The light dies away, leaving just an opening into a black, unknown place, but everyone here is ready to choose the unknown over what's out here, I think. And so we move, and we move fast. Rick goes in first. His gun is at the ready. Shane darts around us all, eyes moving from outside to inside as the group makes its way indoors, and he yells for my dad to cover the back. Meanwhile, my feet leave concrete for tile, and my nose brings in a breath that has just a hint of freshness to it, and so I inhale again, deeper, greedily. I stay at the end of the group, by Dad, who keeps his gun aimed outside as he backs in. We all go through a pair of glass doors, and then we're in this enormous, electrically lit space that I would have wanted to yell in back before just to hear the echo. I don't now, but Rick does.

"Hello?" he calls as my dad and Dale close the glass doors behind us, and yes, there is an echo, but it's more creepy than it is cool.

I crane my head up and around. I went on a field trip to a museum once, and this is like that. The ceiling is impossibly high and the wall that supports it is, as I noticed outside, mostly window. The floor tile is patterned with big, funny shapes, and in front of us, built into the wall, is a giant blue sign. It's decorated like a map. "CDC" is in the middle of it, written in blaring white letters.

I swipe sweat from my forehead and cough, either because my lungs are readjusting to clean air or because my throat is dry from all that happened outside. I listen to the sounds of shuffling feet and guns being fiddled with. Everyone is looking this way and that, no one seems to know what to do. My dad still keeps his shotgun up and pointed behind us, even with the glass doors shut, and I realize that those doors won't do too much for too long if enough walkers get to them. And I can see the walkers moving in. We're going to have to close the bigger outside doors, the ones that should be on a garage. But how, I don't know how . . .

"Hello?" Rick tries again, and this time he's answered by the clear sound of a gun being cocked. He and Glenn jerk their own weapons up and aim in the direction the noise came from, which is up ahead, in an unlit corridor. I can see the shape of a man there, standing by a set of stairs.

"Anybody infected?" the man yells.

Rick's gun lowers, just a little. "One of our group was. He didn't make it."

Jim. His name was Jim.

The man comes forward, a little more into the light. He's tall and blonde and still pointing that big rifle at Rick. He doesn't really look mean, though. Scared, maybe? "Why are you here? What do you want?"

". . . A chance."

He keeps moving forward, the strange man, closer and closer to us. But like I said, he doesn't look mean in the face. His eyes are narrowed, studying Rick. "That's asking an awful lot these days."

"I know."

I want to turn to my dad but don't. As the man takes a few more steps to us, his eyes running over our group, I square my feet and look at his face, waiting for his gaze to cross mine. It does and I hold it.

A few more seconds pass. Breathing is the only sound.

Finally, "You all submit to a blood test," the man says. "That's the price of admission."

"We can do that," agrees Rick.

This is when the stranger finally lowers the rifle. "You got stuff to bring in, you do it now. Once this door closes, it stays closed."

The door's going to close. He's going to close the door. Something inside of me relaxes.

My dad and Rick and Shane and Glenn go outside to get the bags from the vehicles, and it makes me nervous, but they're armed, and they run fast and get back soon. T-Dog and Dale close the glass doors once the four are inside again. Bags are handed out. I tug mine, Mom's favorite travelling duffel, from Dad's arm.

"Don't want me to carry that?" he asks.

"Nah."

The strange man's by the wall. He presses what looks like a blown-up version of the keypad to the home security system my Nana and Papaw had. This keypad glows green, and the man talks to it. "Vi, seal the main entrance. Kill the power up here."

Who's Vi?

I watch through the glass as the outside door hisses down and bangs closed, blocking out the walkers, blocking out everything. A loud noise, and then it gets dark, except for a few little lights along the CDC sign.

"Rick Grimes," I hear Rick say.

Dr. Edwin Jenner. That's how the man introduces himself.

We follow the doctor down the corridor he came from, and he stops by a set of elevator doors. I like elevators, and this one is really big – we all fit into it, though it's a little tight. Dad steps into a corner and I lean against him, maneuvering around the crossbow to do so.

The elevator starts to move and my stomach feels like it's floating. I can't tell if we're going down or up, though. After a minute, my dad asks, "Doctors always go around packin' heat like that?"

He means the rifle Dr. Jenner still has in his arms. "Well, there were plenty left lying around. I familiarized myself." The doctor is at the front of the elevator and has to turn to say this to Dad, and he doesn't un-turn after. No, he looks over the group again, and at first I think he might still be worried that one of us is infected, bitten, but all he ends up saying is, "But you all look harmless enough."

I glance at my dad, who's never looked harmless, as far back as I can remember. And half of us in here have guns. I have my knife. But, like Rick said outside, we have women and children. And we all look tired. We all are tired. And hungry.

Dr. Jenner's watching Carl now. "Except you. I'll have to keep my eye on you."

He's joking. Carl smiles, liking the attention. You'd think between his mom and dad and Shane he'd get enough. I don't say anything, I just let my eyes rest until the elevator clatters to a stop.

We file out into a hallway that reminds me of the ones we had back at school, only without the posters and decorations. It's all white, too, so really I guess it's more like a hospital. I think back to the hospital I visited once when my mom's old boyfriend Shawn got into a car wreck, and yes, this is definitely more like a hospital, and I don't really like it, but at least it's cool down here. I'm not sweating so much. And clean air, clean air.

We pass door after door, and Carol asks, "Are we underground?"

Underground? Like a basement? There are no windows. I guess the elevator was carrying us down, then.

Dr. Jenner looks back at her. "You claustrophobic?"

I don't know what that means. Scared of basements, maybe.

"A little," Carol replies.

"Try not to think about it."

Try not to think about it. I know that's not possible, because Mom used to play a game with me – "Try not to think about unicorns, Sydney," she'd say, or something like it, and then I would try and try but the more I tried not to think about unicorns I had to think about unicorns . . .

Farther and farther down the hall we go, and then we cross through an opening into yet another big room. Dr. Jenner actually calls it "the big room" – he tells that person Vi to turn on the lights in here, in the big room, and there's a zapping-bumping sound like you would expect only in movies, and white lights fill the place up. We're standing on a bridge-like thing – though the real floor is only a few feet below us – that leads to a railed and raised circle of very big, very fancy computers.

"Welcome to Zone 5," Dr. Jenner says. He starts to walk down the bridge, to the center of the room and all the computers. Rick follows him, and we all follow Rick.

"Where is everybody?" Rick asks as he walks. "The other doctors, the staff?"

Dr. Jenner turns. He's made it to the middle of the space, and he looks small there. "I'm it. It's just me here."

The bridge has rails on the side of it, too. I reach out and hold one now as the group pauses. I don't know what it means, exactly, that Dr. Jenner's the only one here, but I doubt it can be good. And the emptiness of this place is – Mrs. Gladson, wonderful Mrs. Gladson would say – eerie.

"What about the person you were speaking with?" Lori asks. "Vi?"

"Vi!" calls Dr. Jenner. "Say hello to our guests . . . Tell them 'welcome.'"

"Hello, guests," comes a voice from everywhere. It's in the walls, talking through invisible speakers, and it sounds like a woman, but like a computer, too. "Welcome."

Vi isn't real. Or at least, she's not human. She's not a person we can talk to who can help us or who could have cured Jim or Mom or anyone.

Dr. Jenner stares at Rick. There's a dull note in his voice when he says, "I'm all that's left. I'm sorry."

. . . . .

I don't like shots. I hate shots. And giving Dr. Jenner my blood isn't even a shot – where at least I get healthy stuff poked into my body – it's just him sucking something I need out of me. But I have to do it, it's the price of admission, and apparently we want to be here. So I give the doctor my arm. I let him jab me without flinching, and my dad smiles at me after.

He and I are the first two to get blood taken, Dad and I. When he's done with it, we settle in by the wall. Us and the group, we're in what looks like a classroom – there's a whiteboard at the front and everything, although there are no desks, just the chairs that would be tucked underneath the desks if there were any here.

There's a little metal table by the door, though. Dad lifts me up and sets me there, then comes around and leans forward on it. Our heads are almost level. "You good, Little Bit?"

"Yeah," I whisper as Carol and Sophia go up to give their blood, holding hands. "What's 'claustrophobic' mean?"

I think he chuckles but I'm not sure what for. "Means you don't like being in small places. Or places with no windows."

"Okay." I pause. Rick and Lori are sitting on the floor to my left, so I lower my voice even more. "It's bad that Dr. Jenner's the only one here, isn't it?"

Dad's jaw works. I think he wants to spit. He keeps his eyes ahead. "Don't worry 'bout it."

That's not a real answer. And I am worried, and it's the worst kind of worry, because I don't even know why I'm worried. "I'm just tryin' to figure out what's gonna happen now." This has all gone on so fast. I went from fearing Dr. Jenner – he did have a gun on us – to letting him hold my arm and stab me with a needle, all in just a few minutes, and inside of me, a part of my heart wants to loosen up and another part is nervous and jumpy, not liking this change of pace, not liking this unknown environment.

"I said don't worry 'bout it." My dad looks at me, then bumps his shoulder into mine. He's playing. That's a good sign. But I'm mad that he won't give a real answer, so I don't bump him back, I just glare. He sees this and sighs. "We're gonna stay here, Syd."

I look at my feet as Glenn leaves one of the missing-a-desk chairs to get his blood drawn. It must be safe here, then, if my dad isn't going to try to get us to leave. I need to make myself relax, relax all the way. But . . .

"You were right," I murmur at the floor. I have to say it.

"'Bout what?"

I resist biting my knuckle. I make myself talk. "Just . . . I know you didn't think there would be a cure. For walkers. And there's not. I mean, if there was, Dr. Jenner wouldn't be taking our blood, and a lot of other people would probably still be here." I shrug. "You were right."

I know he's watching me, I can see it from the corner of my eye, and then after a long second he says "C'mere," and he pulls me in tight and kisses my head. "You think too much, baby girl."

He's teasing, I know. And he's warm. And when I press my ear to his chest, I hear his heartbeat, and that makes me feel a little more calm, though not as calm as I would like to be.

They all go up, the whole rest of the group. Andrea and Jacqui are last. Jacqui's first. No problems. Then it's Andrea's turn, and when she's finished, she stands up unsteadily.

"You okay?" Dr. Jenner asks, and I have to admit, it certainly seems like Dr. Jenner's nice, overall.

"She hasn't eaten in days," Jacqui answers, helping Andrea along. "None of us have."

Not days, but still. A while.

Something changes in Dr. Jenner's expression after Jacqui tells him this, and something about the way it changes gives me a sudden and unexplainable buzz of hope in my empty, empty stomach.