Age: 25
Birthday: December 21
Gender: Male
Category: School Staff
Class: Head librarian, Korean language teacher
Appearance Description:
There isn’t much to look at when it comes to William. He isn’t very tall at all, standing at a mere 5’6” (167cm) and dwarfed by most of his family, who seem to stand at least 5’11 (180cm) each, including all the girls. He’s sort of gangly, having been on the cusp but never quite losing that awkward skinny figure he’d acquired during his teenage years. Though he runs around a lot and tries hard to work out, genetics just never allowed him to gain any muscle. There’s also a tendency for him to stress starve himself, contributing to the fact that if you grab him around the chest, you’d probably get poked with a rib.
His hair is plain black, kept clean and neatly cut short at all times. Stroking it back is the norm, as he thinks it just contributes to a more professional look and his parents had always taught him to keep himself tidy. His eyes are your standard brown, framed by thick black glasses, and his skin is pale without any irregular blemishes to take note of most of the time. His clothes might stand out a bit, consisting of very formal, starched and ironed suits, dress shirts and pants. The craziest it seems to get is if he switches his tie out to a bright colour.
Overall, William is the sort who would go completely unnoticed amongst a crowd, and not just because he’s below eye level.
The man always looks worried about something or another, his brow furrowed even if there’s nothing overtly wrong. He’s got a bit of a nervous twitch on top of that and it looks like he’s shivering, making it extremely obvious when he’s anxious (which, in truth, is just about all the time).
Personality Description: If William could be summed up in his entirety in a single word, it would be “anxious”. He’s always trembling like he’s scared about something, even if everything seems to have gone right. He just has an extremely nervous personality, and for a fair reason.
William is a carrier of a virus that produces results similar to becoming a zombie. One of the side effects of having this virus is constant intrusive, prevalent thoughts of harm. Without the virus itself, it would be something akin to Harm Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The severity of it only made it harder and harder for him to seek help. With more common types of OCD, a person’s brain becomes obsessed with an action or a particular thing, such as cleaning, or doing something repetitively and in a specific manner. In William’s case, he experiences intrusive, disruptive and unwanted thoughts of harming those he cares about. They’re ego-dystonic, which means they are generally inconsistent with his morals and beliefs. This makes it all the worse for him, as he doesn’t want to harm a single thing, but his brain will not keep telling him that he does or should.
In turn, he lives with a constant fear and guilt that weighs on him. They always chewed at what hurt him the most; he rarely has these thoughts about strangers, but of family members, friends or just those he cares a lot about. He’d be in the kitchen cooking with his mother, pick up a knife and have a sudden urge to stab her with it even if she’d done nothing to deserve it. He is aware that these thoughts stem from his infection, but it’s still hard to separate the logic and the sheer, gut-wrenching emotional agony it causes him.
He fears a failure in his composure. One day, he fears he might just be overwhelmed and push someone into traffic, or his infection will flare, he will lose consciousness and he’ll wake up only to find everybody else infected, too. The worst is suicide; he is terrified that at some point he might just lose all his senses of self, his willpower will fail, and he will put a gun to his head.
William is extremely submissive because he just doesn’t want conflict to arise and would just bend over to anyone who so much as hints at opposition. He doesn’t want to lose that tenuous grasp he has on his thoughts, and even if every part of him screams that he shouldn’t want to harm anyone at all, they are relentless and invasive and he’s terrified he might just give in.
Because of this, he tries his hardest to keep his life in check. Everything needs to be in order, and everything has its place. Chaos and disorganization only muddles the mind and with it come even worse thoughts. His clothes are neatly pressed and ironed, his hair is always combed back and clean, he’s always on time and his personal agenda rules his life. To everyone else, his anxiety is caused by his lack of flexibility. To him, it’s a comfort he clings to.
The effects of the virus aside, William is actually a rather gentle person. He treats objects and people in general very delicately because he’s been raised to understand all things as precious and valuable, even if not to himself.
He’s respectful, albeit rather meek, even to those who are technically below him. After all, how much lower can you get than wanting to kill everyone you love? He’s mindful of how he acts and is extremely hesitant to so much as shake someone’s hand, let alone kiss or get intimate.
Powers: Infected - William (Gore Warning):
Low-Moderate: William looks mostly like what he would day to day… minus the fact that he seems to suffer from frequent nose bleeds. His skin becomes very pale, almost translucent and cool to the touch, and his eyes also seem to partially glaze over and become watery. If one looks closely, there would also be a little blood in the fluid in his eyes as well. He seems to maintain higher functions, though he becomes more reclusive. Intrusive thoughts become more frequent. Most people would think he’s just hit with the cold or flu. This stage is the most frequent and he will often go back to normal after a couple hours.
High-Very High: The bleeding becomes more obvious. It’s a somewhat frequent trickle from his nose, his eyes are bloodshot; every time he blinks he seems to be “crying” blood and his saliva is tinged pink. He has trouble with some fine motor skills at this point and he trips and stumbles a lot. His skin is ghostly white and the veins underneath become more obvious, while being icy and sensitive to touch. The intrusive thoughts are now disruptive and extremely frequent. Though he can still work at this stage, he will more likely than not hide away until it passes.
Severe: William could pass for a walking murder victim. He’s bleeding from most of his orifices now including eyes, nose, mouth and ears. Even his pores seem to develop little droplets of blood that seep up from his pale, lifeless skin. He looks like he’s bleeding more than his body contains. His eyes were clouded even though he can still see. Strangely enough, his motor skills go back and even become better than normal, as does his hearing and sense of smell. The intrusive thoughts are more or less overwhelming at this point, though he still remains lucid and will fight the urges. His speech is limited, but he can still form semi-coherent sentences.
Extreme: For the time being, this remains to be seen. He would barely resemble himself at this point; what’s left of the flesh that he hadn’t torn off would be covered with an infected… something. Just don’t touch it. The William that everybody had known would’ve been trapped in the back of the mind at that point, fully aware but screaming to be let out as the infection takes control and does what it wants. He will be extremely keen at this point, his hearing, sight and smell elevating to inhuman levels. William becomes rather fast and strong as well, despite the state of his body. His ability to vocalize is restricted to screeches, howling and chittering while spraying the infectious fluid. He will try to spread the infection through any means possible until he reverts back to normal.
Infected - Others
William is always infectious, whether his infected form is currently dormant or not. His infection spreads through bodily fluids such as blood and spit, though simply ingesting it won’t make the person sick. If anything gets directly into a person’s bloodstream, however, the virus will begin to take over.
A person will go through the low-moderate, high-very high, severe and extreme stages one by one and will display necrosis parallel to the carrier’s, albeit faster. Unlike William, however, each stage is not reversible. When the victim reaches the high-very high stage, William will become mentally linked with them and be able to telepathically communicate with them, though the communication itself is nonstop and often maddening on both ends. He can influence the things that the victim does at this point, though it isn’t mind control.
Unfortunately, unless an antidote is found or the person proves to be another carrier, being infected is a gory death sentence, indiscriminate of species. The virus cannot infect those that are already dead, however, as it cannot propagate in tissue that isn’t alive.
A person will go through the low-moderate, high-very high, severe and extreme stages one by one and will display necrosis parallel to the carrier’s, albeit faster. Unlike William, however, each stage is not reversible. When the victim reaches the high-very high stage, William will become mentally linked with them and be able to telepathically communicate with them, though the communication itself is nonstop and often maddening on both ends. He can influence the things that the victim does at this point, though it isn’t mind control.
Unfortunately, unless an antidote is found or the person proves to be another carrier, being infected is a gory death sentence, indiscriminate of species. The virus cannot infect those that are already dead, however, as it cannot propagate in tissue that isn’t alive.
Biography:
William was born into a somewhat well off family, the youngest of three siblings. This pretty much guaranteed that his childhood was cushy and borderline spoiled had his parents not maintained a strong work ethic and instilled it in their children. William showed promise since he was a child, though it was probably because his parents bore down on the Song siblings to excel in school. For all intents and purposes, he was perfectly normal.
When William was ten years old, he became very sick. It seemed to come down onto him overnight, going from a happy, active and curious child to one that barely had the energy to get out of bed. Round upon round of doctors yielded no results; all they could tell his poor parents was that it was some sort of yet to be identified degenerative disease. William was lethargic and couldn’t keep food down, his muscles seemed to atrophy at an alarming rate and his speech slurred. Within a few weeks of the first symptoms, he began to suffer from cardiac distress; his heart couldn’t handle pumping blood through his veins anymore.
Attempts to alleviate his symptoms were useless. No medications seemed to work, no amount of therapy made him responsive again. Mr. and Mrs. Song were understandably distraught; their youngest child was dying in front of their eyes and the best doctors couldn’t do a thing about it. At that point, as any loving parents would, they’d try absolutely anything.
That ‘anything’ came from a kind-hearted doctor who saw their plight and quietly referred them to a research team. William wasn’t the only person with symptoms; there were quite a few people affected by the same mystery disease, and one research team was trying an experimental procedure that may have been a cure. William’s parents, left with no other options, signed him up.
A series of treatments soon followed and, much to their surprise, the patients began to get well. Over the course of the experimental run, a total of five years, each of the five initial patients was ‘cured’ slowly but surely and sent back home. William was the last to leave as he had been among the sickest, but he was once again a healthy and happy boy when he returned to his parents.
Mostly happy. The thoughts had started. Thoughts of killing the ones he loved, of pushing friends of bridges and stabbing his siblings. They crept up slowly over the next few years, slowly but surely. They seeped into his dreams, causing him to wake up in a cold sweat. They grew more violent, more realistic in his head and he sometimes found himself planning. The idea that he wasn’t normal came along very early. By the end of his first year after treatment, he’d already thought of harming all his friends in various violent manners and became very nervous and jumpy. His teachers and parents noticed that he’d constantly ask if the person he just interacted with was okay, or if he’d hurt them inadvertently in any way.
Three years came and went.
Then he got sick again. This time it was different.
William began to get frequent nosebleeds and his skin felt cold to the touch. He’d get better. Then he woke up one morning, his pillow soaked in blood from his nose and ears, and his eyes bloodshot. He was ‘crying’ blood and swiftly sent to the hospital… where he seemed to get better with zero intervention. After the whole hospital gave a collective shrug, he was sent home and his family told to monitor him.
A year went by without further incident aside from nosebleeds and cool skin, so William began to do normal things again.
He was having dinner at his then-girlfriend’s house at the time when he suffered another one of his nosebleeds. He promptly excused himself to the washroom, but seemed to disappear for quite a while. Sent by her parents, she went to see if there was anything wrong.
She was so shocked by what she saw that she only screamed when William came after her. The washroom was splattered in blood and William himself was soaked in it. His skin had turned paper white, the only colour being the veins that webbed underneath. He looked like something straight out of a gory horror movie. He launched himself at her, sinking his teeth into her arm.
Her parents came to help her, both of them being bitten in an attempt to restrain him until the proper authorities arrived. He was put into isolation at the hospital and for forty eight hours, he seemed to spew more blood and gore than his body was capable of holding. He broke the restraints meant to handle people several times his strength.
But he got better, just as he had the last few times. One morning the doctor checked on him and he was sleeping on the bloodied bed, his skin restored to normal, his eyes clear. He seemed to have suffered nothing. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for the poor girl and her family. Over the next few days they, too, displayed William’s symptoms. The only difference was they never got better and quickly died.
The cause of his infection was traced to a virus, and then back to the experimental treatment he received as a child. The dangers he posed were obvious, despite wanting to do no harm. The four others who had gotten the same treatment were rounded up and they were all labelled “carriers” of the virus.
He was kept in isolation for a couple years, the system unwilling to let him wander the streets. He displayed symptoms again and again, each time gaining a tiny bit more control but never in full. The nature of the virus itself didn’t allow for it, and it was theorized that he could get a lot worse. However, he had gotten far enough in keeping lucid enough to isolate himself when there was a flare up.
That was when the hospital on Manta Carlos contacted the hospital he was currently staying at. They said they might be able to help, that they had the room and resources to try and find a cure.
And just like that, he was sent halfway across the world to a place that promised they could help him.
William tries to remain hopeful.
Additional Information:
Despite his condition, he was allowed to work at the school because the relative tedium and familiarity of his given tasks help him remain calm and supress any flare ups. Korean is his mother tongue, so speaking it is soothing and the rhythmic pattern of language keeps him level headed. He stared as just a librarian, but his dutiful persistence in his work quickly saw him to the lead position. Again, the quiet of the library and the monotony of cataloging books help him keep calm.
