The Universe's Mixer

Simon had gone home happy, or content. He'd had a few good days at work; he'd spent a nice evening at Jennifer's, and it looked as if he might be doing something right for a change. Hell, the watch dog nurse assigned to him even seemed to be on the upswing when it came to moods. So, after saving a few lives, helping deliver a baby or two, even reassuring some poor kid that, no, he was not going to go blind after enjoying...personal time - very awkward discussion that one, and Simon did have to wonder if that rule applied in the City - the good Doctor Tam went home in a very decent mood. He didn't even mind the rather ridiculous people around him; there were couples galore, and they were certainly affectionate. He even thought he saw someone who looked a lot like Jennifer making out with some other woman, but then it couldn't be Jennifer.

It looked like even the doorman was having a happy, loving day because the man was busy getting cozy with Mrs. Applebottom, the poodle-happy octogenarian on the 3rd floor. Strange, but Simon wasn't going to comment; he wasn't going to think to hard about it. He was going to get in the elevator and ride to his apartment; then he was going to call Jennifer to see if she wanted to have dinner. They were going to have an actual dinner. That had been the plan anyway.

Instead, the City in the form of one majorly ugly Cupid decided to step in. Or fly in as the case may be. Dr. Tam was certainly hit by the arrow, but the elevator doors closed before Simon could see who hit him. When he tried finding whatever it was, nothing presented itself. He shrugged and waited for the elevator to start moving. He had pushed the right floor button, right?

So much had gone on that Jennifer felt like she hadn't really had two minutes to herself to sit down and just relax. First the zombies, then having to question Simon and Dr Lecter in a professional manner, and then the snow. Not to mention the talk with Smith Wall, who she was seriously having some doubts about as a person. She wanted to find out more about him, but she also wanted to talk to Charlie about him. Maybe somebody with such a Zen way of thinking would have some insight that she didn't, or couldn't.

But today? Today she wasn't going in to work, because it was her day off. She didn't have any chores to do. No errands to run. She was just wearing some comfy pajama pants and a big shirt. She had Jake sitting in her lap and a big fat book in one hand while she lazily scratched the cat on the ears and under his chin. Also sneaking in some tummy rubs when he turned on his back. It was really easy to forget he wasn't a normal cat. That he could look up at her and ask for some Tuna or milk at any moment.

The City had given her a lot of things to think about since she'd been here. Even with everything that had gone on, she still liked it here a lot better than she liked it at home. Things felt stable here, despite the moving buildings and streets. They felt normal. SHE felt normal. That was the most important thing. She felt like just another person in the world, even with the strange barcode tattoo under her eye. Nobody seemed to care about it. It had no significance here. Nobody knew her from her past, when she'd gotten it. Nobody knew her nicknames.

That right there was enough to make her content.

Jennifer snuggled deeper into the chair, listening to Jake purr.

(For Bella, Veronica, Dick, Bruce B, Lee, Edward and Simon)


Making the snowman had been extremely fun, and Jeannie was very pleased to have met a new friend. She genuinely liked people, and the truth was, she was more than a little lonely. While she enjoyed meeting all the people that she had since coming to this place, not one of them had really stayed. There was no one that she saw regularly. While she liked her new master, it was not at all the same as having a human master who was always there. To talk to. To serve. To love.

But when the snow became too bad, it was no longer quite as fun. It became too difficult to hold a conversation. So reluctantly, Jeannie made her good-byes and watched as Liz disappeared into the growing storm.

For a bit, Jeannie wandered through the chilled and changed landscape. Here and there, she ran into people that needed a bit of help dealing with the ever-deepening snow. All of them received aid in some fashion or other. ( Except for the last man. )

The smoothie had been just what the doctor ordered. A good cup of coffee would have done wonders too, but the banana-berry mix was good. So, the detective and the agent trudged through the snow to the Hospital.

Crews didn't seem to notice that the streets might be changing as they walked, probably because this was one of his first trips through the City. He didn't ask if they'd be there anytime soon; he just let his partner guide him along. They'd get there when they got there, and when they got there would be the right time for their arrival.

What Crew did notice were the festive decorations. Christmas had already come and gone for him, and he wasn't sure how he'd gotten back to Christmas, unless this really wasn't Christmas but instead some other winter holiday. It certainly looked a little Christmasy. His brows furrowed a little; his lips turned to a slight frown as he tried to remember what exactly he'd gotten Ted for the holidays. What had he gotten Reese? He hoped whatever he'd gotten they'd liked it.

"So, Dr. Lecter and Dr. Tam. Lecter sounds familiar. Are we playing good cop, bad cop? Crazy cop, good cop. Bad cop, bad cop?" There were a few more variations, but it was always good to have a decided style. Maybe. "This would have been easier if I could find my car. You think my car's here somewhere?"

All verbal communication has to be in the form of questions. If a statement or exclamation is made, everybody in the room forgets everything after the point they were placed in the room. There is a sign in the room that says "Do you know the question?" and the door will open if the right question is asked.

(This happens prior to this)

Simon was walking on a cloud, or more he was happy that his life was actually looking up. Sure, he was still surrounded by those who were suffering from what they had done, but he had kept his promise. He had saved Jennifer. He had saved everyone. So what if Hannibal had isolated the cure to begin with, or a possible cure? Simon had discovered how it could be implemented and mass produced to save everyone who could be saved. He was the big damn hero.

With this feeling of elation, he decided that a nice quiet moment with his cup'o'soup was in order. He'd managed to find his own office, whether it was shared or not didn't matter, since his "colleagues" were out. He'd even bother with going through his messages and files. Things were certainly looking up. Well, they were looking up for a little while anyway.

As he lifted his cup to taste that salty chickeny goodness, he spotted the memo. Dean of Medicine? There was a Dean? The Hospital was a medical school? Well, that would explain a few things, he supposed. He read over the memo and nearly suffered from burns in areas no man should ever suffer burns in. The cup fell to the ground, and Simon, having learned a few things on Serenity, jumped out of the way just in time. Even Jayne might have blushed at the language Simon used. Wilson! Wilson was Dean, and Wilson was summoning Dr. Tam to his office?

Things really couldn't get worse.

Wilson had ridden out the zombie furor in the hospital, treating anyone who made it through the doors for shock. He had counseled doctors, nurses, patients and total strangers. He had slept in his chair for days on end and he was looking forward to just going back to being head of Oncology.

Until, of course, he walked in the morning after the cure was discovered and saw "Dean of Medicine, Hospital Administration" on the plaque outside his door.

"No. No! I can't be Cuddy! This is wrong. Wrong. Damn it."

He sat down behind his desk and waited for it. Sure enough, about 1 minute later, a nurse came in with stacks of papers.

"Good morning, Dr. Wilson. Here are all the staff forms, equipment requests and usage, unassigned client files, clinic calender..."

Wilson tuned her out as file after file landed on his new, larger desk....of course it had to be larger, to accommodate the expanded workload!

When the annoyingly perky nurse left, Wilson grabbed his cup of coffee and gulped it down, hoping it would clear his head enough to deal with all this crap. Strangely enough, it worked a little. So did smacking his desk with his hand repeatedly for 5 minutes.

It was when he was going over equipment usage that he found something interesting. All those supplies requested by either Dr. Lecter or Dr. Tam. Something fishy was going on.

He checked out the room where all the supplies were delivered, interviewed some staff, and he thought he finally got to the bottom of it. It didn't take long to figure out that just as the cure to the zombie attacks originated in this hospital, so too must the source of the entire problem. And those two idiots were just egotistical and irresponsible enough to do it, too.

Well, they were going to have to learn a lesson, weren't they? Wilson pondered his own situation and smiled meanly. They were about to get a real taste of responsibility, and learn to live with having to report to others.

Wilson had a nurse leave memos for both of them to come see the Dean of Medicine as soon as they got in, leaned back in his chair and laughed. Then frowned as he looked over the rest of the paperwork. Sighing, he slogged his way through the rest of it.

They found her with a wake of bodies and a blood trail stretching out behind her. Her sheet and her metal tray with the broken wheel still attached, now coated in viscera. She hadn't left anybody alive to be turned like other zombies had. Most of her victims had been completely devoured, or had vital parts of them removed so the ability to become the living dead was ripped away from them.

She hadn't been hard to subdue, really. She wasn't a fighter, and with their suits, she couldn't smell them. They were of no interest to her, meal wise.

It could be said that the situation was ideal, as she'd never left the hospital, and had professionals dealing with her instead of the new wave of so-called bounty hunters that were out in the world, bringing in the zombies for treatment.

Once she was in the room, and the door was locked, they left her.

Jennifer stood in the room, not doing anything. Feeling sort of lonely without the sheet and the tray. The tell-tale squeaka missing from her life.

( Take the bitch down, boys. )

Simon stared at the samples.  He'd been able to duplicate it, making a slight change here and there due more to the lack of supplies and time.  He just had to hope he wasn't cutting too many corners.  The good doctor needed to test everything before he could simply run around giving injections.  He also needed to find a faster way than syringes.  Pneumatic syringe seemed the best solution, but he'd have to make sure the cure was actually the cure.

Sure, he could have found Jennifer and tested it, but he couldn't take the risk that something worse might happen.  He didnt' want to find out that once the..zombification had been cured, she was dead.  They were dead after all.  The tissue samples he'd taken from her said as much, and it certainly didn't look much better when he tried testing the cure on those same samples.   So he opted for finding one of the slow types that didn't look as if they were missing body parts.  He just had to hope that his coming out of the office wasn't going to get him bitten.  Sure, he'd have a test subject, but would it be worth it?

He ran full tilt at the zombie, knocking it down, and tried to make the injection.  Damn zombie wasn't really in the mood to be cured; it just wanted that delicious meat, which meant the doctor was now fighting to get the needle into the dead skin, all without getting bitten.

Run. Run and don't look back. Run, don't look back, and don't fall. Run, don't look back, don't fall, and don't get bitten. Run, don't look back, don't fall, don't get bitten, and-

Dr. Simon Tam hadn't been in this sort of situation before; it wasn't everyday that someone he might have been interested in was trying to eat him. It also wasn't everyday that he had to be Mal; Simon wasn't much for the action heroics, but he had to do something to keep alive. The trip to Lecter's office was fraught with dangers, and the good doctor had to overcome every obstacle. The first was finding a weapon, say like a fire ax. The second was dealing with a zombie, say like chopping said zombie with aforementioned fire ax. The third was fighting off another zombie without falling. It went on and on. ( He was a doctor, dammit, not a superhero. )

Hot.

She felt too hot. Impossibly hot. Like she might have been sitting in an oven on the surface of the sun. Her skin felt like it was on fire. Her organs felt like they were boiling. She wondered if she managed to find any water to splash on her face, if it would just go up in steam before it got to her skin.

The big green zombie had bitten her right on the back of her leg. Then it had tossed her aside like she was a sack of potatoes. Apparently sweeter treats had come along. It had taken Jennifer a while to be able to stand up. She hadn't wanted to move at all. It hurt so badly. But then a small army of those things had come around the corner a couple of blocks down, and it had motivated her. The only thing worse than being bitten was being eaten to death.

Sweat poured down her face, leaked out of all of her pores.

All she wanted to do was find Simon. Something in her knew that she wasn't going to last like this. And she felt like she needed to see him. Tell him that she had been interested, but work had gotten in the way. Work always got in the way. Jennifer had great regrets about letting her job take over her life. She would do that differently, if she had the chance to go back. Especially here, in this place, where people had an actual working police force. Where they didn't need to pay to have their crimes solved. There was no reason to be so personally involved here.

Jennifer didn't know where Simon would be. All she could do was walk around and call out his name occasionally and hope.

Hope.

Somewhere, not too far away, someone was singing. Pietro could not make out the words, and the tune was foreign to him, but the song had a good beat and was surprisingly cheerful given the ongoing zombie apocalypse. Zombies. At least, where he was from, the dead stayed dead.

Usually.

He was back in the black suit that Fred had suggested he abandon some time prior, but he had a long coat on over it and it helped to mask the ridiculousness of the outfit. Hey. His X-Men costume was aerodynamic, albeit slightly unfashionable in most places. With the walking dead wandering the City, he wanted to be prepared.

He was on high alert, and therefore a little more twitchy than usual. He had a bat in hand, and he kept hefting it experimentally. He moved in bursts, running a block or two and then slowing to look for people who seemed to be walking instead of shambling along like something from one of those corny movies that he'd seen on the television since he'd come to the City.

Billy was busy setting up his webcam for a new installment of his blog when he heard a knock on the door. He perked up hopefully, thinking that the only people who really came over were Moist and the Pink Pulverizer. Billy could really use a friend right now and so he immediately stopped working on his current set up to answer the door.

Only to find out that zombies were in fact capable of knocking.

Billy immediately slammed his door shut. A synthesized beat he was only subconsciously aware of began to play in the background and as the card carrying member of the Evil League of Evil began to ponder his predicament, he also began to sing: "You hear the door slam, and realize there's nowhere left to run. You feel the cold hold, and wonder if you'll ever see the sun. You close your eyes! And hope that this is just imagination, boy. But all the while, you hear the creature creepin' up behind-- You're Out Of Time!"

Billy could hear the moans of not just one zombie behind his door, but a chorus. He needed to find an escape and spotted his small basement window. Billy, without skipping a beat -- literally, ran to the small window and managed to squeeze out of it. In his excitement he left behind his transmatter ray gun and his freeze ray, either would have been particularly useful in this situation.

There were more zombies outside his home but Billy did his best to sneak past them. While singing. Quietly. "They're out to get you, theres demons closing in on every side. They will possess you unless you change the number on your dial. Now is the time for you and I to cuddle close together," but as Doctor Horrible looked down at his arms which were cradling the ray gun he should have had in his arms, realizing that it was not there he knew he had made a grave error, "All through the night, I'll save you from the terror on the screen, Ill make you see."

Billy bravely tried to think his way out of this situation. He began to sneak away in rhythm only to be followed by zombies matching him beat for beat. What started as sneaking slowly developed into skipping past a graveyard and then into a large, but deserted street. The synth pop melody which had kept him alive so far was replaced by screeching violins. The zombies forgot their cues and more came out from allies and around corners until Billy was surrounded. And bitten.

But only once. The bite mark on his arm looked like an enthusiastic hicky and confused the super villain for a moment until the synth beat started back up again before he could fully ponder the anticlimacticness of the attack. The zombies took their places behind Billy. And they began to dance.

Step, beat! Step, beat! Shoulder, step! Beat beat! Shoulder, step! Beat beat! Big arms, step! Arms! Arms! Step, step! Head pop! Dip down! Arm swing! Arm swing! Mouth pop! Mouth pop! Clap slide! Shoulders, arms, clap, slide! Shoulder, pop! Skip! Skip! Skip! Skip! Scary swing! Scary swing! Leg, hips! Out, in! Leg, hips! Out, in! Step, step, arms, arms! Step, step, arms, arms! And so on...

The dance was interrupted in parts by Billy's song, which as he began to turn would be his last words. "Cause this is thriller, thriller night! And no ones gonna save you from the beast about strike. You know its thriller, thriller night. You're fighting for your life inside a killer, thriller tonight. Cause this is thriller, thriller night! Girl I can thrill you more than any ghoul who's ever danced right. Woo hoo! So let me hold you tight and share a-- killer! chiller! thriller night! Cause this is thriller!"

With Billy in the lead, the zombies began to skip down the street musically in search of their next victims.

( OOC )

Boyd had left the relative safety of the ER and ventured into other parts of the hospital. Which was to say that he ripped out the IV in his arm after the attending informed him that they knew he was a drug seeker and weren't going to do anything to help him out. Aside from informing the police. Then he'd turned the wrong way, gone through the wrong door, and instead of finding himself out in the night like he'd wanted to be, he'd found himself in a hallway.

A very clean hallway.

It wasn't Boyd's fault that he was an idiot or that he lost his sense of direction all the time. It was because he didn't have the drugs he needed. The drugs helped. They centered him. Made him feel things. He needed them to function. The doctors just didn't understand that.

So it couldn't really be blamed on him that he found himself standing near a door, on his way out (so he thought, it was roof access actually) when he heard voices. At first he thought they were in his head. Then he realized he wasn't smart enough to have voices like that inside. They used words that he didn't know the meaning of. Or how to pronounce. Boyd hid quickly out of sight, but somewhere he could still hear. Curiosity had gotten the best of him, and he wanted to know what the secretive tones were for.

His heart was beating so hard that he couldn't hear everything that they were saying.

".... found it? What do you mean? You couldn't..."

"Had to.... in order to complete the .... discovered the compound...."

"Remarkable... think it could be.... amazingly dangerous...."

"I have the.... see? It's also only ..... in the case of it .... and only if it falls into the wrong hands...."

"Wrong hands.... City dripping with...."

"Not like.... nobody is going to..... it's .... heroine or anything..."

Boyd's ears perked up at that. He became intensely more interested in what was going on. They'd said the magic word. Or one of them had. The drug of all drugs. The golden ticket. Far better than anything he'd put into his body thus far, that was for sure. He'd heard stories about it.

Just his luck, a nurse ran down the hall past him, right to the door. He heard her frantic voice inside now, too.

"Needed, right now!" She was much clearer. Probably because she was yelling.

"Stand right here." One of the male voices insisted as they both burst out from the room. "Don't move. Don't let anybody in."

Boyd's heart sank. He wasn't going to get his hands on it. He almost turned and left before his luck struck once more. The nurse cursed herself. Muttered something about Mr Ling's medication, then how she was sure she could get back before anybody even noticed. She took off, and that's when Boyd struck. He went through the door as fast as he could manage. The sight that greeted him was certainly nothing he'd expected. Two needles sat on the tray in the middle of the room. Both full. And a monkey. In a cage.

The monkey didn't look right somehow, but Boyd didn't care. His eyes were for the needles only. He picked one up and put it in his mouth, immediately working his veins so they would pop to the surface. The drug went in, and he felt none of the burning he'd expected to. After a moment, there was still nothing, so he picked up the second needle and did the same thing. Perhaps it was actually something, or perhaps it was just Boyd hoping for something, but he would have sworn to anybody that it was finally working.

Satisfied, Boyd dropped the needles. The monkey made a noise at him. He went to inspect the cage, sticking his fingers through to pet the thing. It turned on him, bit him. Almost bit one of his fingers off. Angrily, Boyd smacked the cage, not quite feeling the pain yet. It was time to leave. He'd gotten what he wanted, and gotten bitten by some monkey on top of it. That was what he'd call the end of his day. He needed to find a bed to sleep in so he could continue his search tomorrow. More drugs. More high. Never ending.

Boyd wasn't feeling too hot by the time he found his way back downstairs. He felt sick. Feverish. He felt cold, but knew he was sweating. The ER docs tried to stop him at first until the one who had worked on him told them he was just a junkie drug seeker. Then they let him go without a word. Boyd stumbled into the night, his wound throbbing now. Maybe he should have stopped to get it checked out.

He collapsed near the alley on the side of the hospital. Breath stopped. Heart stopped.

A woman ran over to him to see if he was okay. Boyd looked up at her. Grabbed the hand checking his pulse, and bit down.

Hannibal sat over the monkey with his bottom lip sucked into his mouth. He was concentrating heavily on the project before him.

For a while, he'd forgotten about the monkey in the wake of all the deaths and trying to determine if he wanted to go after the killer himself, or let somebody else do it for him. He was sure that there were many out there just as upset by this as he'd been, with just enough ability to rectify the situation as he had.

In the end, he'd opted to leave it to others, and gone back to monkey experimentation.

He'd expected Simon to show up at first. Every day when the door opened, he'd listened to the footsteps and focused on the scent, thinking that it would be his cohort. After a few days, he'd given up.

Today, well, the unexpected happened, and the familiar walked through the door.

Hannibal pushed away from his current experiment to turn to Simon.

"Finally."

The reaper had been reluctant to visit her favorite breakfast hangout. Der Waffle House was fully recovered from the truck that managed to destroy at least one wall and kill, miraculously, only one innocent bystander. George had it firm in her mind that she needed to keep her day job as a Grim Reaper a secret, and that she wasn't simply inventing an antisocial defense mechanism.

She ordered oatmeal with raisins and drank water. The waitress looked at George dubiously, having calculated that her fifteen percent wasn't worth the time and effort she gave some of her other customers. The reaper looked at the empty seat in front of her. She'd been here over two years now and still missed the company of her undead coworkers. She frowned sourly thinking she should have invited Dexter.

George poked at her food with a spoon.

Norman was confused. Actually, for once, Mother was also confused. And it wasn't very often that the two of them agreed on emotions and feelings. They were usually very opposite. Very contradicting. But on this one thing, they could agree. On this confusion they could agree.

They killed me! They killed me and they killed my dear boy! Filthy good-for-nothing bastards and those high society whores. They don't deserve to live, they don't. None of them. Ought to let the whole damn city just go to hell. Go to hell and burn! Burn for harming me and my son.

But they weren't dead. They were both alive. It was a very strange sensation. To be dead one moment and alive the next. Very confusing. And it had made Mother very aggravated. She'd started to become more vocal about her feelings. Sometimes Norman would be reading the newspaper (or one of those naughty books he bought in The City and hid from his Mother,) and Mother would just start screaming from upstairs. Screaming about how they were going to come back and kill her. Kill her and kill her Norman. And even though there were times when she thought her stupid half-witted son deserved a punishment worse than death (or death -- whichever came first,) she didn't like that someone else was taking that into their own hands. She was going to have control over her son. Her son and this house and this motel. No matter what The City thought. No matter what anybody thought. She'd burn everything to the ground if she had to. Whatever she had to do to survive. And to make sure the Bates Motel stayed in business.
( Painting the motel. )

Kaylee felt pretty off balance. Not just because of the wounds she had covering her arms, large cuts that were still leaking blood from being pulled out of Serenity by the large vacuum of space, but because her heart felt a little heavy. Mal said Simon didn't remember anything after the beagles. But how could he forget? How could he not know? Kaylee felt it was kind of painful to forget about her an him like that. Mal had tried to explain it, like he wasn't their Simon. But then.. He didn't know about Wash being departed? Or Book? Kaylee felt certainly out of place. Normally she was so bright and cheerful but it felt drained right out of her like motor oil out of an engine too fast. Life wasn't there no more.

Felt lick getting kicked in the gut, it did.

Kaylee was leaning heavily on Mal now. Getting blood onto his nice brown coat. She kept apologizing for it. Wounds weren't lethal really, but Kaylee wasn't weak enough to walk on her own considerin'. Finally they made it to the hospital. She'd have preferred the medical bay of serenity. She never liked normal hospitals. Even with the promise of seeing Simon.. well this Simon. Simon that didn't remember everything that'd happened with Miranda, or the Reavers, or Mr. Universe. Kaylee wasn't keen on it at all. She turned her head to look at Mal. Mal looked determined, as he always did. All worried about her. She had to go in.

She took a deep breath as the doors were open. When they came to the main counter, Kaylee lifted her head and tried to stand up fully. But Mal kept her firmly half leaning on him. To that she smiled. "My name is Kaylee Frye, I wanted to see Dr Simon Tam."

"Frye. Frye. Right here. Your appointment is in a moment."
"My what? I didn't call or Nothin' of the sort."
"Right here. Kaywinnit Lee Frye, right?"

Kaylee winced at her full name, but nodded. "Mal how did they know I was comin' before we got here?" She asked, half expecting some mess of officers to come out, having known her name and tired her with Serenity. They knew she was here, here with Mal. What if it was the Alliance was here? Calm Kaylee. Calm. Kaylee looked around, expecting something.

Now it was at the end.

Slowly I pushed the doors of the hospital open and walked through. So many people moving around but no one really noticed me. I paused long enough to find where the good doctor likely would be.

One quick glance and then I was off again.

Quick and easy, walking without pause. Through the halls and around the corridors, and then I found him.

Moving fast, the knife flashing in the light, the blood such a stark to the white walls and floors.

My chest bleeds along with the bodies I've killed
I find peace at someone else's death
My life is empty
and I've lost all my sense of humanity


And once again I move. Careful to stay out of reach, out of sight. How would I find him? Where would he be? Did he know the pretty little River had already stopped? Or would the news be the last thing he heard.

There was not time to clean the knife so it was warm and wet in my pocket.

The door slammed open and the knife was in motion the moment he was seen.

"Dr Tam I presume?"

I've already forgotten the last time I dreamed of
today I just have nightmares
I see the heads I've decapitated
with a lot of blood on the hair