The ABO Serum

The Fraternity That Picked You

The dean of students was not surprised, when informed about the crisis, that campus-wide mandatory testing by the CDC turned up a large number of exposures, 31% of the student body and five professors. The final count of those found unconscious was eight, only one in critical condition.

The CDC took over the student center with its small health clinic for a follow-up treatment center and reassigned dorm rooms to isolate each type during their transition. The president cancelled school for the rest of the semester and sent unaffected students home so the remaining dorms could be used to isolate other affected townspeople. The CDC also issued official statements about an outbreak and the mayor called the governor who called in the national guard to seal off the town, only letting people who tested negative leave.

Off campus were more exposures by the numbers, since more GenLife employees lived in the community at large than on campus, but nowhere near the overall percentage or spread rate. The police did welfare checks first on known exposures, but eventually on every single house in town.

Riddled with guilt, Mitch volunteered to help liaise with the CDC working at the college. Three of the students found unconscious were his partners. Back in the first miserable days of the crisis he'd barely registered their faces, and now they were comatose. He spent his extra time caring for them.

There weren't enough caretakers, so he made sure to turn them at intervals, bath them, empty their catheter bags, and replace IV and feeding bags. He talked to them and massaged them so their blood flow wouldn't stagnate. The first alpha that passed out in California woke up shortly after his omega mate came and cuddled him, but these patients didn't have mates. They only had him. Their bodies wouldn't be craving a useless beta. No one knew how to help them wake up. They might go through the rest of their transitions unconscious.

As word of what happened got out, the community rallied to care for their own. Apart from students who came from out of the area, few people cleared to leave chose to do it. More often, people showed up at the borders of town trying to get in. The national guard allowed families of the affected but blocked the legions of people coming because they wanted to change. The campgrounds in the adjacent national forest were soon overflowing. The serum was still a long way from FDA approval so GenLife couldn't intentionally give it to anyone else, but they didn't care.

Mitch watched the news reports about the camps on a TV in the ward with his unconscious accidental victims and his stomach turned. All the cute frat boys with limitless potential he'd fucked in his anger at himself were now part of his unwilling brotherhood of hermaphrodites. Could you call a group of hermaphrodites a brotherhood? They wouldn't be a sisterhood either. What would you call them? There were going to be a lot more from now on, so they'd need to figure things like this out.

These were the kinds of things Mitch thought about as he went through the daily motions of caring for his victims. Aiden, Noah, and Riley were their names. Riley was an omega. Aiden and Noah were betas. When their families arrived, they thanked him profusely for caring for their sons. He didn't tell them it was all his fault. It wouldn't help anything, and they might send him away and not let him pay his small penance.

With the CDC and national guard putting their resources behind managing the crisis, Daryl had a moment to seriously consider Carey's suggestion about developing a suppressant. He quietly put the alphas upstairs to work on the task. They were getting restless isolated from their work anyway.

With the sudden influx of test subjects, the initial project was getting a surfeit of data points about the physiological change caused by the serum in humans. Dr. Martin managed the follow up treatments with help from CDC doctors and Daryl gathered the data and quietly passed it to his team upstairs. They studied the three pairs most because something about mating suppressed the desperation and impulsiveness in both alphas and omegas. Betas didn't have that problem so they wouldn't need suppressants.

What everyone would need is a simple diagnostic test and follow up treatment procedure that any doctor could implement anywhere in the world. Even with a clear understanding of how to prevent the spread of a sexually transmitted disease, they knew they couldn't stop it. Not with the kind of public response the camp forming outside the town indicated.

The CDC wanted the follow up protocol ready to announce to the press yesterday and in production for shipping today. So far, GenLife was only producing enough serum for the immediate need. And their protocols were just them winging it. They changed as individual response to the transition called for.

When they called Mitch in for a meeting with higher level staff at GenLife he knew it had something to do with the CDC. He didn't expect them to ask him to examine all their notes and draft a diagnostic and follow up protocol based on what they did that worked most of the time. They assured him it would only be a draft and everyone on their team would make modifications. But they needed someone watching how the CDC interacted with patients and coordinated with outside doctors to write up the protocol in a way they could understand and easily implement.

Oh, and could he sit down and do it right now.

Aiden, Noah, and Riley weighed heavily on his mind. He wanted to go back to them, but they had family close now. He imagined others accidentally exposed by other assholes and not in this town with GenLife nearby to treat them. The fucking fraternity they never meant to join. It gave him the motivation to work hard and be precise. There were commonalities in their follow up procedures. He started with those.