driftfleet | video;

Who: Maggie Rhee and YOU
Broadcast: video!
Action: Aboard the S.S. Blameless
When: Now!

[It had taken Maggie the short time aboard the Marsiva to collect herself. She hadn't even messaged anyone she remembered until now. It had been a strange transition waking up aboard the strange yet familiar ship, only to realize this had been home once too. Maggie had struggled back home, but now she felt her grief settling into a cold anger. She could channel that into something productive if she was to be stuck here in the fleet again.

Finally addressing the fleet, Maggie's features look calm, compared to the confusion of most arrivals.]

I'm assuming this place hasn't changed any? New arrival gets sent to their new ship from the Marsiva and all that. Though I'm curious what the Atroma find so fascinating about me this time around.

[She had become a leader, a force of nature in human flesh. She might still grieve her losses and feel hesitant to reach out to a new crew but she would help them get by the same as she'd done when she'd been on the Goldstone.]

Private - Carl Grimes

[Maggie has her hands folded under her chin, trying to think of what to even say to Carl. She could start with questions - how long was she gone? When had Enid left? She had absolutely skimmed their ship's rosters for them, not seeing Enid's name listed anywhere. She no longer saw Rick or Daryl's names either which meant Carl had been here alone.]

Are you on the Red Fish right now? I want to see you.

[If only to give him a hug and maybe make sure he'd been taking acceptable care of his eye and doing his physical therapy. Rick and Michonne weren't here to take care of him so it fell to her, just as it would if their roles as parents were reversed.]

Action;

[Upon arriving, Maggie deftly brushes the confetti out of her hair and ignores the Atroma's usual pomp and circumstance. She had half a mind to make her way to her new lab, but instead she takes her time exploring with her celebratory chocolate goo in hand. She had never been on the Blameless before now.]

Hello?

[Say hello to your new crewmate, Blameless?]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Who died - how many?

[She's practically gripping her seat now, trying to find calm and failing.]

Were they- were they still dead when they came back? Did you check for bites and scratches and things?

[Well this is going to end up being a more revealing conversation than intended. Maggie never thought they would be on a planet with zombies. She's also never heard of the crew dying either. She knew they couldn't really age the same as a normal person. Takeshi had still been incredibly young the last time she saw him and hearing he had finally grown up a bit made her happy for him. Now all she could think of was the memory of digging a bullet out of his shoulder and stitching him up.]

It was around ten people I think. I don't remember who exactly except Okita. [Partially because he was in a coma when it all happened and by the time he woke up it wasn't long before they were all alive again. That and the information wasn't all that clear and centralized. It took awhile before he even found out about his own crewmate. But these other questions are more confusing. He's pretty sure they're weird even if he doesn't understand everything about Earth.]

...How would they be dead if they are alive again? And why would we check them for that?

[Shit. She was careful about how she spoke of home on a normal day. This was not a normal day.]

It's just something that happens back home where I'm from. An infection that can be spread through bites that only keeps them up and moving unless you kill their brain. You said they come back from being dead so I thought it was something like that.

[And now she wishes she hadn't assumed.]

Why would you want to kill their brain? Isn't it good that they came back? [He's sure he's missing something here and infection doesn't exactly sound like a positive thing.]

Not particularly good since in my experience undead people try to eat you.

[She rubs the side of her head, wishing she could avoid trying to explain this without sounding utterly insane.]

Where I'm from they're called walkers. They're vicious, even if they're slow sometimes. They can rip the skin right off your face. Only way to stop them is to shoot or stab them in the head. The brain is what keeps them moving.

Wow. That's horrible. [And he never got around to seeing any zombie movies while he was on Earth.] So, if someone you know dies you have to kill them again? You can't just get them to not eat you?

No. You can't it's like - they're like wild beasts. No conscience, no thought process. If you were about to get mauled by a bear wouldn't you try to run or defend yourself?

Bears are the big furry ones with the claws and teeth? [Look, you can only learn so much about an entirely different planet when you're only there a few months and you spend all of your time in one city in California.] But yes, I get your point. I guess there isn't a cure when you start by being dead?

Yes - that'd be them. [Her lips curve a bit a the edges, amused that Mon El still has so much he's learning even with the time he's spent around humans in the fleet.]

Exactly. Once you turn that's it. We wanted there to be a cure once - even tried looking for it, but nothing came of it.

[Well Rick had explained the whole thing, at least. What they'd learned about how the disease works hadn't been promising.]

But just because they're monsters doesn't mean they aren't still people. We still try and treat them with dignity even if we might have to kill one of 'em.

[You'd be impressed how often bears don't come up in space.]

I'm sorry. That's hard to imagine. [Maybe because he doesn't want to think of his friends changing into monsters or him changing and hurting people he cared about.]

Does it happen a lot? [Still not getting the sheer scope of it.]

It was hard for me to imagine too, 'til it actually happened.

[How to explain, really... she doesn't know.]

Yeah, it does. The army and the government told us it was a wide spread illness that was causing it? No one really knows where it started, just where we were when it all happened. My family missed a lot of it from living on my dad's farm, but it got to us eventually.

But you're not infected, right? [Concerned for her. He hasn't made the step over to "are you a carrier? Can the rest of us get it?"]

It's not something that's an active infection, no.

[She has absolutely dreaded this sort of thing getting out. The last thing she wants is people afraid of her and Carl.]

The only way it spreads is through a bite from a Walker but people where I'm from are still susceptible to becoming Walkers when they die because we were exposed to it initially. I don't know if the Atroma did anything to my augment or Carl's to prevent that. It's a possibility.

[It's a thought that's crossed her mind. She's not about to test that theory on herself or Carl. Either way, she's absolutely unsure of how to handle a situation like that.
She's almost certain she and Carl are incapable of infecting other people but there was nothing to prove that.]

You mean even if someone dies without being bitten they can become one of those? [Wanting to make sure he understands it correctly.]

I've seen it happen a few times. I wouldn't worry. Pretty sure it's limited to just me and Carl. No one else should get sick.

[She's absolutely worrying that he's worrying.]

Just... try not to spread it around? I can handle it if people think I'm going to make them sick, but I don't want Carl to have to deal with it.

[She would do whatever it took to make everything easier for him.]

You know I don't want you to be sick either, right? Or Carl even if I don't know a Carl. [And of course he's worried about everyone else too. Himself, sure, but also Kara and his other friends and shipmates. Especially if it's something all the fleet doctors could be working on.

He doesn't respond to the spreading it around part directly. He's not planning on it, but he doesn't exactly hide a lot from Kara. Okay, he's hidden some really huge things from Kara, but that's part of why he doesn't want to because that didn't work out so well for him.]

Well, I'm not sick. For now. It's probably dormant. I don't think the Atroma would even want it to spread anyway, even if it wasn't. For all I know they've done something to stop that from happening.

[She's not even sure the doctors could be working on it. She has enough ability thanks to her augment that she might be able to, but that didn't really seem a good place to put her energy.]

It would be nice if the augment did good things for a change. I mean, other than teaching us how to fly space ships if we didn't already know. [He totally knew. Okay, this technology is nothing like his so not really, but he knew how to fly some kinds of space ships.

He's not sure how likely the augments or the Atroma doing nice things is, but if they have this sickness then they probably already passed it on.]

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