A soft, bitter laugh spills from Ratchet's throat and he leans his head a little farther back into his pillow.
"Ohh yeah, we found him. You see, the other reason we slogged into enemy territory to pay him a visit was because I was notified of a really genuinely weird steady spike and plateau of patient deaths at that facility. For a while they were all over the place, which is normal, but then they'd climb a little and then flatten out, climb a little and then flatten out. It was worth checking into, at least, and if it was nothing then I wouldn't have wasted my trip because I could give Pharma my job." Ratchet makes a low sound. "There was a whole mess that went down once we got there, but it turns out the whole place was in quarantine due to--to a virus, a lethal one. Potentially lethal. Some patients it'd be fast acting and their tissue would go necrotic and they'd be in septic shock or dead in days, if not hours. Some patients lingered for weeks or months, unconscious. The reason the whole place was in quarantine is because Pharma cooked the virus himself to wipe the base out."
He looks over at York, knowing York won't be looking back at him and obscurely grateful for it. He feels his belly clench, torn between not wanting to give too much detail and wanting York to understand, even if it wouldn't change anything now.
"The reasons Pharma did that are a wild kaleidoscopic whirl of ego and bad management decisions, but first and foremost it was because of where the base was held. When I said it was in enemy territory--I mean enemy. There was a small group on the other side of the war that called themselves the Justice Division, their job was to capture and publicly torture and murder defectors to deter people leaving the army, and Pharma's base was right smack in the middle of where they'd set up shop. One of them was, well. Was ill, chronically, and needed regular organ transplants, and there was this convenient medical-slash-mining base right there. So he basically threatened to break the base open and torture everyone inside to death unless Pharma provided him with a steady stream of organs from his patients. That was the death rate--Tarn kept asking for more and more, and Pharma would have to find a way to get them, but he wouldn't kill more people than he'd have to, so the rate would plateau. He made the--the rotting virus to... I don't know. Save his ego, I guess, just wipe the base off the map without having to ask for help. He was very proud. Maybe he was trying to take Tarn out, and he didn't care who got in the way. Maybe the constant threat of gruesome torture and slaughter for him and his entire staff forcing him to murder people for whom he was responsible just drove him completely crazy, but there it was."
Ratchet stops again for a moment, just breathing steadily, his own eyes closed.
"I've never met a researcher like him. Or a better surgeon. He pioneered, he wrote, he did insane things nobody had ever tried before to cure patients just to prove they were possible. He was gifted, and all that was just... broken. Destroyed. He wasn't the same person anymore, and as much as I miss him it was also such a goddamn waste."
no subject
"Ohh yeah, we found him. You see, the other reason we slogged into enemy territory to pay him a visit was because I was notified of a really genuinely weird steady spike and plateau of patient deaths at that facility. For a while they were all over the place, which is normal, but then they'd climb a little and then flatten out, climb a little and then flatten out. It was worth checking into, at least, and if it was nothing then I wouldn't have wasted my trip because I could give Pharma my job." Ratchet makes a low sound. "There was a whole mess that went down once we got there, but it turns out the whole place was in quarantine due to--to a virus, a lethal one. Potentially lethal. Some patients it'd be fast acting and their tissue would go necrotic and they'd be in septic shock or dead in days, if not hours. Some patients lingered for weeks or months, unconscious. The reason the whole place was in quarantine is because Pharma cooked the virus himself to wipe the base out."
He looks over at York, knowing York won't be looking back at him and obscurely grateful for it. He feels his belly clench, torn between not wanting to give too much detail and wanting York to understand, even if it wouldn't change anything now.
"The reasons Pharma did that are a wild kaleidoscopic whirl of ego and bad management decisions, but first and foremost it was because of where the base was held. When I said it was in enemy territory--I mean enemy. There was a small group on the other side of the war that called themselves the Justice Division, their job was to capture and publicly torture and murder defectors to deter people leaving the army, and Pharma's base was right smack in the middle of where they'd set up shop. One of them was, well. Was ill, chronically, and needed regular organ transplants, and there was this convenient medical-slash-mining base right there. So he basically threatened to break the base open and torture everyone inside to death unless Pharma provided him with a steady stream of organs from his patients. That was the death rate--Tarn kept asking for more and more, and Pharma would have to find a way to get them, but he wouldn't kill more people than he'd have to, so the rate would plateau. He made the--the rotting virus to... I don't know. Save his ego, I guess, just wipe the base off the map without having to ask for help. He was very proud. Maybe he was trying to take Tarn out, and he didn't care who got in the way. Maybe the constant threat of gruesome torture and slaughter for him and his entire staff forcing him to murder people for whom he was responsible just drove him completely crazy, but there it was."
Ratchet stops again for a moment, just breathing steadily, his own eyes closed.
"I've never met a researcher like him. Or a better surgeon. He pioneered, he wrote, he did insane things nobody had ever tried before to cure patients just to prove they were possible. He was gifted, and all that was just... broken. Destroyed. He wasn't the same person anymore, and as much as I miss him it was also such a goddamn waste."