Chapter Text
“Are you seeing what I am seeing?”
“Yes, this is incredibly concerning, at this rate it could develop into a mass extinction event”
She could feel her breath speeding up her heart was thumping wildly in her chest as she looked upon the results on her screen. Her lab partners had started gathering around her desk. A dark quietness had settled upon the lab as the realization set in that she had potentially discovered the nearing end of the human race.
“This is really not good, I don't know what to do.” She croaked, her throat had completely dried out. Her hands felt clammy and jittery.
She turned around and looked at the faces of her colleagues, all their faces showed an equal degree of devastation as her expression was showing. Ann, her assistant, had started sobbing, breaking the quiet.
“I have to run it again, this can't be true, there must have been a mistake.” She turned back around frantically trying to start her tests again, but her shaking hands were interfering with her plan. Hands enveloped her from behind and pulled her into a tight hug. “You have run all the tests multiple times, you are the most qualified neurologist on earth right now Sam. This is it, this really is it.” Lenore, her senior lab partner, was almost crushing Sam in her arms, pulling her tightly to her chest.
“I can’t accept that, there must be something we can do, there must be something!”
Sam shouted, her devastation and momentary hopelessness had immediately turned into anger, anger at the RDA, anger at her inability to create an immediate solution.
“We need a drink, and then we can start thinking of a solution.” Jim, her biochemistry technician, suggested.
“This virus is acting similar to a prion disease like the mad cow disease for example. The problem is that it is not transferred via consumption of infected meat, instead it is spreading via inhalation. The symptoms start out as a simple respiratory infection, a fever starts setting in, and the infected start getting continuously more disorientated and start experiencing delusions until complete mental collapse.”
“So what you are saying is that some people are getting air dementia and croaking a little early because of that?”
Sam had to keep her face neutral in front of all the members of the RDA appointed council for humanitarian issues. The question and the accompanied apathy and total lack of care for the entire population of earth was not shocking for her anymore.
If she were a less prepared person, without knowing that death was nearing due to her discovery, and with a lesser amount of whiskey in her bloodstream, the question would have thrown her off.
“There is no cure, we have tried every conceivable option. The virus mutation is almost immediate when a form of antibodies or vaccination is introduced. Death is a one hundred percent guarantee. With the current population density, the rapid spreading, and the lack of clean air, we estimate that the total population will be wiped out in approximately twelve to eighteen months. Since the virus has an incubation period of two weeks in which it cannot be detected by the infected since symptoms have not set in, we estimate that almost twenty percent of the population could be carriers right now.”
“So can you synthesize it?” a middle-aged man with black hair asked, Sam recognized him as Parker Selfridge. Son of Mark Selfridge, CEO of the RDA. He had been pushed onto the proverbial sidelines of the company after his colossal fuck up on pandora 9 years ago and put in this council as punishment by his father.
“Yes, we have managed to synthesize a version of the virus, but we are not fast enough in developing a cure. As soon as we have managed to find some form of vaccination in the lab, the strain that is going around has already mutated.”
“Yes, but you could still use the lab strain, right?” He continued questioning Sam. The other council members were looking half asleep, some of them were scribbling stuff on their tablets, not even listening to her presentation.
“Use it how exactly, Sir?” Sam asked. “Well as a bioweapon of course, what else do you think we would need that stuff for?”
Her heart started thumping again, her anxiety had tripled ever since she discovered the virus three months ago.
“Sir, do you not understand the gravity of the situation we have at hand here?!”
Parker looked at her, surprised she was questioning his line of thought. Sam took a deep breath, willing to calm herself down. She would need another drink after this.
“The population is at risk of a mass extinction event, the people are dying, and you are thinking about weaponizing this virus? “She almost shouted at him.
“Well yes, we could use it on Pandora to finally get rid of their natives and settle on the land.” He said calm, collected, and so sure of himself a smug smile gracing his very punchable face.
Sam could not belief what she was hearing. She could feel her heart racing, an angry vein had definitely appeared on her forehead and she was one hundred percent sure she looked like a crazy woman when she jumped up from her centered seat in the auditorium. She tried to reach over to Parker but as soon as she had reached him, security personnel had grabbed her by the shoulders and sent her down with their electronic prods. She did not even register the pain of the electricity racing through her body as she shrieked at the councilmembers
“You will be complicit in our extinction do you hear me! There will be no more people left to settled on Pandora because we will all be dead by then!”
She was dragged out of the auditorium still looking at the members, seeing their condescending smiles, and shaking heads as she trashed in the hands of the security guards. They threw her out of the building, dropped her in a puddle of toxic rain in the middle of the street, and left her there.
Jim passed away first, two weeks after her council audience.
Lenore followed 5 days later.
Ann fought the hardest out of the three, in a moment of clearance she had recognized Sam as she trashed in her isolation room in the hospital. Tears had streamed down her face as she tried to communicate with Sam, only warbled sounds and foam escaped her mouth.
She passed away a day later, in agony muscles cramped so tightly that she had resembled a bow on her small white bed until her heart stopped.
The explosion followed two days later. Her life's work, all her lab equipment, her projects and most importantly all her discoveries and the work of her dear colleagues had gone up in flames in two seconds. Hadn't she drunk as much yesterday and her hangover wouldn't have slowed her down on her way to work, she would have gone up in flames too.
She barely noticed the bottles clinking in her small cube apartment. Sam had emptied the last of her whiskey stash and was debating if she should pull the plug and wash the pills down with the rest of the whiskey left in her glass. When another bottle fell over, she rolled around on her small mattress to look for the source of the noise. Everything was spinning and she couldn't make out anything in the darkness without her glasses on. Sam closed her tired eyes again, she should sleep a little and when she woke up and was able to stand again, she should go for the pills in her nightstand. There really wasn't any other option left for her. The virus hadn't gotten to her yet, but the population had almost halved. Her predictions had been surpassed by the rapidly spreading virus. There had been reports in the past two weeks of around fifty kids surviving the virus other than that, nothing had really changed regarding the survival rate of humanity. Even the rich people that had been treated with Amrita to stop their aging, and generally made them immune to most, if not, all human illnesses were not spared by the virus. Maybe it was earth starting to fight back after being ruthlessly exploited for years.
Her vision kept spinning violently, she had overdone it tonight with the whiskey, so much so she couldn't pull through with her original plan and down the pills. With the spinning came the nausea. She turned further around over her mattress and started to retch. Through her blurred vision she noticed a pair of boots in front of her face that decidedly did not belong to her. The retching continued.
“Oh, hell nah!”
“Man, that's fucking vile!”
Two male voices exclaimed. Sam looked around disoriented. Someone was in her room. Sluggishly the panic started to set in despite her inebriation. The light was turned on, and Sam immediately closed her eyes to the bright lights.
Scrambling from her small bed, she fell straight onto the floor and slipped in her own sick before crawling into the nearest corner, still blinded by the bright light.
“Doctor Samantha Williams?” A third female voice asked.
Sam tried to disappear into her wall, still scrambling in the corner, panicked breaths escaping her disheveled body. She was finally able to make out three figures clothed head to toe in combat gear in her room rifles slung around their bodies.
“What do you RDA fucks want from me, I have nothing left, fuck off!” She tried to scream but her voice cracked, and it came out more as a warbled squeaked, speech slurring from her whiskey escapades.
“Mam, with all due respect, we are not RDA and we are here to help you the female voice said again.
“More like we need her help.” One of the men spoke under his breath.
“I don't care fuck off!” Sam choked out as another wave of nausea overcame her and she vomited on herself again.
“Oh come on man, that's just nasty.” “Shut up Spike!”
“Doctor Williams, you will have to come with us.” The female RDA fuck uttered.
In her desperation, Sam started to reach for the drawer in her nightstand with the pills inside. She would not let herself get captured and exploited by the RDA. She had to end it, or her work would be used to bring more suffering upon this universe.
“I won't be doing shit! Fuck off!” She exclaimed again as she fished around in her drawer with one shaky hand as she kept her eyes on the intruders.
She grabbed the pill bottle and tried to get the cap to open but with the alcohol still cursing through her blood and the vomit making her hands slippery the cap wouldn't screw open.
“Oh no you don't!” One of the intruders exclaimed in shock and knocked the bottle out of her hands.
“Sedate her Spike!” “Man knock her out now!”
She was trashing in their grip, trying to escape desperately when she felt a sharp pain in her arm and the world turned dark and quiet.
Humanity, you have been abandoned by your leaders. The RDA has forsaken you.
My name is Doctor Samantha Williams. I discovered the Virus Alpha-1-0-B. I warned our leaders months ago. I pleaded with them to listen to me, to save humanity. They bombed my laboratory instead and took everything that was dear to me.
The government structure that the RDA upheld has collapsed. Earth is running out of breathable air, now that the generators that fortify the artificial atmosphere have no operators left.
Listen to me, you will not survive this, humanity might not survive this, but we still have a chance. Your children might have a chance! The children that have previously survived the virus can be saved. Send them to us, the resistance cares for you comrades!
“Is this alright? Can I get my drink now?” Sam asked after delivering her speech for the hundreds time.
The tall, serious looking woman with a side cut nodded at her. “Yes, perfect this time boss, here.” She reached in one of her cargo pants many pockets and pulled out a flask.
“Just one sip, you can't be drunk of your ass when we start the ISV.”
“Yeah yeah.” Sam mumbled and took a deep pull of the flask before it was inevitably ripped out of her grasp. They were going to leave earth forever in approximately 26 hours. The broadcast of Sams' speech was already being sent out all over the planet in hopes of reaching some of the surviving children.
Four weeks ago, she had been kidnapped out of her cube apartment by Nadja, the serious looking woman beside her. Spike and another man called Roger. They were part of the resistance against the RDA government and had been operating well before the Virus had broken out.
After all the RDAs' figureheads had been brought down by the virus, they had taken control of their left-over space stations and ISVs that were operable. The resistance had been gathering engineers, doctors, soldiers, scientists, and other people that were agreeable to their cause.
Apparently, they had had their eyes on Sam and her Team for some time now and after the explosion in her lab, they had to act in fear of losing Sam to a left-over RDA cell attack. So, they had kidnapped her.
Nadja, as one of the decision makers in the resistance movement, had decided that Samantha would make the perfect leader of their movement once she sobered up.
Roger was decidedly against giving Sam any decision power after she had thrown up on his boots. Spike was unspoken on the subject, he just wanted to survive and thought Sam was valuable from a science standpoint since she was the most accomplished neurologist on the planet, even more so now that most of the other ones were dead or going to die, either of the virus or lack of air.
Sam got up from her recording place and slowly made her way to her new living quarters in the ISV. Their trip to Pandora would take six years. Someone, most likely one of Nadjas underlings had delivered her some space sludge food to eat, so she started to chow down, she was supposed to get used to the food. They had cut her drinking down to a minimum so she could be put into cryo for the first three years of their journey as a resource conservation method since the kids onboard could not be put into cryo.
They had five ISVs, four hundred people could fit on each. Half of them would be children, a quarter would be caretakers, scientists, and the other quarter would consist of resistance soldiers. They would rotate the cryo phase so in total every adult onboard of the ISVs would be frozen for about three years total.
Sam would be one of these adults. She did not feel like she deserved a place on board one of the hundreds of children that would arrive too late at the ISVs deserved her place.
She could have done more, should have done more, and maybe humanity would not have to go to a planet they were not welcome to in hopes of rescuing their future. They ... she had failed, disastrously so. Guilt was eating her alive, and the alcohol rationing she was subjected to only worsened her anxiety.
Sometimes when she closed her eyes, she could still see Parker Selfridges condescending smile, hear the laughter of the council members, see the foam spewing from Ann's mouth. The memories kept tormenting her, so she stood up from her small utilitarian table and went to her sink to splash water on her face and calm down.
She looked at herself in the mirror; her green eyes were glassy and irritated. Her curly brown hair was dull and greasy, her once tan skin, was grayish. She had lost a lot of weight due to her alcoholism and was mostly skin and bones. Nadja had uttered her concern multiple times if putting her into cryo in this state was a good idea, but Sam had insisted. If the position as a somewhat leader of their new colony was thrust upon her, she had to at least try and get sober. Her body would be able to recover in cryosleep, she would still be an active addict when she woke up but the pain of going through physical withdrawal would have been .
Her face was puffy and swollen, probably from crying more likely from drinking, or both.
She would get a new chance, a new life and she could not waste it, no matter how underserving it she was, that's what Nadja had told her. She still didn't believe it for herself, but she saw the logic in it. At least, that is what she believed, she could repay some of her debt to humanity by being useful as a neurologist on the new planet if she turned out to be unfit for leadership.
Slowly drudging herself to her small cot, she laid down to wait for the cryo signal to go off. 26 hours until launch. 16 hours until she was put to sleep for three years. The small digital clock on her nightstand was only slowly moving. She turned around on her mattress, mindlessly trying to pass the time and abate the thoughts. She closed her eyes just resting, not wanting to fall asleep.
The siren was loud. Sam was ripped from her restless sleep by the wailing of the cryo signal. Adrenalin was running through her veins because of the unceremonious alarm clock. She got up rather uncoordinated and made her way to the cryo stations. Nadja, Spike and Roger were already waiting at her station, as well as the cryo nurse that would freeze her for the foreseeable future.
“Up you go boss.” Nadja said patting on the cryo capsule bench that was pulled out.
Sam lay down on the capsule looking up to Nadja. They had grown a bit closer during the last four grueling weeks of preparation. Nadja had given her many pep-talks and already unofficially made her the boss of this whole operation. Nadja squeezed her shoulder tightly.
“We will see each other in the blink of an eye again boss. I hope you are excited for three years of combat training “ She said as she with a grin and rubbed Sams shoulder. Spike's face came up next.
“I guess uhm, don’t die boss. We need you. Have a good rest.” He said, patting her head awkwardly.
Roger didn't say anything, her just nodded at her, face kind but still critically considering the woman laying in front of him. The cryo nurse started her work, Sam was familiar with the process, during her residency she had observed a lot of cryo procedures. She wasn’t worried about being put to sleep.
The anesthetic pushed into her veins as she was pushed into the chamber, darkness enveloped her.