Kelly didn't do anything but go along with the suggestion.  Walk and talk was an excellent idea in her estimation.  She described to Maytag the symptoms, especially the injuries without apparent causes, and the issues her patients had.

"I'm overwhelmed.  Look, I'm a self taught hack when it comes to medicine, I have a thimbleful of actual competence.  I can clean wounds, I can suture, I know just a little bit about internal medicine, but it's the nearsighted leading the blind.  This is beyond me.  It's too many patients, and I'm suffering from the same malady as the people I'm trying to help.  It doesn't work."

A flicker of confusion flashed across Dean's face before it hardened again.  His jaw tightened, eyes narrowing.  Suspicion turning to aanger.  The syker began to stand up from the little camper bed, "If a skinny has you, you don't escape."  Dean looked up to the cyborg at the door, a challenging look, "I'm getting a little put off by your not answering my questions, dead man."
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:05, Thu 05 Aug 2021.

Prudence struggled painfully to turn and sit up to get an eye on the interaction, "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry...  But why on...ow...why on earth should that mean it is not real..." She said Harry, but she was looking at Dean.  Which likely makes it all less helpful.

Maytag listened carefully to the description of the injuries and....how they were gotten, "Well...  I'm not saying it all makes sense to me, but I'll sure do what I can."

Robert, the Reefer Man himself, jumped in with a question as they got closer to the Black Dog, "So...  It happens when people are trying to sleep?  But not every time folk sleep?  Hmmm..."  He started pulling odds and ends out of a satchel he'd brought with him.

"Yeah, if you're looking for sense, you won't find any here.  Harry's been trying to crack it.  I tried something different the last time it happened.  I appreciate you coming to look, I don't think we can take this much longer.  The problem is, every time it beats us down a little more, and we're that much worse off for the next episode."

I.e. it has put us on the Savage Worlds wound treadmill where penalties lead to failed checks leading to bigger penalties until you eventually fail the roll not to die and I'm not nearly a good enough healer to stave it off lol

Turk shook his head in concern, tight lipped, "Yeah.  Harry told us some about the problem before...  Sounds like its getting worse.  If sleep is involved, Bud has some pills that'll keep you from worryin' about sleep at all for a while.  Useful at times...but not for the long haul, savvy?  Maybe some time to get ahead of whatever it is."

"That's right. You don't." Harry says firmly. He kicked up the electronic growl of his voice box, too. "The Skinny grabbed you. Did something to you. And yet, here you are. If I'm not answering your questions, there's a damn good reason for it. So sit your ass back down, Sargent, while we try to suss out just what it is that's going on."

((OOC: Going to try to intimidate Dean into sitting back down at least until Kelly arrives with help. he has absolutely no idea what to make of Prudence's statement, so he's just going to file that under "keep watch for now" and keep his attention on Dean.

19:16, Today: Rusty Harry rolled 11,6 using d8+4,d6+4, rerolling max with rolls of 7,2.  Intimidation.

Thankfully, Fletcher's device cleared all my fatigue, so currently I'm fine, but yeah, I worry about not being able to keep ahead of things in the long run while we figure everything out.))

"Oh I savvy, I'm not that clueless about medicine.  But we might not have a choice, I don't think we can keep doing this.  It's like..."  Kelly looked for something to compare it to, and came up with the obvious.  "It's like pit fighting every day.  It doesn't matter how good you are, if you do it every day injuries compound sooner than later."

She pondered this aloud.  "Maybe if everyone but me took one..."

Fletcher was about to interject when Harry seemed to just sort of somehow fill the small trailer in a way that made Fletcher want to be anywhere but here.

The fact he was growling at Dean was about the only thing that kept his work boots where they were and not beating a real fast rhythm for the door.

So, quietly the mechanic waited to see what Dean was about to do.  He'd heard a lot of rumors about Sykers, which meant he had no idea what Dean was capable of if he decided he really was not liking Harry at the moment.

Dean's eyes widened at the tone.  He even flinched back a bit.  Then training seemed to kick it.  Emotions locked down.  Expression blanked.  The former Psychic Legionnaire settled calmly back onto the bed and turned his eyes front.  Looking at the other wall of the camper.  Or at least in that direction.

Pru flinched back as well, even if she wasn't the target of it.  Something about a mass of dead flesh and metal taking a commanding tone tends to put folk in check.  She muttered, "Shit...  wrong Harry..."

Syb did everything she could to be uninteresting, small, and unnoticed in her spot on the floor between the cots.  This camper suddenly felt very...very small...

Turk looked like he wanted to ask about the mention of pit fighting, but had been out in the wastes long enough to know you didn't ask.  Folk wanted to talk, they talked.  He stayed focused on the issue at hand, "Why not you?  Seems like you need to be just as sharp?"

Turk, Kelly, Reefer...Robert, and Maytag were close enough to the Dog now for words.  So Turk used some, with volume enough to get attention, "Hey Harry!  Your crew here says you got injured,  Brought help."

"Hey call them again, I don't know if they heard you."  Kelly couldn't help herself.  She also took the opportunity to dodge the question.  "Now where are my erstwhile helpers..."

That was a rare thing for Kelly, she normally didn't use fancy pre-War words like erstwhile.  Generally didn't know many of them.

Harry nods as Dean retakes his seat, feeling rather shitty for having to go the "angry dead man" route. He sighs with relief when he hears Turk calling out. "Back here, Turk!" he shouts. "Door's not locked!"

He keeps his gaze on Dean as he moves to allow folk to get past him. "Sounds like the Cavalry's here. Let them give you a look over. Once you've been treated, we can discuss all the weird shit that's been going on, and I'll tell you what I know about the situation. Sound good?"

He suspected that whatever was happening with Dean, this wasn't part of his original tour of duty on Banshee. His hypothesis was that whatever had happened that day had happened to the Syker who'd been grabbed by the Skinny. Maybe it had planted some sort of psychic parasite in them. Then the poor bastard had gotten back to Earth, died around Dallas, and their ghost had been hanging around looking for something to latch on to before finding...Dean? The Dog? A group of people with enough mojo to sustain it? He still wanted to contact The Driver and see if he'd detected anything weird, it just had never seemed like an opportune moment to do so.

Dean stays very still and very quiet.  Just sitting.  Staring.  Waiting patiently, as ordered.

With Harry having cleared the way, Maytag squeezed into the little camper.  He looks over the three and settled on starting with Prudence.  The problem there seems obvious and she's the furthest from creepy Dean.

Reefer Man climbed up to the little camper.  He made a few more adjustments to what looked to be mostly an old, military grade Geiger counter crossed with a cracked old smartphone, and possibly a microwave.  He first waved the sensor at himself.  It crackled and beeped.  He made a made a few taps on the touchscreen.  Waved at himself again. Crackle-beep. Satisfied, Reefer began waving the sensor probe at each of the Black Dog's crew.  Crackle-beeeeep-beeeeeep.  Tap-tap.
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:21, Fri 06 Aug 2021.

Fletcher moved out of the way to make room for Maytag.

When the Reefer Man started waving around his meter Fletcher looked on with professional interest.

"What wavelengths you tuned in for on that thing?"  He asked.

Kelly kept out of the way but on standby.  The camper was only so big.  She looked around wondering if the others who'd gone out looking had made their way back yet.

Harry, not sure what Maytag is reading for, just keeps observing.

Robert made a few more adjustments before answering Fletcher.  He absently rattled off an odd range of frequencies and modulations, adding by way of explanation, "The Targ Range.  Or so I was told..."  There was a pattern developing in the junker's scanning.  Scan Dean....scan a Dog...back to Dean...  Repeat.  Move on.  Always back to Dean between.

Dean remained creepily motionless throughout, just staring at the far wall.

Robert continued to explain, "We had a syker travel with us once.  Teagan.  Said she served with the Brain Dogs.  Syker experimenters or something.  I asked a lot of questions.  Anyway..."  Crackle-beeeeep.  Adjust, "Sorry.  Anyway, after what Harry told us this morning, I started thinking back to some of what she showed me...  Tracing syker frequencies and such.  Traces get left behind.  And it looks like..."  Adjustment.  Recheck.  "It looks like you folks have all the trace prints of syker influence...  Since you got a Syker around and all, made sense I guess.  But, what's weird is..."  He scanned Dean again, "There's more than one trace signature.  One of 'em is really weird too."  He paused, then looked sheepishly at Fletcher as he admitted, "I mean...  Weirder...  This stuff is all weird, frankly, and I'm not gonna say I really /understand/ it.  But it's that weird one that you all have gotten whammied by."  He nods at Dean, "Except him.  He reads with both."

Fletcher just nodded at the Reefer Man's explanation.

"Figure it's a ghost in the machine then?"  Fletcher suggested.  Wasn't so far fetched an idea given the tractor sitting not too far away from them.

"Maybe needs wetware, not hardware.  'N 'prolly a real specific type too."  He continued speculating.

"Course that leaves the issue a clearin' it out.  Maybe figure out the antiphase for what you picked up, if we can generate it, might do the trick."

Robert considered, then shrugged, "Its possible...  Try to disrupt the signal.  But that'd be a whole other rig to transmit like that."  He paused, looking at Dean with some concern, "And...  I don't know what it'd do to him.  Might cook his brain or something.  How long has he been like this?  Is he talking at all?  He ain't already cooked is he?"

"He ain't talkin' because I put the fear of God into him just before you guys arrived." Harry says. "The way he was talkin' earlier, it sounded like he didn't really know where he was -- seems to think he's still on Banshee and we're part of his outfit." He shakes his head. "Or maybe not his original outfit, but the outfit we keep seeing in this dream." Seemed like everyone was here, so he figured it was time to tell them what he'd gathered. "There was a Syker unit in the dream, wore a black lightning patch. The dream we keep having is of a last stand. This regiment the Sykers with the black patch we're part of took 'something' -- I still ain't clear on what -- from an underground Anouk city, which apparently riled up the whole mess of 'em to chase us down and kill us. It starts looking like the tide might, might turn for a few moments...then this badass Anouk Syker called a 'skinny' shows up, and any remaining resistance crumbles. The last thing I saw before I woke up this time was the Skinny pull Dean closer with its powers, then his eyes go black, and then there's this word...it sounds like someone gargling rocks." He tries to remember the word. "I think it went something like 'GANKANAAR', or leastways that's the best I can pronounce it. I think I heard it the other time, too, only I was already dead in the dream, so I wasn't perceiving much."

He looked over at Dean. "You get all that, soldier? You're Earthside, long way from Banshee."
This message was lightly edited by the player at 05:36, Thu 12 Aug 2021.

Kelly leaned in and offered up her thought.

"I thought we might stop it by refusing to believe in the scenario.  It's easy for me, I have no concept of any of it so it's not real to me.  Too young."  She chuckled.  She didn't feel young.  "That's why I thought drugging everyone but me might be the play, I could just refuse to go along with the scenario and break it.  I tried it last time, but unless everyone is of the same will I don't think it will work, and I don't think Dean can resist it, through not fault of his own.  It's too real to him, because he has the opposite situation.  For him it's more than real."

Dean, for all his stony stillness act, sat up a bit straighter as he listened to the Reefer Man discuss the readings...  And the rest of the discussion...  But something Harry said snapped him out of it again and he turned his attention back up to Harry.  His eyes narrowed, "What was that?"  His eyes narrowed to the dangerous cast again, "What did you say?"

Robert was in the middle of considering all that.  Weird names.  How real is real...  Then Dean suddenly turned and spoke again.  The poor guy nearly dropped his Syko-Scanner in surprise, "Geeze!  Don't do that, man...."

Harry looked at Dean. "Which part? The alien word thing? I said it sounded like someone gargling rocks." he shrugged. "or did you mean the part about the Skinny picking you up and laying some sort of mind whammy on you?"