Wolves and Feavers
Sep. 7th, 2006 07:18 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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crossing_lostrpWho: Rose Tyler
Where: Rose's Room (J) to women's bathroom
When: Day 20, late afternoon
Invited: open side tag Isabel, Ami, Scott, Jack S. anyone in the caf at the time.
Status: Complete
She could see it, the burning of a world, home. The whole surface was burning as she was. And around it a million little fires. But there was satisfaction there even through the agony.
But she was burning, and she had to stop, even as she rode a shockwave that tossed her through space and time. Confusion, dizziness on top of agony. She cut off oxygen to her inside, thirty seconds was enough. But how could she do that? She had to save him, as he’d saved her. But oh, he was as burnt as she was. Death was imminent. Maybe for them both. This really could be the end.
Rose was burning. Every cell felt on fire. But the song was there. Beautiful music, soothing and comforting. It didn’t take away the pain, but it distracted her from it.
As she twisted on the sheets of the bed, in the throes of a nightmare or something else something appeared in the kitchen where others were gathered. As Ami curled up with Scott and Isabel felt isolated and no little depressed. Words faded into existence on the wall. Written in blue chalk, in huge letters.
BAD WOLF
Rose woke with a gasp. She was so cold. Sweat dampened her hair. Maybe that’s why she was cold. But wearing nothing but sweat damp scrubs didn’t help. She felt weak and shaky still, but she couldn’t stay in bed, not really tired now. Just so cold. She’d been burning, hadn’t she?
Scrubs. Right. She and the others had been wearing their own cloths when they’d been kidnapped. They had to be around in this place somewhere.
She wandered, glassy eyed, from the room. Now where would they put their cloths? Maybe she should shower first. She needed to get warm. She began to shiver. Yeah, shower, warm up first.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-09 12:41 am (UTC)”Just need a shower. ‘M a bit cold is all.” She waved as she passed. She was weaving a bit as she walked, but that could well be due to just waking up.
The women’s bathroom, she remembered it from somewhere, but it had shower curtains this time. She stripped and let the scrubs lay where they fell, she didn’t have the energy to pick them up right now. Not when she was so bloody cold, to her bones. It was almost as bad as Women Wept, with its frozen oceans. Beautiful, but so cold.
She turned on the water. As hot as she could get it without burning. As it was her skin reddened from the heat. Oh, lovely warmth.
She managed to pick up the soap and shampoo and actually wash up before just standing under the hot flow. But her legs were shaky again so she sat down on the tiled floor. The tiles had warmed a bit from the water. This was nice.
[Scott] Medical emergency?
Date: 2006-09-10 05:05 pm (UTC)All seemed quiet, so Scott dropped his mental shields as he smoothed Ami's hair out of her face. As soon as he did Scott immediately felt someone's discomfort. (Cold,) he realized, glad that it wasn't Ami. When the feeling didn't pass he decided to see what the fucking island was up to now.
Ami whimpered and reached for Scott as he got to his feet. /I'm not going far, love,/ he assured her. She returned a sleepy pulse of affection. Leaving the lights on, Scott stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind him.
SCOTT ENTERS
Scott followed the nagging sense of wrongness to the other wing of the bunker. To the women's bathroom, specifically. He could hear a shower running inside. After rapping on the door with his knuckles he called, "You okay in there?"
[Rose]] Medical emergency?
Date: 2006-09-10 07:31 pm (UTC)"Gamma Leonis, eightysix light years, yellow star system. Energy based race, advanced civilization. Scientific explorers."
[Scott] Jumping to conclusions (tag MB, Doctor)
Date: 2006-09-10 09:48 pm (UTC)"'Okay' is ambiguous at this juncture. Select a different term."
Scott blinked. "Rose, I'm coming in. Just want to make sure you're ok-- um, not sick." Before she had a chance to respond with any more weirdness Scott strode inside -- into a cloud of steam. The bathroom was hotter and more humid than the jungle. "Rose!"
He followed the sound of running water to the shower stall, where the blonde was sprawled on the tile floor, naked. Rose's eyes were half-open, and her skin was bright red from the scalding water. That and the now-overwhelming sense of wrongness distracted Scott from Rose's very... shapely body.
Scott turned off the shower telekinetically and knelt beside Rose. "C'mon, we're taking you to see Dr. Pierson." He was about to look for a towel, clothes, anything to cover her when Rose met his eyes. Motes of golden light floated across them. "Um..." (What did those bastards do to you, Rose?)
"The protocol is on schedule," Rose said flatly. She wrapped her arms around herself, saying in her normal voice, "So cold."
Scott stared for a moment longer, then managed, "Cold. On schedule. Yeah." He reached forward to pick her up but didn't get any farther than touching her shoulder. Rose's high fever was alarming, but her overpowering mental presence make him yank his hand back. Once he'd cleared his head Scott narrowed his link with Ami, then connected with his sphere. He "shouted" telepathically, /Doctor! Damon! Something's wrong with Rose. I'm with her in the women's bathroom. Bring Pierson and a towel. Or a blanket./ If the Doctor didn't hear Scott, he figured that Damon would and would bring the Time Lord.
[Rose] Jumping to conclusions (tag Scott)
Date: 2006-09-10 10:22 pm (UTC)"Huuuurts." She fell to her side, curled on the floor, her arms wrapped around her abdomen. "M burning. Cold to the bone and burnin' up. The music... th' singin' can't stop it." That was Rose's voice, fear in it, and misery.
"Process almost complete. This physical form cannot tolerate much more without a period of adjustment. We will be what we need to be." There was a distance to her tone. She reached out and took Scott's wrist.
For a moment he could sense, time itself. It wasn't painful so much as shocking. A awareness that most minds were not meant to have. But some sort of adjustment was made, and that awareness faded in nanoseconds. "Nature abhors a vacuum. So does time. The laws of time cannot be broken, only bent. Causality Theorem. They will understand in the order of things. Bad Wolf is not one, but two merged to form a third under common purpose. But the third makes decisions the two do not concur or consent to. The Process was started by accident, but continues through intent. Accident, but always meant to be. The Wolf cannot be held to heel. He cannot hear you. Shields himself always, heart, soul and mind. She has slipped through the first two, which is why she was chosen by time itself.”
[Scott] Jumping to conclusions
Date: 2006-09-10 11:34 pm (UTC)Holding his shields as tightly as he could, Scott picked up the semi-conscious Rose. She was already partially dry from fever. He took her directly to her and the Doctor's room and laid her on the bed. If the Doctor didn't arrive soon, Scott would have to leave Rose to go find him.
OOC: Reply Down Here
Date: 2006-09-11 01:31 am (UTC)[Doctor] Elsewhere in the bunker lab
Date: 2006-09-11 12:21 am (UTC)The prisoners had still not been questioned, although they were taken one at a time, at gunpoint, to take care of neccessities, and were given food and water. They were not spoken to. It helped keep them on edge and nerveous. Being questioned would come as a kind of relief when the time was right.
He was in the lab now, looking over the most recent blood samples taken prior to 'liberating' the bunker.
He pulled up the DNA films and placed them on the wall light. Looking at them, he closed his eyes and tried to suppress the anger,fear and guilt.
There, the begining formation of a third strand of DNA. Fragmented, just beginning to grow. Impossible and monsterous as it had no place in the human body.
This was because of him. If she hadn't been with him, these things wouldn't have been done to her. But on a more personal level, this was directly related to him. The so called scientists here had no idea what was happening, although it intrigued them greatly. He knew what, but the how eluded him.
He felt a frision of worry and upset through his link to the Tardis. Good, she was recovered a bit from bosting his telepathy the day before yesterday. She rarely ever projected anything to him when he wasn't onboard her. So this distress was unusual.
He couldn't even ask what was wrong. They didn't quite communicate like that. But he got an impression of Rose. Was the Tardis picking up on his feeling here?
((OOC: Yep, he can be a bit thick at times.)
[Megabyte] 'Porting About
Date: 2006-09-11 01:30 am (UTC)"It's normal for a first," Dr. Pierson told her with far too much cheerfulness, "Don't worry, things will pick up before you know it."
House, in an odd twist of sympathy and helpfulness, gave her a very, very low dose of Demerol, citing that it would help her relax and take "the edge off the pain."
"But don't go thinking that I'm your personal pusher," House continued, actually popping several small white pills into his mouth, "Women did this with nothing but a twig to bite on for thousands of years."
Whatever his attitude, the medication apparently did do as promised and after a bit, Claire was able to relax into another light nap. That gave Megabyte opportunity to check on Junior and to confirm what Scott had told him – the baby was definitely empathic. Empathic and sharing in his mother's Demerol supplied numbness. The fetal monitor didn't show any distress, only a drop in heart rate of a beat or two, so there didn't seem to be anything to worry about.
Megabyte went back to reading DHARMA technical manuals and occasionally checking Claire's contractions on the monitor and watching the baby's vitals. It was at one of his checks that a surge of urgency and desperation washed over him, and a faint tickling in the back of his mind.
(What the -- )
Automatically, yet cautiously, he dropped his shields, reaching out with his senses to figure out what he head and felt. It surprised him that he recognized Scott's "voice" considering that he'd never heard it before, but the words were disjointed, quiet, like coming to him from beneath liquid or water and it took a moment for Megabyte to turn what he heard / Rose … women's bath. . .. Pierson and . . .a blanket./ into the full message.
(Crap.)
He glanced at Claire, still sleeping and realized that he couldn't take the chance that the Doctor had heard Scott. There was something wrong with Rose and she needed a doctor and the Doctor. Megabyte was halfway to the door, racking his brain to figure out where the Doctor was when he decided to take a short cut.
(The lab, probably, with Rodney.)
Megabyte teleported there, glad to see that his approximation of the Doctor's location had been correct. "Doctor! There's something wrong with Rose."
He sent back to Scott, /I'm bringing the Doctor. And I'm focused on you now. Can you repeat?/
[Doctor] 'Porting About
Date: 2006-09-11 01:43 am (UTC)"Doctor! There's something wrong with Rose."
Oh! That was what the Tardis was trying to tell him. Sorry, old girl.
"Is she convulsing?" He quickly ran behind Damon. Those tapes had him actually violently angry, and he had been forced to leave the room to regain some of those primative impulses. It was facing the Daleks all over again, only this time the focus of his anger was human.
He had to consider his options. He'd had Ripley feeding Rose Asprin and sports drinks earlier. No more Asprin. Not with the begining structure of the third DNA strand.
"I'll need Doctor Pierson. I'm going to have to find a way to shut down those Nanogenes. They should have stopped when the injections did." He was muttering to himself as he ran.
[Scott] Ten-four, good buddy
Date: 2006-09-11 01:59 am (UTC)His sphere hummed in his pocket. /Rose is sick, burning up with fever. I brought her to her and the Doctor's room./ Scott dropped his concentration as soon as he'd finished speaking. He might need the energy to help Rose.
[Megabyte] Off to see the doctor ... not that one, the other one
Date: 2006-09-11 02:22 am (UTC)He didn't wait for an acknowledgement or dismissal. Megabyte figured that there was no need; the Doctor would go to Rose and Megabyte would track down the sometimes elusive Dr. Pierson.
[Doctor] This is NOT my panic face. Really.
Date: 2006-09-11 11:45 am (UTC)Rose was very flushed, her hair wet from the showers. She was covered with a sheet for modisty's sake, but the sheet was damp from wither the shower or sweat.
The Doctor ran the sonic screwdriver over her.
"Temperature is at 42. We're gonna need ice. Got to cool her down or risk brain damage."
He looked at Scott with a distressing amount of gratefullness. He was trying to mask his worry, bordering on fear.
"No more asprin. If I'm not around, can you make sure everyone understands that? The genetic changes may be giving her an asprin allergy." Maybe. He didn't know, and he didn't like not knowing. But better safe than sorry.
He held a hand a few inches over her body, closing his eyes he mentally called the nanogenes. He'd commanded them before. He mentally called them to him.
They were not answering. How? They needed to be programmed to ignore external commands, and these were from a war ambulance.... no. They were from Jack's timeship. That's where her rope burns had been treated.
They still should respond to a outside command.
"The nanogenes aren't responding to me. Their external sensors have been shut off. But the people here don't know how to do that."
[Scott] Working overtime
Date: 2006-09-11 04:42 pm (UTC)Scott didn't wait for a reply. He connected with his sphere again and turned his attention to Rose's hypothalamus. It, like the rest of her brain, was working overtime. Coaxing it to lower her body temperature was an uphill battle requiring all of Scott's concentration. Whatever the nanogenes were doing, they were going at it full-tilt.
[Doctor] Working overtime
Date: 2006-09-12 12:48 am (UTC)The Doctor ran out of the room and went to the nearest bathroom, ripping down a plastic showard curtain. He didn't even notice if it was the men's or womens. He went to the larger kitchen next and flung open cupboard doors until he found a box of those large zipper bags. Those he filled with ice from the freezer. and put into the shower curtain. He left all the cupboards open.
He ran to the second, smaller kitchen to find that one had people in it.
No time to chat, he went to the freezer and used all the ice to fill some more zipper bags.
"Someone refill the ice, thanks." He turned to leave and stopped, his mouth falling open a bit in shock.
On the wall, in big blue letters were two words. BAD WOLF.
"No. nonononono..." He knew denying facts wouldn't change them. "It's supposed to be gone."
No time to wonder, he was already putting some pieces into place.
He ran out of the second kitchen leaving some confused people behind, not caring how barmy he looked.
Back in the room he was supposed to share with rose he lay an icy hand on Scott's shoulder.
"Hey. Thanks. We need to lift her up and get the shower curtain under her. We'll close up top and bottom like a bananna, and pack the ice bags in with her."
[Scott] A cold shower
Date: 2006-09-12 03:23 am (UTC)Working together, they spread the shower curtain out on the floor and moved the shivering Rose on top of it. The Doctor kept talking to Rose and keeping her from moving while Scott knotted the ends of the impromptu watertight hammock. Once that was done, they put the ziplock bags of ice in with Rose. Her whimpers and wails were unnerving.
If Rose's weak prostest were affecting the Doctor, he wasn't showing it. The Time Lord's face was deadly serious. "Right, then. Lavatory."
Rose was hauled back into the bathroom in short order. Scott telekinetically got the closest shower running cold water so that Rose was immersed in cold water as soon as possible.
Once it was clear that Rose wasn't going to panic and thrash about Scott finally asked the obvious. "Doctor, nanogenes? What's going on?"
Re: [Scott] A cold shower
Date: 2006-09-12 11:38 am (UTC)"You've got a fever, Rose, we have to bring it down." He stripped out of the punctured leather jacket and moved to hold her, despite the cold. She was still packed in as much ice as he could round up.
"At last her shaking and moans, and evident incomprehension drew him to place his fingers to her temples and softly murmer, "sleep."
She quieted, her glassy eyes closing, but it didn't stop her shivers, or was that twitching?
"Nanogenes, nanites, whatever you want to call them. A while back, when she first met Jack, she had some nasty rope burns. He had a alien timeship at the time, with a nanogene medical kit. They'll heal anything, even regrow limbs. But like any machine, a few break down. Thousands of little ones leave maybe a score of inactive ones left in the body after they're done and they return to their holding cells to repower up and await their next orders." The Doctor's fingers kept circling at Rose's temples, keeping physical contact.
"So she had a couple dozen inactive, and perfectly harmless little one celled healing nanites in her body. Then months later, she manages to take the Time Vortex... pretty much time itself, into her body. She merged with the Tardis. It nearly killed her. She became something called Bad Wolf. Almost a goddess, able to reorder time itself. Nothing but a Tardis can withstand that, and it can't access the power like she did. It was burning her alive from the inside. I managed to pull it from her and put it back into the Tardis. Thought it would kill me in turn, but it didn't. I never ran tests on her, because we found ourselves here only minutes later."
The Doctor looked upto meet Scott's eyes. "As near as I can figure when these people injected Rose with immunosuppresents among other things, the remaining sparks of vortex energy in her body reactivated the dead nanogenes. They've been replicating themselves, and changing her on a genetic level. They're rebuilding her. But they aren't programmed for that. Something's reprogramed them. And from what I saw in the kitchen... I think it's the Bad Wolf."
[Scott] A cold shower
Date: 2006-09-12 08:17 pm (UTC)Shifting...
Date: 2006-09-12 10:40 pm (UTC)[Doctor] Colder reality
Date: 2006-09-12 10:48 pm (UTC)He was cold now, as well, and it had nothing to do with the cold water soaking him. The Doctor was chilled by his current helplessness with this situation. That Rose was bearing the brunt of his own carelessness. If he had been able to check her out before the Tardis shut down. If she hadn't tried to save him against his own wishes, if he hadn't brought her with him...
"They've started building a third strand of DNA. Mine is the only species with that particular trait. But why? The Bad Wolf seemed... dangerously protective before."
He barked a bitter laugh. "Her temperature's going down. I think you spared her the worst of it, Scott. It seems I keep owing you."
[Scott] Payback
Date: 2006-09-13 12:38 am (UTC)OOC: I'm feeling thoroughly uninspired. If you want to wrap this thread up,
[Doctor] Amicable agreement
Date: 2006-09-13 03:05 am (UTC)"Leave the curtain and such for later. I'll carry her back to the room. But we'll need fresh bedding and some blankets. I'm gonna stay with her, keep monitoring her vitals. Could you let Daniel know what's going on, and where I'll be?
Not as if he was likely to leave Rose soon. He'd gotten wrapped up in helping solve other problems, and left her alone to get this bad off. Tomorrow there would be tests to see if this could be reversed, or stopped at a safe point, anyway.
"Now if you don't mind, I'll get her dry and wrapped up." Scott nodded and slipped out.
The Doctor acted as he had in the past when he had seen Rose without clothing. He kept it on a strickly medical level, ruthlessly supressing the purely male reaction to her. There was a time to appriciate and a time to attend. Rose was in some discomfort yet, even if her temperature was away from the danger zone.
Scott went ahead of the Doctor, and kindly changed the sheets. He was fast. By the time the Doctor arrived carrying Rose wrapped in his leather jacket and a towel, the bed was made and some blankets gathered.
"Thanks again, Scott." The Doctor's voice was soft, and subdued as he slipped Rose into the bed. The way he looked at her left little doubt the way he felt about her, no matter what they might have said in the past. It was the look Scott gave Ami. Here was something precious to fight or die for.
"I'll do what I can for Ami, if she wants help, when she's ready. And I'll find some way to make that drug cocktail she's worried about ineffective. I don't want you thinking I've forgotten." The Doctor met Scott's eyes.
The psychic trauma of what she'd been forced to do was doubtless going to plague her. But she had to be ready for someone to help her. Ready to deal with and face it. It was, essentually, a mental rape, both for her and Boone. And like the any form of violation, healing could not be rushed, or pushed.
"Good night, Scott." The Doctor kickeed the brakes off the other single hospital bed and shoved it up against Rose's.
Nope, he wasn't going anywhere.