Quaranteam: Remote Wor

The Quaranteam Universe is the creation of CorruptingPower, used with permission.

Also a huge thanks to BreakTheBar, loremaster for the side story writers and keeper of the timeline. He let me know I had a few inconsistencies that I needed to repair, and that is happening this chapter.

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Chapter 13: Psychology

27 August 2020

Not too long after breakfast, Team Jeffries made their plans for the day. They had two weeks to plan for with inconsistent access to things like laundry and only the one room. Sure, it was meant to hold four people, but it was still an adjustment. One had to stay back with Adam for his safety since they still didn't know what caused his fainting spell, and since Esther had work she could do from the hospital room that left the others to get started writing their lists of critical items. Clothing, electronics, toiletries, notes, job necessities, entertainment if there's room. Everyone would be living out of a suitcase and the hospital's hospitality, so treats and snacks were important. Especially as many perishable ones as they might be able to rescue.

The four teammates checked, double checked, and triple checked their lists. And each other's, much to Shannon's relief when Callie scratched off "bras" from her list. She was still growing, and the ones she had at the apartment had about as much hope of holding her as a child's sand castle stood against an ocean tide.

Shannon and Callie left, both looking back at Adam as they did. Esther looked at the closed door with a speculative look afterwards. "Adam, mind answering a question for me?"

Adam shrugged in his hospital bed. "Sure, what do you need to know?"

"Have those two... always been this horny? We all got ours from you yesterday, and it is looking like they don't feel like waiting all that long for the next time around."

"I can't really speak to how they were before they came to me, you understand. Still, since they did they absolutely have been."

Esther pulled out a notebook and started taking more notes. "Did they say anything about their sex lives before that?"

Adam thought hard. "Shannon wasn't a virgin when she got to me, but it wasn't particularly active for her. Between scarring and surgeries the opportunities were sparse on the ground. Callie mentioned that she had to get very good at fellatio to keep boys around. Take that one how you will."

"No, I think I got enough interpretation of that particular fact by listening to your reactions to it." Esther, as usual, delivered this in a devastating deadpan. "Here's the thing. I know you've been told that the Serum has an effect on the libidos of the recipients."

"Yes, a fact that I hope you won't be offended when I say I appreciate. Significantly. Before Shannon came into my life I was on a dry spell that was much, much longer than quarantine could account for."

"Not offended at all. Thing is, I've been reading up on the data now that I'm here and able to get it more easily. Any time I have the chance. The way they are acting is not normal. Not even with the side effects I've read."

"How far outside of normal are we talking, Esther?" Adam sat up and started shifting over to the edge of the bed. He was getting really tired of being confined there, and needed to stretch.

"Three to four times normal. A week or so is normal for vaccinated women to start feeling the itch. Most can hold out for ten to fourteen days before getting truly desperate. I don't think I've seen either of those two go more than two or three days before wanting to jump you again. Enough that they were getting distracted. Granted I don't have much of a data set yet, at least not until yesterday."

"May I remind you that you also participated in yesterday's events? How are YOU feeling on that front?"

"I have had more sex with you in a week than I've had combined for the previous five years. Having any feelings at all on that front is a marked change, so it's hard to really say."

"So right now you're...?"

"Aware that there is a willing, capable penis in my vicinity obscured by only a hospital gown, tempted by this fact, but able to ignore it. I'm moderately sure that you did not mean that as a come-on, either."

Adam stood up, letting himself slowly stabilize. "Blame the teacher in me. I was trying to get you to define it better so that you can move forward with the observation."

"I need you to understand that it is not a compliment when I tell you that you sound like my second-year Clinical Psychology professor." Esther's eyes flew open, she snapped her fingers. "Wait, that's it! Okay, I might have a solution to the anomaly. At least explaining it. I just need to make a couple of calls. At least, I will once the others are back. Still can't leave you alone."

"I'm fine, Esther. You can go make those calls." Adam was starting to stretch a bit, slowly getting some motion back into his limbs.

She turned to fix him with a glare. "For the tenth time, Adam, no you are not. I will not be the one to leave you alone so that we can come back to find you unconscious on the ground again, this time having fallen onto hard tile."

He didn't dignify that one with a response. It wasn't exactly something you could come back from, anyway. Instead, he just opened his packet of stretches and gentle exercises then got to it under the stern eye of his bonded doctor. Then he found out that if she was going to be stuck in the room, she wasn't going to let him skimp on the exercises. Esther was utterly ruthless in making sure he was doing his full ranges of motion and not skipping any of them. Much to his continued embarrassment, Adam worked up a fairly decent sweat. This shower was very different from the day before, however. Notably, he managed to go the whole time with nobody joining him. At least, not in the shower itself, when he came out he saw that Esther had indeed opened the bathroom door and was regularly looking his way. It was much, much less sexy than the last time. All he could do was dry off and put on a fresh hospital gown.

Shannon and Callie got back not long before lunch, and both were looking... strange. Weirded out. Callie pushed the luggage to the appropriate beds. "We got just about everything on the list, didn't have to throw out much food. Even tried to give away some of what we couldn't take." Her accent had thickened up again, which more than anything told everyone there that she was concerned about something.

Adam caught the phrasing immediately. "What do you mean by 'tried' to give it away? That is not a small building, I'm sure someone could use it."

Shannon shook her head. "That's the thing. There were a few cars in the lot, but once we were in there? Nothing and nobody. We didn't see the building manager to let her know that you're here. We didn't see any other families, or hear a single sound besides the AC and one alarm someone forgot to turn off."

Callie nodded. "It was kind of creepy. Still, anything that wouldn't keep but needed to be cooked got donated to the cafeteria kitchen downstairs. Not exactly their normal supply chain, but all ports in a storm. One of the cooks said they'll use it to make themselves meals if they don't get approval to put it on the line."

"That's good to hear." Adam did sound relieved about it as he glanced at the suitcase Callie had wheeled next to his bed. "And thanks for getting the essentials. I'm probably not going to wear mine for a while yet, but being able to respond to emails might be useful." He looked up again, and noticed Shannon. Her eyes were on the other two, her expression that of someone asking for permission. Both nodded back at her, and Esther opened up a dresser drawer to pull out a door hanger.

As Esther walked out of the room, Shannon walked over to Adam's bed. Resolutely, she reached up and started pulling the thin curtain around the section for some privacy. With a slightly nervous look on her face, she came up beside Adam. "I figured you wouldn't mind, but just in case. I'm as horny as I've ever been in my life, my boobs are getting more sensitive by the day, and you're right here. I want you to bend me over this bed and rail me. Use me like a toy and fondle my tits like you own them. Like I just carry them around for your convenience. Please." She looked him straight in the eye. "You are an amazing man and a gentle lover, but this is not the time for that. I am telling you to screw me hard enough to make me forget this morning. Make me struggle to stay quiet enough to let the Nurse's Station work in peace. Do you understand?"

Adam was already untying his gown. He understood.

It took Shannon longer to get out of her own clothing, if only because she had about five times more on than Adam did. When her increasingly bountiful breasts bounced free, something seemed to possess the man. With a force he rarely used, he came behind her, grabbing her tightly against him as she practically melted into his arms. He took a moment to maul those breasts, to really sink his hands into their soft depths, then with a look of determination shoved Shannon down to lean over the bed. She was wet and willing, and he speared her from behind almost to the base in one smooth thrust.

Shannon's eyes opened wide and a small "yip" escaped her lips despite the best she could do. She got better at holding back as Adam pulled back and slammed into her again. And again. Every thrust was hard enough to set her firm behind bouncing, to shake her breasts with enough force that it was visible from behind her. Adam's hands came to her hips and grabbed on for leverage, letting him push that much harder and deeper into her. For a time, neither really knew anything but the feel of Adam using Shannon's body for his pleasure and her rippling orgasms as he did so. When he came, he had to cover her mouth with his hand to keep her screams muffled.

He stumbled a step back, finding himself wiped and barely able to keep his feet. Shannon, for her part, could barely roll over enough to be able to face him and say "yeah. Just like that."

The two slowly got themselves cleaned off and back into their clothing (admittedly easier for Adam once again), then opened up the curtain to find both Esther and Callie sitting in chairs looking their way. Esther coughed slightly. "So, would you say that was typical, more intense, or less intense than usual? This is for medical purposes, so please be honest."

Lunch was brought in about ten seconds later, temporarily saving Adam from having to answer that. Then again, Esther took one look at Shannon's face and wrote something down. He suspected she could darned well tell that the answer was "more," regardless of anything they might say.

Worth noting was that the Nurse's Station had tried to bring the food by five minutes prior and realized it was a bad time after three seconds of listening, but Adam didn't need to know that.

Before they were finished, though, another nurse came with paperwork. It was official. They'd be stuck there for two weeks. It was Callie who spotted the detail on the last sheet of paper, though. Listed next to "Insurance Provider" was "US Department of Health and Human Services."

The next few days passed in a bit of a blur. Meals, physical therapy, sex, cleanliness, sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat. The ladies volunteered where they could, Esther took what notes she could. Despite having access to a lot more of their life, there was simply a lot that they could not do in the confines of the single room. It was four days later, on a cloudy Sunday afternoon, that the monotony broke.

For one, Adam was permitted to wear his own clothes again. Most of the time. He still had to get into the gown again if he was required to be examined closely. Thankfully, he was showing exactly zero symptoms of anything that may have caused him to randomly fall unconscious, leading one doctor to jokingly recommend he buy a fainting couch for his bedroom. Said doctor got lightly smacked on the arm by a nurse who was there with him, presumably on his Team from the affectionate nature of their interactions. It was sweet, really.

Once they left, Esther glanced at her phone. "Looks like everyone's here. Shannon, mind if I borrow your setup? You have a much better camera than I do, and the doctor I'm calling might need it."

Shannon looked a bit concerned. "Uh, sure. Let me get it set up. Who are you calling?"

"An old classmate of mine I haven't talked to in a while. It took me two days to make sure she was still alive. Her family is very active politically, it was no shock to learn she got an early dose."

Callie had to shake her head. "Not exactly encouraging. Any particular reason you're gonna go out of network, so to say? What's stopping you from using the resources in the hospital we're staying at?"

Esther flipped a few pages in the small notebook she carried, a frown of concentration on her face. "Three reasons. First and easiest, I trust her. The day a lie crosses her lips the world's going to end anyway. Second, I found out she's able to talk about Serum things, being on a Team herself since last month. Third, our local clinical psychologist was a man who died in the first DuoHalo waves, back in April. I didn't know him, but his coworkers here mentioned it."

Not too much you can say to that, is there?

Shannon finished getting set up, and Esther made sure the camera was aimed properly to catch all of them in its view before opening up a teleconferencing program and typing something in. She clicked the call button, and Shannon's speakers let out a ringtone. There was a beep, and the screen showed a stretch of blank white wall. The corner of a window was visible on the other side, it was dark outside wherever this was. From the other side, a tired woman's voice came "

yeoboseyo?

"

"

Yeoboseyo

! Doctor Park, thank you for taking my call at this hour. My Teammates do not speak Korean, do you mind if we do this in English?"

A tall and willowy Korean woman in a nightgown came onto the screen and sat down in a chair they couldn't see. "Wouldn't be my first one today, Doctor Kim... my apologies, it is after midnight, so it is in fact my first one of the day." She blinked a few times, and lifted a mug of something that was probably, but not definitely, tea from offscreen to take a sip. "The information you sent me is interesting, I assume these three are the people you were talking about?"

"Yes. I'm trying to figure out where the difference between what my literature says should be true and what is actually happening might be."

"You understand that this is not going to be enough time for me to make a clinical diagnosis, right?"

Esther nodded. "Of course. I just need to account for a few things before I can do more on my side."

"Alright. Shannon, Callie, and Adam. I am Doctor Park Soo Young, a clinical psychologist in Uijeongbu, Korea." She yawned slightly before continuing. "Your teammate Esther called in a favor I had forgotten about to get a remote appointment after midnight, but let's see where we stand. Shannon, I need you to come front and center first."

Shannon sat in front of the camera, a place she was used to even if the situation was not one she found comfortable. "Yes, doctor?"

"Shannon, I need to be frank here. The questions I am going to ask are ones I would normally save for later appointments, after rapport building. They may be uncomfortable, but I need you to be honest. Can you do that?"

Shannon closed her eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. "I think so."

"Thank you. In the year before you got to Adam, how often did you have sex?"

Shannon blinked twice. "Um. I think once total."

What followed was a relatively short line of questions that was direct, blunt, and about two degrees away from pornographic as Doctor Park asked Shannon about her body, her sex life, and how her relationship with Adam was going. Honestly, Adam was shocked at the fact she was asking these questions with the rest of them in the room at all. And when she was through with Shannon, Doctor Park told Callie to come sit in the hot seat and put her through it as well. Adam found it odd that she didn't bother to ask Esther anything, but after she got done with Callie Doctor Park seemed satisfied. "Alright. Shannon, Callie, I do need you two out of the room for the next part."

Callie, half way through standing, seemed struck by a sudden thought. "Hold on. You just unpacked our sex lives more thoroughly than the Oracle quiz right in front of him, and we are getting kicked out before his part?"

"Yes. I needed to make sure you two were reacting as you would in front of him, but his part needs to be with just the doctors." Doctor Park's tone was conversational and level, but her face did hold a bit of amusement.

Callie found out fast that trying to stare information out of someone does not work from thirteen time zones away. Grumbling slightly, she grabbed Shannon by the wrist and got going, muttering something about the hospital's legal department. As soon as the door closed, though, Esther got very serious. "Park, I have never once in my life heard of you making an exception for one person out of a group when lives weren't on the line. Explain."

"Observant as always. Is that why you called me, or just because you hated Professor Song's class?"

"Both." Esther did not elaborate any further.

Park grinned slightly, then nodded. "It has been thirty years, and you haven't changed a bit. Please, never do. Adam, I have more than enough information now. I have some instructions for you, and then I have a lot of research to do in my abundant free time. It will be brief, but I need you to take it as seriously as you have ever done in your life."

"You already had my attention, doctor. What could possibly be that critical?" Adam's tone did not indicate any skepticism or sarcasm. He was a teacher who realized that he needed to be the student this time.

"Those two women of yours... possibly those THREE women of yours..."

"I am still in the room." Esther interjected.

"... are in a potentially fragile state. You have been doing well, thankfully. Taking their needs into account, rolling with the punches, trying to smooth things as much as you can. You're hurting, too, but I have to place one more demand on you. They are going through some serious body image revisions in their own minds, and that is not an easy process. Never, and I do mean NEVER, insult their appearance or how they present themselves. In their present state, one wrong word at the wrong time could be in their heads for decades. Especially coming from you."

Adam's eyes furrowed. "Why me in particular?"

"Adam, you are the first purely positive human interaction either of those women have had outside their families in a very, very long time. It all stemmed from a lack of physical attractiveness, too. That is changing, but you are on ground zero. The other task I have is probably going to be less of an ordeal, but is no less important."

"And what might that be?"

"They are going to be aroused very often, possibly for the foreseeable future. I am encouraging you to indulge that as often as you feel up to it. If you are debating it, go ahead and go for it. They need sex as much more than a physiological imperative right now. It is validation as much as anything else, and if Doctor Kim's notes are correct then this should not be a hardship as things go."

Adam paused to consider those words. Despite the topic, they were deadly serious. "Thank you for the advice, Doctor. I will follow it to the best of my ability."

"See that you do. Doctor's orders, after all. Now, I need to get to sleep. As you can imagine, my schedule is not exactly empty these days." She shut off the camera from her side, leaving Adam with a lot to think about as he stood back up.