fandomhigh | The Library

"This school is plenty odd," says Janet. "~~Who hasn't seen their friends get taken over by their dark sides every now and again?~~ You're only fine?" She looks at him quizzically. "Anything I can do?"

Methos strikes the pose of, 'I am an Immortal and thus all the problems of the world rest upon my manly shoulders, and I am not to burden poor mortals with that which they need not know.' And then he remembers that his name is not Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod, shrugs, and coughs slightly. "In a place with zombies and demonic possession, should I be dancing the hora or something?"

Janet watches the near-schizophrenic body language shifts with a raised eyebrow. "The hora?" she asks dryly. "Probably not. And who said anything about demonic possession?" She shakes her head. "Look, can we talk privately? I have a strange question to ask you."

"With that sort of lead in, how can I resist?" Glancing around, Methos finally leads her back to the room behind the circulations desk where he had been sleeping. His cot and a small refrigerator (full of beer) are still there. "What's your question?"

"I still can't believe you slept here for so long," says Janet, shaking her head. She looks around for a place to sit, and finding nothing really suitable, dusts off the cot and sits down.

"What's your story?" she asks. "I mean, during the zombie incursion, there were some pretty strange things that happened to you."

OOC: Okay, do you happen to be known as Methos or Adam Pierson, BTW?

Methos stared at her level eyes, which were unnervingly focused for a teenage girl. He framed and rejected a few comments in the key of, "What on earth could you possibly mean/you must have been mistaken."

Something CJ had said when she'd finally pinned him down occured to him: why did he feel the need to keep it a secret? Well, besides the fact that he always had. In this place, he was an oddity among oddities.

Then again... he sipped his coffee and grinned at her. "Why should I tell you?"

[OOC: Prof/Dr. Pierson, although I haven't made that terribly clear and it's quite fair to call him Prof. Methos, since that's his username.]

Janet grinned right back. She had the key to the puzzle right here in front of her, and she wasn't leaving the room without answers. For once, she didn't necessarily have to deduce everything from just a couple of samples.

Her binder was disturbingly heavy as she hauled it out of her backpack, and she set it down in her lap. "Remember how I was looking for samples of zombie saliva during the attacks?" she asked. "In addition to the biological samples I collected directly from the zombie corpses--and my, wasn't that disgusting, by the way--you gave me your sweater. The mysterious bite mark that wasn't, remember?" She shook her head. "When I was running tests on the saliva, I hadn't realized that some of the fibers I'd grabbed for one or two slides had been contaminated by your blood as well."

She flipped open her binder to show Professor Methos some color photocopies of complicated-looking scientific. "The results were off from baseline human, and they weren't degraded the way the samples from the zombies were."

OOC: Good, because I'd started out calling you Professor Methos. *laughing* Having fun with this?

Of course, when he had contemplated being an oddity among oddities, there hadn't been medical research to out him.

He put down his cup of coffee and held his hand out for the binder. "May I have that. Please," he said flatly.

"They're copies," said Janet, noting his change in demeanor as she stood and handed over the binder. "It's not as if I ~~could~~ was planning to publish a research paper anyway," she said, struggling to keep the bitterness out of her voice. "Did you think I'd call a press conference? I ~~know what classified means~~ can keep a secret."

She gave the professor an appraising look and kept her voice level, firm, and even, if not completely calm. "I also hope you don't think I'd be so unethical as to go behind the back of ~~someone I'd have like to consider a friend some day~~ someone I work with about something like this."

Methos flipped through the binder. The pages were largely gibberish to him. It's one thing for individuals to know, for the Watcher organization to exist. It's quite another to have scientific proof in full-color spreads.

Through the roaring in his ears, he tried to focus on what Janet was saying. Keep the secret. He remembered Joe pulling a gun to shoot Christine down, willing to kill or die to keep the secret.

"Why do you want to know? What do you want from me?" he struggled to ask.

[OOC: Oh, and in answer to your question above: hell, yes!]

Janet uncrossed her arms and eyed the exit warily. She didn't like the mixed signals she was getting from the professor's body language. You might have bitten off more than you can chew, Janet. Again.

"I want to know because I have a nearly unparalleled level of scientific curiosity," snapped Janet. "And all I was looking for was an answer or two to clear up the puzzle." She paused as his words sank through her anger. "Dear God, did you think I was going to blackmail you? What the hell kind of person do you think I am?"

OOC: Yes. We're brilliant. Though poor Methos had no idea that cranky!Janet was in full throttle already. :)

"I don't know," Methos said, as levelly as he could. He met Janet's eyes again, and saw in them the outrage of someone who really would never threaten someone without a damned good reason. God, spare me more idealists. Then again, at sixteen, what else would you be? Good thing I can't remember back that far.

"I've no desire to be a lab rat," he said, calm coming more easily to him. "And that's what this could do."

Janet took a deep breath. "Apparently not," she said. "I'm a science geek." She struggled to keep the anger out of her voice. "If I see something I don't understand, and it's within my specialty, I look for answers."

A lab rat? How could he possibly think I would--Let's face it, Janet, he thinks you're a high school student. He probably thinks you want to get extra credit from the Science Club. "Unauthorized human experimentation is both unethical and illegal," said Janet. "Not to mention immoral. I hope you understand that I would not, nor could ever be, party to something like that." So much for the guy who told me I was wasted here. I guess he doesn't think of me all that highly after all. Rather the opposite, in fact.

"Unethical, illegal and immoral are very subjective things. Specific to their place -- and time." Her hurt was almost palpable. "I'm five thousand years old, Janet," he said, very quietly. "Forgive me for being a touch paranoid?"

Ethics are subjective? You don't say. Janet let out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "Five thousand, huh? I hate to say it, but I'm not that surprised." Her one-shouldered shrug and wry grin hopefully served to cover how awkward she felt. "The rate of genetic mutation in your mitochondrial DNA and your Y chromosomes was staggeringly different from normal, modern human results. I had to do a lot of reading up to analyse them properly."

"Here," she said, holding her hand out for the binder. "Let me explain a few of these things to you. I'm entirely too familiar with the glazed look of incomprehension I get when I start expounding on matters of a scientific nature." She looked up at him, not quite anxious. "That was supposed to be a copy for you anyway, you know."

Methos blinks. "I do generally expect a bit of reaction to that. Mitochondrial? ~~Isn't that what emo_padawan has?~~"

He takes the binder back, and grins wryly at her. "What should I do with this? Post the pictures on my wall? My very own family portrait gallery? But do they all have the same nose?"

Janet grins. "It takes a lot to faze me," she says wryly. She resists the urge to pull one of the genetics books out of her backpack and use the diagrams as visual aids. "Mitochondrial DNA. ~~Those are mitichlorians. Or midichlorians. And I don't know about that, thankfully, or I'd have spastic fits about the so-called science of it all.~~ It's a specific type of DNA contained in your mitochondria which is passed down only from your mother, not your father. Scientists have been able to use it to determine the genetic drift of various populations and from their research and the results I found, I was further able to find a way to refine their methods to determine your age. It mostly has to do with analyzing the genetic drift in your mitochondrial DNA, which doesn't match up with any modern population--" She stopped. "I'm boring you, aren't I?"

"Your nose is...prominent familial feature, I presume," says Janet, resisting the urge to snicker. "Though naturally I couldn't determine much of anything about your biological family."

She shifts a bit. "Look," says Janet seriously. "I don't blame you for being a bit paranoid, but I really am possessed of a nearly insatiable scientific curiosity. I'd like to know what's going on. If you don't mind."

"I'm boring you, aren't I?"

"No, actually, I find this fascinating. What you're saying is, in a quantitative way, I got... frozen five thousand years back from the rest of the population. Was that what... alerted you?"

He looks at the pages in his hand. They are incomprehensible to him, but they mean something to her. A language he hadn't yet learned. He wonders, with a sarcastic laugh aimed at himself, if this is what an adoptive child feels when faced with the possibility of finding his birth parents. He knows who he is: an Immortal, one lucky and ruthless enough to have lived. Would having a scientific explanation make a difference?

No, it would make no difference. But that didn't mean he doesn't want to know. "I'd be... interested in what you could discover," he says finally.

"You find this fascinating?" asks Janet disbelievingly. "You're not humoring me? You're definitely not normal, then." She listens to his question, then shakes her head. "No, that came after. See, after a certain amount of time out of the human body, most red blood cells sort of--" She waves her hand slightly as she's talking. "--look different after a while. I'm simplifying. But the ones I found in your sweater didn't look any different. It confused me. I wanted to find out what the difference was. I didn't even realize this was something totally different from the zombie cell structure until later."

"You would?" asks Janet. He looks curious, maybe, but a bit shaken too. "I mean, I know I would, but--" She stops herself from starting another scientific discourse and grins at him. "Okay," she says. "Before you change your mind."

OOC: Disclaimer - I am pulling this science out of my ass, so if anything is wrong, sorry.

The Library

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