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Sins of the Father Ch50 Outbreak
🕑 Added 2023-09-07 23:05:07 +0000 UTCAlwen read the blood chart again. And again it didn’t make sense. She compared it to the MRI brain scan and also frowned. After seeing both she had ordered a full sweep of tests on Gato and had similarly ordered non-essential personnel confined to separate rooms as she and the other doctors began testing for some sort of unknown pathogen.
Normally this sort of thing would require the captains approval. But the Captain and Lieutenant were off ship. So Alwen had used her full authority as the ship’s chief medical officer to push the order through. Highland, Heizer, and Alice had backed her on her decision and shepherd the crew to as many separate rooms as possible.
It was unlikely that whatever was affecting Gato was air/water borne. But ship protocol was very clear on this matter, once something like this was detected all crew were to be confined to isolated quarters. Especially if it was this…strange.
She read the charts again. Typically Alwen would sneer at the idea of literal testosterone poisoning. Even on Torwen were the males experienced lower levels of the hormone than Terrans people used the phrase to hand wave male aggression. But with a T-count this high Alwen was at least open to considering the possibility. Especially when matched with the strange chemical hodge-podge going on in Gato’s head.
It was as if someone had mixed up a cocktail of all the different hormones and endorphins needed to repress higher brain function and encourage aggression. Hell, given the what was going on just controlling his strength would have taken concentrated effort.
Beside her Gato stirred. “Oh good.” Alwen said as he opened his eyes and looked around the room. “I was worried the suppressants may have interacted poorly with the tranquilizer.”
“Wha? Where’am’I” he said groggily, his words slurring together.
“Medical, in an isolation suite.”
“Why am’I…” he blinked and them tried to sit up, but was held back by the restraints. he stared at them until understanding dawned on him “You tazed me!” he growled, now fully awake.
Alwen winced, there was an harsh accusation in his tone. “I… did. But only because Limey called in a code 19-56 on you.”
She had needed to look that one up when she got the call from Limey. Code 19-56 was one of the obscure codes pertaining to odd crew behavior and the potential for infiltration. It covered things like alien brain parasites, mind control machines, body snatchers, space ghost possession, and shape shifters. She was mostly sure that none of those were real, but one couldn’t accuse the Hellworlders of ever being unprepared for all the potential eventualities of space travel. Or at least the common tropes found in science fiction.
There were also protocols in place for time travel, extra dimensional entities, parallel universes, and the possibility of being taken and hooked into a digital simulation of their reality. Astarte had even gone so far as to boobytrap the ventilation systems just incase something crawled in and tried to pick them off.
Insane, maybe. But certainly not off brand given what Alwen knew of Terrans by this point.
Gato frowned, unaware of where her mind had wandered. “Is that the Body-snatcher code or the one about the ship gaining sentience?”
“Given that your currently cuffed to your bed…”
“Right, don’t know what I was thinking.” He grumbled. “So am I an evil clone, or is their an alien parasite in me.” He said bitterly. Probably assuming Limey had made the wrong call or was playing some sort of bad joke.”
“Alien parasite might not be far off.” Alwen answered.
He blinked, stared at her as if she was supposed to laugh and say ‘just kidding’, then blinked again when nothing came. “Seriously?” he finally said.
“Probably not. But there is a foreign ‘something’ in your blood stream. It appears to be organic and is replicating itself by parasiting your white blood cells . The ‘parasites’ then use your own blood stream to reach your brain. They then attach themselves to sections of the brain and depending on the region either boost the production of certain chemicals, or suppress others. The good news it that the immune system is capable of recognizing the threat and fighting back. Right now I’m using the same injections we use for HIV to better help your body fight of the…” she paused wondering what the right word might be. She wasn’t sure if the word parasite fit, she had only used it because Gato said it first. But it also was unlike any virus she had ever seen. “infection.” She said uncertainly. Terminology would have to wait.
Honestly it was a miracle that had learned this much in such a short time, and she couldn’t even claim that credit for herself. For all that she had grown accustomed to the insanely advanced, and almost magical medical technology; it was moments like these that made her truly appreciate how great it was. The auto-lab only took two hours to spit out the basics for how this ‘parasite’ worked. And while Alwen and her team would need to spend weeks examining that data it was a fantastic starting point.
There was a dawning horror on Gato’s face as he dissected what she said. “You said its effecting my brain, how?”
“Right now I have on hormone suppressors to try and clear you mind. Limey told me you’ve been feeling… unusually aroused and aggressive. That correlates with your elevated T-counts. There is also evidence to suggest that its effecting your neurochemistry in ways that affect judgement, impulse control, as well as your ability to think. I also suspect that it may have attached itself to your nervous system to suppress muscle control.”
He looked down at his lap. “So basically I’m angry and horny, with nothing to help me hold back.”
Alwen frowned “Yes. On the brightside the short term affects are transient. If we fix it soon enough you’ll go back to being normal. But if we don’t there may be lasting effects.”
“Lasting how? Its just a hormone imbalance.” He asked.
“Imbalance implies that the scale is leaning further to one side. This is more like an elephant sat on one side. But that’s not an accurate way of representing what’s going on, the brain is far more complicated than a scale.”
“But if you can correct it why does the duration matter?”
“This isn’t my field, but the brain wasn’t built to run at extremes for long periods of time. We’ve only begun to guess at the long term effects, but the stress of having your emotions constantly ramped up to eleven could result in a lot of bad things.”
He stared at her. “Like a mental breakdown?” he asked.
She bit her lip “How did you-“
“I’m a soldier, the effects of prolonged stress are a part of the job.”
She grimaced “Its not off the table. But I’m not going to let it get that far. We’ll have to keep an eye on you but the hormone suppressants should keep you from the edge. But we’re going to have to keep an eye on you.”
“So I’m stuck here.” He said bitterly.
“For the foreseeable future yes.”
“How did this even happen?” he asked.
“Well, I’m just guessing, but I think it might have been the chimps we met. I mentioned that their behavior was strange.”
His head snapped up and he looked to her “So then are you-?“
Alwen shook her head “No, I tested myself immediately, along with the other doctors. We’re clean. We’re working our way through the crew, but I think they should be fine. I suspect it to be bloodborne. So as long as you haven’t been sharing fluids like blood or semen the crew should be fine.”
He looked relieved. They lapsed into a silence for a while before he spoke up “If, if you can’t cure it, I need you to put me down.”
“Gato!” she snapped testily, not this again.
“No, listen to me. I’m too dangerous to leave alive, if the suppressors lose effectiveness, or if I snap, I could hurt a lot of people.”
“I think we can manage.” She said coldly with a quick glance down to his restraints.
He looked down to follow her gaze, then looked her in the eyes as his muscles bulged as he strained against the straps. First the bottom most strap restraining his forearms, then the second around his biceps, and then his arm free he pushed against the bed until his chest was free. He sat up, never once breaking eye contact.
Despite the situation he grinned a little. “Your drooling.”
Alwen jerked and quickly wiped her mouth. Dammit, he wasn’t lying. “Okay, we’ll need stronger restraints.”
“Vi” he said softly, “That’s not the only issue.” His shoulders shook “I… don’t want to face whatever’s at the end of this. I’m already close to the edge just as I am, I don’t want to cross the line and become an animal again. I don’t think I can handle the recovery a second time.”
She put a hand on his shoulder, her hand barely able to cover half of it. “Your not on the edge Gato” she reassured. “Limey told me about your talk, even dealing with all that… junk messing with your head you were still in control. You were trying to work it off on your own because you didn’t want it to affect me. That’s not the reaction of an animal.” She said softly.
With everything going on in his head she knew it must have been a herculean effort not find her and express his desire, or worse. And given the lack of muscle control he showed in the gym he might have really hurt her.
It was a scary thought.
But he didn’t. He held back despite his every instinct screaming for release like those chimps. She new people in collage with less restraint than that.
It told her that despite everything Gato was good at heart. Even when the Draxori board the Astaroth and he went wild she had still been able to pull him back, she was confident she could do it again.
“I know everything looks pretty dark right now, but you have to trust me. I’ll find a cure, and we’ll never even need to think about the worst-case scenario.
He stared at her, golden eyes searching her light blue. “Alright” he relented. “I trust you.”
“Good, will you be alright for me to step out? I have a whole ship to test.”
He nodded. And she left him with his thoughts.
Hopefully she was right about the transmission, and he was her only case.
~~~*~~~
She was wrong. They found that eighteen crew members were infected. But none were acting nearly as aggressive as Gato. A few reported being a little friskier than normal, and some did say they were angrier and more snappish, but not to the same degree as Gato.
At first only the male crew members tested positive, and she believed it to only affect the men. But then Izzy tested positive. It was only after grilling the embarrassed Marine that she learned that all the crew members had sexual encounters with Terrans aboard Unity, with only Gato ingesting blood. She also noticed that most of the human crews immune systems were fighting it off better than the non-human members. And in Izzy’s case her number were so low that it wasn’t effecting her brain at all, though not below the detectable/transmissible levels.
She was also beginning to suspect that it wasn’t a natural epidemic. From her first few brief examinations of the auto-lab results she noticed a couple of irregularities that indicated advanced genetic tampering.
The implications of which were terrifying.
So far her attempts to contact the captain or Lieutenant had been unsuccessful, making Alwen the only person available to take charge of the situation. She had tried to push the burden off to Highland, Heizer, or any of the other senior officers, but they all insisted that this was a situation that only she could handle. leaving her in charge of a panicked ship full of Terrans possibly infected with an unknown bioweapon that the crew had promptly dubbed ‘murder boner virus’.
She and her team all hated the name, but she knew from experience that any attempt to fight it would simply cement it even further. She just had to hope a new name that was less dumb and more popular came around soon before she had to write a medical report that included the phrase ‘murder boner’.
Butch, who was surprisingly not infected, brought in a thermos of coffee. And Alwen gladly refilled her cup. Normally she wouldn’t touch the stuff, but tea just wasn’t strong enough for the long days she had ahead of her now.
She only hoped that whatever Astarte and Karega were doing would be over soon, because right now she wasn’t sure she could handle this all alone.
