2334/Epicenter: Humanis Supremus

Epicenter: Humanis Supremus
Date of Scene:	04 July 2020
Location:	R and D Labs: Triskelion
Synopsis:	Bobbi Morse and Cecily Winters consult with Caitlin Fairchild on the strange blended powers evolving.
Cast of Characters:	Bobbi Morse, Caitlin Fairchild, Cecily Winters

---

Bobbi Morse has posed:
The biological hazards area gets used a lot, the procedures and rules are very strict here. Director Sidney Levine is quite particular about it, but then so are the regular R&D haunts Simmons and Fitz. One mistake here can cause a big chunk of the R&D wing to shut down. In research bay 27, managed by robotic arms, is a sample of...

"Humanis Supremus, they called it. It's the combined genetic attributes of several Inhuman subjects, stolen either in a laboratory setting or on the streets of New York City with a remote DNA reading machine. This is HYDRA biochemistry at its more wreckless. Every subject who has used every version including this strain of it has eventually died from a heart attack," Bobbi explains. Lab coat, goggles. It's required affair for this sort of work. No one wants to get some of this stuff on them and potentially die from a heart attack.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin's wearing the requisite safety gear, just like Bobbi. Nevermind that any acid strong enough to hurt her would have to melt the goggles first; principle of the thing. She's dressed professionally; sensible plum-colored skirtsuit, low black closed-toed, no jewelry save for two studs in her ears. Her hair's pulled back in a professional bun at the back of her head with two or three pencils absentminded forgotten in it.

"This isn't biochemistry," Caitlin mutters. Fingers flick over the screen in front of her. "This is hacky high-school genetic science fair material. Like trying to graft bird wings into a frog."

She turns in the chair and stands, moving over to where Bobbi's working. "See here, this nucleotide sequence?" She taps the back of a pen against Bobbi's screen, trying not to budge too much into her colleague's space. "This looks a lot like NR5A1, the steroid stimulant for adrenal gland development in utero. It looks like whatever they're doing, it relies on stimulation of the adrenal glances by overproducing ACTH in the pituitary. Like, uh..." the pen taps, and she looks to Bobbi. "Like steroid addicts. But this is the sort of damage you see after..." her nose scrunches, thinking. "Like, ten or twenty /years/ of hardcore abuse. How soon did you say the mycardial infarctions happened?"

Bobbi Morse has posed:
Bobbi sits back a bit as Caitlin comes over and pokes with her pen. She smirks a bit and fills in the blanks, "Our first interaction with it, the user died three days after injecting the serum. The second version we encountered was in the blood stream of its members for at least a week, possibly longer. Though, the leader of the group attempted to inject three different versions of the serum at once and had a fatal heart attack within seconds."
She taps on the screen, "Now here we have a sample from subject 3 who was detained today. He is still alive, in a coma. In this version of the serum he gained advanced healing capabilities - so when he had his heart attack, he suffered brain damage before his body could repair. We're unsure if he'll ever regain consciousness."

She swipes a finger over the screen, "You see here, these structures - they don't prioritise what should be repaired first. The subject suffered significant laser fire damage to the face and numerous gun shot wounds to the torso, blunt force trauma to the legs and to the head. But the kicker is, we're pretty sure he had this multi-power version of the Serum in his system for at least two weeks."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"Need a neurologist for that sort of thing," Caitlin admits, wryly. "I'm good with cell sequencers but the extent of me playing amateur doctor is urgent trauma care. Ask Nightwing why he's got stitching scars shaped like a heart on his left arm, sometime," she suggests, trying for levity. The redhead flashes a tight grin at Bobbi and focuses back on the displays.

She returns her examination to the readouts, and her brow furrows a bit. "Okay, let's start from the end and work backwards," Caitlin suggests. "They died of heart attacks. The infarctions seem to correlate to the size of the dose." The pen wiggles at the screen as a thought occurs to her, and she looks to Bobbi for confirmation. "Is it possible that HYDRA's just dialing it in? Maybe they had more test subjects pass and realized the dosage needed to be adjusted. You might see if there's been any suspicous deaths in the areas where you think they're active. An all points out to local hospitals and clinics for unusual heart attacks or cardiac incidents of a non-fatal nature?"

Bobbi Morse has posed:
Bobbi merely raises an eyebrow at the mention of the vigilante Nightwing. She's read the files and carefully put them back in the section of (please don't make this my problem). "You are on the right track." She swivels around on the chair and moves over to a different screen. She brings up an image of a needle, "Delivery device #1." Next she brings up the image of a pair of gauntlets that look like Quake's, "Deliver device #2." She rotates the image to show the inside with thousands of micro needles. Next image up is a set of connectors for the spinal cord. "Delivery device #3.. extremely painful looking, injects directly in to the spinal fluid. This horrifying thing was the solution of one Toshiro Mori. He's a free lance engineer and scientist who often takes jobs for HYDRA and AIM.. unfortunately he's very good at his job."

Bobbi swivels back around, "I'm working on the hypothesis that they nailed the delivery mechanism by this stage, but there was one extra element that they hadn't counted on --- uh, countering."

She places her hands in her lap and looks to Caitlin. "During the altercation with subject 3, he attempted to use his tremoring abilities but Agent Johnson countered them with her own. He attempted to use his lightning abilities but a device built by Agent Foster and Johnson countered that. He attempted to use his sensors but during the fight Agent Foster overwhelmed them. He attempted to heal but he sustained injuries faster than he could be healed and finally -- he used his newest ability, the ability to phase in and out of solid material form. It was at this point."

She turns back to the computer and brings up a cell slide which appears sheered in two, "That he effectively ripped his insides apart and forced his healing to overdrive. Every single one of his powers was in overdrive.. and then the heart attack. Most of his cells recombined when the attempted phasing out stopped, but not all of them and I believe the only reason he stopped phasing was because of the oncoming arithmia."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin's jaw works back and forth, and she moves to sit in her own chair (carefully). It squeaks in protest but holds, and she pulls over a personal computer covered with some pop culture stickers (Star Wars and Warcrat among them). It looks a little out of place among the sophistacted tech equipment but it's the latest generation of StarrWare machinery, with encryption that'd slow down some of the best and brightest hackers out there.

She reads some files, then makes a face and shakes her head. "Rats. I thought I had an idea there for a moment, but the RNA encoding is all wrong." She spins her laptop towards Bobbi and leans back, rubbing her eyes briefly and swapping goggles out for wide-rimmed glasses with a subtle yellow tint. "Weapon X focused on rapid healing but the amino encodings are completely wrong for what he's got."

She gets to her feet and moves to the coffee machine, rattling around to try and produce some caffeine. "What if--" she bites her lip, thinking, and pours. "What if the heart attack wasn't what killed him? The first two, it's basically Cushing's Syndrome, right? Massive myocardial infarction produced by hyperproduction of the adrenoids. What if what killed him was the the phase shifting? He ..." She twists her shoulders opposite her hips, trying to shake the words out. "Like we know there's a reflexive component in the brain that prevents us from biting our fingers off, right? And we know that certain metahumans have something similar, it's, uh, it's how they keep from setting themselves on fire or whatever. What if Mori gave himself the *powers* but not the inborn reflex? I'm pretty strong, but I can throw my back out just like anyone else if I try to squat-clear the wrong cruise ship," Caitlin points out.

She rattles the coffeemaker, looks around. "Is there any more coffee? I think we're out."

Cecily Winters has posed:
    Cecily is dressed similarly to Caitlin, though she's opted for the black skirt and she's rolling a black vest over a short sleeved white blouse. She's still adjusting her goggles over her glasses when she comes in, though she keeps a bit more of a distance away from any samples due to the extra reach of her tails. "Someone mentioned reckless biochemistry?" the fox announces herself with a question--and a deep frown on her usually warmer features. Her badge is clearly labeled, level 1 clearance, hanging from her hip so her folded arms don't obsecure it. Her ears perk at the mention of no coffee, and her expression softens. "Sorry, dear, if I had any of my tea with me I'd share."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
Her labcoat has the name Dr Barbara Morse embroidered on it. She would rather it not have her name expanded like that but it was a gift upon receiving her doctorate from her mentor, so it meant a lot to her and she's just never gotten rid of it since. She catches sight of it and is reminded to stop her own thoughts for a moment and let the thoughts of another absorb in to her brain. Bobbi stays quiet for a few moments.

"Now that you mention that Dr. Fairchild," she presses her lips together and twists her lips to her side, "Agent Johnson repeatedly mentioned how those on the serum didn't have the 'same problems' she has had.. ie: they weren't feeling their bones breaking, even though they were microfracturing. May be you're on to something there. The genes are there, the abilities transmit,.. but all the safeties are off."

Bobbi smiles to Cecily as she arrives. She notes the tails and reads her badge, "Hi there. You must be Cecily Winters I've been told about." In a morning briefing, it skipped her mind though as she was planning a raid on a HYDRA facility. "This is Dr. Fairchild," she says and offers her hand to Cecily, "I'm Dr. Morse." She's playing it coy, it never helps to talk about ranks with new recruits. "And yes, we're discussing reckless biochemical engineering. A new kind of.. super soldier serum. If you're at all familiar with the term?"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:


Caitlin looks into the pot with disappointment, then flashes Bobbi a look of desperate appeal. "I'm willing to do some consulting work for SHIELD, Dr. Morse, but I won't do it for free and I definitely won't do it without coffee," she says. There's a merriness in her eyes that belies any possible umbrage someone can take, and she turns back to Cecily to offer a handshake. Despite her sheer size-- head and shoulders even above the biggest SHIELD operatives-- she holds herself with a little bit of a slouch and de-escalatory posture, trying not to loom. "Nice to meet you, Ms. Winters," Caitlin tells her.

She nods once at Bobbi, then thinks about it, and shakes her head. "Nono, see-- that's what I'm saying," Caitlin tells Bobbi, and pulls one of the free-swinging displays over. "Look, the original Super-Soldier Serum-- that wasn't meant to trigger a metagene event," she clarifies. "It was intended to repair damaged DNA and then rapidly rebuild the body, inside and out. Now, the Super-Soldier program got mothballed, but it rolled up into the Weapon Plus projects, later," she says. Caitlin reaches for a whiteboard and starts drawing lines and figures connecting a few different programs. "Dr. Banner, he was working off Weapon Plus research. Uh, Team 7, that was a Weapon Plus program. CADMUS used it for the S--" Caitlin bites off the words, glances at Bobbi and Cecily, and coughs. "Uh, something super duper classified," she amends, lamely. "I worked on that project, though, and I was definitely cribbing off Erskine's notes for a lot of it."

She draws a line off the Weapon Plus bubble, away from the others, and circles a big question mark. "But there are certain common markers, it has to do with the use of RNA retroencoding. Slower and less predictable, but better results, its' what the Russians used for the Infinity Formula," she points out.

"But this--" Caitlin taps the whiteboard and the ? with the marker cap. "This is something new. It's grafting these ... abilities onto existing DNA code. I mean, don't get me wrong, I wish I'd thought of it," she admits, wryly. "If we can reverse engineer this so it doesn't kill people or drive them crazy, we'd be shoe-ins for a Nobel Prize."

"Of course, there's a reason every Super-Soldier program got shut down," she mutters. "Hard to get willing volunteers with a 90 percent fatality rate."

Cecily Winters has posed:
    "Fresh off the boat, as it were... only had the tour yesterday..." Cecily gives a gentle smile, and... still looks a little nervous. It's certainly got nothing to do with Cait, though! She takes hands and shakes them in the order they're given, her grip measured, fingers long and dexterous. "Pleasure to meet the both of you..." she says kindly, then returns her gaze to the pictures. "Super soldier serum... can't say I've run into one personally. I've run into something damn close and just as terrifying though. Kind of why I wanted to poke my tails in over here... hoping for some clues on my own side of things..."

    Then she sighs, ears wilting a bit, "...sadly not quite the same thing... I'm not sure if mine or yours is worse. At least you girls have some clues on where your Frankenstein's Monsters come from to some extent, yes?" she asks, though the look on her face seems to indicate that all of the biology chatter is going way over her head. "...my father would be into all of this business..." she muses.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
Bobbi frowns at the coffee. "Agent Reed," she calls out to a lab tech. He turns and stands stiff, "Ma'am!". Bobbi lifts an eyebrow, "Go get the good coffee for Dr. Fairchild post haste." The agent stiffens again, "Ma'am Yes Ma'am!" He isn't allowed to run in the lab but he sure moves quickly at a walk. Whoever Dr. Morse is, she certainly has authority.

Bobbi nods her head as she looks at the question mark. Bobbi literally wrote the paper on Super Soldier Serums, as was pointed out to her by Nadia recently. All of that was meant to be highly classified, yet some how the Red Room had it and gave it to their students. Something to be looked in to another time.

"Yeah.. so I'm pretty sure I know the answer to that question mark. Unfortunately the answer is not a nice one." Her eyes look over the lines drawn and notes a few other milestones not included, but she's not going to fill them in with the trainee here. They were rather recent though, it's possible Caitlin simply doesn't know about them yet.

She rolls back over to the DNA sequencer and brings up a list of Inhuman sequences. "So I've been identifying the components, the stew mixed together. Here -- part of Quake's DNA, not very well copied, done with a remote sequencer device. Here, the vigilante named Daredevil, also remote copied. Here, someone unknown electrical abilities, here another unknown for super healing, here another unknown for the phasing. But this one, this is the most interesting. It's not an Inhuman ability, more like the stinger of a bee, something Inhuman left over. I think there is an Inhuman that is making this DNA recombination possible."

She moves over to the other computer and brings up the scanner device schematics. "So this is what has puzzled me from the start. This device read the DNA, then mixed it with another solution and injected it in to the user with a regular hypo-needle. The solution used was not something we ever got our hands on... I'm positing it's from another Inhuman we have yet to identify. Keep in mind, the heritage is accurate, this franken-serum came from HYDRA after all."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"You've met Captain America, right?" Caitlin asks kindly, of Cecily. "He's the poster child for it. He's a swell fellah, we've trained together a bit. Ask him to show you his best judo throw, it's really easy to learn."

She steps away from Cecily when the coffee comes along, perhaps a little quickly; the comment about Frankenstein's Monster seems to have touched a nerve, though she covers it wel. Coffee in hand, she returns to the main display, sipping the beverage with a disregard for temperature.

Caitlin starts playing with DNA sequences; seeing how they overlap, interact, what encoding activates or decombinates them. They drift back and forth over the transparent touch-screen and then she flicks them away with a sigh of frustration.

"There's no rhyme or reason to it," Caitlin complains aloud. "We're still not wholly sure how DNA even affects metagenetics. Like-- okay, Captain Rogers DNA." She types on a screen and brings up a chromosome mapping of America's Greatest Soldier. "Perfect. Right? No junk DNA, no stray RNA polymerase, nothing superfluous. This is what you'd expect engineering DNA to look like. Everything you need, nothing you don't."

She brings up the sample of the DNA copies from Quake and Daredevil. "See here though, we've got more common little bits of flotsam and debris. Evolutionary detritus."

She sips, considering, then points her coffee behind her and turns to follow the direction of it towards Bobbi. "Dr. Morse, when the medical team did the postmortem-- did anyone think to drain the cerebro-spinal fluid resevoir?" she asks, brows rising slowly. "It's not SOP, I know, but if that ... concoction is anywhere..."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
Bobbi stands up and paces back and forth a moment. "Yes, though that's the interesting thing. We get this trace left over, the stinger of a bee, but not the bee. I'm starting to think.. that this Inhuman's ability isn't DNA recombination at all, but perhaps DNA entropy." She looks back to the screens and says, "Which would mean.. that this HYDRA approach to a super soldier serum with Inhuman abilities." She smiles, "Would never work." She motions to the screen, "Think about it a moment.. quake combination, quake yourself to death, phase in and out combination, phase yourself to death, electricity combination, eventually you shock yourself, .. so and so forth. Even the healing version would start killing you unless you could keep taking it."

Bobbi's face drops and she blinks a moment, bringing up the various photos they have of Daniel Whitehall's projections on holographic technology and the one photo they have of him walking in to a HYDRA facility.

The oldest photo of him is of an old man, then suddenly he's young again. "He's taken it... he's taking the healing inhuman with the recombinator inhuman with the super soldier serum. That's how he's young again. He's turned his own body in to a ticking time bomb. He needs to keep taking it or he'll die like the rest of them."

Bobbi sits back down and is quiet for a while staring at the photos of the man. She zooms in on a small discolourisation on his skin that wasn't there in the previous photo. "He's dying from the cure to death."

Bobbi goes quiet again for a moment and then suddenly double takes to Cecily and says, "Sorry, did you say you were poking your tails in here because of your own situation?" She glances at the tails again. "Something similar but different. Would you mind terribly if we," she wiggles a finger between Dr. Fairchild and herself, "Sequenced your DNA. For SCIENCE of course." She smiles kindly, "This is not a requirement, you are free to say no Trainee Winters."

Cecily Winters has posed:
    "Too many weird parallels but I don't think my boogeymen have anything to do with yours," Cecily's brow is still furrowed. If she touched a nerve on accident, she's not aware of it either. Fox isn't even completely sure what made her anyway. "I have not met Captain Rogers yet, no. Stark, Thor, and Ms. Potts, yes..." she considers, "..though those three are irrelevant to the topic at hand..." she muses aloud then leans towards one of the screens when Caitlin starts fiddling with sequences.

    "DNA entropy?" she latches on to a single phrase from everything being discussed as her... not-so-genetically studied mind struggles to keep up. "...are you suggesting there might be a meta out there with a..." she rolls her eyes up for a moment, trying to think of the phrase. "...a Pandora Effect? Genetic mutation roulette as a catalyst to bind other sequences together and make them..." her nose wrinkles. "...sort of... work...?" Her nose stays wrinkles at Bobbi's turn of phrase. "...you should make sure to record that one, dear. That's gold..." she muses, even smirking a little bit.

    "Huh? Oh! No, no no no. I don't mean my personal situation...." Cecily suddenly lifts her hands up. "...no, I've been having a... super-soldier problem of my own as of late..." she sighs. "...was hoping to find clues but correlation doesn't equal causation..." her tails and ears droop a little. Then lift back up. "Oh, um. Do feel free? I admit I don't... actually know where any of... this comes from.." she gestures to her entire everything. "...they're still trying to figure out where to slot me into physical training because a few of my metrics apparently reach 'Spider-Man' on the scale... though I swear someone just used a label maker on the chart..."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin nods slowly along with Bobbi's explanation, thinking it over, then shakes her head and gets to her feet. She gloves up and reaches for a swab kit. "Open your mouth, say 'aaah'," Caitlin tells Cecily. "I'm just going to get a tissue sample."

"Metagenes occur in two different parts of the body," Caitlin explains while she works. "It's a... sort of a 'panic code'. The body rebuilds DNA under stress. In some of the population, it's encoded in your chromosomal DNA. That was Dr. Xavier's work, I think he got the Nobel for that in ... seventy-something," she hazards.

The sample container's sealed and carefully labelled. "But in the rest of the metahuman population, it's encoded somewhere in the brain. We don't really know where," Caitlin admits. "Or what triggers it, or how it works. It usually takes trauma or a serious injury to trigger it, and it's a little barbaric to put kids in cages and poke them until a metegenetic event happens."

"So--" Caitlin gestures at Bobbi's screen. "If there's an Inhuman-- golly I hate that word," she mutters-- "if there's a mutant novus who can do that sort of ... copy-pasta transfer of powers, it's doing it halfway. You get the powers, but not the full evolutionary adaptation. My bones are about twenty times harder than steel," she explains, matter-of-factually. "If I had my muscle strength but normal bones, I'd snap myself in half sneezing. I think Dr. Morse is right on the money here; he's having to try and balance this admixture of Inhuman traits to keep himself alive. But from the loosk of it, he can't sustain a natural equilibrium. There's no telling what'll happen if he keeps this up."

She hands the epithileal samples to Bobbi.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
Bobbi scans the label and then puts it in the sequencer machine. "Low priority means regular sequencer, not the fast sequencer.. so we'll have your ancestry tomorrow." She jokes of course. She presses the button and lets the machine do its thing, it'll take a few hours.

Bobbi nods to Caitlin and says, "Well Dr. Fairchild.. I think we've narrowed down the mystery. Thank you once again. We won't know until we get to the source of this HYDRA operation. Today we took a significant chunk out of it. They're on the run, they'll make a mistake sooner or later."

Bobbi turns to Cecily and says, "Thank you Trainee Winters. Remember do not discuss what you've learnt here with other trainees."

Cecily Winters has posed:
    Aaah~ Cecily's got the cutest vulpine canines, too. Her breath also smells like tea and honey. It's sweet. She smacks her lips after the swab is taken though and sticks her tongue out in a rather undignified way. "..always hated those.. drug tests were the worst.." she mumbles, shaking her head a little then casts a nod to Caitlin. "The same sort of adaptation that keeps the Flash from disintegrating when he moves that quickly. These serums and soldiers don't have the same failsafes...?" she queries.

    Then she nods to Bobbi, "Well, that rules out HYDRA for my own spooks, at least," Cecily considers. Then bows her head gratefully, "Of course, classified information. Though I do admit I'm curious as to what you'll find. As I said, I have... a substantial lack of knowledge on my own situation..." her tails flick back and forth slowly. "A pleasure meeting you both, though. Thank you."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"We'll do what we can to help," Caitlin promises Cecily, and flashes a reassuring smile. Despite the deference she offers Bobbi, there's definitely a comforting sort of maternal presence about the redheaded woman-- though she can't even be out of her mid-twenties yet. "We'll let you know what we find out. Or don't find out. Science is a journey," she says, with a wearying sigh.

"If it's all the same to you, Dr. Morse, I'm gonna stake out one of the empty labs for a few more hours," Caitlin says. Her laptop and notes get pushed into a neatly organized bag, somewhere between a designer purse and an attache. It's slung over her shoulder. "I want to take a look at that spinal fluid. Just... chasing hunches, but if I find anything out, I'll let you know, pronto." She smiles at the two women, then with a wiggle of her fingers bids them farewell and heads out into the larger research area to pursue her own leads.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
Bobbi nods to Caitlin, "Be my guest Dr. Fairchild." Another Agent wanders over to Bobbi and says, "Field Leader Morse, Deputy Director Hill wishes to see you at your convenience." Bobbi smiles to the man, "Thank you Agent. Well, definitely time for me to go."