App for babylonwood

This is the way that the world ends:
Not with a bang and not even a whimper,
But nothing, just nothing at all.

The Player
User Name/Nick: Beka
User LJ: starletfallen
AIM/IM: archangelet
E-mail: beka [at] bekacavanaugh [dot] com
Other Characters: Rose Marshall (sparrowhillrose)

The Character
Character Name: Shaun Phillip Mason
Character Journal: badplanchaser
Canon: Newsflesh series
Age: 24
From When?: Deadline - Between ch 10 and ch 11, stepping out of Dr. Abbey's lab

Abilities/Powers:

Shaun is a journalist, which is a rather dangerous career choice in his universe. He has credentials and clearance to go into hazard zones up to a certain level - the next level of certification requires he be 25 to apply for them. He is trained and certified to carry various types of firearms - handguns, shotguns, even crossbows are very dangerous weapons in his hands, and while his aim has suffered in the past year or so from (relative) disuse, he's still a damn good shot and able to keep himself alive through what might seem like impossible situations. And he's in good enough shape to run into danger, save a dumb Newsie or two (or maybe just poke a zombie with a stick), and get out without collapsing or getting bitten by a zombie.

Power Limitations:

Not for Shaun, but for Kellis-Amberlee (see the special notes at the end for a general rundown of the virus). In its dormant, "helpful" form, it will only be contagious to people from Shaun's universe - who, unless they're from before the Rising for some reason, will already have it. The live state of the virus, however, will probably still be actively contagious to anyone (or at least the humans here), should that issue arise.

So basically, if George or Shaun turns into a zombie and bites someone, they could still amplify and become a zombie too, but anyone else who dies without being bitten will stay dead, and no one's going to carry Kellis-Amberlee back home if they ever get there. ((copied with permission from shotofdumbidea))

Inventory

• His clothes:
  
  • Khaki cargo pants with steel thread reinforcement in the fabric
    
  • Boxers
    
  • Steel-toed combat boots (and socks)
    
  • Long-sleeved grey t-shirt
    
  • Kevlar vest
    
  • Black leather motorcycle jacket (the sleek, safety kind, not the kind with lots of useless straps and buckles hanging off it)
    
  • Black leather belt
  
  
• Weaponry:
  
  • Two hip holsters and one shoulder holster
    
  • Three semi-automatic handguns (including one .40 that used to belong to Georgia) with full 17-round clips
    
  • One extra clip of 17 rounds for each gun
    
  • One specially-calibrated grenade
    
  • One collapsible shock baton
    
  • One small collapsible crossbow with 7 bolts
  
  
• Multi-tool
  
• Cell phone (ear cuff)
  
• Wallet with personal credit card, After the End Times credit card, and ID
  
• Journalism credentials

Personality:

Shaun is, in essence, an angry co-dependent kid who lost the person who meant most to him in the universe a year ago.

When he’s having a good day - that is, pretty much every day before George died, and few days since - Shaun is a pretty laid-back guy. He’ll crack jokes, make light of dangerous situations, and generally be a goofball. He likes adventure and the rush of adrenaline he gets risking your life by poking things that want to eat and/or kill him - it's driven him to do some very stupid things, but nothing stupid enough to actually get himself killed. He cares about people close to him, he’ll run interference for them if he can and they need it. He used to flirt with the cameras and play off his good looks for ratings, but that’s something he’s dropped entirely because of losing George.

Georgia and Shaun’s relationship probably would’ve been called “co-dependent” and “unhealthy” pre-Rising, but for them, it was the safest thing they had. They trusted each other utterly, loved each other more than anyone or anything, and always knew that they had someone who had their back. Their relationship appeared, on the surface, to be two close siblings, mostly because they generally avoided public displays of affection, especially if the Masons were around. To anyone who knew them personally for any length of time, they were shockingly close, and those who were closest to them (their tech wizard Buffy and Georgia’s close friend Mahir specifically) could definitely put together the pieces that the reason George and Shaun weren’t interested in dating was because they had each other. Their relationship did have a sexual component, though it wasn’t the most important part. Shaun loves Georgia, end of story, and while he might not broadcast their relationship, and they might take steps to keep their privacy about it, if it’s brought up, he’s not going to deny it. Any protests of “but she’s your sister” will be met with a shrug and pointing out that they’re not actually biologically related, and that they were raised more as rating props for the Masons than anything else. Any further protests or claims that it’s disgusting and wrong will probably end with Shaun’s fist in someone’s face.

George is the most important thing in the universe for him, and losing her broke him. They always knew that one day Shaun was going to die poking things with sticks, and Georgia was going to be an only child, and they’d both come to terms with that idea. But even in his worst-case scenarios, Shaun had never actually given thought to a world without Georgia and him still alive. Losing his world when she died left him pretty much completely unable to cope, and it wasn’t long after her death that he started hearing George’s voice in his head, talking to him, prompting him when he forgot what he was doing, generally just being George, only… dead and in his mind. He only stopped talking to her once, at the urging of a well-meaning therapist. It nearly drove him to suicide and after about a week he started talking to her again, fired the therapist, and decided that if people couldn’t deal with the fact that he was crazy, they could shove it up their ass.

When they were alive, people tended to assume that George got all the angry and bitter and Shaun was perpetually laid-back and easy-going. And in some ways, that was true, because George handled most everything that needed handling, and Shaun didn’t need to bother getting upset. The truth is, though, that Shaun’s really got a worse temper than Georgia did, he just was able to save his anger for important things. Unfortunately, after losing George, that got fucked up to hell - he fell into a state of near-constant low-level anger - anger at the universe and the conspiracy (whoever was involved in it) for taking George away from him. His temper became much harder to control, and bringing up the wrong things or asking the wrong questions could land you a punch in the face. When he’s frustrated, Shaun’ll punch the wall until his knuckles bleed, and it’s happened often enough over the past year that he has some scarring on both hands.

Shaun mostly gets up in arms over safety, when he’s not angry at the universe in general. Following safety protocols, not taking unnecessary risks. Of course, his idea of “unnecessary risks” is different than most, because he used to poke zombies with sticks for a living, in a world where many people would consider being a journalist at all an “unnecessary risk”. But there are things you don’t do. You don’t focus on anything but your surroundings if you’re in an unsecured area. You don’t hang out in dangerous areas alone. If there’s a chance someone’s infected, you have a gun trained on them until you get a clean blood test back. He’s gotten more careful since George died - though that’s not saying too much, he had to be blackmailed into even just a kevlar vest in the past - because he doesn’t want to die before he gets a chance to at least kill the bastard who shot George with the hypodermic full of live KA. Preferably the entire conspiracy, too.

While he is angry and distressed over the revelation that George could very well have recovered from amplification, had he not put a bullet in her spinal cord, he doesn’t really struggle with feeling like he killed her instead of whoever induced her amplification. Oh, yes, he put a bullet in her when she might’ve recovered, but that’s what you do - and even if he hadn’t, the CDC had already gotten her positive blood test results and would’ve killed her regardless. At least he was the one to do it. That’s what family’s for.

Shaun doesn’t have any real specific fears aside from “not getting the bastards who killed George” - his deepest fear used to be something bad happening to George, but he didn’t really believe it would happen - or at least if it did, it would be happening to him, too. The most terrifying moment of his life was a time a zombie spit a mouthful of blood in Georgia’s face when they were in the field, but when the escaped and got a blood test done, it came back clean. The second most terrifying was a time he went out with some other Irwins (and not George) and he got scratched, drawing blood. He really thought he was dead, but when they got to safety, his blood test came back clean. After that, he went home and just clung to George, shaking and trying not to cry from fear, adrenaline, and relief. She never asked what happened, and he was always glad for that. With George in the Wood and back in his life (once he grasps that she’s not a hallucination), he will be terrified that he’s going to lose her again. Life without George was hellish for him, and if he has a chance to have her back, he’s going to hold on to that with all his might - losing her a second time might break him completely.

Shaun’s not always the brightest crayon in the box - he can deal with problems you can solve by hitting or shooting, but beyond that he’s a little out of his element. He doesn’t have much scientific knowledge, and it’s hard for him to follow conversations or information that’s based in statistics or science or something similarly academic. He’s slow to reach conclusions that even the Georgia in his head comes to, sometimes. It’s not that he’s unintelligent, it’s just that he’s not scientific-minded or book smart. He’s not used to tracking down, understanding, and presenting facts, he’s used to tracking down, understanding, and presenting zombies that he pokes with sticks on camera.

He’s similarly thick when it comes to people, in some ways - one of the girls on his team has been all but throwing herself at him for months, and he’s completely missed it. Given how young they were when he and George started the more physical aspects of their relationship (the summer they turned 13, George started it - she always had to be the first to do anything except zombie-poking), and the fact that he never wanted anything relationship-wise other than George, Shaun never learned how flirting actually works - he can do the fake, “look, aren’t I amazing?” flirting that he did for ratings, but it wasn’t real - any time a girl tried to get flirty with him, George would make her go away, and he never had to bother about it. He doesn’t know how to recognize actual interest in someone else if it’s not outright stated. He’s better at reading other signals, thankfully - anger, frustration, sadness, joy. But anything relationship-wise is going to be very skewed by the fact that it’s never been something he’s had to even think about, much less pay attention to.

The last really important thing to know about Shaun is that he’s come more than a little unhinged since Georgia’s death a year ago. He has a sort of incarnation of Georgia in his mind, that he talks to and can sort of feel there even when she’s silent. Whether this is entirely his own mind having cracked or if it’s something a little more unbelievable and KA related is not clear, though everyone in his universe (Shaun included) assumes he’s just crazy. For all intents and purposes, however, this voice in his head is Georgia, snarking, fussing, advising, noticing things he doesn’t and putting things together before he does. He’s just the only one who can hear her. He regularly responds to her audibly, though he generally tries to downplay it when he’s around other people. He can also, as shown by an incident shortly before he came to the Wood, be pushed into a brief, mild psychotic break, where he has a full auditory, visual, tactile hallucination of Georgia. This has only happened once so far, but he has been recently put under a great deal of stress and the Wood will cause even more, so it’s possible he will have more of these hallucinations in the future. If presented with a real, actual Georgia he will probably cease to have these hallucinations, because they were really only a coping mechanism for him to survive and not kill himself in a world where George is dead.

History:

In 2014, the Kellis flu and the Marburg Amberlee filovirus (see note at end of app), the cures for the common cold and cancer, met, mutated, and bound together to form the Kellis-Amberlee virus. With the virulence of the original Kellis flu, the mutated virus quickly spread to all mammals on the planet. This was not noticed as much as it should have until people started going into amplification. Those that died after being infected with this “beneficial” combination of viruses came back to life, and anyone whose own blood came in contact with the live version of the virus (through a bite, mucus membranes, or spontaneous amplification) joined them.

The Rising had begun, and George Romero fans everywhere began the process of protecting themselves and spreading information. While the mainstream news denied there was a problem, bloggers around the world were shouting that the dead were rising. While news stations reported a possible outbreak of some sort of epidemic, bloggers were sharing videos and tips and stories about how to stay safe, how the zombies could and couldn’t be killed, how the infection was transmitted. In America, it only took a few days for the CDC to get tired of no one official doing anything and taking matters into their own hands. Humanity survived the Rising, but some things would be forever changed. Blogging became a legitimate news source (as no one trusted the news corporations anymore), guns became common even among young people, the CDC became one of the most powerful forces in America, and the dead walked among us, chewing on any of the living they could get their hands on.

Early in the first rising, an academic couple - the Masons - lost their young son to the first case of animal-to-human infection. It turned out any mammal over about 40 pounds could amplify, which meant they could pass on the live infection to any other mammal over 40 pounds. Or, y’know, just rip them to shreds and eat their flesh. Rover? Suddenly not something you want sleeping on your kid’s bed at night. In the wake of their son’s death, the Masons began blogging. Stacey Mason became one of the first (and most well-renowned) “Irwin” bloggers, named for Steve Irwin because of their main draw: the fact that they made videos of themselves going out and poking zombies with sticks. Michael Mason, on the other hand, became a “Newsie” - dedicated to reporting the facts as removed from opinion as possible. And then, in either a misguided attempt to heal from the loss of their son, a ratings stunt, or some bastard mix of both, they adopted two orphans who had lost their respective parents to KA.

For those following at home, that would be me and my sister Georgia. The Masons declared that they would give their children as close to a pre-Rising childhood as they could. We lived in an un-gated neighborhood, we had various pets that were below the amplification threshold, we went to the zoo when ratings were low. When we were five, George developed retinal KA (see note), which didn’t change much from our point of view, except that now George had to use special lights and wear sunglasses all the time.

If we were ever more than an elaborate ratings stunt or photo props to the Masons, that stopped being the case after a few years. By the time we were old enough to really process what they did and why, we realized that they really didn’t care, as long as they could use us now and then for a ratings boost. We learned to go with it, and in high school, when George decided she wanted to go into journalism, it wasn’t really a hardship to follow along - she was obviously Newsie material, but if it gave me an excuse to run around poking things with sticks and putting my hand in holes and being awesome on camera, I was with her all the way. Besides, my whole life it’d always been a matter of “Where George goes, thus goes my nation”. We were all the family we had, whatever the Masons might think about their relationship to us, and we were going to stick together. When we turned 18, we got our first licenses and started our blogs. We realized pretty quick that we needed someone on the tech side of things - neither of us were particularly good at those sorts of things - and that’s how we met Buffy. She was one of our best friends (and probably the one who knew the most about us), and she kept us well-geared as far as cameras and recording devices went.

Five years later, we had a nice little gig going. We were blogging on the largest Bay Area news site, we had our van fitted out pretty much perfectly, and we had rushed Buffy through her qualifications to get a higher level license, that would let her into higher hazard zones and would allow the three of us to apply to be part of the press corps that would follow one of the presidential hopefuls, Senator Ryman, on the campaign trail - the first bloggers to ever have the honor of being part of an official campaign. Amazingly enough, we were picked. We all-but-immediately started up our own site (After the End Times), hiring on some beta bloggers and getting ready for the trail.

Lots of things happened on the campaign trail. Attacks, loss of life. The night the senator won the primary, his oldest daughter was killed when the horses at his wife’s family’s ranch went into amplification, and she saved her younger sisters from the same fate at the cost of her own life. Ryman took his former opponent for the Republican nomination, Governor Tate, as his VP running mate. We found out that the amplification of the horses was caused purposefully, indicating some sort of conspiracy, or at least an attempt at getting Ryman to drop out of the race. Buffy sold us out, thinking she was doing the right thing, and it got her killed when a sniper took out the tires of our van. Got us nearly killed, since someone called the CDC before we’d even crashed, telling them we’d all gone into amplification. The conspiracy basically consisted of people wanting the people of our country to stay afraid, because as long as the country was afraid, these conspirators could stay in power. And Tate was in the thick of it.

George finally took the information she’d managed to get to the Senator. Shortly after which we(me, George, and a Newsie we’d picked up on the campaign, Rick) were almost blown up, and instead managed to make it to the safety of our (repaired) van. Except that we didn’t all make it safely. The same sort of hypodermic dart full of live KA that had caused the Ryman horses to go into amplification had been shot at us as we ran for our lives, and whoever shot it hit George. We sent Rick off to upload things, back up servers, and save his skin. I stayed in the van with George as she wrote her last blog post, a postcard from the Wall (a list of everyone who died because of KA directly, complete with the bloggers’ last post). She included everything that we found as a download, begged people to download it, read it, share it even though it could technically be considered treason to do so. And then, when she felt herself slipping, I put a bullet through her spine at the base of her skull.

Tate, when cornered in the banquet hall in front of everyone, admitted to guilt, had a huge super-villain monologue moment, and then stabbed himself with a hypodermic of live KA. So I put a bullet in his head. It was both immensely cathartic and nowhere near enough.

I stepped down from being the department head of the Irwins after that. I stepped down from being an Irwin at all, really. I provided content still, and I pretended to step into George’s shoes as far as administration went, but that was honestly mostly handled by George’s old second-in-command and replacement, Mahir. I coped. Badly. For a year.

Oh, and I heard my dead sister’s voice in my head and talked back to her. I went along on field assignments sometimes, to keep an eye on things from the van. I refused to make a proper return to the field. And then, almost a year exactly from when George had been fucking murdered, a (reportedly) dead CDC doctor, Kelly Connelly showed up on our doorstep with strange information about reservoir conditions like George’s retinal KA, and the death rates of people with those conditions compared to those of the general population. This was followed shortly by someone dropping a bunch of zombies off on our roof and then firebombing our neighborhood in Oakland. We barely made it out, and we lost a good man in the process. Some more cross-examining provided us with a scientist to go to who would be able to understand and expound upon the Doc’s information and research, and we ended up in the underground, illegal lab of Dr. Abbey, who had done immense research into reservoir conditions. She had managed to induce a bunch of reservoir conditions in a large English Mastiff, and rendered him immune from amplification. I’m not a Newsie, I’m a bit slower on the uptake than George is even when she’s in my head, but one of my people got the truth out of Doc Kelly - If I hadn’t shot her, George would’ve gotten better.

A mild psychotic break and chat with my dead sister later, I got more details (only 2 in 10,000 can fight off the live KA infection, there was only an 80% chance that George actually would’ve gotten better, the CDC would’ve killed her anyway), and it seemed like the best way of getting more information about all of this, and how much the CDC in general knew and was hiding, was to go to the nearest CDC office and interview their director.

Except that when I stepped out of Dr. Abbey’s mad science lab, instead of being in Oregon with my team, I was in a fucking fairy wood.

First Person Sample: In which George lodges a complaint and Shaun thinks he's bantering with a hallucination. (Also his entire history section. -_-)
Prose Sample:

Don't be an idiot.

Shaun sighed, and ran a hand over his face. He had Maggie's living room all to himself, for the moment, and was trying to take stock of what he'd managed to save from Oakland before the firebombing. "I'm just looking at what I've got, George," he muttered.

Which is why you've surreptitiously laid out your body armour and weapons so they can be put on quickly and with a minimum of fuss? Georgia asked from the back of his head, and he could almost hear the way she'd have her eyebrow raised, poking over the top of her sunglasses dubiously. He glowered at the box of bullets for Becks' rifle, since he couldn't glare at the voice in his head. Sneaking off would be idiotic and end in you getting killed before you find out what the hell's going on.

"I wouldn't get ten feet trying to sneak out," he pointed out, though he hadn't really thought of that until that moment. "Maggie's ninja security guards would be all over me." He deflated a little and pulled the black box out of the back, setting the ammo aside. He'd wanted to get out while everyone was sleeping - sneak off to deal with the shit that was going down by himself, so no one else would get killed. He wasn't sure if he'd be able to handle it if he got anyone else from his team killed, even if it meant being stupid and getting himself killed.

It's better this way, Georgia said quietly as he fiddled with the pair of her sunglasses he kept in the black box. You can't do this alone. They're in this whether they want to be or not, and it's not your fault.

“I know,” he whispered and put George’s glasses back in the box. He needed to clean up his mess before Becks came in and realized what he’d been trying to do.

Special Notes, or A Brief Primer on Kellis-Amberlee (mostly copied with permission from shotofdumbidea):

[Note: Here be spoilers for Deadline. If you care, DO NOT READ THIS SECTION.]

Kellis-Amberlee is a combination of Marburg Amberlee, originally designed to cure cancer, and the Kellis flu, originally designed as a cure for the common cold. In its normal, dormant form, Kellis-Amberlee still does both of those things - no one in Georgia's world gets colds or cancer anymore. It's airborne, as contagious as the common flu, and once you have it, you have it for life - it just stays in the body, waiting.

It's the live version of Kellis-Amberlee that causes a problem. When someone infected with KA dies, the virus amplifies and becomes "live", taking over the host and turning it into... well, a zombie. The virus only has one purpose: to spread itself, which it does by getting its bodily fluids onto open wounds or mucous membranes of living humans. Mostly, this involves biting any living mammals they can reach and bleeding on people if they manage to injure it without killing it, although fresher zombies with fluids to spare have been known to spit and vomit to spread the infection.

When a living human (or, in fact, any mammal over forty pounds) comes in contact with live Kellis-Amberlee, they will then amplify and become a zombie as well. This usually happens within thirty minutes to an hour, but rate of amplification depends on a number of factors, probably most important being body weight, and heart rate at the time of the bite, but as soon as a person is bitten, they become contagious and should not be touched, even if not yet fully amplified. Early signs of amplification include dry mouth and throat, dilated pupils, loss of motor control and sense of pain, confusion and disorientation, and finally the death of the conscious mind, shortly followed by trying to eat your face.

There is no cure for Kellis-Amberlee, and ordinarily, there's no way to stop or reverse amplification. However, in some cases, those who come in contact with very small amounts of live Kellis-Amberlee (usually before they are large enough to amplify) will kennel off the virus in one specific part of their body - it's still live, but it does not send the body into amplification and zombification. These reservoir conditions (like Georgia's retinal KA) teach the body how to fight live Kellis-Amberlee when it encounters it again - not always, not perfectly, but in two in ten thousand cases, someone with a reservoir condition who undergoes amplification can recover. Georgia was one of those two in ten thousand. And though he doesn't know it, because of an unheard-of contagious immunity between them, Shaun is basically immune to amplification as well.