❝spencer, all this week you've been holding my hands. what about your germ thing?❞
❝you were more important.❞
hazel finley is a liar. but she's a damn good one. and she's especially good at telling when other people are lying. she's the newest memb...
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❝I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.❞
ORSON SCOTT CARD
✩
3.0 : hazmat suits and i love yous
OR
season 4, episode 24 : amplification (ctd.)
FIN TAKES DEEP, SHUDDERY BREATHS THROUGH HER HANDS. She can't look away from the heart monitor flatlining on the other side of the glass. The doctors pull a sheet over the blankly-staring eyes of the man who just died.
Dr. Kimura pulls the door open and joins Fin and Spencer on the other side, looking sad and exhausted. "Thirty-eight-year-old high school history teacher," she says. "Leaves two kids behind."
"Seventeen out of twenty-five dead," Fin whispers, slowly dropping her hands to her sides and pulling the sleeves of her sweater to cover them. They shake uncontrollably, the worst they've shaken in a long time.
Dr. Kimura leans against the reception desk, pen in hand, thinking hard. "This strain is duplicating every thirty- to forty-five minutes. It's poisoning the lungs, causing massive hemorrhaging and organ failure." She looks up at Spencer, and the look on her face scares Fin. It's the look of someone who's lost and has no idea what to do–and that's not the look they need from the doctor in charge.
But something's clicked in Spencer's brain. "Extreme bacterial amplification," he mutters under his breath, focusing on something far away.
"What, Spence?"
"Whoever created this had to, at some point, go to the trouble of testing it," Spencer explains, his voice growing stronger as he processes his thoughts.
Dr. Kimura starts and looks up at him, surprised. "What do you mean?"
"Think about the way scientists work their way up to human testing. They start with rodents, then advance to larger mammals, and then at some point, they do a very small trial run with people." Spencer shakes his head, frowning. "There's no way this was his first human test run."
"You're right." Fin nods slowly. The logical side of her brain is kicking in, weighing facts and thoughts and cutting out the emotional side. "It's too sophisticated. It reads like an escalation, not his first go-around."
"We would've heard about a previous anthrax attack," Dr. Kimura says matter-of-factly.
Something else clicks in Spencer's brain. "Not if it presented itself as something else. Dr. Kimura, can you make some calls, pull some files from nearby hospitals? Look for anything like meningitis, hepatitis–diseases that cause rapid organ failure, similar to this strain of anthrax."
