Pepper / INK /

Protection

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Everyone was surprised when medical got there with a full quarantine team and began testing, only to find Max had Plague. But, they did tell him that what he had could not have been from blast he had just received, he had had it about a week.

Everyone it seemed had been coming down with Shadow Plague. "Call your friends, we should check the rest of your taskforce and anyone you have com into contact with over the last week."

***********

"Jordan?" The veiled young woman had placed her hand against the pad next to the door. "My name is Alyssa and I’m from Medical Services, we need access."

"I’m not supposed to open the door unless my father is here."

"Jordan, your father, Robert, he’s-- he’s sick Jordan, and we need to make sure you aren’t either. Check the pad, I’m From Medical Services."

A moment later the door vanished. "What happened to my dad?"

"Have you been feeling ok?"

"A little tired."

"Has your father shown a change in temperament lately?"

"What happened to my dad?"

"He’s at Medical and as soon as you are processed we can take you there."

"Dad’s been acting weird since I dunno, about the last year. Not sleeping well, sneaking out, mom got sick a year or two ago, and then about a month after she died he started not feeling good, but he said he got better, that it was just stress, but he’s been angry."

"Has he said anything lately that scared you, threatened you maybe?"

"H-how did you know that?"

"Jordan," Alyssa smiled through the fabric. Even if he couldn’t see it, he’d be able to feel it. "Your dad is very sick. We think he caught what your mom had."

"What did she have? Dad and I never found out."

"We think she and your father both came down with Shadow Plague. Your dad probably caught it somewhere in town, maybe some place he and your mom went. She wasn’t strong enough to fight it off and it killed her before the really tell-tale symptoms showed, but your dad... He’s really sick Jordan. And we need to make sure you don’t have it too."

"If I do have it what happens?"

"We give you the antidote and you sit in quarantine for a week until you are better. Have you noticed a decrease in your magic?"

"I-I’ve been afraid I did something wrong. That I was losing my magic because I was bad."

"That’s one of the first symptoms. How long has it been?"

"I dunno, four, five days. I had a fever monday."

"Which means either the two of you were never around each other, or your dad just entered an active phase."

"Dad was almost always away since Mom died, I thought maybe he didn’t love me anymore."

"He does Jordan, he’s just very ill, his mind isn’t working correctly, you need to come with us."

"Medical Services agent Alyssa, I have Jordan, He’s symptomatic, need a quarantine location, and we need to get a sterile team to the house to give it a good clean."

"Do you have any pets?"

"A dog, but he’s upstairs."

She nodded. "Cats and dogs don’t catch plague. So what we are going to do is moon wash the house for the next couple days. That should get rid of any of the virus left here. Nothing should be damaged or destroyed."

He nodded and came with her.

#

"Gabriel," Daniel was using Max’s phone. "I need you to do me a favor. Go down to the night garden and talk to Sebastian, tell him and his charge that we are quarantined and that they have to get to medical now. Then put the whole place on Lunar wash."

"Yes sir, anything else?"

"When you are done, check yourself in too. It’s shadow Plague."

There was a long moment of silence. "Yes sir, am I going to be ok?"

"You should be, we’ve caught it early."

"So you have it?"

"Yeah, they think I picked it up a week or so ago, in town. I’m in the early stages, its why I can’t recharge like I should. It also explains why the people are so easily falling under the Necromancer’s spell.

"Shadow plague." Sebastian said, taking the phone, he had been with Gabe when the call had come. "Doesn’t it make people susceptible to dabbling?"

"Yeah, it makes them feel bad, changes their temperament and takes their magic. Enough to make anyone dabble in the forbidden."

 Max saw the veiled figure approaching. "I have to go, the doctor is coming."

The figure approached, placing her hands together in front of her, a traditional greeting to Alchemists.  "The strain that you have is one that has been around the city for a long time. The one that Robert has, is much different. It is a much older, more virulent strain. And I’m afraid, officers, that Robert will never be himself again. I can pinpoint that his exposure to this older form of the virus has been if not constant, consistent for the last two years. And if its a person, then this person is the typhoid mary of this particular case. The strain is several hundred years old and not from around here. Further east."

"Is it from the desert tribes?"

"Quite possibly, yes. It has a much longer incubation period before symptoms start, but after that it progresses to the the toxic phase rapidly."

"Does it still show the same birth defects if you are in that incubation period when you have a child?"

The doctor nodded. "Why?"

"I know who our typhoid mary is. In this case it’s a he. The necromancer we are after, he’s long-lived and his mother was from the desert tribes. I think our father caught the virus from his girl friend, and he was born with it. No one knew, but it would have made his magic not appear on time. We thought he was totally null, which is rare in a magic family. But if he was born with the virus, then it was blocking his magic. By the time he was a teen, the active phase had started and his brain was warped."

The doctor nodded at the timeline. "And if that’s the case, whoever this person is will not have the ability to think or feel properly. Everything for them will be about necromancy and magic. The stronger he makes his magic, the worse the virus gets."

The doctor, the only one around without a veil spoke again.  His dark brown eyes were worried. "Is there any chance that the mother was from the region of the presidium?" The doctor finally asked. "There is some talk among the rest of the staff, the older version looks--manipulated. We won’t know that for sure unless we can get samples from the primary carrier-- but it appears as if it was created specifically for some purpose."  He sighed.  "We suspect, that purpose was as a weapon."

"I was hoping you wouldn’t say that." Daniel said. "My uncle lives at the presidium. He’s a solar. Pretty rare, and its been brought to my attention that he might have fled to the city with a bunch of Alchemic doctors of Virology. Whether they came and worked for him of their will or his is anyone’s guess. But there are stories, and they are not rare that he dabbled in genetic engineering and social constructionism." Daniel replied. "If anyone was capable of it, it would be Seb."

Max frowned.  "Wait, What? Then its your opinion that the virus was created Doctor?"

"No, not created, more like-- adapted." The doctor frowned. "We are sending to the far east for some of the specialists, but if even our rudimentary genetic assay is right, it’s triggered by certain genetics. Which you do not have. So you are incapable of catching the older form."

"Shadow plague, as near as we can tell is naturally occurring in most cases, but this form seems to have been bread to wipe out certain populations and leave the others untouched." The doctor frowned. "The strange thing is, you show symptoms of the shadow plague but-- you don’t carry the genetic markers to trigger it."

Daniel looked down at his bare skin, he had taken the ink off to have it looked after while he healed A thought settled in his head. "I know what those genes are, and why I don’t have them." Daniel put his head down. "Its the ink."

"Ink?" The doctor asked. "I’m not familiar with that."

Daniel smiled. "You’re a Mortal?"

The doctor nodded. "Most of us in this wing are. It’s the only way to make sure you can’t catch it."

"I’m an Inkwalker Doctor, my whole family is, and I’m willing to bet that the genetics that trigger it are in the Ink, we know there are at least two forms, there are the eastern and the Western Inks, roughly. The ones from the deserts are a little different, they have different prayers and tend to be a little more-- fierce. Some might even say they are more violent. And most of them are solar. So to find a desert Lunar has to be pretty hard." He remembered his father’s girl friend, she had the moon mark, but her skin marked her as one of the deep desert tribes. Farther to the east or the south, she could be from the great desert, the nameless desert of the south.

She had said that she wasn’t able to go home, that she was stolen from her people when she was young, and only escaped recently... but what if she didn’t know how far she had gone? Could she have gone as far as the Forbidden city? Could the raiders have been the Presidium and its ladies? In which case, Damien had no chance.  Being born with the one strain would have been bad enough, but having the ink bound to him, it would have made the engineered strain even worse.  It would have made it stronger. 

"He was born with Plague?"  The doctor asked. "Yes, you said that plague when they are born with it, can make their eyes look red.  Well, his brown eyes have looked red since the day he was born.  When he was nine the lunar mark showed, when he was twelve his magic broke and vanished.  That was the year I took the ink.  I had thought he and his mom were both dead."

A lot of things are possible.  But we won’t know more until the experts get here, and it would be foolish of us to assume we knew more than we do.  So I will refrain from commenting about the origin except to say, that the common strain here is local and non preferential.  The uncommon strain, shall we say, is triggered by certain genes,

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Next Chapter: What Jordan found