The first minutes in Charters Towers were the tensest of their journey. Objectively speaking, if the town was similarly infected already, they were doomed - the chances that they could continue running away from this was reduced to insignificance - but the adrenalin didn't care that it was probably superfluous. Robert crept into the town as if it made any difference at all - as if the car could flip itself around at first sign of trouble and coast back onto the 'safety' of the desert road; nevermind that such a trick would effectively leave them trapped between the two towns.

Unfortunately, part of their plan involved stocking up. Even if hiding were reasonably possible in a town that was gradually beginning to wake up, waltzing into a store to get a week's supply of water hardly qualified. Fortunately, the man at the petrol station they stopped at did not try to telekinetically manhandle them.

It took ten arduous minutes for Robert to tear himself away, however, from the fervent discussion about the problems in Townsville. The conclusion seemed to be that the clerk was glad they were just about sane enough to pay for what they bought, and at least equally glad that they were leaving.

Once they were out, Robert privately shared his impression that they had been, in fact, believed. He hoped it was right. The character didn't have to admit that he bought into their story, as long as he made sure to disappear in due time. Admitting it would have made things easier; admitting it would have sent the signal that he might warn others.

A similar situation occurred at the convenience store they picked out for their water supplies, though this time Keneh tugged on Robert's sleeve before he got too worked up about the dismissal: “Let's just keep moving.”

Despite that urging, Robert paused to let a local fire department know of the problem. To his partial relief, they took his concerns as seriously as was in any way reasonable. They would, they promised, keep an eye out on the developments. It was unreasonable, they said, to try and evacuate Charters Towers based on a few youtube videos, but they were confident they could handle the fires the citizens themselves could not, at least.

And then they were back on the road - Keneh's risk of being crushed to death by the canisters sandwiching her now likely significantly higher than her risk of existential death by the pathogen - heading further west, entering distressingly bleak landscapes. There were a few small towns on the way to Cloncurry, it wasn't a complete voyage through nowhere, but it still had the look and feel of foolishness.

And they were foolish, but perhaps not as foolish as others. Robert certainly knew to drive carefully while it was dawn. Someone else clearly had not. Just a bit after an hour and a half since they left, having passed through Pentland, a van was nuzzling the rocks on the left side of the road. By the looks of things, someone had swerved precisely the wrong way in instinct.

Robert sucked in a breath and brought them to a stop thirty metres away from the crash. And then stared forward, keeping his hands on the wheel as if he were holding onto a lifeline, clearly undecided if the apocalypse behind them warranted getting out to discover the van was empty or pry someone who might still be alive out of the wreck.

There was no fire, no ominous ticking from the engine (that she could hear through a lowered window, at least), no cries for help or groans of pain. Nothing to suggest that the people hadn't crashed, gotten out, and started walking for help.

Except for the fact they hadn't seen any people walking along the road and the nearest town was behind them, not in front. So either the people had been travelling in convoy and had jumped in the other vehicles and kept going (the police would hate them), the people were idiotic tourists who had set off the wrong way and would get themselves killed (they could report it when they reached the next roadhouse and the police may still get to hate them) or they were in that vehicle and dead.

No matter which option they couldn't do anything and should keep going. Except no, really, they couldn't. “…the infection hasn't spread this far yet, we should get enough information to report the crash at least,” Delaney said at last, unclipping her seatbelt.

Keneh's twisted herself around in her unlikely cage, staring out front for a moment, struggling out of shapeless daydreams she'd been occupying herself with. There's an urge to ask that extraneous question, 'What happened?', but it's clear enough someone got into a car crash, and equally clear that it she didn't somehow mentally sleep through it being their fault. “Could they still be alive?”

“Hypothetically,” Robert lets his hands drop from the steering wheel and lets his head rest against the headrest for a moment, exhaling. Then he opens the driver's door and sticks out one foot. A pause. “Keneh, you staying in?” It wasn't like his backseat passenger could let herself out, unless she clambered awkwardly to the front.

“…um. If you want me to?” Keneh offered.

“Right,” Robert nodded acknowledgement, plucking the keys from the car and shuffled out of his seat and onto the tarmac. The door slams shut and he meanders to the back, opening up the trunk. He squints at Keneh for a moment, unsure if he should be saying something else, then just passes the corner of his vehicle and begins to stalk across to the stranded, mangled van.

Sliding herself out of the vehicle, Delaney glances at her friend. “Think they're tourists and gotten lost?” she asks quietly. There were skid marks but the road was free of broken glass, and the van looked mostly crumpled at the front and not the top, so they -probably- hadn't rolled it. Which meant the driver at least might have survived. And was, hopefully, not here. Because if they were they were kind of in a tricky situation, lacking space to become an ambulance as they were.

(And they desperately didn't want any police noticing Robert's vehicle had three occupants and only two seats.) Grimacing at the thought, she followed him towards the crashed van.

“Do tourists travel in vans?” Keneh finds herself asking, as if 'tourist' were a foreign species she'd never come across in all her life. (Granted, the chances were even high enough that might be true, given she certainly spent more time online than outside - but even so, she should at least be familiar with the tourist stereotypes, if nothing else.)

After there are only ten more metres to the crash site, Robert's protective instincts partially get the better of him and he nudges himself into a jog. If there really was someone hurt in the wreckage, it was best to be alert and act quickly - even if the pace of approach was hardly a factor unless they had phenomenal timing and the extra two seconds would be enough time to stop a fatal bleeding.

Judging by the damage, it collided with the rock face at a harsher angle than it's now standing, having scraped along it at least a metre or two. There might be a shard of glass or two somewhere amongst the pebbles from the especially mangled sideview mirror, but the windshield had apparently survived. Everything in front of the windshield, on the other hand…

Keneh and Delaney aren't quite caught up when Robert jerks back from the side of the van and swirls to face them with an almost menacing energy, beginning a tense stride back where he came from. “Go back. Into the car.”

Keneh blinks, confused, watching Robert stalk past her, following him with her gaze. “What? Why?”

A moment later sees him grasp at her sleeve, tugging her a few inches toward the car before leaving her to her own devices again, making his opinion on the matter very, very clear. “We're leaving this behind,” he insists.

“Is the driver still in there?” Keneh asks. Rather than wait for an answer, she turns to continue across the scant rest of the distance to the van, prompting a hiss and curse from Robert, who pauses in his stride back to the car to stare at her.

“I have no idea,” Delaney admitted. “But tourists always seem to be the ones that get into vehicle trouble and then make it worse by not staying put, so if the van is empty I'm assuming tourist.” Was that biased? She wasn't sure, but it did seem a little off that she was assuming idiotic behaviour was from a non-local. Then again, if they weren't local they'd have the excuse of not knowing it was a bad idea and it wasn't exactly idiocity if you were simply naive.

Which wasn't helped by Robert's reaction to the van. Clearly there weren't survivors if he wasn't helping. Equally clearly he didn't want them looking closer. “The driver's dead and in a really nasty nightmare inducing way, then?” They had enough trauma to be going on with, thanks, she didn't need to see someone crushed or decapitated or pureed.

The notion either doesn't occur to Keneh, or simply does nothing to deter her. She's reached the front of the van herself, now, attention at first drawn to the mangled front, reminiscent of crumpled paper, noticing that there must once have been something written on it. It's only a instant's distraction, though; a moment later the far more obvious lettering on the door - smaller but not at all mangled - makes her realise what spooked Robert so badly.

She pauses for a moment, glancing up at the slumped figure in the van. The driver is probably dead, by the looks of things, but he might also simply be knocked out. It's difficult to tell from this angle. She tries the passenger side door and it opens without complaint.

“Keneh, leave it,” Robert calls across, frustration evident in his demeanour - but no matter how much energy he's currently devoting to his little panic tantrum, it's Delaney and Keneh that have the guns, and even if they didn't, Robert just did not seem the type to start threatening someone. He was going to have to up his persuasive powers and try again.

Delaney hesitates and looks between the others before heading towards her friend with vague ideas of drawing her away.. “We've got enough PTSD triggers so far today already, Keneh, I really don't think we need any more.” She tries hard not to look inside because sooner or later she's going to fall in a heap and have a massive breakdown and be useless for a few hours, and she's aimed to make that happen as later as possible.

“He's not mangled,” Keneh promises, voice somewhere between a call across and the volume of regular conversation. “But it's a Deiparous van.” Her tone is only slightly hesitant, chiefly giving an impression of calm. Said, she's crawled onto the passenger side seat and glancing at the slumped shape. Gingerly, she extends one hand to hover fingers near the person's face. There's something that might be a weak breath, but is just as likely to be an artifact of the motion of her fingers. Her hand slips down and begins to curve around the person's neck, but notices that it's at a terrible angle to probe the carotid artery. Instead, she gently grasps at his wrist, pushing fingertips onto the skin immediately under the base of the thumb.

It takes a long moment for her to be sure - Robert's outside of the van again by then, sporting a look of displeasure and frantic concern, both. “Seems fairly dead,” she observes, deflatedly. Maybe in another situation she'd follow Robert into freaking out, but this is a fairly clean death and that's far less horror-inducing than someone just barely alive in the middle of nowhere would be. Disconcerting posture and bruises aside, he might as well be asleep.

Her next instinct is to quietly back out of the van again and leave it as it is - but the ramifications manage to poke holes in her usually so docile nature. A Deiparous van. She shifts into a sit on the passenger seat and checks the glove compartment steadily and slowly, making sure to read the titles on the instruction manuals, but nothing pops out at her as unusual. Then she twists to glance back through to the back of the van, separated by plastic and glass. There's nothing immediately interesting in there visible from her angle, but maybe they could take a look anyway. This accident was probably entirely unrelated and just mocking them in their paranoia, but it would help her to know that for sure.

“Keneh, leave it,” Robert repeats, but softer this time. “Please. We're running away from this stuff for a reason, don't- don't make this our problem. There are people that are better equipped to handling the Townsville problem than we are.”

“And they're ignoring the evidence,” Keneh comments, dispassionately, recalling Charters Towers. It's not that she believes that as an absolute - there might be entirely capable people handling the situation in Townsville by now. It was reasonably likely. It just wasn't likely enough that she felt they had the freedom to walk away from this potential opportunity.

A grimace spread across her face. “I'm with Robert. We are running away. Presumably this guy saw the writing on the wall and was also running away. So we'll tell the police and let them deal with it. Or call the army to deal with it. The last thing we should be doing is breaking into an Umbrella Corp van! What if there's something infectious in there!” Delaney waved her arms in emphasis. Okay, so the curious side of her really wanted to poke around too, but if her survival instincts were screaming quite this loudly she should probably listen to the things.

Keneh shifted herself to better see the car key, then stretched a hand across to tug it out, simultaneously avoiding the corpse. In all honesty, she was on auto-pilot, much like Robert and Delaney - her auto-pilot just drove her to engage with this. There was adrenalin in her veins, but it manifested as outward calm; as if it were making her rigid. A moment later, she's sliding off the seat and back onto the pavement. Robert grasps at her shoulder, albeit not roughly, prompting her to shrug his hand off. “You were the one that wanted to help with a wiki,” she reminds him, tone suggesting that it excused her rifling through this.

Robert huffs, flustered. “…and that backfired,” he points out. “From all we know now, it's just turning into a repository of survivor IPs.” He'd already spent a moment in Charters Towers leaving a note on the wiki's front page and locking the page from non-administrative edits - after revoking Ethan's access. Whether people heeded it or not was a different question, of course.

But the very idea that the whole thing was a terrible mistake had come from Keneh, pointing out that, eventually, someone from the major ISPs with access to connection logs would be able to trace those IPs to physical addresses. Thankfully, they'd created it in the middle of the night, so damage was minimal to non-existent, but if they'd let it continue without the added warning, real people could have been endangered.

Apparently, Keneh still felt it was her right to make another mistake of that magnitude, since she's reached the back of the van and is fumbling with the keys. Really fumbling - it's suddenly quite clear how tense she is. It doesn't really matter that there's probably nothing in there, that she'll probably just laugh stupidly at the empty space and mark off some sanity points as wasted investment in hindsight.

“The wiki was of limited personal harm. Because if they've got to the point of going door to door grabbing people and need IPs to winkle out the stubborn ones anyone staying put is pretty much dead,” Delaney protests. “Especially when the server is in the USA. Who are trigger-happy warmongers with nukes. If they hit that point I think we've already hit game over.”

At least Keneh was hesitating. That was good, right? She wasn't sure because her brain was busily coming up with worst case scenarios and careening towards a panic attack. “This is a personal threat! This is a facehugger in a box! If something bad is in there how are we supposed to run away?”

“Go back to the car, then,” Keneh offers, aggravation in her voice now. “If I act weird, drive away.” Of course, this neglected to mention that she was already 'acting weird'. The key slips into the keyhole and she twists, but leaves the door closed, peering at Delaney and Robert expectantly, waiting to see if they would make a run for it. …she really, really hoped they wouldn't, because it might be infectious. A part of her wanted to shout at them: 'Stop making me nervous!', but that felt just unfair enough that she kept it under wraps.

Admittedly that was a solution. Surely a better solution was not getting infected in the first place, because Delaney really didn't think she could kill someone, let alone her friend. Besides, leaving Keneh behind was a security risk. Even if she wasn't sure how, since “fleeing towards Darwin” was hardly a plan to them; someone stalking them wouldn't do much better and making a warning wiki was damage already committed.

If the hivemind was seriously vengeful enough to hunt them down for THAT and ignore all the other tasty humans then said hivemind was going to be much easier to bait into a trap and defeat. By someone else. Because she would be too busy hiding in a boat somewhere offshore and gibbering.

No steps were taken in either direction. She was torn between retreating just-in-case and approaching with some vague idea of being able to tackle Keneh. The result was paralysis.

Robert broke away. Having no deeper ties to either of the two, he had no problem with the offered alternative. He's done his fair share of rescuing. He'll continue to do his fair share of rescuing, certainly, but he wasn't planning to be stupid about it.

His right hand grasps at Delaney's shoulder briefly, giving her a light tug in the direction of the car, a prompt, while he reasons with himself. He's had plenty of opportunities to physically wrestle Keneh down - why hasn't he? Maybe because the chances something will pounce them is essentially non-existent; the videos he's seen suggest ambush is not a hunting tactic of these creatures. Maybe because the chances anything of interest is in the van in the first place is vanishingly small. Maybe because if there somehow is something of interest in there, there's a small chance it'll be a cure or something.

Rationally, the threat seems negligible. Emotionally, he wants nothing to do with it.

Delaney takes the prompt hesitantly, making Keneh nod in silent acknowledgement. Good. There's no resentment in her gaze, just the stern imperative for them to get to whatever they considered safety - and they were. She shifts her attention back to the van and opens the door before she change her mind.

There are some canisters near the crumpled front of the car, cylindric, heavy-looking, going to about hip height, labelled with alphanumeric IDs that have no meaning to her. She counts about six of them. They're attached to the corner they're in with two broad straps. A useless module in her brain remarks that if she ever owns a van, she should try to get those, they're apparently good, given that this cargo seems undamaged.

Her fear caught up with her - and in dumb defiance, she clambered up into the van to get a better look at everything else that was here. Maybe she could find some information what was in the canisters in stray papers or in one of the suitcases that had been scattered by the crash.

One of them even had such an unfortunate point of impact that it had busted open a few millimetres on one side. In Keneh's mind's eye, a silvery substance leaked from that wound and evaporated, permeating through the air. She gives a very soft, single-syllabled whimper of distress, then banishes the mental image with memories of what Ethan had said: seems to be a blood vector.

It didn't matter that he'd been infected when he said it. She desperately wanted to believe that right now, and it would do.

There were a few lose papers on the floor, probably previously trapped between the now-scattered stack of suitcases. Why hadn't they been secured, anyway? Oh. Judging by circumstances, they were - but one of the anchors of the straps seemed to be missing (perhaps it had broken off at some point and had yet to be replaced), and the other had been used to secure them diagonally. Which was probably sufficient for regular driving purposes, but apparently the jolt from the crashing van had been enough to partially dislodge them from their insufficient hold.

She picks up one of the papers. It's a checklist, but again just full of alphanumeric IDs - this isn't giving her any additional information, short of the signatures at the bottom lending an identity to some Deiparous employees - although nothing she can use. The next one seems to be a receipt of some sort, but again, nothing useful. Internal jargon was a bitch, especially if it came in the form of random letters and numbers. At least if projects had a pet name you could try guessing their purpose.

And now she was in the vehicle. It must have something interesting. There were no screams. These were all positive signs. Not as positive as getting the fuck out of here and stopping her friend from adding breaking and entering to their troubles, but it could be worse. Nobody (important) was dead. Yet.

Keeping her distance Delaney circled the van in the hopes of catching a glimpse inside. No, brain, the van is not about to grow teeth and eat someone, you don't have to treat it as a predator. Potential lair of one, fine, but it was a disabled hunk of metal.

Then she catches a glimpse inside and her heart stops. “Keneh?” she calls out uncertainly. “At the front, in the corner. Those tubes. Do they look like gas cylinders to you? Because if they do, and they look like they have had any sort of bump or knock or dent or anything you need to very slowly and carefully get back out of there and we are going to run away very quickly before something fails and they destroy everything nearby!” Why no, hyperventilation was not an overreaction right now.

Keneh glances over to the cylinders in an abrupt motion, but her second-hand alarm stops there. She regards them, her eyebrows crinkling quietly. Her left hand rises to adjust her glasses - not that she strictly needs them, much less fine-tuned, but it was a welcome, mundane motion. “Doesn't look like it to me,” she comments, simply, before first crouching, then slipping down into a kneel and sliding one of the suitcases half onto her lap, trying to figure out if she could get it open or if it was going to be frustratingly shut with some obscure combination lock.

Something mundane was capable of inspiring at least as much if not more terror than the unknown. Who knew? Especially when the saying went the other way. It did nothing to surprise the urge to drag her friend out of there by the hair.

Which may have been why her feet were carrying her closer without realising for the first several paces. “Look, if there is something particularly interesting grab it and move away. Please,” she begged.

Keneh paused, at first to stare out of the van at Delaney, perhaps thinking her to be joshing her. Then she considers the request. For a moment, she's picturing herself tossing the suitcase at Delaney with the comment 'Here, catch!', but of course that would hardly be a sensible thing to do. She grabs a hold of the one she's got, then pushes to her feet, annoyance in her body language. Her gaze sweeps the inside of the van - everything is interesting. Absolutely everything. She gives a frustrated grunt, then reaches down to pick up the broken suitcase that had spooked her earlier, simply to spite it. Fortunately, it doesn't fall apart as she lifts it. A moment later, she's sliding out the back of the van. “You're making me steal things,” she points out, venting her frustration with a petty accusation. She saunters a few paces away from the van, making sure to hold both her foraging prizes in one hand. The other rises up to her face to scratch lightly at an itch on her tip of her nose. “Better?” she asks.

She breathed a sigh of relief. Okay, they were technically still too close if those cylinders were liquid oxygen or something, but if they were just nitrogen - and for a biotech company, they almost certainly were - then at least diving behind Robert's car was a possibility. “We can put them back afterwards. And if the police appear we were checking for survivors, and now we're looking for contact details because the van doesn't have any on the outside.”

Delaney glanced back over at the van to check that. Not that she was actually going to ring any “How's my driving! Contact on this number!” that was marked but maybe they could get back online and have someone else do that. From overseas where it was safe to do so.

Keneh's slid back down into a kneel by now, the position uncomfortable on the hard pavement, but her curiosity simply getting the better of her. She puts the broken suitcase down beside her and slides the other half onto her lap, then fumbles with the clasps. While she finds their grasp firm and them reluctant to budge, they look like the only obstacle - unless this is going to turn into a bad movie and it's going to spray her with acid or something. The vague superstition makes her tilt her torso to the side a little, alleviating the mild pang of paranoia with a pointless gesture - then she flips it open.

Robert's sauntered back by now, keeping a distance of approximately five metres, wary and frustrated, but clearly his curiosity has finally wrestled his mood into submission. He looks grouchy, daring anyone to say something about how he's yet to disappear into the car despite all his voiced concerns, but he's keeping perfectly quiet now.

There are four vials in the suitcase, filled with something that might as well be coloured water. There's a sheet of paper in the top. Keneh plucks it out with some curiosity. Oh, great, another ID - and then a bunch of incomprehensible jargon, in key words, printed into some kind of template table. “Delaney?” Keneh asks, glancing at her and holding out the sheet of paper. “Does this look relevant to you?” Her free hand closes the lid on the suitcase and slides it back down onto the pavement, then fishes for the other one.

This was a bad idea and she was doing it anyway. Taking the form she eyed it carefully. Those strings of letters and numbers were probably the ID of each vial, and that cluster of digits in it might possibly be a date from… some time in September? Maybe? Handled by three teams or scientists or technicians, plus one courier. Stable at room temperature, that was nice. “I think this is saying it breaks down at about eighty degrees? Except I'm not sure what 'this' is,” she reported. “If it's related to the hoard at least we know cremation will work.” Nevermind the fact nobody had heard of one of the things being killed yet.

Contact details for a lab in Townsville - she was going to make the assumption that place was utterly doomed and a deathtrap based on Ethan's last report - but nothing that she could puzzle out that told her where the van was going. 'Inland', except there wasn't much in this direction. Surely it should have been heading south towards Brisbane. Or to the airport. Unless they weren't able to get on a commercial flight with unknown biologicals, which kind of made sense, but west via Darwin was a horrible route overland.

“Is it too supervillainy to wonder if Deiparous has some secret underground lab hidden on a cattle station?” Delaney asked as she flipped the page over seeking something useful.

The second suitcase has popped open by now, albeit only after some stubborn coaxing involving awkwardly twisted arms - the damage to it's managed to make one of the two clasps event more difficult to pry open, as if it were an animal that's gotten its bite tensely caught in prey. “It might not be that secret,” Keneh offers. “Maybe the government made them build at least one lab somewhere remote, where standard pathogens won't do much damage, and told them to put all their viral research there.” A sigh. “…this is still greek to me. This is making me feel illiterate.” Another piece of paper finds itself passed to Delaney, almost absent-mindedly, as Keneh inspects the single, larger vial in this one. It looks like it's a shipment of desert sand, though no doubt it's something else.

“Oh come on, couldn't they attach a spectra or a molecular diagram or a receptor site or something?” she said in frustration. More papers were shuffled. “We have a vial of… blah. That should not be mixed with blurr, which is probably in one of these cases too, but no idea what either of them are. Other than it kills more mice than water but less than ethanol, which at least makes it fairly harmless if anyone wants to be suicidal and take a swig.”

If she was brutally honest her chain of custody forms probably didn't make much more sense than this one did either, but at least stuff like haemoglobin and salt levels were widely recognised! These had a heap of tests with funny codenames that may not be code names after all, but were no less helpful for it. She felt like a high schooler again.

Keneh closes the case again, letting it settle on the pavement next to the other. For a moment, she stares down at them reprimandingly, then her gaze sweeps back to the van. It lingers well past its welcome. Without announcement, she tips forward, then pushes herself up to a stand from that brief instant of being on all fours, and a moment later, she's walking back to the van. Time to get another two… even if trying to understand any of these substances seems sisyphean and the others aren't going to be any better. She wants to do something useful, damnit.

Her friend reaches the van again before Delaney realises where she's gone. “Keneh, we can't just sit in the middle of the road and go through all their paperwork!” she protests as she stuffs the pages back where they came from and snaps the cases shut again.

“I'd go through it in the van instead, but by decree of Delaney I'm not allowed,” Keneh calls over in dry humour. Clunk. Thud. With a glint to her eye, Keneh resurfaces from the shadowed interior with two more suitcases. A part of her wanted to counter-protest that they were in no rush now that they were past Charters Towers, but that seemed both insincere and unnecessarily grim in subtext. She resists the urge to toss Delaney one of the suitcases to keep her busy, instead walking back to where the other two suitcases are and slumping back down into a sit - less aggravating for her knees this time. The first one clicks open. “Where do you get this sort of suitcase padding, anyway?” Keneh finds herself asking. “Or suitcases like these, for that matter,” she adds in after-thought. Her adrenaline seems to have made way for a reasonably good mood for the moment. Maybe it was that she was fooling herself that they really had all the time in the world for this - a luxurious illusion of freedom.

“Rowe Scientific and Edwards Group do them, I think?” she answered after racking her brain for which company names were on the front cover of the supply catalogues. “Or just get a locking case from wherever and get a custom insert made, people do that for stuff like guns and collectables all the time.” It was a good thought but she couldn't see the cases being a good way of tracking the company down. Not that they needed to, they knew exactly where Deiparous Technologies was. Err, or at least where it had been.

Keneh popped open the first case and tugged out another paper. A brief glance proves it another one for Delaney to assess - evidently Delaney is not being consulted as to whether she wants to assess them and her gripe about how they're in the middle of the road (well, side of it, but same difference) doing something probably pointless is clearly being ignored.

It's when the next case opens and three pieces of paper find themselves tugged out of the top that Keneh's interest is rekindled. The first one is more gobbledygook for her, following the structure of all the previous paperwork they've been through. It's the second that makes her pause. It's split into sections, some of which have a language Keneh can actually handle. 'Firmware Version'. 'Neural Network Interface'. 'Fractal Propagation'. 'Latency'.

She looks at the vials - there are four of them, each about as wide as two of her fingers, filled with an oddly creased black liquid. The hair on the back of her neck are, as of yet, undecided whether to raise. Other than that this stuff is programmable, or can interface with other software, she doesn't know anything truly damning just yet.

She brings up the third page, shuffling the other two to behind it. Her left hand rises to slide a finger in under her glasses, giving the inner corner of her left eye a light scratch as she looks at it. This seemed to be some sort of legal advice in keyword form, referring to several paragraphs… no doubt instructions as to what rights, exactly, needed to be waived by a test subject.

“…Delaney,” she says, tugging at her friend's attention, briefly trapping her tongue between her lips. “I'm a little terrified I might have hit the jackpot.” A distributed, programmable system that came in vial form. There was nothing saying this was a neural modification - neural network was the software paradigm and said nothing about the biological component - but if it was, the chances this was relevant for Townsville suddenly seemed significant.

In almost all circumstances 'jackpot' was a good word. Maybe it was the tone, but Delaney suspected they'd just found one of the exceptions. She leaned against Keneh's shoulder to glance over the forms. Then stopped glancing and read them properly. “Neural network would be software, software interface… well, that could explain the 'telepathy', it's not like we've seen any of them shoved in a Faraday cage,” the biologist mutters.

Physical explanations for mutant powers is good. It lets people understand them, and if you understand something you can counter it. Remote pyrokinesis and telekinesis are more of a struggle to justify. Especially when even the most tentative solutions - projection of a pyrophoric liquid or gas, and either some sort of ultrasonics or a simple air pressure wave - would require large scale modification of a human body. Messing with the central nervous system she could (barely) comprehend. Realtime restructuring of large amounts of the body struck Delaney as pure science fiction. Although if it was happening around her she guessed she'd have to reassign that to science fact.

“Software interface means it can be extended,” Keneh comments, meaning it as a tentative correction. “So whatever this is, it's meant to be a module… - a framework, perhaps.” Keneh's motions are slow now, very cautious, regarding the bottled substance with wariness. Blood vector - according to Ethan, or whatever had been left of him at the time. Please let that not have been a lie. If this was airborne in any way, she didn't want to be anywhere near it.

'Calm down, this could be anything,' she told herself, but the knot in her chest did not want to budge. “Can you tell me anything about the biological function of it?” she asks, glancing up at Delaney, with a look on her face asking to be either told 'this is unrelated' or, at the very least, 'it's not airborne'. The fact she could open the case relatively easily either doesn't strike her as a reliable way of determining that it must be a very low-risk contaminant - or it hasn't occurred to her, either way.

“So we have an operating system in goop form? Windows Slime?” Delaney asked, gesturing at the bottles. That was a disturbing though. Yes, it was probably a more flexible alternative to trying to shove hardcoded things into a body and expecting them to play nice, but biological systems did not respond well to bugs. Possible case in point, Townsville. Who for once probably could use some Power Puff Girls.

She turned back to the consent forms. Lots of disclaimers… okay, frankly scary amounts of disclaimers, including what looked like 'if this kills you your family cannot sue us for millions, and if we only cripple you we pay your expenses for a year at most'. Possibly significant but she wouldn't be surprised if their were similar templates in mild stuff like steroid cream just in case. Nothing on transmission vectors but equally nothing indicating it was supposed to be transmissible. In fact she could assume that no, that bit was BAD, nobody will ever regulate that. Not to mention being a nightmare to profit from. Medical piracy in a brave new world, that.

Aha! “It's meant to be administered intravenously and then it crosses the blood brain barrier,” Delaney read. “It doesn't spell out what it is supposed to do once there. I think they were still making sure the test subjects weren't about to drop dead? There's a mention about possible seizures but that animal models were inconclusive.”

That brief elaboration is plenty to twist Keneh's gut into a knot as well. She's decided she doesn't feel so well. In a careful but firm motion, she pushes the case a few inches away from her. In her mind, a sense of responsibility wrestles with an instinctive disgust.

They should take this to someone who knows more about this. Deiparous in… wherever they were situated. They might be responsible for the Townsville apocalypse, but they were also extraordinarily well qualified to handle it. Maybe they knew something about the substance that would allow them to come up with a vaccine, or a cure, or anything else that might stop it from actively spreading itself to new hosts.

But she already knew it would take a supreme act of will to sit in the same car as this stuff, even if it was complete superstition on her part. The case clearly wasn't about to bite her.

“…so,” she says slowly, after an awkward moment's pause. “I vote we take this to wherever it was meant to be taken… then tell the staff what happened in Townsville, if they haven't heard about it yet, and hope they can engineer something to counter it.”

“As long as the driver didn't just see everything going to hell and jump in the first vehicle there and bolt out of town. It'd explain the crash,” she cautioned. “Or if he wasn't delivering it to Townsville and saw something and decided to turn around.” It was hard thinking of her home as a total no-go area. Hard, but vital, and there was more than enough sheer panic at the thought of returning to enforce that.

Still, finding Deiparous and giving them the stuff was probably a good idea. Unless they got arrested for theft. But this was not a video game, companies were not supposed to be evil in real life, she doubted they were BIG enough to be able to act evil in real life (unlike, say, Monsanto), and within 24 hours they were going to be getting extreme bad publicity. And nasty government attention. Surely they'd be grateful for any practical attempts to help or at least not make things worse, and giving suspicious documents and formulae to the media counted as 'worse'.

“Do you remember which bit of paper any of those addresses were on?” Delaney asked Keneh before pivoting to Robert. “Thoughts?”

Robert has evidently been staring at them in silence. Judging by his body language and facial expression, he's not particularly happy about the sudden extra responsibility, but isn't going to complain - this has the potential to be a more tangible help than any previous attempts they've done. That their previous attempts all went awry… he's going to ignore that for now. “I have no interest in staying on this road any longer than absolutely necessary,” Robert says, flatly. “If you want, you can put the other cases back, but as far as I'm concerned, we're going to Cloncurry before we do anything else. Then we can look for addresses.”

They were en route to Cloncurry, the van was facing in the same direction, the van was presumably on route to Cloncurry and then past there because there was nothing interesting labwise there. So it was the right direction. And maybe someone from Deiparous could come to them if they phoned. Wouldn't that be nice?

(No, mutant Townsville hivemind did not count as part of Deiparous, even if it had started in one of their labs by eating their employees.)

Delaney levered herself to her feet. “Okay, so we definitely need this case, we can probably skip the others? As long as we've a clue where we're going or who we're calling later.”

Okay. Okay, taking the suitcase along required actually taking the suitcase. Keneh frowned - then closed her eyes, letting the battle rage on inside her. A drawn-out exhale morphs into a motion - then she's snapped it back shut and is shuffling to her feet with it. Calling might be the easiest exercise of the mentioned ones, given every single page they've read so far has a footer in fine-print with the most basic information about the main headquarters of Deiparous - but unfortunately, that's in Townsville. On the other hand, Deiparous had clients, and where there were clients, there were prospective clients, and while they hadn't looked for numbers and addresses on their website before - given they'd only wanted to verify that it was, in fact, a company that could conceivably be responsible for the Townsville disaster - there no doubt would be. Alternatively, there would be a list of clients, and those could be asked.

Keneh's gaze dips down to the pavement, regarding the other suitcases. There was a strong urge to just leave them where they now were, simply to get away faster, but it was best if it wasn't completely obvious they'd raided the van… especially if others from Townsville came past here. Other less human passersby. She glances to Robert, dithering - then passes the case to him and begins to collect the other cases. Putting them back required walking back to the van and Delaney wouldn't like that, but nothing had exploded yet and she just really could not feel intimidated by a set of cylinders that looked like you could drop a bomb on them without that they'd get as much as a scratch.

Ack, the van was still a death trap. Then again, it was a moderately contained one and surely the gas cylinders would have pressure valves. There was no ominous hissing. If they were quick and careful it should be safe-ish. If this blew up in her face - literally - it would be on her head, though. At least if they weren't hit she'd be able to say “I told you so” for the next week.

…which should not be an argument in favour of doing something dangerous. Clearly she needed sleep.

Still chastising herself under her breath Delaney bent to help Keneh with the spare cases. The sooner they were back on the road, the better.