Quaranteam - The Upstart's Knight Ch. 01

This story is a spin off of CorruptingPower's Quaranteam series, written with his blessing. Where his tale focuses on the DuoHalo pandemic from the US's perspective The Upstart's Knight looks at the UK, and while prior knowledge of the series is a bonus for any reader, it's not intended to be required.

Thanks to BirchesLoveBooks for their input with editing.

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15th October 2020

'Boss'

The word lit up Ethan Knight's phone, the brightness of the screen illuminating his room with just enough insistence to drag him from sleep. For a moment he considered leaving it, until the dull vibration on his bedside table prompted him to place the call on speaker and toss it onto the neighbouring pillow so he could at least talk without expending the effort needed to lift his head.

"Lukas, do you have any idea what time it was before Aoife fixed our transfer issue last night?"

The Polish-tinted voice that came out the handset in reply at least had the good grace to sound apologetic. For a second anyway. "She mentioned. I'd let you rest, but I've got a meeting I need you for."

Ethan groaned. He already knew there was no way he was getting out of this conversation without getting up, despite this being the 4th night in a row he'd seen the wrong side of 3 AM to just feel like they were treading water. It's not like Lukas would be doing this if he didn't need to. Since Tom collapsed last week the pair of them had been carrying the load of 5 producers, work neither of them was meant to be qualified to be doing.

"Ethan? You there?"

"Yeah. Just deciding whether to hang up on you...Fuck Lukas, whenever it's for push it back an hour and send me the Zoom link."

There was a sigh on the other end of the line. "I need you over here in Studio 3 in half an hour."

For the first time Ethan lifted his head off the bed, shifting to sit upright as he blearily struggled to try and parse the implications of what Lukas had just asked him. The only people who'd been down to the studios in days were the on-camera talent and the odd engineer whenever a cable needed adjusting. "What happened to no-one leaving their rooms unless it was absolutely necessary?"

"Then I guess it must be absolutely necessary. Just get your ass over here and I'll explain when you're awake. You're going to want to be here for this."

The call ended abruptly, punctuating that this wasn't really something that was up for discussion. It wasn't like Lukas to hang up a call like that, but then they'd both probably earnt the right to be a little short at times. It's not like the twin heads of the Covid and DuoHalo pandemics were giving any of them a chance to compartmentalise between the body blows.

It was a struggle to pull himself up and towards the shower, leaving the hotel room in the morning half-light pressing through the curtains as he dressed rather than turn on a light and be fully confronted with the mess he'd let things slip into over the last few months. He briefly considered doing the same in the bathroom, not wanting to deal with how much the dirty blonde of his beard was less shabby chic and more just shabby right now, or the slight paunch his previously toned stomach was giving way to on a diet of 2 AM instant noodles. The only thing forcing him to do otherwise was the need to fish around for a new set of DuoHalo test strips. Thankfully the finger prick of blood continued to read negative even after he'd wrestled his lanky frame into a 'smart' pair of slacks and a no-iron shirt that still managed to look like it really needed ironing. Ethan knew, objectively speaking, that he was decent looking but hated that the luxury of any pride in his appearance just felt like another casualty of the last 6 months.

Back in the bedroom the light on the side of his laptop flickered away and he made the mistake of flipping open the lid to check the damage from the 3 hours since he finally got some sleep. Guiltily he closed the handful of porn tabs he'd managed to leave open that made up the sum total of his non-work human interaction for the last few days and his heart sank as his Desktop came into view. He'd cleared his inbox before bed but sitting obtrusively on top of the envelope icon was a red circle with the number 32 in it.

It had been two weeks since they'd announced Boris Johnson's death from DuoHalo and he'd spent most of the last few days attempting to pull together the segments they needed to cover the new cross-party coalition government in London. Naturally the feeds they relied on for interviews and video could never just work how they were meant to and most of his day looked like it was going to be fielding requests from stressed editors trying to get hold of the footage they needed, along with more bitching about how the sound gear in Studio 4 kept cutting out. And Aoife was still awake it seemed. A short-tempered reply he'd been CC'd in on 5 minutes earlier explained that she'd sort out the sound equipment if someone else wanted to stop their network equipment literally bursting into flames every few days.

She was going to work herself to death even before he did.

He paused at the door, taking a moment to push down the swell of anxiety. Ethan hadn't left the expensively decorated confines of his room in over a week, not since the recent wave of infections had run through the staff despite the quarantine bubble they were meant to be in. They were meant to be totally biosecure, but that hadn't stopped the hospitalisations hitting double figures again. Before then he'd fallen out of using his N95 mask, but as he lifted it off the coat hook and began strapping it on again it suddenly felt a flimsy amount of protection no matter how tightly he pulled the straps.

A few minutes later he exited the ostentatious entrance to Taymont Hall and picked his way across the lines of cables splayed about the terrace like connective tissue, towards where the boxy masses of temporary huts and trailers that compromised their studio set up were sat on the lawn. The word Palisade could generously be described to 'decorate' in bold blue letters the side of each structure. 8 months ago the 19th-century Taymont Hall had been a luxury hotel and spa, an edifice of grey stone covered in cultivated ivy that opulently imposed itself on the eastern curves of England's Pennine Hills. It was exactly the sort of place that was meant to exist well beyond the reach of an associate producer for a regional news channel like Ethan, outside of being a guest at a much wealthier colleague's wedding. That was, at least, until the double act of the DuoHalo and Covid viruses had devastated the country, as the rest of the world, from the start of 2020, starting a downward spiral of quarantines and mortality statistics.

By all accounts the UK's proactive early approach to lockdowns and restrictions, while bad news for destinations like Taymont Hall, had spared most the country from being ravaged quite as hard as most other places. However, as the dust had settled from the wildfire spread of the first waves and the authorities got a clearer picture of just how deadly DuoHalo could be, Britain was still left nursing a death toll in the millions. The male half of the population was particularly devastated by the virus, with mortality rates in excess of 80% once a man contracted it, dying with their ravaged lungs collapsing in on themselves. It was an order of magnitude greater than it was affecting women. Quite why this was the case seemed to be eluding the scientists at the Wellcome Institute and big research universities, even as doctors and public health officials struggled with how to deal with a disease they barely understood.

Ethan had been fortunate. He'd only recently secured a promotion to become an associate producer on the BBC's news services based out of Manchester and was finally getting to take a week off to decorate his flat when the virus first hit in late February. While half his new team were being hospitalised as DuoHalo tore through the office, he was shut away at home, painting walls and assembling IKEA furniture. By the time he was meant to return the country had been locked down and by the end of March it was unclear quite how the media, like most other sectors, was even meant to keep going.

The imperfect solution, as with most issues faced in modern Britain as far as Ethan could tell, was to turn the problem into a dividend for the private sector. Contractors were sought to establish 6 regional media campuses scattered across the country. What staff remained standing from the BBC, radio, broadcast, and print media were folded together and sent into isolation at Covid and DuoHalo-secure locations, working with the government to keep tailored, localised media provision running no matter what happened.

So of course it was an obvious fit when the owner of Taymont Hall stepped forward and offered to repurpose the luxury estate into the base for the newly minted North England Broadcast Corporation. That the company he founded to do this, Palisade Services, had zero experience in such a complex logistical and communications operation had significantly less bearing on the contract being awarded than the fact that the estate's owner was the brother-in-law of a high ranking Conservative Minister.

Ethan, along with approximately 100 others, was selected to keep essential operations going at this site, regardless of the state of the world around them. They had arrived at Taymont Hall 5 months ago and had been essentially locked in under strict conditions ever since. Not that living on a 5-star country resort didn't come with considerable perks, but other than a skeleton staff of maintenance workers and security the media team were largely being left to fend for themselves, and the glimpse he caught of just what it was costing the taxpayer had considerably soured his enjoyment of the complimentary pool and open access to the bar's stock. But what really caused his resentment at the blue Palisade branding splashed on every available surface were the constant outages, issues, and lack of foresight needed to actually run the service they were meant to be providing. If it wasn't for the sheer bloody-minded brilliance of Aoife and her engineering team he doubted any number of all nighters would allow them to produce the content they were being relied on for. He had to fight the familiar spike of aggravation as he crossed the final stretch of grass and saw 'Palisade Studio 3' emblazoned on what amounted to a cluster of outside broadcast trailers bolted together.

Studio 3 was the smallest of Taymont's five, and its use had been seriously reduced the last few weeks as the number of staff still fit and working had required consolidating down to two production teams and scaling back the ambition of their content. Ethan wasn't especially surprised to find that at some point during his isolation the presenters' desk and camera rigs had been moved to one side, replaced with conference chairs that sat at respectable socially distanced spacing from each other as an ad hoc meeting space.

Lukas sat nearest the door, only just managing to look like he wasn't about to drop from exhaustion. He was a good 15 years older than Ethan, in the back end of his 40s but with a certain amount of rugged good looks still remaining that his stern demeanour only seemed to increase. A veteran of live sports, the Pole had done stints in Italy and Germany before being headhunted to help run broadcasting of Premier League matches a few years back. And with the old hand Tom having picked up DuoHalo Lukas was the most senior of the handful of production staff they had left. Ethan needn't have worried about looking the most tired.

"You look like shit," Lukas noted to him gruffly. There wasn't much softness in his voice, but Ethan knew him well enough to know that it was when he stopped needling you that you needed to worry.

"Misplaced my tie," Ethan replied. "Really holds the whole 'slept in your clothes' look together."

The younger man's attention was already on the other two figures in the room however. Two women, one he knew, one he didn't, neither of which exactly filled him with confidence about the implications of where this might be going.

Evie Kimura sat with one leg crossed over the other, glancing down at the folder of notes in her lap rather than making eye contact with Ethan. He had to admit that stung a little. Of the four 'advisors' from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport who had been based in Taymont as a link to the government, Evie was the only one Ethan had managed to warm to. In her late 20s, she was idealistic about the positive potential of government in a way that most around politics weren't.

She was astoundingly out of his league. Her father was a Japanese embassy worker, her mother an English journalist, and she carried the best mix of both heritages. Unlike Ethan she'd somehow managed not to let appearances slide, dark hair trimmed off at the shoulder and neatly tucked back with a tasteful smattering of almost equally dark makeup that made the brown of her eyes pop. Her blouse was simple but had actually seen an iron within the last month which put her ahead of most of the staff who weren't needed on screen. As she checked her phone, setting it to silent, she managed to show the one extravagance she'd evidently allowed herself, with black nail polish tipping off her delicate fingers.

And she was brilliant too. A graduate of Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford, fluent in Italian and Arabic as well as Japanese, Ethan had been told she could have had her pick of careers with any of the main political parties, but entered the civil service instead, with the powers that be clearly thinking enough of her to send her to Taymont.

Yet, despite all of the differences in class and circumstance, Ethan had still got the impression that Evie was into him. They'd flirted during evenings sharing drinks at the hotel bar with the other junior staff when things had felt safer. And he could have sworn she was encouraging him to look when they'd both found themselves using the spa's pool at the same time, athletic curves teased with a confident black swimsuit. Or at least that was the impression he was getting from her until suddenly he definitely wasn't, with her attitude switching a few months ago to cool professionalism almost overnight.

He had no idea what he'd done to fuck it all up.

In contrast to Evie the other woman present didn't remove her gaze from him for a moment, leaving him feeling like he was being picked apart by her scrutiny. He'd never seen her before, a fact that was a little concerning given the strict containment protocols of the site.

Sat on the inexpensive chair with a casual grace and confidence that made it look like a throne, the woman had a sheer ease to her presence that left Ethan feeling like he was the one intruding on her workplace rather than the other way around. Dark skinned, the frizzy curls of her hair were pulled up neatly behind her head to accentuate sharp model-like cheekbones. The cream coloured business suit she wore was tailored and very very obviously expensive, tucking in at her waist in a way that did just enough to emphasise her figure without feeling excessive. Nor did it seem to give the slightest concession to any sort of infection control.

She held one of their coffee mugs, perching it in her lap between two carefully manicured hands, drawing Ethan's attention from the fact it almost seemed to be a prop, coached into her to maintain poise rather than being something she had any real interest in drinking.

Seeing him study the ID lanyard hanging around her neck, one hand came off the mug and held it up for him by way of introduction.

Nia Clarke-Mills

VP of Public Relations

Averna Medical

"You aren't meant to have heard of Averna yet," she cut in, lowering the badge as Ethan finished reading, while pre-empting the question he was about to ask. Her voice was smooth, ever slightly posh and she smiled at him in an easy and natural way that, while meant to be disarming, just made him all the more aware he was on the back foot here. She gestured to the room's only remaining chair as she continued.

"We're new, a joint venture between the UK government and Veraxiontic."

Ethan didn't notice himself easing into the offered seat, his focus too busy chasing down the implications of the superficially simple statement the woman had just given him. On paper he might be vastly under qualified but he liked to think he was good at his job. He wasn't a journalist but he knew he needed to pay attention to details and be entirely across the stories they were covering, able to connect the dots and bring everything together.

Veraxiontic. The pharma company that had come out of nowhere to be the production muscle behind the US government's rumoured DuoHalo vaccine successes. The same vaccine that every European government was trying to massage public opinion over the potential price that would need to be paid, including his own. If Averna was the UK working with Veraxiontic, did that mean they had a vaccine now?

Nia smiled again as she caught his expression change, before turning with playful amusement to Lukas to speak.

"I think he caught the implication there, don't you? You did say he was sharper than he looks."

"The UK has a DuoHalo vaccine?" Ethan heard himself say, immediately frustrated at how obvious it sounded to voice that.

"Yes."

His mind staggered from the weight of the simple confirmation. The sudden feeling that after months of trying desperately to stay afloat, even as people were being lost by the score around them, someone had come, holding out a rope to help them.

He lost himself in thought for a moment before Evie's voice punctured it, saying his name. He couldn't quite manage to read her tone and, looking up, caught her gaze for the first time, the slightest hint of a frown playing across her features.

"It's not quite that simple," the younger of the two women stated, a hint of conflict playing out in her voice. A sense of deep frustration that it wasn't. Ethan suddenly felt like the chair was about to be kicked out from under him.

Nia leaned back in her own chair carefully, her mask of elegant assurance not slipping as, for the first time since Ethan had entered, she took a sip of coffee before placing it and both hands back in her lap. She returned to watching him, as if his response to whatever was coming was going to be judged.

It was Lukas, seemingly sensing the potential for everyone else to dance around bullshit he didn't have the patience for, who picked up the thread from Evie. "Dr Armstrong and I had a call with London last week. DuoHalo's been worse than we realised. Worse than Evie or Laura were told, and definitely worse than the public has any idea of."

"How bad?" Ethan braced himself for the punch.

""At least 25 million"

Lukas said it so bluntly, so matter-of-factly, that the impact Ethan was scared of never came. The number didn't seem real enough to process, such that he was convinced that he must have misheard, or misunderstood what Lukas was referring to.

"...we passed 25 million globally months ago. Lukas...you're almost making it sound like you're telling me that's the death toll for the UK."

Ethan's jaw clenched as Lukas simply looked back at him, leaving the silence as confirmation that he hadn't been misheard. Without thinking Ethan started to pull at the cuff of his shirt, his hands searching for what they're meant to do at a moment like that as he searched Lukas' face for any sign that the Pole wasn't serious. When none came he shifted his attention to Evie, receiving a simple nod from her in return as she continued to attempt to keep whatever was going through her own head implacable.