Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ L2 Outbreak ❯ Chapter 2 ( Chapter 2 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Day 2, 6:00 A.M.:

Duo tried to balance his folders as he unlocked the door to his classroom. As they were about to fall out of his grasp a hand reached and plucked them from Duo's hands. Duo looked up and saw Wufei standing beside him with an amused look on his face. “Shut up,” Duo growled.

“I didn't say anything,” Wufei replied, still having an amused look plastered on his face.

“It's not funny when important papers get mixed around,” Duo said, sitting down behind his desk.

“What's so important about these?” Wufei asked.

“I've been looking at a bunch of files and reading some books, but I can't find anything that matches what going on.”

“I thought you said this was smallpox,” Wufei said, raising an eyebrow.

“Some of the symptoms that Andrew was displaying made it seem like Ebola though,” Duo said.

“Like what?”

“The headache, spreading down to the lower back,” Duo replied.

“Okay, so one different symptom,” Wufei said. “By the, to back up the smallpox claim, Andrew has pox on his skin now. So unless you think that there's a new virus going around, it looks like smallpox to me, and I'm having a vaccine sent now.”

“Then why are there guys wearing spacesuits outside my door?” Duo asked.

“Shit,” Wufei said, opening the door. “Could you guys stand out anymore?” he asked them.

The men didn't answer. Instead they walked over to Duo and handed him a card. “That's your temporary Preventers I.D. card,” one of them said. “You can use it to get into the Bio-Level 4 room we have set up.”

“What about my classes?” Duo asked. “Should I call in a substitute teacher?”

“No,” the man said. “We want to bring as little attention to this problem as we can.”

Duo looked at them and rolled his eyes. “You're doing a good job so far,” he said sarcastically.

The man frowned at him, and then he and the others walked out the door. Duo turned back to Wufei. “Wu, I do think this may be a bio-terrorist attack.”

“You think this guy we're going after may have already released the virus?” Wufei asked.

“Yes.”

“Let's hope it not airborne,” Wufei said.

“Wu-man, there's no point to a bio-weapon that isn't,” Duo said.

7:05 A.M.:

As the last student entered the classroom Duo started with a joke. “I went to a restaurant for lunch a couple of days ago, and a waitress put a bowl of soup in front of me. After I had ordered, she walked away. I heard someone say, `Nice shirt, stud'. I looked around, but I didn't see anyone around. So I went back to eating my soup, and then the same voice said, `That's a nice haircut'. I looked around, and again, nobody was there. As the waitress was walking over with my order, the voice said, `That's the nicest tie I've ever seen'. I looked at the waitress and said, `I think I'm going insane. I keep hearing a voice saying nice think about me, but there's no one around'. She smiled at me and said, `Oh, no, that's the soup. It's complimentary'.”

Duo looked around the room, but there was only a little bit of laughter. “What?” he said. “Don't you get it?”

“We get it, but it was really stupid,” someone said.

“Okay let's get to today's lesson,” Duo said quickly. “Today we're going to be studying Ebola.”

Wufei's shot up and he glared at Duo, who took no notice.

“Do any of you know the symptoms of Ebola?” Duo asked.

None of the students raised their hands. “Fine,” Duo sighed. “I'll show you.”

He grabbed Wufei's hand and dragged him to the front of the room. Duo had decided to use Wufei as a model. He turned him so that Wufei's back was to the class. “It starts as a headache,” he said, pointing to Wufei's head, “and then spreads down to the back (Duo trailed his finger down Wufei's back). You may get a fever, and then chills. You vomit up blood and other material from your stomach. They call it Vomito Negro. It's not actually black. It's red with black speckles in it.” The class looked grossed out by his explanation.

“Who can tell me the different types of Ebola?” Duo asked, and again nobody raised their hands. “There are four different known types: Ebola Zaire, which is by far the deadliest, it has a ninety-percent mortality rate; Ebola Sudan, which is a fifty-fifty thing; Ebola Tai, the most recent, there's not a lot of info about it; and finally, Ebola Reston, the only known airborne strain. The good thing about Reston is that it is only harmful to monkeys. It has little to no affect on humans. The airborne part is the disturbing part. If it mutates just a bit it could infect humans.”

A student raised her hand. “Yes, Miss Zimmermann?”

“I'm not feeling well,” she said. “Can I have a pass to the Health Office?”

“Sure,” Duo said. “Just take this pass.” He handed her a piece of wood carved in the shape of a syringe.

She took the pass and started to walk towards the door. Halfway there, though, she collapsed. Duo looked up in time to see Wufei run over and crouch to check her out. “Pulse is erratic,” he said. “Same as Andrew.”

The phone rang and Duo ran over to pick it up. It was the man he had spoken to earlier. “Someone in your room just collapsed,” he said. “We'll be over to pick her up shortly. Some other students have gone down as well.”

“How many?” Duo asked.

“Five.”

Duo gasped. He hadn't thought that many would go down. “This thing has to be extremely contagious,” he thought.

The man spoke up again. “We want you over at the lab ASAP. We'll send someone over to make sure no one leaves. This school is officially in quarantine.”

“We'll be over as soon as possible,” Duo said, and then hung up.

7:50 P.M.

Duo and Wufei had put on their Racal suits. They went through the DECON process and stepped into the lab. A scientist rushed up to them. “Dr. Maxwell, we did the tests you requested, and you were right. There were traces of both smallpox and a mutated strain of Ebola, that's apparently airborne.”

“We gathered that much,” Wufei growled. “Is Major Po here yet?”

“Yes, sir. She got here about an hour ago.”

“Let's go see her Duo,” Wufei said.

“Yaah,” Duo said sarcastically.

Duo and Wufei walked through a door into another part of the lab. Sally Po was sitting down in front a centrifuge. She looked up as they walked in. “Wufei!” she exclaimed.

She started to talk further when Duo interrupted and said, “Yes, Sally. Just ignore the fact that I'm here, too.”

“Oh hi, Duo. I didn't see you there,” she said.

Duo rolled his eyes. “How could you not see me? I'm standing right next to Wufei,” he said.

“Sor-ry,” she said, obviously not meaning, as she emphasized the last syllable. “What are you doing here anyway? If I remember correctly you were fired. Why was that again? Oh yeah! You did something stupid!”

“You would have done the same thing!” Duo yelled.

Wufei stepped back. This was obviously something they needed to finish by themselves. “No I wouldn't have!” Sally yelled back. “I respect Queen Relena.”

“So do I,” Duo said. “But she did something that put my life in danger. She shouldn't even have been there! She's not trained to be there!”

“She wanted to inspect it, to see if it was worth the money.”

“Inspect it from behind glass!” Duo said. “She didn't put that monkey down right, and it nearly infected me!”

“You didn't need to yell at her,” Sally said. “And I know why you really did. You envy her because she has Heero, and you don't.”

“BULLSHIT!” Duo yelled. “I never had any romantic feelings for him!”

“Then who?” she asked. “I know it's one of the guys!”

“I don't need to answer that question,” Duo said.

Now Wufei was getting tired. “Excuse me!” he yelled, stepping between them. “Can we get to work now? Finish this later.”

“Fine,” they both said at the same time, turning away from each other.

8:10 A.M.

“Okay,” Wufei said into the phone, “I'll tell them.”

When Wufei hung up Duo said, “What are you going to tell us?”

“Andrew just died, and now his whole family is showing symptoms,” Wufei said. “Also, there are some more cases from the school,” Wufei replied.

“Crap,” Duo mumbled. “How the fuck are we supposed top stop this thing?”

“It's obvious,” Sally said. “We find the host to get an antibody and make a serum.”

“There is no host!” Duo exclaimed. “This is an act of bioterrorism.”

“You don't know that!” Sally yelled.

All the other scientists were looking over. “I have to agree with Sally,” Wufei said. “There's no evidence to support bioterrorism.”

“Beautiful,” Duo exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air, “Just fucking beautiful! I fucking knew it. Don't come crying to me when you do figure out it's bioterrorism. Wufei, I thought you were smarter than this.”

Duo stood up quickly, pushing the chair back. Wufei watched with a sigh as Duo stomped into the DECON shower.

10:02 A.M.

Wufei had been having trouble finding Duo. When he finally did find him he was sitting eating sandwich in the cafeteria room. “It's a little early for lunch, Duo,” he said.

“Fuck of, Chang,” Duo growled.

Wufei winced. Duo only called him Chang when he was really pissed off. Wufei hesitated before he said, “Duo, Sally is right. I mean, come one, we're on L2. A lot of diseases pop up.”

“Listen Wufei, if you wanna talk about go away,” Duo said.

“Okay, but I have one question. Why did you say you knew it? Knew what?” Wufei asked.

Duo sighed. “I knew you would side with Sally,” Duo said.

“How did you know?”

“People always side with their girlfriends or boyfriends,” Duo answered.

“Duo, I told you, she's not my girlfriend. We're just good friends, nothing more,” Wufei said.

Duo snorted. “Yeah, right,” he said. “Sally obviously doesn't think so.”

“What do you mean?” Wufei asked.

“When you were on the phone she said she thought you were ready to pop the question any day now,” Duo said.

“And you believed her?”

“I tried not to,” Duo said. “I tried to believe what you said to me earlier, but then you agreed with her and rubbed you're hand on her shoulder, and...”

Duo never got to finish, because at that moment Wufei silenced him the way he always wanted to. With a kiss. Wufei's tongue requested entrance into Duo's mouth, and Duo was only too happy to agree. Wufei's tongue explored Duo's mouth, and only a shared need for breath broke them apart. “Wow,” Duo said.

Wufei smiled. “I always wanted to do that,” Wufei said.

“So did I,” Duo said.

“Come on, let's get back to work,” Wufei said.

“Okay.”

7:30 P.M.

Duo stretched and yawned. He threw his jacket onto the couch. Wufei followed him into the room and sat down on the couch. “Jeez,” Duo said. “That was a tough day at work.”

The telephone rang and Wufei picked it up. “Maxwell residence.” Duo snickered.

“There was silence from Wufei for a couple of seconds. Finally he spoke up and said, “Alright, I'll tell him.” He hung up.

“Let me guess,” Duo said, “More cases.”

“One-hundred twenty-five, all over L2,” Wufei replied.

“Holy shit,” Duo said.

“This is getting bad,” Wufei said.

“Wufei, this was always bad.”

Space suit: Slang for Racal suit, or if you prefer, a Haz-Mad suit or a Biohazard suit.

Whooh. Finally done with chapter two. Are my teacher's jokes funny? I think so. More soon. It's a mutated form of EBOLA. Smallpox was officially eradicated in 1978.