Participants:
| Scene Title | Fact, Fiction or Falsehood |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Brennan shows Megan what he and Michelle found over a cup of coffee in his office and a request of the ferry regarding the kids. |
| Date | January 25, 2010 |
Brennan Medical Group, Financial District
The girls had been up all night. The twins at least. Sick, not feeling well, throwing up. As such he'd canceled working at the suresh center since a great deal more people go through there than his private practice. Michelle was out getting lunch, the nanny taking care of the girls at home and Brennan reclined with eyes closed in his seat. Megan was slated to come soon and he hoped that one of the girls up front would show her back while he caught some shut eye.
In point of fact, the nurse up front had her hands full with the phone and she merely waved the redhead back with a "He's expecting you." So there's a light tap on the office door and then Megan pops her head in. "Harve?" she says quietly. And seeing the weariness in his face, she grins slightly. "Rough night?"
"Megan" One brown eye cracks open. "You know how it is. One three year old vomits, the other vomits, lots of crying cause they're throwing up and made messes on the carpet. Chain reaction that lasts all night" He offers her a grin. "Not so rough that a nap won't cure. How the center?" Brennan eases out of his chair, white jacket hung up on the back of his door leaving him in a blue button down and trousers when he moves to close the door behind her. "Any of the uhh, kids turn up sick?"
"Nothing more than the usual," Megan replies with a smile as he closes the door. "Sorry to hear the girls are sick, though. The Center's doing all right. Kind of slow this morning. So what's up? Your message was downright cryptic." She doesn't slide out of her coat, her gaze curious.
What's up. There's a bit of a see saw expression on his face as he ambles away from door to a closet and the winter jacket, boots and briefcase within. "Could be nothing frankly, could be some prank played by some little hacker with nothing better to do than whip up stuff and scare John Q,. Public. One of the girls up front reads the paper online and she came across something and has been obsessing with it ever since." It's an older briefcase, soft sided so he only needs to undo the front clasp and get out the manila envelope thick with papers and a thumb drive.
"Some hacker named Rebel's been leaking out stuff. Now the first one the picture was right, as was seen when the papers ran a story about some research drilling station imploding right. But this…" He offers up the files to Megan. "The first had some truth to it, I can't help some small part of me wondering if this might have some ring of truth"
There's a tilt of her head. Megan's not a high muckety-muck in the Ferry, but the rumors have obviously been making the rounds. She doesn't really know who to ask what about all of it, but she's been listening. She steps forward to take the file from him, looking very curious as she flips open the file to take a look at the images. And a frown creases her brows. She looks more intently. "Christ, Harve… what the hell is this?" She sounds… more than a little alarmed, her blue eyes skimming the information he's printed out.
"Some guy named Rebel. he's put up a website and twice now there's been pictures. Only the pictures actually hide files. First was an audio file, this second one was all of that, I printed it off. Come on, I'll show you. Took a few hours for me to figure it out, but I finally did." he heads back to his computer to draw up a blank webpage and type in the website. "You have to check the page source at times, but this time the clue was on the picture, and it's just page after page and picture of H1N1 stuff. Quarantine papers, pictures of men in bio suits, blood cells, test tubes in refrigeration" IT's all in her hands and soon enough on the screen as he breaks the simple decryption for her to look at on his laptop.
Shrugging out of her jacket as he talks, Megan's frown now seems a permanent fixture. She sets the file down and moves to peer over his shoulder. "So… if they were already running quarantine camps in New York, we'd have heard about that. Shit, Harve… if they were running camps in Texas, that should be all over the news," she says with a frown. The pictures look real enough. "This …. can't be real," she whispers softly, horrified. Looking up at him, she bites her lip. So far, none of our kids have come down sick from that inoculation, but… dear God, what if they do?"
"I would think that people would have noticed quarantine camps. Not for lack of places to put them here, or in Texas I'm sure. That and it's been a couple days and there's been no article in the paper stating that 'This is what happened, it's not a conspiracy' for all to see" Brennan moves over to give Megan the full screen.
One hand slides beneath her skirt to smooth it down as she lowers herself into Brennan's chair, the other reaching for the mouse to click her way through the pictures, each one worse than the last. "I've… heard… that the first image there was… an associate of some of our members. Something about a nuclear weapon," she admits. "I don't have any of the details, it's not really…. I've been a soldier, but what I do now is about the nursing, you know?" She clicks over to the images of the men in hazmat gear and such. "This scares the hell out of me."
One hand slides beneath her skirt to smooth it down as she lowers herself into Brennan's chair, the other reaching for the mouse to click her way through the pictures, each one worse than the last. "I've… heard… that the first image there was… an associate of some of our members. Something about a nuclear weapon," she admits. "I don't have any of the details, it's not really…. I've been a soldier, but what I do now is about the nursing, you know?" She clicks over to the images of the men in hazmat gear and such. "This scares the hell out of me." Megan looks up at him again, worried. "And I have to tell you … you may think people wouldn't miss the quarantine camps, but … somehow they actually missed out on a whole prison built to contain Evolveds. It's… kind of like conspiracy within conspiracy out there."
Whoa, hold on there, slow down Nelly.
Brennan's never been fully inducted into the conspiracy rabbit hole or the ferryman proper. just medical help on the side. "Nuclear weapon? Megan, what are you talking about, they hit a gas pocket while drilling. And a prison built to contain evolveds?" His voice schooled to neutral but confusion covers his face. "And assosciate of your group?"
Blowing out a breath, Megan leans back in his chair and gestures for him to pull up the other one in his office. "I have… deliberately left you in the dark about a lot of things, Harve. For your own safety, and for the safety of everyone else. It's one of the things my group of associates does — compartmentalize so that if one location is compromised, the rest have a chance of still being safe. We call ourselves the Ferrymen. We ferry Evos who are scared out of the area. That's our primary job. But we have loose ties to some of the other organizations in the city," she says finally.
Shit.
"Summer meadows part of this?" He asks, moving away from the desk, meandering elsewhere in the office. This was a great deal to take in. Sure it's one thing to help with the medical care of families who are relocating elsewhere. but loose ties are still ties.
"You know Helena Dean" His hand rasps across his lower face as he remembers conversations earlier. "God dammit Megan" Not so much mad at her as he is about what he's stepped into.
"Know of her," Megan says quietly. "Haven't worked with her, and I'm not involved in all of that, Harve. I just keep my ear to the ground regarding what they're up to," she tells him. Resting her head back against the high back of his chair, she says quietly, "I don't know if that rumor about the nuke has any basis in fact at all — It's something that one of the street kids was babbling about the other day. But coming from a military background? I can tell you that no methane or other gas explosion I've ever seen looks like that. So… take that for what it's worth, which is probably not much. Summer Meadows is not a part of any of this conspiracy shit," she assures him.
"The people who work with me — the Ferry as a whole — are not in the business of being activists or .. getting out there and being home-grown terrorists. Our entire operation is just about trying to keep Evolveds who need help safe. From whatever threatens them. For most of our people, the main threats are hunger, illness, and Humanis First."
Street kids babbling, rumors, hearsay. He still rubs across his lower face shaking his head. "I think I realized this, really, when you introduced Alistair to me. When so much medicine in needed, and even what I gave is just a drop" It makes him think though, think hard, long. "How illegal is this all megan. How bad do I stand and my family stand to be hit if this ever comes to light?"
"As of this moment? The only thing you'd be on the hook for would be not asking enough questions. All you'd have to say is that I came to you asking for whatever samples and medications you could spare for kids that I was treating out on the streets," Megan says quietly. "I've been trying to be very careful to keep you on the fringes, Harve — you've got a wife and kids to take care of. It's why I've only ever brought my kids to you instead of the other way around, and why I've only answered the questions that you've asked me and not volunteered much." She tilts her head and says, "The fact that Michelle's hanging with Helena Dean? That could be problematic, since last I heard she was a wanted felon. She's someone who was actually kept out in that prison in Moab, so if you want firsthand information about that …. ask her. Ask her what she saw. What she knows." She gestures to the computer.
"My big concern is this. And the fact that they recalled the batch of H1N1 vaccines that my kids got. Some amount of paranoia sort of has to infiltrate the ranks when you start looking at this — reports of people being taken from H1N1 vaccination sites and vanishing? A disproportionate number of Evos getting sick and dying from the vaccine and/or the virus when that hasn't happened in years past? You know Evos have been out there longer than the last couple of years…. so why are they only now getting more sick than everyone else? Those are the kinds of questions that concern me."
"It's been one time. We haven't seen hide or hair of her again" Harve is quick to point out. She's right though. He doens't know much, and mushroom clouds in cold places and prisons that house evolveds are a bit far-fetched and unbelievable that the government would do that. Or the hints that maybe there's something nefarious about the H1N1 vaccines.
'It's plausible enough to believe that possibly, the mutation in the genetic code that produces the anomalies that are our abilities could react unwell to a vaccine. The swine flu hasn't really been a threat till now, it's been minor, insignificant. I'm not going to make excuses as for why this is happening, but it's a possibility. There's so much still about what being an evolved does and impacts things like reactions to vaccines, other therapy's for disease like cancer. Sometimes a conspiracy is fake and other times, there's a shred of truth to it. Maybe these pictures are from another operation held by the CDC dealing with outbreaks of Ebola or who knows what else. Or maybe it is. I just figured that this needed to be seen by you so that you can take the blood of the kids who did get the vaccine and we can run tests and see how they are"
Megan acknowledges that with a nod. "Absolutely, this could be something like that. Therein lies the trouble with 'proof' put out on the web. In this day and age, it's easy to fake." She pauses and bites her lip. "You're willing to take the blood samples and check all of them out? I can… take the samples myself and bring them, or I can bring you to the kids. Your call."
"You can take them. Less I know about the other end, the better for me and for you." He doesn't boot her from his desk. "I just want to check them for anything off, different. Make sure it IS the H1N1 that they were vaccinated with. I gave out those vaccinations at the cathedral and two of the people died"
Brennan turns to look out onto the street below through the blinds, his hands coming down on either side of the window sill. "I'm wondering if maybe it's not that the people were evolved, the ones who died from the vaccine, or a reaction totheir specific ability." He looks over at her. "What if say, you were to have someone who… secrets a specific chemical as their ability and whatever was in that vaccine, just reacted to it? The two not being compatible? We have people who are allergic to eggs, and cannot take the chicken pox vaccine because they will be harmed by it instead of helped"
There's a flinch when he says that, and Megan moves to stand up from his chair with a thoughtful look. "So…. you're suggesting what? That something in the vaccine might have interacted with some specific subset of the SLC population because of a chemical in their own bodies?" Meg pauses. "I'm not a doctor, you'll have to dumb it down a little further for me," she says with a faint smile.
"I'm saying maybe it was their specific ability that reacted badly, not a chemical that the evolved as a whole have. Really the only difference that many can see between you and me is that I have a different gene which turn gives me the ability to negate others with the same gene with just a look and a thought. But the ramifications of various abilities and the reaction to modern medicine. Like the protesters have said in the papers, it's not something that's been thoroughly investigated because it's never been an issue. Now however, it's turning into an issue. It's just a thought and likely not true, but.. Can't hurt to keep an eye on the kids. Besides, they got the last batch, not this batch, so … I've volunteered to do duty and help with the dispensing of the vaccinations. Seems even more important that I do that now, to keep my finger on things. Stay informed"
Megan nods slowly, thinking it through. "Seems reasonable. I'll bring you the samples as soon as I can make the rounds of the safehouses. No later than the weekend, I'll make a point of it." She pauses and admits, "I've got someone who needs pretty constant care right now, so until I'm sure that she's stable and doesn't need more than I can give her, I may be a little tough to get hold of."
"You know my numbers. You know where to find me. You need the supplies for taking the blood?" As always it seems when Megan comes to visit, she leaves with a brown bag of supplies to take care of the kids.