NationStates Jolt Archive

"Are you sure Mr. President? The Chazakains and Chazadains are sure to not take this well."
"Ah, you seen our intelligence on that matter. The Chazakains started this, with their whole seekings WMDs."
"True Mr. President, but this is likely to add fire to the pot as we say."
"Indeed, but Chazakain is currently quite busy holding off external threats and the Chazadains barely communicate with anyone out side of our region."
"True Nyx, but I still have my reservations."
"Of course you do, Apollo thats why I picked you as my VP."
"It will be delivered then, I just hope you know what you are doing."
"It not likely to be but a blip anyway, Apollo."
"I sure hope so sir." replied Apollo as he walked off.

Televised Broadcast/press conference:
"Greetings nations of the world, Chazaka has had a long history of ignoring or outright banning nuclear weapons and plants in our lands but times have changed, threats have emerged to the world stage and fallen back that have raised our concerns. Mewsland, Bohivia and most recently North Defense. All have used or threaten the usage of nukes and other WMDs on otherwise peaceful nations, as our enemies have increased over the short years we have been a nation we have formally bought nuclear tipped cruise missiles and have increased research into ICBMs, our policies have changed so that we will use these missiles on any country that dare attack us or our closest allies(Chazada for now and Chazakain to a lesser degree.). For every nuke/ICBM/WMD launched at us or our allies we will send ten, for every city destroyed we will destroy five of our enemies major cities including the captial, for every one of our citizens killed by WMDs we will utterly destroy five hundred of our enemies, for every ships destroyed by WMDs/Nuclear weapons we will destroy a port, we will make (nuclear) war so destructive to our enemies that they will negotiate rather than attack. Our first order of this grand deterrence strategy was to purchase 550 CM-39Ns, Nyx briefly paused looked at his security head then continued on, our second will be the purchase/development of ICBMs and nuclear weapons for them and lastly we will continue our purshasing of antimissile satellites and other technology. I thank you for your attention and good night."
As Nyx stepped away form the podium, Apollo stepped up.
"We will now take questions."

VSIC
"Jana!, I authorized the purchase of 600 missiles where is the remainder?"
"We only received 550 my president, though that could explain the missing crate(s)..."
"Missing crate?"
"Erh, yes why our men were off loading the crates that held the missiles they noted an area where a decent sized crate could fit yet was empty."
as Nyx started to turn he managed to grit "And You Never Thought TO INFORM US THIS LITTLE INCIDENT!"
"Erh, no we didn't. You know your writing its that easy to read my President, we assumed that you had only ordered 550 and not a round 600."
"WELLLL YOU BETTER FIX THIS, WHO KNOWS WHOSE HAS OUR MISSILES AND WHAT THEY COULD DO!"
"I'll get my best agent right on the case."
"YOU'D BETTER OR ITS YOUR HIDE THAT WILL BE SCORCHED BY THIS."
"I"m well aware of that, I suggest you stop screaming or you may attract undue attention and since you threw this press confrence rather quickly, my man didn't have enough time to secure everything."
"You'd better just find this nukes, Jana or heads will roll."

*note: WMDs/Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical weapons/Nukes/etc are interchangeable in Chazaka.
occ
All posts are assumed VSIC, unless otherwise stated.

"Grand Mother!"
"Yes?"
"You may wish to turn to CH-02."
"The Chazaka Foreign Information channel? Ok"
*Click*

"Great, now we have a nuclear gap."
"But aren't the Chazakans our allies?"
"For now they are, but we can't always sustain ourselves on their handouts, get my Whisper now!"
"Yes, Grand Mother."
Whisper quickly ran into the audiotrium.
"Grand Mother."
"Whisper can you explain this." Replied the Grand Mother gesturing to the now looping Nyx speech.
"The Chazakan President spewing another speech, Grand Mother?"
"NO, pay attention to his words not his dull tone.
Damn thought Whisper how could my spies fail to pick this up, she then focused on the speech, noting the time that Nyx stopped and looked over to a nearby man and continued apparently slightly startled.
"He seems distracted when he gets to the number of nukes they now have."
"Ah, you've noticed that too. I want you to figure out why he seems so taken back and I want you to start sending feelers to traders, sellers and general scum that would be willing to sell us nukes, We can't let a nuclear gap occur."
"As you wish grand mother. Is there anything else?"
"Yes, I wish to meet your Chazaka spies within the hour."
"Grand Mother?"
"You heard me."
"But that will take time..."
"I want them in this room in 59 minutes now Spy master or you won't be working here for much longer..."

Before arrival of nukes
"Athena!"
"Eh? Yes Jack."
"I thought you'd want to see this, seems our spies in the C of DC picked up something."
Flips through files.
"Hmm, Chazaka tried to purchase some nukes." Spits coffee all over. "And they allowed it? What was there reasoning." Flips again
"Ha thats a pretty weak reason, though it could help our plans advance quite readily."
"Exactly what I thought, should I notify our spies in C of DC, they could take a few nukes between the delivery to Chazaka and fudge the numbers so that the theft wouldn't be noticed."
"Ah and we plant evidence to make it seem that my father ordered it, incase there was any fallout, Brilliant. You have my permission to engage Jack."
"Thank you Athena."

"Yes, Thank you Athena." repeated Jack as he shut off the tape recorder stuff while stuffing it in his pocket.
"Loki, I have a job for you."
"Yes?"
"I need you to set up a fiest."
"The target?"
"A few nuclear weapons being shipped to Chazaka."
"Chazaka" purred Loki.
"Sounds fun, how many are we talking?"
"As many as you can swipe and fudge out of the records without being caught."
"I'll start it right away, Jack..."

"Report" snapped Nyx to the crude holo representing Jana.
"We've ruled out the Chazadains and the CC group, we are checking out alibis and running background checks on any C of DC employees that would handle the nukes, the Chazakains have been fairly for coming but we still have our doubts. Someone must know something, 50 nukes don't suddenly disappear without someone seeing something and when we find them..."
"If, if you find them Jana, stealing 50 nukes isn't done by amateurs one or two but not 50. sighs, well call us when you have something else to report."
"Aye Mr. President."
As the screen faded to black, Nyx swiveled his chair towards Apollo>
"Your opinion?"
"I still think we should warn the Chazadains, and the wider world that 50 nukes have suddenly gone missing. If they find out that we purchased a nuke that a terrorists used..."
"True, but it is best to let Jana have abit more time, he's the best in his field."
"True, but the thieves seem to be the best in theirs."
"Hmm, is Hermes still on our payrolls."
"Mr. President?"
"Whats a better way to catch a thief than another one, Apollo?"
"I'll make the calls Mr. President."

The phone suddenly began to ring in the darken hotel room, its ring echoing around the dust covered tv, the cloth covered floor and the smashed lamp. Slowly Hermes reached over and lifted the receiver.
"cough. Hello?"
"Mr. Hermes?"
"Yes?"
"We have a job for you."
...
the only outward sign that Hermes showed was a brief flash in his eyes as the other outlinned what they wanted.
"Just wire the normal amount plus 20% and you have a deal."
"5%."
"18%"
"10%"
"17"
"Sigh, deal just find the nukes."
"Of course Mr. President."

OOC: next time, let me know when you're gonna have some corrupt people of mine help you steal some nukes, k?

"550? Didn't we sell 600?" Boris Rotorcraft asked. Natasha grunted inquisitively.

"Oh, sorry, it's just that Chazaka bought some missiles from us, only they say they bought fewer than they got," Boris said.

"Meh. If they don't care enough to protest to us, why should we care?" Natasha said. "Now, get back to bed, Boris."

"I swear, you're getting to be like a wife, Natushka."

"What was that, dear?"

"Nothing, honey." Boris smiled. "Just you, me, and nothing else to do for hours..."

"I think we'll be able to keep ourselves busy, don't you?"
---
Lau Min-Yang feverishly checked his watch. The foreigners' men should be here in three minutes, then he'd have the money. He wasn't nervous - how could a man such as he, a '426', an enforcer for the 14K Triad for a decade, be nervous? Just... cautious. After all, this was Singapore, not Hong Kong. He had friends here, but this still wasn't his turf. Still, the foreigners wanted to pay him here, and they were going to be paying him quite a lot.

It hadn't been difficult, really. A few bribes here, a beating there - just establish himself and his Triad in the city, then pay the right people to look the other way when the destination changed. Not that many people even knew the difference between Chazaka and Chazakain anyway; it's not like he did...

Lau checked his watch again and grimaced. They're late. He was right to bring his men. A few quick texts, and they knew what was up. Tonight was going to be a long night.

Ah, there they are. Traffic, they'll claim. Does it matter? Nobody disrespects a Triad. Nobody.

occ
technically I was thinking the people you most likely already hired to start construction/work out details for the factories you were going to build in Chazakain were the ones that stole the nukes and/or some members of a chazakain crew that transported the normal weapons, but this works too.

IC
The "state right" (http://z13.invisionfree.com/Chazakain_Storefront/index.php?showtopic=36&st=0&#last) armored limo rolled to a stop. Finally dislodging a man that would quickly fade in your memory if you didn't pay to much attention, a man of average height and weight, of average completion, and with an ascent that would be hard to place. In other words a perfect man for these type of agreements.
He took out a briefcase and walked over towards the obviously nervous man, this should be easier than planned he thought.
"Sorry about being late, there was a three car pile up a few blocks down. Now do you have the goods?"

Lau stepped forward and looked up into the sky. "Beautiful night, isn't it?" A slight nod to the watchers on the roof - he couldn't see it, but they returned it and placed a call.

He held out the briefcase and smiled, then asked, "Do you have the money?", one hand on his briefcase, the other on his knife. He walked towards the nondescript man with that odd accent - not one Lau was used to hearing. Where was it from? Probably some refugee they picked up off the streets. Then again, maybe the foreigners had multiple mob connections - that was a modified Caddy, after all. Only yakuza and tourists drive those big American cars, and Lau didn't really think this guy was a tourist. Still, yakuza he could deal with - he'd dealt with them before, after all. Lau relaxed, then suddenly tensed up, seeing something - no, someone - in the distance. Did they bring guards, too?
---
"Chong, what are you looking at? Do you not like me or something?" Ho Radars said teasingly. That Chong, always looking out the window. If she let him, he'd probably just sit in his room all day and stare through those damn binoculars. At least he now would actually do some work every once in a while. And other things, too. Mmm.

"Hon, there's something going on over there. It looks weird," Chong Radars replied. Ever since the accident, since Kwa died, his outlook on life had changed. At least Ho had been there; at least she still tried. She didn't give up on people. Chong looked again. Yep, that guy's still there, still looks mean as hell. He gulped an anti-anxiety pill.

"What, you still worried about that guy on the dock outside the window?"

"Girl, I'm being serious. This other guy pulled up and he looks kinda suspicious, too."

"You're seeing things again. There's nothing important that happens around here. I was having a lovely evening, and now you're ruining it with your paranoia."

"They've got briefcases, and both have guns or something."

"Then it's no business of yours. Hey! Who are you calling?"

"I'm calling the cops. I really, really don't feel safe."

"The cops? Like they'll ever show up."

OOC: I wouldn't use a Chazakan car - it would be kinda recognizable to the police. You don't sell any limos in the CoDC - you've no authorized dealers. See my factbook for details about car sales in the Confederacy.
The limo would've had to have been brought in from outside the Confederacy proper - not a problem, necessarily, just a factor. It is pretty recognizable, though not necessarily as Chazakan per se.
On the other hand, no reason we can't have a third side... unless you think I shouldn't just riff on Rear Window, in which case the cops will just never show. Not like that hasn't happened before in the Singapore of the CoDC. I might just do that anyway.

occ
You do know I'm semi-trying to get caught.(if caught Athena/Jacks gets the benefit that the King gets egg on his face, if not caught then Chazakain gets "cheap" nukes.) but to each his own.

Noting the man's gaze, the agent replied. "Ah i've see you've seen my body guard, you know how it is."
as he eyed the other suitcase he continued to talk. "Those the goods?"
"I believe our deal was a one to one trade? I give you the suitcase filled with money, you give me the location of the nukes. We all walk away happy and no one gets hurt."

OOC: True, but having it found out because of a call about 'suspicious activity' isn't really a good enough narrative payoff. I'm not going to drop the car thread, however; I'll just weave it differently.

"I give you the shipping manifest in here, showing that the package is going to the right destination. Then, you give me the money. Then, we leave," Lau replied, setting down his briefcase. Suddenly, his phone rang. He cursed - aloud! - in Cantonese. He looked at the other man and cursed again, this time in English. "Sorry, can I take this?" he said as he picked up the phone.

"What? Oh... ... ... right. Sorry, I'm busy... With the business...ours... It's going fine... okay... good-bye, brother." Lau hung up, then switched back to English. "Sorry about that; that was my brother. He got an earlier flight than expected, so he's at the airport waiting for me. I hate to take longer than I should, but family's family, you know?"

Dammit. Well, at least there'd be no blood tonight.
---
After that text came in from one of Lau's soldiers, Lee Ming, a Deputy in the 14K Triad, quickly called him. How could he? How could Lau mistreat him so badly?

"What? Oh..." the wayward mobster said, finally answering the phone. Ingrate.

"Is that how you treat me? Is that what you thought we were? A bunch of murderous thugs?" Lee shouted. "We have lucrative contracts with the foreigners, and you want to screw that up. What were you thinking? You'd have disgraced us all!"

"...right. Sorry, I'm busy," the distracted Lau replied. Idiot!

"With the brotherhood's business, or with making your name?"

"With the business."

"And whose business is that? Yours or ours?"

"Ours."

"And how badly have you screwed up?"

"It's going fine."

"You're not flying back home after this. We're putting you back to work."

"okay..."

"You'll get some legal training, some respectability, and a chance to show that you're not a bloodthirsty moron, sworn brother," Lee said, using the traditional term for a member of the Triad.

"Good-bye, brother."

Well, now that that unpleasantness is out of the way, it was long past time for sleep. Tomorrow, he was going to be presenting before the Pearl Foods Board. Tomorrow, hopefully, they'd accept his offer straight up. He didn't like having to use his influence for business; if you merge both ways of doing business, then you get enemies on the wrong side of the line.

"Indeed family is family, you'll fine the agreed upon sum in there, have a pleasant evening." replied the agent as he switched out the cases, signally to the driver to start the engine and the guard to get in. He then walked away, wondering why his client really gave the thief the money instead of letting him blow his brains out. their money he thought and there free to do with it whatever they want...

Being a cop can get pretty dull sometimes, Lee Tanks thought. Then again, technically, I'm not a cop. Which is nice - more opportunities to enrich myself at the expense of the scum and the gullible, less risk of getting shot. If only he could get his partner to understand that!

His partner, some fresh kid out of Korea, still seemed to think policing was about catching the bad guys. Didn't he know anything at all about the way things work around here? If it was their job to take down 'bad guys', who wouldn't get arrested? Damn kids.

Ah, here we go. Nice-looking limo. Looks sorta familiar - oh, right, from that brochure. Sirens on, pull out, time for some fun!
---
Well, at least it was done. At least Lau had safely gotten the money. Not that that would appease his boss, he realized. Ming, sworn brother that he was, was an ass sometimes, and this was one of them. There's more to life than just running the same old rackets. Sometimes, a man's gotta make a name for himself. And Ming wasn't letting him do that.

Lau popped in an old favorite of his and leaned back on his bed. As a kid, he always used to identify with Mark; hell, he still had that old Mark Gor Lau somewhere. These days, though, he tended to identify with Ho. You either make a name for yourself, or you find your way out into the legitimate world, but you never, never let down your brother.

But who was his brother? Lee Ming certainly wasn't; he may have been his sworn brother, but he kept holding him back.

The driver of the car noticed the lights.
"Sir?"
"Be cool speak deutsch(password)"
"Aye sir."
The vehicle moved towards the curve as the guard hid his pistol and the agent tried to the briefcase.
"flip."

the driver rolled down the window to the outside after making sure that the divder was up.
"How can I help you?"

"Hi, I'm officer Lee, with the JTSF. Please hand over your license and registration," Lee said, leaned into the car, then added, "Oh, and sorry, but I think I smell alcohol on your breath. That's a $500 fine, in USD, or a six-month jail sentence and revocation of your passport."

It wasn't, but how was the driver to know? It could just as well have been that, or a one-year draft into a Security Force, or a warning. Law in the Confederacy was a messy thing, after all.
---
Chen Law was the last to leave the office, every evening, and tonight was no exception. As a first-year attorney, his billing targets were 2000 hours a year, measured in 'convenient' six-minute intervals. Plus, he tended to get stuck with mundane office tasks that a secretary would've done better. But that wasn't the real reason.

See, on the side, Chen was an activist. He regularly emailed the blog PirateReports.com with tips about what the Confederacy was (and more often, was not) doing about piracy, always using backdoors and secure servers. Not that it was hard to get around David's 'firewall', which barely blocked any sites; still, it was good practice.

Now, he was headed home. Could he really call it home when he spent less time there than at the office? Some days, he had seriously considered bringing in a pillow and finding a place to sleep at work...

OOC: Chen Law is who Lau will be assigned to work with right away, when Lau becomes the least-experienced employee there.

"Ich verstehe nicht, ich spreche nur Deutsches." spoke the driver as he tapped a small button on the steering wheel. The button connected to a switch, the switch to a transmitter and the transmitter to the agent's headquarters, notifying them that problems had popped up.

Lee didn't speak German, so he did what he had learned to do when the mark won't speak right and switched to the most obscure language he knew - Tamil. Usually, that got people who didn't want to speak English or Mandarin to relent. There was that one time where his mark actually spoke Tamil. That was an amusing incident...

Seeing the blank look, he repeated himself and threw in appropriate gestures. Hopefully the mark would get the idea.
---
Dark, time to get up! Sniff, sniff. Ooh, rice! Scurry scurry scurry. Rice is in some kind of rock-thing without dirt. Scurry leap scurry climb. Aha! Rice! Nom nom nom.

Full now. Scurry climb leap scurry. Ow! Rock-ground is hard. Hmm, what to do? Hungry? No. Thirsty? Not really. Nest? Good. Where's my clan? Ah, there they are!

Squeak: Hi, Alpha! Alpha squeaks: Where have you been? I squeak: getting food! Alpha squeaks: Where? I squeak: Come with me!

Scurry scurry scurry scurry leap leap climb. Silly Alpha! Quietly: leap scurry scurry scurry scurry scurry.

Ooh, big-Beta looks nice today! Ooh, pheromones! Squeak: let's mate! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Oh. Is that a flea? Do I care? I got to big-Beta before 2-Female did!

OOC: The 'night-life of another character' section in this installment features a female of Rattus rattus (Asian rat, aka black rat), living in a mixed multiple-male, multiple-female community, portrayed somewhat like how a real rat might think.
The important part is that 2-Female will be passing on worse genes to her offspring than 1-Female!
However, for those who don't care for rat soap opera, the other news is - one ship bound for Chazaka (or Chazakain) with nukes has rats in its hold, carrying fleas infected with Yersinia pestis (biovar Orientalis), aka bubonic plague.

Continuing to stare at the man, the driver decided to switch to his native chazakain. It had been years since he had last spoken it but he was able to speak. Trying to tell the man he didn't understand what he wanted or why he had been stopped, seeing that the words weren't having any effect he tried again in German...

the light continued to blink in the room.
"Hey bob whats that."
"Hey what?" replied bob as he sat down his magazine.
"Ah that, lets see thats car 10, switching to back end camera."
"ah a cop, let see alpha beta gamma." bob watched awhile as he watched the driver mutter in german than a native chazakain lanuage.
"yesh, Driver is going to need some listens when he gets back home."
"Rob bring up laws of DD and any fines."
...
"Ah, seems our man here is trying to fleece Mr. Driver, can you get me a com to the agent?"
"Sure one second rob."

"Rob to agent, I repeat rob to agent." the com squeaked in the agent's ear.
"Agent here, hope you found something."
"Yeah that "cop" is trying to fleece you, we can't quite tell if he has any back up so don't try alpha protocol."
"Roger rob, seems Driver is trying gamma protocol."
"Ok, agent we'll send one of our own over, try and stall the cop. Bob should be there in." "?" "10 minutes."
"Ok, rob."

occ note to self CSS Mot

"What the hell are you speaking?" Lee muttered in Mandarin. Not a chance now. Apparently, this guy knew that trick already. Plus, he wasn't responding to the hand signals, so he really wasn't biting. Well, whatever.

"Sorry about the mix-up; have a nice evening," he said, first in English, then Malay, then Mandarin, then Tamil. He then said the last bit in Japanese, using the rudiments his last boyfriend had taught him. The man kept up his blank look, and Lee walked off.

Damn. He really could've used the money. And for once, it wouldn't just have been for him; his patrol partner was in the hospital, and he could've bought some flowers for him. Or something like that.
---
Alejandro Ruíz tossed and turned in his sleep. He had this weird dream of a rat burning up in a flame, mushroom-shaped and green, on a wick; for some reason, the dream was making him feel happy. It wouldn't have made him happy, however, if he had known that his body temperature was at 39 degrees C. It didn't help that there was only a single half-trained medic aboard the ship.

The first dream suddenly was replaced by another, of him drowning in the pool of tears that was apparently awaiting him at his destination. Tears that were suddenly really, really hot. Alejandro did not like this dream one bit.

OOC: Meet one possible candidate for your future index case!
Also, we have a title!

the driver sighed and nodded as the man walked off, he rolled the window pack off tapped on the glass, told his passengers what had happened and lastly shut off the transmitter.

"Agent to rob, we got off. Tell Bob he can return if he so wishes."
"Negative Agent, better to just have him escort you back, don't want anymore surprises this evening."
"Roger Rob, ETA?"
"Should be right about now." replied Rob, the driver saw the new lights and indicted it to his passengers.
"roger rob we have him in our sights, see you soon."
"God Speed Agent."

excerpted from The Pool of Tears: The Chazakain Plague
In retrospect, the plague that struck Chazakain got some extremely lucky mutations from the radiation - most notably, mutations that quadrupled its incubation time and made it resistant to tetracyclines. Had those not occurred, the plague would've likely wiped out the crew of the Andaman Conveyor before it arrived in Chazakain. Equally problematic, the shipment was identified as traveling into a warzone, so radio silence was demanded in accordance to company policy. From these two factors came a monstrous infection.

We do not know the index case. Photographs of ship logs (which were destroyed to prevent contamination once the crew realized what was going on) suggest three possible candidates, all of whom had some early symptom, either a fever in the case of Alejandro Ruíz or a rash, likely from the flea bite itself, in the cases of Captain Isabel Ferrera and Ship's Cook Manuel Fuentes. The logs record that Alejandro was ordered to rest and given a mild dose of paracetamol, while Isabel and Manuel were prescribed dimedrol to deal with the bite. While Isabel and Manuel appeared to have fully recovered, Alejandro's fever was reduced but did not subside...

...By then, the Andaman Conveyor was just hours from port and, after the close call in the storm, the crew apparently decided to dock, leave ship, and head to the nearest hospital. However, during their radio communications with port personnel and with the tugboat that guided the Conveyor into port, they apparently never mentioned their suspicions. The guide from the tug seems to have noticed the unusual appearance of the crew, but apparently the authorities did not acknowledge his report, whenever it was filed, until two hours after the ship had docked.

OOC: Here's what keeps a ship in port - plague! You'll need to fumigate, and perhaps will consider destroying the ship.

scurry scurry scratch scratch sniff sniff cheese! Nom nom nom *snap* hmm? squeal blackness
"Told you that that rat trap would work." replied the salesman as he grabbed the rat. "ouch"
"So you did, I'll take 20 of your Covalent Lever Rat Traps. o and you ok?"
"Yeah, seems this rat had some nasty fleas." replied the salesman showing the man his freshly bitten hand.
"Nasty may want to check that out, never know what these things can pick up."
"Yeah maybe I will, well Pleasure doing business with you and heres my card."
Turning away from the portside apartment, he walked to his waiting care and drove off towards his home happy with the sale and giving only passing feelings towards the flea bite. He had been bitten by rodents before though the more he thought about it the less the dead rat looked like the local rats. Finally unable to stand it he pulled over and took out the plastic bag peering at the now dead rat. Still unable to idenfity it, he decided to call rodent control. Lets see 1-800-3323(DEAD)-7287(RATS).
*ring*
*ring*
*ring*
"Hello?"
"Is this rat control?"
"Indeed it is, how may I help you sir?"
"I'm a rat trap salesmen and I've just caught a rat I've never seen before, I was wondering if I could get some help identifying it."
"Hmm new rat you say?"
"Yeah."
"Than come right down, 312 Murinae Street Port Ochun."
"Will do and thanks." replied the salesman as he flipped off the phone and putting it away headed down town towards Murinae street.


The Scene at Ochun Port's main hospital would have been quite discerning to the foreigners, it wasn't the worst hospitals in Chazakain by a wide margin but neither was it that good, the foreigner crew had arrived at a very inoperative time. A crane had fallen over when the Squall had hit Ochun causing it to collapse into a nearby building injuring and killing hundreds. Many of the doctors and nurses had already been working for hours some on their third shifts trying to save those they could and bag and tag the ones they couldn't. Though finally the head desk noticed the foreigners and directed them over.
"How can I help you gentlemen?" Hogga asked.

Excerpted from Global Journal of Epidemiology
What was striking about the strain of Y. pestis that hit Chazakain was its unusually long incubation period. Normally, plague kills its victims in 4-7 days, if left untreated; in Chazakain, this figure changed to 2-4 weeks. The long incubation period has not been given a satisfactory explanation; in the standard explanation, radiomutations led to the dominance of a slow-growing strain. However, this strains credulity; how would a mutant that slows growth outcompete the wild-type, especially when food intake was not a factor? We propose that tetracycline resistance and slow growth were linked mutations. In this paper, we show the results of tests on R. rattus from ships that followed the same route as the Andaman Conveyor; these tests show that R. rattus aboard the Andaman Conveyor may have had significant levels of tetracycline in its blood. Therefore, a mutation that conferred slow growth, if it also conferred tetracycline resistance, would have allowed mutants to outcompete wild-type Y. pestis....
---
Isabel started forward, then stumbled, muttered, "Why does my damn leg still ache?", and was assisted to the desk by her first mate.

"Hi. Uh... could you tell us what we have?" she said, breathing heavily, then added, "I need to be examined privately, as will the rest of the crew."

OOC: First, 'Murinae Street' - nice! Did Rat Control pay for the street to be named that?
Second, poor 1-female!
Third, GJoE is a (fictional) journal with a low impact factor - that is, its articles don't get cited as often as articles from journals like (in RL) Nature or Science. Fourth, this plague will lead somewhere of interest that ties into my larger plans for the CoDC.

occ: not so much, back in the day that the Port was founded, a large rat nest was found when they first started to dig out the area for the road so they called it that and abunch of antirat buildings grew up around the area due to the large supply of rats nearby.

The Rise and Fall of Chazakain Kingdom Part 3:The Plague con
"The initial cases of Yersinia pestis or its more common Chazakain name the Purple Death had found its first victims and discover in a rat trap salesman, Mr. Karni Mata an Indian immigrant who had made friends with the local people while peddling his patented Covalent Lever Rat Traps throughout the bay area. He had wisely called the local offices of Rat Control and kept the body of the rat whose fleas had bitten him, greatly shortening the time required to positively identity the bacterium, though the initial contamination was unforgivably not discovered for many days after due to the distance the rat had moved from the waterfront, other errors were also committed that day, that in hindsight are forgivable but at the time left a most vile taste in those that would survive the outbreak.
Now let us examine the hospital where the first outbreak victims were treated."
Aerial zoom in of Ochun Mercy Hospital
"As can be seen, the hospital has fallen into disrepair since the outbreak. Its ceiling crumbling, with medical supplies slowly rotting in its halls due to the quick evacuation after the worst of the outbreak had began. But let us travel a little further back, back to that late January Day.
*Reenactment*
"Hello sir? I asked you what your problem is as you can see we are very busy right now." seeing the blank face Jill tried in German.
"Hallo Sir? Ich fragte Sie, dass was Ihr Problem ist, wie Sie sehen können, sind wir im Augenblick sehr beschäftigt."
"Paginierungs-Doktor Mus, werden Sie in Betriebsbezirk zwei benötigt."
"He Jill würden Sie sich um diesen Gefährten gefallen kümmern."
"Sicheres Mus, gutes Glück."

OOC: neat. Nice bit of history.

Excerpted from Minutes of the First Conference on the 'Purple Death'
[Dr. Mellors]: I believe it is reasonable to say that this was not, in fact, Y. pestis, but instead a new strain of Yersinia, which I provisionally name Y. imperator
[Dr. Spiros]: After the imperial purple, I take it?
[Mellors]: Yes. While there are similarities between Y. pestis and the strain isolated from the Ochun index case, the unusual incubation period and slower growth rate suggest that it is, in fact, a different species.
[Dr. Chung]: Why not simply a mutant form of Y. pestis? You found, you say, 85% correlation between the DNA of the two strains. That is consistent not only with being part of the same genus, but also, in my opinion, of the same species.
[Mellors]: Where would so many mutations come from? This, in my view, is a supermutant strain that is so distinct from Y. pestis that it must be a new strain.
---
"We're not gonna be helped," Alejandro muttered between coughs.

"There, there. They'll help us," the ship's medic, María Ruíz, said soothingly, rubbing her brother's forehead. "Soon enough, they'll help."

"Show them."

"Now?"

"Show them!"

"Really?" At this, Alejandro nodded, then grimaced. María hobbled over, then took off her shirt and pointed out the weird blisters under her armpits.

"Hmm Sprechen Sie Deutsches? order Englisch?"
noting the blank stare, Jill tried again.
"Do you speak German or English?"
switching back to German she told a nearby attending "Fredrick, diese Leute sind Schmerzen wir haben ein leeres Bett?"
"Ja."
"Gut, Gelangen Sie diese Männer und Frauen an das Bett und fangen Sie an, die normalen Tests zu machen."
"Ja."
"Please follow me. Hmm" Fredrick noticed the pained look on one of them, "Jill, Am besten, wenn Sie eine Rollbahre erhalten und einen Rollstuhl."
"Ja, ein Moment."
"Here you go miss. Its ok, we'll take care of you, you can release his hand, we're already over crowded so you'll have to share a room."
spoke Fredrick as he began to wheel the woman down the hall.

excerpted from Minutes of the Second Conference on the Purple Death
[Dr. Franke]: In sum, our results show that 'Y. imperator' is a supermutant strain of Y. pestis, not a novel species.
[Dr. Mellors]: But what caused it to become a supermutant strain?
[Franke]: We propose exposure to radiation. It is the most likely solution.
[Mellors]: But where did that come from?
[Dr. Chung]: We're in the process of studying samples taken from the Andaman Conveyor index cases...
---
Damn, she must've spaced out for a moment. Isabel leaned back in the wheelchair, then winced at a sudden burst of pain.

Behind her walked the other members of the crew, some leaning on each other for support.
---
Lau realized he had a question about one of the lines on the form from Chazakain - government of the purchasing company's home state. What should he put down? He walked over to Chen Law, his new boss, a Korean who seemed to shrink into his seat whenever he so much as saw Lau's face.

"Chen? What do I do for this line on the form?" Lau asked. No response. Chen didn't even turn his head. "Chen?"

"Hey, I'm busy!" Chen snapped. Damn intern - no wait, he's a damn paralegal. Damn him anyway. Busy interrupting my work.

"Sorry, boss, but I don't know what to put for this line on the form - it doesn't appear on the forms you showed me." Chen looked up; Lau glanced at his computer. What was he looking at? Looked like some blog or something.

Chen took a look at what Lau was pointing to, and said, "Put down: Confederacy of Defense Corporations."

"But is that a government?"

"Yes. It isn't, exactly, but it is. For their purposes, at least."

"I thought we needed to be right?"

"To the right degree of accuracy. It's close enough for their sake."

"Still, shouldn't I put down Singapore? That's where the companies are based, after all, isn't it?"

"Who runs Singapore?" Chen said in reply, then turned back to his computer. We do. Even though we have no business doing so, we do, he thought. We're just too scared to admit it.

OOC: Thought I forgot about Lau? His story is being told not only here, but in random bits in other posts. Here (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14462291&postcount=2), Chen meets Lau. Here (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14463082&postcount=2), Chen and Lau talk politics for a bit.
Bring them to the appropriate room. If you want to have a nice, medically significant screw-up, have the doctor do incision and drainage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incision_and_drainage) on their buboes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubo) - it aerosolizes the disease, making it spread more quickly. And in a hospital, that gets to be really, really bad.

*Reenactment*(continues)
"Captain, I need to ask you a few questions." again asked Fredrick as he tried to snap her out of her Delirium.
"Who was the first person to fall ill on your ship? How long ago was this? What treatment did your medic schedule for him/her?" "Captain?"
"Blast"
"Pflegen Sie, erhöhen Sie seinen Morphiumtropfenfänger und erhalten Sie ihm etwas für dieses Fieber."
"Ja."
Fredrick left the room, still confused as to what his patients had. They had shown a general lack of energy, high temperature fevers, Delirium and those blisters. Why are those blisters so for familiar he thought, as he tried to get questions from the medic...

Voice over
Let us leave the doctor and press on for what happened after.
Due to the general lack of rooms in the hospital, various patients were shuffled into and out of the room that held the patients from the ship, likely exposing one or more of them, as some of those patients had only minor injuries they were generally allowed to leave within a day or so, for a normal pestis strain this would be long enough for the symptoms to began to show up but this strain took longer allowing patients to go home and spread it further, who then further spread it to others before going back to the hospital and spreading it around again, until in the end by a months end most of the port was infected in one form or another...

*Reenactment*
"Mr. Fuentes is it? I need to ask you some questions.
"Who was the first person to fall ill on your ship? How long ago was this? What treatment did you schedule for him/her?"..

"Please, speak to María, she knows best," Fuentes said.

"María, same questions," the doctor said.

"Well, Alejandro got a 39-degree fever a few weeks ago - sorry, Alejandro Ruíz, over there in the corner - and it wouldn't go away. I initially prescribed paracetamol, which reduced his fever somewhat, but it persisted, so I increased the dosage. Then, his fever worsened and he started to get those spots, so I moved up to the heavier stuff - tetracycline and amoxycillin. No help."

"What about Isabel's rash?" the youngest crewmember asked, in Tagalog.

"That cleared up, you know," María replied in English. "She got sick later."

"Pardon?" the doctor asked.

"Sorry, but one of my crew thinks that a rash that had cleared up with dimedrol is somehow related to this," she replied.

"And who had that rash?"

"The captain, Isabel."

"Okay, so what other symptoms did you notice?"

"Well, these blisters started breaking out. We used anti-itch creams; they didn't work."

OOC: Alternatively, have him think they've got syphilis.

Fredrick nodded, rules out the burn theory he thought.
"This rash the captain had, what color was it, did it itch and where was it located?" after asking Fredrick turned to a nearby Nurse.
"Pflegen Sie, ich benötigen Sie, etwas Blut zu zeichnen, überprüfen auf der üblichen bakteriellen Infektion."
"Ja."
"Also has there been any other symptoms besides this rash and your current symptoms. Fevers, headaches, pains, vomiting, diarrhea the like?"

"I don't remember what it looked like, sorry," María said.

"My first rash did itch, though not as much as mine does now," Manuel said. "It was right here, on my neck."

"As for other symptoms - pain, coughs, fevers, vomiting (with blood, at least once - poor Freddy), and these damn blisters."

"Plus, my legs ache," Freddy said.

"And there's those spots breaking out over my face," Fuentes said.

Fredrick nodded as María listed off the symptoms trying to think of what could cause such a wide range, they had quarantined the rest of the crew a half hour before had in one of the few remaining rooms.
"This aching does it come in short bursts high intense or longer and duller?" asked Fredrick as he continued to write down the symptoms, the more mentioned the more he became confused, a nasty burn had been ruled out and the symptoms were to common, to alike to too many diseases to rule out...
"And Alejando's coughing when did it first start?"


The camera flips to the clipboard, Dr. Fredrick's records of those first patients symptoms are still with us, they detail the notes he made and the overly common yet uncommon symptoms of the first outbreak.
clip board
Patient 1(Maria)

Patient 2(Captain)
Unknown colored and sized rash, treatments seemed to have worked.
Possible Leg ache

Patient 3(Freddy)
Leg ached

Patient 4(Alejandro Ruíz)
39 C fever, weeks ago, prescribed paracetamol then tetracycline and amoxycillin.
Spots?
coughing

Patient 5(Manuel)
Itchy Rash, second rash presented on neck around lymph node area?

Patient 6(Fuentes)
Breakout on face

All
As for other symptoms - pain, coughs, fevers, vomiting (with blood, at least once - poor Freddy), and these damn blisters

Possibilities:
Extreme Flu, Avian?
Lymph nodes point to possible infection
Closeness of multiple victims coming down with roughly the same thing rules out most STDs.
Blisters-Burns?(ruled out), Radiation?(unlikely), Sun Burn(all of them unlikely), illness(most likely)


Fredrick went over the information he had learned the previous few hours. He walked over to the captain after talking to another nurse.
"Wie fielen die Tests aus?"
"Negativ auf Geschlechtskrankheiten, Viren und Prions Doktor."
"Nicht Gut."
"Ich wünsche Sie ihre Antibiotika erhöhen tue einen vollen runden General."
"Ja, Doktor Fredrick."

"Captain? I need to ask you a question it could pertain to your illness. Do you know what your shipment was? Certain drugs or other (illegal) cargo could cause yourself and your crew to come down with something very similar to this...

Isabel had recovered from her delirium somewhat. Dios mio, that was scary. "We were shipping weapons of some sort that had been ordered by your government. This was a legitimate shipment; on my laptop on the ship is the manifest, listing the shipping orders," she said, then added, "We do not ship drugs!"

Alejandro suddenly started breathing rapidly. María, seeing this, leaned over and rubbed his temples. They were cold - and clammy? She shouted "He's going into shock!"

OOC: Test for Gram-positive v. Gram-negative bacteria - Y. pestis (which this is) is Gram-negative.
Also, definitely treat Alejandro's circulatory shock, as soon as possible.
Generally, I'm mixing symptoms from all three varieties of plague (bubonic, septicemic (blood-borne) and pneumonic (secondary from either of the other forms; involves spreading of infection to the lungs); I'm also including some novel features and a somewhat atypical presentation.
Not going to play with 'dirty foreigners always sleeping around?' Oh, right, you're not Fictions... ;)
I was actually considering avian flu, but decided to go with the classics.

"Sorry captain, but I had to rule that out, since several highly illegal drugs can produce the symptoms you and your crew are experiencing.
Since your medic can't or won't answer.
Do you known when Alejando started to cough?"

"He's going into shock!"
"Flip, Krankenschwester! Paddel! Jetzt!"
"Clear!"
*Thump*
"Damn it!"
"Clear!"
*Thump...*

As we leave the frantic doctor let us turn back to the rat trap seller...

Reenactment

He has only just arrived at the antirat control, handing the plastic bag with the dead and infected rat to an official with promises that they'll run all the needed tests on it.
"Thanks for scheduling this Deggael. I know it couldn't have been easy."
"No problem my friend, if you did find a new species its best to figure out how it got here and if there are anymore."
"True and that rat is of an unusual size."
"I'm sure buttercap can figure out what type it is, and if its a likely carrier for any diseases, horrible things, rats."
"Ah, Deggael a clean rat can make a good friend and pet."
"True but a sick rat can be the death of you and your family."
"To true, but I sometimes wonder about the molarity of my job."
"Its a vital one though. Keeping the numbers low, keeping storage areas safe and keeping us same."
"True True, but sometimes I think I live to close to Ut erroris est humanus , sic nos must non exsisto humanus."
"Well you could always get out of your line."
"Nah, I still have kids to support, well I've taken up enough of your time, please call me if anything turns up."
"Will do."
"Night."
"Night..."

Excerpted from The Pool of Tears
The first Chazakain citizen to fall ill was Karni Mata, an immigrant who sold rat traps. He suffered from psoriasis, and took remicade, an immunosuppressive drug, to treat the condition; thus, with a weakened immune system, his case progressed somewhat more rapidly than the cases at Ochun Mercy, masking their similarity and delaying the link between the rat flea that bit Mata and the sick foreigners.
---
"No idea. Sorry," Isabel said, impressed by the doctor's calm demeanor.

Still, Alejandro's septic shock was worrying to all present, despite the best efforts of the doctors - who had, just barely, managed to stabilize him.

Manuel began to bleed. Ugly purple bruises started to appear, especially on his legs.

OOC: I'll kill Alejandro off a bit later, when I kill off Isabel and Manuel. After all, The Pool of Tears doesn't present him as the first victim, just as one of three possible first victims.

"Krankenschwester, wie fielen jene Tests aus?"
"Sie prüften Positiv auf gramnegatives Bakterium."
"nicht gut."
Fredrick turned towards Manuel.
"hmm nicht Lymphknoten dann, Krankenschwester erhalten einen anderen Beutel des O-Bluts."
"Sir, I know it itches but I need you to stop itching it will just increase the bleeding."
"Danke schon. Erhöhen Sie den Tropfenfänger bitte."
"guess the general antibiotics aren't working going to have to try something stronger."
"Krankenschwester, benötige ich zweiundzwanzig cm von freyjaψυχοπομπός"
"Sind Sie sicher?"
"Ja müssen wir eine radikalere Behandlung versuchen, da die normalen nicht arbeiten."
Switching back to english, he turned to María Ruíz,
"Your brother Alejandro is the worst off and only getting worst so we wish to try an experimental drug thats been shown to work against antibiotic resistance bacterium, the main problem is that in his current state if the disease doesn't kill him the drug very well could, and we barely pulled him out of his last cardiac arrest. This is his last and best chance and since he is currently still unconscious we need your permission..."

Video fades to black, voice over restarts
freyjaψυχοπομπός or 'Freyja's guide of souls (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopomp)' was an experimental drug that was developed in Chazakain laboratories, to fight the increasing resistance of antibiotic bacterium facing Chazakain patients. It utilized the scales of Dragon Gopher, the eye of a soul and other arcane ingredients. While wide scale production proved problematic due to the rareness of eyes of souls, the medicine proved very good at its job greatly reducing the amount of bacterium in a victim's bloodstream with only the minimum of symptoms(death, constipation, more death) but those that did survive the treatment generally survived the disease they had been inflected with...

The Chazaka Intelligence Agency or CIA had not been ducking on the job as the saying went in Chazaka.

Jana had sent several of her own agents to scour the path from the shipyard where the nukes were offloaded to where they first got the nukes, C of DC shipyards. They had initially found no sign of foul play, the ship's logs checked out with the official forms that C of DC had sent back to Chazaka though the more Jana had her agents the more a certain name continued to pop up, a low level thug named Lau Min-Yang who had suddenly found himself a few million dollars richer around the same time that the nukes had disappeared, unfortunately it seemed Lau had been planing his disappearance for quite a time...

Agent J dusted off her coat, another useless lead, another dead end. The combo sedative/truth sermon would soon wear off the man but he'd have a major headache in the morning and no clue as to how he ended up in the alley way.
Continuing to walk along Agent J flipped out her phone.
*ring* *ring*
"Hello?"
"J here, another dead end boss, this guy knew even last than a lost. Same story, a man walks in pays with some foreigner currency and leaves without waiting for change. This time it was some sushi."
"Sushi hmm? O well, we have another lead for you."
"Boss its been a week, the man could be halfway to some private island by now."
"Unlikely, you found his car afew hours ago remember?"
"True, but that doesn't mean he still here, he could have sold it, someone could have stole it or anyother number of options."
"Do you want the lead or not?"
sigh"lay it on me."
"Another agent has found a lead, seems a guy fitting our description went to a dry cleaner in your part of town a few minutes ago."
"I'm on it..."

"I should've kept more of the money, Lee. I at least know what to do with money. You? All you do is HOARD!" Lau shouted, in Cantonese, into the phone.

"Oh, and what would you do with it? You'd waste it on flashy cars, expensive meals, shit like that, then get your brains blown out for hoarding what is rightfully the property of all your sworn brothers. And if we somehow didn't find you, then they'd find you," Lee replied.

"They?"

"What, you thought we were just doing a favor? Anyone who's trying to steal nukes has to have enemies."

"And what did you do with it?"

"It helped with business. Money talks, you know. Spent right, it's not loud, not flashy, not noticeable, but instead a whisper, an unwritten promise that everyone knows but that nobody ever read. Good night, Lau. You've got another long day at work tomorrow, don't you?"
---
What the hell? Where the hell am I? Lee Tanks, some-time scam artist and part-time cop, thought as he awoke. He looked around, saw nothing familiar - just some odd-looking room. The lighting was really, really bright - he kept blinking. Probably meant to throw off his senses, get him distracted. Kind of like a con, eh? He laughed a little at his private joke, then reviewed the events of the evening. He vaguely remembered going to a dry cleaner, then - black. So, short review.

Three people walked into the room. One, female, was clearly the leader; the other two were male, dressed in identical outfits, and were a step behind the first person. Everyone's faces were covered by masks, but their gaits betrayed their genders. One of the little useless tricks Lee had picked up. Now, if only he had picked up some subtlety, he might not have been in this mess.
---
Lee Foods awoke in an alleyway with a headache. Suddenly, someone - dressed in green - came in and started yelling at him, first in German, then in English. He couldn't understand - but he knew those languages from school! - so he just smiled weakly. The yeller then threw off her(?) coat, and suddenly became his teacher at the culinary institute, yelling about how to properly cook meat - "Rare, bitte! Nicht leather!"

He then awoke with a start, back in his bed. The events of yesterday morning had made an impression. "Ugh, I need to see a psychiatrist," he muttered to nobody in particular.

OOC: You thought Lau would be able to pocket the money and get away with it? Or that he'd go by his real name (or anything more than just Lau, if he even used that name)? He's an organized criminal, not a lone wolf.
He's not the only guy who's recently making money, though...
Also, minor spelling issue - it's generally truth serum, not truth sermon. Unless this is even more theologically-minded than I thought.
Bad German is the fault of the dream (also of my not knowing any German, but hey). It would add to the dream-logic, which is good.

occ
Lets just say we have some very persuasive priestesses(and priests) and leave it at that.:p
Chazaka Priests/Priestesses bringing sexy back.

Now the two lees are they the same people or do you just like lee?
I'll go that there two different ones.

Also I could use the permission for the Chazakain post.

I find that babel fish (http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt) works wonders.

IC
"Greetings Lee Tanks, we have a few Fragen for you." spoke the tallest of the group.
"Lets start with an easy one, why where you using Chazakain Marks to pay for your dry cleaning? The Chazakain's aren't know for their wiliness to pay others in their own currency for some reason."

Excerpted from Pacific Medical Journal
The famed 'guide of souls' (GoS) remedy developed by Chazakain remains controversial, in large part due to the Chazakain government's unwillingness to release details on how it is made. The following is based on interviews with surviving patients and health care officials, and also relies, unfortunately, on conjecture.

We propose that GoS was made from some sort of fungus. According to patient M.R., "the medicine came as a paste that tasted weirdly like mushrooms." The side-effects of GoS included: hallucinations, often with a religious tinge; gastrointestinal problems; occasional organ failures. GoS had bacteriocidal effects, as surviving patients came out with most of the bacteria in their gut dead, including beneficial forms...
---
Do I tell the truth? What's my angle, here? Who are the Chazakains, anyway? Who are these people?

All those thoughts ran through Lee's head as he tried to compose a response - until he realized he already had told them. Told them everything, from the tourists he ripped off to that weird traffic stop that went nowhere. Lee wanted to scream - who did this to him? What happened to him? Why can't he control his own responses? Something in their appearance - or was it in his bloodstream? - stopped him. One of the group muttered something incomprehensible, but with a disappointed tone. Then, one of them said, "You won't remember a thing."

He woke up in the morning with a terrible headache. He needed to stop going to bars so often.

OOC: Singapore has lots of people named Lee. It's like Kim in Korea, or John in America - a stereotypical generic name. I took the serum approach - it seemed more plausible, and more horrifying.
Oh, and please tell me you have tourists from Chazakain - I get annoyed by people who claim that nobody leaves their country. Amusingly, your Chazakan agents are probably barking up the wrong tree in trying to pursue Chazakain Marks - any sensible gangster would only take USD, and would make that a precondition. By the way, could you next time TG me with what you plan to do before posting, so that I could talk with you and suggest how things might go down? I admit I should've TG'd you in advance about the plague idea, but it was too good to pass up.
Permission? Oh, right. Feel free to leap ahead in time a bit - say, one week, by which point Isabel, Alejandro, and Manuel have already died, to when María, Freddy and two anonymous crewmen are in such a weak condition that they are given GoS.
Also, about the whole 'guide of souls' thing - consider it a reworking. Feel free to interpret it one way or another. Finally, I decided to let the medic ('patient MR') live - I felt at least one of the crew needs to live, if only to tell the company 'We're in Chazakain, not Chazaka!' PMJ, naturally, is another fictional journal, this time with an even lower impact factor - who else would take an article based on conjecture and interviews, rather than on any kind of experiment or computational modeling? In terms of what I was thinking in how I reframed GoS, I thought of it as a bacteriophage, something that directly consumes bacteria (rather than merely preventing their reproduction or bursting their cell walls). It's an alternate angle, and would be a plausible alternative to antibiotics - except that bacteriophages tend to target too many different sorts of bacteria, not just the ones you want dead. Thus, potential organ failure, near-certain gastrointestinal problems, and other such conditions result. As for the hallucinations, I figured the name 'eye of souls,' if not literal, referred to a common name for a fungus.

OOC: Singapore has lots of people named Lee. It's like Kim in Korea, or John in America - a stereotypical generic name. 1 I took the serum approach - it seemed more plausible, and more horrifying.
Oh, and please tell me you have tourists from Chazakain - I get annoyed by people who claim that nobody leaves their country2. Amusingly, your Chazakan agents are probably barking up the wrong tree in trying to pursue Chazakain Marks - any sensible gangster would only take USD, and would make that a precondition.3 By the way, could you next time TG me with what you plan to do before posting, so that I could talk with you and suggest how things might go down? I admit I should've TG'd you in advance about the plague idea, but it was too good to pass up.
Permission? Oh, right. Feel free to leap ahead in time a bit - say, one week, by which point Isabel, Alejandro, and Manuel have already died, to when María, Freddy and two anonymous crewmen are in such a weak condition that they are given GoS.
Also, about the whole 'guide of souls' thing - consider it a reworking. Feel free to interpret it one way or another. Finally, I decided to let the medic ('patient MR') live - I felt at least one of the crew needs to live, if only to tell the company 'We're in Chazakain, not Chazaka!' PMJ, naturally, is another fictional journal, this time with an even lower impact factor - who else would take an article based on conjecture and interviews, rather than on any kind of experiment or computational modeling? In terms of what I was thinking in how I reframed GoS, I thought of it as a bacteriophage, something that directly consumes bacteria (rather than merely preventing their reproduction or bursting their cell walls). It's an alternate angle, and would be a plausible alternative to antibiotics - except that bacteriophages tend to target too many different sorts of bacteria, not just the ones you want dead. Thus, potential organ failure, near-certain gastrointestinal problems, and other such conditions result. As for the hallucinations, I figured the name 'eye of souls,' if not literal, referred to a common name for a fungus.4

1. Thought so, just wanted to make sure.
2. Yeah they have have tourists, though with the multiple wars they are/were in they've dropped off quite a bit lately and some areas have been outright banned.(GWO,Stok,Kot,etc)
3. True, but your guy didn't look into the case before the Chazakain agent grabbed it so.:p..
4. Ok

IC
Agent J sighed, another dead end. Lee had talked most of the night away. Admitting tons, but nothing of any real impact on the missing shipment. These nighttime visits with various thugs hadn't been helping they had already wasted an additional week and the trail had just gotten colder. Sighing J picked up the phone, she had wanted to avoid calling him but she had run out of opinions.
"Operator get me Ate."
"The plumber?"
"No, the information broker."
"Ah, one second please."
*ring*
*ring*
*ring*
"Hello?"

"You're the new client, yes? The one who's interested in our chicken farms?" the voice of the information broker asked, using a pre-arranged code phrase. The broker herself was deaf, but a skilled programmer; she had hacked her telephone typewriter, linked it to a text-to-speech program, then ran that through a voice-masker. In a business like hers, you could never be too careful to hide your identity.

"Yes," J. replied.

"Good. Just a moment, please; I have to take a call from my wife." In other words, hang up; I'm calling you on the secure phone. This was quickly done, and now the broker felt she could communicate more freely. "Well?" she asked.

"Well, I'm getting nowhere. Just random thugs."

"What do you expect? You're trying to find them by the quickest route - the money. Organized criminals - which the people who ran this for Chazakain would've had to have been, in order to ensure, at all levels, that the shipment was properly diverted - don't flaunt money."

"It was the only solid lead we had. Besides, why would they get involved with organized crime, instead of just a few select people? Wouldn't fewer contacts mean fewer people who could reveal their secret?"

"You're thinking like cops, not like spies. Think like spies. How would you hide something like outright theft of weapons from your own government? How would you cover your tracks? Surely, you wouldn't want yourself implicated directly in any way. And the best way to ensure you get what you need without people knowing you were the ones who needed it is to go to the Mob. They have the connections, and they have the means to make people look the other way."

"That doesn't help us much. After all, we don't even know where these people intervened, or how. And saying that the Mob helped Chazakain doesn't help much; after all, which Mob? I've interrogated ten low-lifes this week, half of whom were working for individual, distinct Triads, three of whom were Yakuza, and two free-lance con artists."

"Well, I'll give you a tip. 14K Triad has recently begun submitting more and more lucrative investment pitches to the Confederacy over the past two months. I suspect you might find your targets there."

"What's the 14K Triad?" All J got in response was a dial tone. Then, her phone buzzed - the broker had texted her a bill, and a secure location for a dead-drop.

*Fade back to the hospital, Fredrick by a hospital bed that his obstructed by him.*

Fredrick sighed. It had been a stressful past two weeks. Alejandro had gone into convulsions before freyjaψυχοπομπός could be administered and had died only a few minutes later due to a blockage that had left his brain critically deprived of oxygen. They were able to persuade the ship's captain to take the drug and it had seemed to work, she had regained conscious and her fever had fallen though the headaches had never gone away but then her body went into a type of shock. It had appeared that freyjaψυχοπομπός had destroyed a benign or at least neutral bacterium in her gut allowing a violent and deadly strain of bacterium to arise and start attacking her internal organs, she had lingered on for days but eventually enough organs shut down.. They had disconnected the life support hours before, she had taken along time to stop breathing..

Finishing putting the white sheet over the captain's head. Fredrick turned towards his remaining patients there were so few, many hadn't lasted anywhere near as long as the captain and now there were reports of Chazakains coming down with the first symptoms. A few nurses had even fallen ill yet Fredrick felt fine will as fine as one could expect when one's been up for days at a time with only minimum periods of rest and massive doses of caffeine.
"Krankenschwester! Wie sind unsere restlichen Patienten?"
"Nicht gut, Doktor Fredrick. Ein hat dargestellt, dass Zeichen der gleichen Probleme, die der Kapitän hatte, nachdem er die Droge bis jetzt nur empfangen hatte, man alle positiven und langfristigen Zeichen der Verbesserung gezeigt hat."
"Dieses, das es ist?"
"Ein Herr..."

Fade to Black, voiceover
"But Doctor Fredrick had been infected by the bacterium and we still do not why but the bacterium growth was slowed, it could be because of the lack of food he had ingested, the amount of caffeine coursing through his veins or some third thing but the bacterium never did reach the levels in Dr. Fredrick as it did the other patients. While this may seem a blessing, it wasn't because it meant that Dr. Fredrick could act as a carrier for the disease, spreading the strain outside the hospital without knowing that he was infected. Giving the disease a critical advantage those first few weeks...

"What did you find?" Dr. Chung asked the grad student who had run into his room suddenly with a shocked look on her face.

"Radiation exposure - about 2 milliSieverts," she said.

"That's consistent with being around a reactor for a few weeks."

"Patient MR was asked about whether she knew if she had been exposed to radiation, and had said no."

"Patients do lie, sometimes."

"But why would this one lie? Unless she was covering something up..."

OOC: There's always simply just natural resistance to Y. pestis. It happened in real life; in fact, the gene that with 1 copy confers resistance (as in, you get the disease, but survive), or with 2 copies confers immunity (as in, you never even get the disease), to plague also confers resistance/immunity to AIDS.
The above scene took place a week after the Second Conference on the Purple Death.

J continued to wait, fighting the sleep that continued to gnaw at her, she hadn't had a good night sleep in weeks, contentiously worrying about the case, it was what made her a good agent but also could lead down to her downfall time to time, wondering why command had sent her to establish the dead drop, wondering why the drops always seemed to be next to deserted play grounds. Laying back in the swing, J pressed back trying to fight the sleepiness...

Meanwhile
While Agent J had not clue as to what the 14K Triad was, the CIA did. It had been one of the hardest bunch of criminals to infiltrate after the 10th of their agents was killed, the higher ups decided to just pay informants. Most of their information was wrong usually dead wrong but beneath the layer of crap a golden egg would sometimes show up. Agent Z hoped these would be one of those times, as he waited inside the Leaky Spoon a pub in the south of the major docks, nursing a jug of milk, the bartender had looked weirdly at him when he had requested it but the bartender had still poured it for him, though Z imagined it was going to be way overpriced...

*Fade to Fredrick House, VO*
Fredrick had finally been ordered by the dean of medicine to take some time off.
"You don't look so good, go home take some vitamins and try and get some rest."
Nodding Fredrick had left the hospital hailing a cab to take him home to the suburbs. He had coughed a bit in the cab but thought nothing of it, paying the cabbie in Marks he had left, stumbling slightly towards his house.
Due to being early in the morning, that cab picked up another 12 of which 10 quickly, well as quickly as this disease was, fell ill but not before spreading it to another person, who then spread it to another. This continued exponentially throughout the port.
or at least that is one theory..

Another is that Dr. Fredrick was not infected at this time and instead the secondary source was the also the first. The Chazakain-Defense ship, it appears between the time that the first wave got to the hospital and officials finally quarantined the area that at least one person went aboard the ship and was bitten by fleas that had been infected and the second wave spread from there.

Which ever therory is correct it is know that cab number 1887 was the secondary source. As it picked up both Dr. Fredrick and the unnamed dock worker...

*VO*
Whichever theory was correct, the disease started to spread throughout the bay area, striking at random. Killing whole families yet leaving their neighbors perfectly healthy. Some workers tried to flee towards the north, towards the Mountains, where most of Chazkain Population had fled due to the Korintar-Chazakain War. Thankfully they either were stopped by the military quarantine that was eventually put in effect or died/became very ill before they could traveled more than a few kilometers. Others shut themselves in, trying to hide from the plague, though they died like the rest if not even more often due to not seeking or getting medical treatment.
Interesting patterns began to appear as the plague spread, some Chazkain of certain descents did not get the plague nearly as much as others, the atheistic died less often than their religious neighbors...

*bump*

J continued to wait, fighting the sleep that continued to gnaw at her, she hadn't had a good night sleep in weeks, contentiously worrying about the case, it was what made her a good agent but also could lead down to her downfall time to time, wondering why command had sent her to establish the dead drop, wondering why the drops always seemed to be next to deserted play grounds. Laying back in the swing, J pressed back trying to fight the sleepiness...

Meanwhile
While Agent J had not clue as to what the 14K Triad was, the CIA did. It had been one of the hardest bunch of criminals to infiltrate after the 10th of their agents was killed, the higher ups decided to just pay informants. Most of their information was wrong usually dead wrong but beneath the layer of crap a golden egg would sometimes show up. Agent Z hoped these would be one of those times, as he waited inside the Leaky Spoon a pub in the south of the major docks, nursing a jug of milk, the bartender had looked weirdly at him when he had requested it but the bartender had still poured it for him, though Z imagined it was going to be way overpriced...

A stocky man walked in and sat down next to Z. "I'll have a jug of milk, barkeep," he said. Z turned slightly. His top informant was here.

"So, how's business?" Z asked.

"Good, good. I made a killing on Balestier Road," the informant replied, then handed Z an envelope.

"Good. Pleasure working with you," Z said, then handed the informant a small box. With that, the exchange was complete. To anyone who was watching, it would just look like a standard drug deal; only Z and the informant knew that the box contained gold rather than drugs.

Once Z got back to his apartment, he'd open the envelopes he'd gotten and see if the info was any good - if he had gotten any closer to an understanding of how the 14K triad operated. It was increasingly clear that it was involved in the disappearance of the 50 nukes. Two questions remained - one, where were the nukes now, and two, how do we deal with the Triad so they don't try this stunt again?

*I guess bump since there not awhole lot to reply to.*