A young woman opens the door, the bags under her eyes betraying her calm demeanour. "Yes?" 

She is immediately concerned - doctors being sleep deprived isn't exactly unusual but it's not good for anyone. Still, it's not really something to be brought up so soon. 

"Hi, I'm Erin Newark, I just got into town and thought I'd come in to make sure everything is settled here so I can start on Tuesday." 

The woman brightens immediately at that, relief clear on her face. “Oh! Doctor Newark! They told me you were coming this week, but I didn’t think- please, come in!”

She stands away from the door to allow Erin in. 

In she goes, "Don't worry about it, I know I'm here a few days early! Has it been particularly busy around here lately? I got the impression that more doctors were rather needed here, but couldn't find much information on why." 

The woman is happy to turn her computer monitor to face Erin, the name in the top right being Dr. Yenna Braska. “An accident at a local laboratory two weeks ago. Some kind of infection. People have been turning up with complaints of severe joint stiffness, muscle spasms-”

Yenna flops into her desk chair. “We can’t find a source, and there’s too many cases for it to be merely sports injuries. That’s why we’ve been so glad that you were coming!”

"A local laboratory? Have they released anything about what they were studying?"

Yenna shakes her head. "Apparently it's very top secret. Shows you that the military cares more for secrets than it does for human lives." 

"Well, we already knew that." Sigh, "I'll see what I can do. All that lab work experience has to be good for something." Maybe there will be something helpful in her parents' house, as well, though she has some doubts about that - they've always been very careful about sensitive documents.

"True enough, though it is a hard lesson to keep relearning." Yenna clicks over to a couple of other documents, and then prints all of them out. "Here. It's not much, but if there's anything in there you can see that we've missed, that would be something!"

She takes them, glancing over the first few lines on the top page before slipping them into her bag, "Thank you, I'll look through them and let you know if I notice anything." She looks her over, gaze catching on the bags under her eyes, and her concern compels her to ask, "How long have the shifts been, lately?" 

Yenna gives her a rueful smile. "Too long. But the town hasn't seen an influx of patients like this before."

"Is there anything I can do to help now? I have clean scrubs in the car, and unpacking can wait. Assuming the paperwork has gone through..." 

"Things are quiet, for the moment. A few people are staying under observation. We have your number if we need to call you in?"

"Absolutely, any time you need me." 

Yenna's smile is grateful. "Thank you, Dr Newark. I'll see you Tuesday?"

"Yes, I'll see you then." And she'll see herself out, as well. 

The hospital, while little more than just a large doctor's office, is as much of a hive of activity as it was when Erin walked in. As she goes through the halls, she can see the very few staff tending to rooms of full beds. Most people look okay, for the most part, aside from the odd jerking motions of their limbs. 

Strange, and concerning. Erratic movements like that... she doesn't like what they imply about what this infection is doing to the patients' nervous systems. 

Well, the sooner she gets to her parents' home, the sooner she can look through those papers to see if there's anything she can do about it. 

This in mind, she heads out to her car.

There's a few people in military dress standing around, in small groups, armed. They look like they're monitoring the streets. 

However, life seems to be going on around them, people walking by, shops are still open. 

Erin does her best not to stare as she drives by. Armed military literally in the streets, what is going on in this town. And it looks like people are fairly used to it, too. 

Her parents' house is on the clifftop, in the wealthiest part of town. They've always been partial to the elegant and extremely large, which is not something she's looking forward to dealing with. She'll need to pay for a maid service if she doesn't want to spend all her time off just keeping the place clean, she expects. But it would be quite wasteful to buy her own house here if she's not going to be staying long-term. She heads up the cliff and through the neighborhood to the correct address. 

The house is there, just like it always was, but looks strangely lonely, up there on the clifftop. 

She can see her closest neighbour watching as she drives past, his unnaturally wide grin pressed close to the window. 

Um. 

Well that's... creepy. Creepy is the right word for it. She watches him out of the corner of her eye and then keeps glancing at him in the mirror as she drives past. Maybe he's high on something? 

His eyes follow her, widening, until he's pulled away by a harried, scared looking woman.