Invisible Death

Intensive Care

The overhead and side lights in the decontamination booth bathed Rebecca Steyn's body from every angle, making the dark pink scrubs she was wearing glow in many shades as the different beams destroyed microbes and bacteria she could be carrying from the outside to the isolation ward. White, purple, yellow... each color marking a light specially designed for a specific microorganism, each one coloring with a different glow the image Rebecca saw through the transparent glass doors leading to the high-tech ICU-like room with half a dozen beds, only two of them occupied.

Inside, staffers worked checking machinery; some of them in simple scrubs much like what Rebecca was wearing herself. That marked these staff members as humans, immune to the disease confined in the ward. Other staff members sported the complex hazmat suits that covered their entire bodies, complete with helmets, gloves and breathing apparatus. That marked them as mutants, therefore vulnerable to the virus.

The only exception was the strange creature in unprotected scrubs, a mix of woman and bird, who directed the work within the confines of the ward, ordering nurses and technicians around. That one was obviously a mutant - or a hybrid, as she had explained – her appearance making her conspicuous and very visible, indeed extremely odd. From the semi-protection of the decontamination booth, Rebecca looked closer. How deformed were the hybrid doctor's feet, with their Avian appearance, their three toes pointing forward and a kind of thumb-toe pointing backwards. Perfect for perching and grabbing they were, but awkward on the ground, most unfit for walking. No wonder the hybrid had to use a cane to move around. How ugly were her hands, combining the darkness of her Afro-Brazilian heritage with wrinkled thick skin, long fingers adorned by large knuckles ending in black pointy talons.

By far, her most striking feature, her stranger, but at the same time, most enchanting characteristic, was her wings, their feathers gold and maroon. She kept her wings neatly folded on her back when on land, but she had unfurled them completely when she took off to pick the escaping Catherine off St. Kat's front lawn. Flight! The dream of human flight personified by the myth of Icarus. Rebecca had seen it come true from the hospital's main entrance when the bird woman shed the hazmat suit she was wearing and, oblivious to the danger she was putting herself in, flew high up in the sky and held the thrashing, very sick Catherine in her arms, fighting to keep her still and implant her with a sub-gov, a necessary precaution to prevent the girl from using her stealth powers to escape again.

Yes, how enormously humane, how apt the bird doctor's name was. Angela... it means "messenger" and, by extension, "angel" as God's errand creatures. She never thought of the possibility of contamination for a moment. She simply flew up and brought Catherine back safely. Yet, contamination was a concern. Even though the doctor stated her genes were stable, therefore she was not technically a new mutant, so possibly immune to the Y pestis virus killing both Catherine and Richard Moeller, Rebecca had her doubts. The chemist had been discreetly observing the doctor and she had seen her cough, at first just a little, now more frequently, the bird woman's breathing more labored, a faint bubbling sound rumbling from her chest. Rebecca Steyn knew very well Y pestis didn't manifest only as Black Death, with buboes and darkening of digits. Y pestis had another face, just as cruel: pneumonic plague, attacking the lungs and making its victim drown in dry land.

From the decontamination booth, as the light beams finished up their microbe killing business, Rebecca watched the bird doctor. Her back was turned to the door, as she hunched over a computer station, in conference with another woman who looked intently back from the monitor, her big earrings dangling as she shook her head at Angela. The bird woman fluttered her wings and turned a little to the right, covering her mouth with her hand and coughed a few times, dabbed a tissue over her watering, tired eyes and mouth, then threw the tissue away in a hazmat waste basket, later to be incinerated, turning all the way around from the computer as the glass door slid open to admit Rebecca in the isolation ward. With a smile that lit her blood-shot blue eyes, the doctor motioned for Rebecca to come closer to the computer unit, offering her a stool next to hers, so the small video camera could admit the chemist in its frame, making her visible to the person in the monitor.