Ear, Nose, Throat.. [Michael]

[Thyra Henriksen]

<sub>Three weeks in, Thyra had not thought much of this new pandemic sweeping the nation. Certainly, it changed many things, her life, her daily routines, and yet so many other things.. but it did not shake her logic or determination. It was with those two qualities she found herself, weighed down by a backpack and a rather disproportionally large sword on her back, going north in order to find some help and solace in the colder weather. She had always felt more comfortable in cold weather, and after a significant amount of studying on the topics of survival in these parts, she armed herself with what she needed in order to accomplish just such a task. This was when she found herself nearing a hospital. Three large cuts in the palm of her hand, and the continuing annoyance of splinters in her hand gained weeks ago when the outbreak first happened, had not only made this a wise choice, but somewhat of a necessity. It was truly irrational for her to enter a large medical facility, which surely had been the first to be hit hard, and yet she had no choice; all the pharmacies and small clinics she had seen so far had not only been ransacked, but many were in flames and otherwise blocked.

With determination, she stepped onto the curb in front of the facility, took a deep breath, and glared. Would this be as daunting a task as she imagined, or was she in for a pleasant surprise, she wondered? Pulling her prized replicated high-carbon viking sword from its sheath, she dragged it through the grass as she approached the building, instantly regretting her carelessness and feeling a twinge of guilt for sullying her sword with something other than blood. So she lifted it, entering through the shattered glass door, and peering around for any signs of life.. or rather, dead life. There were no sounds. There was no light. While she took this as a good sign, it made her uneasy to be this blind. Was this right, she thought, wondering whether she should stay on the ground, or make her way through the ceiling. It had been her main goal avoid the walking dead, and even other people since it all started. Being up there, her eyes moved to the ceiling, she would reduce such a risk. Ceilings had always been her preferred method of moving about building that had unlimited possibilities of walking dead or otherwise.

With that, she checked around the corners, certain that no one was nearby, she rolled a blood-stained bed to a wall, and stood on it, knocking a ceiling panel out of the way. Pulling herself up, she only caused herself more harm, as her arm scraped the metal holding the ceiling together, and creating a nice thin line of blood on her forearm. Infection, not from the living dead, but from ordinary cuts, were what truly frightened her. So with that, she rolled her eyes and made her way through the narrow ceiling. She was unaware of where to go, but felt certain that the pharmacy had to be on the bottom floor. If not, she had assumed there would at least be a myriad of bandages lying around for the taking.

She reached the end of the line, wires blocking her way forward, walls blocking her way to either direction. What was she to do, she wondered, feeling immeasurably stupid in not having considered this impasse. The choice, however, was removed when she heard the ceiling panel give way beneath her. Crash! she broke through the ceiling into a patient room, landing half way on the bed and rolling to the ground. The racket she made was certain to have caused attention, and so she picked herself up, ran to the door, and closed it, setting a chair up to block it. She had been in such a frantic way of attempting to prepare herself for intruders that she forgot to look around, only to be surprised by the figure of a man in the room. She wasted no time recovering her sword from the bed on which it had landed, and standing in full preparedness to receive whatever this being was; man or undead.</sub>

[Michael Levetta]

Michael was as determined as he ever was. He had just made the trip out to the northeast due to coming across a note in a lab that there was an attempt at making a cure in a lab in Maine. He was disappointed once he arrived to see that he was the only one still at the facility. That seemed like a growing trend, wherever he went, everyone evacuated. Though he couldn't say for sure if they actually evacuated, or were eliminated all together. There were times that he strongly believed he was the only person alive working at finding a cure. It sure felt that way, considering he hadn't met any other biologists or even scientists for matter since the outbreak.

His work in this new lab was growing frustrating. He had yet to find any substance that could present itself as the start of a cure, but according to that note it was around here somewhere. If nothing else, he was looking for any evidence that experimenting was actually done here in the first place, right now he was even questioning that. How could that note be a hoax? Who would want to deceive someone on something as critical as this? It HAD to be here, somewhere.

One particular patients room looked like it may have been set up as a testing ground. There were restraints on the bed, and biohazard suits in the corner. Michael was just getting through ravaging the place when he heard patterned footsteps up above. So he wasn't alone, the question was whether those steps were human or not. He hardly even had time to finish that thought, when suddenly the roof caved and someone, or something, plopped on the bed and then the floor. Instinctively, he reached for his revolver until he realized it actually was human.

"Human, not creep." He put his hands up at chest level and and frowned a little as he looked at the freshly made hole in the ceiling. "I would think a medical facility would be more structurally sound than that." He said with a small shrug. "You alright?" He eased his way over to what he could now tell was a female.

[Thyra Henriksen]

<sub>Thyra's sword held aloft, she heard the man speak. The dead don't speak, she thought, rather obviously. Not much for contact in the last 3 weeks, she had only observed and deduced what type of people might be running around that were alive these days. She did not lower her sword. First human contact in weeks, and she did not wish it to end badly on her part. Being overly cautious and slightly paranoid was only reasonable in a situation like this, and even before the outbreak she had always a slight cynic, never truly trusting that someone might have good intentions.

Then again, she reasoned, he was asking her whether or not she was alright.. people who cared not for her well-being surely wouldn't even bother to ask. But it was not enough to win her over. She stepped back as he approached her, pointing the sword at his chest, her hands shaking slightly due to the mild infection that was beginning to weaken her grip. Raising an eyebrow, she finally responded, with some apprehension, "You'd think so, but I doubt they kept patients in the ceiling..."
Silly man, she thought, doesn't even know mineral fiber ceiling when he sees it.. though that assessment of the man was, as per Thyra's usual way of dealing with people, unfair and presumptuous. She cared not if it were, however, and only for her own safety.

"I'm ok..." she said, nearly dropping the point of the sword when she moved her left hand to dust herself off. Dust had covered her head to toe, rendering her otherwise perfectly black (recently washed in a creek) clothes a dusty grey. Regaining control of the sword, she eyed the man. On first glance, she would not assume that he was an unkindly type.. alas, you never could tell these days, and while she was somewhat adept at psycho analysis, she was untrained in reading people without proper examination of their character.

She cleared her throat. "I hope you understand why you're at knife-point, so to put my mind at ease, let me just ask; are you the type of person I should allow to do a jig before I'm forced to defend myself, or should I just end you now? I'm certain it's either one of those options, or you are truly feeble..." Listening to herself, she wondered if her loss of faith in humanity, and her utter assurance that no one was to be trusted, would scare him off. She thought, for a moment, of whether or not having others around might even be a good thing.. and yet, she stopped herself from those thoughts, having seen nothing to prove that.</sub>

[Michael Levetta]

Michael didn't appreciate the elegant sword being pointed towards his chest, but what was new, he should've known most, it not all survivors out there had lost all sense of reasonable thinking. "Patients, no. Supplies and equipment, yes." He stated very matter-of-factly. His expression grew a little suspicious when spotted a cut occupied with blood on her arm. "Were you bit?" He asked raising a brow, knowing that pressing the issue probably wasn't a smart thing to do in his position.

"Well, you're the one that crashed into my party, quite literally, and I didn't fire on you on the spot. So no, I don't understand why I'm at sword-point." He said with a hint of annoyance in his voice. His otherwise tame personality was tested in instances like these. Sometimes it surprised him that he didn't really change that much since the outbreak, but that was more than likely because he didn't have hardly any interaction with actual people since then. He spent the majority of his time in search of or locked in a science lab. "None of the above, I'm afraid. I'm not a threat to you unless you give me a reason to be." He paused for a moment. "Which you are actually." He said with a sly grin in his typical dry humor.

So this was what everyone else was like. It was a giant free for all, every man and woman for themselves out there. In that case, he might as well just stop working with medicine, if humans already lost their humanity and just became glorified animals, then what good would a cure for the infection be? For the first time since the outbreak, even his optimistic mind began to think this was the end, there was no hope..

[Thyra Henriksen]

<sub>"Patients, no. Supplies and equipment, yes," he said, causing Thyra to arch an eyebrow. She sincerely doubted they kept supplies in the ceiling, where most fungi and bad things could creep up, not to mention where the air ducts and wires lived. And yet, in her skepticism, she stopped to wonder how he might know this, or why he'd even care. She couldn't help but give him points for knowing something she might not.. to her, additional knowledge beyond what she had was becoming increasingly impressive.
"Were you bit?" he asked, causing her eyes to flicker to the small wound on her arm. At this, she smirked, and with a tone of sarcastic candor, she responded, "yes, I came to an abandoned hospital to find a miracle cure, made by aaaaaall these happy alive scientists running around..." Trailing off, she couldn't help but give a small smile and shake her head, correcting her sarcasm, "No, it was just the evil metal construction that bit me." She gestured at the ceiling.

Eyes opening in sudden realization at his next point, she began lowering her sword. Had this man not seen the depravities people were capable of? was he an untouched snowflake in this world of rather selfish violence? could she have come across someone so unlikely? she saw no deceit in his eyes, and was confused at this, her faith all but lost, quietly restoring itself. She was, however, not quite ready to turn her back on this stranger, and as she sheathed her sword, she kept a cautious hand on it. "Tell me," she began, "what have you experienced to make you so trusting? even a good man is forced to do things he otherwise wouldn't, in this situation.. I have seen it. Have you not?"

She slinked a few steps toward the man, attempting to redeem herself of her previous mistrust. Certainly, he had not changed her cautious mind, but her hands were in a bad shape, and she did not, all of a sudden, think the idea of help might be a bad one. With that in mind, she removed her gloves, instantly returning one hand to the hilt of her sword, just in case. The other, she presented, showing him a hand with scars crusted in fabric residue and dried blood, a few small holes sporting old splinters under a layer of slowly forming infections. "I came seeking a pharmacy.. you wouldn't happen to know if they're open, would you?"</sub>

[Michael Levetta]

Fortunately, the mood lightened up a little, and her tone wasn't so cutthroat. It was a good note to self for Michael though, now he realized just how violent the remaining civilization could get. He guessed if there was one consequence to spending an apocalypse locked away in a lab, it was that you wouldn't be prepared to adjust to the real world outside.

With her joke about being infected, he debated about spilling the reason he was here, but decided to hold that to himself for the moment. "Think I saw some bandages in that shelf over there, open wounds are no good." He motioned over to the shelves on the opposite side of the bed. "What were you possibly doing up there anyway?" His head snapped back to her and then the ceiling. That would be an odd place to try and set up camp.

Her question caught him by surprise, that was never something he ever expected to hear, let alone have to answer. In fact he really wasn't sure how to answer that, it wasn't the experiences he had, more so the experiences he didn't have. Then it hit him though that in a time of desperation and shortage, of course people would break out in a panic that would lead them to take on a gladiator attitude. He himself had nearly unlimited supplies from the first lab he was confined at, but if he didn't have those provisions? Then how would he act? "What I've seen." He paused briefly. "Is a bunch of biological equations and chemical reactions. Can't say I've spent much time doing anything but that." He shook his head.

He frowned as he took a glance at her battered hand. "And frankly, I'm glad that's all I've done." He said in observance of her condition. "There's a pharmacy at the northern end of the building, mostly ransacked, but you might get lucky."He made his past her, and carefully navigated his way through the debris. "Follow me."

[Thyra Henriksen]

<sub>Thyra didn't hesitate to follow the gesture of his arm to the shelf opposite the bed. She kept her gaze on the stranger as she approached it, her eyes going ever more sideways to keep him in view, she nearly stubbed her toe on the cupboard below the shelves, only stopping herself an inch before. Her eyes only quickly darted to the shelf to spot the bandages, then back to the man. Her paranoia could not be quelled by the niceness he had shown her so far. At least not yet. If he knew, she thought, that she had had no contact for weeks, and had only seen men doing terrible things, would he be less confused or offended by her careful nature? she wasn't sure. Some people were simply trusting and believed the best in people.

She took a bandage and even found an old alcohol wipe hidden beneath it. She she faced the man again, she addressed his question with a smile that only told him she knew better, and was strangely proud of having avoided most confrontation all this time, "it is easier than trying to saw a head off its shoulders, no matter how sharp my blade is". That part was true. She had found it remarkably difficult to decapitate the walking dead. not for lack of strength, or sharpness, but rather.. well.. necks were pretty toughly attached to bodies, and just breaking it did nothing to stop them from biting you. Certainly, she had thought of ways around simply cutting their heads off - a good prick in the eye, a whack to the parietal or frontal bone, hell, even the maxilla was easier to penetrate than cutting through all that connective tissue. And yet she always thought it took too long. One whack never did it, and when there was more than one to contend with, she'd rather just avoid the issue all together.

Thyra's eyebrow quirked in curiosity, as he spoke, and she swung off her backpack to stuff the bandages into a small pocket on the front. Biological equations and chemical reactions? she knew that that was what attributed to people acting the way they did, yet she could not help but wonder if he meant something completely different by it, especially considering his following statement. A scientist, she wondered? if so, she almost considered herself to have hit the jackpot. She had not considered that there might actually be people like her out there. "It'd be much easier to understand if you explained what you meant by that," she said, following close behind him hand steady on her sword, eyes firmly set on the back of his neck, ever worried he could be leading her into a trap. And yet, she needed antibiotics, and she was not willing to give up the chance to get some for mere paranoia.</sub>

[Michael Levetta]

The first thing Michael noticed about this person was how tense she was, it seemed like any second she expected all hell to break loose. He wasn't sure himself how comfortable he was around such an attitude, but she was the experienced one, he only had a mild idea of what it was actually like out there. He knew that was something that would probably need to change in the near future.

"Crude." He remarked with a little humor at the decapitation comment. She sort of reminded him of the mindset those tough women usually had in apocalypse movies. In his opinion, he didn't see anything wrong with a gun, and wondered why you'd risk getting up close and personal instead of just eliminating the threat from a distance. He knew how fortunate he was in this situation, most everyone else had to fight for every inch they had, while he just worked in between solid walls. Sometimes he felt the weight of the world on his shoulders though. If he couldn't figure it out, who could?

He took a moment to think how he could best explain what he'd been doing. "This whole epidemic was caused by a virus that once subjected to the host's bloodstream, would shut down the hosts bodily functions, resulting in death. Somehow, the virus takes control of the hosts central nervous system, and in sense reanimates them. Not normally as we both know." He took a breath as he turned a corner at the end of the hallway and took a glance back at her. "There were a few scientists out there, me included, that think we can end this. All it is is a virus, if it can be eliminated within the hosts, then it's all over." A more remorseful tone took over his voice. "As fate would have it however, I'm the only one remaining I know of that is working towards this. I'm practically on a wild goose chase now." He gave a small shrug.

[Thyra Henriksen]

<sub>"Crude," he said, causing her to merely be amused by his innocence. It was not crude, she thought, simply true.. she wondered whether this man was made to survive at all. With an attitude that showed him unable to consider the concept of removing something's head she was amazed he had survived this long. But, of course, she thought, he claimed to have not spent much time doing anything but thinking. Thyra had large plans to follow his lead somewhat - if she ever found a settlement you could be certain to find Thyra writing a paper that no one would ever read.

When he finally explained, she stopped in her tracks. He was trying to cure people? From what he thought was a virus? She frowned. "To what end?" she asked finally, intensely fascinated, nearly forgetting any type of paranoia that might have been filling her head, instantly replacing it with racing thoughts of what this might mean. She did not have faith in the man she just met, not because of him, personally, simply because the process of making, manufacturing, and distributing a cure would be near impossible for one man alone. But what did this mean, if he indeed could? Surely he couldn't cure the ones already walking around dead - they were already decomposing. You cannot revive necrotic flesh, she knew, and the amount of damage to every person's organs, even if he could cure the disease, would kill them anyway. Surely he could find a way to prevent the disease from showing up, but in order to even do that he'd need cells from someone who was in the stages of becoming one of them, but was not yet dead... and getting enough test subjects to even make the testing possible was.. well.. crazy. There were barely enough people in the world left to fill a stadium, let alone enough to be dying for him to test their cells, and certainly not enough if he needed those people who were infected and dying to test their cells.. everyone would die before he came to a conclusion. Of course, she thought, he could always use rats or pigs, but she wasn't entirely sure she'd seen killer pigs running about, so the odds of them even being able to be infected in the first place was slim, which would rule out that form of testing. A proper scientific method required vigorous testing, she knew, and found this idea completely unfeasible.

Still, she could not help but become slightly optimistic, though sadly, at this moment in time, she was only glad of the prospect that she might one day be able to walk around without fear of the living dead. Selfish, sure, but completely reasonable, given that this was all still very new, and human contact, alive human contact was new. She began walking again, smiled encouragingly at the man, and said "wild goose chases have often led to results, I find... is that why you're here?"

They had reached the pharmacy. Thyra jumped in through the door and instantly looked crestfallen. There wasn't much left, and what was left hitched on her major pet peeve of being completely disorderly. She took a deep sigh, stepped forward, and began rummaging through what was left. "Be a dear and see if you can find any antibiotics... ertapenem, doripenem, or something broad-spectrum... one of those -enem or -cillin names" she gave him an encouraging smile, her mind honestly still racing with thoughts of a cure.</sub>

[Michael Levetta]

"To no end." He replied firmly. "It's this or we're all dead, it's simply a matter of time. A longshot, yes, but if there's any possibility at all of eradicating the virus, then someone's got to try something." Michael was silent for a few moments while looking down at his feet as they neared the pharmacy. "Believe it or not, we knew about this virus before it actually took its effects. The problem was that we found out about literally 18 hours before the first incident of cannibalistic behavior was reported. The CDC was working relentlessly to find a solution, they brought in test subjects, did experiments, and even formed a few theories." His tone grew a little darker as he continued. "That's as far as they got though, the epidemic became so large scale that I suppose it wiped them out too. My colleagues, biologists and chemists around the globe that we were in contact with, all gone. Don't know what happened to most of them." He sighed and shook his head.

He yanked the door open to the pharmacy and motioned for her to pass through. "I'm here because of a past message from this exact medical center. They say they developed another antidote from a different set of equations they tried. I'm here to find it and see if its legit, so far I haven't." He added with an annoyed tone.

His second look at the pharmacy revealed no miraculous changes, the place was still a ransacked mess, void of just about anything that would be of true usefulness. "I'll dig a little." He studied several bottles spewed on the floor. Stacked away in a far corner of a drawer he finally discovered something he didn't know they even carried these days. "Found some meticillin, this stuff is pretty outdated but should work." He grabbed the bottle and tossed it to her.

[Thyra Henriksen]

<sub>Thyra frowned. She was in complete disagreement with this man. It wasn't this, or they were all dead.. the human race was not only resilient, but too stubborn. Thyra had been of the opinion for a long time that the world was overpopulated.. hell, that wasn't opinion, it was fact. And sure, she never thought wiping out everyone was the solution, but it might just have turned out that way. Thyra was, strangely, slightly relieved at the onset of the outbreak.. evolution could take over again. Instead of man adapting nature to fit them, they had to once again fight for survival, and live with the land and adjust to it, instead of the other way around. That was how evolution worked, it was how people changed and became what they were... she was happy to see that progress was no longer preventing progress. But she would probably never tell anyone that. She knew, despite not being entirely practiced in the social arena, that mentioning she thought it was a good thing the world ended probably wouldn't endear her to anyone. this was one of the very few things she elected to not say... otherwise, she was difficult to keep from speaking her mind.

Still, she listened, nodded, even gave a small encouraging smile. She would never discourage something that might improve intellect, even if it was fruitless. It was endlessly fascinating, and though she had not forgotten her previous paranoia, she held her fingers more slack on the hilt of her sword the more he spoke. "You really think you'll find something?"</sub>[/color] she asked, curious. She truly was. She nearly offered to help him search for what he was looking for, but stopped herself, giving the man a look of helplessness that lasted for no longer than half a second. He had been nice enough to help her, she thought unhappily, and while she thought the search for a cure was kind of a waste of time, she still wanted to repay the favor... not to mention, she was intensely fascinated with, if he finally succeeded, what might happen in that situation. That, she thought, was enough.

So when he tossed her the meticillin, she plucked it out of the air and immediately took one out of the bottle and popped it into her mouth. "Well!"[/color] she said with enthusiasm, though the apprehension in her voice to shield from prying ears hearing them was not lost, "now that I'm no longer dying.. need any assistance curing the people who eventually will?"[/color][/sub]