if you need it."

Lena Reilly
[[Paradox]]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Lena Reilly
[[Soak?]]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (2, 7) ( success x 1 )

Hydra
[Lena takes 1B on top of the 4L from the disease]

Hydra
Sera had the right idea in running for the door.  Not long after she started her unsteady, shuffling run toward the exit, a disembodied and coldly mechanical voice announced over the speakers:
"Three minutes until disinfection protocol."

When the remaining woman heard this, she snapped her head up in panic.  Looking around at the carnage before her, she hesitated a moment, then turned and ran back through the front room, making her way to the door.

On her way out, she'd trip over the prone body of her colleague, who'd slipped and cracked his head hard on the front desk in his panicked (and it would seem - very unlucky) escape attempt.  He was alive, but unconscious.

In her frustration, Lena attempted to channel her effect onto the fleeing guard, but she missed her target entirely and the effect went off inside her own head, cracking down with a horrible shock of psychic pain that radiated inside of her skull.  For a brief, fleeting moment, she'd feel everything she'd intended Callum to feel.
Then it washed away, and she was left in a dim hallway with her friends urging her to leave.

They all go.  And however they make their way toward the door, they'd find their path open.  The three drugged guards in the lab were still unconscious, as was the one now sprawled on the floor.  The woman was just disappearing out the door and into the parking lot.  Wherever the rest of Hydra was, they hadn't yet made it to the lab.

Lena Reilly
When she couldn't directly pass on the dying sensation of Eric, she'd screamed.  When it bounces back like a rubber band directly into her brain and goes off like a psychic shrapnel-filled IED, she slams herself against the wall and her mouth opens, but no scream comes out.  It's like she's been shot straight through the lungs and would cry out in horror if she could, but lacks the capacity to do so.

It scatters away quickly enough though, leaving shadows behind that she'll have to sort out later.  She doesn't have anything left to throw up, but her body is certainly trying as she straightens herself, staggering blindly forward after her friends, running on pure animal survival instinct.

Serafi­ne
Sera accepts Grace's help.  Needs it, really.  Whatever it is that is keeping her together at this point - will, perhaps - has started to desert her and there's something ragged and terrible about the way her wasted body moves, Sera who is also so entirely in-her-skin, self-assured and sensual and so many other things.

The terrible, shuffling run and Grace on one side and then run into the prone body of a man while a disembodied voice, cold and metallic, chills through the speakers.  Sera breaks a bit away from Grace as they are passing the prone body of the man she tried to scare into fleeing - did scare into fleeing - almost literally trips over him and starts - shaking more, and crying, and cursing.

Shit oh shit oh shit,

she's saying, shit oh shit

barely keeping it together, shaking so powerfully and imploring Grace, "We can't leave him.  This place is going to burn."

Sera grabs one of his arms and starts trying to drag the unconscious man toward the door.

Sid
She did it.  Katie did what she said that she'd do.  In three minutes this place is going to lock itself down and burn itself apart from the inside.  Just like the virus created within its walls was designed to do.  Just like what these people wanted to do to Sid, Sera, Grace, and Lena.

Sid wants them all to die, all of them, every last one.  Every person who had a hand in this place and what it did to her friends, she wants them dead, dead, dead.  That kind of hatred should scare her, but it doesn't.  She was never the mouse people thought she was.

But she can't stop to make sure that all of these people get what they deserve.  Lena's still back, and as much as Sid would like to stay and kick in Callum's chest cavity with her booted foot, her first and only priority is getting her friends out to safety.  So she goes back, peeling out of her sweatshirt as she goes back, throws it around the Ecstatic's shoulders, giving her something to hold so she can safely urge her toward that door.

Where Sera is trying to drag a man toward the door.  Sid reaches for her arm as she guides Lena forward and past her.  "Sera you can't we have to go."  Her voice breaks on the last word, breaks for Sera not for the man, Sid could not care less about the man.  Tears well up in her dark eyes, threatening to spill over her chest but she blinks them back, no no, not yet.  She has to get Sera, her friend, who wants to save even one of these people who did this terrible thing to her, Sera who has that kind of forgiveness in her.  She has to get her and they have to run.

Grace
Grace goes wide-eyed at Sera, as she -- even at her worst of health -- starts trying to drag a full-grown man out the door.

"Sera, we can't! I'm sick, you're sick. There's no way we can move him... Aww hell! We're not going to make it as it is!"

She and Sid both try to dissuade her, but Grace decides that a bit of physical urging is needed. She tries to grab Sera's hand, tries to drag her out of the building.

Serafi­ne
It's not forgiveness, just humanity.  Grace isn't helping, just dragging her away and now Sera is pulled open, Grace tugging her from the unconscious stranger, Sera shaking, crying, struggling to pull a full grown man she wouldn't be able to drag at her healthiest and cannot begin to budge, with one hand.

"Wake up!"

Frustrated, the work is a lashing, visceral thing, an urgent push as his unconscious mind.

[Mind 2.  Dif: 5 + 1 (sic)  -1 resonance appropriate.  -1 quint.  ]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (6, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Hydra
"Two minutes until disinfection protocol."

The truth was, if they all tried, they could probably get the guy out the door before the building locked itself down.  But Lena was in no shape to help, and Sid and Grace weren't likely to want to risk their lives to save a man who'd wanted them dead.  Who'd stood by and allowed them to be effectively tortured by this disease.

It would seem that Sera was the only one among them willing to offer the unnamed man any kind of forgiveness.  Or maybe she'd just had enough of death and misery for one lifetime.

It was probable that this man did not deserve her help.  But forgiveness wasn't only about the other person.  Sometimes it was just about holding on to your humanity.

So Sera did the only thing she could think to do.  She lashed out with her mind... and woke the man up.
He sat up with a shock, gasping in breath.  There was panic and confusion in his eyes as he scrabbled to his feet, nearly slipping and falling again in the process.  It was a small mercy that he was too much in the throes of the fear that had been projected onto him to think to attack any of them.  Instead he just ran for the door.

Serafi­ne
There's almost nothing left inside Sera as the working takes effect, jolts the man from unconsciousness to scramble to his feet and run.  He takes off going past them and Sera is absolutely, utterly spent.  Would not be able to move if Grace were not pulling her along behind.  Would not, perhaps, remember how or why to move.

But Sid urges and Grace pulls and there is no longer an unconscious man between Sera and freedom, doomed to some terrible death-by-fire.  So: move she does, at last,

crying, yes.  All the way.

Grace
Sera wakes the man, and Grace supports her, tries to keep her moving. Well, now there is no dead-weight to drag out the door, but Sera's not moving without encouragement.

Grace doesn't cry. Oh maybe she will later, when the enormity of the situation and her life comes crashing down. But she doesn't cry now. Maybe she would, if Sera didn't need her to be the strong one, to be a person to lean on.

She just keeps going.

"Just a little bit more. We're almost there."

Sid
[WP to not kill a dude.  Down three from expenditures.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 9) ( success x 1 )

Lena Reilly
Man?  What man?  Lena, frankly, doesn't see any man.  There might be a time where, if she did see him, she might help.  That time might even be now, if she were cognizant and capable.  She did try to help Katie up.  But she's neither capable nor really all that cognizant of anything, and so she just keeps stumbling for the door, urged onward by Sid.

Once she's outside, she doesn't really bother to check her surroundings.  She feels fresh air and it's barely six steps outside the door before her legs are failing her.  She makes it as far as Sid can guide her--perhaps even to the car--before she's on her hands and knees on whatever surface she's on or pushed to, and then on laying on her side.  She doesn't sigh in relief, doesn't thank anything for being alive.  Doesn't cry, doesn't ask questions, doesn't talk.  She just lays there, or leans there if nudged into a sitting position against something, with a deeply distant and faraway look.

Sid
That man hurt them.  Sid doesn't know how much, she doesn't know what he may or may not have done down in the rooms below, but his connection to them is enough.  He is guilty by his association with his maniacs.  He is guilty of hurting people just to hurt them.  Of trying to kill them.  Sid knows what it's like to suffer at the hands who take joy in the pain of others.  She has the scars to prove it.

She has a quiet, simmering fury to prove it.

Sera wants that man saved so badly she would risk her own life to make sure he got out.  In the end that's all that saves him.  It's all that stops Sid from jumping on him as soon as he stands up, all that keeps her from stomping down with all her might onto his ankle, hoping to break it, hoping to hobble him and trap him in here.  Death by fire is too kind.

Instead, Sid stands behind Sera, fists clenched at her sides, her whole body shaking with the desire to snuff out that tormentor.  Her eyes track the man as he goes, and for a moment Sid is too furious to move.  He's getting away, he's going to get away and live his life as though none of this ever happened while they live with the scars, the memories, the pain and hurt.

Only when Sera and Grace and Lena are nearer the doors does Sid finally force herself to move.  She passes a hand over her face as she moves, one step, two steps, three, suddenly stiff limbs loosening with each step until she's running, hurling herself out of the building with a strangled cry of grief and rage.  She doesn't stop, doesn't turn to look back, doesn't turn to look for the two that escaped.  They may have to deal with them later, but first they have to get away from this place.

She heads for the car that brought them here, thankful that Katie left the keys behind for them.  She doesn't look at the others as she makes sure the doors are all unlocked, and they're free to go.  Unless there are very strong objections, Sid will take them all to Luke's.

Hydra
The clock was counting down.  Time running out.  But there was the door just ahead, and one by one (or two by two) they all made their way past it and out into the crisp late-October air.  Outside the sun had gone down, and the parking lot was dark and empty apart from Katie and Eric's Audi and the back of a black van that was presently peeling its way onto the road.

They were getting away.

Sometimes in life, there were no clean endings.

A minute and a half after Sid let the glass door slide shut behind her, the locks on the building clicked shut, moved by some automated protocol.  For a moment, everything was still.

Then the door and the windows shattered, exploding outwards in a bright cloud of flame.  Inside, bodies of those living and dead roasted.  Electronics melted and scorched.  Paint peeled from the walls and dissolved in the heat.  Glass vials popped.

The building burned.  The virus burned.

Turned out it was fire that killed the Hydra after all.

The Woman with the Hood

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.