Quaranteam: Remote Work Ch. 01

Welcome to the newest story of the Quaranteam universe! After reading CorruptingPower's epic and continuing saga, plus its spin-offs (both by CorruptingPower and by BreakTheBar, AgathonWrites, BirchesLovesBooks, SilverRyden, RonanJWilkerson, and more), I wanted to make my own contribution to it. Much to my shock, he let me. Thus, here we are.

Then again, I'm me. Many of you reading this will be familiar with my particular slant on things, and rest assured you will not be disappointed. This has been fun to imagine, and I anticipate it will be just as fun to write. Without further ado, let me introduce Quaranteam: Remote Work

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Chapter 1: Social Studies

Adam knew he was asleep, and it was a nice feeling. Floating along in the black void of his brain, no worries, no pain, he wanted to hold onto it for as long as he could. Hold onto the nothing, keep resting for as long as his alarm would let him.

The first thing to successfully object to the infinite void was a beep. A beeping, rather, as it kept on spitefully insisting that Adam was not actually alone in his brain. It was off, though. It wasn't his alarm, it wasn't the warning that he would need to rapidly make himself presentable to sit in front of a camera and lecture another day. Perhaps it was Saturday today, and he forgot? Either way, he resolved to ignore it as unimportant. The painless void still held him close.

Next was a feeling of weight. Slowly, gradually increasing, it was like a small child had crawled up onto his chest and decided to sit there... a small child that was rapidly maturing into an adult who was ready to be a sumo wrestler. The weight became a pressure, pressing him down, making it hard to breathe.

Adam coughed. He could not have resisted it even if he'd had enough warning to try. That cough brought with it more intrusions into the once-comfortable blackness. His throat suddenly felt like it had been scrubbed with sand. Another cough, and the feeling became rather more like he had swallowed broken glass instead. Like something was trying to invade his throat as he slept.

The darkness lightened by half-degrees, and as it did more sensations flooded in. Mostly not good ones. Deep pains in his arms, his chest, his legs, his back. A pounding headache like the worst hangover he'd ever had. Itching at the corners of his eyes and his mouth. Itching of a different kind over a lot of his skin, as if rough cloth was there. Suddenly, in a rush, his eyes opened and the comfortable darkness bade him farewell. Agonizing reality greeted him.

The light resolved itself to sterile hospital white. The beeping of monitors accelerated as he emerged to wakefulness, as every inch of his body felt individually abused. Something was in his nose. Something was in his arms. His choked cry and coughs combined with the suddenly-shifting displays to bring someone running. The person's attire chilled Adam to the bone, because none of their skin was visible. At all.

The stark white suit was obviously hazmat in nature. Shiny coating, easy to clean. Full mask, hooded to cover hair and neck. Air tank, gloves, the works. It seemed to almost flow with the sterile walls. A tinny female voice sounded, translated from the inside of the getup to the outside. "Sir, calm down! You're in the hospital, very sick! I'm here to help you. You are in the hospital, recovering." While repeating this, she briskly moved over and grabbed at something on his face. With horror, he felt her pull at something he was barely able to tell was there, and he felt the horrible sensation of something sliding up his throat the wrong way, sliding out of his chest. It was out, and his coughs changed to something more normal in his ears. Throat still felt like he'd tried to eat particularly spicy barbed wire. And didn't chew it enough.

When he spoke, his voice sounded foreign to himself, coming out in a harsh, froggy rasp so unlike the smooth tenor he so often used to control his classes. "Where am I? What happened?" Everything was dragging. Every movement felt like he was having to push himself with all of his might.

"I should be asking you the same thing. Let's start with the easy part. Please, tell me your name, job, and the town and state you live in."

He had to think for a moment. His head was going slow, feeling like it was trying to drag individual thoughts through a bowl of molasses to get them to the surface. "I'm... Adam Jeffries. Civics teacher, I live in Yelm, Washington."

"Oh, good. That will make the next bits easier." The woman kept looking at various bits, bobs, and monitors.

"Will you at least tell me why I'm in the hospital? Why are you in full hazmat?"

She seemed to ignore his request entirely, much to his frustration. "What is the last thing you remember, Mr. Jeffries?"

... a pounding, a breaking sound, a man's voice not his own, in the tiny apartment which had been so lonely for so long...

"I... ah... I think I was burglarized. Someone broke into my home. That doesn't explain all of... this..."

... but what if it did? There are a couple of plagues going on...

"Mr. Jeffries, I do not know if you are a religious man, but if not then you may wish to reconsider your stance on the matter. The bed you are laying on is in the DuoHalo ward. You are the only male alive in it, and more than once you nearly weren't. What day is it, and who is the president?."

"President Trump is still in office. It is July third."

"You didn't lose too much time, but a lot has changed. Both President Trump and Vice President Pence died yesterday. You survived what they couldn't. President Pelosi swore in this morning, the eighth of July. Alright, I need to see some of the other patients here. I'll note that you need water sent here, and food later. Please don't try to remove your IVs or catheter. I might not have someone available to fix them. The remote is on the table to your right, it also has a call button in case you have an emergency. Any questions?"

Adam shook his head... slowly. The drag of the wires and tubes was a reminder that he was very happy to not have a mirror to look into at the moment. The nurse left, and he realized that he hadn't learned her name at any point. It wasn't like she could wear a tag pinned on to a hazmat suit, after all.

So. I missed the fireworks this year. Bit busy not dying. Looks like politics is good for once, though, so fair trade.

True to her word, someone came by not too long after to set up what amounted to a water cooler. He'd been expecting a cup, or at most a carafe, but the woman (a different one this time) explained that it was worth neither the effort of suiting up nor the risk of exposure for someone to come in every time he got thirsty. It made sense, even. It all still hurt. Both physically and emotionally.

At least sips of water stopped hurting by the time food... looked like dinner... came up. Swallowing even the soft foods there was torturous once again, but he could do it. Very shortly thereafter, he passed out again.

When he came to, it was no longer light. Given Washington summers, this narrowed what time it could be considerably. The condition, though, meant that when he cut his room lights on, he could see his reflection on the television screen. It was... not encouraging. Adam Jeffries, called AJ by his friends, had never been a stand out specimen of manliness. He had always been almost painfully thin, pale, and unassuming. He wore wire-frame glasses to save the headaches his ever-so-slight nearsightedness delivered, had muddy brown hair and eyes, and looked like he'd rock a tweed vest.

Now? The pale skin had shifted to pallid and greasy-looking, bruises trying to heal all over his body where he'd bled internally. He had gone from thin to nearly skeletal, his limbs feeling like it was an effort just to reach for his remote. To push a button. The hospital gown certainly looked worse on him than jeans and a tee shirt... or a tweed vest.

He didn't even have his phone or laptop here. Couldn't tell his students or his administration where he was or what happened. The pounding headache felt like it shouldn't let him sleep, but after a cup of water it receded enough. He blinked, and suddenly the sun was back out. He felt like he had not slept in the time lost there, but given that his skin felt like someone had wiped it off and the fact that there was food on a tray at his bed meant he'd missed a check-in. There were instructions with it about basic movements and exercises he could do at his bed to start recovering.

He tried them the best he could, but it wasn't encouraging when "make a tight fist, five reps" was the limit of what he could manage.

So it went. Bit by painful bit. He tried to fight the boredom with the news, but turned that off before long. Too much pain, too much death. The next day, the tenth, went better. He could sit up. He could get to the back of the page. Day three (or was it seven?) went further as he set his feet on the ground. Not quite standing yet, no, but moving. After a week, more new developments. He got his IV and catheter out (ow) as he demonstrated the ability to use his bathroom himself, and someone managed to retrieve his laptop and cell phone.

The day after that, though, came with one of the most awkward hours of his life. He had not yet caught up on emails from ten days spent unexpectedly out of contact when a new one came. It was from a government email, Project Oracle, saying something about his prior Level One status being upgraded, and carrying a link to a survey. While the first half was so banal as to almost put him back to sleep, the rest read like he was auditioning to be the scrawniest porn star on Earth.

Kinks and preference lists a mile long. The list included things that Adam was more than slightly sure had laws against them in at least twenty states. Minimum. He might have felt more charitable about the whole thing if his dick wasn't still hurting from having a freaking catheter removed. Reading some segments of that list felt like reading some of the dirtiest smut on the Internet, enough so that he had entirely predictable physiological reactions, which came with entirely predictable shooting pain from the same physiological locations.

For reference, pain play was a very hard no on his survey.

After that was the personality quiz, along with specifications on his living arrangements and views towards polyamory. Given that those views consisted of "it would be awesome if more than one woman was interested in me in that way, ever," the box was checked with a bit of a sardonic grin.

With that done, he found himself unexpectedly exhausted. Baring one's soul, even to an impersonal machine, tends to do that. It was still followed by what physical therapy he could do, then food (which was finally getting more solids in it), then passing out into another exhausted sleep that felt more like a coma than anything. The concept of days and nights meant little to the man who could only last four to five hours at a stretch without needing sleep, though the return of his link to the wider world was helping get that back on track. It was a liminal space of pain and exhaustion, of hospital food and physical therapy, of frequent verbal checks over the intercom and rare physical ones by fully-suited and armored women. No chances were being taken, and given what Adam was recovering from he didn't blame them. DuoHalo might be more universally lethal to men, but the death rate among women was still plenty high enough that he didn't want to be the reason they caught it.

After another week of this, three pieces of good news came more or less simultaneously. He was finally considered physically recovered enough to have the majority of the equipment removed from his room, he had finally managed to catch up on his emails and calls to administrators and students alike, and his daily virus checks came back negative for the first time. The tired-seeming nurse explained that he would be held for another forty-eight hours for observation, then taken home. It seemed unreal. He could barely remember how he had been living before waking up here.

In another blur, he was suddenly being delivered home, in the back of a sealed ambulance. He didn't have much of anything to take with him, just a cheap backpack with his laptop, charger, medicine, and an intimidating packet of instructions and warnings for all of the above plus continuing physical therapy routines. They even gave him a small foam roller and a lacrosse ball to go with them. In all, perhaps five or six pounds of stuff. It felt like a thousand while he was going up the stairs, since the elevator was out. AJ had to stop four times to catch his breath before he got to the third story. Not particularly encouraging.

What was even less so? The rotten smell as he opened his (obviously hastily repaired) door. The air conditioning hadn't been left on, so all of his precious fresh fruit and vegetables had rotted in the sticky summer heat. Same with a lot of the contents of his refrigerator, from some leftovers (moldy to the point that he didn't even try to rescue the plastic containers) to cold cuts (so slimy he had to chuck the entire drawer's contents).

That tends to happen after more than two weeks unattended, doesn't it?

Window open enough for him to lean out and breathe without gagging, Adam darkly considered what it all meant. Food was expensive and getting more so as the quarantines dragged on, and his summer tutoring gigs were not quite enough to make up for pay differences... even when he hadn't missed two weeks of it out of nowhere. It would be a severe struggle to survive until the school year started without cracking open his already-slender retirement fund. That... also didn't even count the hospital bill. Nobody had provided one, and everyone had been awfully evasive about it, but Adam's insurance wasn't the best in the world. Certainly not up to covering that long of a hospital stay, with that many tests, plus presumably two ambulance rides. He wasn't an economics major, but some things didn't take too much brainpower to see. Or smell, as it were.

Well, step one. As soon as I can breathe in this place, order groceries delivered. Going to be a lot of ramen, beans, and rice, but I've been a college student before. I'll live. Maybe egg prices came down? No way am I affording beef, but the nutrition sheet says I need complete proteins and beans only take you so far...

An unexpected sound shattered his train of thought. A knock. At his door. Needless to say, he was not expecting anyone. Even before his recent hospital stay, he'd been isolating hard. He hadn't had a guest in... well, a lot more than the four-ish months of quarantine, it wasn't like the apartment was anything special. The only people to come to that door had been delivering groceries or mail, and those all backed off before sending a text for him to retrieve it. Another knock, much more insistent, shook him loose from his reverie. Rapidly donning a cloth mask, he answered the door.

Standing in the hallway were three people. Two of the three were, like all of the nurses he'd been seeing so much of recently, entirely encased in hazmat suits. These, unlike the hospital ones, were in camouflage patterns and had markings denoting official status and military affiliation. Apparently, the Washington National Guard was helping out now, helping whomever the third person was. And she... was very different. Short and thin, with blotchy skin hovering in that zone between tanned and dark, with frizzy dark hair in a loose ponytail and slightly squashed facial features. She was wearing blue jeans and a white tee shirt with a purple paw print design. Around her upper right arm was a medical wrap, the kind you might have holding the gauze after a blood draw or a vaccination. The other thing he noticed, fairly quickly, was that she had a lot of scars. Many looked surgical, but if so whomever did them needed to be retrained. They were broad and ugly, irregularly criss crossing her upper arms and visible at her neck. She wasn't even masked, in sharp contrast with her escorts. She had a plain brown backpack on, and a piece of rolling luggage behind her. "Can I help you?"

The suited person to the left spoke up, the first male voice I had heard in what seemed like forever. "Yes, sir. I am Sergeant Alan Walker, and we are escorting your new partner. Mr. Adam Jeffries, I would like to introduce you to Shannon Owens."

I shook my head a bit. "Wait, partner? What is going on?"

The woman... Shannon... spoke up. "I can explain it, once we're inside. Y'all gave me more than enough info on it on the way here. No offense, but I just want to be indoors again."

The suited soldier looked back at me. "If that works for you, it works for me. There's a lot left to do today, just sign here under 'Primary'."

Adam looked down at the proffered clipboard. The form on it was relatively simple. "Army and Army National Guard Oracle Program Delivery Form" across the top, his name and address along with Shannon's, and a bit of obscure admin data. DA Form 6969-R at the bottom, which was probably not intended but which definitely made some immature designer's whole month. There were three signature blocks on it, one already filled out by Shannon. He signed the second one with a bit of a shrug.

With shocking rapidity, AJ and Shannon found themselves devoid of escorts. Shortly after, they were sitting in his (thankfully slightly better-smelling) living room. She claimed his beanbag chair, so he took the rocker. "Um. Okay, still not sure what's going on here. What are you my partner for?"

She sighed, sweating slightly in the heat. "They really didn't tell you anything, did they? About the vaccine, about the whole program?"

Adam shook his head. "I just got home from the hospital about... two hours ago. Vaccine's a tad bit late for me, already survived the whole experience."

Her eyes shot open wide, the pupils dilating visibly. "WHAT? How? Doesn't it kill basically every male it hits?"

"That's what they said, too, but even 80% isn't a hundred. I'm normally a skinny dude, but not this skeletal." He paused to cough for a moment, taking a shuddering breath. "Can you... just explain the rest? Assume they treated me like a mushroom and go from there?"

"A mushroom?"

"Yeah. Kept in the dark and fed dung all day."

Shannon started laughing hysterically, caught off-guard by it all. Her laugh was a pleasant one, almost like the tinkling of bells, and Adam found himself rather happy that he'd managed it. "Okay, okay, that's a good one. Well. The government managed to develop a vaccine, though they kept calling it a serum in all the videos they made me watch. Only works directly on women, though, got my jab this morning before we got on the way so that it could soak in. If it's given to a man directly, it kills him quicker than catching the disease in the first place. Some good news, though, is that it can be shared indirectly. Thus the whole partnership thing." There was an odd smell in the air. Sweaty, musky. It was beginning to reach him even through the ambient funk he had been airing out.

"That's nice, I guess. Not sure I'd pull through round two. How do we do that?"

Despite her skin tone, it was very clear that she was blushing. "It's... shareable with a man through regular sexual contact. Also has a really strong side effect on the woman's libido, too, and they absolutely were not joking about that part." It was then that Adam noticed how she was seated, legs gradually moving further apart.

Adam's brain screeched to a halt. Whatever he had been expecting out of this conversation, that wasn't it. "Hold on one second. You're telling me that you are on a government-mandated mission to have sex with me? And I'm supposed to just believe that?"