Jay & Essex log
Aug. 15th, 2008 11:05 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsJay wakes up in Muir, discovering he's has undergone some treatment from the hand of Dr. Essex. He learns what happened to him and the end result of so many powers coming together.
"Please do not try to sit up, young man. Your healing factor will be several weeks before it resumes normal function." The room Jay was in was an open, sterile area. Muir Island had traditional recovery rooms, but obviously they hadn't finished with whatever they started yet. On a table across from him was another man, but hideously misshapen and twisted. He was breathing with a steady rasp, and Jay could see massive white wings, slashed with dark burns, stirring slightly, overhanging the sides of the surgery bed.
"Normally we would keep you sedated for several days following surgery, but I believe six hours should be sufficient to keep you out of the danger of shock." The voice materialized into a tall, older man, with dark hair and a precisely trimmed mustache and goatee. There were slight flicks of grey in his dark hair, and lines webbing his pale features. He viewed Jay for a moment with very cold grey eyes, his look searching and seeming to assure that no secrets could be hidden from him. "How do you feel?"
Jay's first impulse was to bolt upright, fall into that flight instinct he disliked so much but couldn't ignore. His body wouldn't listen and he tilted his head back, the smell of a sterile environment filling his drug induced senses. His tongue felt like sandpaper in his mouth and he opened it to say something only nothing but a sigh came out. Rolling to his head to the side, he opened his eyes and inwardly recoiled at the sight next to him. He didn't recognize the person, didn't know who or what that was but it was a sight. One he gladly turned away from.
The deep penetrating voice drew his attention away and held it. A doctor? Maybe, yeah maybe but he didn't know. His thoughts were a mess and he couldn't sort out what was being said to him, as simple as it was. He felt groggy, his movement sluggish like a weight was tied down to where he lay and though his chest ached, he felt the ripple of it through every inch of his body. "Ah feel like hell," he voice came out hoarsely and lifted a hand to brush over his eye. He felt like hell, but he never felt better? It'd probably sound like a nutty thing to say but he wasn't sure he could say it any other way.
"What happened?" he asked. The last thing he remembered was being told was to count backwards while that voice, that deep voice was giving out very direct instructions.
"We completed surgery earlier today. You, young man, had a parasitic collection of tissue which had tapped directly into your nervous system, and was suppressing your healing factor while it slowly rewrote your genetic code. Quite intriguing." The man took Jay's pulse as he talked, and Jay could see the patterns of scarring on his hands, as if he'd been badly burned. "Fortunately, once the connection to the origin of the parasite was severed, it was a fairly straightforward procedure to remove the foreign tissue. I would advise avoiding flight for the next week or so as well. Your body will be essentially trying to reset itself, and there might be unexpected side effects."
"Side effects?" he repeated dumbly. What the hell? This whole mess was screwed up and he lay there, watching his pulse get taken like it was the most fascinating thing. He studied the man in front of him as much as he could, or as much as his mind would allow for it. The drugs in his system slowed his thought process down a lot and he found even the simplest explanation too much to comprehend. "Ugh," was all he could manage and repeating himself that he felt like hell felt like the right thing to do but the wrong thing to say. "Who's he?" Jay asked, gesturing his head side ways but didn't turn his eyes to look. The sight was gruesome and he wasn't sure his stomach allotted for it.
"The doctor at the clinic that treated you. While you were unconscious, he implanted a cluster of his own genetic material into your torso, where it began to grow, attaching itself to the spinal cord. The drugs you were taking were designed to impair your healing factor long enough for the growth to alter its genetic composition enough that your body would accept it as part of itself." He smiled thinly. "Something akin to a fetus. As it grew, it began to replicate your DNA and some how transmit it to Doctor Skrul. His power allows him to rewrite his own genetic code to include the x-factors of a number of different mutants; a sort of celluer telepathy, so to speak. Really quite intriguing. As part of the process, the transmission appeared to block your body's own access to the energy needed to sustain your mutation, and would have eventually killed you through any number of secondary infections on your compromised system."
"Jesus," Jay said and tried to sit up again only to have a hand placed firmly on his shoulder, pressing him down. His skin crawled with the idea of something growing inside of him, breaking down his body to allow itself to survive and fuel someone else. "Do Ah wanna know how you found all that out?" he asked, knowing full well he wouldn't grasp that answer very well either. The whole explanation seemed far fetched, right out of some of the missions he read for the X-Men. Nope, he definitely wasn't cut out for the team stuff, but neither was he cut out for this victim stuff either. It brought down a whole new respect for people who got sick and were vulnerable to viruses. He'd forgotten how shitty it felt to throw up.
"Moira MacTaggart is one of the premiere geneticists in the world, and I'm not without some skill myself." He said dryly. "The X-Men tracked down Dr. Skrul, and his physical condition made his powers quite obvious. I've been able to neutralize the connection by removing a small portion of his brain. You, and any other victims who might still be alive, are now free of his influence. I'm afraid that Dr. Skrul does not have long to live though. His body and his mind could not sustain that number of additional mutations, and their combined effects of them will kill him fairly shortly. Pity. A truly remarkable mutation. I can only wonder what it could have genetically been intended for."
"There ain't anything you can do to help him?" Jay asked. An eerie, surreal sensation swept over his body, knowing that he lay beside a dying man. It mattered that the guy had almost killed him and had every bad intention possible but he felt it was somehow unfair. There should have been a way to help him but missing a part of your brain so others would live? That was obvious. Though it made him question how much sanity the general population of doctors had, especially the one in front of him. He seemed very confident, just as the other doctor was.
"No. Even if there was a way to reverse the effects of his intentional overload of his mutation, there's simply not time to develop such a treatment. Dr. Skrul is in heart failure, kidney failure, liver failure, traumatic system shock due to vastly divergent mutations which do not have the adequate adaptations across his entire system..." The doctor checked off a note on the page. "For example, young man, without your healing factor, your body could not sustain your wings for very long. That was what almost killed you, in fact. Dr. Skrul added the effects of multiple mutations to himself, but his body was simply unable to modify itself to balance the physical and energy needs of all the divergent types, and is breaking down as a result."
Now he couldn't pull his eyes away from the doctor who assured him that he was just fine at the time, that he had only passed out for a few minutes and gave him the medication that was supposedly on trial to help the mutant community. He watched the rise and fall of the man's chest, the breath that death slowly put a choke hold on and wanted to get up and leave the room. Immediately. "Ah wanna go," he tried to state in a firm voice, but the tremor in it was apparent. "Ah wanna go right now, please. Ah don't wanna be here when he dies." Whenever that was.
"I'll send you a nurse." He didn't seem to notice the tremble in Jay's voice, or certainly didn't regard it much. He made a few more notes and hung the clipboard at the end of Jay's bed. "I've prescribed a number of pills for you, including a sedative. Please do not be nonsensical about taking them. Your body needs rest and needs to replenish the nutrients that have been lost. My assumption is that it will take several days for your healing factor to reassert itself, so do not be alarmed if you feel ill or weak until that happens. If there are any complications, Moira and Charles know where to find me."
He stabbed the call button with a slim scarred finger to contact the nurse. "Best of luck, Mister Guthrie."
"Please do not try to sit up, young man. Your healing factor will be several weeks before it resumes normal function." The room Jay was in was an open, sterile area. Muir Island had traditional recovery rooms, but obviously they hadn't finished with whatever they started yet. On a table across from him was another man, but hideously misshapen and twisted. He was breathing with a steady rasp, and Jay could see massive white wings, slashed with dark burns, stirring slightly, overhanging the sides of the surgery bed.
"Normally we would keep you sedated for several days following surgery, but I believe six hours should be sufficient to keep you out of the danger of shock." The voice materialized into a tall, older man, with dark hair and a precisely trimmed mustache and goatee. There were slight flicks of grey in his dark hair, and lines webbing his pale features. He viewed Jay for a moment with very cold grey eyes, his look searching and seeming to assure that no secrets could be hidden from him. "How do you feel?"
Jay's first impulse was to bolt upright, fall into that flight instinct he disliked so much but couldn't ignore. His body wouldn't listen and he tilted his head back, the smell of a sterile environment filling his drug induced senses. His tongue felt like sandpaper in his mouth and he opened it to say something only nothing but a sigh came out. Rolling to his head to the side, he opened his eyes and inwardly recoiled at the sight next to him. He didn't recognize the person, didn't know who or what that was but it was a sight. One he gladly turned away from.
The deep penetrating voice drew his attention away and held it. A doctor? Maybe, yeah maybe but he didn't know. His thoughts were a mess and he couldn't sort out what was being said to him, as simple as it was. He felt groggy, his movement sluggish like a weight was tied down to where he lay and though his chest ached, he felt the ripple of it through every inch of his body. "Ah feel like hell," he voice came out hoarsely and lifted a hand to brush over his eye. He felt like hell, but he never felt better? It'd probably sound like a nutty thing to say but he wasn't sure he could say it any other way.
"What happened?" he asked. The last thing he remembered was being told was to count backwards while that voice, that deep voice was giving out very direct instructions.
"We completed surgery earlier today. You, young man, had a parasitic collection of tissue which had tapped directly into your nervous system, and was suppressing your healing factor while it slowly rewrote your genetic code. Quite intriguing." The man took Jay's pulse as he talked, and Jay could see the patterns of scarring on his hands, as if he'd been badly burned. "Fortunately, once the connection to the origin of the parasite was severed, it was a fairly straightforward procedure to remove the foreign tissue. I would advise avoiding flight for the next week or so as well. Your body will be essentially trying to reset itself, and there might be unexpected side effects."
"Side effects?" he repeated dumbly. What the hell? This whole mess was screwed up and he lay there, watching his pulse get taken like it was the most fascinating thing. He studied the man in front of him as much as he could, or as much as his mind would allow for it. The drugs in his system slowed his thought process down a lot and he found even the simplest explanation too much to comprehend. "Ugh," was all he could manage and repeating himself that he felt like hell felt like the right thing to do but the wrong thing to say. "Who's he?" Jay asked, gesturing his head side ways but didn't turn his eyes to look. The sight was gruesome and he wasn't sure his stomach allotted for it.
"The doctor at the clinic that treated you. While you were unconscious, he implanted a cluster of his own genetic material into your torso, where it began to grow, attaching itself to the spinal cord. The drugs you were taking were designed to impair your healing factor long enough for the growth to alter its genetic composition enough that your body would accept it as part of itself." He smiled thinly. "Something akin to a fetus. As it grew, it began to replicate your DNA and some how transmit it to Doctor Skrul. His power allows him to rewrite his own genetic code to include the x-factors of a number of different mutants; a sort of celluer telepathy, so to speak. Really quite intriguing. As part of the process, the transmission appeared to block your body's own access to the energy needed to sustain your mutation, and would have eventually killed you through any number of secondary infections on your compromised system."
"Jesus," Jay said and tried to sit up again only to have a hand placed firmly on his shoulder, pressing him down. His skin crawled with the idea of something growing inside of him, breaking down his body to allow itself to survive and fuel someone else. "Do Ah wanna know how you found all that out?" he asked, knowing full well he wouldn't grasp that answer very well either. The whole explanation seemed far fetched, right out of some of the missions he read for the X-Men. Nope, he definitely wasn't cut out for the team stuff, but neither was he cut out for this victim stuff either. It brought down a whole new respect for people who got sick and were vulnerable to viruses. He'd forgotten how shitty it felt to throw up.
"Moira MacTaggart is one of the premiere geneticists in the world, and I'm not without some skill myself." He said dryly. "The X-Men tracked down Dr. Skrul, and his physical condition made his powers quite obvious. I've been able to neutralize the connection by removing a small portion of his brain. You, and any other victims who might still be alive, are now free of his influence. I'm afraid that Dr. Skrul does not have long to live though. His body and his mind could not sustain that number of additional mutations, and their combined effects of them will kill him fairly shortly. Pity. A truly remarkable mutation. I can only wonder what it could have genetically been intended for."
"There ain't anything you can do to help him?" Jay asked. An eerie, surreal sensation swept over his body, knowing that he lay beside a dying man. It mattered that the guy had almost killed him and had every bad intention possible but he felt it was somehow unfair. There should have been a way to help him but missing a part of your brain so others would live? That was obvious. Though it made him question how much sanity the general population of doctors had, especially the one in front of him. He seemed very confident, just as the other doctor was.
"No. Even if there was a way to reverse the effects of his intentional overload of his mutation, there's simply not time to develop such a treatment. Dr. Skrul is in heart failure, kidney failure, liver failure, traumatic system shock due to vastly divergent mutations which do not have the adequate adaptations across his entire system..." The doctor checked off a note on the page. "For example, young man, without your healing factor, your body could not sustain your wings for very long. That was what almost killed you, in fact. Dr. Skrul added the effects of multiple mutations to himself, but his body was simply unable to modify itself to balance the physical and energy needs of all the divergent types, and is breaking down as a result."
Now he couldn't pull his eyes away from the doctor who assured him that he was just fine at the time, that he had only passed out for a few minutes and gave him the medication that was supposedly on trial to help the mutant community. He watched the rise and fall of the man's chest, the breath that death slowly put a choke hold on and wanted to get up and leave the room. Immediately. "Ah wanna go," he tried to state in a firm voice, but the tremor in it was apparent. "Ah wanna go right now, please. Ah don't wanna be here when he dies." Whenever that was.
"I'll send you a nurse." He didn't seem to notice the tremble in Jay's voice, or certainly didn't regard it much. He made a few more notes and hung the clipboard at the end of Jay's bed. "I've prescribed a number of pills for you, including a sedative. Please do not be nonsensical about taking them. Your body needs rest and needs to replenish the nutrients that have been lost. My assumption is that it will take several days for your healing factor to reassert itself, so do not be alarmed if you feel ill or weak until that happens. If there are any complications, Moira and Charles know where to find me."
He stabbed the call button with a slim scarred finger to contact the nurse. "Best of luck, Mister Guthrie."
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