ways_infirmary | (no subject)

"I can't--there's no cure, okay?" Harper was babbling, as they dragged him over and got him in a bed. "...Trance. Get Trance. Trance can tell you. We tried, okay? We looked up everything."

The front of his shirt was now completely soaked in blood and his eyes were wild and manic in a manner that was almost animalistic.

"Just gimme my gun. Gimme my gun or one of you be a pal and take care of it for me." He almost sounded like a druggie, begging someone for one more hit--just a little bit more.

Duo manages to get the struggling Harper onto the bed. Nita, meanwhile, pale and wide-eyed, has moved into the room and acquired herself a scalpel.

"What are they?" she asks as she turns around, not exactly expecting an answer from Harper.

Her ears are flattened, but Laini helps Duo keep Harper down on the bed. He grabs for the restraints, and wincing, Laini helps Duo fasten them.

"Harper- we'll get them out. Promise. This is Milliways, there has to be something. You'll see." Laini looks up at Duo and Nita, worried.

"Right?"

"Right."

There are gods, after all, and wizards more powerful than she can imagine. But right now, there's just her.

No pressure.

Nita starts looking for gauze and bandages as well, and repeats, "What are they? I might be able to do something."

"I don't care where this fucking is!" Harper rasped out, in a harsh croaking voice. Neither Laini or Duo had probably ever heard him curse before. He was usually too creative to need to.

"Kill me! You goddamn, fucking bastards, how can you call yourselves my friends? If you were my friends, you'd kill me! That's what friends do! With the Magog, you save a bullet for your buddy, you always save a bullet for your buddy!"

He went on, choking on his own blood. "You think I didn't try, when I was infested last time? You think I didn't try every way I could to get the damn things out? I found one way, and it killed people. My life isn't worth that." It wasn't worth anything, really.

"If you try to take 'em out surgically they'll just latch onto my organs and you'll be dragging a few miles of intestines with 'em! You gotta kill me! It's the only thing you can do!"

He threw his head back against the pillow, thrashing more against the restraints, and his pants gave way to more howls of pain.

"My pain--" he gasped, remembering what Rev had said to him so long ago, and how it had helped. "--my p-pain belongs to the Divine. It's l-like air, it's like--Ah...ah god--l-like w-water. M-my pain b-belongs to the--oh, oh God--to the D--AAUGH!"

He kept screaming, arching his back and thrashing against the restraints. More skin stretched and tore, more blood spurted out from his mouth, and out came another baby Magog from his torn and bleeding gut.

The pain was unlike anything Harper had ever felt before, and he knew pain.

His mind was racing with adrenaline and betrayal, and fear, there was plenty of fear. But it all dulled down to a buzz as the pain built, and the larvae tore free and skittered off of the table. Before it got far, however, it disappeared in a puff of smoke.

He was shaking now, starting to go into shock, shivering as if he were bitterly cold.

Eyes closed, he whimpered, "B-Beka..." Most people called for their mothers. Harper knew better than to beg from comfort from people already dead.

Duo was fumbling in the cupboards for sedatives, until he sees the second expulsion of Magog.

He chokes back a cry of dismay, because if those keep bursting out, there isn't going to be anything left of Harper to fix. This is already beyond what small skill he has.

Duo doesn't bother with alcohol or anything but a sterile needle and drugs as he injects his friend with the strongest painkiller he can find. He grabs one of Harper's hands, and squeezes.

"I promise, Harper. I'll do it. Let us try, first. If it doesn't work, I've got plenty of bullets." His face is blank, eyes wide and dark.

"I swear."

Laini flinches as the second magog starts scuttling off. She grabs a nearby jar, and whirls to trap it-

And then stares at the puff of smoke. A quick shake of her head, setting the jar down on the closest available surface, she turns back. Laini flattens her ears, hearing Duo, then grabs one of Harper's hands.

She knows less about medical stuff than the Preventer or Wizard, so the only thing she can do? Is be there.

There really was one way this could have been worse, and that was if the damn things didn't magically disappear. See, because then he'd have them running around, eating, killing, and as he died, he'd die with the knowledge that they'd be spreading around his DNA, as they were technically his children.

Rape kinda sucked.

Especially when the offspring went on a bloody rampage.

"Where? Where are they? How? Gone." He shooked, and spoke to Duo. "Painkillers. Won't. Work," Harper choked out, spitting up blood. "They--they absorb everything. Can't get drugged--can't get drunk. Stop trying. Stop. Hurts. Stop. Sto--AAAAUUUUUGH!"

He screamed as he thrashed, more of the skin stretching, blood spurting, tiny hands and claws boring through skin. He screamed, a pleading litany of anguish:

"KILLMEKILLMEKILLMEKILLMEKILLME!"

Nita winces as he screams again.

There's something on a shelf here -- Theta-delta wave emitter. The instructions below note that it destimulates pain centers. So not drugs, direct to the nerve endings. She knows wizardries that do the same, but this won't take the energy out of her -- and she might need it later.

She fiddles with the settings, as shown in the intructions, and passes it to Duo. "Duo, here -- base of the neck."

He snatches it from her hand and carefully places the small device at the nape of Harper's neck, about where the brain joins with the spinal cord.

"Did all of those damn things disappear? If we had a living one, we could test it for weaknesses."

The gun is heavy in his pocket.

Well, here was another living one, clawing its way through skin and fat, and the screaming stopped, though.

The screaming stopped because the pain stopped and everything felt numb.

But not entirely numb. It was like having a tooth drilled or removed. You could feel the dentist prodding around, scraping the root of the tooth against the bone, even though it didn't hurt.

He coughed out blood, and shook, and saw it clawing out of his skin, stretching it.

"There's always...always lots of them. Were...fourteen last time. Takes a while," he said distantly, as the thing struggled to tear through his skin. "Takes a long time to die. Small wounds. Slow bleeding. Takes a while. S'why we...we'd kill them ourselves. Killed them and built pyres--burnt 'em. Burning them was better. If--if you buried them sometimes the larvae could crawl to the surface and...and then they'd come after us. Had to burn...had to burn..."

He coughed out more blood. He was completely soaked in it now.

"They burned Siobhan and Declan, burned...their skin curled," he babbled deliriously. "Ma cried. She...she promised my aunt. She promised, when she died that she and Da, that they'd...they'd look after 'em. It smelled kinda like bacon--haven't been able to eat bacon, ever, since then. They burned..."

The creature tore through the skin at last and he could see his own intestines.

Too much blood. Humans were fragile creatures, and died too easily.

Same reason we stop to admire a sunset

Wide-eyed, she stares at Harper as he babbles, tail twitching nervously, then looks up at Duo and Nita as the next magog bursts out.

"... We need a healer, a doctor, someone. You both know more here- I'll get one. Should be one here, I'll find one." Laini takes a breath to say more, then leans down to brush a kiss on Harper's forehead before she bolts for the door.

A few seconds later they can hear shouts for a doctor coming from the bar.

It's just their luck that there is a doctor in the bar that night.

It's just his sort of luck to get called in on not one case, but two as soon as he appears in the bar.

He almost beats Laini back to the infirmary.

You can tell he's arrived when the steady stream of cursing starts up.

"Status." His orders are crisp and clear as he pulls on surgical gear at a speed that can only be gained through practice - gown, mask, cap, gloves.

Man down.

Duo swallows. "Infestation of alien creatures called 'Magog'. Unknown quantity, burrowing out from lower stomach area. They vanish after appearing, which isn't normal. Painkillers, no effect. Theta-delta wave device is apparently functioning as it should. Blocks pain."

"Direct to the nerve endings," Nita adds.

"What kills them?" Normally, he's all for preservation of alien life.

Not when they're killing his patients.

He spies a medkit he recognizes and hauls it off the shelf, snapping it open and laying it out with economical motions. Scapel, laser cauterizer, suture, right.

Then he hurries to Harper's side and observes the damage.

The cursing gets more empathatic. And switches to Klingon. It's more satisfying to curse in Klingon.

"We don't know. They disappear before we can capture them."

She takes a deep breath. "If you can get them out, I can patch him up. I'm a healer."

That earns a raised eyebrow that's difficult to see under the cap, but he doesn't comment. Snarky comments waste time. Instead, he grabs a few hemostats and adds them to his collection. No way is he picking those things up with his bare hands.

Targeting the closest of the wriggling lumps, he slices it open deftly, internally cringing at the thing inside. However, when he reaches for it with the hemostats, he freezes.

"Not going to work. Is there some way to destroy them where they are?" He doesn't elaborate. There isn't time.

"That's s-supposed to hurt, isn't it?" Harper rambled. He laughed, deliriously. "This is--this is cool. If I wasn't g-gonna die...I'd use this thing all the t-time."

His eyes started to roll back in his head, but he stopped it, even if they stayed unfocused. He told Bones, "You c-can't take them out. I t-told you. They l-latch on."

He gurgled a bit, then went on, "It's really c-cold in here. I'll get on those environmental controls right away, b-boss. I just...I just g-gotta fix the d-damage to the s-slipstream core, first."

"... Shock." A worried look to Harper, then she looks back to Bones, then and Nita.

"Well, wizard- think you can help burn them out without hurting him?" Laini takes a deep breath, and stretches her arms out. The flickering flame of fox-fire collects around her hands, and she looks back at the magog larva latching on to Harper's insides. Laini narrows her eyes.

"... Just very carefully."

Direct and controlled, the foxfire glows no brighter than fireflies under the bright lights of the infirmary. But it works. Quick as lightning, it starts weaving around one visable magog and contracts- and with a flash and a whiff of ozone, its gone.

She starts on the next she can see.

Nita swallows hard.

"I have to be able to see something to blast it. For something this precise, I might have to be--" She cuts off, swallows again.

"I might have to be able to touch it. Better safe than sorry."

"You, sir..." McCoy assures Harper as he slices expertly through as many of the wriggling lumps as he can see, leaving the critters exposed to his lovely lady assistants' magical touch, "Will be fixing nothing until I give you a clean bill of health. Which will happen, by the way."

"I dun'...I dun' like doctorsss..." Harper slurred, his eyes rolling back in his head. "I can't...I c-can't see. I c-can't s-see Isaac, B-Brendan. They're--the uuuubers're g-gonna kill'im. He d-doesn't know it's an ambush."

"They're all right. You got the numbers you need, man." Duo learned last time that it's better to humor a Harper in shock.

Giving a slightly panicked glance at his hands, Duo hurries to wash them off, then gather the supplies for an IV. Stand, artificial plasma, needle.

He returns to the bedside and prepares to hook it up when the doctor signals.

McCoy gives Duo the go ahead for the IV. He is still carefully searching for more of the larva, and Laini is weaving foxfire around each one that is found.

They do not survive much longer than that.

Four out before. Six more found. Four more to go, if Harper's estimates of fourteen are close enough.

"... Almost there, Super Genius. See? Told you so." Laini murmurs quietly.

They're getting harder to find, little buggers. But he's patient, and quick, and soon they fall one by one.

While Laini fries the last of them, McCoy loads up a hypospray with the standard shock drugs - epinephrine, steroids, lidocaine, atropine. Those are shot in to the jugular while he monitor's Duo's blood drip rate, and nods. It's going to be messy, but it'll work.

Quickly he begins suturing and closing, running scans every few minutes to make sure he isn't closing in any more of those creatures. However, he can't quite keep the victorious smile off his face.

Feels good to save them.