[Fin] The Murder-Free Hotel

[Kennifer]

"Guess I should take Stew up on his offer to help me remember, then..."

Kennifer only hoped she'd be able to live with herself if she knew what happened.

[Despair's Archon of Memes]

I wonder if Reimu's here... I know her from back in Gensokyo...

[madface7]

Stew and Jocelyn were hanging out in the former's room, drinking hot cocoa and watching TV.

"This isn't funny. He just fell over, hit his knee, and is reeling from the pain for a full minute."

Meanwhile, Stew is dying of laughter.

"...Am I supposed to laugh at that...? Yeah, no, I still don't really like cartoons. Or at least Family Guy." She then whispers, "At least I'm watching this with my boyfriend..."

---

Meanwhile, the Medic is still a cat. "So, shall ve migrate back to ze lab? Ve have some tests to run."

[PointMaid]

Yeah, we'd better do that. Holly -- are you coming?

[Kennifer]

"Sure. This should be quite interesting. I will ask that if I start showing any sort of feline traits you squirt me immediately so I don't compromise the experiment."

Holly smirks a bit and follows the others.

[madface7]

Medic arrives back at the lab, where Engie has set up an array of machines to help with experimentation.

"Y'all ready t' start? I gotta say, boys, I'm a bit uneasy 'bout this, because of the last time we did a microbiological experiment."

"Ze long story short?" Medic pulls out a jar with a sentient piece of moldy bread that's grown teeth. "I found a new pet!" It attempts to bite and lunge at Medic from inside the jar. "Haha, it hates me so much!"

[PointMaid]

...I both want to know how that's possible and what on earth you did, and a bit unnerved, Ruby says after looking at the sentient piece of moldy bread.

I think we should get the sequence of this virus first. It might be related to something we're familiar with -- although it's different enough I'm a bit sceptical -- or it might help with figuring out the structure.

[Kennifer]

"Right, we should deal with this virus first, and then maybe figure out what's going on with that toast. Neither of which are like anything I'd seen before, so this is... quite fascinating, actually."

...did Holly just smile? Yes, yes she did. She's got on her safety glasses now, and pulls on a pair of gloves. This is really pretty exciting to her.

[madface7]

"Right, we gotta sequence its genome and find out its composition. Lemme get some a' the tools set up."

Engie begins clacking on a keyboard and setting up microscopes, scanners, and test tubes.

[PointMaid]

Ruby puts on her lab coat and gloves, then checks that she has all the necessary reagents, enzymes, growing media, and such. All good.

We're going to need to separate the viral DNA or RNA from everything else in your blood... Maybe if we exploit what we already know about this virus?

[madface7]

"Well, what do we know?"

"From what I can gather, it spreads through blood and saliva, due to ze bite... Is zere any other vay it can spread?"

[PointMaid]

...I think that's it.

Maybe if we just do some size-exclusion chromatography and look for a reasonable size for a viral particle, though, that could work. You don't have any other viruses, do you?

[madface7]

"I've manually replaced my immune system to never allow viruses in unless I tell zem to. I should be clean if I just tell ze ones other zan ze cat one to leave..." Medic chuckles.

[Kennifer]

"Well, that's convenient. I'd ask how you managed that, but all in good time. At least it should be reasonably easy to isolate this particular virus, then."

[PointMaid]

:-/ ...Right. Of course. Do that.

I guess it will probably help that it must replicate so quickly and make the body create a lot of itself. I can't see any other way it can take hold so quickly and create so many changes. It's got to evade the immune system, too, since it doesn't cause anyone to feel sick.

[wingedcatgirl]

Landing Pad
"Raha, Shtola..." Sylvi smiles weakly, still on the floor. "Missed you two so much..."

And then she passes out.

G'raha and Y'shtola immediately panic.

[Kennifer]

"It should be easy enough to find, and reasonably easy to sequence. Making sense of the sequencing is what I'm concerned about."

[PointMaid]

Oh, there are lots of tools for that. Whether they're as accurate as the ones I'm used to using in my home time, well...

First thing is to see whether the sequence itself looks like anything we know. Or what's the closest we can come, anyway. Like I said, I'm not very confident how much that's going to help, with it being such a strange virus and all, but it's something...

[Kennifer]

"Right. Well, let's get started then, shall we?"

[madface7]

"Yes, let's!"

Medic pulls out a swab and gets a sample of his saliva.

"Hopefully zis should suffice?"

[PointMaid]

If it behaves the way we think it has to, that's got to be plenty, yeah.

[Kennifer]

"It looks like we're ready to go then. You want to do the honors, Ruby?"

[PointMaid]

Right... Ruby grinned.

Ruby did some centrifugation as a prep step, and did a size-separation gel. Finally, after some PCR and cleanup, the sample was ready to sequence. That feels like it took hardly any time when it should have taken days, shouldn't it? I think my sense of time is skewed. No matter.

[madface7]

"Time's nonexistent 'round these parts."

"Can ve move it along? I'm getting a strange tickling urge to bite people... Ooh, it's delightful!"

[Kennifer]

"It certainly seemed faster than the last time I've done this sort of thing. Then again, I haven't done much work with viruses. I think the last thing I sequenced was plant material, and that's been almost a year ago. I think."

Holly paused a moment to ponder how long she may have actually been here versus how long it feels like she has. But that's a different matter entirely. She shakes her head a little, and refocuses on the gene sequencing.