[Moosh da Outlaw]

Poor Dan. Lucky Ian. I thought the Durc was kind of funny in this chapter. What's happend to Dan? By the way there was a single spelling mistake. That would be when "Dan knew better than that" knew was spelled new. Awsome chapter and the only confusing bit was the thing with the slig that said "Is anyone there.". And as a small nitpicky note how do interns know that their teeth look like that?

I figure they must have some idea. o.o;

I made this chapter because it seemed completely necessary to explain what cylonite does and the effects it has on the victim's body. Yay.
I will build a shrine out of your comments and worship it twelve hours a day.



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It was cold and dark. He felt something tugging at his consciousness, prodding him like a curious animal. Dan moved away impulsively, disconnecting his thoughts.

What happened?

The incident in the basement was the most recent thing he could remember, yet it seemed far away, as though he had missed out on something important. He opened his eyes groggily, wincing as he felt an aching pain near his hip. Solid white light blinded him temporarily. His vision swam. The back of his head pounded slightly. Dan reached up and felt his face; he had an anesthetic plate strapped firmly over his mouth. He tore it off and tossed it aside, sitting up.

He was in the sickbay on a stretcher-like bed. The room was pure white and completely sterile, ready to use. Stainless steel tools and machines rested in a corner next to a night stand. There was a barred window in the middle of the wall to his left, draped in thin white curtains. Through the window he could just barely see the tops of trees as they passed over a forest, scattering startled birds in every direction. Somebody, Dan was surprised to see, was in the back of the room, by the door.

Ian? Dan asked with a yawn. Ian turned.

Oh, hey! You’re awake.

Dan rubbed his eye with the palm of his hand. He still felt dazed. What are you doing here?

Ian grinned. Lookin’ at this. He said, holding out a jar. Dan blinked.

Whats that? Dan asked.

Ian looked and said casually, Your appendix.

Dan stiffened. My APPENDIX?

Well, yeah. Ian said defensively. It exploded. We got some vykkers to cut it out. He shook the jar roughly. Its fun to shake it up and watch it roll around—

Give me that! Dan snapped, grabbing the jar. Looking at it made him feel sick. Dan knew how vykkers acted during an operation: they were giddy and over-enthusiastic, often cutting out extra feet of intestines just because they could and coming up with an excuse later. Chances were they’d cut out a kidney as well. Half of their patients died in surgery just because their doctors were too chop-happy.
You cut out my appendix and didn’t even ask me first? Dan demanded, his voice shrill. Ian shrugged.

You were unconscious. Plus it popped like a water balloon, so we didn’t have many options. But don’t worry: you can live without your appendix. Helix said so. Ian looked up at the ceiling as though examining the lights. ... or did that only count for tonsils? Ah, whatever.

Dan leaned against the stretcher-bed’s banister. How long was I out?

Only a day. You didn’t miss much. Ian sighed. After you fainted in the basement—

I didn’t faint! Dan grumbled.

Anyway, like, a second after you passed out a bunch of sligs and interns in these silvery-suits barged in. Somebody had managed to contact them and radio for help before Nedd, you know, slaughtered them. Ian fell silent. There was a long pause where no one seemed to know what to say, so Dan didn’t respond.

Dan pulled the thin white covers off of his body. At the left of his hip, barely hidden by his speedo, was badly done row of stitches, the outsides of which were chafed and swollen. The incision seemed unnecessarily long and made Dan feel even worse.
Dan got up out of bed and searched the night stand for his baseball cap, grumbling to himself. Ian blinked.

Shouldn’t you still be sleeping? He asked accusingly.

Screw that. I’m getting out of here.

Dan crammed the baseball cap over his head, twisting it so it faced the right way. The stitches in his hip were repulsive and completely noticeable. Dan pulled up his speedo in remorse, covering it the best he could.

Ian examined his nails boredly. By the way, there’s an informative-presentation-type-thing on the affects of cylonite going on in the Lecture Hall. I’ve seen it three times already, but apparently we’re supposed to go over it, like, five times, so we might as well go now.

They know about Nedd? Dan asked quietly.

We told them everything. We didn’t have much of a choice.

They left the sickbay, passing rooms full of people who were either missing a limb or had been mauled by fuzzles. Both Dan and Ian left the chambers with a growing sense of dread.

They eventually came to a quiet section of the ship that was rather inactive. The floor was covered with clean red carpeting that made a zipping sound under their feet. The hallways were wide and lined with cubicles on either side where interns were typing. The wall to their right was made completely of glass windows; the halls were to the side of the ship, giving them a perfect view of the guard tower and the forests below.

Red was leaning against a wall by a plain metal door, drinking a bottle of prescription penicillin. He eyed Dan distastefully.
Nice, he grumbled, taking a swig of the medicine. That scar makes you look like a thug. Did you kill somebody?

Shut up. Dan muttered.

Red pushed open the door and entered the Lecture hall, flanked by Dan and Ian. The room was long, with a stage-like podium on one side. A vykker stood on the podium, energetically explaining the horrible side-effects of the disease. Behind him was a large screen nearly as big as the wall, flashing pictures as demonstrations to help explain. Dan wove through the crowd of interns and vykkers so that he could get close enough to hear what was being said.

“...It overwhelms the Cerebral Cortex of the brain, much like a drug, damaging the victim’s hand-eye coordination. However, it is believed to improve the senses greatly, particularly one’s vision...”

The Cerebral Cortex produces antibodies to fight some diseases that try to infect it. That’s usually enough to destroy the infection, but Cylonite is too powerful. Red explained. He had always been better at advanced anatomy than Dan. Dan nodded slowly, perplexed.

The vykker said, “Cylonite is spread in only one way: by being bitten, or sometimes scratched, by an infected person. Cylonite spreads like crazy, traveling the bloodstream until it reaches the brain or heart. When it gets into the heart it either eats through the arteries or clogs them, each of which eventually result in death.”

Dan gulped. ‘What a horrible way to die.’ He thought.
He immediately worried for Nedd, but banished the thought immediately. He couldn’t worry about him; he tried to kill him, for Odd’s sake

“Sometimes, however, the heart can produce enough white blood cells to wipe out the cylonite threat. But there’s little that can stop it from infecting the brain. Once the blood gets inside the skull it damages the brain cells of the cerebellum, causing it to deteriorate. The deterioration screws up the body’s system, resulting in either loss or gain of muscles and bone marrow.”

An image appeared on the screen behind the vykker. He didn’t mention whether it was the nerve cell of an intern or a vykker, but Dan got the general idea. “As mentioned before, it damages the Cerebral Cortex until it eventually breaks out. But after it fights its way through the delicate tissue it reaches the brain stem. From there it squeezes inside nerve endings, slowly working its way down the spine, tearing away at nerves.”

An image appeared on the screen. It was a real picture of some creature’s spine, wrenched from its body and split in half, lying on a table. The inside of the spine was a foul dark brown, and the soft tissues inside, instead of being grey like normal nerves, were an eggplant color. A gag seemed to sweep through the crowd as a second picture was swept into view. It was a picture of the inside of the nerves, which seemed to be made of small, overlapping honeycomb. A dark red liquid the color of spoiled meat was dripping down at its base.

They vykker continued pleasantly, “This is the spine of an elum that had been infected for two months. So as you see, cylonite pretty much eats the shit out of the victim’s spine.
Now, as you clearly see, the ‘benefits’ of cylonite don’t outweigh the negative affects it has on one’s body.
One of the worst negative effects appear to be the inability to venture out into the sunlight. We’ve discovered that the cylonite germs die in bright places. The germs squeeze in-between skin cells, replacing a few of the nerves. When the victim goes out into the light, it starts killing the cylonite, and it causes the nerves to go crazy. When the nerves go crazy, the brain jerks, sending small electric shocks to the body. The shocks, which are usually used by our brains to transmit commands throughout the body, causes the lungs to fail which results in lack of oxygen. Prolonged exposure to light often results in a stroke or heart failure.”

The vykker grinned, satisfied. “Questions?”

Dan raised his hand. The vykker passed him a pen and a piece of paper, and he scrawled his question down.

The vykker read the paper critically. “I was getting to that.” he insisted. “Now, as many know, the cooling system in the basement is lit with blue lights.
These lights do not affect cylonite victims. Cylonite is killed off by exposure to Ultraviolet rays as well as the ‘hot’ lights in the color spectrum. FYI, red, yellow, and orange. The blue lights, which contain no UV rays and are, (wouldn’t you know it,) blue, have no affect.” The vykker scratched his head. “Kind of a flaw on our part, actually.”

The vykker continued answering questions. Dan sighed.
Maybe this isn’t such a big deal, he said. Maybe Nedd will die before he can do any more damage.

Ian crossed his arms. What your forgetting, he said bitterly, is that this is Nedd we’re dealing with. He’s survived more diseases than I can count. If anyone can survive a cylonite infection, Ian frowned, he can.