jason todd. | red hood. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gutpunching) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
epidemiology2017-03-21 01:40 pm
gutpunching) wrote in epidemiology2017-03-21 01:40 pm
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.]
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.]
no subject
He exhales sharply and scornfully. The slant in his expression tips up in a way that would be wry on any other day. It just manages to be mean and morbid on this one. Just enough of a crooked humorless grin to show the white of his teeth.]
You sure you really want an answer to that question?
[Think about it, Aqua.]
no subject
She doesn't know what's going on in his mind, outside the obvious, pervading thoughts of cannibalism. He doesn't seem so desperate that he'd want her to put him out of his misery just yet... or maybe that's just a front; she doesn't know Jason well enough to read his moods, much less when there's a virus getting in the way of it all.
Her arms tighten around her legs. ]
...How long ago did this start.
[ How long do you have, is what she's really asking. ]
no subject
Just a few days ago he was digging through the tunnels in the sewers in search of the person responsible for the virus. Pinging the network with Lucina for volunteers. He'd been miserable but mostly handling himself, then. Seems like a long time ago, now.
He spreads his hands in front of him. Still spattered with dry and drying blood. Literally red-handed. Lets not beat around the bush.]
Long enough to start going all Sweeney Todd on the shambling masses, apparently.
[Most civilian cases have already hit worst case scenario, by now. He's not quite there, yet. Still lucid more often than not, if not clearly himself. But then there's the not. At least the guy he'd taken out had been pretty far gone. A danger to himself and others. (But did he deserve it? That's a greyer area.)]
no subject
She doesn't know what the victim deserved, nor can she come to a conclusive verdict on Jason himself. (She has to stop herself from looking away from his free admission to guilt, even if it's really the virus to blame.) ]
...
[ Talking to him clearly doesn't help her come up with a solution, and perhaps it's better to confer with someone else. But she doesn't know who Jason may or may not associate with on the regular, except— ] ...I'm going to speak with Lucina. She'd want to know you're here.
[ (Perhaps two blue heads are better than one, and they can figure a way out of Jason's mess.) It isn't like she wants to get her 'sister' involved, but they're all friends here. The burden is shared, if not a sense of responsibility, at least how she sees it.
...Of course, she doesn't trust him to roam around freely in her absence, either. ]
I'm sorry, but you'll need to stay here.
[ (He won't be able to protest much before the room fills with the hazy glow of her magic.)
(Good night again, Jason.) ]
no subject
He can guess what she's planning to do before she does it. Already shifting to brace himself against the porcelain and stand, breathing in to tell her no. (A hardline insist that she not drag Lucina back into it, thanks—)
But it all happens a little too late. Too distracted these days to act fast enough to head her off at the pass. It'll be enough to knock him out, for now. Enough that she can leave him, harmlessly locked up where he can't hurt anyone but himself. For now.
But expecting him to stay put might be a little much. (Sorry, not sorry.) By the time she comes back around, he's made himself scarce again. For better or for worse.]