10540/Brains! Mmm, brains!

Brains! Mmm, brains!
Date of Scene:	22 March 2022
Location:	Dakota Apartment 1
Synopsis:	Blackagar has reasons to worry.
Cast of Characters:	Jane Foster, Blackagar Boltagon

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Jane Foster has posed:
Good things come from the Caribbean. Sultry music, great drink mixes, pining dreams of beaches. The diaspora of many cultures gathered on the Antilles makes for a rather unique place in the world, a lovely culture and frankly amazing culinary tradition all high points. But bad things come out of the Caribbean too.

Jane doesn't typically speak about those events involving her spycraft. Everything else, an open book, but the silent turmoil of work defending people from greater or lesser risks tends to be private. It helps Blackagar has some status, vetted by no less than the very pregnant chief who was on the very same mission as Stargazer, aka "why did we bring a scientist."

It probably speaks some volumes that Jane has a bandage wound over her forearm and a battery of untouched syringes being basically forced on her. Said items are left in the fridge beside a nice soup from the previous day or two. Was it two? Hard to remember. She then promptly makes it to the couch, dropping notes of sufficient complexity they'd please the average Attilan biochemist (and raise eyebrows sky-high, if said person had eyebrows). French statements and graphs all blend together with examples of complex chemical chains, a thicket of materials probably stamped classified if they weren't, you know, photocopied with the bloodstains and creases on them.

She is, in fairness, not apparently bloodied. But facedown on the couch, knocked to semiconscious or just plain asleep in seconds.

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
Travelling to and fro from the moon to the Earth, around Earth itself, and even the streets nearby has kept Blackagar on the go of late. He has his own projects of course, tasks and plans that he works to see to fruition. Of late they have been meticulously planned and revolving around quantum signatures along with a concept that has been dubbed 'cosmic vibrations'. A full field that the researchers on Attilan have delved into. So many different things taking place, bubbling over, being considered and measured and weighed.

He had spent the most recent day in fact in Brazil, meeting with a research team that had been funded by resources at his disposal to do some work, quietly, on some of those concepts and was in a surprisingly good mood. Great strides had been taken. Of course, keeping all this relatively quiet from the scientist he lives with was not done intentionally or deceptively, it simply was concerning her thus he was hesitant to bring it to the conversation until genuine strides had been made.

The distracted mind had not picked up on some things, due to distance along with the bubbling of his own busy. Thus, the arrival back home a bit after the collapse Jane makes onto the sofa brings a startle of surprise. There was a gap between resting and passing out, one that he had not noticed immediately, but the uncertainty of the situation upon seeing her brings pangs of alarm in his mind, quickly quieted as he approaches.

Jane Foster has posed:
Research is hard. Jane would be the first to acknowledge the habit of searching out the teased suggestion of an answer. Giving hope is one thing, but sometimes waiting on a more conclusive answer can prove better. Where Blackagar comes and goes, their lives intersect again on countless fronts. There might be small ways that she waits for him, sending a message through the aether or arranging for choice meals, fresh clothes, or the occasional surprise to anticipate his needs when she can do so. It's not like he stays in the same hotel in the same suite of cities. He needn't sacrifice health, comfort or satisfaction for all the weight a crown bears. If they can have some kind of harmony in their everyday lives, then she can quietly and certainly advocate for that through deeds above words.

Though how being facedown on a couch without so much as a blanket over her achieves this, she very well hasn't answered. Her arm rests to the side, head squished against the cushions of the couch. Comfort here aligns to the line of her body there, elongated shadows spilling through the windows past the sheer curtains drawn for some modicum of privacy. Not much, enough.

His startled reaction might stir her from sleep, normally, but this is a weariness not quite bone deep. Mostly because her 'bones' aren't precisely bones, more like a composed energy representing bones. At least she makes relatively content sounds? The blotting of her lips, for one. She could probably be mistaken for tired after a long-haul flight not that much different from his in Brazil, minus a few dozen degrees of latitude. Haiti, though, has left its mark.

In the barely discerned bruise on the back of her head. The smattering of dusted glass and a little gore and grime staining the hem of the pants. Her thoughts are cloudy, a shadowed circle of hunger rolling in a weak tide, but odd. Because it's one brownish-rust stain there, weighty, pushing without success to find a hole in the mental armour. For now, anyway.

At least what's on her wrist isn't a bite mark. Under the bandages? The wound of a forcible needle injection with a fair bit of force, deep enough to bruise bone.

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
He can't grunt. If he could, he would. This situation definitely warrants a grunt or some other acknowledgement of confusion, concern, something. But silence instead prevails and the steady blue eyes look over the woman's form. He knows the difference between resting and collapsing, this is clearly the latter. If it were not a comfortable couch, he would perhaps move her from this spot, but instead he proceeds to step over to the chair nearby to fetch the blanket from within it and drape it carefully over. While doing so, careful consideration is given to injured areas and those that are showing signs of treatment before he moves away quietly to the kitchen, the process of preparing tea began before he returns to sit calmly in the now empty chair.

However long it takes for her to rest, that is how long he waits. The papers that were left out are picked up, thumbed through. It is her work. Normally he would respect those boundaries but at present? There is enough concerning him about the situation that it warrants him perusing and considering them.

Jane Foster has posed:
A grunt wouldn't be out of the ordinary, not unrestrained. Draping a blanket over her leaves another phantom hovering at the shade of the mind, the rusted ring swirling back and forth like mineral-heavy water. A discrepancy from the usual clarity that could cut like a diamond blade. She doesn't particularly move about once there, the occasional kick from the top of her foot scathing a mark into the upholstery as her body reacts to whatever pull lies within.

Trouble bubbles slowly with the morbid weight of a storm, being crushed under a pressure cooker intension. The rise will be faster than some, stirred on the rise up and the gentle tug of weariness loosed from fingers curling, cheek turned.

By then, he probably knows certain degrees of truth. Those notes aren't hers; for one, the degree of French requires expertise in biochemistry and building pharmaceutical compounds to a degree she probably doesn't have. Not to, say, Jemma's understanding. The details are hideous, but if he knows French, it boils down to two very simple facts.

They created an injected drug that can transform a person's physical capabilities to the superhuman while deteriorating the mental faculties. The body's abilities to regulate and create protein fail, and thus cause a massive breakdown in the body systems if not maintained from high-nutrient external sources. Human bodies being preferred, of course, fairly fresh. Otherwise irreversible mental decline follows, and the drug /Boko/ is fully responsible for that. As for the remainder, it's the antidote, apparently not fully complete. Though the handwriting on a page under table 12C strictly underlines and stars options, a coagulating compound or two named as alternatives in fairly high doses to be mixed with the rest. A wet fingerprint -- ink or blood, the photocopy doesn't make clear -- indicates the condition the battered copy was written on.

No problem, just a zombie-making medicine and an incomplete antidote to it.

No problem, just Jane tiredly raising her head. "Light reading?"

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
<<I was tempted to pick up the french dictionary to decipher some of the words,>> he speaks back quietly. Well, thoughtfully quiet at the least. <<But the context clues were enough and I am not entirely sure even if I knew the words I would understand all of them.>> Despite common conceptions of some in Attilan, the King does hold a rather sharp mind, just not in the ways people may suspect. The last of the pages is set back down in the exact way it was presented previously. Put there carefully and then slowly he looks over at the form laying on the couch.

<<First, how do you feel. Second, are you alright?>>

Jane Foster has posed:
The hollow shadows that someone might have for not sleeping well don't express themselves in Jane. Her injuries, when any injuries insist, are in the mental realm. Fogginess, confusion, these outwardly manifest instead of bloody wounds, bruises, and lacerations. She recognizes the Inhuman king with a lopsided smile, her fingers pushing her messy bangs away. The rest of her braid holds together. <<Someone tried to enhance people. Only at the cost of their mind making them more than monsters.>> Her gaze seeks his, and she covers her mouth for a jaw-cracking yawn. There it is.

<<Frustrated. We saved some, not enough.>> Her blinks slew off some of the sleepiness, and she pulls the blanket around her shoulder and gives him a low, throaty chuckle. It's rusty. <<Either the antidote works or it couldn't work on me right in the first place. Leaning to the latter. Jemma's going to have enough on her plate for reports.>>

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
Would it be surprising that the idea of experimentation may influence an Inhuman to be a bit agitated? That there'd be the sudden spikes of concern, frustration, and even more concern that would flare up throughout him. The concern of course directed for her but also the more broad sense of it. <<Experimentation on humans again?>> Not the first time it has come up for certain. <<And you were infected?>> Even thinking it impacts him, but the thought of infecting someone who is not exactly human with something designed for them, so many complications rear up.

<<The doctor advised rest I am assuming, and if not, then they should have. I have some calming tea brewing. Let me get you a pillow, some music and if you need food I will start a soup. But I will harbor no consideration other than rest and recovery.>>

Jane Foster has posed:
<<The man who designed this as a street drug personally stabbed me with the needle.>> A grim sort of recognition flashes there, her eyes narrowing as the cold, slow wave of dismay cools the flash of anger behind her. <<Ms. Drew webbed him solidly. I wanted to soundly punch him.>> She looks down at the decently good bandaging job, squeezing her fingers and opening them again. <<Yes, experimentation on anyone unlucky enough. Haiti is poor. People didn't know what infected them. They didn't know why they were doing what they did.>>

There burns the true core of the anger, the heat-shimmer of outrage for abuse against the most vulnerable. <<Without an antidote my prognosis wouldn't be very good. He expected something and it didn't happen. For a man naming himself after a lwa, he didn't expect trickery?>>

She rubs her hands and then holds them out to Blackagar, gaze steady on him. <<The doctor hasn't seen me yet and other non-Simmons personnel can't. You really want them pulling a blood sample to realize it's just red-coloured liquid? Otherwise I promise to stay put, Blackagar, and you can demand what you want. I'm worn out. It was hard not surrendering to the call of the dead and cleansing all of them out of the room. But that wouldn't be a help.>>