epidemiology | I've got blood on my name.

Entry tags:

I've got blood on my name.

CHARACTERS: Jason. ft. Lucina, Asher, Sigma, Aqua, & OTA if you want to deal with this, ig, why would you ever.
DATE: I've lost track. vaguely late march, shortly before (tentatively during??? idk I'm flexible) the 3/25 log.
WARNINGS: Violence, gore, death, reference to cannibalism and other zombie rage virus things. Embarrassing angst logs. A mess, basically.
SUMMARY: finally gonna get full horror game up in here.

ONE.

[In the days following their discovery of the tunnels, he spends most of his time in and out of them to try and track down their presumed guilty party. As distractions go, it's not bad. Gives him something productive to focus on that isn't the acid hollow feeling crawling its way up his gut. His increasingly unraveling hold on his hunger and his temper, the way his instincts are screaming at him to bite back. (Go for the throat.) It's easier, just barely, when he can duck out alone. Without a target to focus that on. But after a while, tracing the halls of the winding maze lends itself to too much opportunity to lose traction.

He loses time for the first time a few days in. He'd done the math, and all things considered, it should have happened sooner. Most of the reported cases involving the locals had the worst parts of the virus kicking in anywhere between 3 to 5 weeks after showing symptoms. He's been sick for at least the upper end of that. Maybe even more, if you count the parts where the symptoms were small enough to slide under the radar. Is it a physiology thing? Alternate earth humanity just different enough to slow the process? An immune system thing? One last parting gift from the Lazarus Pit? Whatever it is, it isn't slowing things enough. He'd been taking the edge off his hunger pangs with nicotine, because it was easy to find, but that had stopped helping a long time ago. The next thing he knows he's drifting, (searching for something,) and he doesn't recognize the tunnels around him when he pulls his focus back.

Really pushing his luck, now.

He gets the hell out of the underground and back into the fresh air of the city as if it'll clear his head. (It doesn't, but he starts putting some distance between him and the higher traffic of the sewer entrance nearest the search. Pacing his way out from where the people pulling mapping duty are coming and going.) Distantly, he can feel the phone that serves as his connection to the magitek network buzzing in his pocket. And he ought to answer it, because maybe they've made a breakthrough on the search, or the treatment, or any number of pressing problems on their plate. But right now, it just registers as unimportant.

He ignores it. He never even notices when it stops buzzing.]

TWO.

[It would be so much easier, it occurs to him once again, as he slams a late-stage Bristol-zombie back against the brick facade of a building, if they just thinned out the herd. (The man looks at him wildly, snaps and lunges at him like an animal, something (someone?) else's blood dried around his mouth and down his neck, crusted into his filthy clothes and caked under his nails. A fetid iron stink on his breath.) All's fair isn't it. You don't blame a rabid dog for what it becomes, but you still put it down when it starts baring its teeth at your neighbors. How much of Woodhurst's population has been attacked, consumed, or poisoned by this madness because they've been holding out vain hope for a quick cure? How long would it take to outnumber the rest of the city? Worse, to breach the walls of the quarantine? Odds are that one's happened already.

The smell of blood in the air should turn his empty stomach, but mostly it just pulls at him. Sharpens his focus, narrows his attention, spurs him into action before he's even aware he's come to a decision. He swings a fist for the man's jaw, colliding with a crack that staggers him. Follows it up with a knee to the gut that drops him onto the pavement, gasping.

His hands curl at his sides while he stands over the man—still struggling for breath, grasping at the straws of his own fleeting sanity without success. (Two birds, one stone. It would make so much more sense.)]

THREE

[There aren't a lot of places in Woodhurst that he'd really consider secure. (And that includes the ALASTIAR-maintained petting zoo they've set up for the infected. Not really the most attractive of options.) But at some point, he happens to duck through a familiar door in an effort to find a place to get his bearings. (His own, yours, a public place that's at least a little out of the way. Etc. Surprise me, I'll roll with it.)

He lets himself in. Slipping through the door quietly but fumbling the effort at the finish line. It closes with an audible rattle that echoes through the room, and he drops back against it for a second, or a handful of them. Eyes closed, hands shaking.]

FOUR

[A MYSTERY. if none of this bullshit works for you, feel free to wildcard me or hassle me for a different starter or ping me via PM or plurk, you know the drill. I'll be slow for a bit while handling network nonsense but gets this up now.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Lucina knows that the disappearance of Jason Todd was a sure thing, despite her hoping otherwise. Every piece of evidence, everything she knows about him, speaks in favor of it — the quarantine wouldn't hold him, and the virus had proven it doesn't leave its victims docile. He's not the type of person to ask others for assistance, either; which meant that once his time in the sewers started rivaling his time away from it, it was only a matter of time before he stopped showing up at all.

She expected it, but that doesn't mean she's going to accept it.

So she turns on the tracker once she's back above ground. It's irresponsible to abandon her post by the tunnels, especially with her partner-in... justice(?) already gone. But her messages — simple updates that quickly turned into questions about his well-being — aren't getting a response anymore, and desperate times call for desperate measures. The rest is pretty much cakewalk, her ski bag hung loosely around her shoulders, the gun in the holster on her belt. She's in her police uniform, bulletproof vest and all ( it never hurts to be safe ), thankful that the little dot indicating Jason's position is no more than a 20 minute walk away ( either he circled the city a few times, or he didn't really get far in the first place ). ]

Jason? [ The tracker leads her to the far side of the university, in a temporarily closed ( but unlocked ) lecture hall. She purposely makes her presence known, though her eyes search for a sign of life. He should be here, but for where exactly— ]

[They've been spending a lot of quality time together, lately. Through the whole course of his illness, really. The whole of the mission. So it would be hard for her to miss the rapid downward slope in his condition. Gone from miserable and moody but manageable to unpredictable and unfocused. Like there's poison bleeding out of him in starts and snaps when his concentration on the case cracks. The occasional thin threat of violence in the set of his spine, when he moves too fast. He doesn't voice it—that he's been starving for weeks, that his base instincts have already started urging him on to the obvious solution and everything lately is red-tinted, some familiar/unfamiliar anger clogging his chest that tastes cold and coppery and burns in a way the ancient madness of the Lazarus Pit didn't. Mindless and singularly focused, and it doesn't die. Just claws its way deeper and hollows him out and fills him up with more of the same. He got less and less done and let his frustration get the better of him more and more. It was only a matter of time until he stopped showing up entirely.

It was only a matter of time before she caught up with him. She's a smart girl, even if she's out of her element in some ways. (And in it in other, more awful ones.) He hadn't had the presence of mind to ditch his phone—and thus his tracker. It's not like he'd set out to disappear, at first.

Despite the hundreds of empty chairs in the abandoned lecture hall, he's sitting on the floor. Leaning against the double-doors on the far side of the room, opposite the matching set that Lucina had used to make her entrance. Wrists on his bent knees, eyes closed, breathing strained but slow—like he's been trying to concentrate on evening it out. There's a cigarette caught between his fingers, telegraphing the odd tremble in them as the tip of it shakes. His lighter has landed a foot or two away on the floor. He doesn't seem to have gotten far enough to use it.

His fingers curl into fists when he hears her approaching. His jaw sets. He does not relax when he places the voice.

Without so much as opening his eyes—]

Don't you have cats to herd down in the tunnels, princess?

[The words are familiar, deliberately casual, but the edge on them is not. No part of it invites approaching any further than she has.]

[ Of course he asks about the tunnels first.

Her reaction is reflexive — a quiet, but sharp exhale of breath, because as if she'd be that irresponsible. ] The others have got it under control. [ She trusts them to. It's just as important to them as it is to the rest ( even if her gut reaction tells her otherwise ). Almost everyone that volunteered are already within the tunnels, anyway, which means there isn't much for her to do in the first place.

( Besides, if she really thought about it, this is where her priorities lie. Finding an answer is important, and so is the cure — but both of those things are things that others can do just as well as she can. This is selfish and personal and she can use every excuse under the book ( she refuses to leave anyone behind ) to justify it, but that's only half-true. She just doesn't want to lose anyone ever again. )

She doesn't flinch anymore, at least, the initial sting already gone with their second trip to the sewers. It's a part of the whole knowing more about him thing — she can't do that unless she tries. Questions bubble underneath the surface, from "how are you faring" to "how bad is it", but those already have answers written plainly on his face. She takes a hesitant step forward — and then another. Her hands remain at her sides, eyes carefully searching his form. ]

... May I sit beside you? [ Is the one she settles for instead. ]

Edited (edits on phone) 2017-03-23 21:52 (UTC)

[Priorities, Lucina. This time, his eyes snap open at the first step forward she takes. Hooded, red-rimmed, focused sharply back at her over his bent knees and his bruised knuckles.

He's never been a very approachable person in the time she's known him. But the still and narrow way he watches her move is not so much wary as it is unmistakably hungry.

His knuckles white, marking the way his pulse picks up at the sight of her and his eyes won't drag away from the exposed skin at her throat. (Tallying the places where one could snap her neck or cave in her skull with the right amount of pressure. Weaknesses in her police armor where he could wedge a knife. Bleed her out and drink it down and tear away at the soft places where she's vulnerable with his teeth. It wouldn't be hard. It doesn't disgust him the way it should, anymore.) While he's watching, she's closing the distance. He cants his head back up at her, but he doesn't move, otherwise. Composure drawn tight and tense like a tripwire, as if any sudden pressure at all would allow it to snap.

She should get lost. Why is she even here when they're closer than ever to cornering their man?]

A pretty girl like you and a guy like me? Are you really that sure I'll keep my hands to myself?

[There's a pointed attempt at bitter symmetry in it, a pale echo of the moment she'd realized he was sick. But it falls too flat to be glib. So much for being the perfect zombie gentleman. (He should tell her to get lost. He knows that, somewhere. She should know how this goes by know. She's lived it before, hasn't she?)]

[ She's here because she's lived it before; the logic should be stupid and backwards ( because it definitely is ), but the short of it is that the situation is different. It's supposed to be different, because the infected aren't gone forever ( yet ). There's no grand moment when she sees the life go out of their eyes, only to be replaced with something haunting and dead — yet their bodies move, with the same agility they had when they were alive. There's still a pulse, they're still breathing; everything else, she figures, are details that will get solved later ( that have to be solved later, no matter what ). ]

[ Which more or less boils down to her refusing to run. She's not tactless, won't approach him if he starts to snap at her, but she'll be back until he lets her sit beside him. ] ... Yes. [ Lucina knows what he's trying to do, and dutifully ignores it. A nod, another step forwards. In case he doubts it, she supplements with a: ] I trust you.

[ Again, it's foolish and shortcut to her demise — but a look of hunger, in some ways, is much better than a blank look. There's a tiny sliver of hope, and she's going to hang on to that for as long as she possibly can ( she doesn't know how to act in any other way ). ]

[Don't ignore him, Lucina. As things are, the argument doesn't really help ease the jagged aggravation out of his spine. Well-intentioned as it is, it doesn't seem to reassure him so much as it puts his hackles up in kneejerk defense. He scoffs shortly through his nose, closes his fingers around his (bent, ruined) cigarette and then tosses it away.]

You almost had me going, there, Luce.

[She's a step or two out of striking range, and maybe three from sitting range. (He both bites back and braces for the insistent urge to close the distance. She's doing it for him, anyway.) He shifts, leaning back against the door now that he's abandoned his cigarette and extending his legs to stretch them out in front of him in a way that'll make it a little easier to join him on the floor. (Feet crossed at the ankle, like it'll slow him down if he tries to move too fast.) Her next step forward gets the same sharp attention as before. But he doesn't try any harder to chase her off. It's about as close to permission as she's going to get.

Your funeral.]