Room 222, Tuesday Evening

[glacial_queen]

"I win again!" Karla tossed down her cards to show the winning hand and then began toting up the scores on the paper. Not that much math was required, considering most of Warren's scores for the round were in single-digits and several of Karla's had three. "I get to claim another forfeit!"

Karla was having a grand time. She was still fully dressed, even after six rounds of cradle--she hadn't even lost her shoes yet. Warren's clothing, on the other hand, were in a messy pile next to her; he was down to his boxers and a charming smile.

...Well, his boxers anyway.

Warren wasn't all that fond of cradle. But he had promised to play if she agreed to this vacation, dammit, and it wasn't like this game wasn't leading somewhere much more enjoyable for the both of them anyway. Karla felt no remorse about making him spend a few hours over the cradle board.

"I'll give you a choice," she said, grinning at him. "You can either lose your boxers--" thus ending the game "--or you can give me one of those very good, toe-curling, Karla-dipping kisses you do so well." Which also stood a chance of ending the game.

[For one at least at first, please! Post now open to anyone Karla would call in a panic over Warren.]

Comments

[longislandiceme]

You're damn right Bobby worries, Warren. Which would be as soon as he found out his friend was sick, he was knocking on his door rather frantically.

[glacial_queen]

Karla answered the door this time, her face lined with exhaustion. Some of those lines disappeared when she saw Bobby there. "Oh good," she said. "Sookie called for you?"

Warren had told Karla not to call Bobby. So she hadn't. There had been no rule about not calling Bobby's girlfriend in a panic and not passing along the warning.

[longislandiceme]

Bobby nodded. "Said something about Warren being sick?" he said, sounding... not as shocked as he should be, given Warren's healing factor. There really was only one thing he figured it could be, though, and a healing factor wouldn't be much help there.

[glacial_queen]

"He's running a high temperature, sweating, delirious, shaking..." The list of unfortunate symptoms went on and on. "Exhausted and covered in some kind of gray rash, too. If you could...?"

She waved over to the bed. "We need to get his fever down. I'm worried it could cause damage to him."

[longislandiceme]

"Of course," Bobby said, moving closer to where Warren lay. He didn't ice up, not yet, but the temperature around the bed dropped visibly, frost forming on Bobby's fingertips. "There isn't really a lot we can do for this," he added, still sure he knew what it was.

[glacial_queen]

"Wait, how do you know that?" Karla asked. "You've already studied it?"

Karla was under the misapprehension they were talking about the same thing.

[longislandiceme]

"Please, me, study?" Bobby scoffed. "We've met, right?" Because he wouldn't be Bobby Drake without the ability to spout sarcasm even as people were possibly dying around him.

[glacial_queen]

"Then how do you know what you can and can't do for him?" Karla snapped.

Don't you go suggesting things look grim without studying what was wrong, Bobby Drake!

[longislandiceme]

"Because I've seen this before. In my world." Seen people die from it, was the unspoken meaning of his words.

[glacial_queen]

That brought Karla up short.

"The rock is from your world?" she asked, lunging for his collar. "What is it? How can we fix it?"

[longislandiceme]

"Rock?" Bobby frowned. "No, this is- it's the Legacy virus." Or at least, the symptoms matched the virus almost exactly.

[glacial_queen]

"What's the Legacy Virus?" Karla asked. "I thought he got this from rescuing a bunny from a lake with the creepy rock in it."

Though Bobby's idea sounded way more plausible.

[longislandiceme]

Yeah, Bobby wasn't even going to say 'that makes no sense'. Out loud, anyway. "A virus brought back from the future by a terrorist named Stryfe," he explains. "It attacks anyone with a mutant gene."

[glacial_queen]

Shit.

"Are you at risk?!?" Karla asked, already going to try and pull him away. "Darkness, are you going to get this, too?"

[longislandiceme]

"I don't know," Bobby admitted. "I don't know too much about how it's transmitted, but I've been around plenty of people who've come down with it and haven't felt anything yet," he shrugged.

[glacial_queen]

Karla gnawed on her lower lip; if Bobby had some kind of immunity, he could really be useful in keeping Warren cool and healthy. But she didn't want to risk him, either.

On the other hand, maybe it was too late for him already? Who knew?

"If you have seen it, can you tell me about it?" she asked, calling in a notebook and pencil. "Whatever information you have is useful. Even just something to give me a place to start figuring out how to fight it."

[longislandiceme]

No offense Karla, but Bobby didn't think you'd be able to succeed where Hank had failed. "Just that there's three strains. The symptoms you described, that's the second one, I think. It attacks the X-Factor gene- the thing that gives us our powers- and just... screws it up so much until the mutant's powers go out of control." And then they died.

[glacial_queen]

Hey! She had magical powers! Maybe she could find something with magic that science had overlooked!

...Yeah, probably not. But she was going to try like Hell.

She glanced over to the bed. 'Powers out of control' was a pretty accurate statement of what was happening to Warren right now. With his Healing factor going insane, his body was taking a heavy toll.

"I am not going to lose him," she said, very quietly. "I refuse."

Because that would show the weird disease. Karla was refusing! Ha! Take that!

"How could he have gotten it?" she asked. "If it was brought back from the future of your world, how could it have gotten here?"

[longislandiceme]

"Maybe I brought it back with me," Bobby mused, feeling nauseous at the thought that this could be his fault. "Or maybe with all the people from different versions of my reality running around, there could be some version of Stryfe here."

[glacial_queen]

Karla...really didn't want to think of this as Bobby's fault. Really, really didn't. They had just started talking again and blaming him for this was a good way to make their slowly resuming friendship grind to a screeching halt.

"With all the different people around, anyone could have been a vector," she said awkwardly. "Did you see him at all yesterday when we got back?"

[longislandiceme]

"No," he shook his head. "This is the first I've seen of him since class on Friday."

[glacial_queen]

So...either it had a long incubation period, or it wasn't Bobby. Karla relaxed a little at that. "How long does it usually take for symptoms to show?" she asked. "Because he was fine until tonight."

[longislandiceme]

"I don't know," he admitted. Hank had probably mentioned it at some point, but like Bobby could follow what his friend was saying when he got all science-guy-y. "Day or two, maybe?"

[glacial_queen]

"It's been longer than that for him," Karla said. "It's Tuesday now and we spent the weekend in Kaeleer and Kaeleer moves at double-speed. It's been almost a week for him since he's seen you last."

Didn't exactly rule out this Legacy virus, but it did make it that much less likely that Bobby was the vector.