Participants:
| Scene Title | Fuck |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Isis reaches another low point, Isaac's patience and understanding is tested, and a visitor tries to barter away a debt. |
| Date | 24 August, 2019 |
Isis turns to watch two hazy, sterile-white blobs disappear back into Raytech’s automatic doors. On the other side, the bio-geared escorts stop and turn back, faces obscured by the glare on their plastic-screened helmets, presumably to watch the wobbly redhead in turn.
That swirly faux stucco spot on the ceiling looks like a fanged demon skull. Surely that’s a good omen…
Isis blinks and the underworld cranium shape melts back into the hazy grains of shapeless texturing overhead. Her pupils dilate and focus in what has been, at least lately, a rare occasion of clarity.
“I think I’m doing better today…” She turns her head on the pillow wedged into the arm of the sofa, scanning the room.
The cut of the morning sun over reconstructed buildings is a sharp assault on her senses. The squinting does nothing to dull the pain, but it doesn’t stop her trying. Isis pulls out a small cellular device, a sudden tremor nearly knocking it from her hand.
“Pull yourself together. You just need to find someone to…”
To what?
Her thumb skims through an admittedly short list of contacts. There’s a pause over one in particular, though:
Dr. Necromancer
“Okay, not funny anymore.”
Another swipe and her brows shoot up. She presses her thumb jaggedly into the face of the phone and brings it up to her ear.
“Hey, I’m not sure that we’ve… reached the level where it’s okay for me to be a needy hot mess, but…"
Isaac's apartment
7:13 AM EST
Isis’s gaze lands on Isaac and, to her credit, she does look a fair deal better - the tremors have not simply lessened but stopped entirely. Now that must be a good omen, right?
Isaac looks down at Isis with an expression best described as somewhere between carefully neutral and artificially pleasant. The convulsive spasming has stopped! Hurrah!
One of many thoughts he's had lately that he isn't about to voice. He's glad the tremors have stopped, oh yes. Absolutely. Maybe it means she's finally on the mend. Dear God in Heaven, he hopes that's what it means, and the fact that he's even thinking anything remotely resembling a prayer is a testament to just how scared shitless he's been the last few days. Watching someone you care about in any capacity go through what Isis has been going through is a horrifying experience, an exercise in abject powerlessness that Isaac has found utterly nervewracking.
At least he's been able to help keep her comfortable. He tells himself that, at least. For what solace it's worth.
"You do look better," he says after a few moments' scrutiny, offering a small smile. The fact that he's not lying when he says that is itself something he would have found alarming at any other time; now he's just glad of it. "How are you feeling? Pains? Still hot? We still have some ice…" He'd had to get the ice and bring it back in the cheap cooler he uses for a mini-icebox; Park Slope doesn't have electricity to run things like freezers.
“I’m sorry for all this.” It’s the same phrase, down to the exact same wording and inflection, she has sheepishly muttered during moments of clarity these several days past. Isis brings up a pale, steady hand to wipe a bit of sweat and clingy coils of garnet hair from her forehead. “I feel…”
She gives a legitimate pause, turning her attention inwards on her body. “Hot.” The black patch of dead flesh has not abated and remains morbidly, glaringly, warningly prominent about the side of a hand on the inside of her left elbow. She lingers long enough for another brief internal review and she adds, “But, good. I mean, really good. Nothing hurts!” Her voice sweeps into the chirrpy lilt of pleasant surprise, taking up the corners of her pale, chapped lips with it. The slender, clammy redhead fidgets and aims to sit up. “I think the worst is beh-…”
Thunk!
Isis nearly falls off the sofa. The thump comes from the knuckles of her left hand hitting the floor as she falls back into the sodden pillow behind her head. She freezes in place, left arm dangling off the couch still. She tries to talk, but the fear so plainly written on her face has leached into her throat and mangles her words into only a pitiful squeak at first. The pain and tremors of her condition may be gone, but that does nothing to stop the shivers induced by cold, icy terror.
“Isaac. I’mma need you to call that guy I told you about now…” Of course, Isaac has been looped in on Zachery’s involvement and subsequent disappearance. He’s even been made privy to Isis’s phone password and the doctor’s role as her ICE contact… just in case. It’s hard to say whether she’d have been so forthcoming and open in this budding relationship if she wasn’t well… you know. But, that’s a discussion for another time.
Her teeth are chattering as she reaches over with her right hand to grab hold of her left bicep. “I think the worst is… not over.” Using her dominant right hand, she pulls at her left bicep. Her left forearm, however, doesn’t follow along at the proper angle it should. Without any outward signs of pain or physical duress, the little woman’s left forearm hangs limply from the elbow joint - blackened skin stretched grotesquely to accommodate the back-bent limb.
“Oh fuck…”
Isis turns and stuffs her head into a bucket meant to collect melted ice bags, shoulders heaving.
For a moment, Isaac lets himself hope.
Then. Then Isis starts to try to get up, and her arm… doesn't. It just… dangles. Backwards. It's like instead of a normal human elbow joint, she's got some kind of crazy universal joint or something. The way it bends is… wrong.
To his credit, he manages not to screech, or scream, or throw up; the most he lets slip is a certain paling of his face, a momentary horrified widening of his eyes before he's able to collect himself. For what it's worth, he thinks she is handling it remarkably well herself, all things considering. He'll have to clean that ice bucket later. Oh well.
He bites down on the urge to say we need to get you to a hospital; he'd only ventured that one once, and she probably doesn't want to hear it any more now than she had then. But at least now, now, she's finally willing to at least see someone about it, and at least this guy apparently has a doctorate. He's also the one that started this whole damned mess, but hey! Maybe he can do something now.
"Right," he says, turning away and making a beeline for her phone — he's got it hooked up to a battery pack to keep it charged, stabbing at the lock screen to try and input the password as quickly as he can. Too quickly; it fails. "Fuck!" he hisses, his frustration getting the better of him. He tries again, this time a hair more slowly, and this time he's able to get in. Right.
He runs through her contact list, trying to find the guy — there. 'Dr. Necromancer'. As desperate and panicked as he's feeling right now, as bad as this has gone, he still can't help but give a narrow-eyed stare at the phone for a moment. How very appropriate.
But he doesn't have time for that, does he? No. Time enough has been wasted already. He heads into the next room, lightly taps the icon to give 'Dr. Necromancer' a ring, and waits…
…and waits. After a few seconds, his face twitches. A few seconds more, and he speaks, in an oh-so-carefully controlled voice. "Doctor Miller. I'm calling on behalf of Isis O'Conner. She is in need of medical assistance." The strain of keeping back his fury gets to be too much; he has to take a moment to breathe, to gulp down the vitriol that's trying to crawl up his throat and shove it back down into the pit of his stomach where he can pretend it's under control. "I can be reached at this number, or…" he rattles off his own phone number. "Please call as soon as is possible, thank you," he says, stabbing the button to hang up.
He misses. "Fuck," he snaps again, and again stabs at the disconnect button with his finger, this time successfully, and heads back to the living room. Gently — oh-so-very-gently — he lowers the phone back to its resting place and turns his gaze back to Isis, working to get his expression under control. "He didn't pick up; I left a message to call back on either your line or mine." He takes a deep breath. "Do you have any feeling in your fingers?"
When Isaac returns, Isis has successfully perched into a semi-upright position, her legs still stretched across the couch. The lower, and useless, half of her left arm is resting across her lap with her right hand still holding her opposite bicep for support.
As her … caregiver? Boyfriend? … Her Isaac. Keep it simple. Anyway, as he settles in she pulls a section of blanket over her deadened arm. Clearly, if they can't see it, it doesn't exist. Still, her icy-empty expression fractures into a scowl at his words. "No. No feeling." Pause. She leans out and taps at the cellular device, a thumbtacked digital map shooting across the interwebs to Zachery's device. "I hope we aren't barking up the wrong tree…"
Pin and needles, prickly tingles of fear, start expanding across her body. Zachery had bailed. She doesn't have any reason, necessarily, to believe he's return, except…
"If he doesn't come… You don't happen to have a sexy neighbor who we wouldn't feel to guilty about uh…" Her face screws up tightly, her eyes closed. "Nevermind, it's not even funny to joke about." She drops her chin to her chest as she takes in a shuddering breath, her version of the phrase a bit quieter than his had been… "Fuck."
It takes a few minutes, but when Isis' phone blinks back to life, the screen lights up with a new message from one 'Dr. Necromancer'
1-2 hours. - Z
The two hours that pass do so more slowly than usual, it seems. Both in the apartment as well as the hearse that eventually finds its way into the neighbourhood. The length of the vehicle does not make it an easy thing to park on the best of days, but there isn't even an attempt at parking, today. Its tires bounce up and over a sidewalk, which is exactly where it will stay.
"Fuck!"
The word is shouted out after the driver's side door opens but immediately clanks - with the scrape of metal on stone - against a wall. Without enough space to leave, the door shuts. A few seconds later, and the car's owner awkwardly piles out of the passenger's side. "Fuck. Fuck. Shit. Fuck." The second door slams shut a little louder than the first.
To his credit, once Zachery reaches the door to Isaac's apartment, he's at least stopped uncontrollably leaking curse words. The dress shirt and slacks might even make a halfway good impression — if he didn't look like he'd slept in not only them, but his car, for a few nights straight now, unshaven and a little frazzled.
He takes a deep breath and lifts a fist to bang it on the door… only to have his hand relax somewhat while it hovers, and to rap a calm knock-knock-knock of knuckles a moment later, clearing his throat.
The door opens almost immediately after Zachery's knock, revealing a slightly shorter and significantly younger man standing in the entryway to a darkened apartment. Isaac is wearing black today, both because it's stylish and because it fits his mood; he's also wearing a carefully composed expression, because while that doesn't particularly fit his mood, foaming at the mouth is generally frowned upon in professional interactions. His eyes flicker over Zachery for a moment, studying him; after a moment, he speaks. "Doctor Miller, I presume? I'm glad you could make it. Come in, please. Jo — Isis — is on the couch," he says, with all of the well-learned politesse he can manage.
With that said, he steps aside, holding the door for Zachery and gesturing with his free hand.
"Who's that? Who-!" Isis fidgets awkwardly, a wildness in her eyes having replaced the fear that had been there before. Two hours has been long enough to see her through a rollercoaster of reactions - some near catatonic, some ignorantly hopeful, others indiscernible beyond their shivering bodily state. The knock at the door is enough to elicit a paranoid response, but only briefly…
"Zach?" Isis leans forward, cradling her limp and blanketed arm to her middle. "Oh! There you are." Her smile is all the more beaming for the brightness of hazel eyes and the glow of a thin layer of sweat clinging to her pallid complexion. "I told you we were too old for hide-n'-seek, silly goose. Get in here. There was something…" Her pale brows knit nearer one another and she looks around to Isaac and then the walls, as if whatever she'd lost might be writ upon them in invisibly inked hieroglyphs. "Something I needed to tell you. What was it…?" Her voice trails off.
Though Zachery studies Isaac in turn, albeit with one eye fewer, it's brief. Something else has his attention even still at the doorway, his face already turned up and away slightly. A preoccupation that causes the twitch of a lower eyelid over acrylic white.
Despite his appearance, he carries himself strikingly well when moving further inward, wasting no time in finding the source of the second voice to say his name. "Thank you, yes, I can…" He comes to a stop, standing just over Isis, the expression on his face a strained sort of neutral. The end of his sentence falls away, as his shoulders sag down with a slow, laboured exhale.
There's a lot of options for what to say. What might very well be fear keeping him from blinking is probably also what keeps the words back for a little while. At least, until he takes a deep breath to say, flatly, "Funny thing. I tried so hard not to want to find you, apparently, that I can't, now, turn it off. My — intuition. It's getting greedy. And distracting." There's a wry chuckle, and what might barely pass as a somewhat stunned grin, before he adds, "I think finding you dead might have been easier."
Isaac moves behind Zachery, following like a shadow, silent as a ghost as he pads through the shaded gloom of his apartment. He stands off to the side as the doctor peers at Isis, watching with concern. Seeing that bright smile appear on Isis's face when she's in this condition… does something to his heart, makes it do this weird sideways lurch; he doesn't like that feeling very much. He musters the most reassuring smile he can in return, though.
But when the so-called doctor says that finding Isis dead would have been easier… that's when Isaac's composure slips for a fraction of a second.
He'd always thought the phrase 'seeing red' was just a metaphor; turns out that no, it's an actual thing. Under other circumstances that's the sort of thing Isaac would find that pretty interesting, but at the moment he is too full of blinding fury to devote so much as one whit of attention to it. His eyes widen, the smile he's wearing curls up just a bit more, and Isaac's hands twitch upwards slightly as a sudden vision of those very hands wrapped tightly around Zachery Miller's neck flashes in the pulsing red roaring through his field of vision —
— but he manages to force it back down again, a thin hiss of breath slipping through gritted teeth.
And hey, since he's making stupid noises, he might as well try to actually do something that might be a little useful, like maybe provide information to this… doctor. "She's been here for a week," Isaac says, his voice quiet, his enunciation very precise and careful as he speaks; howling rabidly is the sort of thing werewolves do and werewolves, it has been agreed, are really not cool. That's important; one of them probably needs to be keeping their cool right now, and Isis can't because she's got a fever no amount of cowbell is going to fix, so that leaves him by default. Isaac's pretty sure there's something wrong with that chain of logic somewhere, but he's equally sure that the end result is the correct one, so fuck it.
He takes another breath and continues. "She's been feverish. In and out of it. Constant pain. Tremors. Then, this morning, she woke up and said she was feeling better. Right up until she tried to get up and her arm started flopping around like jello," he says, his voice getting a little louder, a little more emphatic as his control cracks a bit around the edges.
He forces himself to take a breath. "I tried to get her to go to the hospital. She wouldn't hear of it. This is the first time she's agreed to get help. You're the one she wanted to call."
“Dead? Why would I be-…” And away she goes. Still smiling brightly, chin up, and head tilted to the side, her eyes follow something floating in lazy loops across the room. Something that isn’t there. She carries on in this blissfully ignorant and delirious fashion for as long as it takes Isaac to stamp down his lycanthropic reaction and instead take on the icy, calculated approach of the much cooler, vindictive vampire breed. Score.
It’s clear that much of the week’s recap is lost on the moontouched, clammy little woman bundled on the couch. Whatever will-o-wisp has caught her attention, though, POOFs abruptly at the mention of a hospital. Her head swivels sharply back to the male species in company, eyes widened, as her pupils shrink with a laser focus that reveals a prominent, nervous gold in her hazel gaze. “Wha-…”
She cradles her arm to herself, looking first to Isaac with a most complex contortion of emotions writ into freckled features - gratitude, apology, endearment, fear. If she makes it through this… her glaze slides away. “Zach,” she hisses. SNAP. All those things - those feels - the delicate balance of emotions - shatter. To be replaced by… nothing.
It might have been easier if she were dead, he’d said. Well, the expression she holds him now is just that. Dead.
Despite all the fury Isaac is feeling, Zachery seems almost oblivious to it, his focus hovering around Isis' form while he stands perfectly still. The fact that his mind is racing is not anything anyone else needs to see, even if it's taking all of his energy to try and maintain a calm composure.
But words seem difficult to come by. There is a cold consideration to the way he eyes the woman nearby, eye lowering briefly to that… one arm while Isaac speaks, but it takes Isis saying his name again to snap Zachery out of his brief stupor. After inhaling with a shudder, he says, "You're going to need to calm down."
He looks to Isaac. This last comment was meant for him, and the increased heart rate and blood pressure that comes with wanting to put your hands around someone else's neck.
Addressing the less delirious person in the room now, his tone… wobbles from grim to something a little more unsteady. "Clearly, she is… not well off. I'm going to have to act fast on something that, ah — " he stops, forced neutral expression finally breaking as a laugh escapes him, unplanned and off-kilter with anxiety, which seems to immediately spread to the rest of his body in how he immediately slumps out of his good posture and smacks a hand onto the side of his face to drag it down the stubble on his jaw. " — Something that might be… incredibly ill-advised. But will… in theory, get her out of here either which way my plan goes." Whether that's meant as a heads up or a warning is anyone's guess.
Isis's sudden tensing does not go unnoticed; he glances to her just in time to catch that look of hers, and as dark as this hour may be, seeing a look like that on her face still has the power to draw a smile to his face, tinged by worry though it may be. Her hissing at Zachery is… actually maybe a little reassuring as well. Isis, for the moment, is back with them.
Zachery's comment draws his attention back to the doctor, though, that smile vanishing again. "I'm perfectly —" Isaac begins… only to cut himself off before he's much more than started, a more honest expression of overt annoyance crossing his face. Annoyance that Zachery's been able to score a point on him is easier to focus on, easier to handle than teeth-gnashing fury at Isis's condition. "No, I'm not. You're quite right. But under these circumstances, controlled is probably the best it's going to get," he says. Oddly enough, though, seeing Zachery slump seems to take some of the tension out of him, as well; one hand comes up to rub at his brows.
What the doctor has to say next, though, is enough to give Isaac pause. Something that is, quote unquote incredibly ill-advised by the standards of Doctor 'Come Into My Back Alley Clinic and Let Me Shoot You Full of Mystery Substances'? Something more incredibly ill-advised than the incident which led to this? He peers out from under his hand at Zachery… but even he, with his grand total of zero medical training, can tell that Zachery isn't wrong about Isis being in bad shape; if this is what it takes to get her help, well, so be it. He's willing to hear the man out, at least.
Isaac studies Zachery for a moment longer, then glances over to Isis questioningly. She's the one who's going to have to sign off on whatever Zachery's planning.
The walking corpse continues to hold Zachery in her unblinking gaze for several long moments. Perhaps she doesn’t have the energy for rage, or perhaps she has simply breached the neigh impossible region beyond such. Finally, she blinks, lips parted slightly to reveal the way the tip of her tongue slides from left to right across the sharp edge of her front teeth, pinched slightly by the lower.
“I have my own thoughts…” Isis’s voice is hoarse, dehydrated regardless of how much water Isaac has brought, fever burning away drops seemingly faster than she can consume them. Her fingers hugging her useless elbow give a telling twitch. One touch. Just one. But… She glances briefly towards Isaac, his image enough to remind her to breath - an act which takes the edge off, at least for now. She curls deeper into herself, literally and figuratively - hugging her arm closer and checking the impulse controls on her ability - as she watches him still. Her voice, though, is clearly for Zachery, “Let’s hear yours first.”
Zachery spares Isaac a glance - one that is… sincerely apologetic, brow knitting, despite the grin that his chuckle from before left behind. It's not an expression he looks comfortable with.
"Alright. We can — do better than controlled, though. Let's do better than controlled." His words are considerably less calm now, leaving him without thought and in the same frantic way he reaches into one of his pockets and retrieves his phone. He unlocks and stares at it for a moment, looks to Isaac one more time, and then resettles his gaze on Isis' face. Grin widening, grip on his phone tightening. "I'm not going to have killed you." Said matter-of-factly. "It's just -" he laughs again, all signs pointing to involuntary, as his eye darts from her right to her left.
The nervous humour's leaked out of his voice when he continues speaking. "I'm realising, now, the… breadth of my mistakes. We need to call Garza. The question is… with how… I have… no idea what will happen after that — what will happen to you — how quickly — if I should call -" his right hand is reached slowly out toward her, palm up, phone still within it, "or you."
And then, his left hand is offered, palm up again, but empty.
Isaac glances from Zachery to Isis, then back to Zachery, his eyes widening momentarily. Is this guy actually suggesting what Isaac thinks he's suggesting?
Well. Seems the doctor was right. That is definitely ill-advised. Isaac had occupied Isis's body briefly at one point, and that experience had been… less than pleasant, even then. Getting stuffed in there now would probably be orders of magnitude worse. Grudging props to the doctor, even if he probably doesn't realize just what he's getting into.
Isaac has a lot of questions, though. Who's Garza? And how is this 'Garza' going to help? And, most importantly of all, why does this Garza make Zachery squirm around like he wants to crawl out of his skin? His gaze flickers back and forth between Zachery and Isis… but as much as he wants to ask, he doesn't. If one of them wants to volunteer some answers, great, but he's not going to ask — not now. There will be time for questions later… one way or the other, as the doctor had said.
Isis lleeaans forward only to stop short. Shivering with the effort of willpower and control required to overcome her ability’s flighty-survival instinct. Isis groans audibly, closing her eyes to shut out distractions and reign herself in… for now. “Garza might…” WIth her eyes closed, her face pinches. When did words become so slippery and thoughts so sludgey? “Recognize the…” She makes a limp gesture to her whole person. “Stuff.” She opens one eye, catching sight of Isaac’s expression as he does his best to follow the conversation. Her chapped, cracked lips part, but ultimately she shakes her head. She’s running on fumes and right now there’s something that needs to be said…
“We went in on this together…” Isis turns golden, glassy eyes up to Zachery. “I get that. I take some… some…” She makes a gesture of piling stuff onto herself. Responsibility. “But, you left…” Not just left, but left her. In a lab. Her mobile hand comes up, slowly and as if of its own accord, hovering over Zachery’s outstretched fingers. “Now, it’s your turn.”
“I just…-” Her fingers twitch. A static spark jumps between her flesh and his the instant before the touch. There’s nothing smooth about the transition, nothing resembling control. Where Isaac’s experience had been merely uncomfortable, this one is jarring…
Isis-in-Zachery stumbles back with a loud gasp. Cool air! Fresh air! She-in-he gulps it in gratefully, only to release it in the form of an unabashedly relieved sigh.“…Need a break,” she completes the original statement and turns Zachery’s borrowed face towards Isaac with a fresh look of apology.
The phone, meanwhile, falls to the floor with a dull thump, bouncing once to the side, casting light upwards still.
Much less dull is the experience going on within Isis' body and head at that same moment. On her face is a wide-eyed look of shock aimed at nothing and no one in particular, before the new inhabitant of her body causes it to simply curl up in jerky starts and stops, unceremoniously partway off of the couch already before clawing that one functional hand into the couch in order not to fall off completely.
What does hit the ground, though, is whatever water Isaac has managed to help Isis to over the past few hours, heaved out between struggles for air and what sounds suspiciously like… choked laughter.
Because once more, for good measure, even if Zachery can't manage it verbally right now: Fuck.
Well. Never let it be said that Doctor Necromancer doesn't put his money where his mouth is; props to the man for that. Switching bodies with Isis in her current condition is something that even Isaac would've had to think hard about. The new puddle of vomit on the floor draws a faint sigh from him, though. I'm going to have to burn this apartment.
Isaac takes a deep breath. "Alright. I'll… start cleaning this up, try to keep… Doctor Miller… comfortable. You… should probably call this Garza person, I guess." He pauses, and now that he's faced with the prospect of cleaning up vomit — again — on top of his native curiosity, he allows himself to ask the question he's been sitting on thus far. "Who is Garza, anyway?"
Isis-in-Zachery’s shoulder’s bob thrice, alternate, and roll. Skin suit adjustment comple-… Wait… A dexterous hand comes up to touch at the strange, opaque orb shoved where an eye should be. Okay, so as far as borrowed body’s go, this one has some mileage. She paints a grimace on the doctor’s face at the thought.
“Hm?” With a hand still delicately, nervously prodding just under the prosthetic eye, Isis-in-Zachery considers her proper body there on the couch, the emptied stomach contents, and then Isaac. “If you grab the cleaners, I’ll take care of this. It’s the least I can do. But, yes… I owe you some proper explanation…”
Zachery’s body is puppeted through the motions of tucking a blanket up over the fevered redhead form, propping up the limply connected arm joint, and even finding a few packs of ice to tuck in at the sides. All for want to keep productive, to keep from meeting Isaac’s gaze, as she explains. “I may have mentioned a ‘support group’ or uh… Book Club, I think is what Zach called it.” She clears her throat to adjust to the lower tones. “It’s a group of … pro-evolved, I guess? We’ve been working towards a better future. A bit of an… elitist future, perhaps. But, at some point enough is enough, right? At some point, hate is a weed that just needs to be yanked out by the roots and then rota-tilled over and set on fire.”
Finishing with the extent her bedside manner can manage, she picks up the phone, leaving her to straighten in Zachery’s body and face Isaac properly. “Anyway, Garza oversees the New York sect of this group. And, it’s quite possible that he might recognize these symptoms, seeing as we kinda borrowed the mystery soup material from some derivative of an experiment conducted by his boss.” A hand comes up slightly from her side, but when her periphery catches the more masculine shape of the fingers and palm it settles back down rather than reaching out and risking Isaac’s discomfort. “That’s really all I can say right now. Without… putting you at more risk. If you want me to get out of here,” She gestures back towards her body. “Before I make the call, just say the word. I’m not sure how much deeper this rabbit hole goes once I dial that number…”
"FfFffrrRrghHHGH, nnn — …" goes Isis' body, being clearly much, much less used to this whole situation than the person on the other end of this little trade.
Blearily, he drags the body he's in down and back into the cushions as much as gravity and a minimal amount of bunching up allows him. Though he doesn't manage much of an expression, and weak, staggered half-chuckles eventually subside. He knew what he was in for. Whether the blank stare suggests he currently recalls what it was is a different matter altogether.
"I thought… " Zachery tries, part of a whole other conversation, while a sneer finds its way onto a face that feels unfamiliar with this particular brand of expression. This voice situation is the pits. "I should… trust - what?" After blinking a left eye shut a few times, he just closes them both. Better. 'Night.
Isaac listens as he mops up the mess, doing his best to get the thin, sour-smelling residue scrubbed out of his (admittedly rather ratty) carpeting; it doesn't take long, thankfully, meaning that he can actually devote some time to thinking about what Isis-in-Zachery is saying.
It's not something he's had a lot of, lately — time to think, that is. Isis's body is still just as sick as it had been before Zachery had paid his visit, and they're still on just as short of a time limit… but the prospect of some kind of solution, something that can be done, is enough to make all the difference.
He is silent for a long moment after she finishes her explanation… then he lets out a single quiet chuckle. "Sounds a bit like some friends of mine during the war," he says quietly. Then he nods. "If you want to step outside to make your phone call, go ahead. Or if you think I should leave, I can go take a walk for awhile, if you want to take care of Dr. Miller." He shrugs, offering a lopsided smile. "Up to you."
Isis-in-Zachery casts a quick glance back at the mumbling near-corpse on the couch. At the first hint of an uneasy labored snore, her attention swivels back to Isaac. “If you’re willing to ride this crazy train, I’d… like you stay.” The admission, little though it might seem to some, carries a certain weight that is disguised ineffectively by a lopsided smile. On this one-eyed, rumpled, wrinkled, cranky, sleep-deprived man-face, the expression has significantly less charm. “But, that’s my selfishness talking so…” Puppeting Zachery’s hand, she raises the phone up and arcs a brow over the good eye.
That grin isn't as charming on Zachery's face as it would've been on Isis's, but… can't have everything. "Then I'll stay," is his response. Simple as that.
With a singular nod, Isis-in-Zachey gabs a thumb down on the illuminated, cracked phone screen. Eyes on Isaac, she brings the phone up to her ear… “Yes, hi. This is Zachery Miller calling. We have a situ-.. Emergency. We have an emergency on our hands…”
FUCK.