It's Never Lupus.

[Hank McCoy]

"Well, Miss Rozanov... or do you prefer Tereza?"

Doctor McCoy is pacing in front of Tereza's cell, holding a tablet in one hand.

"I really must thank you for your cooperation in this."

[Tereza Rozanov]

"Not a ton of choice in the matter. Something's wrong and I'm kind of stuck until we figure out what." She adjusts her position on the bunk. "What do you need me to do?"

[Hank McCoy]

"I'm going to need you to stand in the left rear corner of that cell, facing outwards."

"I don't much like these automated collectors, but we had them installed after a few incidents."

[Tereza Rozanov]

"Okay," Tereza says, moving to the indicated position. She's doing her best not to be fidgety, but it's hard with the energy building again.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"They work perfectly fine. I'd install them in the infirmary if people weren't so squeamish about a machine drawing their blood." Ashlie comments from where she's standing behind Dr. McCoy.

[Hank McCoy]

"They lack a bit of bedside manner, at the least."

The doctor taps a few things on the tablet and a cuff emerges from the wall, wrapping around Tereza's arm. It constricts for a moment to make her veins easier to find, then is followed by a smaller mechanism emerging and a brief prick before it begins to draw blood.

[Tereza Rozanov]

Tereza's fist clenches up when the stick happens and she blinks away a bit of yellow from her eyes. "Not too bad," she says, covering up the reaction.

[Hank McCoy]

"Thankfully we don't need as much as we might have in the past. The new testing machinery is very efficient."

[Tereza Rozanov]

"It's comforting that you don't need to bleed me dry," Tereza says with a half-smile.

[Hank McCoy]

"Believe me, Miss Rozanov, we don't take any pleasure in this," he says as the arm and restraint retracts, regarding things on his tablet.

"This is... interesting," he murmurs, looking intently at something.

[Tereza Rozanov]

Tereza rubs her arms, though there's no trace of the needle puncture. "Good interesting or bad interesting? Or just interesting interesting?"

[Hank McCoy]

"Your endorphin levels are steadily rising, and your serotonin is much higher than I would have expected. There's also some anomalous hormones here that haven't shown up on any of your prior testing."

[Tereza Rozanov]

"Any of those hormones the sort of thing that would make me sprout fur and go canine?"

[Hank McCoy]

"Hormones don't do that."

"Well they do, but it's usually a far more gradual process. Certainly, I wasn't always this good-looking," he jokes.

"But... now that you mention it, these... do seem far more like canine hormones than human ones. We usually only see this in shifters."

[Tereza Rozanov]

Tereza sits on the bunk again, "Well, I was apparently bitten by someone I assumed at the time was a canine shifter. I would assume differently now, given what I've been through, but apparently that's not a thing." She glances at Ashlie.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"It's likely her ability to infect others is part of her mutation. If that is the case we should make sure she's apprehended so she can't do this to anyone else."

[Hank McCoy]

"It's going to take some work to see if there's still a pathogen in your blood. I'm not seeing anything obvious at the moment, which is a bit baffling. This has integrated into your bodily systems alarmingly well."

[Tereza Rozanov]

"So I guess I get to sit in quarantine in the Hotel Holding Cell until you get this figured out," she says with a resigned tone, picking at a stray bit of mattress fluff.

[Hank McCoy]

"I'm not certain that's strictly necessary. This doesn't seem to be airborne, or the cell's sensors would have picked that up."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"But can we risk her transforming in the dorms?"

[Hank McCoy]

"I should think this is one instance in which we're uniquely prepared to ease a feral shapeshifter back into the student population."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"While that's true, a telepath couldn't calm her. We'll move her to the Danger Room for the night and see if she transforms again."

[Hank McCoy]

"That's all I'm suggesting, Headmistress. It's a transition, not a catch and release."

[Tereza Rozanov]

"It's good to know I haven't reached wild animal status," Tereza says, crossing her arms.

[Hank McCoy]

"Miss Rozanov, I think you know I have only the utmost sympathy for you here. We all go through changes, and not all of them are easy."

[Tereza Rozanov]

"How many changes like this are imposed by someone else?" She takes a deep breath, apparently to steady herself, "She calls herself Isolde, by the way, and she mentioned Würzburg, Germany. Her physical description should be in that report I filed when Shane and I encountered her."

[Hank McCoy]

"I'm sure if there's any record of her, the Headmistress can zero in on it."

"As for the cause of such changes, external sources are more common than you might think. And sometimes... sometimes we only have ourselves to blame." He sighs.

[Tereza Rozanov]

"It's just a lot of sh... stuff to deal with when there was a lot of stuff there already."

[Hank McCoy]

"It almost never waits for when you're ready," the doctor says with a sympathetic tilt of his head.

[Tereza Rozanov]

"I guess not. You'll let me know as soon as you find something?"