Summary:There's an accident in Jemma's lab Log Info:Storyteller: None |
Related LogsTheme SongNone |
  |
Whoop Whoop Whoop
That's the sound of the contamination alarms sounding in Jemma's laboratory. Jemma was working late and Jeriah knows she was still there. Which means, she's in there as this alert goes off.
From outside the lab, a smell of decaying flesh and something very acidic permeates the corridor and the doors to the lab are closed but not locked. Whatever triggered this, has been contained in the clean room that Jemma uses.
Question is. Where is Jemma? In that room or simply in her lab.
Jeriah pounds down the hallways and throws open the lab door with his sonic field at full power. He's hoping the disruptions in the air will keep whatever it is off him if it isn't contained though the fact that the doors open without him having to smash them means that either it is contained to the clean room or the biohazard systems have failed.
"Jemma?" He says rather sharply as he thrusts the doors open and looks around to take stock of the situation.
Would Jeriah have smashed through the doors if they'd been locked?
When the doors open, the smell in the lab is terrible - ten times worse, at least, then how it smelt in the corridor. The windows on the clean room that Jemma uses are hazy though - the haze a strange purple / grey that swirls around.
"Jeriah." Jemma says in a crisp British accent - she's in a clean suit with hood. Not in the room but it looks like she … might have been in there or perhaps going in.
"I hope the door survived your entrance."
"They weren't locked so yes. Tell me you're not going in there." She clearly is or is about to. She probably has to in order to shut down whatever is happening and what is happening does not look good.
"What is going on?" Clearly some kind of contaminant is loose. He goes to the terminal and accesses the environmental systems to see for himself what the extent of the damage is.
Jemma looks at Jeriah - it's weird, the cyborg in a clean suit like that. "Someone has to, eventually. I was about to check the system and make sure I could." She says calmly "Tell me you're not going to try and stop me."
The console responds to him, of course, giving him the read out. It's the ooze that Jemma's been testing for the last couple of weeks, according to the project record.
"You remember that bio-reactive ooze I was working with? I was doing some testing and it started to … change. I managed to close the room but I have to get it under control."
Jeriah can see the results. It was mildly responsive to the tests that Jemma had been conducting and then, without any changes in her inputs, it went crazy. Something had triggered it, but it didn't seem to be anything that Jemma was recording.
"Have we considered setting the room on fire…" Jeriah mutters. He knows that's probably a bad idea but fire is usually good at controlling biological agents. Then again if this is something that isn't controlled by fire all that will happen is the fire suppression system will spread it.
"So what exactly IS your plan then? You don't even know what set this stuff off."
"Evacuate the oxygen from the room and turn the heat up. I know from my tests it likes cold and oxygen. Then when it retracts, go in and contain it." Jemma says. So yes? She's considered fire. Sort of.
Jeriah can pull up the video of the lab. Jemma records everything that happens in there. There's the testing and then Jemma starts singing - quietly - which is when the ooze responds rather violently.
As they're talking, a large ooze palm hits the window on the door - breaking the purple haze. It hits with a thud and causes Jemma to jump. A muffled sound can be heard from the inside.
"Was anyone inside?" Jeriah says as he works the environmental controls. He doesn't see anyone who went in there which makes the human shaped palm a sort of bad thing. The fans begin to work and take the air out of the room. The should start to gutter.
"What's that noise?" It doesn't quite sound like a person but it most definitely doesn't sound like a fire.
"No. Of course not." Jemma answers indiginantly. "I wouldn't be standing out here if there was." She's looking at the hand though "That's not a per——"
The sound continues and gets a little more clearer as the haze fades from the room. Jeriah can now make out a oozey humanoid figure now. It's not got any real form except basic humanoid, where it's face should be is just a blobby mass. The sound continues and gets a little clearer
K Theeera Theeera
It's rhythmical.
The face presses against the window and looks out, right at Jeriah. Which is when it's features start to become more distinct. It's a purple, oozey, pulpy vision of …. Jeriah.
"Right…" Jeriah says as he links in directly to the environmental system and then simultaneously reaches out to snag Jemma's hazmat suit to yank her away while he pulls out his sidearm and sets his fields to full.
"This is why you don't poke biological goo!" He growls charging the electroplasma cores in his pistol.
"It's emitting some kind of sound. Is there something we can use in here to disrupt or destructively interfere with it?"
He's not clear how good electroplasma is against goo. It's never come up.
"Jeriah …" Jemma says but doesn't struggle when he tugs her away. "That's fascinating. It's … trying to emulate you. Look at that. It's taking form …" She's fascinated and starts to fiddle with her own terminal, collecting as many readings as she can as Jeriah growls.
"It's contained …" she points out.
K Theera Theera
Whateva wi' be will be
K Theera Theera
The sound continues repeating those two phrases over and over.
"Disrupt or destroy it? That containment unit is well grounded and the equipment protected. We could use the speaker system to emit different frequencies to see if we can disrupt the molecular bonds. Or we could overload the electrical system and make the whole unit an electrical conductor.//Jemma sees Jeriah charging his pistol. "Tell me you're not thinking of going in there…." she gives him his own words back.
"No I'm thinking of using a ten thousand degree fire to burn it." He's already called his dogs and they are at this moment tearing through the building's hallways to get to here. It'll be less than sixty seconds for them to arrive. They are sadly leaving a trail of spilled papers, tripped agents and similar behind them.
"It's… repeating a few bars from the song you were singing when you went in there. That's what set it off to begin with." Was it the frequencies in question, or is it something about the beat? Hard to say. Jeriah eyes the goo.
"It's contained NOW, but that containment wasn't designed for anything with hands. That thing created a corrosive atmosphere in there. We really don't need it out here. We've got to find a way to shut it down."
"And how do you intend to do that without going in there?" Jemma looks at the soldier-hacker, dragging the hazmat hood off her head. She's sort of resigned to the fact he's not going to let her in there right now and, to be honest, she's not keen to do something like that - again.
"Yes, it is. It's achieved some degree of sentience, I suppose." Which is a bit scary really.
Jeriah's words prove almost prophetic as the goo man reaches for the handle and starts to turn it. "Oh for heavens sake, can you not jinx things please?" Jemma starts to move to the door to try and hold the handle with her cyborg arm. She'll be able to do that, but not for long. The dogs should probably get here quick.
The environmentals keep venting the oxygen and heating the room, Jeriah can see the mass move more slowly but the effects are going to be quick. "Try the speaker system. If my singing did something, maybe frequency will."
The dogs slam into the room and that DOES damage the lab door. They very quickly take up crouched firing positions with turrets deployed and one of them making a low rumbling noise that sounds rather like a growl. Jeriah himself takes aim with his pistol. He hadn't been planning on shooting it in the containment. That's for if it got OUT of the containment.
"Trying something." It takes him a moment to isolate the frequency that Jemma had been using - on average - and he blasts that through the speakers in the room. Which are not music quality but he'll work with what he has.
The speakers crackle and pop. They really aren't high quality at all.
The oozey man struggles with the handle, fighting against Jemma's opposing grip on the other side - and … gets bigger … as the sound echoes through the room.
With a shove, it gets the door open, sending Jemma stumbling and tripping over one of the dogs and going sprawling.
The now rather large form seems to seep through the door and into the lab …
As if on cue the moment Jemma is clear all three of the dogs plus Jeriah open fire. The sonic blasters normally use powerful low frequency waves cause powerful compression blasts but as the hacker-soldier pours electro-plasma into the mass of goo he begins to modulate the frequencies of his dogs sonic weapons. The wave that he played from Jemma made it bigger. So he tries the wave's inverse, something that would destructively interfere. If that doesn't work he'll try brute force.
"How is it gaining more mass?!" He demands of the biochemist as he works the rather tight tactical situation.
Jemma struggles to her feet and gets behind the dogs, assessing the goo-man as Jeriah fires. "It's … not. Look at it, it's spread thin. Literally." She's right - it's just managed to stretch its form out.
Not that it matters as Jeriah hits it with the dogs and his own weapon. The man made of goo twitches and smokes - well hazes and its molecular structure starts to disintegrate, ending up in a gooey puddle on the ground.
A gooey puddle that twitches twice and then … stops.
Jeriah lets up the weapons fire after a moment. They've made a mess of the front section of the containment room but otherwise not too bad. Not too bad is relative term of course. Not too bad for a war zone. It's quite obvious that someone let off weapons in the lab, though. QUITE obvious.
"Is it done?" He says, not moving his weapon from it's position. Only Jemma will really know. Maybe. Possibly.
"Ummmm…." Jemma answers, stepping around the dog in front of her, nudging the ooze with her toe. "I … think so?" It's a mess, that ooze is everywhere. "At least for the moment. I'll have to clean this up and get the ooze into containment again."
She sighs as she looks at the mess they've made. "You're doing the paperwork for this one …"
She's already collecting a container and appropriate implements to scrape what she can up. Of the ooze that is.
"Are you alright?"
"Unhurt though it is a bit disturbing to be shooting yourself…" Jeriah approaches the ooze with weapon trained on it but when it doesn't move he finally holsters his sidearm and the dogs fold away their turrets. "You'll want to sonically isolate it."
There are all kinds of questions to be asking right now. Was the ooze sentient to begin with? Why had it reacted to Jeamma singing? What was with the corrosives it was throwing off? But what he actually asks is…
"… What on earth was that you had been singing?"
"Good dogs…" Jemma says as the turrets fold away. She evens gives them a pat on the head. Jeriah should *hate* that. "Mmmhmm. We've a warehouse for these types of things - where all the dangerous specimans go. I'll make arrangements to have it sent there.
There are a lot of questions and Jemma might be able to answer some of them. She won't be able to answer all of them - which might be frustrating.
"It wasn't as good looking as you.?" That's a statement that sounds a bit like a question as the biochem works. "But it was certainly trying to mimick you …" sort of.
There's a slight colour to Jemma's face as she glances up at Jeriah. "Que Sera Sera. By Doris Day." That's an *old* song and hardly anyone knows it anymore. "My mum used to sing it to me when I was little."
"It reacted to it. That was when it went nuts. It must have 'seen' you but I never entered the enclosure. Could it have seen me when I entered the room or did you have some other kind of contact…" He pauses. "You don't have any of the slime ON you anywhere do you?"
In fact it's best to check this now. Was she hazmatted up when she was initially working with it?
"And yes. Send it to the warehouse. Or Rikers. Either or."
"It didn't start transforming to your features till it pressed it's 'face' against the window …" Jemma points out. "I was wearing the suit when I went in there, I don't think it touched my skin at all." With the goo collected, and the area checked thoroughly, Jemma stands and holds her arms for Jeriah to check her. Suit first, then she'll remove it. If he finds any tears, they'll know they'll have something to be concerned of.
"You got here rather quickly, when the alarms went off."
"Have you seen how much running I do?" Jeriah smirks. He'd been nearby and he is very very fit. The hacker examines Jemma but finds no tears in the suit and no evidence that any goo got on her. Since it's caustic, apparently, she'd probably know anyway. "You're clean."
Which is a relief.
"So… I take it you'll be taking a late lunch then?"
"Not really. Maybe you should show me more …" Jemma answers, blushing at her own audacity. "Of course I'm clean." She starts to remove the hazmat suit and dispose of it. "And it's dinner. I'll have to get the report in about …. this."
"I was hoping for a companion to share something with me."
"Well…" Jeriah smiles. "After I clean up here I'd be happy to provide that." They can talk about how she needs to not sing around goo. Not that this is a thing he would have thought of before but apparently it's the kind of thing he has to think of now.