When Ethan had said he needed time to think he had expected more than the three hours Nia and Lukas gave him. He understood that people were working to a timetable that was already, in Lukas's words, "beyond fucked," and that it wasn't just his safety on the line, but even so, this was so large that being forced to rush left him wanting to scream.
He took himself back to the main building of Taymont Hall, where he and most of the crew had been living for the last 5 months. An odd stillness hung across the building as the majority of people on-site remained in their rooms. The bar, tucked off to the side of the hotel's lavishly grand staircase, had been locked a week ago to stop anyone congregating, but whoever had done so had left the key in its home behind the front desk, making it trivial to let himself in to nurse a drink among the wood panelled walls.
Browsing the shelf of spirits, he came across a vintage bottle of whisky that put a small knot in his stomach. He knew less than fuck all about spirits but Tom Warrick had been a self proclaimed expert, and Ethan recognised it as the one the squat Welshman had brought from his personal collection, informing everyone of his plan to save it for the day when they had some "genuinely gods damned good news" to share with the world. Apparently, he'd long since given up on Wales winning the rugby world cup and the end of a pandemic would have to do.
Ethan had liked Tom. He had been a senior producer at Media City in Manchester and the one who'd put Ethan's name forward to join things at Taymont when everything got set in motion. In the early days when Ethan had felt there was no way in the world he should be doing this, it had been Aoife's friendship and Tom's trust that had got him through. It still hadn't quite caught up with Ethan that he wouldn't be seeing him again.
He was on to his second glass when Evie arrived. He had only intended to have one but Nia had given him a tablet containing a huge amount of detailed information on every possible data point or question he might have about Gemivax and some of what was there really made another drink seem compulsory. She'd really downplayed a lot. From how often a man needed sexual contact with his 'Team,' to just how pronounced the libido spikes could be, especially after the initial administration, as well as something called the 'Daniels Effect' where a Team was shown to become psychologically, as well as sexually, dependent on each other.
It wasn't the black and white of clinical data and reports that were really bothering him as the half-Asian woman arrived however. Rather it was the video file that was also included and that he found himself looping on repeat for the 5th or 6th time.
"Imprinting. Imprinting. Imprinting..."
He looked at Evie, holding up the device to show her the cropped in face of a woman repeating the same word over and over.
"Are you really ok with having this done to you?"
The reports said it was a side effect of the serum being used in Gemivax that no-one had been able to remove from the final product, that when a vaccinated woman first paired with a man she would lose consciousness and repeat the word while the physiological changes occurred. Looking at the profound yet blank contentment painted across the woman's face he once again found himself wondering if this was all a sick joke. Evie just shrugged.
"Tom's whisky?"
Her voice was ever so slightly deeper than you would expect it to be from looking at her, oddly luxurious in a way that matched her assurance that Ethan had always found particularly appealing.
"I didn't think he'd mind. Who knows maybe this is the miracle he was saving it for?"
"How many you had?"
"This is my second? Think that's a bad sign when it's not even 10 in the morning?"
Evie went to the bar, fetching a tumbler of her own before easing into a seat alongside. She poured herself a measure, paused, and then to Ethan's surprise downed it in one go, mostly managing not to wince afterwards as she thudded the glass back down on the antique table.
"There. And now I'm caught up."
He looked at her, and couldn't help but laugh, finding at least some humour in the sheer fucking demented absurdity of it all. This was Evie as he knew her at her best, unshakable yet warm. For a brief moment as a slight smile curled at her lips he managed to let the situation slip from his mind, before the voice on the tablet cut through things.
"Imprinting. Imprinting. Impr-"
Evie reached over and stopped the video, before turning the tablet off. She looked like she wanted to say something, then sighed and ran a hand through her hair instead. With things out in the open she didn't have the same caged awkwardness as she did at the meeting at least, but it still took her a moment to fill the silence.
"I've had a week longer than you to get my head around this, how absurd it is" she said, pouring a second drink. "I keep trying to tell myself that we aren't really getting a choice in this. Not just us, not specifically anyway, but everyone. If there was even a hint of another way then I can't see how it would have gotten this far. Because it's not just life and death, is it? But everything else too, work, society, Gemivax and Delphi are the way they think things are getting put back together. We can either be on the inside or outside."
She paused again, before looking at him. "May as well at least try and get dealt the best hand possible."
Ethan laughed again, finding somewhat bitter humour in the notion that an increasingly scruffy northerner from a housing estate might be the best hand someone like Evie could get. She clearly needed a better dealer if it was. Evie, however, fixed him with a displeased look, evidently finding the laugh as a slight against her earnestness.
He held his hands up, "look, hey, I didn't mean it like that. Just...a month ago we were telling people how well things were going, there was even talk of hospitality opening back up. Two weeks ago we were telling them that the Prime Minister had died. And this week we need to find a way to say it's this...whatever this even is, or the literal end of the world."
Her expression softened slightly, "you're taking all of this better than Lukas did at least, there's still a hole in the wall of Studio 2 from that. Put his fist right through it when they told him."
"I'm allowed to laugh at that at least?" he joked, the recollection that Lukas was already neck deep in this ahead of him and seemed to be surviving managing to relieve at least some of the sense of it all feeling quite so overwhelming.
