Dr. DoyleIt was official, if Agatha had to sit through yet another press conference she was going to kill someone. This was the third time she was forced to sit front and center to listen to the ho-hum drone of "Everything will be okay" to keep up a smiling, optimistic, appearance instead of doing what she was flown over to do: study the damn virus. The amount of politics surrounding everything was infuriating when it came to business. Her studies, her experiments, were being interrupted not daily but hourly by government officials demanding different things of her. Say this not that, skew those results, scale the others, don't ask questions, mind your superiors. She didn't even get a say in these things, her words were recycled and retreaded before being handed out by some official in a suit and tie to the public. It was infuriating, it was impractical, it was getting the research nowhere.
AlexanderPress conference number three. Alex sat somewhere behind Dr. Doyle, not bestowed with a high enough honor to join her, and took notes vigorously. He hated this. He hated every piece of this. Once, long ago, he was excited for the flight over to London, for the chance of a lifetime studying a new disease before he even graduated. But that was a few months ago. It turned out that all a "Chance of a life time" entailed was coffee runs and report writing, he hardly ever even got to go into the laboratories. He sighed, taking a break from his recording as the Prime Minister faltered, and looked around. Everyone there was terrified and unbelieving. Not a single soul beyond the first row of researchers looked optimistic, but at least some of the men in uniform guarding the really important figures looked cute. Quietly as he went back to his notes he supposed that it was a perk, no matter how tiny of one it was.
JakeDid anyone actually believe any of this bullshit? There was no way that they could, even the Prime Minister seemed to be wary of the word vomit that spilled from between his teeth. Frustrated with the psychobabble they were trying to enforce he turned off the TV before practically stomping. Jake didn't trust them for a second, the government always tried to make these big deals seem tiny, especially after his mother had been taken away for testing. He wasn't sure what had exactly happened that night in the hospital's ER room after the car accident, all he knew was that as he stood next to his mother's cot that her heart EKG flatlined. It wasn't until she gripped him tight enough that he fell forward, his father grabbing him back and calling for help, that it even occurred to him that the EEG was still monitoring steady levels of activity. Ever since then she'd been quarantined. Jake didn't trust an ounce of the government's bullshit.