Dead Man Walking (TaeKook / VKook FF)

Chapter 13: A Little Bit Of Peace

The crowd was mumbling and Than stiffened.
He looked at Heather who was sitting next to him – she strapped her gloves over her hands and put her mouth mask on.
Than feels like her appearance had gone silent, almost cold.
He met her as Kyoungjae's bright girlfriend who was interested in science with her role model as her boss.
But now ... it was like a whole different person was sitting next to him.
He did not know her very much, and he was glad about it. Otherwise her change would have got him more like it did right now.
She adjusted the straps of the sterile white mask behind her ears and glimpsed at the stage again.
"He's coming"
Just two words which sent shivers down Than's spine.

A whisper ran through the crowd, people were talking and standing up as Doctor Kim Namjoon appeared at the stage.
His white suit had something from a white coat, not one single fleck of dirt or other impurities visible.
He cleared his throat before he went behind the speaker's desk.
Namjoon looked down at the crowd, politicians from around the world sitting in his audience, together with famous doctors and scientists. He also spotted two of his assistants on the margin of the first row of seats.
He gifted his audience a last slow gaze before he spoke up.
"Good evening, dear ladies and gentlemen. I invited you tonight to inform you about the latest research results in our most prominent case – the 'Toxo-Infection'. Please", he added, "have a seat".
The audience sat down again and Namjoon waited until it was silent.
Not visible for the audience he quickly adjusted his papers of the protocols.
"Well, since our first meeting exactly nine days, three hours and two minutes have passed. And since exactly eight days, six hours and, now, eight minutes, the Toxo-Infections has been crossing through South Korea"
A low rumble went through the audience, but they kept quiet again. The doctor spoke on.
"That's right. It's not a long time since something so big is present on our beloved, and now abandoned, country we used to live in. Nevertheless and against our common expectations, we succeeded with new perceptions about this very infection. We gained knowledge from experiments, such as behaviour experiments and laboratorial-biological experiments. Furthermore we can annotate changes and innovations in our notebooks about the evolution of the Toxo-Infection"

Than saw how his colleague got up from her seat and quickly followed her. Silently she walked behind the stage and pulled two blankets from the glass boxes.
She looked at Than.
"Help me" she mouthed and motioned Than to hold up the curtain. He did as he was told and so he looked at Heather pushing the glass boxes, with added wheels on the underside, onto the stage. He hurried to push the second glass box and tried to close his eyes in the process.
The last thing he needed right now, was to look right into her eyes.

Namjoon smiled confidently as the young Vietnamese assistant pushed exhibition container onto the stage.
He and his other assistant hurried to disappear again and he went on with his speech.
"This, ladies and gentlemen, are specimen of the Toxo-Infection"
He pointed at the left exhibition container.
An infected man was visible, he was obviously blinded by the lights which were shining onto the stage.
He pinched his eyes and turned his head away.
He wore nothing then pants which once might have been white once, but were now stained with yellow and brown flecks of defecation.
His skin tone was a teint from porcelain to sickly light turquoise, and the audience gasped.
"He has the usual Toxo-Infection" Namjoon explained.
"His behaviour is definitely changed from a normal human's one. The mixture of the parasite Toxoplasma Gondii in combination with a re-combined gene of the HI-virus is turning his whole behaviour to the aim, to spread the disease"
Namjoon turned himself fully to the audience again, which was still disgusted by the view that was shown to them.
"Every kind of parasite has one thing in common – the aim to spread and survive. No matter in which way this process is about to happen, the destinations of a parasite are a host, a body to live inside, and to propagate. For the case of the Toxo-Infection, the genetically changed parasite has many different ways to propagate. For example"
The whole hall turned the lights down and a white screen was raised from the ground.
Namjoon took out a laser pointer from his pocket and the presentation started.
"This is original footage from two boys in Yangsan. They are survivors which could not have been saved in the first wave, but their destination is to get to the borders and to survive. Those two boys are our test objects. This is their first confrontation with an infected human, right at the first day after the spread"
The video showed a blonde and a brunette boy, running away and into an alleyway. It was a dead-end and the infected person followed them.
"Here" the red dot of Namjoon's laser pointer was at an abandoned body on the floor.
"This was at the very beginning. Usually something you will now find rather rarely. This human was taken down and devoured by that infected man. Since this person is obviously dead, the parasite could not spread. What you are now going to find, is this case"
Another footage started. Again the two boys were visible on the screen, walking through an abandoned underground station.
The videos showed them as they were walking right next to a train, which has stopped midway.
The doctor's laser pointer showed up again, pointing at a young child laying on the ground.
"This is way more common right now. Just a single wound on one part of the body. The body fluids, like saliva or blood, of the infected human spreads the genetically changed parasite, so the human gets infected. The fall into a slow state of trance and shook, until the Toxoplasma Gondii manages to take over the central nervous system. That's the time when the infections is completed and the parasite begins its search for an opportunity to spread itself"
Namjoon puts his laser pointer away, the screen rolls itself on again and the lights got brighter.
"So much to the usual points. Now to the uncommon points"
The doctor looked at the second exhibition container.
"As you can clearly see, this infected person does not have the usual body proportions of the common infected. This one has ulcers and swelling all over it's body"
A low whisper went through the crowd, deep and full of concerns and anxiety.
"Simply said, this is cancer"
The doctor cleared his throat again before he spoke on.
"Well, since the HI-Virus has engaged into the infected person's body, a risk to cancer is much more higher in the HI-Virus's mutated version. The cells has stopped their usual functions of stopping their production processes, and so this happened. The main cancer for this person must has started in his lungs. The cancer cells wandered through his bloodstream and caused metastasises to appear – those are secondary cancer points which all have the native cancer cells from the one in his lungs. This version of the virus helps to spread it better and so this happened"
A scientist in the back of the hall raised his hand and Namjoon allowed him to speak up.
The scientist began to speak in his broken English with his strong Swedish accent.
"But isn't the production of cancer cells incredibly contra productive for a parasite?"
The doctor nodded.
"That's correct. The massive production of cancers cells makes the infected human slower to move and weaker. This means, that the pure appearance of cancer in a few causes might be the start of an extinction of the Toxo-Infection"
Again a low whisper went through the hall. The doctor went on with his explanation.
"If, in theory, every infected human begins to develop cancer, and every habitant from South Korea is in safety and in another country, the Toxo-Infection might extinct itself"
The Swedish scientist raised his voice again.
"Isn't that the solution for all our problems?"
Namjoon kept quiet for a very short moment, just for a blink, then he caught himself again.
"No. In fact it is not. Of course the development of cancer cannot be controlled by an organism, but a way to not develop it can be found. That means, if this is the case like you saw in the video footage with the two boys, the parasite could find a way to strength its cell functions and to avoid the most ways of getting cancer. But this is not a fact, just a rumour"
Exclamations went through the whole audience, question like "What happens then?" or "What is the solution?" were yelled.
Namjoon packed his papers and spoke a last time into the microphone.
"This conference is finished. No more questions pleased"
Yells of protests pierced his ears and he saw his two assistants jump up and hurrying over to him.
The doctor was fuming.
"Of course" he muttered and crumbled the papers in his hands to little balls.
He disappeared behind the curtain and met his assistants.
"Get those out of my eyesight" he barked and pointed at the two caged infected men in the exhibition containers.
"Discard them like the trash they are" he muttered and left the two speechless adjuncts behind.
He hurried out of the building and saw how his Limousine.
It stopped right in front of him, far from all the paparazzi eyes.
His chauffeur got out of the car and held the door open.
"Welcome, Master. To the laboratory or home?"
"You got Diana with you?"
"She is right here, Master"
The man pointed into the inner of the Limousine and Namjoon entered it.
"Please, drive me home. I need a little peace from all of this"
"As you wish" the man said and closed the door. It locked immediately and Namjoon headed over to the velvet cushion were his cat was laying onto.
Diana meowed lowly and purred as she seemed to feel her owner's presence.
"Hey, my princess"
Carefully he lifted the tiny cat out of her fluffy bed and into his arms. He sat down onto the expensive car seat and crawled her body affectionately.
"How has your day been? Lazy, huh?"
He pressed a little kiss against her head and she purred, rubbing her forehead against his chest.
"Yeah, mine was stressful" he muttered and looked at the driver.
"Close the partitions please. And drive" he said and the chauffeur nodded.
The partitions rolled up and he let his head fall back against the headrest.
"So stressful" he groaned went on with crawling the cat's body.
She purred and the little bell on her collar rang softly.
It was light and peaceful tone, clear just a virginal water out of a spring.
The doctor smiled and finally felt like he found his daily time of peace.
Just a little bit of peace.

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Here I am again! After a long break I am here again! I am very very sorry for this being so short, but every Namjoon-Chapter has to be so short, otherwiise I am afraid that I pretty much kill you with all those shitty biological gibberish (it's very very annoying to google all the English meanings I tell ya :D) and I have to get my way into writing again very slowly.
So yeah, Chapter 14 and 15 about to follow, then the epilogue and the bonus chapter where everything gets explained.
I hope you find everything interesting and keep reading to the end ^.^

Love ya all <3