#zone sickness

Zone Sickness: An illness assumed to be caused by the toxic nature of the Zones and those exposed to it become ill over time. But actually is a crafted design by BL/ind.

Beyond the cannon concept of radiation and breathing issues due to what has happened to the world after the breakdown of society, this is considered a more intense degree.

Zone Sickness stems from an engineered 'safeguard' built into children born in Battery City. It is a tampering of the genes that BL/ind does during pregnancy through injections in the mother that installs a trigger in the child.

This trigger is maintained by the medication given out in the city; though BL/ind claims the pills are for mood and to ward off radiation, they are to a point, the main purpose to them is to stall the breakdown of cells programed into children.

If a child grows up and becomes a part of society in the city they can expect to live so long as they are physically fit to do the work expected of them, once they become physically damaged or aged to the point that they cannot serve their purpose their medication is changed and the buffers are removed. They are still given the pills to keep them calm and happy, their dose is increased so that they are numb to the effects of the sickness that then set in and kills them by breakdown of healthy cells. They are also dosed with medication to speed up the process, since the nature of the sickness varies from person to person.

Before the final stage of the sickness victims are taken back by Bl/ind to avoid public awareness of the illness and are housed in special complexes set up like hospitals but only staged as such; people are simply housed in vast rooms filled with beds and left to expire to avoid wasting resources or staff to tend to them.

The fact that the symptoms are so vast, and the other medication convinces a victim's mind that nothing is happening, it has never been discovered that BL/ind is carrying out genocide in subtle degrees.

And since children born in the city who leave for the Zones know to expect the environment to be harsh and dangerous, and they often die too early by wounds before they show many symptoms, the disease remains unknown beyond some speculation that Battery City kids seem to be a bit weaker than those either born in the Zones or who are old enough to have been born in the time before Battery City.

For the kids born in the city and turned Zonerunner, if they live out their first few years, loss of their buffering medication triggers the sickness. It can manifest at a time rate that varies between people and is connected to other genetic factors; it can show as fast as months or take as long as years to show.

The symptoms too are varied, which makes it hard to pinpoint the sickness as a disease; most everyone misses the connection simply because it's impossible to make the jump to all the stray signs of illness connecting to a single sickness.

The signs can be any range of illness; from coughs and sneezing, cold chills or overheating, rashes or itching in the beginning; basically it can manifest in nearly every sort of basic sign of sickness known. But the latter stages tend to go a somewhat common route; there is organ failure of various systems in the body, any organ or system can become victim to this. Often the lungs and digestive system are the most common, as is the neurological system causing madness, numbness in body parts and even paralysis in extremities.

Lose of senses is common in the latter stages, gradual weakness of vision the most common, but it is possible for any sense to die; sight, hearing, smell or even touch.

The final stages manifest in breaking down of immune systems and the blood itself; victims will lose the clotting factors in their blood systems. The mind too at this point has degrading to weakness; madness, extreme emotional states, and delusions are common.

The body itself, robbed of the ability to function by the shutting down of blood flow to the digestive system cutting off the ability to process nutrients and the failed clotting factor, shows in physical exhaustion and extreme hunger constantly.

Death comes in the form of starvation both on a physical and cellular level; no amount of ingesting food edges off starvation because the body can no longer gain anything from food with a dysfunctional system and blood cells no longer carry oxygen to the body correctly.

Victims bleed out; often with fits of stomach heaving that results in emptying of pooled blood in the digestive system as well.

To date no person has lived long enough in the Zones to have died from Zone Sickness, they have shown symptoms up to the midpoint stages but by then they're already physically weak and are picked off by Dracs.

Exterminators specifically are trained to look for Zonerunners that hail from Battery City to destroy so that the illness is not discovered yet; BL/ind intends to destroy Killjoys born outside the city's genetic tampering, then when there are only Zonerunners with ties to the city remaining they will abandon their efforts to conceal the sickness and allow the infected Zonerunners to expire without having to spend energy hunting them.

While it varies in how fast it shows, Zone Sickness is buried in the genetics of every child born in Battery City, and likely residents born in any city elsewhere run by BL/ind, and it is always fatal without the buffering medication.

There is no cure, there is no treatment ultimately, there is only a stalling of the process with the medication; a child who undergoes the genetic alteration will fall to the disease if the buffers are removed.

Those who are off the pills for a time and begin to show signs of the sickness can return to the medication and have their sickness stalled at the point where it was discovered, but they will always have the existing symptoms; there is no going back to a fully healthy state once the illness has begun to progress.

How it relates to Static: Having been born in the city, his mother went through the treatments and he does indeed have the sickness. His has yet to manifest beyond the occasional headache or bout of nausea from time to time, he is in the first stages currently.