sixthiterationlogs | [MINGLE] PLOT: Down the Tubes: Alarm

[MINGLE] PLOT: Down the Tubes: Alarm

WHERE: The bunker & elsewhere
WHEN: 1 September 2018
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Please warn on threads
NOTES: Plot Details | Bunker Details | Bunker Map & Key
Threads may take place ANYTIME during the plot, including before, during and after the tubes have been opened, just please do not godmod tube arrivals without explicit permission. Related threads not in the bunker are welcomed, as are general bunker exploration/reaction threads that have nothing to do with the arrivals. Please reference the bunker key doc for what is and isn't available to explore at present.

Deep under the mountain, tucked away in the newly-discovered bunker complex, there is a room where everyone begins. It is filled with equipment — Computer consoles, monitors — but the point of it all resides within ten vertical stasis tubes lined neatly along a far wall.

One of them has been cracked and lies dormant, dry. In six of the remaining are bodies, unconscious and floating in their familiar vari-colored scrubs, vital signs ticking calmly off on their respective readouts.

In the corner, near the cracked tube, the ceiling has shattered and tumbled inward, across the floor and over the largest console in the room — The one flashing 24 HOURS UNTIL STASIS FAILURE.

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"Moore," I instinctively reply, and then step quickly forward, eyebrows pinched.

"Shit— Sam, you're bleeding." And don't ask me how that's possible when she's a vampire, but it's right there in front of me. I heft the pack off one shoulder and hastily pull open the zipper so I can jerk out one of the pieces of clean bandage I'd packed just in case.

"Here, just—" I falter with the fabric lifted between us. "Is that... Are you crying?"

Not that I could blame anyone for that today.

Sam took the bandage. She knew what her blood could do to a human. But she could only imagine what it would do to a zombie. And, frankly, scientific curiosity only went so far. So she wiped her eyes and turned hastily back to the shelf.

Running her finger along the initials, she found the one labeled O. M. “There you are.” Close to the one marked S. M. of course.

The fucking multiverse still liked to alphabetize.

Go figure.

“No matter where I go, I’m always a label on a shelf somewhere.” That and the alphabet were her only constants.

Frowning, I turn my attention to the rows of vials, open pack sagging against my hip. To see them all lined up so neatly, so coldly and clinically, is the most unsettling part of this experience yet.

"Why would these even be here?" I quietly ask, a rhetorical question. Sam obviously isn't going to know any more than I do, although it's possible she has theories.

I pluck up the tube Sam's pointed out, OM coded with dark blue, and shove it into my bag without thinking. It's followed by ML with magenta and RC with teal, the glass clinking as I tuck them away. At the B's I hesitate, brow pinching as I tap my finger from one to another — No BB. And then I remember, and sweep up the JB in blue as well.

It's probably pointless, but I really don't care.

Absently, Sam dabbed at the blood in her eyelashes. She'd considered taking her own. Besides the fact that it felt like an intense invasion of privacy, she figured it might well be vitae, which could fuck up someone even more than her tears. Hell, she'd even reached for the vial. But then...

But then.

"I imagine there's more where this came from," she said quietly, examining the red, butterfly patterns on the gauze.

It didn't matter if they took the vials or left them. They were in the system now. This was just...just the fucking museum display.

"Probably, but that's not the point," I reply as I zip the bag back up and heft it properly back over both arms. "I don't know if anybody's watching or not, I don't know what kind of sick game this is, but if somebody is watching right now, even if it makes no difference to them at all, I want them to know I don't consent to this. Not for me, not for the people I care about."

I reach up, pull Sam's vial down from its holder, and thrust it her way. "It doesn't matter what you do with it. Throw it in the lake for all I care. Flush it down the toilet. Feed it to a bear. Sometimes it feels good to give somebody the finger even when they can't see you do it."

Sam was more than a little surprised. Although not necessarily in a bad way. She took the vial from Liv, holding it with the same delicacy as one might hold a nuclear bomb. Not that her vitae could hurt her. But it was still hard not to think of it as a deadly weapon.

It was.

She frowned a little. "You know," she said. "I saw you taking down a bunch of those vials." Her friends, she presumed. "And I immediately thought to myself...no one would take down my vial for me."

Depressing as fuck. But also true.

Edited 2018-09-06 13:20 (UTC)

Everybody has their shit; as a person who has more shit than most, I absolutely get that. For people like Sam and me, normalcy is a luxury, and I guess for her, friends are lumped in there, too. It's hard to not be a little hurt by the fact that she's apparently missed my efforts to be around, make sure she stays fed and generally be dependable, but maybe that's on me. Maybe I've been too distracted. It wouldn't be the first time.

"Sam," I begin, my expression pinching. "The only reason I didn't take yours down with the others is because you're standing right here."

"No, no," Sam said, waving her off. "That's not what I meant." It wasn't often Sam got apologies. Even less when they weren't warranted. "What I'm trying to say...and failing to say, I guess..."

Why were people so fucking hard?

"Is...thank you."

Yeah, that hadn't come out right. Not at all.

It really must be a sad state of affairs up in Casa de Samantha if something I consider so basic, so intrinsic to being a decent human being, warrants thanking, but it's better than what I thought was happening. I still feel shitty, just for different reasons.

"We need to get out of here," I declare, because that is the one thing about this whole situation I am rock-solid certain of. I reach to loop an arm around Sam's. "There's only so much creepy mind-fuck either of us should be expected to endure in a day."

It wasn't exactly up to them. But Sam was a physical creature and responded pretty readily to touch. And there was only so much she could accomplish staring at the vials. Aside from get herself a little hungry and that was not happening. Whether from a vein or a vial, she was pretty resolved not to drink another one of her neighbors, if she could help it.

So much wrongness.

So, so much.

"Yeah," she sighed. "You're probably right."

Still, she couldn't help but stare up at the shelves again.

They were so organized...

"Look, I get that this is like a buffet for you— Trust me, I get it. Intimately. I used to work in the morgue. But we gotta go." I tug Sam more insistently toward the door. "Look away, baby, look away..." I sing, because hell, if I can't accomplish this, maybe Chicago can. They have mystical ballad powers.

Seeing as Rob and Anne were up in their fifties by the time they adopted Sam, she was intimately familiar with old-people music. And normally, would have appreciated the joke.

It bothered her a little that Liv thought she had so little impulse control.

But what was really bothering her was... "They wanted us to find this," she said, letting Liv pull her away from the shelves. "They had to. No self-respecting scientists would just leave data out like this for the subjects to find. They...had to."

"Maybe they're not self-respecting," I reply, mouth twitching down. "God knows they don't respect anything else." Like the laws of physics or the natural passage of time.

"I mean, if you want to stay here—" I slip my hand from Sam's arm, hold it up. "You do you. I'm just thinking it might be healthier to mull over the screwed up surprises down here in a place with actual fresh air. As a physician and as a friend. Because just being down here is a little much for me, personally."

"No," she said, "no, you're right. We should get the fuck out of dodge." The spell didn't exactly break. Sam could never stop her mind from churning. But she followed Liv to the door, still twisting the vial between her fingers.

If they wanted her vitae for whatever reason, they'd find a way to get it and they could...

She paused, just at the door.

"Liv," she said. "You're working in the medical building, right?"

Already in the hall, I pause, and can't help wondering why this is a question that can't be asked while we continue walking away from this house of horrors.

"I sit around in the hospital doing nothing, if that's what you mean," I reply over my shoulder. "Why?"

Sam was so fucking good at analyzing and over-analyzing shit. The problem was, it sometimes got in the way of her ultimately good intentions. The fact that the road to hell was paved with them was constantly on her mind, of course. It was sort of the definition of the journey that had led her to this moment.

But she shoved all of that to her subconscious.

And she held out her hands, pressing the vial of her blood in to Liv's palm.

"This is a medicine of last resort. Not last resort. Last, last, last, last, seriously no other options, last resort." She was talking as fast as possible, to keep herself from changing her mind. "I want you to have it. Just in case." She had people she cared about. She deserved it.

Sam couldn't second guess that fact.

"What?" I say, squinting down at the vial with Sam's initials, and then look back up to her, eyebrows pulled together in confusion. Yeah, it's legit embarrassing how long it takes me to clue into what she's talking about.

"Like turn someone into a vampire?" And now I'm confused for a whole other pile of reasons. Apparently I didn't go over Zombie 101 with Sam like I probably should have. "I mean... Okay. If they prefer it, I guess. But I can turn people into zombies as a last, last, last, last resort, too, so if you would rather keep this or get rid of it—" I hold up the vial, eyebrows arching. "Otherwise I'm just going to label it 'Last, last, last, last resort: Version Vampire' and stick it on a shelf."

The fact of the matter was that Embracing had been one of the first things Sam had asked about, when she was starting out her 'Requiem,' as they called it. Karen had been appropriately horrified. And it had taken Sam a long time to explain that she didn't want to know how to do it, so she could.

More so she could avoid it.

She shook her head a little bit. "It has to be fresh from the tap to turn someone," she said. "Which is never going to happen. But vitae on its own...uh...fancy word for blood. Vampire blood has some healing properties. The side effects are shitty as hell." Even if they worked in the clown rodeo. "But vampirism isn't one of them."

"Fresh from the tap," I echo with a considering cant of my head. "Good to know." And a lot safer than what I've got going on, so points to vampirism.

"What sort of side effects are we talking about here?"

Everything's a balancing act in this place when it comes to the medical profession. The local plant life have a lot of benefits, too, but the side effects can be nasty. Plus, a lot of our supplies are very limited. You always have to ask if it's worth it, and I'm not talking about debating whether an opioid is more appropriate than extra-strength Tylenol. You've got to figure in the spring water, things like that. It's all just a little skewed.

Sam jammed her thumb into the hollow of her eye, rubbing her brow bone. "Um, the aging process is halted for a month," she said. "Then when it wears off, it zooms back on track." For ghouls who'd been drinking vampire blood for years and years and years, this was a serious problem. But she figured a month wasn't so bad. Not for a normal human, anyway.

"There's also a slight risk of dependency, but if you don't tell them what you used, it's not like they're going to be able to track me down for more."

She hoped. They might still come. And not know why.

"Back home, it would come with the possibility of developing a minor case of mind control." She winced apologetically. "But I don't think that's likely here." Unless the Overlords thought it was funny.

...they could?

"How in the— No," I begin, and then lift a palm, shaking my head. "I'm not going to even ask what differentiates a minor case of mind control right now. That's the kinda conversation that really requires being the hell out of here."

I reach for Sam's arm again and start moving back down the hall. When we have a moment to actually breathe, when we're a little less worried about whether our lives were actually real, or are actually real, we can sit down and go over the specifics of vampire blood as pharmaceutical.

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[MINGLE] PLOT: Down the Tubes: Alarm

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