Welcome to Gaia! ::

Mistral couldn't see anything spectacular about the cells under her microscope, but she'd only just begun looking at them. Their mysteries, she was confident, would reveal themselves to her in time. A different focal length, some specialized dye, and the cellular properties of transcendence markings would become clear.

Across the room, she heard Camlann retching again. Mistral looked up, fixing the knight with a concerned look. "That's the fourth time since we've been here," she said. "If you were feeling sick, you should have asked for a rain check. I would have said yes."

It was difficult to conduct an experiment when your subject was pausing every ten minutes in order to be violently ill, after all.

"Seriously," she said, "I'm worried. Did you have some bad sushi or something? Should I take you to urgent care? Because the nearest one is like forty-eight million miles away but I could Mapquest it."

Mistral frowned. At least her immunocompromised little head could breathe a sigh of relief - if Camlann had been sick for a month and no one else had caught it, he probably wasn't contagious, and she wasn't about to go spewing her very delicate guts all over everything.

On the other hand, knowing what privileged information she did about Camlann's medical history... well, his symptoms rang certain alarm bells in her head.

"I'll wrap this up," she said. "The samples will keep, and I have plenty of other test subjects available to me." If all else failed, she'd just pressgang Babylon into service.

"Camlann," she said, trying to maintain an air of no big deal as she packaged up the slides for storage. "Have you considered that you could be pregnant?"

Mistral blanched - she didn't realize she wasn't supposed to know that. "I - I did your paperwork," she said, "for your civilian identity. To make sure everything was official." Or as official as any one person could make it, anyway. She dreaded the day someone caught on and investigated her activities. Twenty-five to life would be generous.

"Irinei's passport was issued for an, um, earlier name," she said, shoving the slides into a refrigerated drawer in her lab bench. She pulled off her rubber gloves. "I've only discussed it with Nick," she said. "To make certain you got your prescriptions, since with your memories being caught in the lurch you might not remember you were supposed to take anything."

Well, Nick and Finn, but that seemed irrelevant. Mistral only wanted to prove she'd had Camlann's best interests in mind, after all.

"But if you're sure, then forget I said anything," she added, crossing the room to him. She glanced into the wastebasket and considered whether she ought to direct its contents to the incinerator or bag it up and dispose of it on Earth - letting it stew for the next two weeks was hardly an option.

Mistral pulled the liner out of the can of sick and tied it off, and then offered her other hand to Camlann. "Fortunately," she said, "There is a very easy way to rule out the possibility, and it costs about eight dollars at Walgreens. My treat, since you've been such a good sport."

It was the least she could do for someone who was having as bad a day as Camlann.

Especially because she'd just made it considerably worse.