These Lines on My Hands

[Kuzo]

"No, I'm okay Six-Nine. Just a little.... woozy I guess. Give me a minute." Even without the translator, she thought she understood what the little droid was asking her.

She stood for a long time, head down, only looking up when [member="Phylis Alince"] arrived.

"I can see why," she said, her voice still a little distant. "It's.... hard to come out of. I feel like I'm still shaking off a... hmm.... a really comfortable heaviness."

Each step was made with deliberate care as Irajah found her way back to the chair. She looked at it for a moment, then thought better of it and moved to perch lightly on the side of the bed as she listened to the Jedi. A slow nod was the first response before-

"Yes, I think food would be a good thing. Thank you. We can talk after."

 

[Phylis Alince]

[member="Irajah Ven"]
“Hmm, yes, it feels like you’ve been asleep for a week,” Phylis agreed.

Six-Nine returned soon enough with a tray of food for both women. It did not escape notice that Irajah’s bowl was more full than Phylis’!
“Hmmph, what’s this favouritism?” Phylis asked crossly. The droid beeped innocently. “I suppose she does need to regain her strength,” the Jedi conceded.

After they had eaten Phylis produced a datapad. “I ran some initial tests on the blood I took. What I found was astonishing and concerning. It is indeed what you surmised, a living example of the Gulag Virus. Now, the curious thing is that this was as close as I can tell the original strain. The virus mutated and changed over time, as they all do, but this bears a similarity to the oldest recorded examples. I don’t know what this means, but it’s concerning to say the least.”

 

[Kuzo]

Irajah took a sip of water and nodded. The weariness on her face had nothing to do with actually being tired, and everything to do with the topic of conversation.

"Yes, that's what I saw as well. My system had a hard time matching it to the original because of the size of the virus, rather than it's composition. It didn't make any sense, a virus this big. It's not supposed to be technically possible. But I found something- May I?"

She reached over, taking the datapad. She swiped and then enlarged the image.

"See these little nodules though? They contain.... slices I guess.... of newer versions. The base in the oldest, but someone has spliced in most of the known mutations. Giving the original, most virulent form all of the benefits of the later strains, but none of the draw backs."

Handing the datapad back to [member="Phylis Alince"], she sat back, frowning but not at anything in particular.

She's said 'someone'. And to Irajah at least, there was no doubt this was a manufactured plague, at least in this form. The question was just still this- Who?

 

[Phylis Alince]

[member="Irajah Ven"]
Phylis nodded gravely. “Which means it’s been engineered this way. I’ll leave you too it, Irajah, I have some other things I must check out. Come on, Six-Nine.” The droid beeped disapprovingly. “No, come along,” Phylis said sternly.
The droid beeped once more, but then followed obediently.

Phylis turned back to Irajah. “I’ll be back soon,” she said with a smile.

Little did she know that when she did Irajah would be long gone….

 

[Kuzo]

Irajah had smiled at Six-Nine before they left.

"It's okay. I'm going to be busy with this for a while. But I'll play another game of chess with you later, okay?"

*****

Security footage would show a man and a woman entering the facility. Their faces were not recognized as authorized personel, though they were dressed the part. They would enter the corridor leading to the containment suite. A small device in the man's hand, pulled from a pocket and then the video feeds in that section went all to static.

By the time the feeds were repaired and someone realized those two didn't belong there, it was too late.

The biocontainment center was empty.

But in that room, two things had been left behind.

The data pad, with all of the information Irajah had on the virus input for [member="Phylis Alince"]. There wasn't much, but she included all of her musings and conjectures on the virus, including how it was possible to compare the recombination of the DNA to other known engineered viruses- perhaps there was a chance that there was som similarity, some potential to lead someone to who had created it.

"After all," came Irajah's voice over the recording, "This is highly skilled gene-tech. No novice could have done this. But in some ways, it's also supremely sloppy. There will be other traces, other plagues, maybe less virulent than this one, that show similarities in the fashion of creation. Look for engineered viruses that hold multiple versions of themselves in their genetic code. This is not a common technique- usually only the most functional are duplicated. It's big and it's messy and it's *unique*. This was not created by a geneticist first. This person learned that skill *in order* to accomplish this. Find other viruses that look like this in that capacity, and you'll find the proto-test versions who ever did this ..... "played" with first."

The other was a fresh set up of a chess game, with the first move made.