[Tasale, Exarch Station] Bad Medicine

Cerastes awoke to the smell of antiseptic and intravenous drugs, and a familiar voice humming amid the haze.

"All right, I'm set. Room's clear. Get to your positions."

As the world cleared up, it became readily evident that up was down and black was white because Shirin Her Own Self Vedral was waiting beside his goddamn hospital gurney. It might have been a hallucination (which would be fitting, considering that the Emerald Death having a bedside manner of any kind seemed fundamentally wrong), but as she leaned closer to peer at Cerastes' gradually-opening eyes, it became evident that no, this was the real deal.

"Oh, you're awake." A browridge lifted slightly - she was probably trying to determine whether he was lucid. "Welcome back. Uh, can you understand any of this? I don't know how much they've got you on."

The world, contraty to a popular song Cerastes had never heard, was not so much a vampire as it was a cloud. A pair of red eyes slid open, mere slits exposed in the bright, sterile environment of the hospital room. He stared blearily, ruminating on the blurry masses that floated above him.

So white. The drell squeezed his eyes shut against the brightness, his albinism rendering him more sensitive to the fluorescent bulbs above. When he finally dared to have another look, a pair of yellow orbs centered in a mass of green - god, what a beautiful shade of green - had encompassed his world.

Shirin and Cerastes shared a long, awkward staring contest before the broker finally erupted with a half-shout of surprise and flattened himself against his cot. He squinted at her, bewildered, and eventually realized that she was speaking; strange words flowed into his ears.

"What are you doing here?" he tried to say. What he actually said was, "Whurr you oonere?

Morphine was a hell of a drug.

"Right, they've got you on a metric fuckton. Makes sense; the damage wasn't exactly negligible."

Leaning from side to side, the drell stretched her back muscles out - if Cerastes was lucid enough to be observant, he might've noticed that she had a rather bulky business suit on. It was oddly formal for her usual fare.

"So yeah, I don't know how much they did." A pause, and Shirin eyed the shifting legs under the blankets. "I'm guessing it was reasonably extensive, though - that knee was pretty much ruined, and I noticed it was already kind of shitty to start with. Uh, sorry. Hard not to notice that kind of thing in a fight."

She reached for her collar and began casually unfastening the buttons, one by one.

Ugh, what was wrong with his mouth? Cerastes reached up to try and pop his jaw, but his hand flopped limply on his chest. His muscles felt like jelly, some sort of bizarre, warm jelly that... was still maintaining its shape. He grumbled a few unintelligible words (which were outside of the human hearing range, but that was no issue for Shirin) in protest.

As he continued to adjust to being, well, not a slug again (how long had he been here? what time was it?), a rustling beside him regained his attention. Shirin was still talking, spouting something incomprehensible at him, but now she was moving, too.

Again, Cerastes stared.

Was she stripping? For fuck's sake, he didn't know where he was, he was in no mood or condition to work up the energy to - oh. Oh. She had a full-blown stealth-suit on under that coat. Why did she have a stealth-suit? Confused, he flopped his arm to the side of the gurney and grabbed limply at Shirin's wrist, then fixed her with a questioning look.

There was indeed a stealth suit under the formalwear, which raised a whole variety of new and interesting questions.

"Uh...yeeeeaaaahhhhh." Shirin glanced at the wrist in Cerastes' grasp. "I may have had kind of a vested interest in taking you to this particular hospital."

She glanced at the door.

There was another visitor for Cerastes headed into the hospital even as the two drell spoke - a quarian who hadn't actually dealt with him face-to-face. Even so, it would be unkind of Jil'Korah not to pay the drell a visit, and he'd been looking for a reason to get off the Wheelbarrow anyways. Might as well be to see his... nemesis? at his most vulnerable.

If nothing else, Jil intended to point out that it was his oh-so-thorough infestation of the Eidolon's systems that had allowed for the rescue. This was going to be sweet.

At least, if he ever got through security.

They're not very good at hiding things. If they didn't want people to know this was a research hospital, they'd just use regular security scanners. These are really high-tech.
Apparently safety takes precedence over secrecy.
Not on Illium. These are a warning - they're letting anybody interested in this place know that they have some pretty wealthy backers, and they're hinting that bigger, better systems wait within. Like a deterrent.
There is no record of a successful theft from this facility.
Records can be doctored, especially if there's a wealthy corporate backer involved.

The fun thing about deterrents? Two kinds of people used them, and all but the biggest corporations generally only fell into one category. The first uses them to scare away potential attackers, and backs it up with a terrifyingly effective and equally costly security system. The second uses them as a cheap way to look like the first, but the systems backing them up are basic stuff. Corporations are motivated by profit.

If you're bored, see if you can find out who backs this place. Never know when that might come in handy, and I doubt you have much interest in all this boring organic stuff.
On the contrary, I find organic behavior intriguing. I am, however, a capable multitasker.
Great.

Finally, fucking finally, the security officers waved him on. Quarians always had to wait. Assholes. Jil made his way to Cerastes' room and stuck his head in through the door.

"Not interrupting anything, am I?"

Typical.

"Ahh," Cerasted intoned, upon seeing a quarian head pop in the door. His grip loosened on Shirin's wrist, then dropped entirely. The IV in his other hand continued to provide fluids; he could remember something through the haze of drugs, a doctor saying he was severely dehydrated. The week was coming back to him in bits and pieces.

He had more immediate concerns now, though. The broker grit his teeth and pushed, trying to get into a sitting position. He couldn't even feel anything below his waist. Did they take his legs? No, there they were, under the blankets. Relief flooded him just as fluidly as the morphine.

"How," he cleared his throat. Shapes were becoming more clear, but sitting up had made him nauseous. No doubt a nurse would rush in in a panic if they saw him through the door. "I haveoo g'out here, affer."

A light nod to Jil turned out to be a mistake. He nearly gagged.

Cerastes was about as easy to understand as the industrial slave caste, with their bizarrely-accented cant. As such, Shirin completely ignored him.

"Get your ass in here," she said, waving Jil'Korah through the door with one hand and folding her slacks in the other - it quickly became evident that she'd opted for the Ontarom flare-legged look because it effectively concealed combat boots. "All right, that's me and my, uh, plus one through visiting hours, the rest of the team should be around reasonably soon. Cerastes, just stay put and don't draw attention to yourself - ideally, we're going to be in and out pretty quickly, but you shouldn't be implicated regardless of what happens."

She pulled the door to the closet aside, revealing an unconscious human in a nurse uniform stashed inside it, and placed her folded suit inside with some of Cerastes' personal effects. A moment later, with the door closed again, Shirin started checking her gear.

"Oh, uh. When she wakes up and comes out, just pretend like you're asleep."

Oh, Cerastes was high. He wouldn't even remember it if Jil rubbed in the whole rescue thing right now! That was boring. Probably should have thought of that, though... Thankfully there'd be plenty of time to lord it over the drell later. He stepped into the room.

"Right, uhh... I think my translator's broken?" Your translator is fully functional "Anyways, I got you this!"

With that, the quarian held up a small plush lizard of some kind. "It's something called an 'iguana'. From Earth apparently. Thought it looked a bit like you. It was green when I got it, had to wash it in a chlorine solution, but I think it came out pretty well!"

Being quarian, Jil couldn't really tell that the plush lizard still smelled quite strongly of bleach, but surely that would come out in time regardless?

"So uh... How are things here?"

The question was directed at nobody in particular.

Cerastes just glared hatefully.

Suddenly, elcor.

... kind of.

It looked like an elcor. It was certainly the same size as an elcor - an elcor carrying a metric fuckton of balloons and a top hat, even. But elcor moved with slow, certain grace, and most certainly didn't pop around corners like a piled of tensed muscle suddenly released.

Also, elcor didn't have a strange, krogan accent.

"Uh, er. Greetingsly: I am elcorgram, and I am here t'give yoooou a happy message! Uh. Ahem. Singing this song: Get better soon, get better soon, I am elcorgram, get better soon. Ta-daaaaa."

There was a tiny cough as the 'elcor' silently closed the door.

"Er. I don't think nobody noticed. Managed t'get the gas in, too."

"Things are proceeding on schedule, and--" Shirin cringed momentarily. "...Sorry. Bleach. Memories." She shook her head, and, focused as she was on clearing out the solipsism, returned to the land of the lucid right in the middle of the elcorgram song.

After a moment, she found herself wishing she'd stayed in the solipsism.

"I, uh...fuckin' A, Kirok. Well, you...you technically did what you were supposed to, I guess." Sparing a second look for Kirok's elcor costume (it was surprisingly realistic, if you kept moving and didn't give anyone a chance to look too closely), the drell shrugged. "All right, quarantine research is on floor B1. KSK's given us the specific name of the pathogen we're looking for, but we're going to have to track it down ourselves, which'll require access to the records. Uh, we'll go ahead and wipe any record of your DNA, Cerastes, so don't worry about--"

Footsteps echoed in the corridor. Shirin's eye twitched, and a millisecond later she disappeared into the closet.

"Oh crap, uh, SINGINGLY: GET BETTER SOON, GET BETTER SOON, THIS IS ELCORGRAM, GET BETTER SOON, TA-DA..... uh..."

She was dressed in a labcoat that clung entirely too well to her body. Her hands were covered in thick blue latex gloves; her feet, bound up in boots that enveloped her pants. She was also wearing a wig – a bright red, frizzy wig that covered her scalp like a scarlet afro from hell.

But worst of all was the tanface.

Striding into the office with an air of authority and belonging, Ana’s face was caked with a bright brown makeup that would have horrified anyone who wasn’t a 1940’s MGM actor. The effect was striking; with the perm, the makeup, the inexplicable beauty mark and the wire frames struck across the bridge of her nose, she looked like she’d just walked off of the set of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Not that any one of them would know that film, of course.

Stroking the side of her wig, Ana gripped a datapad against her sagging chest and straightened the ID tag reading “DR. ELAINE CARTIER” stapled to her breast pocket. Twirling a stylus through her fingers and chewing a stick of gum, she looked up, saw the gathering circus and grinned.

“Well hey there, folks!” she exclaimed. “Ready for some…triage?”

By the time some... strange, horrible hagraven marched into his room, Cerastes was convinced he'd started to hallucinate again. He drew a long breath, steadied himself, and very carefully laid back down. Time to go back to sleep - if he even could, now that he'd seen the face of the abyss.

Behind the costume and balloons, Kirok's face curled into an expression best hid by an elcor mask.

"Disgustitated: Dere is somethin' WRONG wit' you."

It was all Jil'Korah could do to put the plush iguana on the bed, trying to nestle it in with Cerastes' arm as best he could without taking his eyes off Ana and the 'elcorgram'.

At least the others had chosen ridiculous disguises, so they wouldn't be recognized. Still, not a bad idea to be sure.

Ensemble, please make a note to erase all camera footage hospital-wide once we're in the system.
You are concerned that the krogan-shaped elcor and the racist human caricature may draw unwanted suspicion?
Slightly.

The quarian didn't actually say anything, though. He just stood there, flabbergasted.

The familiar rasp drew Shirin from her hiding place, and one look at Ana later (she would've spared a much longer one, but after Kirok, there was less astonishment to spare than usual), the drell shrugged. Well, whatever works.

"...Right. Okay, the only elevator to quarantine is behind a guarded checkpoint. Shooting our way past it isn't really an option - we don't want to cause a high-profile incident and we don't want to, uh, accidentally release anything."

This was an understatement. Causing a biological outbreak on Exarch Station would result in a sector quarantine, Illium's fleet showing up to lock everything down, and probably a very long jail sentence for all of them, if they survived long enough to make it there.

"We have options, though. Apart from finding some way to do a total security blackout on the checkpoint - leading the guards away, turning off the surveillance, and so on - I was thinking we might just hide in plain sight. Get ourselves a set of hazmat suits tagged with clearance, and then just pass through. Thoughts?"

Jil'Korah looked from Kirok to Shirin to Ana and then down at himself.

"I can see two problems with the hazmat idea. I'm already wearing something similar that I can't change on the fly, and Kirok's a krogan. I wouldn't think there are a lot of krogan-sized hazmats around."

The quarian plopped down on the corner of Cerastes' bed and struck what could only be described as a 'thinking pose' - elbows on his knees, hands clasped in front of him as he ran through ideas and possibilities in his head (or his suit, at the very least).

We could pose as maintenance and a security escort?
Acquiring the proper clearance codes without system access would require locating and incapacitating enough personnel to impersonate.
...Which would take forever because we're a very inclusive bunch. Okay. We could send Analina to a nurse's station to plant a hack drone, that'd give us some options right?
Doing so without a plan in place would risk detection. She may be recognized as an imposter or the drone may be discovered.
Damnit. Okay. We could try to access the systems from in here?
Without a control console our intrusion would be rapidly detected and isolated, and individual rooms are strictly controlled to prevent patients from accessing hospital systems.
Okay, no good. We lure the guards away and run for it?
We still require access codes, and the guards would be suspicious upon their return. We would also be discovered on our attempt to leave.
You're a bit of a downer, today.
I have decided that I dislike hospitals.

There were not a lot of options that Jil could see, but he wasn't the mastermind. Shirin had a way of looking at things that tended to circumvent the obvious.

"I'm not sure I have anything that we could work with. If we prioritize getting system access I should be able to do more, give us some idea of what we're up against, but for now I don't have much."

Kirok grumbled, clearing his throat and making way for the unusually large thought in his head.

"Well," he said, cocking his be-elcored head to the side in concentration, "I dunno 'bout hazmat techs, but place got germs, s'got security. If'n y'coukd gimme a, I'unno, day pass or temp job with th' security personnel, they wouldn't blink twice at 'nother krogan on staff. Hell, s'why we git hired inna first place; we don't git sick easily. Plus, I'll be armed, which, uh."

Kirok pointedly did not look at Shirin.

"Has been useful, in my recolleckshun."