Quaranteam - The Upstart's Knight Ch. 02

When Ethan had said he needed time to think he had expected more than the three hours Nia and Lukas gave him. He understood that people were working to a timetable that was already, in Lukas's words, "beyond fucked," and that it wasn't just his safety on the line, but even so, this was so large that being forced to rush left him wanting to scream.

He took himself back to the main building of Taymont Hall, where he and most of the crew had been living for the last 5 months. An odd stillness hung across the building as the majority of people on-site remained in their rooms. The bar, tucked off to the side of the hotel's lavishly grand staircase, had been locked a week ago to stop anyone congregating, but whoever had done so had left the key in its home behind the front desk, making it trivial to let himself in to nurse a drink among the wood panelled walls.

Browsing the shelf of spirits, he came across a vintage bottle of whisky that put a small knot in his stomach. He knew less than fuck all about spirits but Tom Warrick had been a self proclaimed expert, and Ethan recognised it as the one the squat Welshman had brought from his personal collection, informing everyone of his plan to save it for the day when they had some "genuinely gods damned good news" to share with the world. Apparently, he'd long since given up on Wales winning the rugby world cup and the end of a pandemic would have to do.

Ethan had liked Tom. He had been a senior producer at Media City in Manchester and the one who'd put Ethan's name forward to join things at Taymont when everything got set in motion. In the early days when Ethan had felt there was no way in the world he should be doing this, it had been Aoife's friendship and Tom's trust that had got him through. It still hadn't quite caught up with Ethan that he wouldn't be seeing him again.

He was on to his second glass when Evie arrived. He had only intended to have one but Nia had given him a tablet containing a huge amount of detailed information on every possible data point or question he might have about Gemivax and some of what was there really made another drink seem compulsory. She'd really downplayed a lot. From how often a man needed sexual contact with his 'Team,' to just how pronounced the libido spikes could be, especially after the initial administration, as well as something called the 'Daniels Effect' where a Team was shown to become psychologically, as well as sexually, dependent on each other.

It wasn't the black and white of clinical data and reports that were really bothering him as the half-Asian woman arrived however. Rather it was the video file that was also included and that he found himself looping on repeat for the 5th or 6th time.

"Imprinting. Imprinting. Imprinting..."

He looked at Evie, holding up the device to show her the cropped in face of a woman repeating the same word over and over.

"Are you really ok with having this done to you?"

The reports said it was a side effect of the serum being used in Gemivax that no-one had been able to remove from the final product, that when a vaccinated woman first paired with a man she would lose consciousness and repeat the word while the physiological changes occurred. Looking at the profound yet blank contentment painted across the woman's face he once again found himself wondering if this was all a sick joke. Evie just shrugged.

"Tom's whisky?"

Her voice was ever so slightly deeper than you would expect it to be from looking at her, oddly luxurious in a way that matched her assurance that Ethan had always found particularly appealing.

"I didn't think he'd mind. Who knows maybe this is the miracle he was saving it for?"

"How many you had?"

"This is my second? Think that's a bad sign when it's not even 10 in the morning?"

Evie went to the bar, fetching a tumbler of her own before easing into a seat alongside. She poured herself a measure, paused, and then to Ethan's surprise downed it in one go, mostly managing not to wince afterwards as she thudded the glass back down on the antique table.

"There. And now I'm caught up."

He looked at her, and couldn't help but laugh, finding at least some humour in the sheer fucking demented absurdity of it all. This was Evie as he knew her at her best, unshakable yet warm. For a brief moment as a slight smile curled at her lips he managed to let the situation slip from his mind, before the voice on the tablet cut through things.

"Imprinting. Imprinting. Impr-"

Evie reached over and stopped the video, before turning the tablet off. She looked like she wanted to say something, then sighed and ran a hand through her hair instead. With things out in the open she didn't have the same caged awkwardness as she did at the meeting at least, but it still took her a moment to fill the silence.

"I've had a week longer than you to get my head around this, how absurd it is" she said, pouring a second drink. "I keep trying to tell myself that we aren't really getting a choice in this. Not just us, not specifically anyway, but everyone. If there was even a hint of another way then I can't see how it would have gotten this far. Because it's not just life and death, is it? But everything else too, work, society, Gemivax and Delphi are the way they think things are getting put back together. We can either be on the inside or outside."

She paused again, before looking at him. "May as well at least try and get dealt the best hand possible."

Ethan laughed again, finding somewhat bitter humour in the notion that an increasingly scruffy northerner from a housing estate might be the best hand someone like Evie could get. She clearly needed a better dealer if it was. Evie, however, fixed him with a displeased look, evidently finding the laugh as a slight against her earnestness.

He held his hands up, "look, hey, I didn't mean it like that. Just...a month ago we were telling people how well things were going, there was even talk of hospitality opening back up. Two weeks ago we were telling them that the Prime Minister had died. And this week we need to find a way to say it's this...whatever this even is, or the literal end of the world."

Her expression softened slightly, "you're taking all of this better than Lukas did at least, there's still a hole in the wall of Studio 2 from that. Put his fist right through it when they told him."

"I'm allowed to laugh at that at least?" he joked, the recollection that Lukas was already neck deep in this ahead of him and seemed to be surviving managing to relieve at least some of the sense of it all feeling quite so overwhelming.

They sat quietly together for a while, longer than Ethan had spent in anyone else's physical company in what felt like months, with Evie either comfortable leaving him to his own thoughts or caught up enough in some of her own. He found it oddly easy to slip into sharing the space with her, not needing to say anything but simply being comforted by her presence. He'd missed this, the human contact, the easy feeling of someone in the space next to him. He'd missed her and missed whatever he thought was there between them that had ended up past his grasp.

Eventually he spoke to break the silence. "I didn't think I was exactly your favourite person on site for the last few months."

Evie pulled a small vape pen from a pocket in her skirt and leant back, resting against the wooden panel behind her as she took a drag. Tipping her head up and looking to the ceiling's moulded plaster she exhaled a long cloud of vapour. "It wasn't you. It's been...fuck."

Briefly she closed her eyes as he glanced over and gave her the time to collect whatever she needed to continue, the scent of blueberries now hanging in the air.

"I didn't tell you my girlfriend died in March, did I," she asked, gaze still fixed upwards.

There was a churn of slightly confused emotions as Ethan listened. Shock that she'd given so little away at the time, genuine sympathy, and an unflattering but unmistakable flash of arousal at the realisation she was dating another woman that Ethan hated himself for given the situation. He settled for shaking his head.

"Dad passed away last year, met her not long after. We'd only been dating for a little while, but she was this burst of life and energy back in my life when I really needed that. I didn't want to come here but of course she insisted, said it would only be for a while and she'd be right there waiting for me. But then a few days in I got a message from her mom and..."

Ethan reached over and placed a hand on her shoulder, causing her to lower her head and look at him. There was emotion there, but it wasn't as raw as Ethan expected it might have been. A scarred over wound that hurt for her to touch at, but that wasn't about to suddenly reopen.

"I kept my shit together Ethan. Because I had to. And there were good people around me. But then we started to see the casualty rates we were getting, especially for men. And I had to catch myself. It wasn't personal but letting someone in when I was being told losing them was probably inevitable? I couldn't start doing that to myself."

It annoyed him that he hadn't seen it, Evie was hardly the only person here who'd dealt with the emotional toll by cutting themselves off and sticking to work. It seemed obvious now, something that he could have acted on if he'd spotted it, even if just to protect his own feelings. But maybe he was too close to it for that.

She caught him looking at her, saw the concern and sympathy on his face, moving to pick the hand off her shoulder and set herself to face him square on. "Look, no. Don't do that. I don't want the sympathy." She forced a smile as she affirmed her thoughts for him. "Her name was Sara. She died. Dad died. I'm here and they're not and I'm getting a chance to move my life on. I'm good. Really."

Ethan somehow managed to believe her.

"Wait," she said, trying to change the subject. "Did you think I was mad at you about something?"

He shifted, embarrassed. "I don't know, I thought you thought there might have been something between Aoife and me."

She let out a laugh, genuine and warm. "The engineer? The Scottish one with the green hair and the tattoos? Shit, why would I be mad at you for that? She's hot as hell. I'd have just asked to join you if I was in a better place."

Evie laughed again when she saw the surprise in his reaction, leaving him off balance and desperately struggling to keep a poker face. "Oh, come on Ethan, that's what throws you? You did pay attention when the Delphi questionnaire got mentioned and it said I was compatible with you and with Nia didn't you? I wasn't exactly planning on just taking turns."

It took him a beat to recompose himself, doing his best not to let any serious mental images linger for too long while he was still trying to hold a conversation. The implication that Evie had already made up her mind about things managed not to be lost in the frank openness about her sexuality.

"Delphi," he asked, a hint of humour in his voice as he tried to play things off. "You did take the same questionnaire I did, right?"

A small scoff from her. "Apparently enough for it to think we have a 96% sexual compatibility. Whatever that's meant to mean. Don't forget, I know what I answered, so I've got a pretty good idea of the sort of perversion you put down too," she teased, with a small press of a hand on his shoulder.

"You make it sound like you've already made your mind up," he said, not intending for it to sound as serious as it did. But as soon as he spoke, however, he realised the statement had settled like a weight in the conversation. It was Evie's turn to look disarmed and embarrassed, returning briefly to the awkwardness that had been there in Studio 3 and Ethan realised that it was her potential willingness to go through with things that was leaving her self-conscious.

She nodded, "I have, yes. Like you said, if it's this or the end of the world..."

The words were simple enough, but the certainty with which she said them brought the questions and doubts Ethan had had when reviewing the Gemivax information rushing back up to the surface. There was no backing out once things started and the resolve with which she said it wasn't lost on him. She'd accepted the price of this leap of faith was to give herself to him. But was it right to accept her? And was he worth giving back in return?

A finger on his lips cut him off before he could speak again, as she started to stand.

"Don't rush things more than you're already being made to. I've had days to think about this and even then, I wasn't sure until the meeting."

She moved a hand across his cheek, affectionately, her hand running through his unkempt beard before grinning. "You really need to tidy up and shave this if you're going to go through with things though."

*****

Taymont Hall's honeymoon suite was set apart from the hotel's other rooms, nestled at the top of a small round tower that abutted onto one edge of the main hall like a turret. Ethan had actually lost track of which of the senior staff members was meant to be using it currently, but it was clear that whoever they had been, Nia Clarke-Mills now outranked them. On reflection he supposed that being an executive of the company that was going to stop the country from dying meant you probably outranked most people.

In truth, Nia was becoming the wrinkle that bothered him the most. He'd spent the last half an hour of his limited thinking time shaving as Evie had insisted, but even having made the effort to remove his beard for her he was still wavering on whether he was willing to agree to any of this. Evie was one thing, he at least had a sense of who she was, but Nia was a total unknown. He was being asked to take a chance on committing himself to a woman he'd only just met, based solely on the say so of an algorithm he'd never seen in use.

But what was the alternative? Would he prefer to risk ending up like Tom and millions of others over taking a chance on Nia?

It felt like he was standing on the precipice of a cliff knowing he had no choice but to jump or be claimed by something looming behind him, but that he still wasn't sure if he could push himself over that edge.

The thoughts were still running through his head as he knocked on the suite door and Evie answered it. He wasn't sure what he had expected, that some mad scientist's lair might have suddenly appeared in the hotel room overnight? Or to find the two of them splayed about in lingerie like some shitty romance novel? Instead, what he found was a perfectly ordinary, if fabulously expensive, hotel room with Nia and Evie both exactly the same as they were when he last spoke with them.

Evie's hand came up and caressed his now smooth cheek, tenderly acknowledging that he'd listened to her. She must have seen that the look on his face was more unsure than the gesture perhaps suggested, and she tried to reassure him with a smile, before linking her hand with his, black painted nails leading him inside.

Nia was seated in one of several leather armchairs set near the large bay window at the other end of the room that had previously overlooked the gardens and the green slopes of English countryside, now starkly interrupted by cables and trailers. On the coffee table in front of her, a metallic briefcase sat alongside a small plastic bin to dispose of used needles probably looking more ominous than she had intended. As before she watched him carefully, but knowing what he did now, the gaze felt different. It's as if she wasn't questioning him but questioning herself, looking as if she needed to constantly keep scrutinising her own judgement without starting to second guess.

The elevator ride on the way up had been spent considering what, exactly, Ethan planned to say to Nia when he saw her, but he'd come up short. It was only as Evie guided him to a chair opposite her that his gut kicked in and he settled on something.

"You don't give much away, do you?"

The direct approach felt like it would be something Nia respected more, although he instantly regretted how accusatory it sounded. However her expression softened, the poise she still managed to hold slipping for just a moment. She looked apologetic.

"No...I suppose I don't always."

Ethan didn't reply, letting silence hang in the air for just longer than was entirely comfortable, making it clear he was waiting for her to go on. Nia sighed, exasperated, although whether it was with him or herself he wasn't able to tell. She'd foregone her coffee cup from earlier and as a result her fingers drummed against the arm of the chair in what he could only presume was a nervous tick she normally did her best to avoid as she picked her reply.

"You aren't the only one that this is daunting for. Feeling like I'm keeping things in control is how I deal with them. This is," another beat, "how I told myself things were meant to play out. It's not a shot in the unknown, just another line in the script."

"You're nervous?" Evie asked, voicing Ethan's surprise for him.

"Of course I am."

God, she clearly hated this, not the situation, or at least not entirely, but the candour. Ethan couldn't tell if it was the emotional honesty that bothered her or something else, but the pace of her fingers picked up the drumming faster.

"I know exactly how this is meant to go, and yet..."

"Taking that step over the cliff edge is harder than you thought," Ethan said.

She forced her fingers to stop, curling slightly into a grip of the front of the chair's arm instead. And nodded.

"You know, I ran us through Delphi ten times just to be sure. I even had a contact in the US run us through Oracle as well in case the UK government fucked their system up by going with the lowest bidder, like they always do. I'd been fully prepared to need to find people from outside Taymont to run this project with and to find one person with such a strong match felt unlikely. To find two of you in a sample size of less than 100, well, the odds of a lottery win were higher. But no matter how I had things tweaked, how many controls I tested or systems I put things through, there was the algorithm telling me that you are the best fit I could ever find in partners."

Ethan wasn't even sure where to start unpacking that for her. Here she was, being told to surrender herself to this, that everything by the odds should go right. But if things didn't... the questions that would leave her with...

"No pressure then," Evie managed, forcing a smile from the older woman.

"None at all."

At some point, Ethan wasn't sure quite when, the atmosphere in the room had shifted. Initially, the question of whether this was going to happen still lingered in the air but now, both Evie and Nia were speaking with a tone that suggested it was already decided. It was almost like he was in a car that was beginning to roll downhill and he was watching to see if anyone else was going to pull the handbrake, without knowing quite why he wasn't moving to do it himself.

"That's them," Evie asked, indicating the briefcase.

With a nod of confirmation from Nia the younger woman moved decisively towards it. Held shut by a pair of heavy clasps that clunked with what felt like an unnecessarily dramatic amount of weight. As Evie swung the lid open the sound of Nia's drumming fingers started again. A brief draft of cool air accompanied the reveal, the case refrigerated for the vaccine's storage.

They didn't look like much, a couple of small, pre-filled syringes sat resting in a padded compartment, batch numbers and expiry dates printed neatly on the side along with the word Gemivax and a small green Averna 'A'. There couldn't be more than 2 millilitres of milky fluid in either of them.

It almost felt ridiculous to Ethan that this was what the fuss was about, but here they were, 3 people who were practically strangers about to enter what somehow felt oddly like a suicide pact. Where one went they were all going.