The Tower

Lauren isn't sure when exactly she had been separated from Jack and Bert in all the chaos - one moment she had been running at their side, the next she was in an empty corridor with nothing but the sound of her footsteps for company. She knows she ought to double back, try to find them, but as she looks around she realises that she is near one of the the labs and the urge to be somewhere familiar and safe(ish) is just too much to fight. She hurries down the hallway, Bert's gun held tightly in one hand as she counts the doorways between her and her destination. Six.... five...

Suddenly, there's a flickflickflick sound from up ahead and Lauren freezes like a deer in the headlights. Her brain is telling her to run but she can't seem to make her feet take even a single step, and the hesitation is long enough that the centipede soon appears ahead of her, taking up nearly all of the corridor with its massive segmented body. Jolted into reaction by its sudden appearance the doctor lets out a blood-curdling scream, at the same time raising the gun and firing off a single shot which does nothing to deter the monster, if it even breaks through its carapace. With a sudden burst of speed it darts forward, seizing Lauren in its forcipules and injecting a dose of fast-acting venom into her bloodstream. Immediately she feels the burning, her heart spasming and then slowing, her limbs suddenly heavy and icy-cold.

"Help..." Lauren croaks out with the last of her strength, though she knows it's futile. If only Bo was here to save her, like she had saved her a dozen times before, a dark-haired blue-eyed fury of a succubus to snatch her from the jaws of death and deliver her safely back to her cocoon of a lab. As the venom seeps through her a veil of darkness descends over her eyes and then she is gone, limp and unconscious in the centipede's grasp.

They had failed. It was as simple as that, really. All the hope, the elation that had come with seeing the comatose emerge from their slumber was dashed now, and all they were left with was another theory to cross off the board - cold comfort when things now looked bleaker than ever. Lauren knew it was cowardly, but she avoided as many people as she could, unsure if she could stand explaining to them what had gone wrong and offering yet more hope that she herself didn't even feel at this point.

Pulling on her lab coat felt like the hardest thing in the world, but what else was there to do but return to the lab and continue testing? At least it was quiet there. Quiet and still.

( Read more... )

Cool. Clinical. Composed. Lauren took a deep breath before knocking at Steve's door, denying the crowd of emotions and reactions that were currently trying to make her stomach churn. Being hysterical wouldn't help anything right now. But maybe talking to Steve could.

"Come on in!" came Steve's voice from the other side of the door, which took it as a sign that it should open. Steve was in pants and a t-shirt, and he stopped rubbing a towel through his hair as he turned towards the door, and pushed still damp hair out of his eyes. "Lauren, hi," he greeted her with a warm smile. "Come on in." He only then seemed to realise that she did not look as composed as she usually did, and frowned. ( Is everything alright? )

Normally John and Lauren chatted during their 'clinic' hours, even when they were both busy with their own research - there was only so much waiting around for cells to culture one could do without getting bored, after all. That particular morning, however, Lauren had been quiet, responding to John's forays into conversation with monosyllabic noises, and she had disappeared at lunchtime only to return a hour later looking pale and upset.

"John? Do you have a minute?"

Lauren had been in stranger situations in her life - something she tried not to dwell on, since it made her attempts at feeling normal hard to maintain - but crowding into a pantry with three vampires during a ship-wide lockin was probably in the top ten. She waited until Pam, Caroline and Klaus had all appeared before giving the group a polite smile and launching into her hastily thought out speech.

"Thanks for coming. I wanted to speak to you all because the circumstances we're in are very limited - there doesn't seem to be a supply of nourishment for you here, which means that you will have to feed from some, if not all of the people here." She acknowledged the problems in this statement with a sympathetic grimace before going on. "Now, I don't know how often you need to eat or how much, but given that we don't know how long we're going to be shut in here we need to approach this in a coordinated fashion." Yes, it was 'we' now, though she knew she was putting herself in a position she hadn't been asked to take. It made a change.

"You're each going to need volunteers, and the people that do volunteer are going to need to be monitored for their health and allocated more supplies. This can't be done in secret - at best, people would soon begin to notice and be suspicious, and at worst it'd cause a panic. I'm more than willing to help with this, but I need information from you if we're going to do this right. So. Please tell me you'll go along with this."

Lauren can't help herself - she's staring. She has been staring - covertly - at the blue woman every time they're in the same room together, which thus far hasn't been that often (and is also probably why she hasn't been punched by now). It isn't that she's the strangest looking denizen of the space station - though she is, on a superficial level. It's more that she's so strange-looking she's almost comforting. A taste of home...

Of course, there is no saying the other woman is fae, or if she is that she's one of the kinds Lauren even knows about. She's an expert, for a human, but that doesn't mean she knows everything.

And then there's was the fact that even if the other woman is a fae, it doesn't necessarily mean anything. It certainly doesn't mean getting back home would be any easier, though maybe, if she had any abilities, Lauren could figure out how to turn it to their advantage...

Which means that she's still half-staring, lost in her thoughts, when the other woman gets up and approaches, obviously fed up with being the object of this particular brand of attention.