Quaranteam Ch. 50

The video cut to an image of a man in an orange jumpsuit, sitting in a cell, with slipper shoes, clearly under suicide watch. Andy had never seen the man before that moment, and he looked almost haunted, his skin ashen, his face gaunt, the vision of what he'd done clearly still replaying itself constantly behind his eyes. Other than how pale and thin he was, the man looked perfectly normal, although his brown hair did seem like it was in need of a haircut.

"Brian Morrison, the man in question, is scheduled to go to trial in February for the murder of Veronica DeLaCruz," the voiceover said. "We offered him a chance to speak with us regarding what lead him to his actions, but he declined via his attorney."

Again, it cut away and returned to a close up of Andy in the ballroom, looking pained and frustrated. He remembered in that moment thinking how he felt like people were only thinking of the act itself, and not the greater ramifications and long-term consequences.

"The problem," Andy sighed, "is that the man, whoever he is, already has multiple women paired up with him, which means that whatever they do to him is going to affect those women as well, even if it's just that they have to come to a prison for their weekly intake. Those women are already tied to him. I'm sure they're looking into some way to remove the binding and reimprint a woman onto a new person, but there's only so many problems they can solve at once."

The footage cut back to the shot of Brian Morrison in the prison cell, as the narration talked once more. "Mister Rook is entirely correct. At the time of his arrest, Brian Morrison had been paired up with five women, each of whom has to come by once a week, to reinforce both his immunity and their own. While there is a method to reassign a woman if the woman's partner is dead, Mister Morrison is still entitled to a fair trial, in addition to the appeals process, meaning that these five women are unable to move far away from him, until some other solution is found. That level of being attached to someone bothers some women, but not the women of Team Rook."

Jump back to the shot of Katie interviewing the large group of them. "Does it bother any of you that your health is tied to Andy's?" Katie asked.

"Bother is the wrong word," Sheridan said, annoyance in her tone of voice. He knew why - the entire group of them had felt like Katie Couric had been fishing for cracks in their feelings for one another, something she could use to prove that the system was too flawed to go nationwide. She hadn't found one, but she'd tried several times to get them to imply there might be some reason for panic. "Concern is the right word. We're very protective of Andy, because he knows our lives are all fully dependent on his for the time being, and that if he dies, we all probably die with him. So, sure, we're concerned, but I think all of us feel comfortable in knowing that Andy's got our best interests at heart, and is keeping that all in mind."

It cut again, this time back to Andy's one-on-one interview with Katie. "Do you feel any pressure, knowing how dependent these women are on you, on you staying healthy and safe?"

"God yes," Andy said with a heavy sigh. "I wake up each and every morning hoping to be as good a man as I can be, to earn this weird existence that I have, surrounded by brilliant and beautiful women, knowing that their health depends on mine. If it was just one person, it would be an incredible weight, but you're talking about loads of them, and if something happens to me, if I slip and fall and die, I may accidentally be condemning all these women to die with me. You're goddamn right that puts pressure on me, each and every day. But at this point, we're all survivors and we're all going to do it together. That's what they've all had to remind me at some point or another, and what I've had to remind them of as well. Whatever else happens to us, we have each other. We're a family, a Team, and that means when one of us falls, there are a bunch of us to help carry them until they're ready to stand again. So we'll take care of each other, love each other, and keep moving forward, over and over. Together."

Again, the video freeze framed, Andy's soft smiling face holding as the voice over continued. "In all our time spent with Team Rook, we found each and every one of them was extremely happy in their new homes, and they have grown into a very tight family unit. When we return, we will introduce you to another family that's living in downtown San Jose, and show you one of the other ways a Team can thrive in the new world." The image of the ticking stopwatch popped back up before cutting to commercial.

During the commercial break, Jenna and her family and Ari and his family both announced that they couldn't really hang around for poker tonight, but appreciated the chance to get caught up, and the Team photos that had been taken on their arrival. Under other circumstances, Andy might've been worried that something he'd said in the 60 Minutes interviews had bothered them, but he knew both Ari and Jenna well enough to know they were always the first ones to leave a party, and that this many people was just a bit taxing on them. Ari had always suffered from mild social anxiety, and this was a ton of people for him to be around. Jenna, by contrast, just liked making sure she was always the first to leave any given party. He'd never been sure quite why. By the time they came back from commercial, the room's population had shrunk by approximately one-third, with Teams Rook, Marcos, Yang and Baker still hanging around.

When the ticking stopwatch reappeared on the screen, everyone rushed back to the couches, Andy finding himself with Piper and Emily on one side of him, Fiona and Moira on the other, as Asha jumped headfirst to splay herself across all their laps with a ferocious laugh.

On screen, the shot cut to a tall building in downtown San Jose that Andy had seen plenty of times that was originally called The 88. "While this building used to hold 197 units, over the past month, it's been rebranded as San Jose Heights Alpha, the first of several highrise condo buildings in downtown San Jose that have been retrofitted into functioning as new villages for a collection of Teams."

The footage turned into a split screen, the left side saying 'before' and the right side saying 'after' as it cut through the same space, with the right side having less walls and hallways, and more open spaces. "Instead of 197 units, this building now houses 20 Teams, each with their own floor. Some are built to a completely open layout, but most have some combination of larger spaces and self contained apartment-style units, to help let the Teams have the level of daily interaction they feel comfortable with. Today, we're going to introduce you to Team Oro, and its patriarch, Chief Diego Oro of the California Highway Patrol."

A Latin man in his early fifties appeared on screen, although the sprawling view of downtown San Jose behind him distracted from everyone looking at him, most likely from one of the highest floors of the building, the windows letting tons of light pour in on the man. Diego reminded Andy immediately of Edward James Olmos when he was younger, a thick graying mustache on top of his upper lip, his hair slicked back, dressed in his formal command officer uniform, his hands folded in his lap, as Katie across from him. Andy wondered if they'd filmed this before or after her visit to New Eden, suspecting it was probably after.

"Chief Oro, thank you for agreeing to sit down with us and tell us your story," Katie said to him, as the man's face took on a slightly pained expression.

"Not just my story, Ms. Couric, but the story of so many men just like me," he said. "Those of us who have suffered immeasurable amounts of loss, only to be reborn into this new world. We have gone through quite the dramatic upheaval this year."

"Now Chief Oro, I understand you were married before the DuoHalo pandemic."

"Yes, Maribel and I have been married for twenty-eight years as of December 3^rd," the Chief told her. "We have..." He paused, closed his eyes and drew in a calming breath, then started again. "We had three children, two boys, Alejandro and Javier, and one girl, Gloria."

"Are any of them still with us?" Katie asked cautiously.

"Gloria is," Diego said to her. "She's partnered up with her boyfriend James up in New York, where they both go to university. My two boys died within the first few months of the epidemic, only a few days apart. They were both peace officers, Alejandro with the San Jose Police Department and Javier with the US Marshal Service. As unhappy as I am to speak ill of the dead, our previous President did not take into account the severity and insidiousness of this virus, and that lack of care is responsible for the death of over a hundred million Americans, including my two boys, who should still be with us today." The Chief was clearly doing his best to remain stoic, but the grief shone heavily on the man's face, mixed with no small amount of anger.

"After they died, I take it you became much more strict about your quarantine?"

Diego nodded solemnly. "Neither I nor Maribel ever left the house after that without wearing a full hazmat suit, which I can tell you certainly earned us some foul looks from people at the supermarket, but neither of us came down with DuoHalo, and now we're both inoculated from it, along with all our other partners."

"How many partners do you have, Chief Oro?"

"Twelve," he said with a sigh. "The government has asked if it could possibly assign me a few more, but I have drawn a hard line at that. Even with the medical rejuvenation that the Quaranteam serum has given my body, it's still quite a lot of sex to be having for a man of my age."

"Why relocate here, to San Jose Heights Alpha, instead of remaining at your own home?"

"There are simply too many people in my new family, sorry, in my Team - it's still taking some getting used to, calling it that - in my Team for our old house to reasonably sustain. Also, in leaving that old home, we could a bit better leave the parts of our lives that were lost to the disease behind us. My previous house, everywhere I looked I saw the ghosts of my boys."

"I understand your partners have declined to be interviewed for our piece," Katie asked him.

"They asked that they not speak to you, and what kind of man would I be if I made them do something they didn't want to?" he said with a kindly smile. "Maribel is still grieving the loss of our boys and the rest of them, well, they feel like the want some privacy in this new world, but I was meant to understand you were more interested in the actual home itself more than me and my Team."

"You have to admit, the living situation is quite a change."

"Sure is," he said proudly. "Wanna get a tour?"

The show cut from the framed interview to a slow panning tour of what the floor looked like. Some of the condos were basically the same as they had been before the pandemic, with small changes like people's names replacing where the number of the unit had once been, as well as the door to the condo having shifted from a front door to feeling like a more normal internal door, without the heavy bolt lock. Others, however, had removed not only the front door but the entire section of wall which faced into the center of the building, making it feel less like a separate unit and more like an alcove. Many of the units had their kitchen sections stripped out and converted into an additional bedroom. "You can see that changes to the core structure range from small to large, with many kitchens having been traded out for nurseries, something Chief Oro says he knows will see use, despite his reticence to become a new father at his age," the narration said, as Diego and Katie peeked into one of the converted spaces, a crib already having been set up inside of it.

They returned to the interview framing, as Katie continued. "I understand at least one of your new partners is already pregnant," she asked him.

"Two of them are, the first of which was Maribel, which I have to admit came as quite a shock to the two us," he replied, a fatherly smirk on his face.

"Why was that?"

"Well, about a decade ago, Ms. Couric, I had a vasectomy, which is supposed to be both permanent and 99% effective, and had been during the entire decade before my Maribel was given the Quaranteam serum," he chuckled quietly. "We were told that there might be some minor health improvements as part of the treatment, but I would say my balls reattaching themselves might be more than a minor change, wouldn't you?"

"Did you inform the doctors who gave Maribel the serum that this had happened to you?"

"I did," he said, that smile not dwindling one bit.

"And what was their response?"

"'Oh, yeah, well, that can happen sometimes. I guess we should've told you in advance.' Typical government undersell, but they also stressed that it was important we be having new children, and that there would be sizable government support for any children we had over the next ten years," he said. "When I started to get a sense of how toxic DuoHalo was, and started tempering my expectations for the people I knew and worked with, and started thinking about what we were going to look like moving forward, because I knew my workplace was going to change a great deal."

The show cut to Diego and Katie walking through what looked like a regional office of the California Highway Patrol, many of the desks with a box on top of them, personal things put away, ready to be sent off to next of kin. "Chief Oro wasn't underestimating. With only about 7% of Chips officers being women, and the 85% male fatality rate for DuoHalo, the Patrol's workforce had dropped from eight thousand to just under one thousand. Had quarantine restrictions been severe and immediate at the onset of this pandemic, he says the numbers of slain men would have been much less, but also that we as a planet are well past the point of 'could have' and 'should have.' This is our new reality."

It cut back once more to Chief Oro, his back to the San Jose skyline. "What do you have to say to those who just want to give up, Chief, who feel like the losses are too much for them to bear?"

"I would tell them that we need them now more than ever, and that everything is being done to make their upcoming lives as pleasant and enjoyable as possible, to contrast the incalculable amount of damage all these deaths have done to our modern psyche. We're Americans, and no matter what other countries are going to do, we are not going to lay down and give up. That's not who we are. That's not how we're built. This could've been an extinction event for the human species, but we're going to fight, we're going to survive, and to do that, we're going to need each and every one of you."

The image froze on Chief Oro pointing directly at the camera, holding there for a long moment before the ticking came on, then cut to Katie Couric sitting in the 60 Minutes studios, looking at the camera, ready to make her closing thesis.

"The world we find ourselves in now is so radically different than the one we lived in that I don't think any of us could've possibly imagined just one year ago where we would find ourselves today," Katie said to the camera. "Most of the men we knew are gone, and that emptiness is going to live with us for the rest of our lives, but as Chief Oro said, we're going to survive. And I want to leave you with this quote from Andy Rook, which I think is good advice for all of us. I'm Katie Couric for 60 Minutes. Good night, and good luck."

The video jumped back to the shot of Andy alone in his writing room, playing just the tail end of his segment. "Take care of each other, love each other, and keep moving forward, over and over. Together."

As the stopwatch ticked towards the end of the 60 minutes allotted, the credits scrolled by, and the room sort of let out a collective sigh of relief, everyone standing up, stretching a little bit, as Xander was the first to speak. "Great show, everybody," he said, which provoked a handful of laughs in response, one person throwing a pillow at him.

"Think we're gonna hear anything about this special?" Andy asked Eric.

"Heh. Guess we'll see," Eric responded.

"Suppose so." He looked around the room with a smile. "C'mon everyone, there's loads of great food waiting in the ballroom, as well as the card table, so let's get some food and play some goddamn poker!" There was a slight cheer from the room as everyone started heading towards the impromptu buffet they'd set up.

Once they got into the ballroom, all his fiancés suddenly swarmed Piper, ready to gossip with her and induct her in their little sewing circle, the girls still laughing and gossiping, hugging and kissing, as Piper looked a little overwhelmed, but also extremely overjoyed, as Aisling held her left hand and Emily held her right, Niko flicking her fingers in his direction with a playful shooing motion, as if to say 'the girls are having girl time, go do boy things,' so Andy glanced over at Eric, who was already setting down the poker table top on one of the big tables, pulling up a chair, as were Phil and Xander, even as he saw Piper's friend Brooke rushing over to hug her

"Two per Team only for this table, and no pairing up to cheat!" Eric said, taking out the deck of cards, starting to shuffle it up. "And I'm not playing tonight, I'm just dealing, so nobody needs to get up and move around. Jacks or better, deuces are wild and the blinds start at one and two dollars."

They were old hands at having their poker night up and running quickly, but rather than stick to strict Texas Hold'em, they liked to mix it up regularly. Hell, within an hour or so, they might be playing Seven Card Stud HiLo, and an hour after that, who the hell knows what variation they might have moved on to.

"Well, hell," Lily said, "then I guess a bitch is gonna have to do all the legwork for the Team, as always." She sat down directly opposed from Eric, grinning at him, as the room laughed. "You've played enough against these boys that you really should be better at reading their tells."

"It's not that I'm bad at reading their tells, Lil," Eric said, dealing out six cards to determine seating order. "It's just that they're better at reading mine. Besides, now you can prove your vaunted card skills against the table master. Who's your second, Rook?"

"I am," Maya said, moving forward to stand alongside him, leaning in to grab a seating card. "I heard you schlubs had a regular poker game going, so it'll be nice to play cards again with people who at least marginally know what they're doing, and not movie stars who aren't sure if there's a difference between a diamond and a heart. Let the girls do their girlie shit; we've got poker to play."

"And yours, Big Daddy Phil?"

"It's me," Phil's partner Yuko said as she reached in to take her card. She was one of the shortest girls in the house, a few inches below five foot tall, in her early twenties, slight and slender and as sassy and sarcastic as they came. Her voice still had strong traces of her Japanese accent, but her English was impeccable. "He always plays so loose that you need someone to be tight at the table." There was a chuckle from the girls, although all the men politely refused to acknowledge the double entendre. Yuko scowled. "I accidentally said something dirty again, didn't I?"

"It's fine," Xander's partner Madison said, stepping in to draw her own card for seating. As the singer in a metal band, Madison was boisterous and rowdy, so it looked like they were getting quite the cantankerous bunch for poker tonight. She didn't look much like she belonged in a metal band on first glance, although her choice of clothing did have a little rough around the edges look to it. But when they'd first met, Andy had commented how he wouldn't have guessed she was a musician if she hadn't told him, to which she'd responded that he looked 'too sinister' to be a writer. They'd continued to get along wonderfully, and Andy was nothing but happy that her and Xander seemed to be exceptionally happy with each other. "That just means you're right at home with the rest of us. Buncha sleazebag dirtball girls and guys at this here table."