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Peja's Wonderful World of Makebelieve Import
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Published:
2020-11-04
Completed:
2006-07-14
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4,909
Chapters:
2/2
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3
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24
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Inseparable

Summary:

An Altered virus is released by a lab accident. The effects on the people exposed is permanent, and unwelcome.
A/N: Consider this a bunny fic, anyone can take it and run.....I may work on it later...but I am too busy now!

Chapter 1: one

Notes:

Warning: pre-slashy at first then all the way to slash. An event that is not likely to occur....except in my imagination. I hope. Also know that this is AU and alternate history, and the timelines and canon events are not universally being respected. ages may have been altered, relationships and the events in the lives of the characters.
Summary: A virus is released by a lab accident. The results are not the ones anyone would have liked, and the way an entire people live is changed.
A/N: Consider this a bunny. Anyone can take it and run with it. I may play with it later, but I am too busy now...enjoy....

A/N 2: Here is is a heck of a long time later and I'm playing with the fic.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: I do not own nor am I profitting from the recognizable characters from The Sentinel, Without A Trace, L&O:SVU, or Oz.
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On January first on any given year, most residents of the United States have the day off.

The men and women working at the Hendricks Biological Laboratory located along California State Highway 80 were no exception, all but a skeleton crew were spending the day elsewhere. Most of the people who were working were low level non-scientific staff who were not very well paid and who were eager or desperate for the added incentive of holiday pay. They were trained to notify administrators at once if there was a problem as none were competent to fix even the smallest glitch.

The frantic call came in at 1105 in the morning of January 1st, 2006 to the home of the head scientist of Hendricks, Dr. Mark Restrepo. He was the first person to have any idea of the seriousness of what had occurred.

The lab had been staffed by the wrong people. That was how the accident was said to have been able to happen. The lab supervisors had detailed handouts showing the reasons the accident could not have been predicted or avoided. Because it took place on a holiday. Because the people staffing the lab were not trained scientists. None of the senators were inclined to cut them any slack. The exposed populace who survived tended to be even less charitable. 

On nearly any other day someone would have noticed the indicator light in lab four go on even without the siren that should have gone off in accompaniment, but failed to do so. Followed shortly by the indicator light in the adjacent lab six, also without a siren. It should have been noticed and action taken long before the catastrophe that vented the contents of lab four and lab six into the same mixing tank and then when the pressure built too high, vented the changed virus into the environment around the lab in a vast cloud of pressurized steam that shot nearly half a mile into the sky in less than one minute, where it was carried by prevailing wind currents first toward the park, then out over the Bay Area.

Lab four was a virology lab. And a major storage facility for viral plasmids meant for use in future DNA studies and gene therapy were kept.

Lab six was a chemical lab. In which chemicals that promoted symbiosis were being analyzed and modified.

Experiments using the two had ben ongoing for a number of years and had been universally impressive. Dr. Restrepo had hopes of any number of recognitions and awards. He had been invited to speak next month at a biological conference in Denver.

The two tanks were closer together than they should have been considering the potential for problems, or so the disaster specialist addressing the later Senate hearing would claim. The safety valves of both tanks should never have vented into the same mixing tank used for the experiments. Problems should have been anticipated. The lab had never had a major accident in it's nearly 20 year operating history. No one felt that let them off the hook.

As it was when the pressure in lab four exceeded recommended levels, a valve released and an internal alarm was triggered and the virus was injected into the mixing tank. Still not a problem. Until the same thing occurred in lab six and it's valve was released. The mixing tank was large, but not that large, once the pressure level exceeded built in tolerances, the contents were ejected out into the environment. Not into a contained unit. The federal safety standards and limits which had seemed excessive when the lab was constructed and the tanks installed, now were known to be inadequate.

The resulting unexpectedly sudden vacuum collapsed the containment walls between the two labs allowing communication from the viral lab into the chemical lab, instantaneous mixing of the remainder of the virus and the chemicals and out into the environment. Twenty-six laboratory employees died in the resultant explosion that was contained by the building walls. No one on the outside saw it.

An altered virus was discharged. Twenty seven hundred pounds of it, out into the air being enjoyed by holiday visitors at Walter Griffin State Park in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the surrounding areas, including the freeway system where passing cars whizzed by, occupants unsuspecting.

Thousands of visitors who had driven up from all over the state to enjoy the holiday were the first recipients of the viral load. An even greater number of local residents were exposed.

The consequences of the inhalation of the virus was not immediately apparent as there were no acute affects beyond a minor constellation of symptoms, dry mouth, scratchy throat, itchy eyes.

The long term effects were far more profound. And began to manifest within the first two hours of exposure, just as the governer of the state was beginning to doubt he'd done the right thing when he agreed tot eh quarantine Dr Restrepo insisted on.

Doctor Restrepo had been the team leader conducting the research with the virus and the chemical it mixed with. He had no doubts as to the potentially disastrous effects. He did however, fail to anticipate the strength of the effects by a signifcant degree. Nevertheless, his quick action, and the fact he knew the governer, and that the governor believed his tale of disaster, saved many lives.

The National Guard was mobilized within one hour and a door to door search was proposed, but abandoned as impractical. Local televison and radio stations gave truncated information, all that they had been given, to the stunned populace. Within moments of the broadcasts a mass exodus was under way. The number of persons required to keep the roadways under control and the people contained was too great. Additional military personnel were called in. 

The first quarantine area was argued to be excessively large, but actually contained less than a third of the area later discovered to have been exposed. That fact alone made every action after the first one ineffective. Lives were saved when the shelter in place order was brutally enforced, but no one felt all that grateful for a long time.


The outraged Senators had been regaled with scientific double speak until they demanded an explanation that was both frank and cogent. With the power to impart sanctions, the Senators were given their easy to understand explanation. Behind closed doors. The meeting that followed, attended by the president, was heated. Given all the information that was known at the time, it wasn't much of a surprise when the Senators from California were politely but firmly sent packing and told not to return until the disaster was contained.

The Virus, for everyone had started to capitalize the word now when speaking of the San Francisco tragedy, had been in the form of a plasmid, specially crafted to increase the ease with which it entered the cells of a host. The contact with the chemicals released from lab six had formed a compound that the Virus carried with it. The compound with its viral vector was rapidly absorbed when inhaled.

The inhaled composite caused a gradual mutation in the cells of the individuals who inhaled it. It adapted quickly. Fortunately the chemicals broke down just as rapidly. So those effected could not be considered carriers. They were not infectious. Nor could their DNA be returned to it's pre-exposure state, however.

Persons who had been in close contact with each other within fifteen seconds of exposure were stuck. The Virus had caused them to form an unbreakable interdependency. A symbiosis. The victims were tagged The Symbiots by the media, which was with a twisted sense of humor shortened to Syms, mimicking the popular computer game. Later more degroatory terms would be used. They needed to maintain regular and close contact with one another or their bodies would shut down.

635,986 people were affected on that day as they went about their lives and work. The proper authorities were notified within ten minutes of the accident and the park immediately cordoned off. Three thousand people who left the area during their unwitting exposure, or who were driving by, shopping or conducting other business and weren't caught in the initital sweeps died later that day, as they separated themselves from their lifelines...the strangers who had been standing next to them, walking by as they inhaled the Virus. A similar number of persons in the park died.

The Virus caused the victims to instinctively seek out the other compatible people it needed for its host to survive. But it wasn't possible that everyone should find their matches in time. Those that were near to them refused to be separated, and became violent if it was insisted upon. There were major scuffles in several of the decontamination lines when males and females were separated, or the attempt was made.

By the time one hour had passed, total strangers who had been exposed together, were holding hands and scrubbing each other in the decontamination showers. The behavior was noted, it could not have been missed as it occurred with such frequency, in one case nine people refused to be separated as they stood in one naked, shivering clump, unable to fit into a single shower.

Agents Jack Malone and Martin Fitzgerald were sitting in Jack's car while Jack took a phone call from Washington, and Martin drove towards the San Francisco International Airport. The criminal they were transporting was asleep in the car's backseat, his head lolling as the miles rolled by under the tires. A traffic accident slowed their progress, and saved their lives by delaying their arrival at the airport, where they were to hand over custody to officers who would fly the man to the Middle East for trial.

The Virus found its way in through the air ducts, sucked in through the heating system as Martin drove past the park, and was discharged, still viable, into the car's interior to wreak it's 15 seconds of life altering mayhem.

In those fifteen seconds Special Agent Martin Fitzgerald, his supervisor Jack Malone, and international terrorist Avril Behm became inseparable.

Not far away standing on a small rise over looking the main park were two men who had just met. Introduced by their daughters Maureen and Holly, students at the nearby University of California at Berkeley, the men had found a vantage point above the teeming holiday crowd where they were still able to keep an eye on their children.

Tobias Beecher was among a handful of people who looked up for an unremembered reason at the instant of the laboratory release and saw the vapor cloud moving towards them.

"What the hell is that?" His use of profanity startled the man beside him, who looked at him sharply, then at the expression on his face, turned and followed his gaze in time to see the faint cloud as it hit them. In that moment New York City Special Victims Unit Detective Elliot Stabler and Attorney Tobias Beecher became inseparable.

They didn't feel very happy when the first riot officers showed up in hazmat gear.

Detective and Sentinel James Joseph Ellison was standing in the small living room of the Embassy Suites Extended stay hotel that he and his Guide Blair Sandburg had rented for the duration of Blair's attendance at an anthropology conference on South American Tribal culture. Blair was one of the kenote speakers, and Jim had gone along for the ride. It was his first vacation in three years.

The smell was the first thing that hit him, making him instantly forget the cup of coffee in his hand. He sniffed, every cell in his body going on alert. He was reaching out to close the sliding glass door when Blair cme up next to him and put a hand on his shoulder, not liking the way Jim was standing.

"What is it big guy?" He asked in his soft voice. Jim snorted the scent out of his nostrils as he closed the door and locked it. Blair inhaled. Jim inhaled. And they became inseparable in a whole new way.

Ne'ichan