Fear and Loathing

[Fairchild]

Nagrebetskiy watched the camera feed nervously. He noticed Antonio's nosebleed and reached for the research notes. Vergil synchronisation should not cause any health issues, especially not an injury. He scratched his head.

The synchronisation bar was almost at 90%. It was getting late and he was getting tired - it was all a long day. Tomorrow they would begin the experiment, but he had to make sure the Outcast lives through the night. The nerve agent from Violet would be ready by tomorrow morning. He needed someone to keep watch.

He reached to the console and wrote a small message to Jera. He hoped she had slept at least a bit. The Corsair was the only person he trusted enough with the project. Like anyone coming from Crete, she wanted the worst for any Outcast.

Meanwhile, the synchronisation bar filled up. He opened the connection to the chip that one of the guards hid in the wall and through it, to the Vergil inside Antonio's brain. A simple, text interface. The more sophisticated one had not been implemented yet.

Welcome to Vergil, version 0.9 beta-testing.

He started tapping the desk. First he wanted to review the sync logs, so as to make sure there were no complications.

$ cat /var/log/sync-001.log
99.65% nodes synchronised, 0.3% desynchronised, 0.05% dead
synchronisation status: ok

So it was not that. He rested his head on his palm. Wisp team developed a few pieces of diagnostic software for animal and human testing. It would be wise to run it here as well.

$ vpm install health-d
Downloading package: health-d (Universal Health Diagnostics).
7%...
52%...
97%...done.
Updating package lists... done.

$ health-d --all

The software displayed various data relating to the Outcast's health status. His blood pressure was high - higher than normal - but still outside the dangerous scope. Nosebleed - but he already knew that - and a cramp in his leg.

The door to his office opened and Jera walked in. "You called for me?"

He yawned. "Yes, yes. I was about to go to sleep but we're having a situation here with our Maltese friend." He waved at her to come to his side of the desk. Jera looked at the camera feed and the diagnostics. "It seems that he had some sort of an allergic reaction to Vergil. I don't think it's anything serious, but I'd rather not have to take him out with the trash."

She leaned against the wall. "You need me to look after an Outcast?"

He scratches his head. "Yeah, er, pretty much. You know this is an uncommon situation, but what am I supposed to do."

"Right," she said. "I can do this, if necessary. I don't have any assignments going right now." She nodded towards the door. "I'll wake you up when something bad happens."

"When anything goes in the red, alert medical and let me know immediately. Good night."

"Night." She sat in his seat as he was leaving. After looking at the diagnostics and the motionless body of the Outcast on the cell ground he took out her PAD and started playing solitaire, glancing from time to time at the screens. It was going to be a long night.