Begin The Procedure, OC/Canon fic, Chapter 8
Author's note: Chapter 8! Hooray! Now this is where the plot really starts to come in strongly! :D They cured the Avaritia patients, now it's Socordia's turn! And what on earth's going on at the end? Looks like the enemy's about to make their next move! This took me longer than I would have liked because for the past few days, I hadn't been able to get much writing done... I did a lot today, though, so that's this chapter done :D I hope it's okay ;u; And hooray, Victor |DD He's a cool character as well, but I find him hard to write OTL I hope you enjoy, everyone~! <3 And as usual, thanks for your comments amideadn0w C:
Chapter 8: The First Step
Early the next morning, Markus and Valerie were busy operating on yet another of Caduceus’s many patients. The man had a bad case of Brachion, which they were quite surprised at - since the SIN incident they hadn’t seen all that many cases of Stigma.
“Okay, just pinch the arm there...” Valerie muttered. “...That should stop the poison getting out.”
Markus injected the medication into the end of Brachion’s long arm, and Valerie cut the tip off with the scalpel. They continued to do this with the other two arms, and Brachion pulled them in to regenerate the tips. Then it re-extended its arms, with an extra one it had made.
“It’s getting weaker, at least.” Elena pointed out.
“True.” Valerie replied. She used the forceps to pinch the virus’s arms and stop the poison, and then she and Markus began removing the tips of the arms again. Once they were done, Brachion’s arms retracted into the core.
The arms popped back out, moments later, with their tips regenerated. This time, when the tips were removed and the virus pulled them back in, the core wobbled almost as if it was struggling to regenerate.
“Looks like we’re nearly done here.” Markus said, gazing down at Brachion.
“Yeah, let’s finish this.”
Again they removed the tips of the virus’s arms, which sent them back into the core. A couple of moments passed while the core struggled and struggled, and then - gone. No sign of Brachion at all.
“That’s Brachion eliminated!” Elena said with certainty, and Valerie began suturing the incision. Once she was done, Markus bandaged it.
“That was fairly easy. Thank goodness.” Valerie smiled.
“You did a good job, Val.” Markus replied. “Weird to see that thing again after so long though.”
“I think we’ve got another Avaritia patient next, and then the research operation.” Valerie told him, then she looked at Elena. “Is that right?”
Elena nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, that’s right, Dr. Blaylock.”
“Well, the Avaritia op should be a breeze.” Markus smirked. “After all, there’s going to be three of us working on it, and we’ve got the hang of it by now. Which room is it in again?”
“Number 17, on the second floor.”
“Right, we’ll head there straight away. Is the patient ready?”
“Yes, we thought it’d be easier as the operation was scheduled right after this one.”
The three of them left the operating room once they were done and headed off to the lift, and as soon as they arrived on the second floor, the group went straight for room number 17. Elena took a few moments to look for the patient’s chart, but she found it soon enough.
“Okay. Our patient today is 37 year old Thomas Wright. He’s suffering from Avaritia in his lungs, but his vitals are relatively stable. We shouldn’t have much trouble curing him.”
“Good to hear.” Valerie replied once Elena had finished. “We’ll cure the Avaritia - this should be a breeze.”
As usual, when they opened the patient up there were cuts all over his lungs. Markus and Valerie carefully sutured each one, and when the Avaritia appeared they worked together to remove them. It wasn’t long before the first three Avaritia had been destroyed, and the large slash that indicated a mature Avaritia’s presence appeared.
Using the ultrasound, Valerie found the virus and cut it out, and Markus hit it with the laser. When it dived back into the lung, they just repeated the process, and soon enough the mature Avaritia vanished.
“Looks like we’ve got the hang of this one, at least.” Markus commented as he sutured the incision and bandaged it.
“Yeah, let’s just hope that second one isn’t so bad - the research operation.” Valerie replied.
“It’s in room 10, which is also on this floor.” Elena said.
Once they were finished, the group headed along to room number 10. Nicole was waiting there for them, and she handed the chart to Elena.
“Thank you, Dr. Williams.”
“It’s no problem. Hi, everyone!” Nicole said cheerfully. “How did your other operations go?”
“Just fine, thanks.” Valerie replied. “We had a patient with Brachion and another Avaritia patient, but working together made the whole thing so much easier.”
“Well, that’s good! Here’s hoping this operation’s just as successful.”
“We’ll do our best to make sure it succeeds.” Markus said, his voice and attitude full of confidence. “Elena, do you want to begin the briefing?”
“Of course, Dr. Vaughn. Our patient is 57 year old Eileen Williams. She was brought in during the Avaritia incident, but she couldn’t be cured. We’re using this operation to gather samples of the Socordia virus and to gather information on the patient’s condition. Her vitals are stable, but low, so we have to be careful while operating.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Here we go. This time, I won’t fail.”
With the incision made, the group was soon looking at the patient’s stomach. As before, there was nothing to be seen on the surface. Elena used the ultrasound, which revealed not only Socordia, but also what looked like haemorrhaging.
“That’s unusual...” Nicole muttered to herself. “What could be causing that?”
“Well, we’ll deal with the haemorrhaging first, then move onto Socordia.” Markus said. “That should stop the patient’s vitals from going too low.”
“Sounds like a good plan, Markus.” Valerie replied.
However, when Valerie made the first cut, an odd blue fluid came gushing out. Elena handed her the drain, and she quickly removed it, while Markus sutured the small cut.
“Looks like that wasn’t blood at all... Socordia must have made some kind of poison inside the body.” Nicole said.
“Another good reason to remove it quickly.” Markus sighed.
They worked carefully and quickly to remove the pockets of poison and suture the cuts. Thankfully, the patient’s vitals didn’t drop too much while they were working, so she only needed a bit of the stabiliser injected.
“Now let’s work on Socordia.” Valerie said as she made the incision right above the virus. Its appearance hadn’t changed since last time - it was still the same shapeless, wriggling mass that it had been before. “Okay, that’s... kind of weird.”
“You’re telling me. But that’s not the half of it, Val.” Markus sliced open Socordia with the scalpel, and the smaller viruses came out - as usual, a mixture of red, blue, and yellow.
Valerie stared at the miniature Socordia. “So this is what it does. It splits into a whole bunch of smaller viruses?”
“Yep. And you see those diverticula?”
She nodded. “What about them?”
“I think they’re an indication of what order to treat the Socordia in.” He turned to Nicole. “What do you think?”
“It makes sense to me.” Nicole shrugged. “After all, I can’t see any other reason for them appearing.”
“I agree, it seems like that’s what they’re for.” Valerie chipped in.
“Okay, can I ask you guys to get some of the small Socordia bodies for me?” Nicole asked them, and the two of them nodded.
“No problem.” Markus said.
“They look pretty slow-moving, so you shouldn’t have trouble getting one of each type.” she pointed out.
Carefully, Markus picked up a red, blue, and yellow Socordia, placing them in a nearby metal tray. “There, will that do?”
“Yes, thank you. Until we can come up with a cure, we’re going to have to stop the procedure though.”
“I know.” Markus replied, doing his best to hide the disappointment in his tone. “Okay, I’ll close her up.”
He sutured and bandaged the incision, and that was it.
“Thanks for your help, everyone.” Nicole said to them. “I promise, the whole team is going to do their best to come up with a cure for Socordia, and then we can cure this patient and all the others for good.”
“It’s no problem.” Valerie smiled. “Good luck working with it.”
“Thank you.” Nicole waved to the three of them and headed out of the operating room with the tray.
“See you later!” Valerie called after her.
“Well, we’d better get back. We have other patients to see to as well, don’t we?” Markus asked Elena, who nodded.
“Yes, we have that patient who got involved in the traffic accident - the one with the burst liver. We need to work on fixing that once and for all.”
“Okay.” He straightened up and sighed. “We’ll do our best to save him too. Do you know which operating room he’s been assigned to?”
“Number 6.”
“Which is along this corridor, so no problem.”
The three of them finished up what they were doing and left the operating room, heading for room number 6. As usual, everything was already set up when they arrived. Elena took the chart that had been left there for them.
“The patient is 16 year old Lewis Hill. He’s suffering from a burst liver, which we only managed to patch up last time. We need to operate again and see if we can’t cure him for good. His vitals are low, and will probably drop a lot during the procedure, so we have to be as cautious as we can.”
“Got it. We’ll be fine, Elena. If worst comes to worst, my Healing Touch should be able to keep him stable long enough for us to help him.” Valerie said, smiling confidently. Markus nodded.
“And I can always use my Healing Touch if things get really desperate.” he added.
“Okay then, let’s begin the operation!” Elena said.
A quick incision, and they were staring at the patient’s liver. The membranes had dropped off since the last time they’d operated, and the liver was pretty much obscured by blood.
“Elena, can you drain this? We need to be able to see what we’re doing.” Valerie asked her.
“Of course, Dr. Blaylock.” she nodded, taking the drain and beginning to remove the blood that was blocking their view. “He’s bleeding badly. We should probably check for haemorrhaging.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.” Markus answered, nodding. “Okay, can you use the ultrasound to check the area for us?”
Elena used the ultrasound to check the whole liver, and the check revealed dark patches under the surface.
“This is probably haemorrhaging, so we should do our best to drain it.” Valerie commented. “That way, we can make it easier to pack his liver.”
“You’re right Val. Let’s do it.” Markus’s usual confidence was back, thankfully, and the two of them began slowly cutting, draining, and stitching to remove the haemorrhages in the liver. It was a slow process due to the fact that they had to stop every once in a while to give the patient an injection of stabiliser.
“How’s he looking, Elena?” Markus asked after they’d finished with the haemorrhaging.
“Good, his vitals are low but stable.” came the reply.
“So now all we have to do is pack his liver. That should fix things. The bleeding must have come from those internal haemorrhages, and now that those are dealt with, the membranes should stay.”
“We can do this, right, Markus?” Valerie gave him a confident smile.
“Of course. We’re a team, Val.” He grinned back at her. “We’ll have to drain some of the blood first though, he bled a bit while we were dealing with the haemorrhaging.”
Elena took the drain and removed the small amount of blood that had appeared, and then the two doctors got started. Valerie and Markus took turns placing down the membranes, and only when the both of them were sure that the membranes were in the right place did they start applying the gel.
To their relief, instead of sliding off the liver or just lying flat on the surface, the membranes were slowly starting to meld to the liver with the help of the gel. A few tense moments passed while they waited to see if the patient was fine, and they looked to Elena for her opinion.
The nurse smiled widely. “I think he should be fine now. His vitals are stable and just rose a bit, so he’s probably going to be just fine now.”
“I’ll close him up, then. Thanks Elena.” Valerie replied, suturing the incision and bandaging it. “That wasn’t too bad - we didn’t have to use the Healing Touch, at least.”
“Yeah, I’m glad about that. The last time I had to use it, I had an awful headache. Though some of us are unlucky in that respect.” Markus grinned, shooting her a mock-annoyed look.
Valerie held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “What can I say, Markus? It looks like I got off easy with my Healing Touch.”
“Yeah, I know. Sometimes I wonder. Seems like your particular power doesn’t have much of a disadvantage with it.”
“I still get tired using it, you know.”
“I was just kidding, Val. You don’t need to take everything I say so seriously.”
“When you say it with a straight face and a deadpan tone like that, it seems like you’re being serious!” Valerie laughed.
“I’d have thought you know me better by now.”
“Shows what you know.”
The research department was overtaken by a flurry of excitement in the meantime, as everyone fussed over Socordia.
“I’ve never seen anything like this!” Dr. Cromwell murmured. “Fascinating that this is the virus known as Socordia - a tiny collection of viruses like this!”
“Dr. Cromwell, this isn’t Socordia.” Nicole interrupted, her face serious. “Well, it is, but it’s not the only form Socordia has.”
The doctor looked confused. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, Socordia is also a big... jelly... thing. When it’s cut, it turns into these.”
“I see.” He looked thoughtful. “And these smaller Socordia come out of the main body...”
“Yeah, and there are these diverticula things that pop up in a certain order. The others and I thought it might be because that’s the order you’re meant to treat Socordia in...”
“So really, in some ways it’s similar to the GUILT strain Tetarti in the diverticula production and the fact that it comes in different colours.” Dr. Cromwell replied. “Fascinating. Well, if we can get some fluid from inside Socordia, we may be able to come up with medicine to treat it.”
The researchers around him looked interested.
“So that’s what I want you all to do. Extract some fluid from the Socordia bodies, and work on a medication. You’ll be working as a team, and Cynthia and I will be heading you up.”
Everybody was showing some sign of agreement with this news, which Dr. Cromwell took as a good sign. “Let’s get started, then!”
The whole team worked as a group to set up the necessary equipment and gather any instruments they needed, and then they all headed off to the large work area in the lab to begin. Isabella and Nicole were assigned the red Socordia, Julian and another serious-looking male researcher were assigned to blue, and Cynthia and Dr. Cromwell were working on yellow. The other members of the team were either helping write down information, work with the instruments, or getting possible ingredients together for the medicine.
“You see, the first thing we have to do is slice open the Socordia body so we can get some of the liquid inside. That’s what forms the basis of the Tetarti medication, so that’s how we’re going about making the medicine for Socordia, too.” Isabella was explaining to Nicole.
“I get it! So we’re going about this in a similar way.” Nicole nodded. “So then what do we do?”
“We’ll take the fluid we obtain from the Socordia and mix it with a couple of other things, and then hopefully that should make us a formula that works.”
Isabella cut open the red Socordia, and a strange pink fluid oozed out. Neither she nor Nicole could keep a slight look of disgust from showing on their faces, but nevertheless, they kept going.
For a long time, the team worked together in silence, the quiet only occasionally broken by someone getting up to find something or a person asking someone else a question. Eventually, though, they seemed to be working towards a solution. All of them were carefully mixing the medicine or taking more fluid out of the small Socordia bodies as needed.
Julian and his partner seemed to be getting on with their medicine okay, but the other man was looking irritated and Julian just looked tense. Obviously the pair of them weren’t getting on well with each other. Cynthia and Dr. Cromwell were working fine together, and they were making the whole thing look relatively simple. They were two of the best in the department though, so that wasn’t surprising.
“I think we’re quite close to having the formula for the blue Socordia.” Julian’s partner said stiffly. He was a severe-looking man with hair down to his shoulders and slight dark circles under his eyes. “It took a bit of time, but this guy was pretty helpful in the end.”
“Thank you, Victor.” Dr. Cromwell replied politely, smiling at the other man.
“No problem. Really, this Socordia thing is kind of a pain, but I did my best.”
“How are the rest of you getting on?” he asked the group at large.
Various murmurs went around the gang of people, and a couple of nervous looks were shared.
“Cynthia and I are doing well, too.” Dr. Cromwell informed them. “Of course, none of us have actually completed the medication yet.”
“We’re doing okay. We’re still working on the formula.” Isabella said, looking perfectly calm about the whole thing.
“Okay everyone, just continue as you are and we’ll see how things go.”
The team went back to work. Socordia was yet another battle to fight in the war against SIN, and they were certain that with all of them together they stood a chance at winning.
Elsewhere, the blonde man and his partner were facing up to their boss for the failed incident with Avaritia and Socordia.
“So, you’re telling me that despite the measures we specifically took with the bomb, there were no fatalities at all?” the boss said, cleaning his glasses. The two exchanged a glance. When the boss’s hazel eyes had that cold look in them, they knew they were in trouble.
“Well, sir,” the blonde man began confidently, “There were no fatalities from Avaritia, but we’re assuming that they’re struggling with Socordia, at least. And the fact that Socordia spreads slower than Avaritia does means that there’s a high chance of fatalities at some point.”
The boss narrowed his eyes, sitting straighter in his chair. “We’re not moving fast enough, William. Soon we’ll need to release the third sin.”
“The third sin, sir?” the blonde man, William questioned, a look of confusion evident in his grey eyes.
“You know its name, don’t you? The sin known as Luxuria - lust.”
“Ah, Luxuria. But I thought it wasn’t quite ready?”
“It’s ready enough.” the other man said dismissively, putting his glasses back on. “And who knows? Maybe we can get those Caduceus doctors to help us.”
William’s partner raised an eyebrow. “Help us? How exactly?”
“It’s all a matter of coercion, Sam. If they won’t help us when we ask, which I’m sure will be the case, we’ll just have to borrow them for a while.”
“You mean kidnap them.” William said bluntly, looking unimpressed.
“Of course, but I prefer the term ‘borrow’. And who are you to argue when you and your partner failed to help those sinners in the first place?”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking, sir.” William bowed. “We’ll do our best to help move your plan forward. We are your loyal followers, and we will do what we must.”
“Thank you, William, you and Sam are dismissed.”
William gave him another quick bow, and then hurried out of the room with his partner before the boss could decide otherwise.
“Geez. We’re lucky he wasn’t in a worse mood than that.” Sam sighed as the two of them headed along the old building’s wide corridors.
“You have to be polite with him, Sam.”
“William, you were pretty insolent. You’re lucky he favours you so much, otherwise you’d have been in a lot of trouble.”
“Whatever. Soon we’re going to make our next move. Then we’ll just see how those sinners react.”
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