I Poured the World Down the Drain (p)

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    Plot
    Diane Dreynan (Muse A)

    I'll make a quick bio (hopefully sometime tomorrow) and then put up a first post ASAP!

    The post was edited 1 time, last by _Cass_ ().

    Post to track and put up a quick bio.

    Name: Conrad Rider
    Gender: Male
    Age: 24
    Sexuality: Hetero

    Conrad is one of those people, who while not quite a conspiracy theorist himself, would freak out to his friends after watching a couple hours of those ridiculous online videos where people claim so and so is done by the government, becoming convinced of such things for up to a week before being talked out of it.
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    OOC: Okeedokee, got my bio finished up! Time to jump in!


    IC: Diane could remember the first time she was introduced to those she was going to be working with for her internship. She could recall floating due to her immense excitement, practically shaking with expectation for the first week that she knew of the great honor bestowed upon her. Her mom was so proud, and her dad could hardly verbalize a response over the phone when she had called them. Even her little sister -- a young girl that couldn't quite understand the full gravity of the situation -- was overjoyed, perhaps as excited as her elder sister.


    Needless to say, Diane felt as though she had finally made it in the scientific world. After years of studying and taking insanely difficult classes for equally as insane amounts of credits, she had finally gotten a break in the real world. This internship could be the doorway which lead to door number two, then door number three, and so and and so forth until she was at the top! She knew that it would require even more hard work, but she was used to putting in all of her heart and soul into her studies. What could she possibly do for the world's top scientific minds? Get them coffee when they needed it, more than anything, maybe file their less sensitive documents and papers, but she hardly expected to get her hands dirty in real research and science.


    But that was, for better or for worse, where she was wrong. Instead of acting as a glorified (and majorly unpaid) secretary, she actually had the chance to do something substantial. And, if one would ask any of the scientists involved, they might even claim that she was of great assistance to them. She was a bright young girl, after all, and the difference of her mind compared to their own was like gaining new sight to old eyes. No, she wasn't near the top of the scientific food chain yet, but she was certainly on the path which would take her there eventually.


    There was no way to ask those scientists about Diane, however. They were gone, destroyed by their own research, corrupted and swept away by the very thing that they had labored to create. Deceived, unable to see into the future, and perhaps a bit too overzealous, each and every one of them were snapped up by Harm's jaws and eaten whole. So much for their "cure for cancer;" instead of that, they simply made something far worse.


    Just thinking about what she had done, what she had helped to do, made Diane feel sick to her stomach. It was impossible to cope with on her own, and yet, what choice did she have? If she told anyone that she was involved with the plague that had created a look-alike to the previously fictional zombie apocalypse, how could she expect anyone to listen with compassion? Anyone in their right mind had to know that they would be killed by an angry mob of people who had suffered loss because of this science marvel gone wrong.


    Even worse than knowing that she had been at least somewhat apart of the experiments was the knowledge that only she had survived. Each of the scientists working on the project were either confirmed dead from being in close proximity with the disease, were killed by angry family members who had been promised a cancer cure but received only more horror, or had simply disappeared into thin air. Diane didn't miss any of them, per se, but she did wish that they were still here, if only for guidance in how to reverse all of the wrong that had been produced.


    How many people had to die thanks to a small group's mistakes? Diane wanted to know the answer to that question, and yet was also too afraid to ask. Not like anyone could answer it truthfully, anyhow . . . .


    A few days after things had gone to hell worldwide, Diane found herself on a plane. She was fully aware of everything that was going on around her, and yet she also couldn't brush off a feeling of intense terror. It felt like everyone around her was staring at her, judging her, whispering about her--even though they weren't. They might've been able to draw conclusions or become suspicious if they found the many files of research within her carry on bag, but no one was looking in it. All anyone could see was a normal girl who looked just as anxious as everyone else around her.


    After what felt like ages, the plane finally landed. People tried to file off as quickly as possible, everyone tired of being cramped and confined on a plane in the middle of a growing apocalypse, but, even so, all of its occupants were clearly impatient and terse.


    As soon as she was off the plane, Diane powered on her cell phone and pulled open her contacts. Backpack on her back and rolling suitcase handle in her left hand, she walked quickly and scrolled even faster. Coming to the contact info that she was searching for, she took a deep breath and pressed the call button.


    "Conrad," she sighed under her breath, "please pick up . . . ."

    Conrad, despite the growing, international panic, was laying in bed trying to actually talk himself into getting up, so far very unsuccessful in his attempts to stand. After a couple more tries he was out of bed, pouring a bowl of cereal, eating as he thought over the items he had bought when everything had started panicking. He was nearly bankrupt after splurging his money on supplies, but for once he had been right to do so, all those videos which had lead to him having to even resell such things as fire arms had proven right, the evidence was all over the world. He stood up, dumped the bowl out, and got himself properly dressed, then begin looking at the things he had.

    Despite his fear in the past when he'd learned things hadn't even been real, he was surprisingly calm now, more in shock than in fear, hardly able to actually believe things were happening. Even in the past he'd been totally convinced by such stupid things, but now that there was real evidence around him, now that it was truly happening it almost felt like a dream, like he would be talked out of it again tomorrow, shown that it was some elaborate hoax. He picked up the gun he'd bought a couple days before all the rumors had been proven true, he wasn't totally unused to using a gun, but the weight of such a small thing always surprised him.

    His phone rang and he took a peek at who was calling. It was Diane, a girl he'd met before he had given up on getting a degree of his own, it'd been a while since the last time they had talked, he'd gotten rather heated when she had accused him of being delirious, crazy to believe the things he did. With a long sigh he answered, "Hey, what's up?"

    "Oh, thank God!" The relief in Diane's voice was palpable. She sounded as though maybe she hadn't really expected him to pick up. Or, more accurately, she had been worried that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't have been able to. A lot can happen in a couple of days, after all, and there was no assurance that anyone would be exempt from feeling the affects of the disease's damage. "I can't believe my luck. I managed to get on one of the last plane flights here, but only barely. I'm also lucky enough to not have been . . . ." She swallowed hard, restraining herself from saying much more.


    It had been a while since she and Conrad had spoken. They had been pretty close for a while, hanging out in class and around campus, trying their best to study and to pass tests while keeping their sanity. The thing which had split them apart was their personal views on what was most important. Diane was down to earth, sometimes a little too much so; Conrad, on the other hand, was not. He chased after things that she deemed silly and unimportant, and she took her academic life a little too seriously for his taste. After a while, the culmination of their differences fractured their relationship. Some might say that Diane continued to move forward while Conrad fell behind. Of course, there was always the other side of the story that would claim that she was too stiff and inflexible with her priorities. Regardless of what actually happened, the past was the past. Given the circumstances, he was still the only person that Diane felt in her heart that she could trust.


    "Listen," Diane started, words running over her lips hastily in her anxious state, "I'm back in town. And I need to talk to you. I don't suppose you could, ah, pick me up? From the airport?" She felt rather awful coming back at a time like this, only making a connection with him once again out of a sense of necessity, but she didn't know what else to do. "It's rather urgent, and I don't trust public transportation anymore, considering everything that's happening." Diane didn't even know if one could call a cab anymore whether they wanted to or not, and she didn't exactly prefer to figure out.


    Even though she knew that Conrad had always been kind to her, she couldn't help but hold her breath as she awaited a response. She hadn't made a Plan A, let alone any back up plans.

    It was weird to hear her voice after so long, reminding him of when he'd had a plan for his life, when he was sure he would become some kind of engineer or something like that. A simple look around his apartment told you how that had gone, as did his job managing some cheap local restaurant that pretended to be Italian. His life was a lot less stressful sure, but the only thing that he had going on was the fact that he'd been right for once, despite all his mistakes in the past. "I can be there in a bit, I guess, don't really have anything else to do."

    He begin rummaging around, looking for his keys, cursing between sentences as he stubbed his toe, "It's a bit of a... surprise I guess, to have you just call out of nowhere, especially with what's happening." He grabbed his keys and slipped on some shoes as he headed out the door, craned head holding the phone in place on his shoulder. "I can be there in five, ten minutes, why did you fly down here anyway?" He rushed down the stairs of the building and into his car, which wasn't much, but it ran and got him from point A to point B, usually...

    Diane felt as though a weight were lifting off of her shoulders as soon as Conrad gave her a positive response. Some of the worry that had been plaguing her, nagging at her like a grumpy old woman nagged at her grandchildren, graciously dissipated. "Thank you so much, Conrad," she sighed, physically feeling the tension in her body decrease.


    She was right in supposing that he would take some time out of his day to pick her up. Considering her abrupt appearance, it was also very correct of her to assume that he would question her about this odd situation. "I know it's surprising, I know it's strange, and I'm sorry for just calling you out of the blue. I'm just glad that I didn't interrupt you doing anything important." Diane didn't really know what he was up to these days, but she liked to think that he was doing more than lounging around playing video games and reading shady conspiracy theory articles online. Just because college wasn't necessarily the right place for him didn't mean that he hadn't found his niche in the wake of their friendship.


    From the other side of the phone, Diane could hear Conrad getting ready to leave his house, rummaging about and cursing when he ran into something. Time might have passed and the current situation might be less than ideal, but she still felt a smile tug at her lips. "Listen, I know that you have a lot of questions to ask. I also know that I have a lot of answers to give. But I can explain everything later." She glanced about at the other people in the airport, pursing her lips as they hurried every which way about her. For a moment she wondered if anyone had been affected but the disease she'd helped manufacture, an internal query which sent pangs of regret rushing through her. "I promise that I will. Just . . . not right now."

    "Right, okay..." Conrad was just now pulling out onto the street, very aware of the fact that if he couldn't back to his apartment, most of the things he'd bought would go to waste. He had brought the gun though, and a couple extra magazines, because you never know, especially with what was going down now. "I'll call you back once I get there." He hung up, slipping the phone in his pocket as he turned a corner, as he kept going he had to suddenly slam on the brakes, a man was in the middle of the street bent over someone else. He carefully climbed out of the car, ensuring he had the handgun ready and loaded.

    From what he can tell the man was giving them CPR, or so he hoped, his heart dropped as he came around the car and saw that the man was not giving CPR but rather holding a rock with both hands... He slammed it down again and again, smashing in his victim's rib cage. Conrad raised the gun up, "Hey, dr-drop the fucking rock!" He was shaking a little, not enough that he would completely miss, but he knew that he wasn't truly ready to do what may be necessary. The man looked over his shoulder at Conrad, saw the gun aimed at him, and simply took off. He lowered the gun, sighing as he hopped back into the car, driving around the corpse so he didn't have to run it over. After a couple more minutes he reached the airport, and called Diane, "I'm here."

    "Okay," Diane murmured. "Thank you again . . . ." After they had hung up, she started to worry about how Conrad would react to everything. He was probably perplexed now, but how long would it take for him to become suspicious? Once she told him, would he react as she had originally hoped, or would she hate him like everyone else? Diane could have gone home, but every time she imagined her mom and dad looking at her with disgust, disappointment, and rejection, she opted not to call them, not even to see if they were okay. She even let their phone calls to her ring until they went to voicemail, steeling herself before listening to their messages so that she wouldn't break down and call back.


    If she would listen to reason, then perhaps she wouldn't be so worried about her family's reaction. But fear stole that from her, and so she continued to run, run all the way into the arms of someone that hadn't seen her in quite some time. Perhaps not the best choice, but the choice was made. There was no going back.


    Diane reached the entrance of the airport, found a wall to lean on, and waited. She didn't take off her backpack, altogether avoiding the risk of someone nabbing it from her when she wasn't paying attention, and didn't sit, almost rigid as she waited for Conrad to arrive.


    Finally, right as impatience was beginning to seep out of her very pores, her phone rang. She jumped, caught off guard by the buzzing, then hastened to answer. She didn't even have time to say hello before Conrad spoke. "Oh, good! I'm by the entrance. What are you driving?" Though perhaps it was silly of her, she caught herself hoping that it was something nicer than the old piece of junk that he had been driving back when they were close.

    "I uh, I think you'll recognize it..." He was still, in fact, driving that same car, because quite frankly he had never had enough trouble with it to consider replacing it, and besides he really did love it. It had a lot of emotional attachment to it, and he definitely didn't want to give such a thing up, "Hey, I can see you, I'm to your left." He honked the car's horn as he slowed down, waiting for her. It had been a while since he'd seen her in person for sure, she didn't look too different from what he remembered, so recognizing her hadn't been hard.


    (Sorry this took a bit and it's not very long, low muse)

    OOC: No worries, also if I don't post much in this upcoming week it's because it's show week and I'll be pretty busy. Just a heads up!


    IC: If it wasn't hard to recognize Diane, then it definitely wasn't difficult to recognize Conrad's crappy car. It still ran, obviously, but it looked even worse than it had back in the day, if that was even possible. "Oh good Lord," Diane sighed melodramatically at the sight of it, a small smile tugging nonetheless at her lips. It was hard to forget a car like that.


    Even more than that, it was impossible to forget Conrad. He had changed a little since she last saw him, but he was still himself. Though she was still looking at him from afar, there was that twinge of familiarity from the very moment she set eyes upon him, an odd sort of comfort. Without another word she hung up the phone, slid it into her pocket, hooked a hand into the handle of her suitcase, and started walking towards the car.


    Upon reaching the car, Diane opened up the door to the backseat and shoved her suitcase into the space on the floor between the seats. It was fairly small, so it was pretty easy to throw in with minimal effort. Her backpack she kept with her, however; even though it wouldn't be stolen or opened by strangers in an airport, an anxious sense of concern made her feel inclined to continue having it as close to her being as possible.


    Diane hopped into the front seat and secured her bag on the floor between her feet. She allowed herself to take in and let out one deep breath, relaxing fractionally. The gamble part of her plan was over with. Now for hard part of her operation. "Really, I don't know how I'll ever thank you enough for this, Conrad. You're truly a lifesaver." And she was a lifetaker, by extension. And he was about to be the first person to know that.

    Conrad sat in the front of the car as she shoved the suitcase in the back, tapping on the wheel and glancing around at the airport. As he had expected, the airport was just full of absolute chaos, people running here to there and back again, people who were clearly lost holding up signs or desperately trying to find someone, anyone, to give them a ride out of here. If you didn't pay much attention you could just believe there was no special reason it was overcrowded, but then Conrad saw a man being detained who was presumably infected. He glanced away as Diane climbed into the car, he didn't want to see where that man's fate took him.

    Conrad cleared his throat after she'd climbed in and thanked him, "I'm really not a life saver, I'm sure you could've taken care of yourself regardless of me, so there was no life in need of saving." He began driving, rather slowly due to all the people and cars moving along, "You seemed a little, I guess, panicked when you called me... what's going on with you?" He thought to himself about why she might be so seemingly worried, all he knew was that she'd gone into some sort of scientific degree, he didn't exactly remember what, but tried to focus on the road more than his own inferences, and waited for an answer.

    Diane didn't directly see what Conrad was seeing -- her back was turned to the man being detained, to all of the commotion that she had just been a part of herself -- but she had seen so many cases of action like this already. Heck, she had been in the middle of it, in the very place where the storm of commotion and distress had begun! If she had a choice, she would run away and never turn back, avoiding everything altogether.


    Okay, well, maybe she did have a choice in the matter. But running away wasn't an option that she could abide in the end.


    As Conrad began driving, navigating through the mess of other cars in the airport, Diane allowed herself a small wry smile. He might not think that he saved a life today, but who knew? There were plenty of ways to die, and there were always worst case scenarios that neither of them could start to dream up. She didn't argue with him, however. "Yeah. Panicked is an understatement, if I'm going to be frank with you. I mean, look around . . . ." Everyone was panicked, though the spectrum of intensity did vary from person to person.


    Diane breathed deeply, knowing that she had to be blunt and upfront in this situation, yet also calm and unalarming. She wasn't too sure how she would accomplish that, exactly, but it was better to try now than to continue putting off the inevitable. "I owe my full honesty with this. But before I can tell you everything, I need you to promise not to freak out. Or, at least, I need you to try to stay at least somewhat calm." She knew that this was a tall and foreboding request, but she at least needed him to attempt to not to lose his nerve. It was ridiculous, however, to expect him to not miss a beat at all, so she herself was preparing herself for sharing the truth.

    "Yeah, alright, I'm not gonna freak out." He was very aware that she was quite panicked and worried, which honestly made already want to freak out, because in the time he'd known her she'd always seemed calm and rational, the one who didn't freak out when he did, who didn't buy into the stupid theories and buy a bunch of dooms day's supplies. Now he was the surprisingly calm one, the one who was calm despite everything, when he should already be freaking out and panicking, but here he was, totally calm. It felt strange, he'd gotten used to freaking out, he guessed.

    They were coming out onto the main road now, he was heading back towards his apartment, hoping that there wouldn't be anything that forced them to stop on the way there, or even worse, someone. He kept driving, doing his best to pay attention to the road while waiting for the news, hoping that it wasn't as bad as she seemed to think it was, though almost anything seemed like a minor incident compared to the world around him, the world that was falling apart at its hinges.

    It was rather ironic, wasn't it? The way that their positions had reversed. For the first time, Conrad was the smart one, the one that had been prepared in more ways than one for the worst case scenario. Through his propensity for becoming riled up over even the smallest of theories, he had thus become prepared for this whole apocalyptic situation. It made sense that he was the calmer one now; it made sense for Diane to be the one becoming increasingly unhinged.


    "Good, because this is going to be pretty big news." Appreciating the fact that Conrad was watching the road carefully as he drove, Diane allowed her eyes to focus on anything and everything that appeared out the passenger side window. Making eye contact would have been too difficult for her now, so at least she didn't need to raise her stress levels anymore by locking eyes with him. "You know that internship I had? When I first got accepted, it was big news. Working with an elite group of the world's collective brightest minds was simply overwhelming. Well, it turns out that they were working on a cure. A cure for cancer." She seemed to shrink in the passenger seat. "And not just any cure; they were the ones that manufactured this . . . this plague. And, the thing is-"


    Her voice was shaking too much, so she broke off, cleared her throat, and forced herself to continue with a greater sense of control. "The thing is, I wasn't just running around doing trivial intern activities for them. They let me help them. They listened to my ideas, invited me to assist in minor yet significant ways. I-I helped to create this disease, Conrad."


    Days worth of pent up shame, a disease unto itself, came to a culmination within Diane. Now that the news was out in the open, she couldn't stop herself from weeping, gentle tears spilling out of her eyes and rolling down her cheeks. It was a refined, quiet kind of misery, one which she couldn't contain. "I'm so sorry that I have to tell you this, but I couldn't keep it to myself. I couldn't bear it any longer!" Her voice cracked, and she pressed a hand to her mouth, trying to get control over her emotions. "Nobody else knows that I worked on that 'cure'. My name was never a part of the records. Some of the scientists were murdered--and, oh God, I don't know what to do!" She gave in, releasing all of the tension that she had bottled up.


    She didn't care as much now how Conrad reaction; she was just relieved to get everything off her chest.

    Conrad listened quietly, taking in the information, he did remember the day she'd gotten that internship. It had been a week before he'd given up on his own degree, and part of why, hearing her talking so energetically about how it would help launch her career had made him realize how little progress he had made. It had made him realize the original desire he had for the degree and a career following in line with it was completely gone, he'd wanted nothing more out of the career other than the money, and had decided such a life wasn't for him.

    At the end of her sentence, when she began to get flustered, he sat silently for a moment, processing the information. That really hadn't been what he'd expected, he breathed deeply and composed himself before speaking, "Okay, yes, you might've been there and helped, but its not like you made it do this right? It's not like you thought it would this kind of effect, you truly believed you were creating the cure all for cancer, that you would be saving millions of lives. You didn't do anything, wrong, okay? You were trying to help people, not hurt them, and that's what matters." He kept his eyes on the road as the words seemed to just spill out of his mouth of their own accord. He stopped the car, "We're here."

    Since when had Conrad been the reasonable one? In the midst of her mess, Diane found herself fighting off a peal of almost hysterical laughter. The irony of this situation was overwhelming her even more than she was already overwhelmed. As she attacked at her face with the heel of her palm, trying to wipe away some of the salty tears wetting her cheeks, she felt a deep sense of affirmation. Choosing to reach out to Conrad had been the right choice for sure.


    "Thank you," she murmured, starting to get her breathing evened out, the flow of hysterics easing up. "Thank you for understanding. I just wish that the rest of the world were just as reasonable as you . . . ." She hated that she had to unburden all of this onto him, but she certainly felt better now that she had.


    As soon as the car pulled to a stop, Diane reached out a hand and gently touched Conrad's shoulder. She was about to thank him yet again, but felt as though perhaps it had become redundant and unnecessary. Instead she smiled lightly, trying to show him that she was okay. Perhaps she was even trying to prove that fact to herself. Then, after the moment had passed, she jumped out of the car, securing the straps of her backpack onto her shoulders before also retrieving her suitcase.

    "I don't know about reasonable, but you're welcome." He did his best to return the smile she gave him and sat in the car for a few moments as she grabbed her suit case and bag. It had taken a bit for what she had said to him to really sink in, and as he thought about it he realized that he'd definitely made the right choice, though he was certain the disease was made by an accident, who would know more about it than one of the people behind the experiments that resulted in such a thing, right? He hoped that she did know a thing or two about what it was, despite it being an accident.

    Conrad climbed out of the car, "I live in the apartment building right over there, I've got some stuff upstairs that'll definitely prove useful." He chuckled, "I had convinced myself of another coming disaster and bought a bunch of shit, guess I was right this time, huh?" He locked the car doors and started up the stairs of the apartment building.

    Hmm. Diane hadn't expected Conrad to be living in a snazzy mansion, but she also hadn't expected him to be living in an apartment like that. Its outward appearance was a bit disheartening, so she could only hope that it would prove to look better on the inside than it did on the outside. "Hey, I'm proud," she said slyly, following behind him after the car doors were shut and locked. "Your constant obsession with disasters and apocalypses has finally paid off. At least you spent a lot of money in preparation for this one and not that one you got really hooked on in college. What was it? The black plague part two? I seriously thought you were going to kill all of the squirrels on campus." She grinned, collapsing the extendable handle of her suitcase and transferring her grip onto the immobile one beside it as she mounted the stairs. Despite the fact that disaster was upon the world and that her face was salty in the wake of tears, she was starting to feel substantially better.


    "Now, if you have anything in your apartment that I can use for experiments, that would be incredible." The important documents in her backpack, heavy on her back after carrying it for so long today, reentered her mind like a tidal wave. "One thing I haven't told you yet is that I stole everything I could from the lab. I don't know exactly what information I have, but something in here has to hold an answer." The scientific part of her mind was reawakening once again. She had a duty to right a wrong and save many lives; she had to find a way to reverse the disease.


    Whether that was possible or not was unclear, but it gave her a sense of purpose. And, considering the fact that her guilt hadn't yet receded in full, that was as good as any therapy for her afflicted mind.

    Conrad sighed, he didn't feel like explaining that it wasn't the black plague part 2, it had supposedly been a disease similar to this own that was happening right now, which caused no violent behavior in animals. He found his mind drifting back to that and the memories of how sure he was it would've come, when he realized he'd almost entirely stopped listening to Diane. He unlocked the door of the apartment, "Well, I'm not entirely sure how useful you'll find this place, not exactly some government funded institution."

    The apartment was kind of a mess right now, due to the supplies he had brought into the main sort of living room area, to keep them all together. He had been intending to pack up some supplies this morning when she'd called, and had to of course abandon that plan at least temporarily to go pick her up. He headed into his small kitchen, "You can dump your stuff in the room through the last door on the right."