Festive
Qia
Melissa
webboysurf
Supermaxx
Half Pint
Nemaisare
Aeolian
Yankee
Jasper was leaning back in his chair, head resting and eyes closed, trying to sense the caffeine from his second coffee permeating through to his bloodstream. He felt like if he focused on it very hard, he could will his body to metabolize it faster. In actuality, he was slowly falling asleep, while the caffeine struggled in vain against a thirty-plus-year career that was sadly culminating in routine and tedium.
Three sharp raps on the glass front wall roused Jasper from the cliff-edge of slumber, and he jerked forward sharply, spinning his chair to face the door and opening the folder he held in his hand. The door was pushed open, and around the edge peered the face of a young agent, skin tanned, hair black and buzz-cut, and a neatly-trimmed goatee adorning his well-set jaw.
"Good morning, Marty." Jasper said, beckoning Martin Reyna into his office proper. Agent Reyna had been with SHIELD for only just over a year after a respectable career with the FBI, but Jasper had to admit he'd done well acclimating in his short time, and they'd formed an odd kind of friendship that was half peer-to-peer, half mentor-to-mentee. "Got something for me?"
Martin stepped in, leaning on the glass as he flicked open a manila folder of his own, glancing briefly at the contents before looking back to Jasper.
"Maybe. How familiar are you with your grandfather's research?"
Jasper leaned back, taking a deep breath as he cast his mind to the annals of history. His grandfather, Jason Sitwell, had been instrumental in the 60's when the mutant pandemic first rose to public notice, then public concern, then public panic; his early foray into the suppression of the so-called 'X-Gene' paved the way for the invention, and then refinement, of SHIELD's present-day X-Inhibitor Serum. The problem was, Jason Sitwell had invented it, and his son - Jasper's father - Colin Sitwell had perfected it. By the time Jasper got through probation and signed on as Agent proper, the formula was stable, with minimal side-effects, and had begun to enter mass-production; there simply wasn't anymore work to be done on it, and Jasper's skills were ultimately better suited elsewhere.
"Not greatly." Jasper admitted with not a small pang of shame for not being more diligent in his studies about his own family's legacy. "I have the basic gist of it, I suppose. I wouldn't say I'm any more of an expert on it than the lab boys, though."
"Well, I went to the lab boys already, and they're stumped, so here I am with you."
"They just fobbed you off like that?"
"Little bit. They said they'd look into it but had other priorities."
"They probably do. Plus, you're still green. What's this about?"
Marty pushed himself off the glass and walked up to Jasper's desk, passing him the folder he'd been leafing through. Jasper tossed his own for-show folder onto the mismatched pile of identical papers in front of him, and began to peruse Marty's as he explained.
"We had a girl come in for her regular inhib dose yesterday, and within minutes of inoculation she went into grand mal seizure."
Jasper stopped reading and looked up at Marty from beneath his brow.
"Well that's never happened before." He said.
"I know. I looked through the early research - what I was cleared to look at, anyway - and while early iterations had plenty of side effects, seizure was never one of them, even at the lowest incident rates. And since then, the serum's only gotten better. Side-effects these days barely amount to more than a slight headache and cottonmouth."
"So you've got the mother of all outliers." Jasper concluded, handing the file back. "Or, more likely, she lied in her pre-screen and reacted poorly to a serum-smack combo platter."
Marty rolled his eyes.
"You don't think that's the first thing we checked? Bloods were clear. Too clear, I'd say, like her blood was formulated in a lab for perfectly level everything."
Jasper just raised an eyebrow. Marty looked at his feet.
"It's just weird, is all."
"How's the girl now?" Jasper asked, careful not to let on that his curiosity had been piqued. Marty would sniff it out, and then he'd never hear the end of it.
"She's fine. In observation at the inoculation center, but fine. MRI didn't show anything abnormal or any lasting damage. Again, she was just...clear."
"So what you have is a healthy girl with one anomalous seizure, and you want my weight on that instead of on..." he gestured broadly at the messy stack of potential cases and assignments that covered, edge-to-edge, his workspace, “...any of this?”
Jasper could see the blood rushing to Marty’s cheeks as his face fell and he became sheepish, embarrassed. Still looking at the floor, he only managed to mumble out:
”Yes, sir.”
“Hmmm.”
Jasper rubbed his chin. It was certainly odd, but not necessarily odd enough to warrant follow-up. Still, it was his family recipe, so to speak. If it was suddenly dysfunctional, or worse, dangerous, things would spiral pretty quickly, and he'd be completely unable to avoid being smack-bang in the damn center of it.
Better to get ahead of the curve.
"Alright. Let's go take a look. At the very least, we can grab some to-go bags for the lab boys."
Marty looked up, smiling.
"I hoped you'd say that. I've already commissioned a humvee."
"Nice and inconspicuous." Jasper said, his dry tone immediately deflating the grinning junior agent as he stood and threw on his blazer. "Good thinking."
Three sharp raps on the glass front wall roused Jasper from the cliff-edge of slumber, and he jerked forward sharply, spinning his chair to face the door and opening the folder he held in his hand. The door was pushed open, and around the edge peered the face of a young agent, skin tanned, hair black and buzz-cut, and a neatly-trimmed goatee adorning his well-set jaw.
"Good morning, Marty." Jasper said, beckoning Martin Reyna into his office proper. Agent Reyna had been with SHIELD for only just over a year after a respectable career with the FBI, but Jasper had to admit he'd done well acclimating in his short time, and they'd formed an odd kind of friendship that was half peer-to-peer, half mentor-to-mentee. "Got something for me?"
Martin stepped in, leaning on the glass as he flicked open a manila folder of his own, glancing briefly at the contents before looking back to Jasper.
"Maybe. How familiar are you with your grandfather's research?"
Jasper leaned back, taking a deep breath as he cast his mind to the annals of history. His grandfather, Jason Sitwell, had been instrumental in the 60's when the mutant pandemic first rose to public notice, then public concern, then public panic; his early foray into the suppression of the so-called 'X-Gene' paved the way for the invention, and then refinement, of SHIELD's present-day X-Inhibitor Serum. The problem was, Jason Sitwell had invented it, and his son - Jasper's father - Colin Sitwell had perfected it. By the time Jasper got through probation and signed on as Agent proper, the formula was stable, with minimal side-effects, and had begun to enter mass-production; there simply wasn't anymore work to be done on it, and Jasper's skills were ultimately better suited elsewhere.
"Not greatly." Jasper admitted with not a small pang of shame for not being more diligent in his studies about his own family's legacy. "I have the basic gist of it, I suppose. I wouldn't say I'm any more of an expert on it than the lab boys, though."
"Well, I went to the lab boys already, and they're stumped, so here I am with you."
"They just fobbed you off like that?"
"Little bit. They said they'd look into it but had other priorities."
"They probably do. Plus, you're still green. What's this about?"
Marty pushed himself off the glass and walked up to Jasper's desk, passing him the folder he'd been leafing through. Jasper tossed his own for-show folder onto the mismatched pile of identical papers in front of him, and began to peruse Marty's as he explained.
"We had a girl come in for her regular inhib dose yesterday, and within minutes of inoculation she went into grand mal seizure."
Jasper stopped reading and looked up at Marty from beneath his brow.
"Well that's never happened before." He said.
"I know. I looked through the early research - what I was cleared to look at, anyway - and while early iterations had plenty of side effects, seizure was never one of them, even at the lowest incident rates. And since then, the serum's only gotten better. Side-effects these days barely amount to more than a slight headache and cottonmouth."
"So you've got the mother of all outliers." Jasper concluded, handing the file back. "Or, more likely, she lied in her pre-screen and reacted poorly to a serum-smack combo platter."
Marty rolled his eyes.
"You don't think that's the first thing we checked? Bloods were clear. Too clear, I'd say, like her blood was formulated in a lab for perfectly level everything."
Jasper just raised an eyebrow. Marty looked at his feet.
"It's just weird, is all."
"How's the girl now?" Jasper asked, careful not to let on that his curiosity had been piqued. Marty would sniff it out, and then he'd never hear the end of it.
"She's fine. In observation at the inoculation center, but fine. MRI didn't show anything abnormal or any lasting damage. Again, she was just...clear."
"So what you have is a healthy girl with one anomalous seizure, and you want my weight on that instead of on..." he gestured broadly at the messy stack of potential cases and assignments that covered, edge-to-edge, his workspace, “...any of this?”
Jasper could see the blood rushing to Marty’s cheeks as his face fell and he became sheepish, embarrassed. Still looking at the floor, he only managed to mumble out:
”Yes, sir.”
“Hmmm.”
Jasper rubbed his chin. It was certainly odd, but not necessarily odd enough to warrant follow-up. Still, it was his family recipe, so to speak. If it was suddenly dysfunctional, or worse, dangerous, things would spiral pretty quickly, and he'd be completely unable to avoid being smack-bang in the damn center of it.
Better to get ahead of the curve.
"Alright. Let's go take a look. At the very least, we can grab some to-go bags for the lab boys."
Marty looked up, smiling.
"I hoped you'd say that. I've already commissioned a humvee."
"Nice and inconspicuous." Jasper said, his dry tone immediately deflating the grinning junior agent as he stood and threw on his blazer. "Good thinking."
