A brunette MILF...?

You stared, perhaps more than you should've, and the fact that you were standing there, all 6'3" of you, you towered over the diminutive stature of your father who played an outsized role in making your childhood a living hell. The intensity of your stare, coupled with the stunned look on your face, told your father both that he had been right, that you would not have recognized him at all, and scared him, that you indeed did not recognize him at all. "Maybe this was a mistake..." he began but you reached out faster than he could turn and grabbed his wrist.

"W-Wait, you're not going anywhere. Not until I know what the hell is going on here." You turned and noticed a few people starting to look at you two, especially the sight of you grabbing onto an apparent woman's hand and holding her while she looked scared and a bit frightened. "Let's go and talk there."

Your father didn't resist as you led him to a smaller private lab off the lobby and once you entered, you turned on the lights and closed the blinds. A few more checks to turn off the cameras in the room and ensuring that the recording equipment was off and secured, you then turned and looked at your father. "Well?"

"...Look, I'm sorry, I don't know how to beg..."

"No, not that," you raised your hand. "You said you were infected?"

"Oh, right," he seemed a bit dejected at your stopping him from telling what he had undoubtedly rehearsed but you didn't want to hear it, you weren't ready (and a big part of you doubted you would ever be ready to hear it.) "I was diagnosed about 3 months ago. The symptoms were mild, at least in the beginning, but I saw the other...people around me who had it. I didn't want to become like them so I've been trying to avoid it as much as possible..."

You blinked in surprise and then shook your head. "Despite all the warnings against that?"

"Yeah..." he was quiet for a moment. "Then it started to get worse. I became hot, then hotter, nothing I drank would help and dizziness, fainting spells...I got them all."

You pulled out your phone and placed it on the counter before you rummaged through the drawers spread throughout the room. Your father watched you silently before you found the small portable kit that was kept in each room as a precaution. When you returned, he looked at it and then at you. "You know, for a graduate of MIT, you are really quite fucking stupid," you growled at him as you pulled his sleeve up and secured a band around his slimmed arm. You didn't say anything about the poor definition (or lack of definition, actually) for the man now standing and wincing under your care and treatment. If you weren't so bloody professional, it would be hilarious.

Too bad Harvard Med did that to you.

"The infection causes your body to need it, the more you deny, the more potent the demand is." You stuck the needle into his arm and drew a quick vial sample before you pulled it out and stuck a small cotton ball over the entry and gauzed it quickly. Turning, you placed the vial into the machine, hooked it up, and pressed your phone to begin the scanning program. "You don't do anything, you die. It's as simple as that. The fainting, dizziness? That's your body losing its grip on reality. Soon, you'll be dead. Very simple."

The silence meeting you told you that it was something your father already knew so you weren't exactly whistling in the wind. You felt the frustration boiling up but instead, you just kept your eyes on the screen. A few moments passed before the readout came back and you shook your head. "Goddamn it." You ran the numbers again, a few more moments, and when the same results came back, you sighed and turned to look at your sheepish looking father in the face. "Why the fuck did you wait so long?"

"I-I couldn't...there's no one that is able to help me, not where I am. I ran the names, I did everything I could..." He began to sway and you instinctively steadied him and helped him onto the stool in front of you. "No one is officially a badge holder, not for the levels that I need. My numbers? I wouldn't get any benefit from those that were around me. So I looked up possible badges that could help me..."

"...I'm one of the highest."

He nodded. "You're actually the highest in the area." The man was silent and so were you. "Listen..."