8440/Bedside Manner

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Bedside Manner
Date of Scene: 22 July 2019
Location: Med Bay - X-men Base
Synopsis: Beast, Emma, Josh, Jubilee, Megan and Kitty gather in the Med Bay around an injured Doug. It is discovered he has a version of the Transmode virus.
Cast of Characters: Beast, Cypher, Pixie, Shadowcat, Emma Frost, Elixir, Jubilee




Beast has posed:
Henry McCoy is in his suit, with a white coat over it. Acting at the utmost professional level as he works in the medical lab. At the moment he stands over Doug. Doug lies in a bed for healing. Hank is checking on his vitals, and for signs of consciousness at the moment. Preparing pain medication in case he's awake. And rumbling low, as he shakes his head. "There's something keeping him alive. He's stable enough to draw blood, so I think I will try to find out what it is. If it's a good thing, we can augment it." He then starts that process.

Cypher has posed:
Doug's vital signs have been weak, but stable, though he is running a high fever. Despite being comatose, his brain activity is lit up all over the map, so he's absolutely in there -- but he still needs a respirator to breathe. Cecelia Reyes reported anomalous results when she tested his blood... but she phrased it much more colorfully.

When Hank draws it from his system, it appears ordinary - red blood. At least to the naked eye.

Pixie has posed:
Megan Gwynn had suffered a sprained ankle from a previous training exercise and had come to the med lab to do a routine check up. However she had also heard about Doug getting attacked and was rather concerned about his condition as she fluttered in. "Hi, Dr. McCoy!" she greets cheerfully, peering at Doug curiously. ?How is He??

Shadowcat has posed:
Kitty Pryde sits on the other side of the bed at Doug's side. Fatigue is showing, bags under Kitty's eyes as she sits on a stool beside the bed. She has one of Doug's hands held in both of hers. There are a few things on the bedside table, things of Doug's that she brought down for him, should he wake up.

Kitty watches as the blood is drawn. "Anything new that you've been able to learn?" the worried young woman asks gently. She looks over as Megan arrives, managing only the smallest of nods before she looks back to Doug, gently rubbing his hand with her own that is on top.

Emma Frost has posed:
"Hello? Ah, wonderful, here you all are." Emma arrives in what is decidedly very Emma Frost-like fashion, striding the impeccable metal halls of the Base's lower levels like she owns the place before she finally comes upon the medical bay and arrives with a woosh - mostly the automatic doors, though they do give her cape a nice flutter. "What are you all doing visiting the good doctor? Nothing terrible has happened, I hope?" Wishful thinking?! Still, though her smile is sickly sweet and maybe a little insincere, there's no overt malice in it.

"I was looking for someone in charge, but they're out, it seems like," she then begins to explain. Obviously, the sometimes-villainous sometimes-helpful rival headmistress isn't a resident. "You'll do, I suppose," she tells Hank, though her attention immediately falls to the younger mutants. Always her specialty. "Katherine, my dear, aren't you looking- mm. Actually you look terrible. Getting enough beauty sleep is essential, you know."

Elixir has posed:
Josh stretches at the lab desk in Medical.

"He'll be fine," Josh says, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand. "Replacing his blood was one of the few things I /could/ do. The wounds are closed, the blood replaced but..." Josh gestures to Doug still lying their unconscious on the respirator.

"He's alive, sort of. His body's just not.... going. Closing those wounds was such a pain in the ass, too. Whatever that stuff is, it didn't like me trying to heal him," Josh says, frustrated.

He runs a hand through his hair. Josh waves to Megan when she comes in, raising an eyebrow questioningly to her.

"Fuckers, let me..." comes a young man's voice from across the Medical Bay.

Josh rolls his eyes and types a few keystrokes into the computer. The restraining field keeping their 19 year old gentleman in place turns opaque and all sound from him is cut off. Josh checks the cameras from the computer and sees the rest of their addict guests are asleep or having serious cases of the sweats. Either way, they were all already wrapped in opaque privacy.

He eyes Emma somewhat cautiously when she comes in.

Beast has posed:
Henry McCoy looks up at everyone who comes in, but he doesn't leave Doug's side. Drawing blood. "Josh, you want to prepare a biopsy? If you've replaced his blood and nothing changed, then the only thing left is something in the surrounding cells themselves." Sighing, he then makes sure Doug is getting nutrition and hydration he needs. Though Emma... she gets a long curious look.

Cypher has posed:
After a moment, to a trained eye like Hank's, there is something odd about the blood in the phial, the way it clings to the sides, almost seeming to grip. The anticoagulants in the phial should keep it liquid. But that... is very curious, how it seems to be thickening before his eyes. Dr. Reyes noticed it, too.

Doug lets out a murmur, and his fingers twitch. His thoughts are a jumble of a hundred different languages.

Pixie has posed:
Megan Gwynn blinks slowly at Josh. "Hi Josh! Is he really gonna be okay? I don?t get it, he's in a coma or something?" she frowns, "I thought you could heal all wounds..." she seems a bit concerned but shrugs. Surely the pros know what they?re doing. Emma is given a look and a brief shake of the head as she peers at Kitty, concerned, "You look tired and hungry. Hey, want these?" she offers her a bag of trail mix. "Don't beat yourself up over this..." she glances back at Doug as he murmurs something and errs questioningky at Hank, "What's happening?"

Shadowcat has posed:
Kitty's fatigue shows as it takes her a few moments to cover her initial reaction to Emma Frost's arrival with mundane thoughts. But then that reaction can be seen in the way her soft brown eyes turn colder. "I think it's best to surround people receiving medical care with positivity," Kitty tells Emma before looking away, too tired to make her comment have the normal amount of barbs it might.

She looks over to Josh and Hank as they discuss the situation. "So, any idea where this came from? I mean, was it related to the shooting? Was it there already in some fashion and the shooting just aggravated it?" she asks them. She looks back to Doug, giving his hand a small squeeze as she feels his fingers twitch. "Come on pal, come back to us. Tim's waiting for you to go raiding online. And... and you owe me dinner in Russia still," Kitty says. Her head hangs a bit. She hadn't accepted the offer, exactly, the moment of the offer so awkward. And no time since their return from the moon to talk about it.

Emma Frost has posed:
As she takes in more of the scene, Emma's attention expands from Kitty to the young man she is seated near. "Poor boy." Again, it's easy to think of this all as a little half-hearted and mocking where Frost is concerned, but the opposite slowly proves itself to be true. Particularly as Josh speaks, the woman's eyes flashing quickly to him, and then back, her expression hardened. "So who did this to him?" Such a tiny little question. Yet there's an edge to it, a touch of cold rage and the hint of violence that goes with it. And it's not directed at them.

"You misunderstand me," she tells Kitty, holding up her hands in a gesture of innocence and self-defense. "I only just got back to the city a few hours ago, and was just coming to inquire about my teaching schedule, if I'm going to be invited back again, that is. So all of this..." And she vaguely waves a hand. "Well, you have me at a disadvantage. But you know I care for you, don't you? It pains me to see him hurt. See any of you hurt. If you're having trouble reaching him, I could even try to help." She does ask permission. That's a step toward respecting the mental autonomy of others!

Elixir has posed:
"On it," Josh replies to Hank. He gets to his feet and sets to work. Still, he watches Frost out of the corner of his eye. Their last encounter, fast food in his dive apartment, plays through his mind. Unwelcome, a slow realization dawns on him that she had known how he would end up the entire time. And what he would do.

Josh winces at Megan's comment, visibly bothered. "Yeah. So did I," he answers her evenly. He continues with prepping the biopsy.

"Uh, what?" Josh says to Kitty. "Uh, I dunno, Hank's the expert. But's like... Well it is his cells, or in them, or something. Sort of. It's hard to tell, I just don't know as much as Hank, so it's to make sense of what I get from Doug. But I mean, unless those were super alien SHIELD mega villain drug dealers on the block, this just can't be from them. There's no way."

He leaves Frost's question unanswered for others while he concentrates on his work. The last thing he needs to do is mess up lab work for Hank.

Beast has posed:
Henry McCoy looks to Josh. "Thank you." Good kid, he thinks, before lookiong to the other question he gets. "I can't say where this is from, when I don't even know what this is, yes. It matches the symptoms of no known disease. I talked with an old friend from Empire State, Dr. Maison in Montreal, and he couldn't tell me a thing, either, despite being an expert in infectious diseases. All he could tell me is what it isn't. Which doesn't help." The blood sample is shaken, and looked at carefully. "His blood looks abnormal. Damn abnormal, though. Despite being completely replaced. Something is... corrupting him in some way."

Cypher has posed:
...Then the blood Hank drew starts climbing the sides of the vial. No, it absolutely isn't lupus.

Doug lets out a murmur, and then the liquid in the vial starts to change. It turns black, and there's a flicker of something yellowish in it, like fickering lights in black ichor, that's taken on a color and shine more akin to charcoal, or more specifically carbon in some kind of liquid state.

It begins to push against the sides of the vial.

Jubilee has posed:
The door opens, and two pigtail buns appear, followed by wide, honeyed brown eyes. They seek Hank among the faces inside, and when they find him, the face follows. Jubilee's expression is haunted. She moves inside, and leans back, shutting the door behind her. Her hands are folded behind the waist of her crisp yellow sundress. "I tried to stay away, but....I mean. What's goin' on? Is everything okay?"

Pixie has posed:
Megan Gwynn laughs nervously at Emma. "Umm maybe you should talk to Mr. Summers? Maybe he can point you in the right direction.." she glances back at Kitty, filled with empathy. If she is not mistaken, there might be something going on between the two of them..? "Ahh, come on Kitty, you gotta eat, it?ll make you feel better..Dint worry, I'm sure between Dr. McCoy and Josh we'love figure this out. You need rest...." she sighs, going onrily munching on nuts, peering thoughtfully at Hank, "Umm if you can"t find anything, could it be magical in nature..?"

Shadowcat has posed:
Kitty seems to be considering what Emma said. There's something she wants to remember about an offer from a snake... or no was it the one about the fox carrying the scorpion across the river?

Kitty runs a hand across her face. She's too tired to think in terms of fables today.

She looks up towards Emma, her teeth grinding together a little bit. Even the entry of an old friend doesn't relieve the tension, though Kitty flashes a grateful look to Jubilee for her presence before looking back to Emma. "Can you try to get through to him? See if he knows what this-" Kitty gets out, before she's cut off by the sight of the changing blood. She utters something sharply in Hebrew. Something that probably would not go over well at temple.

Emma Frost has posed:
"Of course, dear. I'll do whatever I can." No clauses or conditions. Well, other whan the typical ones when it comes to Emma digging around in the brain of someone you care for. There's /always/ a bit of collateral when it comes to that sort of thing. Yet for the moment, Frost seems serious, putting aside whatever sparring and jabs. Megan's suggestion causes just a little smirk. "Better to ask forgiveness, dear. Besides, if we stand around and wait, who knows what might happen to him? I'll be careful."

The invitation to assist sees her walking further inside, casting only brief glances back and forth as Hank and Josh discuss, well, icky medical things. Cells. Diseases. Even the sudden visible alteration of Doug's blood in the vial doesn't actually seem to give her pause. These are afflictions of the body, after all, matters of biology. Emma considers her realm of expertise a somewhat higher one. She comes to stand beside the bed, on the other side from Kitty, and holds a hand out toward, although shy of contact. "Lets see whats inside."

And then, well... obviously no one outside sees much of anything. But *she* goes in, delving into the beleagured young man's mind. She already knows to expect chaos - she could feel that coming off him even as she entered the room. Deeper? Who knows.

Elixir has posed:
Josh continues his work at the lab bench. He uses a clean pipette to gather a sample of... whatever it is in the blood and drop it into distilled water in a petri dish. The water turns pink with the traces of blood that come along. He seals the dish and repeats the process using petri dishes with various growth media and one empty dish.

With everyone's attention on Doug and Emma, Josh slips the first petri dish under the microscope and focuses in to look at the stuff in Doug's blood.

Pixie has posed:
Megan Gwynn eyes the vial then eyes Henry. "Woah, what's going on?" she does close her eyes, trying to focus on any magical energies that might be affecting Doug..

Beast has posed:
Henry McCoy finds his blood sample is... moving. His arms flail a little and he backs up almost comically, given the situation. Getting the vial into a machine as quickly as possible, he SLAMS the lid shut and says "Computer enable containment field." Ripping his hands back as fast as he possibly can. "Like I said, damn peculiar. Emma if you sniff out any hostile presnce in this young man... it could help. It could save his life." Jubilee's arrival is noticed with a nod, but he's rather too busy to greet her properly.

Cypher has posed:
What Josh SEES... is what used to be blood cells, white blood cells, platelets -- but they've been repurposed by something. Something black and shiny, with a physical structure reminiscient of carbon -- it's taken over the cells, transforming them into matter akin to it, shot through with what look like circuitry. And they're moving. In a coordinated fashion, almost like they're looking for more material.

Doug's mind is a fevered haze, shot through with thoughts, impressions, memories.

In one, he is standing out in the rain, turning to look at the school, before he walks away. It carries with it a strong sense of alienation.

In another, he's come to the gardens outside Emma's own academy, to lay a poker chip on a memorial. "I regret what I did. I regret that I wasn't man enough to apologize to you when I had the chance. I wouldn't ask for your forgiveness, even if I could, I just wanted to apologize."

And then bleeding into that, whirring, frenetic streams of information, black terrain threaded with gold wire, endlessly shifting.

He's seated in the middle of it, in an island of serenity, cross-legged, but stuck.

Shadowcat has posed:
Kitty's jaw muscles twitch with tension, though her eyes can't seem to decide whether to focus on the black substance in the test tube that Hank is trying to examine, or Emma as the things that needs more of her focus now.

Kitty's tired eyes finally settle on Emma. She strokes Doug's hand softly, as if somehow that tiny gesture could keep him safe from any of the threats he might be facing. But it can't. And the young woman looks like she knows this, and is feeling as small as she ever has as she sits by his bedside.

Emma Frost has posed:
"Doctor McCoy, I think it is beyond obvious he is a host to /something./ I don't need a medical degree to tell you that blood isn't supposed to do that." She has a point. "Whether he is host to something intelligent, or whether his mind is merely suffering under the physiological strain of the rest of his body, that... I will find out." Emma's voice remains calm and confident, although as one might expect, there is a sense of distance in her tone as well.

Traversing the chaos, Emma uses a sort of psychic construct, creating an orderly space inside the chaos. Between images, she walks on a crystal path, the hard surface giving her stability... although the pieces crack and shatter and fall away behind her. She views his memories like locations along this journey, in some cases dismissing them quickly when she feels they have no value. She does linger on the one memory, and somewhere in her own psyche, albeit heavily partitioned behind barriers of self-discipline and defense, there is an echoing ping of emotion, however brief.

But she's not here for that.

"Doug," the woman calls, when she sees a representation of the young man. "You are safe. Whatever happened to you, your friends saved you. They are all around outside. But they need you to come back." Her lips curl slightly. "Sorry if I'm not the help you might have wanted, but beggers and the comatose can't be choosers. Kitty's out there, with you. Don't you want to go back to her?" And when she speaks the other woman's name, she conjures an image of her standing nearby. Of course, it's not the Kitty of flesh and blood, but one pulled from Doug's own mind, the Kitty of his own imagining. Whatever she says, well, it's really only what -he- wants to hear from her.

Elixir has posed:
Josh looks over when Hank slams his sample into containment.

"Oh shit, sorry Hank," Josh says with a wince. "Same thing happened when Dr. Reyes drew samples. It didn't jump an open petri dish in there in almost 48 hours and the chamber air samples tested negative. It's bloodborne," Josh says and leans back on his stool.

"And you're not gonna believe it. Know why I was having such a hard time? The stuff is converting his fucking cells!"

Josh taps on a nearby tablet a couple of times. A projection of what the microscope reveals is displayed on one wall. After a few more taps, still frames are added of a couple individual cells.

"See now that is fucking cool. Except terrifying. Something is converting his cells into artifical cells with some kind of like... Nano-circuitry? Is that a word? Anyway, check that out. Coordinated movement and spread. I mean, it's biomimicry, but that shit is /not/ biological. And it's spreading."

Beast has posed:
Henry McCoy snickers briefly once Josh explains, and he slumps onto a stool. "Oh my stars and garters, that surprised me. And I'm glad we took that biopsy, good work Josh." Rubbing his hands together. "So it's a... a kind of artificial cancer. Technological. Can we cut the whole thing out of him? Or has it spread too far?" He then rubs his eyes. "I'm exhausted."

Jubilee has posed:
Jubilee only knows enough of the situation to realize that something's desperately wrong. Quietly, she slips over to Hank. "You haven't eaten, Henry," she says softly. "I'm worried about you." She pulls a wrapped Twinkie from her pocket and looks at it dubiously, before lifting it to offer him. "I know this is important, but if you dont take care of you...you wont be able to take care of him."

Cypher has posed:
Doug looks up at Emma, and blinks, slowly.

"You're right, you're not who I would've expected, ma'am." He looks at the illusion of Kitty, and then says, "I appreciate the gesture." He looks around him, at the shifting terrain.

"It's trying to help me. That's all. It's trying to save my life. But it's a little like cancer, if it's not checked it might just keep growing until there's nothing left of me at all."

His eyes are half-lidded. "If this were another strain, I'd become a Phalanx, something horrible, something that would keep replicating itself until the time came to end the world. This is -- I don't know what I'll become if this runs its course, ma'am. But I'm not sure I know how to stop it."

Emma Frost has posed:
Although Emma is still aware enough ot the 'outside' world to converse and trade quips, in truth it is only a very superficial awareness, and the disconnect grows the deeper she goes. 'Artificial?' She hears enough just to know she doesn't like what she heard. While not the strongest mutant psychic, she takes pride that as -technique- is concerned, she is second to none. And yet... well, there is really a limited precedent for what she is dealing with here.

"I just happened to be in the neighborhood, lucky for you," Emma informs Doug, now with a touch of dry humor in her tone as his own reply suggests a more... coherent psyche, rather than a broken one looking for some anchor to pull it back to reality. A good sign? Or a bad one? "Can you tell it you don't need the help? Physically, you should be in little danger, you're under the care of one of the most powerful mutant healers I've ever seen *and* the big fuzzy smarty-pants. I can't imagine that the two of them can't manage." Of course, even she doesn't sound wholly concvinced of that option. 'Oh just tell the invading artificial life form it can go!' That always works.

"This is out of my area of expertise to a degree, though not entirely," she then declares, her construct-self glancing around even as the real Emma delves more expansively through his mind, feeling for points where whatever it is meet his own thought, for the point of interface in thought. "I am not certain I can fight it now, like this. We'll need some technical response as well. However, you can at least offer some resistance. Maybe I've showed you before, but there are tricks, for walling yourself off. We're going to go through one now, to try and preserve, well, you, while everyone sorts this out."

The actual techniques are probably familiar, taught both at her Academy and likely here as well, although the minds-on approach Emma takes here is a bit more intense. Eventually, her trance seems to end.

Shadowcat has posed:
Kitty looks over at the display of what is going on. Her eyes widen as she sees what it looks like up close. And the dark color of the test tube, and the yellow lights suddenly fall into place in her tied brain.

Kitty jumps up and yanks her hands back from Doug. "Quarantine him," she says. "And start taking samples from anyone who has been in contact with him. Myself included," she says looking down at her hands.

"Warlock's people infect beings with a virus like this. Or, maybe it is this. It allows them to feed and drain the person's energy after it... after it converts them to a techno-organic being," she says. Her fingers are working against each other, like they could clean themselves with dry-rubbing."

She looks over towards where the testtube was put in the machine. "That yellow flash... have seen it before. The energy they absorb then. Just... so tired, it didn't click," she says.

Elixir has posed:
Josh looks at Kitty numbly.

"Oh fuck... I was /covered/ in his blood," he says with wide eyes. He looks from Kitty to Hank to Jubilee, stunned, reeling. The colour drains from his face.

Beast has posed:
Henry McCoy acts as quickly as he can, taking off his coat, wrapping it around Josh, and PUSHING him to the emergency shower to see if that'll help. Just trying to wash it off. Then breathing deeply, he walks over to Jubilee, takes the twinkie, and tears it open. "I've been at this 36 hours now. I can't fix everything." He then starts walking off, slowly, munching. "Wake me in an emergency. Jub is absolutely right. I'm going to put myself in a patient's bed at this rate."

Jubilee has posed:
Jubilee watches helplessly as everything unravels, and looks, bewildered, between the others, and Henry as he begins to depart. Quietly, she ducks her head and trails him. If only there were more that she could do. But here, she is more in the way than she is a help. At very least, she can see to it that Hank rests, and eats. And that he is ready for another day.

Emma Frost has posed:
Even Emma doesn't look thrilled at this final revelation, just as she seems to snap fully back from her little delve into Doug's psyche. "Oh wonderful." Yes, she's not thrilled of the idea of being infected with a horrible techno-virus just minutes after she made it back! Ugh. Still, she continues without any sense of panic, cool and poised as ever. "His mind is intact within," she notes, speaking to Kitty directly first, before broadening her attention to the others. "But I definitely saw signs of something... well, of a connection between some sort of invading entity and his own mind. It didn't feel like it had a coherent mind as I'd normally recognize one, but it was able to access his thoughts, I'm certain."

She steps back slightly, adjusting one of her gloves. "My company has done some work in neuro-electronic interfaces, and you have one here as well. I think that might be a productive line of research. In the meantime, I did what I could to make sure his psyche doesn't dissolve into a bunch of ones and zeroes. Anyway, lets get everyone scanned for now, and then I -absolutely- need a nap, the jet lag is killing me." She rolls her eyes. "Even if I have to take it in quarantine."

Cypher has posed:
Doug is still, in his mindscape. "I can try." he says. "But it'll take me some time. I don't think the others are in any danger, though. Tell them -- it's trying to protect *me*. It doesn't perceive anyone around me as a danger. I don't know what it would do if it did."

"But nothing that came from Warlock would *ever* hurt me. I just need... to figure out how to speak its language. Before it kills me by trying to save me."

Elixir has posed:
Josh protests but ultimately goes along with Hank and showers. When he comes out he takes blood samples from everyone and examines them, declaring each clear in turn. His relief is palpable and he slumps, tiredly.

"We're okay, we're all okay," he tells them.