Summary:Jeriah checks in at Medbay. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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The medical spaces are supposed to be places of rest and recovery. Of quiet and professional, prompt care. They are the fortress of the doctor and the haven of the nurse. And at the moment they've been invaded by someone who is somewhat… loud.
"Yes, I test positive for anthrax antibodies, Doc. I was in the army as I've said several times now. It's part of a standard deployment immunization package. You'll find I test positive for smallpox antibodies too."
That… that HAS to be Jeriah London. From the sound of things he's somewhat exasperated.
"Look, my contract says 'work with SHIELD'. It does not say 'undergo a full physical battery of tests after a twelve hour direct flight. Do what you absolutely need right now and then I am going home to sleep for a week. We'll get everything else done later, okay?"
There's quiet, concerned mumbling from the curtained off examination area as the resident retreats.
"Ai ya…" The hacker-soldier mutters as he sits back down on the exam bed, crikling that paper cover.
"That should help with the headache, Jemma." A male voice can be heard from beyond the curtains. "If you're still getting headaches, we'll get you in for a checkup on your implants. Though, you might find things settle down as you get more used to them."
"Thanks Roger. I'm sure it will better too. It's all just still so new." That's Jemma. Jeriah can be sure of that. The british accent isn't echoed by many. He can hear the pause and the footsteps approach his cubicle.
"I've got this one, Michael." It's oh so pleasant. "If you're sure, Jemma. He's being really difficult." "Oh, I'm sure and I'm sure he is."
Jemma appears through that curtain. "Mister London. We meet again. In for a routine, once over, are we?"
"Does a routine once over include a full blood panel to be read by a doctor who doesn't know what 'deployed to foreign nations by the US Army' means?" Jeriah's quick, Jemma will have to give him that. Even if he is surprised by her sudden appearance - and he's not, he heard her talking and sensed her implant - he goes right into the retort. That might just be habit for him the way he snaps it off.
"Or did they just send you over here because you've got an accent and they figured you could handle a guy called London?" That's asked with something of a smirk.
"London's not cultured like Devon is." Jemma rejoinds and picks up the tablet with London's information on it. "And Doctor Gersein is more than aware of what it means. He's being thorough. Something I'm not sure you're familiar with, Mister I can shoot from several positions and ask questions later." She's still sore, both physically and otherwise, by his intrusion.
"All new deployments to SHIELD have to undergo a screening process. We need to make sure you are who you say are, after all." What the hell does that mean, anyway. "And for people like myself, we need to catalogue abilities and … enhancements. So yes, it includes a full panel at the very minimum. Are you going to make this difficult or are we going to work together to get it done?"
"When I shoot, I AM asking questions. The question is 'are you dead yet?' I can ask it several thousand times a minute with the right gun." The hacker snorts.
"I am prepared to make everything difficult until I get some sleep. I'm a contractor, not an agent." There's a moment where Jeriah's eyes are hard. He may be used to dealing with similar situations as someone who has been on the private military scene for some time. He relents after a moment though.
"However I know you have a job to do. So I'm willing to stick around for the minimum you need for your paperwork. Everything else can wait until I've had a shower, a hot meal and a proper sleep."
London takes a deep breath and lets it out. "How's the head, by the way?"
"I see." Jemma just sighs at the quips as they keep coming. "Let me guess, most of your answers come in a similar manner." She shakes her head at the man.
"Contractor, Agent. Potato, Potatoh. It's all the same to me, I need to know who's on the books and what we need to consider. If it's not to your liking, take up with your employers. Until then, you're contracted to me and this is what your employers have signed off on." She sees the hard look and relents a little herself.
"I can live that accomodation, as long as you come back for the rest of it. Let me see what Doctor Gersein has recorded so far. That's an interesting set of antibodies in your panels. Can I ask where you've served or will need to kill me if you tell me?"
The question gets a sigh from the biochem. "It's recovering. I'm not allowed to operate heavy machinery for the next 48 hours. The whole episode gave me migraine like symptons."
"You are my employer. Hence my taking it up with you." Jeriah folds his arms and smirks. "You can ask where I served and I can tell you Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea and Germany. Officially. But where I served doesn't actually affect those antibodies. Anyone who deploys outside of CONUS gets those."
The acronyms. She's gonna have to get used to those.
"And I am assigned to you and Harper and DeHaven. So do I need a name for the three of you? Simharpven? Harpdehmmons? You're all three distinct people right? Not some kind of… three in one kind of creature? Anyway, you know where to find me and you have my phone number so it's not like you couldn't get me to come in if you had to."
A metallic head pokes in the curtain and Jeriah sighs.
"I swear these things. Get in here." The dogbot comes in and lays down out of the way."
"Sorry about the headaches, for what it's worth."
"Then if I'm employer, I tell you this is needed." Jemma answers quickly. His smirk and the smart rejoinder gets another look from the biochem. She'll pull his file up when she gets back to her lab and look through it. "Some of those antibodies are from the standard package, yes. You've others here that aren't usual." she adds.
He probably deployed somewhere … exotic … and picked up a mild infection. Which is why she's seeing some of what she is.
"You can call me Jemma, as I said. As for the other two, I'd suggest Doctor Dehaven and Consultant Harper until they tell you otherwise." The rest of the quip gets another flat look. "Are you always this abrasive? Or is just with women that you tried to hack?"
The appearance of the dog gets a curious look. "You have troubling controlling them? Or is it their programming to seek you out?"
His apology gets a self deprecating snort. "You're forgiven. I still don't understand why you thought it was a good idea."
"And as your employee, I do what every employee does. Bargain. I just do that by telling you that me not being up for eighteen hours is way more important than any paperwork, rather than going through a union steward." No he's not letting that go but at this point his tone is almost… light. As if he's carrying on the argument more to see how far she's going to push it than for any other reason.
"Are they not? I mean, there's all kinds of diseases out there. Who knows what I might have picked up? I'm not dead though so clearly it got handled. Or maybe I just took an exotic vacation." Vacation. And not that he was deployed somewhere that he can't talk about.
He was absolutely deployed somewhere he can't talk about. Maybe multiple somewheres. Those are antibodies for Treponematosis. Skin disease native to tropical climes. He hadn't mentioned anything especially tropical. And as he's not scarred, it probably wasn't too serious.
"If I'm not paying attention to them they tend to wander without explicit instructions. Or sometimes even with them. And I am this way with one hundred percent of the women I try to hack. I told you why I did it. It looked like AIM tech was active in your building."
"A bargain, you note, that I accepted." Jemma points out. "It was a more than reasonable argument that you laid out. Right now, we're engaged in getting that paperwork completed and you out of here" She might know she's being played.
"An exotic vacation would explain it, yes. So did you? Visit any of the tropics lately on vacation? Hawai'i is nice, or so I hear." Judging by the levels, Jemma estimates in the last three months. It wasn't serious, but enough that he developed some immunity.
There's a snort as she flips his records. "Ah yes, the reverbium implants. Those are noted. We'll want to take a closer look and see how they interact." He already knows her concerns there.
"One percent of the women, hmmm? Unsurprising you get the same response from all of them."
"A bargain, you note, that I accepted." Jemma points out. "It was a more than reasonable argument that you laid out. Right now, we're engaged in getting that paperwork completed and you out of here" She might know she's being played.
"An exotic vacation would explain it, yes. So did you? Visit any of the tropics lately on vacation? Hawai'i is nice, or so I hear." Judging by the levels, Jemma estimates in the last three months. It wasn't serious, but enough that he developed some immunity.
There's a snort as she flips his records. "Ah yes, the reverbium implants. Those are noted. We'll want to take a closer look and see how they interact." He already knows her concerns there.
"One hundred percent of the women, hmmm? Unsurprising you get the same response from all of them."
"Hawai'i. Yes. Or maybe I went on Safari. Or maybe it was a white water Amazon tour. Brazil is quite pretty, after all." Or maybe none of the above. The hacker gives her one more grin. Maybe he'll tell her at some point. She might be able to press him for information if she's really that interested.
"Well yes, it's the oddest thing. Every woman who has been Death-lok'd that I have hacked has responded the same way. Just spooky levels of coincidence."
Now his tone is dry. "What about the implants though? There's reverbium in the dog-drones weapons cores as well. And possibly also in my gun. They were sort of lousy with the stuff, AIM was. I gather it was the 'miracle element du jour'. They seem rather… excitable, those researchers they employ. Do you know something of it?"
"Maybe you did any of those things or maybe you did something else." Jemma agrees, not pressing but rolling her eyes at the grin. Maybe she'll ask again later. Or maybe she'll see what else SHIELD has on the hacker. He's been assigned to her team, after all.
"I see. So you're rather selective on who you penetrate then?" She's deliberately upping the ante and there's colour in her cheeks as she does. "I can't say why they might choose to respond that way. And why you thought it was an AIM node, I've no idea."
"You know very well, Mister London. I explained when we first met. Reverbium is being used in the weapon I'm tracing, it has mutagenic capabilities to make it bind and distribute better."
"I'd like to run tests on them all, if I can. We're still learning about it."
"Very selective. Aren't you lucky I mistook you for a hostile force? You might have missed being invasively hacked." Penetrated. Whatever. That smirk hasn't left London.
Until she mentions his implants. "Sort of depends on what you have in mind. I'm a little attached to them. Or, well, I'm a lot attached to them and as they're sort of under my skin I might object to being poked in particular ways because if you make them blow up…"
"I see … so it's ok for you to poke others in ways that may make them blow up …" Jemma knows he's smirking and knows that she's blushing. There's little she can do about that.
"I'd really just like to run some non-invasive tests, Mister London. See what I can discover that might give us insight into what AIM might be doing. Would it help if I said I don't intend to invade you or make your enhancements blow up?" Jemma is still reviewing his record, checking the information that has been gathered so far. It might help to keep her focussed and keep some of the blush under control. "I'm very good, or so I'm told."
There's a LOT of his record that's redacted. He's clearly ex special forces. Did two tours, spent a lot of it in a bunch of war torn hellholes and a lot more of it in places the US government isn't prepared to admit that it sent him. He's an expert combatant with a background in augmentive weapons tests and no small amount of skill with a computer as she's seen. He's been known in the last few years to take jobs specifically targeting AIM so it's possible that he's got a grudge. Or that they do.
"Well, since you're very good I suppose I can allow it." The smirk is back. "But will it be in private, these specifically non-invasive tests?" He's noticed the blush. Maybe he can make her catch fire.
"Well I mean to be clear I probably wouldn't have done that if I'd known it was you. And when I did it, I was TRYING to make you blow up."
Jemma will discover all this when she goes looking and Jeriah will probably get more questions from her.
The blush does grow, it's nearly flaming now but she rallies. "Well that depends on your preferences. Do you like things like this public or private?" She had imagined, as he well knows, the tests would be done in her lab or the medbay. At least until she learns more.
"Well now you know it is me, can I expect you to keep your digital hands to yourself?" As to nearly making her blow up, the headache is at least abating a bit.
"Oh I can do things in public if there's a call for it. You know, derring do and all that. Don't shrink from a challenge. Hoo-ah." This guy is probably trouble, but he's also probably very effective trouble. What with the armed drones and the hacking ability - and reverbium armor - he seems like someone who can get things done.
Just, you know, hopefully he's pointed and someone else when he's doing them.
"I'll keep them to myself yes. Unless you give me a reason not to."
"You're ex-marines, aren't you?" That's said in earnestness and unless Jeriah looks directly at Jemma, he might think she's being serious. She's not. There's an impish smile and gleam in her good eye. Baiting the ex-solder - she's sure he's pure army even if he's a bit of a jock.
"I'll get you to come by my lab when you've slept and we'll get started on the tests. For now …" the biochem taps the screen of her tablet and turns it to him. "… sign here and I'll let you go and find that shower and sleep you seem so desperate for." And yes, she's remembered what he said about the drones. She'll follow up on that later.
His last comment draws the blush brighter. "Well, maybe I'll give you reason to that includes my permission next time."
He's clear to go.
"No. You know how you can tell? My forms aren't signed in crayon." The ex spec-operator snorts. Yes he's army all the way and that includes the inter service rivalries that come with that. Go ahead, ask him about them. Actually no, don't do that. Not unless you want to kill a few hours.
He does sign, anyway, and no not in crayon. That would go poorly with the tablet anyway.
"Food, glorious foooooood…" He sings as he motions to the dog and heads toward the exit. "Catch you soon Doctor Jemma Harper DeHaven." Beat. "Medical Woman."