Grace stumbled out of that car, the black Audi with stolen plates, wearing a detached expression. All of this must be happening to someone else. It isn't real. Like a movie of some other person's life, and she's watching it.
Sera and Lena followed, looking like deranged zombies shuffling in search of meat. Lena wouldn't let Grace help her to the clinic. Dangerous. She's so dangerous like this. But in this moment, when nothing feels real, it's hard to understand why. Why should Grace care about her own life, when it's not hers anymore?
Later, lying in her cot in the lab (Sera took her old room. It was eagerly given away) she can hear Lena fling accusations at Luke. The Cultist still thinks she's in that lab, that Callum is alive, and this new place is a trick.
She hears all that, and it just slides off of her mind. Another fact to file away until she gives herself the freedom to feel again. And when she does, man is it going to suck.
Grace stays until Friday. With no way to heal herself, and relying on Luke's oh-so-generous help to get well again, she has to stay. Won't go out. She tells herself that this is pragmatic -- she's still infected with a virus, even if it's dying, and this virus is the scariest thing she's ever laid eyes on. It's like walking around with a nuke strapped to your arm that could blow up the city. She has no idea why the others thought that it was perfectly fine to go walk around outside like that. In public. It's almost obscene.
The last time there was a virus that used the immune system to kill was 1918. The flu killed 5% of the world that year. Hydra would have been worse. Could still be worse, if it's out there, if it's escaped its cage. And this is another fear that she's just not letting herself feel yet. Someone should check the city, just to be safe. But she can't even access her own information drop right now. Katie killed everything.
She does a lot of staring at the ceiling those last two days. That, and visiting Sera when the Ecstatic isn't stuck in a waking nightmare. Grace isn't that great company, but there is something to just being there, if she's allowed to be. Lena won't allow her to be.
Truth be told, she's more worried about Lena than Sera, the one who fell deepest into the disease's clutches. Lena's been alone for so long.
Friday night, she leaves for home at last. Alone now, no longer having to put up a front for others, she goes right to bed. Surrounded by apartments claimed by students, the thud of bass ripples through her walls. Somewhere, someone else is answering that rhythm with an older, primal one as their bedpost rams into the wall. But Grace, into a mattress stained with week-old sweat, screams. It has its own rhythm. Breathing, and crying and breathing again. She was right. When she let herself feel, it did suck.
Sera and Lena followed, looking like deranged zombies shuffling in search of meat. Lena wouldn't let Grace help her to the clinic. Dangerous. She's so dangerous like this. But in this moment, when nothing feels real, it's hard to understand why. Why should Grace care about her own life, when it's not hers anymore?
Later, lying in her cot in the lab (Sera took her old room. It was eagerly given away) she can hear Lena fling accusations at Luke. The Cultist still thinks she's in that lab, that Callum is alive, and this new place is a trick.
She hears all that, and it just slides off of her mind. Another fact to file away until she gives herself the freedom to feel again. And when she does, man is it going to suck.
Grace stays until Friday. With no way to heal herself, and relying on Luke's oh-so-generous help to get well again, she has to stay. Won't go out. She tells herself that this is pragmatic -- she's still infected with a virus, even if it's dying, and this virus is the scariest thing she's ever laid eyes on. It's like walking around with a nuke strapped to your arm that could blow up the city. She has no idea why the others thought that it was perfectly fine to go walk around outside like that. In public. It's almost obscene.
The last time there was a virus that used the immune system to kill was 1918. The flu killed 5% of the world that year. Hydra would have been worse. Could still be worse, if it's out there, if it's escaped its cage. And this is another fear that she's just not letting herself feel yet. Someone should check the city, just to be safe. But she can't even access her own information drop right now. Katie killed everything.
She does a lot of staring at the ceiling those last two days. That, and visiting Sera when the Ecstatic isn't stuck in a waking nightmare. Grace isn't that great company, but there is something to just being there, if she's allowed to be. Lena won't allow her to be.
Truth be told, she's more worried about Lena than Sera, the one who fell deepest into the disease's clutches. Lena's been alone for so long.
Friday night, she leaves for home at last. Alone now, no longer having to put up a front for others, she goes right to bed. Surrounded by apartments claimed by students, the thud of bass ripples through her walls. Somewhere, someone else is answering that rhythm with an older, primal one as their bedpost rams into the wall. But Grace, into a mattress stained with week-old sweat, screams. It has its own rhythm. Breathing, and crying and breathing again. She was right. When she let herself feel, it did suck.