Superman Movieverse Forum

A/N: A huge thanks to my new beta Bellarata who looked over all of the medical stuff in this chapter and she actually wrote most of it so it made sense (while I used my awesome copy and pasting skills).

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Chloe, Lois, Richard and Dr Higgins eventually managed to get Skye calmed down and the little girl agreed to leave after she was assured that they were doing everything possible to help her father and brother get better. Lois and Richard also had to promise Chloe that they would call her the second  they had any new information before the woman felt comfortable leaving with the very tired little girl.

But now that they were finally able to talk properly about the virus and how to stop it, Lois found herself unwilling to begin. What if there was nothing they could do? What if she was here only to watch her husband slowly drift away, followed soon after by their son?

“- what I thought,” She suddenly became aware of Richard talking, “It’s not normal.”

“Normal?” Dr Higgins shook his head. “It’s hardly even natural.”

“What?” Lois asked sharply. “What’s not natural?”

“The virus,” Richard answered, “Jason and Clark’s symptoms are exactly the same and occur in the same order, almost down to the second.”

“How do you mean?” Lois asked, trying to ignore the feeling of dread in her stomach.

“Well," Dr Higgins started, "we have, of course, been keeping careful track of Superman's symptoms and after his collapse, it took an hour and twenty-four minutes until he developed a significant fever that refused to go down, even with antipyretics and cooling measures. Then, sixty-seven minutes later, he developed a heart arrhythmia called Ventricular Bigeminy that caused his heart to throw extra beats," he informed them, hoping to avoid an overly technical explanation. "It's not serious, just unexpected."

“I know his symptoms,” Lois interrupted, wishing he’d get to the point.

“Lois,” Richard told her softly, “Jason collapsed at 6.12 pm tonight and at 7.36pm, one hour and twenty four minutes later-“

“He developed a fever,” Lois said, looking to Dr. Higgins for confirmation, not surprised by the doctor's answering nod, he nodded. “And sixty-seven minutes later?” she asked.

“His EKG changed to Ventricular Bigeminy, which is what alerted us to the similarities and progression of the symptoms." Dr Higgins explained as simply as he could.

“Just like that?” Lois asked. She had never had anything beyond basic first aid training before in her life, but even she knew something was wrong about this. “But how do you know that’s strange?” She asked, “You said before that you think this is an alien virus, maybe that’s how they worked on Krypton.”

Dr Higgins didn’t look convinced, “It may well come from another planet but the basic laws of science should still apply. In humans, fevers are the results of the body's immune response, not the virus itself. In your husband and son's case, this doesn't seem to be true. I think the virus itself is causing the fever and this is definite cause for concern, especially since we don't know exactly what we are dealing with or how the prolonged fever is affecting them. Since both of the symptoms have followed a definite progression, it's not something that is naturally occurring. Something is causing this.”

“But you said that the heart thing wasn’t too serious?” Lois asked, looking at Dr Higgins hopefully.

“No,” He sighed, “but they’re continuing to get worse and so far, we haven’t found anything to help them get better.”

“And the symptoms are so precise…” Richard muttered, almost to himself. Lois and Dr Higgins both turned to look at him and he continued, “It’s almost acting more like…” He trailed off again.

“Like what?” Lois asked impatiently. Right now she was willing to take anything she got, no matter how far-fetched.

Richard grimaced nervously. “It’s kind of silly, but I was thinking it was acting almost like a machine rather than a virus. All the symptoms occurring so exactly in order and time – reminds me of a finely tuned machine.”

“You aren’t suggesting that my family’s coming down with some sort of… computer virus, are you?” Lois asked incredulously. “Sure you haven’t been watching too much Sci-fi?”

“Nanites,” Dr Higgins announced abruptly, startling the other two with his sudden outburst.

“What?” Lois asked.

Before the doctor could explain, Richard interrupted with an enthusiastic , “Of course!” He turned to  Dr Higgins. “That makes complete sense and a civilization as advanced as Krypton’s would have had no trouble developing a nano-virus. They had faster than light travel for Pete's sake!”

“And ,” Dr Higgins said, pulling some paper from a folder on his desk, "it would also explain the strange readings we’ve seen in their blood work. We've been running chemistry panels every two hours and the  one abnormal thing we've noticed is an increase in the serum iron levels. We've also noted some changes under the microscope, but we weren‘t really sure if that was normal for Kryptonians or not, I mean we really have nothing to compare it to, but-”

“Wait!” Lois yelled, reassured by the excited looks on the men’s faces. “No one’s going any further until you both explain to me what the hell nanites are.”

Dr Higgins barely even looked in her direction as he replied, “Nanites are machines, robots actually, created on a microscopic scale. They’re very hypothetical, but the theory is that if we had the advanced technology, it would be possible to create machines small enough to function inside the human- or Kryptonian- body.”

“Could they simulate the effects of a virus?” Richard asked.

“Probably,” He shrugged, “As I said they’re mainly hypothetical at the moment, at least on Earth.”

“So you’re saying my husband and son have tiny machines inside them?” Lois asked in disbelief.

“It would explain a lot,” Dr Higgins continued, “Like why we haven’t be able to find the virus yet. So far all we can see is the symptoms but if it really is some sort of robotic nano-virus then it could be hundreds of times smaller than a normal virus.”

“Does this mean you can treat it?” Lois asked eagerly, “Now that you know what it is, you can treat it, right?” But she could see from the look on Dr Higgins face that it wasn’t going to be that easy.

“As I said before, nanites are largely theoretical on Earth, if this is in fact what it is,” he tried to explain. “We can’t confirm it yet, but I’ll order more tests done immediately.” He got up straight away and walked out the door without another word.

Richard and Lois sat in silence until something occurred to her. “If it is nanites, why would Kryptonians use this technology to create a virus so harmful to themselves?” she asked. “Surely they could have put it to better use?”

Richard didn’t answer immediately but leaned forward in his chair, drawing Lois’ attention. “I’ve been thinking about that,” he began, “And the only thing that really makes sense is biological terrorism.”

“You mean this is some sort of terrorist attack?” Lois felt another tendril of fear creep around her heart. “But you said it couldn’t have originated from Earth.”

“No,” Richard agreed, “But if these really are nano-machines, couldn’t they be, well, 'programmed' to systematically-” He hesitated for a moment then pressed on, “-kill a Kryptonian. I mean just think, it would be the perfect way to cause mass panic, wouldn’t it?”

“Would it?” Lois prodded him with a question when he paused.

“Well, look at how everyone reacted when Clark collapsed, then he slowly gets worse and every time he does, it causes more panic and fear. Imagine that on a worldwide scale, if this had been programmed to attack humans then people could be forced to watch their friends and family die slowly, all the while wondering if they could be next.”

Lois folded her arms protectively over her stomach at his last words. “Yeah,” she agreed.

Dr Higgins walked back into the room only a moment later, “They’re running all the tests we can think of,” he told them, leaning on his desk heavily and for the first time Lois noticed how tired he looked.

“What are we going to do?” Lois asked. “What are we going to do if no one knows how these nanites things work because we don’t have them here? What are we going to do if you can’t treat it even when you know what it is?” Her voice was slowly becoming louder, “What are we going to do if it changes? What are you going to do if someone figures out how to tell these machines how to kill all of us?” The last sentence left Lois' mouth in a hysterical rush, adrenalin leaving her just as quickly. Suddenly weary, she buried her face in her hands. Richard placed his arm around her and tried to give what little comfort he could.

There was a heavy silence in the room while everybody thought about her words. Dr Higgins cleared his throat nervously. “Well, we have no reason to worry right now since there is absolutely no evidence that it is harmful to humans. Because of the sensitivity of some of our equipment,  the walls of this hospital  were designed to prevent interference from the outside, so it would be incredibly hard to re-program the nanites remotely, If that is what we are dealing with here.”

“Are you sure?” Richard asked, looking around the office as though he could see some sort of invisible radio signals ready to strike.

“No,” Dr Higgins replied.
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