apocalypsehowcomm | [Open] And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills

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[Open] And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills - Log

Who: Luka Kovač and you!
When: June
Where: Wolf Pen still
Summary: Player plot begin, gets aligned to the Stranger
Warnings: Addiction and related themes, blood, injections, body horror, blood-borne/sexually transmitted illness, body dysmorphia, panic attacks and visceral descriptions of them, medical themes, terminology, injections, and procedures, PTSD, trauma, potential talk of war, violence, family/child death, self harm references, suicidal ideation

[Note: This begins the following player plot where Luka and Ade have been trying to use Ade's blood for healing secretly. Luka will swear anyone to secrecy if they discover what they're doing here because they can't let ADI find out. Luka will be getting 2 new powers and you can opt in here.]

a. Can I sail through the changin' ocean tides? - OTA

Their plans had been working.

It was such a good plan, wasn't it? A way to get back at the Entities, to finally have some agency, to be able to use this fear against them. Sedate a patient while giving them a dose of Ade's blood with c'nataat to heal them, taking on a dose himself and the fear for himself when Ade donates to 'pay' the price of fear for the Entities. Trying to hide it, trying not to make too big of a fuss because he knows ADI would not be happy with this. And for a little, while, it was going great. Nobody knew what they were doing, and it was helping people.

Until it stopped working. Until they found out they needed more fear for more healing, which meant more fear for him.

But it's fine. He can deal with the fallout, he can deal with the fear--he's felt plenty of fear before, been through horrific things, and this--this isn't anywhere near with what he's already experienced. But he has a funny feeling the Entities might take issue with that.

So there are more doses. The mutations get worse, but it's temporary so it's fine. He can deal with the fear.

It's a different kind of fear than what he's used to, though. He's used to threats against his person, against people around him, death and destruction and injury. This wasn't like that, though. This is something on a different level. The awareness that there's an alien lifeform in him shouldn't bother him that much, because he understand what's going on scientifically--it's no different from a unique treatment. But it does. It feels like it's changing him in a terrible way, in a way that takes away his humanity and won't give it back.

What it looks like isn't helping, either. He'd undone his shirt when small dots of bio-luminescence became visible underneath. The skin on his chest was a different...texture, almost as if it was fading away in spots, until, horrifically but also fascinatingly, he could start to...see things. Like it was becoming transparent, the organs underneath toiling away, bright spots of luminescence trailing up on each side. It was actually really cool if it wasn't so scary.

He's had a lot of doses today. He really should just stay in the room for the day, and pretend he's sick. He's not sure how long the mutations will last--it shouldn't be too long, the first time it was only for a few minutes, but he knows the longer this lasts, the more doses he takes, it'll fuel the fear price and then he won't have to worry about this until next month.

Except he forgot to grab enough food to last for the day so he's just going to sneak downstairs to run to the nearest convenience store. The mutations aren't visible under the long jacket, and he's wearing sunglasses. A little warm for the weather, but these were the mountains, after all. Surely it's fine?

b. But time makes you bolder - OTA

It's funny how much you plan things and yet they still go so terribly wrong.

He knows he ought to be used to that by now, as an ER doctor. But still, after all the hard work he'd put in, he thought that maybe, maybe this was the once chance they could stick it to the Entities, that they could finally have a little good in a world where there were things trying to actively snuff it out.

Maybe that's what happened here. Maybe one of them noticed.

He didn't have time to give the sedative to the patient and they would have to suffer the effects of a c'nataat dose. As much as he hated to do it, it was a small price to pay. Except the patient seemed...fine. They didn't react, recoil in horror, except--Luka did. It was like getting hit with a hammer made out of fear chemicals, his adrenaline shot up, and that same sensation he gets when he pays the price for the doses echoes in his head like he's been thoroughly replaced by an alien. It's so sudden and so ridiculous he doesn't know what to do for a moment except sit there and take it, trying to breathe through the horror until it fades.

...what was that?

Until it happens again. And then again, in a completely different situation--where he realized that what was happening was completely artificial. It was simple--the patient was terrified of doctors to the point that their blood pressure was always high whenever they needed to see one, except that around him, they were calm. The patient seemed pleased, because this had never happened before but there was a brief moment, when Luka had gone to grab something out of a cabinet, they screamed and said they saw a ghost. And that it was right where he'd been, and they'd ran away--and the same time, fear was pressing down on him in a strange way--adrenaline spiking, anxiety, as if he was terrified about what he would say about their condition. For a moment he wondered if maybe the mutations had come back, somehow, on their own--but he hadn't been on any doses in awhile and still looked perfectly human. Didn't he?

It was maddening. Madness. What was going on? The only thing he could do was to test it out, see if the conditions were repeatable.

He's out on the town, stuffing his hands in his pockets. How the hell was he going to figure this out? Was it based on fear? If he found someone that was afraid, would he take their fear on, or something? Why was this happening?

...he can only hope that this all hadn't caught up to them. That the Entities hadn't finally taken notice.

He's pretty sure they've taken notice.

c. - For Addie

He's running the medical station today and everything is fine.

He's fine, patients are fine, weather's fine.

It's not like everything is starting to catch up to him and become a disaster in any way, shape or form. But he can't worry about these things, because despite the complications, it's still working. The c'nataat dosing is still working, along with the sedation to avoid them from taking on the fear, and what's so bad about him taking on the fear, anyway? That's what he's been doing all along, paying the price so that they don't have to? So really.

It's fine.

He's set up a small curtain in the back of the table and he doesn't dare offer any doses if anyone from ADI is around. There's an older man sitting in the chair by the curtain, and Luka is quietly consulting with them. It's someone with an awful cough and Luka sounds kind, compassionate.

"Your cough isn't going to get any better. And even without extensive testing I can tell you that your prognosis is very poor. Life-threateningly so. We have a treatment that can help you, and it's a fairly simple one. I'll give you something to calm you and make you sleep for a few minutes, and it's a one-time injection. It's, admittedly, fairly experimental but I can assure you it's very effective."

d. - Wildcard - Want a scenario not listed here or anything specific? Anything goes! Hit me up at

indymica

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His back hurts.

That's not surprising after what happened in the mine but the terror of his encounter there and the physical discomfort make sleeping near impossible. Carter has tried his usual yoga poses - pidgeon, sphinx, cobra. While it does release some of the tension he's been holding, it doesn't give him the needed relief.

His mind of course tells him it knows of some other form of relief but he pushes that thought away.

It's fine. It will pass. He just has to be patient.

Of course Luka's various assortments of beer bottles don't help with that. He can feel himself looking over, staring at them as they seem to stare back. It makes him angry but he tries not to be resentful. His anger is about himself, not Luka and he knows he should just talk to him, ask him to get rid of them, to not keep them in here.

To distract himself he grabs his journal and starts writing down everything he remembers from the mine. Tries to sketch the clawmarks. He can't quite bring himself to sketch the spikes smashing down and after a moment he flips the page, unwilling to deal with the images any longer.

Next he goes through mnemonics from his med school days. The nerves in the neck. The muscles in the arm. The bones in the upper body. Empty lists he keeps writing to clear his head.

It's late and he wonders where Luka is. Probably out and about. Getting drunk. He scowls, the thought of having to deal with him drunk tonight is... daunting.

He leans back and stares at the bottles again. Could one really hurt that much? It would help him relax, unwind, calm his mind. After what he's been through, he deserves one, doesn't he?

Ugh.

He brings his hands up, rubbing at his face. He should check if there are meetings in this town.

It's late when Luka comes back.

The door rattles and he's a little loud as he opens and closes it behind him. His movements are careful, as if he's being mindful of not wanting to wake Carter if he's asleep as he comes in, and there's a troubled look on his face. If he was going out for fun, clearly he didn't have a good time.

There's something else, too. For the briefest of moments as he walks in, it doesn't quite look...like Luka. Or a person, really, more of a shadow...it's probably just a trick of the light.

Probably.

Or it's a little leftover something from scaring someone just down the hall who thought he'd seen a ghost.

And then it's gone, moments later, as if it was nothing at all.

He can pretend it's not terrifying.

He's even good at pretending it's not terrifying, if he really tries to just...not think about it. But he knows that's the point, that it's supposed to be, and that the terrifying feelings were what they needed.

He had to pay the price, that fear. He had to think about it, had to experience it.

And now he had to pay more of the price.

Maybe if he pretends that it's cool. Admittedly, from a completely scientific standpoint and ignoring all the terror that came with it, it's actually really cool. Being able to see through one's skin, completely?

Every biologist and doctor in the world would be trying to break his door down to have a look. If it wasn't personally happening to him, he'd be just as excited. But right now it's taking everything he's got to calm down, to just deal with the distress, the feeling like he's being...rewritten.

And right now he's all covered up even though it's hot, trying to hide what's happening, a long jacket covering up to his neck, and a pair of sunglasses over his eyes.

He probably shouldn't have dosed this early in the day, but he wanted to get it over with, so.

"Ade?"

He knocks on the door of his hotel room, hopefully he's in...

Fortunately, Ade is in. He's been spending more time in his hotel room in general as of late, still recovering from that disastrous trip to the Woven Isle. C'nataat had made short work of the minor bruises and scrapes he'd sustained—it's the psychological damage that sticks.

He opens the door, his expression changing from trepidation to relief to confusion when he sees Luka standing there. There's the way he's dressed, for one thing, covered head-to-toe in a long coat and sunglasses. And then, even more potently, is the way he smells. On one level, Luka carries the scent of a distressed human—but there's something more, something stranger than that, as well. Several somethings.

"Luka? What happened?" Ade doesn't have to ask if something happened. It's clear that something isn't right. He opens the door wider for Luka to come in and shuts it behind him once he enters. He's all too aware that whatever is going on might not be something they want ADI knowing about. In the closer space, he manages to place one of the odd scents coming from the doctor. His face falls as he draws the connection. It's one of the many quirks of the wess'har's social olfactory system—you can smell it when someone shares DNA with you.

"Christ, how much did you take?"

On any other day, Carter wouldn't make too much of it. On any other day, he'd probably chalk it up to insomnia. To his own troubled mind, to this place just being this place. Would blink, once, twice, shake his head.

But he's been through the ringer and when something enters the hotel room, something unidentifiable, a shadow, a stranger, he jumps and backs off, chair toppling over with a loud noise.

And then the moment is over and it's Luka and Carter... stares before he exhales audibly with a hiss, rubbing at his face.

"Hey. Hi. You startled me."

"Hi...ah. Sorry, I didn't mean to." The chair startles him, and it takes him a second to realize what just happened.

There's something there, something faint, a weird sense that he's starting to notice more and more. Carter's fear is like a beacon, even though he didn't mean to cause it, it feels like he's drawing from it, in a way...

Dammit! The last thing he'd want to do is this, to Carter. Random strangers, it's not so bad, but not Carter. He can't stop it, though, can't block it off, he has no idea how any of this works, or how his own weird new abilities worked. All he can do is wince and try not to do it again.

He offers a wan smile, but he still looks wildly troubled.

"It's just me."

"Yeah."

It's just him.

Carter sighs and pushes a hand into his hair, then reaches down to pick up the chair again.

"Where have you been? You look like hell."

"I was just going for a walk."

It wasn't a lie, that's what he was doing. Luka tries to make his voice sound more normal, but he still sounds mildly unsettled. He tries for a laugh but it just sounds a little fake.

"Is it really that bad?"

"Yep. And then some."

Sorry. He's too tired and cranky and Carter to sugarcoat it.

But he frowns as he flops down on the chair again, searching his face with a hint of concern.

"You wanna talk about it?"

Luka goes quiet, moving over to sit on the edge of the bed.

Should he talk about it?

His mouth opens and closes, but he's so afraid of what Carter would say, would do if he told him...

...what would he think of him? After all they've been through...

"I..."

He huffs, looking down, wringing his hands together.

"I'm fine. I'll be fine."

Luka hurries in, shuffling past him quickly.

"I..."

Yeah, there's no hiding it around Ade, is there? He almost wants to laugh, it's so absurd. Or maybe cry. Or scream. Maybe all of the above, right now.

"Probably more than I should have?"

Which was certainly an understatement.

"I was trying to get more fear juice going, you know? I just didn't expect it to be...this bad."

He takes off his sunglasses, his eyes are no longer green but amber, the pupils dilating into four lobes instead of being round. There's a slight biolumiescence coming from the direction of his jacket collar, a hint of his skin texture different, almost...transparent.

Carter watches him for another long moment, how he moves around, how he almost talks but then doesn't, how he avoids his gaze.

"You don't look fine. You don't sound fine."

He raps his fingers along the table, playing with his pen.

"Did something happen?"

Again, he almost wants to add because when did something not happen in this crazy, messed up world?

He should just...maybe leave. Get out of here, to avoid the questions, to avoid him finding out...he shouldn't have to know, isn't it unfair to tell him? To make him aware of even more horrors? They've already had to deal with so much on this trip already...

Luka rubs his hair, caught between decisions, too afraid to go forward.

But maybe it's a good thing if Carter knew. It wouldn't be so heavy, carrying all of this himself.

Or maybe Carter would yell at him, tell him he's an idiot.

Maybe he needed that, too.

"Something...happened."

He can't look him in the eye.

"What did you see when I walked through the door?"

"I..."

The question catches him off-guard and Carter stammers for a moment, not knowing what to say. How to put that strange shadow into words. Not sure he wants to because it was just a figment of his imagination.

Right?

"I'm not... it wasn't... why?"

It's suddenly cold, he's suddenly cold.

Fear grabs a hold of him again, wondering what Luka means. Various moments flash before his eyes, Luka under Dunn's influence throwing rocks at him, Luka yelling at him until the light therapy takes effect, Luka on the ground groveling under supernatural influence.

"Luka, what's going on?"

He's afraid and he hates how he can tell, that something, somewhere is probably feeding off of Carter's fear through him.

It's such an awful thought he almost bolts out of the door.

"It's such a long story, I don't..." he rubs his face, sighing.

"What you saw, it's been happening lately. People see things, see me as something they're scared of and I...I can feel it. I can take...take their fear, if they're scared of something else? But then they become afraid of me. And I think something is feeding off that."

Edited 2022-06-06 06:14 (UTC)

"'More than you should have?' What does that—"

And then Luka takes off his sunglasses and Ade knows exactly what that means. He jerks back in shock, suddenly staring wide-eyed into the four-lobed pupils of a wess'har.

"Jesus Christ," Ade whispers, mind racing as he tries to comprehend what he's seeing. Wess'har eyes in a human face, but it's not just the eyes. Once Ade finally tears his gaze away from Luka's, he sees, too, the hints of bioluminescence under the man's collar, the glassy texture of the skin. Ade finally places another of the scents he'd picked up: bezeri. Like the bodies at Ouzhari. Ade feels sick.

What the hell is c'nataat doing to him?

"Shit. You walked here like this?" It's a stupid thing to focus on, but he needs to start somewhere. Ade herds Luka away from the door, then strides towards the windows, lowering the blinds. The citrus scent of agitation radiates from him. "It shouldn't be that bad. Hell, I've been full-blooded c'nataat for months and it's never done anything like that before. Then you dose up and it goes haywire?"

It doesn't make sense. It had taken Aras centuries of living among humans to start looking like them. Why would c'nataat suddenly start changing Luka to look more wess'har? Or bezeri?

Standing at one of the now-covered windows, Ade takes a deep breath to steady himself, then turns slowly back towards Luka. He motions at his jacket. "Come on. No point hiding it now."

"As best I could," Luka mutters, still looking like he's caught between being too embarrassed to show him the full extent of what's been happening and the need for answers. Because he really is the only person that can give him some starting point to what's going on here. "Nobody saw a thing."

It just sucks when he says it shouldn't be that bad and then, well. It is. There's a moment where he's pretty sure he smells citrus and that it's coming from Ade, too, which is interesting to note.

"If it helps, I did dose up a lot." Or well, helps probably isn't the best way of putting it, but it was somewhat of an explanation. "And by it being a lot, I mean, a lot. It was like the smaller doses weren't having the same effect anymore. Maybe the price has changed."

He doesn't want to say the word Entities but he's pretty sure that's what's behind all this.

Luka nods, taking a moment to steel himself up before removing the jacket. The full extent of what's happened is visible, but he undoes a few buttons of his shirt to show how far the translucent skin has gotten. It's to the point where one can see his heart, his lungs, and lines of luminescent spots and specks trailing up and around him, glowing faintly under the fabric.

"Yeah. It's bad." He sounds more than rattled.

Ade sucks in a breath when he sees the extent of Luka's changes: translucent skin, visible organs, extensive bioluminescence. He shakes his head, dumbfounded.

"It shouldn't matter how much you took. C'nataat isn't supposed to work like that." But then, c'nataat hasn't worked like it's supposed to ever since he arrived here. They'd thought the only change was that it was no longer a lifelong infection for anyone but Ade, but what if there's more to it than that? Ade drags a hand through his hair, trying to slow his own racing thoughts.

"It wants to keep you alive. Healthy. It does weird shit, but unless your life's in danger, it's supposed to do it slowly. Not like—" He gestures at Luka. Why would c'nataat give him those adaptations? What did Luka stand to gain from having transparent skin or wess'har eyes? If anything, such visible changes only place a target on Luka's back, especially now that they're supposed to be hiding their little project from ADI.

"Look, just don't take any more, alright?" Ade says, coming to a standstill to lock eyes with Luka. "If c'nataat isn't playing by its own rules anymore or if... if the Entities have corrupted it somehow, then it's not safe to keep using it—on you or on others."

There had been no way that Kate was paying two dollars for a pop from the vending machine at the motel. The prices in all of the vending machines are exorbitant. Kate can understand why. People are more likely to buy from nearby than venturing out. However, Kate is stubborn. She's just not going to pay that price. She's not.

She ends up paying less than two dollars for a bottle of pop. It's fine. Everything is fine. There's a better selection anyway. There's also a better selection of snacks. Kate is loading up and looking elsewhere as she rounds the corner and almost bumps into Luka.

"Oh. I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention."

Well.

That's certainly not what he wants to hear and is terrifying in and of itself.

"What? It's--it's not?"

So that means it's almost entirely the Entities that is probably doing this, unless the c'nataat just...does this here.

Unless it's just here to scare him. Which in that case, it's working.

"Whoa, let's not jump to conclusions now," he says, holding his hands up. "It's not that bad, and it's only just happening to me so far? So--so all I have to is just lie low for a little while when I take it. That's not a problem!"

What Ade is saying is actually the smart thing to do. They don't have the equipment or the time or the resources to really test what's happening here, so the safest thing to do would be to stop their little operation. But to give all of that up because he has to go through a little more fear? Nah. He's fine, really.

Edited 2022-06-08 03:30 (UTC)

At least there's really good snacks here at the convenience store. Luka is loading up on pre-made sandwiches--the quality of which is debatable, but he doesn't have much of a choice here, along with some chips, candy bars, peanuts, and soda.

Someone bumps into him and he quickly pulls up on his jacket, the slightest bit of bio-luminescence spotting might be visible along the bottom of his neck if he wasn't fast enough.

"Ah, no, it's fine, I wasn't paying attention anyway," he says amiably, with a laugh. He vaguely recognizes her from being with their group from ADI, so he gives a little shrug. "Glad this place isn't that far from the hotel, huh?"

There are plenty of good snacks and she really doesn't need as much as she is buying. However, she has Winter to think about. He appreciates sweets. There is also the train ride back to consider and the meantime between that. It's efficient to get everything in one go or that is what she will tell herself.

"I am. Have you seen the prices in the vending machines? It's criminal what they charge for a bottle of pop and a candy bar." One of the benefits of working in Administration is that Kate knows who is with ADI and who isn't. It's not that she goes out of her way to go through files. It is just that sometimes she has to go through personal files in order to issue IDs and funds. It's not snooping!

"We haven't officially met yet. I'm Kate."

"And what if it keeps evolving?" Ade challenges. "What if it finds a way to live in your bloodstream, too? Or someone else's? Because if c'nataat finds a way to become what it was in my world, we won't need the Entities to have an apocalypse on our hands."

A slow, suffocating, deathless apocalypse. A world where no one can die only sounds utopian until you put even a minute of thought into it.

"We don't even know what it's doing to you internally, either. You don't even smell human anymore."

She happens to be passing when she hears him talk. And there's a curiosity to why she stops, to the treatment he's proposing because Addison has encountered many of these coughs during her time at the med station here and she hasn't heard about a treatment.

"How experimental?"

She smiles, offering a hand to the patient he'd been speaking to. "Doctor Montgomery."

Luka keeps talking and Luka keeps explaining and the more he says, the worse it gets.

Take their fear.

Something feeding off that.

Carter tries to listen calmly, to force down the panic that threatens to overwhelm him. This is bad. Whatever it is, it is bad and it must have to do with the Entities and somehow, Luka is in the middle of it.

Okay. Breathe. In an out.

"Is it Dunn? Do you think there's something still lingering? We should go in, I can examine you, we can find out what's going on..."

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[Open] And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills - Log

d. wildcard, cw: addiction, chronic pain, alcoholism

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