Quarantine

"Not possible?" Sparrow asked.

"Its not a coherent design, its just random coding, probably from different mutations."

Sparrow thought about it, then he pulled off a glove and reached for his knife.

"Wait!" she told him.

"He's here because of me Miley, he stepped through that field alone and without his helm so I wouldn't be alone, don't ask me to let him die."

Surprisingly he felt a hand grip his wrist. He looked down and Raul was shaking his head no.

"It can save you!" he said.

"Mutation, more mutation," the clone ground out. Then he passed out.

Miley looked legitimately surprised. "He's right. The problem is that as your body fights the virus one or the other is going to mutate. Depending on how that goes it could make an even worse situation arise."

"So we let him die?" he growled.

"Don't get hissy with me Sparrow, we will do everything we can, we just aren't going to escalate the situation until we need to."

"Please, save him if you can." he begged.

"Of course I will if I can." She told him, "He is one of us. Plus, he is cute and I am amazed he realized the implication of his being infected."

They had been speaking over comms, due to the helmets, so Tony replied.

"We were created to be intelligent, as well as good fighters."

"I hope I never gave you the impression I thought otherwise." Miley said before Sparrow could reply.

"No, that's not it, what I mean is that we all realize how easy it would have been to just shut off those tubes and not have to deal with yet another group of outcasts and possible problems. We have been given choices ever since. Some of us chose not to fight and no one has said a cross word to them. Out of gratitude we have all tried to learn and do what we could to aid the legion in performing it's mission. The issues with the geten have every possibility of affecting everyone, so we have learned what we could to help."

"That is amazing!" Sparrow said, "you guys are amazing, and I hope you realize how much we appreciate what you do."

"Yes, you guys ARE amazing," Miley emphasized, looking at the big clone with new eyes and biting her lip.

"Anyway," she said as she shook her head to clear her suddenly explicit thoughts. "Now that the airlock is in

place we can go ahead and take down the shield so we can let the synths in here to explore and try to find the source of this virus. Hopefully that will lead us to a cure."

"I would rather," Sparrow thought aloud, "go ahead and leave it up as an extra layer of protection and just reset the droids they bring on the other side."

"I like that idea." Tony immediately responded.

"Me too, lets make that happen." Miley agreed.

"Umm, Sparrow, Miley, you guys better get out here."

"What's up Deux."

"We have visitors."

"Say what, there were no life signs!"

"Tell that to them." The synth said with some snark.

The pair exited the airlock and found Deux, still on the other side so he didn't need another reset, facing off with two females.

One was nude and filthy, if attractively shaped. As she got closer and the lighting got better Sparrow realized she must be some kind of droid because in areas her skin was damaged he could see some kind of metallic underlayer.

The other... Sparrow's brain froze up. He literally could not move or speak. She was absolutely the most perfect woman he had ever seen. She was about 5'6" with a somewhat slender build. She had amazing breasts, standing high and proud, and the rest of the figure to match as well. She had blue hair and coal black skin. Her coloration was obviously not human norm. Her eyes were oversized and a deep swimming blue, and her mouth was a cherry red perfect cupids bow.

"Damn." He finally ground out.

Miley saw, and more importantly understood his reaction. The sheer strength of it made her suspicious though so she pulled out her portable scanner and took a look, first at him, then at the alien.

What she found was that he was, indeed, that affected but he wasn't alone. If the females biological indicators worked like most human related ones then she was hit just as badly. It didn't seem like manipulation.

The haze finally cleared for Sparrow enough for him to react. He slowly removed his helmet, (Miley still couldn't), and then took a few steps closer to the figure.

He held out his open, empty hands and said, "Please come closer, we mean you no harm." In a calm, gentle voice.

Siscasse was very confused. The man in the metal suit was talking to her in a language she did not understand. The ugly droid still stood between them, and the female in the bubble just stood there.

She initially did not understand her reaction to the man, something about him had interested her from the second he exited the strange room. Once he removed his helmet though she was ecstatic, her mother had told her all her life what meeting her bonded would feel like and this was it!

Reality intruded a bit at that point though, she was infected and probably going to die soon. The timing of their meeting was terrible.

Outside, the synths had a rapid discussion and Zane and Domi merged and budded. The newly budded synth was given the information she needed to know and rode a battle droid into the airlock.

Deux, after participating in the discussion, began speaking to the Eldrie droid in one language after another. Eventually he got a response when he talked to it in sith.

"You speak the invader tongue." the thing responded, "it is good we can communicate."

"Yes, it is, but we are confused, we have been here for months and did not detect any life here."

"This is the place where the last of the eldrie were hidden away from the virus. It was hoped that aid would eventually come for them."

"There are more eldrie here?"

"In stasis a few more survive. Our watch has been long and supplies have grown scarce."

"My people are not these droids." Deux explained as the battle droid arrived and Stacia, the newest synth emerged. "We are able to interface with them and share data though, can she share with you?"

Sharing data was one of the automatons main purposes so she did not hesitate and gave agreement. Stacia, who Deux was now holding in his hand, slid over to the Eldrie droid and entered its system.

Siscasse did not understand what was happening yet but she was encouraged the two droids were communicating. She was continually distracted by the handsome one, however, and certainly noticed how fixated he was on her.

Sparrow was certainly watching her. He literally could not take his eyes off her.

"You've got it bad, don't you." Miley quietly asked him.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"You've got it pretty badly for your young lady there." she repeated.

He saw no need to try and hide it, "Yes, yes I do."

"Hopefully between our two species we can find a cure."

"I pray it so, right now I wish I were a synth, though, because in a minute they will all know her language." He said sadly.

"Get a chip and they can push it to you." Tony calmly suggested.

"The chips don't.." Miley trailed off as she thought it through. "Actually it should work."

"That is why we have been asking for them, it isn't quite a direct download of information but it is better than anything else we have."

Stacia, meanwhile, had finally made sense of the eldrie droids information storage system and had interfaced with the droid fully, she copied the droids entire data bank and shared it among her kin. She noted the link to the lab master computer but they would cross that bridge when they got there.

Once the data had been copied to Deux Sparrow could finally talk to his new crush, at least sort of. The two sat down on the cavern floor and began a slow, four way conversation exchanging the relevant data on their situations.

About 15 minutes later a shipment of the training chips arrived. Miley immediately prepared an injection and approached the pair with it.

Siscasse saw the large needle and got scared. Sparrow noted her reaction and instinctive urges had him on his feet facing Miley, a snarl on his lips.

"Calm down, it's just me," She said. "I need to do the injection and then we need to get you onto a med bed so we can check you out. Both of you. This virus is not pausing while you two get to know each other."

Via Deux and Stacia he managed to explain to Siscasse what they needed. She didn't seem to mind being examined, but she told him that she didn't understand how she had become infected because she was put in stasis because she hadn't had the disease.

They then explained to her that the virus was loose in the air of the facility. She was really confused because that should have been detected by the medical systems. She placed a request via her droid with the mainframe to do whatever scans it could and try to solve the mystery.

Once they were in the beds Miley hit them with the sleep inducer. They were out in seconds and she immediately placed the chip in Sparrow and they started the language transfer.

While that was happening she did a full workup on the new alien. She soon discovered that these people had been genetically enhanced even further than her

own people had managed.

Unfortunately, it looked like that high level of design didn't give any special resistance to the virus. She was infected, and it was spreading quickly. Estimated survival time was hours, not days.

She was looking into options when Deux and the alien droid entered the room.

"The base scanned for life signs and there are a muddle of them in a lower store room. It seems to be the only opening where the virus could have come from so we are sending a synth team to investigate.

"Wait! You found them alive? That makes no sense, we need a specimen, maybe even several. If those things aren't infected and have developed an immunity we need samples."

"We are on it. If there is a way we will bring some back alive."

Please hurry. Sparrow and Raul have some time left but the girl is progressing much more quickly.

She busied herself over the next couple of hours by getting full samples from all three subjects and running them against various antivirals. As expected, none of them were in any way effective.

Meanwhile, the synths, accompanied by the Eldrie droid, headed to the rodent colony.

Deux was in the lead when they reached the room in question, so he was the first one surprised when a rat weighing nearly 50 pounds landed on him and started biting his limbs and torso. The synth was absolutely horrified to see actual pitting and bite marks left behind by the attack.

What followed was a very odd battle, the droids were attempting to subdue the creatures while keeping them alive, and the rodents were cheerfully damaging durasteel with their teeth and claws. When the battle was over two different droids had lost limbs but there were 5 surviving, although injured, rodents.

The synths, clearly out of patience, drug the creatures back through the base and were ready to just toss them on exam tables in the lab. Miley was not having any of that however, and made them stay and hold the creatures down while she got her samples.

Analysis of the samples proved her theory correct, over the generations the rodents developed an immunity to the sith created virus. If she could isolate how the immunity worked, she could create a cure.