Opposites Attract

Venom

"I'll look after her," Virgil promised as he stepped firmly onto the foot plate, the painting behind him starting to tilt.

***

As soon as they reached the area Scott and Kayo had been sent off on a drone hunt while Virgil and Selene continued on to help the Doctor.

Selene stayed in Two, making sure the medical bay was fully prepared while Virgil switched the huge craft to auto pilot, leaving it hovering above the treeline, and lowered onto the Doctor's observation platform.

It didn't take him long to return, carrying Dr Furnier as if he weighed nothing more than a bag of sugar. She moved aside, letting him lay the man down on the bed and handed Virgil the med-scanner.

"How's it looking?" Furnier asked, a little breathlessly and with a pain filled tinge to his voice.

"Not too bad," Virgil hedged, his eyes focused on the scanner screen.

"How do you feel?" Selene asked Furnier, "can you describe it?"

"The venom is spreading fast, I can't feel my legs, and my head hurts."

Selene leant over to look at Virgil's screen, seeing that his blood pressure was far too high and his temperature was climbing.

She soaked a cloth in cold water and laid it on his forehead to ease both the headache and mop up the beads of sweat that glistened on his forehead as Virgil wound a bandage tightly around his hand and forearm in the hope of slowing down the spread and splinted the arm to stop it from moving, any movement could make the situation worse.

Virgil handed her the scanner so she could familiarise herself with the details and turned away to talk to Scott, not wanting the Doctor to hear how bad it was.

"So, you study spiders, huh?"

Furnier coughed weakly but nodded. "Always been a...passion of mine."

"I took our younger brothers to the zoo a while ago, I freaked the smallest one out by holding a tarantula. Apparently it wasn't really the fact that I was holding it that was bad, it was the fact that I was talking to it like I would our cat."

Furnier managed a weak chuckle as she helped him to sit up and take a sip of water.

"They're on their way," Virgil informed them both, "don't worry, they won't let us down."

***
Selene secured the oxygen mask on Furnier while Virgil rummaged through the meds supply on board, including a box that he'd taken from Furnier's lab.

She was just checking his vitals again when, out of the corner of her eye she saw Virgil suddenly stiffen, standing as still as a statue.

Before she could even register what was happening, Furnier sat bolt upright and lunged in Virgil's direction, sweeping up a specimen jar. Two seconds later Virgil was in possession of a freaky looking spider, Furnier had collapsed back on the bed and Selene was wondering if she would ever sleep again without visions of that bastard thing haunting her.

"Thank you," Virgil breathed, beyond relieved. "You saved me."

Selene checked Furnier's pulse finding it to be far too fast.

"He's tachycardic," she warned as Virgil gently set the jar aside with the care one would give an unexploded bomb. "We need to work quickly, can we give him something to bring his heart rate down? That will stop the heart pumping so fast and spreading the poison even quicker."

"I don't know enough about this spider to want to risk introducing anything else into his bloodstream at this point," Virgil admitted, looking sideways at the spider.