Log: Silent Knight, Titan, & Drain WHO: Jack Murdock, Red Beaubier-McCoy, & Jon Starsmore WHAT: The med staff get their first lead thanks to a traumatized Jack.
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Red didn't know how he found out Jack was in the infirmary. Maybe one of his dads told him. Maybe he just knew. It worried him, he knew what Sick was like and had seen Dad go through it and saw what Pops had struggled with with him. Jack was alone here besides his sister. Red knew that could be lonely and he resolved that he would sit with him. After all that's what friends did. Sit with you when you're sick.
But it took him awhile to remember how to get to the infirmary, only been there once on a tour. He didn't know other kids, the boys, were sick. PK hadn't said anything about him being sick. Seeing all of them in the medical beds was confusing and Red circled carefully until he found Jack's bed, hovering at the foot.
He didn't know what to say. Pops said you always should announce your presence and so Red cleared his throat, nervously looking around, followed by: "Jack? Hi Jack." Then he saw the scratches, the bandage on his head and was confused. "Did you get hurt? Did someone hurt you?"
Jack looked pale and exhausted. He had a slight tremor in his fingers, and he looked like he’d been crying. Now he was finally calm, but only because he didn’t have the energy for much else. “Did you get hurt,” he echoed. “Did someone...” When he was truly focused, he could have a conversation without parroting questions back. He lifted his head slightly. “Red?”
Why was Red always here to see him at his worst? “There’s … something in the air,” he said quietly. “I breathed it in, it choked me, it. Like my mom. Like my mom, it’s the same. I know it’s the.” He pressed his lips together and tried to focus. He was barely spitting out words now. “People are screaming.”
"Oh." Red had a good base of knowledge for what happened to Jack's mom. Through text he had told PK and Red what happened. It only exacerbated his level of concern. He frowned and searched for words, sitting on the corner of the bed and watching Jack.
There was fear abound. He could see the fear in Jack's voice. "No ones screaming right now?" He tried, glancing back around to make sure. Everyone down there was pretty sedated. Quiet. "I don't smell it. How did you smell it? Where? How?" Rapid questions and then Pops' voice reminding him: one at a time. Red inhaled, "How?"
“I was. I. In my room. Just.” Jack lifted a hand to cover his mouth and nose. “It’s in me. In them. It’s.” He was breathing shallowly, like his lungs were constricted or he was too afraid to breathe in more of the toxin. He could hear people talking in other rooms, people who didn’t know what was going on but wanted to find out. “I know,” he responded, forgetting they weren’t there. “I know. I know.”
"You know what?" Red wasn’t good with mind science. He did well with mechanical, so trying to think like Jack was was hard. He moved up the bed, careful not to touch him. Jack didn't like unexpected touch. "I don't think the people who hurt your mom are here Jack the school wouldn't let it this is a safe place," breath, "you're safe here that's why you're in this bed you don't need to be afraid now. It's gone."
“This isn’t a safe place,” Jack blurted. He was dragging his short, blunt fingernails down his throat hard enough to leave marks. “This isn’t. It’s not. It’s. I’m.” He choked back another sob, twisting and shoving his head back against the pillow.
Red shifted nervously. Jack was hurting himself and it was uncomfortable and he couldn't let it go on. "No, Jack, no, stop," he requested, reaching out and making contact, pulling Jack's hands back, away. "It's going to be ok," he said while doing that, trying to reassure him. "Just don't hurt yourself and it'll be ok.”
Jack flinched when he was touched. Held down. Red was one of them. Red was going to take him away. Red was going to hurt him. Red was----suddenly, Red wasn’t there anymore, but a face he didn’t know. Faceless. A steady and impersonal heartbeat. A scent like cleaning chemicals. Holding him down, covering his mouth and nose, smothering him.
Suddenly and without warning, Jack lashed out.
He grabbed the back of Red’s neck and slammed the other boy’s face against the bed rail, and then he scrambled to try and find something on the nightstand he could use as a weapon.
Jack moved too fast for Red to react. He had no reason to believe that his friend would hurt him but the pain in his face and the cold tile of the floor was saying otherwise. Crumpled, Red gasped and felt his injury already knitting back together and he tried to rise, grabbing the side of the bed to help himself back up. He heard Jack looking for something but it didn't register.
This was an accident. Jack wouldn't hurt a friend. Red shouldn't have touched him and he did and he needed to apologize. But he couldn't, because his jaw hurt and he could taste a little bit of iron where his tongue was cut from a tooth. All he could muster was a weak "Jack, stop, please."
“Hey!”
Jon had heard the fuss while he was out of the room for five minutes, god damn it; he tucked the sedatives he’d been looking for into the pocket of his white coat and hurried back into Jack’s room, taking in the situation in the blink of an eye. He moved to get between -- the new kid, whatever his name was, Jon couldn’t remember -- and the bed, sparing a glance to the boy on the floor before drawing out a very mild dose of the sedative, enough to help Jack calm down without impairing his lucidity too much. This sort of reaction needed help to bring down.
“Jack, you need to breathe,” he said, a hint of frustration slipping into his voice. There were too many people being damned frustrating right now, even if it wasn’t their fault. Teenagers were temperamental at the best of times and Jon wasn’t good at dealing with people having panic attacks like so many of them seemed to be. “You’re in the medbay, Jack. You’re having a reaction to something. Nobody’s going to hurt you, but you need to calm down.”
Jack’s eyes flickered to Jon, then down at the IV needle taped to his hand, then followed his gaze up the plastic tube. With how sensitive Jack was, he could sense the sedative immediately, pushing into his veins and seeping into his blood. It sent crossed signals through his body. First, panic. Paranoia.
“No----no, no, no-----”
Jon was here to kill him. Jon was killing him. Jon was infecting him with something, Jon was putting him to sleep forever, burning him from the inside out----
It meant that he ripped the needle from his hand and recoiled, scrambling to the other edge of the bed before the sedatives actually started to kick in. Suddenly he was backed away like a frightened animal, blood seeping from his hand, and he didn’t really … feel the need to be so afraid now. He couldn’t muster up the energy to panic. He looked down at Red, then back up at Jon, and started to slide back down onto the mattress. He mumbled something unintelligible and rubbed at his face.
Both in fascination and fear, Red watched the doctor try and sedate Jack and watched Jack react. Red had never seen this kind of emotion before and he was slow to react, slow to see where he should go until he knew.
Sliding past Jon with a muttered “ ‘scuse me,” Red climbed onto the hospital bed, ignoring Jack’s bleeding hand (because he was oblivious to blood and transmittable diseases and everything else and it could come out of clothes, right?) to shuffle him and slip behind him. Awkwardly Red juggled Jack until he was in back and Jack’s head on his chest, arms wrapped around holding tight. He looked at Jon with sadness, fear, confusion, resisting using his powers to amp up Jack’s pleasure to override the fear. “It’s gonna be ok now, Jack, he’s gonna fix you you’re going to be fine but you gotta relax ok? relax and we’ll get Lizzie and it’ll be fine.”
“For fuck’s sake do none of you understand the concept of not touching people who have panic reactions to being touched?” Jon snapped. He could tell the sedative had started to take effect before Jack tore out the needle, but considering Jack’s trigger issues were complicated enough without altered states of mind being part of the problem, the other kid climbing into the bed was frustrating. Like this whole damn situation.
Jack was the sort of person who would cling to people inappropriately when upset, but at the moment he was torn between feeling threatened and feeling protected. The sedative was working its way through him, and he didn’t have the energy to fight. This was Red. Red was his friend, right? Right. He knew Red. He recognized Red. Red’s powers mixed in with the sedative’s effects, and Jack slumped against him in a calm state of forced comfort. His usual response of clinging and pressing didn’t even occur to him; he just slumped where he was, limbs awkwardly stretching wherever they happened to fall.
Deep breaths. That was all he needed.
Red ignored Jon’s tone and clung tighter, swaddling Jack with good intentions. “He’s bleeding.” His powers always escaped a little, but he was terrified to use them on a person like Jon. Scared to use them at all, but they were working and doing what they did best and Jack wasn’t afraid right now. He was... whatever this state was. Red squeezed Jack and squished up against the pillows. “You can call my dads and yell at them if you want but I’m not leaving my friend here while he’s scared.”
“Next time, come in via the door so we can monitor the situation,” Jon said sharply. “I don’t know how much freedom your fathers give you but there are rules in place in the medbay that are there for damn good reasons. Jack,” he added, his tone gentling a little, “I’m going to clean up your hand now. Keep breathing and relax. Your friend is here for you.”
Jack glanced briefly toward Jon and then away, calm enough that he didn’t fuss. He didn’t have the energy for it. “Okay,” he murmured. “Okay. Okay.”
Red glanced at Jon, wiggling out of the way of The Hand. “I did but you weren’t there and my name is Red Titan Beaubier-McCoy,” he informed Jon sheepishly. “Can you give him a bacon band-aid?”
“Then you wait until there’s someone who works here,” Jon said, carefully cleaning the needle mark on Jack’s hand and sticking a small, round band-aid over it. “Jack, would you rather I not set up another IV for the time being? I’m concerned about your reaction. Nobody would give you any drugs without informing you first, but this level of agitation isn’t good for you.”
Jack was out of it to the point where talking felt wrong. His tongue felt heavy. He looked up at the IV stand, then back down at his hand, and had to think long and hard about what Jon was asking. Finally, he just nodded.
Then, without being prompted, he lifted a hand to his head. His fingers ghosted over the bandage there, and then down to his nose, his mouth. “There’s something,” he said quietly.
Jon made the process of setting up the second IV as quick and painless as he could, keeping actual contact with Jack to a minimum. Jack seemed calm enough with Red -- who named their kid Red? -- holding him, but Jon didn’t want to push it.
Jack’s response caught his attention, though, and he looked up, narrowing his eyes. “There’s something? You felt something unusual before the fear hit?”
It was the closest thing they had to a lead. It was something, if he could get coherency out of Jack.
“Mm.” Jack closed his eyes, turning and resting his head against Red’s chest. “Yes. It’s... I felt...” He pressed a hand to his chest. He was calm, which meant communicating should have been easier. He shouldn’t have been stumbling over his words so much, but this was difficult to articulate. “I breathed it in. It smelled like …” He didn’t know what it smelled like, it didn’t smell like anything he knew. So instead of trying to describe it, he gave up. He didn’t have to describe it. “I know what this is.”
“So it’s airborne.” That made things at once easier and harder; airborne toxins were harder to protect against, but at least they knew, or at least had a decent reason to suspect, that that’s what it was. “That’s helpful, Jack. Do you think you’ll be all right here with Red for a little while? The other doctors and I will be within shouting distance, but we’ve got a lot of work to do to make sure we can stop this.”
“You can’t stop it,” Jack said. “You can’t fix it. You can’t help anybody. You just. You just put them away in a white room for a while and you keep them from. From doing damage. You can’t fix it.” Between the sedatives and Red’s powers, he sounded oddly calm about this. Otherwise he would have been having an absolute meltdown. “You can’t fix it. Once you breathe it in you’re gone. No cure. No help.”
“We can damn well try,” Jon said firmly. Checking Jack’s vital signs one last time, he said, “I need to go and talk to the others. I’ll hear if either of you calls. Red, keep an eye on him. I’ll let your parents know where you are.”
That said, he left the boys. The situation in the room seemed pretty much contained, and they had a lot more to worry about elsewhere.
Red looked at Jon and nodded solemnly, accepting his duty to watch Jack, to keep him safe and calm. Whatever this was was horrifying and he didn’t want it to happen to him, at all, ever. Thinking of it was scary and he held Jack closer for safety, digging his chin into his friend’s shoulder and burying his head in his hair.