fandomhigh | The Day After Doomsday: Getting By In a Post-Apocalyptic World, Wednesday, Period 4

When the students stepped into the Danger Shop for Reno's class today, they'd find themselves stepping into the lobby of the dormitory all over again, with a few pointed differences. There seemed to be a barricade built against the boarded-up windows, consisting of a good deal of the furniture that had clearly been dragged down from the floors above them. The power to the simulated building had been cut off completely, which meant that they were sitting in near-absolute darkness, because naturally Reno was going to be an ass and set this scenario for the dead of night.

There were cans of food lined up against one wall. There were weapons, what looked to be the entire contents of both the weapons locker and sharpened, weaponized versions of the practise fare from the Salle, laid out against the other. A sign hastily scribbled down on a piece of paper pointed deeper into the building, directing any possible injured to a first-aid station in the rec room.

Reno was sitting in the middle of the floor, grinning up at the students as they came in, legs splayed out in front of him and his elbows on his knees, Danger Shop supplied stun baton in one hand.

"Trust me," he said coolly, nodding back to the doors that closed themselves and instantly fell behind another barricade the moment the last of the students stepped in, "you don't wanna go back out there. This ain't your everyday Fandom invasion, where somethin' shows up, tapdances nasty around us all for a week, an' then gets sent packin'. This is the real friggin' deal, yo. This is your doomsday scenario, where there ain't no cure for bein' dead. Where if you get bit and infected and turn into one of them, you ain't snappin' out of it. Where the weapon that blew up the school took half of you with it, and you don't got time for so much as a head count to figure out who's left."

He leaned back, the cool metal of his baton scraping against the floor of the lobby, playing an eerie harmony to the sounds from outside, which alternated from complete silence to screams to gunfire, to the sound of something not remotely human calling out into the dark, answered by what had to be a hundred more just like it, all converging in on one point: The Dorms.

"I ain't gonna pretend there ain't heroes among you, I ain't gonna sit here and point at you one by one to tell you the likelihood of comin' back alive, either. If you're one of them who's gonna run out there, then there ain't nobody who'll be able to keep you inside. And that'll cost the island one of its first big advantages early on. Because once you guys are dead, what are the people who ain't fighters gonna do?"

And then, all at once in a flash of speed that was jarringly unnatural, Reno was on his feet, baton on his shoulder, and he was prowling back and forth in front of the students.

"What the enemy out there is don't matter in this scenario. What's out there is the predator, that thing that goes bump in the night, that sees you as prey or pest, but whatever the case is, it don't want us here, and it's lettin' us know with extreme prejudice. This is the Danger Shop, so if you go out them doors here, you'll just be steppin' out into the school again. This lesson ain't about fightin'. This is about stayin' alive. Look around. Take in what's been set up, here. Let it sink in that there isn't a single resource in this lobby that'll last even a severely reduced dorm population more'n a few weeks at best. And then, try an' figure out what the hell you're gonna do about it."

[Open! Go nuts!]

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"I ... might be of assistance there," she said, chewing her lower lip. "With your research."

It was only a simulation. No need to explain her abilities to their fullest. She was going to leave that one cryptic for a more important remark.

"Ever made robot legs?"

Barry looked up with a quizzical look on his face. "Okay. Yeah, I'll take any assistance you can give. What are the robot legs for?"

"If it were real, I'd help," she said. "This isn't."

She was going to leave it at that. Maybe, maybe the stem cells in her could be stabilized somehow. Or they could infect the cells to see how they combated the infection.

"Not what, but who," she added, nodding in Joker's direction.

Barry looked over at Joker and nodded before turning his gaze back to the generator. "Yeah, I can do that. If that's something that he's interested in. I don't push what I can do on other people unless they want it."

"I didn't mean for reality," she said, shuddering over the thought of -- nonconsensual experimentation on Joker, of all people. "I meant for the purposes of this bloody exercise, so he can get out of here."

"Again, like I said, if he wants it," Barry said looking up from the generator. "He made it pretty clear in class the other day that he doesn't like people playing God. I can do some fucking awesome things but if he doesn't want it I won't do it."

Eleanor hesitated, not wanting to ask this.

"What were you doing that made him think you wanted to play God?"

Because she wasn't going to like the answer.

Barry sighed. "I was going to mess with the crazy teachers who do the career guidance class."

"Oh." That was not, in the least, a frightening answer. She frowned. "That's odd. Joker's usually in favor of messing with people."

"I was thinking of doing it by providing them a drug that would temporarily change them into a dinosaur," Barry added. "That he didn't seem enthused about."

Oh, hey, that feeling was coming back.

"How ..." Eleanor forced herself to take a deep breath. "How does a drug temporarily transform one into a dinosaur?"

Edited 2014-05-16 16:43 (UTC)

"I discovered it by fucking accident," Barry said with a sigh. "I was working on new artificial sugar substitute and my friend Jeremy decided to test it when I wasn't looking. He drank from another experiment and turned into a dinosaur. Still him. Still the same brain and personality but just transformed into a giant fucking dinosaur. I kept the formula and engineered a genetic reversal antidote in case the dumb-ass tried it again."

"Oh," Eleanor said, a touch tonelessly. "You're going to be messing about with their genetics, then. That's all."

Barry rolled his eyes. "It's not like I was going to keep them that way. Those dorks would just think it was a hallucination or something!"

"So it doesn't matter," Eleanor said. Her tone was sharper now, anger seeping in around the edges. "They're dumb, so they won't know any better. It's probably temporary. If they do figure it out, brainwash them to forget all about it, right?"

"It's not probably temporary, it is temporary," Barry said defensively. "And who said I was going to brainwash them?"

"How do you know you're not making permanent alterations?" she asked. "You change it, and you change it back with an antidote. How do you know there won't be lingering traces in their DNA? And what gives you the right?"

She folded her arms, forcing herself not to explode about this. "You'd tell them it was a hallucination. Forgive me for assuming that brainwashing was out of the question, if that failed. You're only manipulating their genetic code for your own amusement. Brainwashing is beneath you."

"I know I'm not making permanent alterations because I built the antidote to reset them to their original genetic code," Barry snapped. "I'm not some mad scientist. It's a fucking joke for Christ's sake!"

"I thought you didn't push what you can do on other people unless they wanted it," she snapped. "Or do the teachers not count because you don't like them, anyway?"

"That's different!" Barry countered. "Building robotic legs for someone to use all the time? That's permanent. I'd have to tap into his nerves and possibly his brain to make it work right. There's a whole neural interface that I would have to build into it! For the teachers? It's. Temporary."

"And what if one of them has a reaction to it?" Eleanor asked. "A psychotic break, from the stress of it, or an unexpected genetic mutation as a result of it. What if your antidote fails? What if you put them back together, but your sample was corrupted, with one tiny chromosome misaligned, and now they've got some crippling disease they didn't before?"

Barry paused for a second or two before he finally snapped.

"I'D FUCKING FIX IT! OKAY!? I don't fucking hurt people! I don't do that! Not-"

Barry stopped and squished his eyes shut. He covered his face and tried to regain his composure.

"Shit. Shit. Shit."

Eleanor folded her arms, hugging herself tightly. She felt cruel, suddenly. He was just a boy playing a practical joke.

"If you would fix it, then you're not a mad scientist," she said, in a hollow voice. "They just dispose of failed specimens and start over."

She ... didn't want to be in class any more. Too much was reminding her of home, the science, the unholy shrieks, the near-clawing panic and need to escape.

She was through participating, for today. Maybe she could sit quietly in a corner until everything was done.

The Day After Doomsday: Getting By In a Post-Apocalyptic World, Wednesday, Period 4

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