Unzombification

[kinrrataiyath]

Kin sat alone at her desk in the Needs, staring at a screen that was all too familiar. The sounds outside her room were muffled by her closed door (or as closed as she could get it with a broken door jam). Other scientists milled about, making syringes, helping their friends, or otherwise working as best they could in the delapitated building. There were still signs of the recently, long lasting zombie invasion. The air still smelled faintly of blood, leaving a metallic tang on the tongue if one lingered in the hallways too long. The walls bore fresh marks of struggle; long slashes where frantic fingernails had worked at the walls, splashes of long dried blood, and other debris left in patterns along the floor that everyone tried to ignore. Kin had done what she could to cover up the worst of the marks with make-shift carpets made out of tarp. She placed boxes over the plastic sheets and tried not to look at them, but no matter her efforts, the memory of what lay beneath hovered like a lethal smog in the back of her mind.

She had come here with the hope of a cure. Instead, she had faced a massacre.

Kin closed her eyes and turned away from the computer screen. It's eerie blue glow continued to reflect off her pallid skin, giving the bags under her eyes a deathly luminescence. Hints of flashing numbers and a rotating sequence of DNA darted across the scratch glass of her spectacles. Behind the shelter of her closed eyelids, she could still see that specific pattern. It leered at her mockingly. She reminded herself that inanimate objects did not leer.

A week had passed since she'd returned to the Cosway to find Red near death and many of her friends missing. A few months had passed since the zombie invasion that had brought down the Needs and turned all her hard work into ash. Yet here she sat at her computer once more, back in the same room she had used as her lab before the onslaught. Here she sat with her notes on the twisted virus strain Doctor Gould had made and implanted in her, wishing that she had a cure instead.

The cure was still beyond her grasp. She had pulled together what research had not been destroyed and started again, but her goal was still just an intangible dream. All she had was a sample of a strain that made her shudder just to think of it. And yet she planned to use it on her friend, laughably calling it a "cure" for his condition.

It was that or let the man die the next time he was bitten. There would be no more coming back for Agate if he fell again. Briefly she wondered if she would make the same choice in his position. After all, death would be a release from this nightmare.

She let the thought unravel a second later as so much discarded nonsense. There was still too much to be done and too many people to worry about to concern herself with her own mortality. Until she found the cure she sought, Kin would not allow herself to rest.

Of course, that was not really helping her mental state.

Kin pushed herself up from her rusted swivel chair with a resigned sigh and moved towards an operation table set out in the middle of the room. She could debate guilt and responsibility with herself later. Agate and Kay would be there soon and it was high time she got ready. Mechanically, the scientist began to check the restraints attached to the table to ensure that they were strong enough. The last thing they needed was an accident when working with this virus.

[dray]

And, today of all days, Agate was having a harder time than usual with keeping his footing over the rooftops. The path from the Cosway to the Needs had been firmly trampled, and the planks and ladders and ropes and grips that helped make the journey safer were in as good a condition as anything in Malton got... but that didn't keep Agate from slipping occasionally.

He was glad to have Kay (and only Kay) in his company. For once, Fa and the rest of the Cosway group had been entrusted with Casey, though the baby didn't like it. Fa had ensured the couple that the child would forget about them and cheer up soon enough -- and then apologized when she realized what she'd said.

'She's probably right,' Agate considered, 'Casey's probably tougher than her dear old lady.'

The Needs was soon in sight, and Agate paused at the threshold that would take them from the the rooftop to their destination. He wasn't a particularly brave person by nature; compared to most of the residents of the Cosway, he was a downright coward. He didn't often face anybody head on in a fight, though he liked to provoke them. He usually tried to sweet talk somebody into trading something away that was useful for him and his, and barring that, he was never above looting from the recently dead. Doing anything to get a leg up over zombies and the competition alike didn't equate to being ballsy, it was just a matter of survival...

And so was this. Agate had avoided death for over a year and a half, now, by whatever miracle. The last time he'd eaten pavement, he'd had a good long stay, and the scars of his mauling had never healed over. The magic goop that came in revivification syringes worked perfectly fine on most of the citizens of Malton, but Agate was so close to brain rot that the serum's hold was close to slipping away entirely. If he didn't undergo Kin's treatment, he probably wouldn't get up again.

Agate was rarely depressive by nature, and he'd always fought tooth and nail to stay alive. The thought of laying down forever held the opposite affect on him as it did on Kin: it terrified him. It terrified him more than the thought of this treatment, even though the scientist had divulged all of the possible side-effects. The process wasn't going to be pretty...

But like everyone who survived in Malton, Agate had grown tolerance for pain. He shivered and held a mitten-clad hand up for Kay. For once he was wordless, but he sought her comfort before he entered the building. He desperately didn't want to look weak in front of the weakest of the Cosway's residents. There was something pathetic in knowing that she would soon have power over him and that she was very likely his last hope. He'd rather rely on a strong spirit like Kay, if he had to rely on anyone at all.

[Kat]

Kay took his hand, and did one better, stepping in front of him. Her other hand took his other glove and she looked up into the familiar landscape of his face. Landscape that would, she reminded herself, hopefully be changing back to something smoother soon.

This had been a hard decision and she'd had to watch him make it while wrestling with her own hopes and fears about this strange and dangerous procedure that Kin had described to them in gory detail. In the end, she was glad they were trying anything they could to make sure Casey would grow up with a dad. There was even the old, flickering inkling of a hope that this might bring back some of Agate's memories -- something that was far from vital, but she suspected it'd be something he'd appreciate. Still.... there was a part of her that was convinced that this was the last time she would see him alive and whole, and that pervasive fear was what she was desperately trying not to show on her face right now.

She released both his hands and brought her own gloved ones up to his cheeks, feeling through the thin-sulate the ridges of his facial scarring, and then she leaned up and kissed him, long and gentle. When she pulled back again, she rested her forehead on his chin and said, "we should go inside, huh?"

[dray]

After a long moment, Agate nodded agreement, but he didn't step forward. There was a Kay in the way, after all. It was cold out here, but the heat coming off of the woman's head as he rested his cheek against the side of it... wasn't something that he wanted to give up just yet.

Agate had already done everything that he could to ensure that his portion of life in the Cosway would be taken care of if he didn't come back. He'd written out a list for Fa, as sore and arthritic as his fingers had become, detailing rations and what he'd been doing to feed people -- when they chose to eat together, anyways. He'd also written down a list of the people who he'd been bargaining and trading with with crude drawings so that Fa could keep up the lines of contact. Every little bit helped, right? And of course, Agate had ensured that he would be coming back. Everything else was only a precaution.

Right now he was very worried that all of his fussing and detail-mongering hadn't been 'just a precaution'. Now that the suburb was relatively quiet and safe, Agate wasn't sure if he wanted to take the risk... but of course it was only because the neighborhood was quiet that they could go through with this in the first place.

A distant, almost petulant groan brought him back to the present. If this went through properly, then the next time Agate died, he'd be properly (properly?!) undead. Or upright, at least, enough to be revived. Anything superficial, like a loss of scarring, was only a bonus to the thought of being able to come back without a worry. It didn't matter that coming back also meant possibly becoming a threat.

So... after a good long time with his arms wrapped around Kay's shoulders, the two of them embracing rather a little close to the edge of the building to be safe, Agate gently released his grip. If they went in, he wanted to go first.

Kin's office wasn't hard to find. Agate had only to ask directions, and one of her science-buddies pointed him in the right direction. Soon he and Kay were standing outside her door. Agate took a deep breath, then knocked...

[kinrrataiyath]

Her mind was a jumble of past and present. She was too anxious to focus on any one thought for too long, so the natural solution was to let them just come as they pleased. Kin could do little to stem the onslaught of half-formed nightmares that were resurrected by the sight of this all too familiar scene. The visions were blurry, but the horrid sounds and sensations made up for it all too well. There were screams, groans, the feeling of searing pain all along her skin, and that persistant, terrifying hatred that seethed beneath the surface like a volcano ready to explode. That was what scared her most.

The knock startled Kin out of her reveries and nearly out of her skin. She jumped high enough to rattle the operation table before settling down again. Agate, she told herself before ever reaching the door. If she was scared, he must be registering somewhere on the petrified beyond belief end of the scale. They were depending on her for his life. She tried to put on a smile as she opened the door.

"Hi, come in," she greeted them in her small voice. Though she had learned to speak up when necessary, that instinctive need to make herself as small and quiet as possible had never gone away. With her eyes on the ground, she stepped back to let them into the small lab room.

[dray]

Seeing Kin as demure and wilting as she always was put a new fear into Agate, considering that he was (whether he liked it or not) putting a new kind of trust in her. He stepped hesitantly into the lab and made room for Kay to enter as well, looking around, eyes settling on the operation table. His throat bobbed as he gulped, and the side of his mouth that wasn't marred into a permanent frown drew down as well.

He began to shed his mittens and toque and outer jacket, just to busy himself. Without a word, he waited for one of the women to say something; for Kin to give him the next step, for Kay to speak up for whatever reason.

[Kat]

Kay narrowly stopped herself from immediately beginning to pace once they'd entered the room, instead giving the little room a scrutinous looking-over, taking in the equiptment and especially that chilling, strappy chair. Her look was like a hawk, vigilant and a little scary.

The truth was that she did have faith in Kin, rather a lot more than she might have had in another person in a similar position. Ever since Casey's birth, when the then-terrified scientist had pulled herself together and remained surprisingly calm throughout the whole gory proceedings, resulting in a healthily birthed infant being delicered rathre than a little corpse, Kay had trusted Kin to pull herself together in a crisis. As far as the redhead was concerned, Kin could cower and scrape and do whatever she'd like to make herself comfortable in day-to-day life -- she'd proven that she could rise to the f*cking challenge when she needed to.

But to say Kay had faith in someone who was about to try a risky, lengthy, downright fatal procedure on her husband was like saying she trusted a downed zombie not to take a chunk out of her. It was true, but she was keeping a d*mn eye on that zombie in case it started to move again.

She took off her gloves finally, her eyes settling on Kin. "So how are we to get started?" she asked tensely, bypassing small talk entirely.

[kinrrataiyath]

Good. No small talk. Trying to act calm only made her more nervous. Kin greeted them both with a fleeting half-smile and shut the door behind them.

"Well, first I'd like to go over the procedure once more to make sure everyone's clear on what's going to happen. If you'd like to take a seat, I can show you what I will be using for each step." One hand went out to sweep across the room and indicate two rusty looking chairs set out next to her own beaten swivel chair. The leather on both was cracked and worn and the metal was rusted so badly that it had corroded in places. However, by some miracle, they were both still standing and capable of holding weight. Having chairs at all was a rare treat in this building. Most of the scientists operated with crates and boxes.

[dray]

And the fact that Kin had gone so far as to commandeer two extra chairs spoke volumes. Agate took one of the chairs as soon as it was offered, still nervously eying the operation table and the instruments lined out for use. Licking his lips and casting Kin a half-pleading look to hurry through it, he otherwise remained quiet. The procedure had been burned into his mind from the first explanation... he just wanted to get this done and over with.

One of his hands slipped out to seek Kay's, the gesture discreet as he could make it.