W

The surgery finished, Clair finds something or someone to flop on.

Flop.

Clair went home. She went home, turned off her cellular, talked to her kids for several hours, and then went to bed.

And she plans to stay there.

Clair makes her way to Dom's office. She knows this is a conversation that might not even occur, but, damnit, she was going to try.

She knocks on Dom's door, then.

Clair made her way back to the Shop, found Z, and flopped on him.

"Meh."

Clair had fled the Sanctuary when her beeper had rung. Code Blue--Gabriel had flatlines, presumably because of the psychic turmoil and not, she hoped, because Allen had decided to unplug him and melt his insides.

Reaching the medlab, she was only slightly releived to find it was the former--though that was going to make things harder to pin down. Later. Vitals first. She joined the other personnel in resuscitating him again, though it came to using a defibrillator to restore sinus rhythm.

Once she was satisfied that his heart was going to continue beating, she looked at the EEG. Coma. Again. All the blood vessel shunts in the world wasn't going to do a thing about this. She breifly considered the only thing that was going to work would be some good solid psychiatric therapy, but reminded herself that this latest one wasn't his fault.

She found some painkillers and swallowed them in an attempt to get rid of the splitting headache the psychic explosion had left and settled in to wait. At least the web was clean of that Yellow stuff, whatever it was. In fact, it was cleaner and more orderly than she'd ever seen it in her short time within it.

Ish a Clair! A bitty Clair!

After putting Gabriel under, W wasted no time in getting the tiny, delicate shunts repaired, sealing them off and stopping the bleeding neatly. This time, she'd gone in through the sinuses with a nose probe, tiny instruments guided by screens. He was only lucky the blood was contained in the brain matter and didn't leak into the CSF.

Several hours later, she finished, dialling down the anaesthetic and waiting for him to wake up while she hunted down some painkillers for the headache she got from hunching over such tiny work.

W is currently in her office, compiling notes and having a nice cup of tea. Meanwhile, Edward is recovering in one of the rooms. Everyone has gone home for the night and it's nice and quiet.

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It was late at night when a portal opened not too far from W's office. She nipped through, opening the office door and walking in, turning on the lights. Imediately, she crossed to the filing cabinet next to the desk, thumbing through it until she found a slim folder. Then she dropped into the chair behind the desk and turned on her computer, leafing through the folder while the computer booted up.

The hardcopies regarding the construct known as Edward didn't tell her much, just that he was from, apparently, one of the many Earths that connected to this Nexus. That wasn't much to go by.

The computer was only a little more forthcoming, as she clicked through results of her own brain-scans, a video recording of the surgery in which she implanted the control system (she couldn't beleive she went along with that), and a few of Del's schematics and scans of the rest of his odd, artificial body. But when she tried to narrow her search, she came up against what she knew was just another example of Del's paranoid security measures.

Crap.

She tried to guess the first password. Failed. Tried again and again and on the fourth try, managed to stumble across it. But just when she thought she was getting the hang of this hacking stuff, that entire section of the database closed itself down, dropping her right back at the window she started from, with her own entries.

She swore loudly and colourfully for a moment, cursing Del and her paranoia.

Then again, it wasn't paranoia if they really were out to get you, she reflected.

She sat back in the chair and racked her brains. She was no hacker. She could fetch Alistair, see if he could do it, but no. People had already asked plenty of him, and there was no telling what he could stumble across that he probably would rather not know.

However....

She typed out a quick message to Arthur, knowing he'd be there to receive it. The man never slept. Sure enough, he replied, in a jargon and slang-laden string that was barely English. She sent her request and when he replied, she hoped that np half a tick meant "yes."

She waited.

And waited.

While she waited, she perused the hard copies again. She eyed the tape ball on her table. She looked at the charts that had been left while she was gone. She tapped her feet and drummed her fingers and paced.

The beep of an incoming message had her flying back to her computer. Sure enough, it was a message from Arthur and when she clicked on the link he sent, her screen was immediately filled with flickering windows until it stopped on what she was looking for. A complete record of when, why, and, most importantly, where Del had retreived this Edward.

>ARTHUR, YOU'RE A GENIUS.

>I KNOW.

She printed out the screen's contents and folded it up, making her way to the Nexus. Augustus could hunt for Del with this.