February 2012

So we’re having a ‘blood party’ now. I don’t know if this is like a West Coast thing or what, but I’m not going to question it.

Zhou apparently got some drugs in him and some blood out of him. Really nasty new stuff I guess. Well, we can try and figure out what’s in it.

I got the mini-centrifuge from my portable analysis kit going with the messy blood sample that they brought back from the coffee shop. In the meantime, while Raahi takes a more professional blood sample from Zhou, I spent some time making up a better centrifuge. I’m pretty sure Zhou wasn’t using his dishwasher anyway. Or his tuperware. Or that blender.

But it works really well now! And according to my calculations, one of the bearing assemblies actually counteracts friction which…honestly I’m not sure how that works, but I’d bet the labs would like to see it.

We let that thing run for awhile while Zhou ranted on like a varsity linebacker. Eventually, the blood seperated out into a bunch of different layers. We grabbed samples of each and ran them through the analysis machine. Once that threw up an error, we decided to go play with the fancier toys that Vulcan has in an attempt to figure out the deal with this drug.

We got there at about 2AM. The guard welcomed us in, turned on the building’s HVAC for us, and generally made sure we had what we needed. I will pretty much never get used to that.

So, after awhile of putting samples into the spectrometers and other neat machines, we figured a few things out. Zhou’s blood looked normal. However, the weird blood that also seperated out contained a bunch of weird extra salts, denser plasma, and other things that didn’t quite look human. At this point, Ceasaigh had an idea, and we analyzed some of this giant blood they got when I was captured by that Ken dude. Turns out it matched up pretty closely with it. Not exactly, but enough to tell us that this drug isn’t exactly natural.

Ceasaigh wondered if this drug may have been responsible for the crazy partiers who trashed his roommate’s former place. I was about to leave with them when Raahi got a text urgently calling him to a specific address. I chose to go with him instead, as Ceasaigh and Zhou can take care of themselves pretty well.

We drove off to Kirkland to check out that address. Remembering my hip flask and thinking this was as good a time as any, I took a hit off of it. And got some really weird inspiration.

To the confused Indian man in the doorway, I told him I was there with Vulcan to discuss his daughter Lakshmi’s education. And he, in surprise, let us in.