EVENT ★ (ABOUT) 28 DAYS LATER

[futurologists]

GENERAL HOSPITAL All signs point to the hospital having something to do with the virus, though further investigation is required in order to find exactly what is going on. The hospital is average sized, with contemporary facilities and equipment, and is usually considerably cleaner than it is now. The constant flow of injuries coming in -- from riots, attacks, and accidents that are happening from just sheer panic -- have filled the hospital to the brim. Many staff are too over-exhausted to show up to work, and those that remain are nearly to the breaking point. Due to the overall confusion and chaos, now might be an opportune time to quietly sneak behind the scenes . . . ON THE INSIDE The waiting room is crowded and there aren't enough staff people to go around. If you snag yourself a lab coat or some scrubs, you should be able to just waltz right in if you look harried enough to go unnoticed. Or, if you're not the doctor-looking type, fake an injury and get one of your scrubs-wearing teammates to usher you inside. Inside the hospital, it's just as busy -- gurneys line the halls, filled with moaning, scared patients. How many of them have the Bristol Virus? How many of them have just been injured in the unrest? It's impossible to tell, so be careful as you move through the halls. One of those grasping hands just might belong to someone who is very hungry. Be careful while you look through the hospital -- the staff are busy and preoccupied, but they’re not blind. If you are caught somewhere you shouldn’t be, you’ll find yourself escorted from the premises, or worse -- thrown in jail. PLACES TO SEARCH: MATERNITY. There are no pregnant women to be found here, and for good reason: the maternity wing has been converted to a treatment center for known Bristol Virus carriers. Biohazard suits hang near the entrance, and the doors are sealed by makeshift plastic shielding to prevent the virus from spreading airborne. Patients are strapped to their beds for their safety as well as for the safety of the staff, and seem to be heavily sedated. But be careful -- you never know when it’ll wear off. MORGUE. In the basement of the hospital is the morgue. Temperature controlled to 3º C (37º F), you may need a sweater if you choose to investigate here. The bodies kept in here have primarily died of natural causes -- that is, if you count being chewed on by cannibals as natural. The few bodies that are known to be infected by the Bristol virus are marked as such: the morgue drawers containing their remains have been sealed by biohazard tape. NURSE’S STATION. The most dangerous place to investigate, but perhaps the most lucrative. The nurse’s station is located in the center of the inpatient ward and is in the middle of all hospital activity. It will be very easy to get caught if you’re looking here. However -- this is where most paperwork is kept, as well as computers connected to the hospital intranet, where patient records can be found. OFFICES. Doctors’ offices are an obvious choice to look for paperwork clues, but be cautious and have an excuse ready: you never know when someone will come in. TOXICOLOGY. Because most of the patients being treated right now are in the hospital for injuries, toxicology is not as busy as one might expect during a viral epidemic. The toxicology department is filled with test tubes, beakers, and the like. This is one of the more dangerous areas to investigate, as you never know when a lab tech or doctor may walk in and catch you snooping. Other hospital areas include: cafeteria, doctors’ mess, inpatient ward, pharmacy, surgery, supply warehouse (entrance outside), etc. If you're not the investigative type, it might be a good idea to cause a scene and distract the staff from your teammates' snooping. While you're here, it might be a good idea to gather fluid samples from patients known to be infected. Their sedated state will make it easy (until, of course, the sedatives wear off -- hopefully not while you're in the middle of collecting a sample!) and not only will it help the efforts in finding a vaccine, it may also help your fellow recruits find a cure. Especially now that some of your number are starting to feel the effects of the virus themselves. FINDING CLUES This post, we will be holding an RNG to decide who receives clues. We have a maximum of five clues to go around, one per hospital area, so you'll have better chances if you team up! Please see this comment to sign up. We will be closing clue sign-ups after 48 hours, after which we will notify the RNG winners of their results. Those who do not hear back may assume they have not found anything of interest. OOC NOTES Because this log is being posted late in the month, threads are eligible for February or March AC, but not both. Beginning this month, we are also allowing AC threads to be eligible for AC Bonus Bank. Please remember that participation in the HMD is mandatory to pass AC this month! Please fill out your HMD comment by 28 February 23:59 UTC. REMINDER: activity and hiatus changes go into effect beginning this AC. Please review the changes thoroughly! Questions about Woodhurst can be submitted to this thread. Questions about the game in general should be directed to the FAQ. You may submit mission ideas or player plots at any time, and don't forget the Bounty Board!

Comments

( Olivia )

[heelies]

[As the infection spreads, so too spreads Discord, companion to the god of war and destroyer of cities: as when a fire fast engulfs a forest, and each tongue of flame is lashed by the winds to burn all the more brightly, so too do riots engulf an ever wider swath of the city, fanned by the rising fears of the population. Achilles avoids as best he can the violence, preferring instead to preserve himself when there is little to gain from interfering: such chaos cannot be tamed. Well does he know that in this land he has not the clout to sway crowds as he might on more familiar shores.

Yet the riots become unavoidable. Just blocks from the hospital, the street fills with angry protesters and slippery opportunists. The son of Peleus, keeping to the fringes and minding the samples tucked into his jacket pocket, swiftly strides past the sweltering crowd. But then his eye is caught by a familar figure amid the chaos, and there is she who once soothed the storms that oft rise in his heart.

The famous runner's footsteps falter. He has gone whole days forgetting her - her fair features, her chiming voice, her scent, her every movement, all that in which he once indulged, all that on which he was never sated. When he does remember her, the memories are no longer shadowed by the sharp ache that once seized his heart; instead there lingers a dullness, a nothingness, which like the quiet in a room after everyone has left is recognizable only by the absence of that which came before.

When they had crossed paths fleetingly some weeks before, without fanfare, without so much as a word shared between them, he had been startled to see how much like a stranger she looked. Just as when one returns to a place in which they have not been in a great long while, and he no longer recognizes it as the place it once was, so too does he struggle to recognize in Olivia the woman he once so fiercely loved. It is not that the changes to the landscape are so stark that all familiarity is shed: rather, the changes are so subtle that he cannot place whence comes this sense of being in a foreign land.

Achilles approaches, as he knows he ought not have done that night he saw her on the balcony. This time, however, no such love makes heavy his heart, as only the stubborn dregs remain, the rest strained from him by time, by will, and by a love more full.]

It is not safe out here in the streets-- [Dear Olivia. The epithet lingers upon his tongue, but it is not so irresistible as it once was.] You ought to stay inside.

crawls in here 84 years later

[winces]

[ by now, she has made several promises to several people regarding the riots. most understood she would not listen past the bare minimum, and the others would soon learn that the combination of her guilt, her desire to be useful, and her overall inherent stubbornness is a dangerous, disastrous mix, but one that has (for the most part) not yet led her astray.

or so she will insist when they inevitably chide her, anyway.

but though she is foolish, she is not dumb. she takes care to keep track of her facilities, sparing a second for herself for every two or three she spends on another. she weaves herself through the crowds trying to be as imperceptible as possible, most of her distinct hair haphazardly tucked under a knitted cap. her energy levels, as they are now, border right along the line of worrisome, but she rationalizes that she has a few more minutes yet before a more substantial break is needed.

so distracted as she is with the brief calculations that she does not even see him until he is right there, standing a few feet before her, his steps intent but tinged with an understandable amount of hesitation.

(for a brief, wild moment, olivia finds herself marveling at that; never before has she seen him hesitate with anything else.) ]

If it is not safe for me, then it is not safe for anyone, [ she finally responds perhaps a moment too late, so much so that the silence that stretched between his words and hers feel as gaping than the distance of their hearts. ]

Yet here we all are.

[heelies]

[The conversation does not quite flow naturally. They are as halves of a broken vessel trying to fit together edges that once made a whole, but now too many pieces have chipped off, scattered and lost, and the eroded edges no longer match.]

I forget how stubborn you are. [Just as he forgets so many little fragments of her, that which once captivated him slipping away. What had they been, these treasures that once were so precious to him? Time marches indifferently forward, heedless of what has been left behind.] Yet you are no longer mine to tend to...this I know well.

[He does not doubt that she has others worrying for her, urging her to keep safe, controlling the damage she pulls down upon herself. She is so easy to love, after all.]

Let me offer what aid I can, to you who have aided me so in days gone by. Quickly now - you must trust me, reluctant though such trust may be to bud anew where I have so carelessly trampled it.

[He reaches for her now but his hand pauses in the air that thickens between them, as if this is a dance whose steps he cannot quite recall. His eyes hold steady against her, his gaze as strong as she will remember, but in it wavers a question.]

--For my craft to manifest, I must lay my hand upon you. Will you trust me, Olivia?

[winces]

[ she gives no response to his comment on her stubbornness. it is not one she can contest, after all, knowing full well that it has made even the kindest friend feel frustration to some extent. but there is, undeniably, a small part of here that swells up at the sentiment. a small prickling of pride in the sense that, yes, i am and you have no idea and there is still so much more you hadn't cared to see. the olivia he seems to only have an inkling of now is still there; the ashen foundations of this olivia who stands before him now, meeting him square in the eye out of pure stubbornness not to relent and look away.

he speaks of trust, and the quieter, darker part of her that she'd worked so hard to hide from him wants to laugh. but he speaks of a craft, too, and while she is confused for a moment, it is only just a moment. she has been privy to alastair's machinations for long enough, after all, that the idea that he is now affected makes complete sense.

(briefly, she wonders how he must have felt, given his strained relationship with alastair in the first place.

but that moment passes quickly too. his life is no longer hers to wonder about.)

calmly (perhaps too calmly, but by now she has not realized she has begun to use some of her own "craft" on herself), she holds her hand out. presses it flat against his, palm to palm. to her relief, it does not shake. ]

I can trust you in this.

[ but perhaps, for now, only in this. ]

[heelies]

[He hears quite plainly that which she leaves unspoken. So too can he see the ramparts she raises against him, the front of cool stone so different from the walls she once put up, when she closed herself behind flushed cheeks and stammered laughs. Her reasons for sealing herself off are different: then perhaps she had feared to let him see her as she is, and now she knows that she was right to fear letting him in. He has left her with little reason to trust him and every reason to scorn him. Yet he is not wholly unsurprised when she complies.]

I ask for nothing more.

[Out of habit, his fingers want to curl and tangle between hers. He ignores this urge that lingers like smoke so long after the fire has been smothered, and he lets shut his eyes to settle his thoughts into this art of his, which still is so new beneath his fingertips. It takes but a breath, and the air around his hand shimmers as though seared by flames. Olivia will feel only a tingling buzz seeping into her skin, up her arm and down the length of her body. After a moment, Achilles withdraws.]

Consider this as armor that shields all of your body although you see it and feel it not. You are not impervious to what strikes others may lay upon you, but my protection shall soften the blow. I know it is little, yet it is not nothing.

[winces]

[ she didn't know what to expect when his magic finally manifests, though in ways hers does — near invisible to the naked eye. and though she has worked her own magic on herself many times before, to feel another's on her skin, in her veins... it is both jarring and exciting — much in the way all news things tend to be.

once upon a time, she had delighted in experiencing the new with him. ]

...Thank you, Achilles.

[ quietly, she withdraws her hand, looking it over though she knows there is nothing there to be seen. ]

I shall take care not to let such a gift go to waste.

[heelies]

[Already he is turning his eyes away, gliding his gaze over the restless crowd and to the hospital that stands stalwart beyond. He does not allow his gaze to linger as once he might have done: those urges and indulgences that once compelled him, he had hurled over the stone edge of the balcony along with the delicate wooden comb she refused to accept. He looks back at her only once.]

May your daughter and your friends see you safe at the day's close.

[And so speaking, the son of Peleus departs with his thoughts turned to the task at hand. Parting is not so hard as he once thought it would be.]