AN: Well, here we are at chapter 10! I couldn't have done it without you guy's support, and just by reading the story. Don't forget to review; ask questions, leave suggestions, or anything you feel is necessary.

Chapter 10

"Morning," Rick announced to the group as he stumbled into the cafeteria, clutching his forehead.

"Are you hung-over?" Carl asked with a smirk. "Mom said you'd be."

Rick sat down, pouring himself a glass of orange juice. He grabbed several strips of bacon, placing them on his blue plate with a slice of toast. "Mom is right."

"Mom has that annoying habit," Lori said with a smirk. Leah smiled too. The mother looked at the redhead, giving her a nod of thanks from the events with Shane during the previous night.

"Rick," the redhead said from his side. "In the rec room last night, I didn't give you alcohol."

"What?" he asked.

"I gave you soda," she told him.

Rick tilted his head. "Why?"

She tapped his forehead. "So Lori wouldn't wake up in a puddle of your vomit," she joked. "You were already on the verge of a bad hangover."

He shrugged, drinking from his glass of orange juice. "Hey, Lori," he began. "Did you know that Leah was a Catholic?"

"No I did not," the mother said.

T-Dog emerged from the kitchen with a silver frying pan filled with eggs. "Eggs," he shouted. "Powdered, but I do them good."

Jacqui smiled, gripping Glenn's boney shoulders as the young man gripped his temples. He moaned at T-Dog's shouting. "I bet you can't tell," the older man said. "Protein helps the hangover." He scooped a pile of eggs onto everyone's plate.

"Where did all this come from?" Rick asked as he attempted to open a bottle of jam.

"Jenner," he wife said as she took the bottle, opening it with ease. "He thought we could use it. Some of us, at least."

She looked at Glenn, shaking her head at the man's insolence.

"Maybe we should make some Bloody Mary's later," Leah said before spooning a mouthful of eggs into her mouth. Suddenly, toaster went off from the kitchen. Leah sprung up, returning with a small plate of two toaster waffles on it. She placed them in front of Carl, who took to spreading jam on them.

"Thank you," he said as Lori began to cut the waffles for him.

"No problem," Leah insisted, sitting back down.

Glenn let out a loud, suppressing groan. "Don't ever let me drink again," he mumbled.

"Hey," Shane said from the door. He sat down at one of the tables, trying to hide a large scratch on his neck.

"Feel as bad as I do?" Rick asked.

"Worse…"

Lori hid her face. "What the hell happened to you?" T-Dog demanded once he spotted Shane's scratch. "Your neck…"

"I must have done it in my sleep," he lied.

"Never seen you do that before," Rick concurred.

Shane shook his head. "Me neither. Isn't like me at all."

Lori's face turned beat red as Shane gave her a hard stare. Once Jenner entered the kitchen, everything went down hill. He sat down at the table, gathering a pile of eggs. He spread ketchup on the yellow, puffy substance, and took a small first bite.

"Doctor," Dale said. "I don't mean to slam you with questions first thing—"

"But you will anyways," he sighed, accepting a cup of coffee given to him by Jacqui.

"We didn't come here for the eggs," Andrea told him.

"Finish breakfast," he said he took another bite of his food. "Then we'll talk.

XXX

The group gathered in the lab, lounging around as Jenner turned on the large screen on the wall.

"Give me playback of TS-19," he told Vi.

"Play back of TS-19," she sang. The screen flickered with bright colors, showing diagrams of the human head, cells, the brain, and many more aspects of the body, with general research information.

"Few people ever got the chance to see this," Jenner said. In the center of the screen, a head appeared, revealing the brain.

"Is that a brain?" Carl asked.

"An extraordinary one," Jenner said. "Not that it matters in the end… Take us in for E.I.V."

"Enhanced internal view," Vi announced. The screen flashed to a side, horizontal view of the brain. Blue lights flickered as the camera dove into the center of the brain.

"What are those lights?" Shane asked.

Jenner sighed. "It's a person's life—experiences, memories… It's everything," he told the group. "Somewhere in all that organic wiring, all those ripples of light, is you—the thing that makes you unique. And human…"

"You don't make sense," Daryl asked, "ever?"

"Those are synapses," Jenner said. "Electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says, does, or thinks from the moment of birth, to the moment of death."

"Death?" Rick asked. "That's what this is? A vigil?"

Jenner nodded. "Or rather the playback of the vigil."

"This person died?" Andrea gasped. "Who?"

"Test Subject 19," Jenner told her. "Someone who was bitten and infected… And volunteered to have us record the process… Vi, scan forward to the first event."

"Scanning to first event."

The brain stem turned a dark purple, and several of the synapses darkened as well.

"What is that?" Glenn asked.

"It invades the brain like meningitis," Jenner explained. "The adrenal glands hemorrhage… The brain goes into shutdown. And then the major organs." After the test subject began moving, the brain turned black, and the subject froze in place. "And then death… Everything you ever were or ever will be… Gone."

Andrea hung her head. "Is that what happened to Jim?" Sophia asked.

"Yes," her mother said. Andrea broke down in tears, hiding her face from the doctor. However, he saw her.

"She lost somebody two days ago," Lori told him. "Her… sister."
"I lost somebody, too," Jenner told the distraught woman. "I know how devastating it is… Scan to the second event."

"Scanning to second event."

"The resurrection times vary wildly," Jenner said, crossing his arms. "We had reports of it happening in as little as three minutes. The longest we heard of was eight hours. In the case of this patient, it was two hours, one minute… seven seconds."

Suddenly, bright red glows resonated through the brain stem. The light began spreading.

"It restarts the brain?" Lori asked.

"No, just the brain stem."

"How is any of this possible?" Leah questioned. Jenner sighed.

"It's complicated… The stem just gets them up and moving."

"But they're not alive?" Rick asked.

Jenner beckoned the man forward. "You tell me."

"It's nothing like before. Most of that brain is dark."

"Dark, lifeless, and dead," the doctor told him. "The frontal lobe, the neocortex, the human part—that doesn't come back. The you part. Just a shell."

The test subject began snapping at the air. "Driven by mindless instinct…"

A flash went across the screen, shooting through the patient. The red disappeared, and the subject stopped moving.

"What was that?" Carol asked.

"He shot his patient in the head," Andrea said. "Didn't you?"

He ignored her. "Vi, power down the main screen."

XXX

Jenner's eyes filled with tears as he loomed over the beautiful picture of his wife. Her perfectly curled auburn hair shimmered in the sunlight, and there was happiness in her eyes.

"I did the best I could in the time that I had," he said to the frame. "I hope you'd be proud of that."

He set the photograph back down onto his desk, covering his eyes with his hands as he sobbed. Wiping his hands on his pants, he grabbed his I.D. card, staring down at the lab from his office window. "We always think there's gonna be more time," he sighed. The power shut off, and the doctor smiled. "…Then it runs out."

He pulled on his coat, exiting his office. He filtered through hallways, even the one where Rick's friends poured out into the hallway, asking frantic questions.

But he ignored them, so they followed him to the big room. The lights in the hallway shut off. "Zone 5 is shutting itself down," he simply said.

"What the hell does that mean?" Daryl demanded. "What do you mean it's shutting itself down? How can a building do anything?"

The men rushed into the lab, meeting up with the others.

"Jenner," Rick growled. "What's happening?"

"The system is dropping all the nonessential uses of power," he said. "It's designed to keep the computers running to the last possible second. That started as we approached the half-hour mark. Right on schedule… It was the French."

"What?" Andrea asked.

"They were the last ones to hold out as far as I know," Jenner told her. "While our people were bolting our the doors and committing suicide in the hallways, they stayed in the labs till the end. They thought they were close to a solution."

"What happened?" Jacqui questioned. "The same thing that's happening here. No power grid… Ran out of juice. The world runs on fossil fuel. I mean, how stupid is that?"

Shane lunged after the scientist. "Let me tell you—"

'To hell with it, Shane," Rick said. " I don't even care. Lori, grab our things. Everybody, get your stuff. We're getting out of here now!"

The group rushed to the doors, but the blaring sound of alarms stopped them.

"Thirty minutes to decontaminations," Vi sang.

"What's goin' on?" Daryl shouted.

"Y'all heard Rick!" Shane ordered. "Get your stuff and let's go!"

The doors to the lab suddenly shut, trapping the group inside. Rick pounded on the doors.

"Did you just lock us in?" Glenn demanded. "He just locked us in!"

"What do we do?" Leah asked, grabbing Rick's shoulder. "He's going to kill us!"

Carl ran to his mother, sobbing into her stomach.

"You son of a bitch!" Daryl screamed as he went after the doctor. "You son of a bitch!

Shane pulled the pissed redneck away from the doctor. Rick came to the doctor's side. "Hey, Jenner," he said calmly. "Open that door now."

'There's no point," Jenner said. "Everything topside is locked down. The emergency exits are sealed."

"Well, open the damn things," Dale barked.

"That's not something I control. The computers do. I told you once that front door closed, it stayed shut. You heard me say that. It's better this way."

"What is?" Rick spat. "What happens in twenty-eight minutes?"

The doctor turned his back to the frantic father. "What happens in twenty-eight minutes?"

"You know what this place is?!" Jenner snapped. "We protected the public from very nasty stuff! Weaponized smallpox! Ebola strains that could wipe out half the country! Stuff you don't want getting out. Ever!

"In the event of a catastrophic power failure—in a terrorist attack for example—H.I.T.s are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out."

"'H.I.T.s'?"

"Vi, define."

"HITs—high-impulse thermobaric fuel-air explosives," she said, "consist of a two-stage aerosol ignition that produces a blast wave of significantly greater power and duration than any other know explosive except nuclear. The vacuum-pressure effect ignites the oxygen at between five thousand and six thousand degrees Fahrenheit and is useful when the greatest Loss of Life and damage to structure is desired."

"It sets the air on fire," Jenner said with a smile.

Leah shoved his chest. "You can't tell me you want this," she demanded.

"There's no pain," he simply said. "Just an end to sorrow, grief… Regret. Everything…"

Daryl marched over to the doors, throwing an empty wine bottle at the glass. The bottle shattered. "Open that damn door!"

"Out of my way!" Shane shouted as he sprinted through with an axe. T-Dog chucked Daryl a second, and he joined the ex-cop at the door, grunting as they swung the axes.

The two children cried. The women were too shocked to do anything.

"You should've left well enough alone," Jenner said. "It would've been so much easier."

"Easier for who?" Lori asked.

"All of you," Jenner told her. "You know what'd out there—a short, brutal life and an agonizing death."

"If we wanted this," Leah began. "If we wanted to die, we would have done it during the damn outbreak!"

"But you wouldn't have to lift a finger now," Jenner said. "You wouldn't have to pull the trigger, or swallow the pills… It would be quick—what was your sister's name?" he quickly asked Andrea.

"Amy," she said.

"Amy… You know what this does. You've seen it," he told her. He looked at Rick. "Is that really what you want for your wife and son?"

"I don't want this!' he said emphatically.

"We can't make a dent," Shane sighed.

"Those doors were built to withstand a rock launcher—"

"Well, you head ain't!" Daryl screeched as he swung his axe at the doctor. Dale snatched the axe. It took all the men to push him away.

"You do want this!" Jenner exclaimed. "Last night you said you knew it was just a matter of time before everybody you loved was dead."

"He didn't mean for this," Leah spat.

"Then what did he mean, huh? The doctor shook his head.

"You really said that?" Shane asked. "After your big talk?"

"I had to keep hope alive, didn't I?" Rick challenged.

"There is not hope," Jenner said. "There never was."

"There's always hope," Rick argued. "Maybe it won't be you, maybe not here, but somebody somewhere—"

"What part of 'everything is gone' do you not understand?" Andrea scoffed.

"Listen to you friend," Jenner told him. "She gets it. This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event."

"This isn't right!" Carol croaked. "You can't just keep us here."

"One tiny moment—" Jenner said. "A millisecond… No pain."

"My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this!"

"Wouldn't it be kinder?" Jenner asked. "More compassionate to just hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run down?"

A gun cocked, and Shane rammed his shotgun into the doctor's face, screaming, "Open that door or I'm gonna blow you head off!"

"This is not the way you do this," Rick told Shane. "We will never get out of here."

"Shane," Lori said. "You listen to him."

"He dies, we all—"

Shane gave an animal like shout, going on an utter rampage. He shot at the computers. Sparks flew everywhere. The group ducked for cover. Rick and Shane wrestled as the man shot out an entire light fissure. Rick knocked him to the ground, prepared to smash the butt of the gun into Shane's face.

"Are you done now?" he demanded. "Are you done?"

Shane glared at him. "Yeah, I guess we all are."

Rick handed T-Dog the gun. "I think you're lying," he said to Jenner.

"What?"

"You're lying about no hope. If that were true, you'd have bolted with the rest or taken the easy way out. You didn't. You chose the hard path. Why?"

"It doesn't matter," Jenner mumbled.

"It does matter," Rick insisted. "It always matters. You stayed when others ran. But why?"

"Not because I wanted to," the doctor sighed. "I made a promise… To her. My wife."

"Test Subject nineteen was your wife?" Lori asked.

He nodded. "She begged me to keep going as long as I could. How could I say no? She was dying… It should've been me on that table. I wouldn't have mattered to anybody. She was a loss to the world. Hell, she ran this place. I just worked here. She was an Einstein in our field. Me? I'm just… Edwin Jenner. She could've done something about this. Not me."

"Your wife didn't have a choice," Rick said. "You do. That's all we want—a choice. A chance…"

"Let us keep trying as long as we can," Lori pleaded.

Jenner rubbed his face, sighing. "I told you topside's locked down. I can't open those."

He wandered over to a keypad. He swiped a card across it, and entered a code. The screen flashed a bright blue, and suddenly, the doors flew open.

"Come on!" Daryl shouted. The group sprinted up the catwalk to the hallway as the clock on the wall counted down, with only four minutes, thirty-one seconds left.

But Andrea stayed behind…

"There's your chance," Jenner said to Rick. "Take it."

"I'm grateful," he said.

"There will come a day when you won't be," Jenner sighed. He clasped Rick's hand in his, pulling Rick in. He moved his mouth to Rick's earlobe, whispering a heartbreaking secret. Rick stood in shock when the doctor finished.

Lori pulled her husband away, and they ran from the lab.

"Let's go," T-Dog said as he dragged Jacqui with him. She pulled away.

"I'm staying," she said. "I'm staying, sweetie."

"But that's insane!" T-Dog cried.

"No," Jacqui smiled. "It's completely sane. For the first time in a long time. I'm not ended up like Jim and Amy."

The group watched with sad eyes as the woman turned around, walking to Jenner. The doctor held out his hand, and she clasped it in hers.

The living beings ran down the halls. Dale stayed in, wandering to Andrea.

"I'm staying, too," she said.

"Andrea, no," Dale sobbed. Rick and Shane stood at the doors, waiting for the elderly man. "Just go!" he told them. They hesitated before pulling away.

They rushed into the lobby, flying through dark stairwells. The group members quickly retrieved their bags, coming to a halt in the vast room.

"I can't get the doors open!" T-Dog shouted. Daryl and Shane swung at the glass with their axes, but the glass didn't even crack. T-Dog tossed a chair at the windows, but the chair bounced off.

Shane shot at the glass.

"Rick!" Carol said as her eyes lit up. She rooted through her purse, pulling out the very same grenade he had collected from the tank in Atlanta. "I have something that may help."

"Carol, I don't think a nail file is gonna do it," Shane concurred.

She ignored him, handing the sheriff the grenade. "Your first morning in camp when I washed you uniform, this was in your pocket."

"Look out!" Rick ordered as he positioned the grenade. The group ducked for cover. Leah pushed Lori against a wall, sandwiching Carl between them.

Rick's hands shook as he pulled the needle from the grenade. Once he realized what he had done, he swore to himself, and ran for cover. The impact of the explosion sent him flying.

But the glass shattered. The group gathered themselves and their possessions, jumping out of the hole. Walkers growled, having been attracted by the explosions.

Shane and Rick shoot at them, knocking the creatures to the ground. They ran across the grass, tripping over dead bodies and their own feet. But they were free.

The slammed into the vehicles, piling into their own. The Grimes family settled inside of the RV with Glenn. As the redhead ran for cover, Glenn shot out, pulling the older woman into the Winnebago. She panted, shuffling up to the driver's seat where Rick sat, searching for the keys.

Once he found them, he started the engine. "Wait!" Lori called. "They're coming."

Rick looked at the gaping hole in the face of the CDC. Andrea rolled on the grass, and Dale helped her up. They smiled, sprinting across the dead bodies.

Inside the lab, Jacqui and Jenner watched the group as they entered their vehicles. They watched Andrea and Dale. "They got out," Jenner said. Jacqui smiled, wiping her tears.

In the last ten seconds before the explosion, Jacqui grasped Jenner's hands. They held onto each other, waiting for death. The gave each other a sad smile.

Rick honked his horn as Dale and Andrea approached. They fell to the ground, hiding behind sandbags. "Everybody get down!" Rick shouted to the members inside the RV. He lunged from his chair, shoving his family, Glenn, and Leah into the kitchen of the RV. They bunched onto the counters, clutched onto each other as the CDC erupted in flames. The grass shook, as did the trees, and the vehicles. Fire flooded the yards, blowing up tanks, discarded vehicles, and melting corpses.

A cloud of black flooded the sky. The group inside the RV slid off the counters, staring at the rubble in shock. Dale and Andrea stumbled inside of the Winnebago. Leah clutched Andrea, pulling her into a large hug. The woman hugged her back, and the caravan pulled out of the smoking rubble, this time, one member short.