The Strain of Self-Exertion

[CW: needle]

You've had enough of working in secrecy, but you procrastinate communicating with Mars and Peregrine for as long as humanly possible. Maybe longer. You might have untapped inhuman potential now, after all. Instead of this thought spurring you on, you doggedly pursue your research in an attempt not to think about your presumably imminent demise.

You don't technically have to consult with Peregrine before having another look at the spore samples you worked with to create the vaccine. You have multiple mushroom samples, now, but nothing seems to distinguish them – they're all the same species, its name lost to time, that grows more plentifully as you gain distance from the Bastion. It resembles thickly sliced meat more than anything else; each cap is much wider than it is thick, porous like the holey bones of a bird on the inside, each pore a hole formed by stretchy fibres that criss-cross into a thick, interlaced internal layer. They tend to be moist, too, like gravied beefsteaks, but the longer ago each sample was collected, the drier it seems to get.

All these observations, as you know very well, are superficial ones. Similes at best. You have multiple samples simply because multiple people – yourself included, and, most recently, the Saint, who took the time to collect a fresh batch, out of some rudimentary understanding that you need more of the source of the pathogen if you're going to make more of the vaccine – took the pains to collect some. You don't expect anything to come of a closer analysis of the mushrooms – after all, Peregrine themselves had a look through the microscope very recently. But, and you cannot emphasise this enough, you're procrastinating, so you look anyway.

How very wrong you were.

A microscopic analysis of one sample, as Peregrine did, and was all you had so far, revealed nothing of note. A comparative analysis of multiple samples reveals that, when examined closely enough, some of them differ. The mushrooms are the same as far as your rudimentary observation lets you see. The spores, however… the contagion-causing deformity within the hyphae differs between samples. You check this very carefully before deciding to worry about it. Between all the samples you've got, you find two categories into which the spores fit. Two categories of pathogen. Two… strains.

Your research isn't exhaustive. It's as far from exhaustive as possible. There could be more strains – despite a vaccine that may work on one of them, you might still be wandering blindly, maybe even blinder than before now that you know the extent of what you don't know. The contagion is more than one thing, and as you consider this, isolated in this knowledge, it continues to spread itself, to mutate further.

But.

But.

You have a vaccine.

And, what's more, you understand why some of the zombies appear to suffer the symptoms of “external” zombification before “internal” symptoms. You know, now, that the second strain is what caused some zombies to behave more apelike, more mammalian, than monstrously, living in pseudo-communities, still interacting with the guise of human sociology, of community.

And you understand, at last, what happened to Lottie.

The second strain.

You have to know which one the vaccine cures. If any, cautions the pessimistic voice in the back of your mind.

Your plan to test on the rat goes out of the window. You already have a testing group – The Relic Seeker, Devo, and Peregrine, all inoculated. You just need to split the group in half.

For once, you throw cowardice to the wind, and it chimes mockingly as it floats on a gust and disappears, sure to return later. You take advantage of its absence to do the courageous thing for the first time in as long as you care to remember.

You tell people about what you've discovered.

It's decided, at last, that you need to test on zombies exhibiting the pre-observed different types of behaviour. Devo will stay closer to home, examining the zombies within reach – the ones who are so transformed on the inside that the extent of their external zombification hardly matters. The first strain. As for The Relic Seeker, he'll go into Din Talin, with the Saint as a trusty guard, seeking zombies with a much less zombified interior than exterior. The second strain.

Peregrine would be of help if they were your third subject. However, as usual, they refuse to leave the Bastion, quivering with a prey-like intensity. You don't bother suggesting it before they're already hopping away from you, warbling excuses.

But that dose doesn't go unused. Who needs a lab rat when you've got Peregrine? You watch them like a hawk, from a very safe distance. No symptoms of the contagion display themselves.

At the very least, it's safe to take.

You pierce your own skin with a needle. Once you're safe, you focus on the next step. Making more.

[OC: You make enough doses for half the number of people at the Bastion. You do not know if this vaccine is effective at all, or whether it is effective against the contagion strain 1 or strain 2.]

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