Wash opens the door of Dr. Grey's lab for me and allows me go in first before entering himself (such a gentleman, right?). Opera music is blasting through the halls of the building to no one's surprise. She really loves her Opera.
"Dr. Grey!" I yell over the music.
"Examination room sweetie!" Came the doctor's reply on the intercoms. "And take off your helmets!! You're not on a battlefield!!"
Wash and I share a glance and took off our helmets. A strand of brown hair falls in front of my face, much to my annoyance because I didn't tie my ponytail tight enough.
"Can you hold this?" I hold out my helmet to Wash. He tucks his under his arm and take my helmet from my hand. I undo my ponytail, putting the tie on my wrist, and combed my hair with my hands to make it more loose. I look up for a split second and catch Wash staring at me. I stop messing with my hair and return the stare. "What?"
"Nothing its just.. I've never seen you with your hair down."
I resume fixing my hair, pulling it back into my normal low ponytail. "I'm guessing this is the part where you tell me to keep it down?"
"Possibly."
I let go of my hair, the same strand falling on my face again, and give him an annoyed look. "Fine. Only for you."
He lifts his hand to brush the stray hair behind my ear and cup my face. "I love it when you do that."
"Do what?"
He presses his lips against mine for a soft kiss then pulls back and touches his forehead with mine. "Do things only for me." He replies.
I giggled as Dr. Grey's voice sounded in the intercoms. "It should not take you this long to take off your helmets!!"
"You know we have to go now." I say.
He pulls back and sighs. "It's like we never get a moment together alone."
"I think you said that already."
"Well I'm saying it again."
We followed the signs to the Examination room where we see Dr. Grey doing an autopsy on a brain.
"What can I do for you?" She asks cheerfully, setting down her tools.
"I was wondering if you could do another test on my brain." Wash says. "Carolina said that I had brain damage but I'm starting to remember things that I used to not know."
"Agent Washington, you must be hallucinating. No one that has brain damage just ends up remembering things out of the blue."
"But can you check anyways?" I ask.
"Certainly. I can do the test now." She takes off her blood-stained gloves and throws it in the waste bin. "Wash, head over to room B-184 and leave your helmet with her. I'll be there in a moment."
Wash hands me his helmet and gives me a two finger salute before heading out of the examination room.
"Unfortunately Alaska, I'm going to have to make you wait in the observation room." The doctor continues, as she rolls the body into one of those dead body holder things in the wall and closes the door.
"Actually, do you have any tools that deal with micro things? I need it to repair something." You can clearly see that I don't know medical terms. And I have no plan on learning any.
"You mean tools to repair an A.I. Of course I do."
I blink in surprise. "How did you know that I was going to repair an A.I.?"
"Well, last time you were here was because your A.I. was going crazy." She walks to a closet and opens it. "Now where did I.."
She starts taking things out and occasionally throwing stuff over her shoulder. She threw a random shoe, a globe, a lamp. I ducked as a Christmas tree flew towards my head.
"Hey! Watch it." I warned her and picked up the tree.
She looked up and her eyes lit up in delight. "Oh there's my Christmas tree! I'm going to need to set that up ASAP."
"Set it up?" I echoed.
"It's December sweetie. And when December comes, it's Christmassss!!" She sang.
All I could think about is missing Thanksgiving. All that food.. the ham.. the turkey.. the stuffing.. the pie..
I shake my head. Thanksgiving is an American thing. Obviously people here don't celebrate Thanksgiving but thankfully they celebrate Christmas.
"I guess I lost track of the days." I admit. I set the Christmas tree down by a desk. Dr. Grey continues to rummage through her closet before pulling out a small toolkit case.
"With all the things you've been going through the past few days, I'm not that suprised. Oh! Here it is!" She steps over the many things she threw on the floor and holds the case to me. I juggle my helmet and Wash's in one hand and and grab the handle. "All you need should be in there."
"Thanks Dr. Grey."
"Please call me Emily." She smiles. "Now let's see what's going on in that brain of that boyfriend of yours."
I blush a bit and followed her to room B-184 where she unlocks the door to the observation room for me and makes sure I get settled in. I set down the helmets and toolkit on the table and pulled out my A.I. chip from my back pocket.
"You know, I do have a degree in A.I. theory and implantation. Maybe instead of having that chip that could be easily stolen, I could do surgery." She suggests.
I gulp. Thoughts of what happened to Wash when he got Epsilon sprang in my mind. But then York still has Delta and Delta hasn't gone crazy yet like Beta.
But I also had the Alpha.. Church.
"I'll.. think about it." I told her.
"Just let me know!" She exits the room and walks into Wash's room to start the test.
I sat down at the long gray desk and picked up the chip again to examine the work that needs to be done to it. On my ship, I was able to make the major repairs but I had to misplace some mirco wires around to do so.
I opened the tool kit and stared at the tools for a moment before taking out a pair of pliers and a thin metal rod.
I carefully take off the small aluminum case of the chip and moved the misplaced wires back into it's original place, using the pliers to hold the small wires and the rod to push it into place. I occasionally looked up from my work at the viewing window to see how the test was going and it seemed to be going good so far.
The task only took a few minutes and slid the case back on, satisfied with the repair. I put away the tools back in it's case and set it on the floor.
I placed the chip on the table and used my wristpad to activate it. Beta's image flickers once and then fully appears. She looks around at the small room and asks. "Where are we?"
"Back on Chorus." I answered. "How do you feel?"
She stretches and takes off the battle rifle from her back. "Well, I don't feel as angry." Her image flickers red for a second before going back to her original black. "Still hints of it though."
"Think you can control it this time?" I ask.
"Can't promise anything, but I think I'll manage better than before."
"That's good-"
A shriek came from the other side of the glass window. Without thinking, I grab Beta, inserting her my helmet and tucked it under my arm as I ran out the door of the observation room and bursted into the testing room. "Is everything alright?" I asked, concerned.
Wash looked at me from his seat on the bed and mouthed 'helped me' as Emily started rambling excitedly.
"This is incredible!! I have never seen the human brain repair itself is such a short amount of time!! Or even ever!!" She runs to her computer and start typing furiously. "It's like your body knew that you had damage and just like a normal wound, it just.. AAAA!!!!"
I laugh to myself as I walked to Wash's side. I'm just glad that nothing is wrong with him and it's just Dr. Grey being.. well Dr. Grey.
Beta appears by my shoulder. "She is right. It's not normal for someone to just have parts of their brain repaired." She informs me.
"You think it has to do with something?" I offered.
She nods. "Project Freelancer."
I winced at the sound of the name while Wash asks coldly. "And how did Project Freelancer have a hand in this?"
"Dr. Grey." The doctor looked up from her computer to my A.I. "Earlier, you said that you had a degree in A.I. Theory and Implantation right?"
"Yes, I do. But I don't remember telling you that." She looks at Beta in curiosity.
"I didn't.. completely log off." She explained. "Anyway, say an A.I. decided to commit suicide in a host's mind." Wash raises an eyebrow at the scenario. "What would be the outcome?"
Emily thinks for a moment before answering. "Well, the host would obviously have some sort of brain damage from the A.I. due to electric shocks in the neural implant and possible flashbacks from the person the A.I. was based off of. Then maybe be knocked out and in a rare case die."
Beta then turns to me. "And how many times did Wash go into surgery?"
"Twice. One to get Epsilon and one to take him out." I recalled.
"Right and how long were you out after the surgeries?" She asks Wash.
He rubs the back of his neck. "I think it's was nine days the first time and five days the second time around."
"Your point here, Beta?" I ask.
"Wash was #6 on the Leaderboard. Project Freelancer wouldn't want one of their 'trusted agents' to be on the DL for the rest of his life." She says. "I think they injected Wash with something that makes his brain repair itself after the incident with Epsilon."
"Are you saying that I had brain damage before?!" Wash questions at the same time I ask. "Project Freelancer can do that?!"
"It's possible and yes, the Project did have some very intelligent scientists on board." She replied to both of us.
"Let me get this straight:" Emily points a pen at Beta. "This evil organization made a serum where it helps the brain repair itself after it's been damaged and if a person with this serum gets any brain damage in the future, their brain automatically repairs itself?"
"It's my current solution-"
"THAT IS AMAZING!! IT CAN REVOLUTIONIZE THE MEDICAL WORLD!!" Emily exclaimed, throwing the pen behind her and taking out a nearby lamp. "I MUST FIND A WAY TO FIND OUT THE FORMULA!!"
She runs out, rambling to herself, leaving me and Wash alone in the room.
"She's some doctor." I commented.
"You don't know the half of it." Wash stretches and gets off the bed. "I didn't like the needles she poked me with trying to get a blood sample."
I poked his side. "You sound like my brother."
He rolls his eyes before interwinding his fingers with mine. I lay my head on his shoulder and close my eyes.
Only to open them again when a dark purple portal appears in the middle of the room. Wash rapidly pulls me behind him as a shiny bulb of light flies through and hits the window of the observation room.
"Ow.." The light said as she fell to the ground. The portal disappears without a sound, leaving the glowy thing with us.
"What the actual.." I look over Wash's shoulder at the flying light bulb. I remember there being two of these things back at the gods' place. "Are you Huggins or Muggins?" I asked.
The light flew up and did a little shake before answering. "Huggins and I need your help. Now!!" She says urgently to me.
"Need her help with what?" Wash asks skeptically, tighting his grip on my hand.
"The Reds and Blues are about to destroyed the timeline!!"