Thanks to Jenner and the CDC, Elise gets to feel like a forensic investigator again! Well, that started in the previous chapter, anyway.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything pertaining to The Walking Dead.

For the first time since the outbreak, I had a complete restful night's sleep. I even believed it was a full seven hours. I didn't have to worry if a walker was shuffling his way to make me his midnight snack. The couch felt a like a plush mattress, and the soft, fleece blanket comfortably draped over me. Although I was awake, I didn't want to get up. In a way, I was afraid that if I walked out the door, I would enter the insane world that was above ground.

However, I knew the others would be gathering around the table for breakfast. Before joining them, I decided to take another quick shower. I knew I couldn't be the only one with that idea. Might as well enjoy it while it was here.

Daryl's POV

I figured I was up 'fore everyone else, so I decided to wait until I heard people movin' around outside the door before joinin' 'em. While waitin,' I worked on cleanin' up my crossbow. Some of Merle's buddies used to joke around 'bout how I always used it for huntin,' but it's been more than helpful with all the damn walkers around. Guess I was the one with the last laugh now.

As I worked on the weapon, I thought 'bout hangin' out with Elise last night. I honestly hadn't planned on talkin' with her, and she seemed surprised when I offered to bring her a drink by, and then talked with her a while. I felt awkward as she began to tell me what happened in Tennessee, but I slowly became more comfortable with her. Definitely not used to sharin' or hearin' such info from people, especially a woman. A highly educated woman who actually wasn't an asshole.

It was pretty clear she thought I was some dumbass when we first met at the quarry. However, I guess I proved her wrong, 'specially after what she said last night.

"You're obviously very observant, despite that I thought otherwise earlier on."

I wasn't used to people apologizin' to me, and I definitely wasn't used to people explainin' why. Hell, there was a lot of things I wasn't used to when bein' 'round Elise.

"Sounds like you're a good brother, and Merle was lucky to have you," She said to me. I glanced at her from the corner of my eye. Her lips were turned up in a genuine, sincere smile. "You deserve the break, although it would have been better under different circumstances."

I never thought of myself as bein' a good brother. I was more along the lines of the one keepin' Merle from doin' somethin' too damn stupid. Once Merle was gone, I started to lighten up around most of the others, 'specially Elise. If Merle was here, he'd yell at me to stop bein' a pansy ass. However, I liked the sound of havin' a break, even though the world sucks, and Merle was who knows where.

"It may seem small, but thank you, for bugging me to explain, and for listening. You're a good friend for doing that. I'm glad I changed my tune about everything."

A "good friend." That didn't bug me as much as it would have if Merle was here. He'd just have some smartass comment, and then tell me I was the only good friend he had. Then again, since he seemed alright with Elise, maybe he'd shut up 'bout it, 'least around her.

Yeah, I definitely liked the sound of a break.

Elise's POV

After dressing in boot cut jeans, white tank top with a pink, blue, and white light flannel shirt, and cowgirl boots, I made my way to the kitchen. I tried snapping my rolled up sleeves into place, but I was having difficulties. I hoped it wasn't a sign of how the rest of the day would be. Upon entering the kitchen, the savory aroma of eggs and crunchy bacon teased my nose. T-Dog was the one in charge of breakfast this morning.

"T, it almost smells like the Cracker Barrel in here," I joked as I took a plate of food from him.

He laughed as he resumed cooking. "Not quite. The eggs are powdered, but I do 'em good."

I sat between Glenn and Andrea. Andrea was still fairly silent as she ate her breakfast. I knew it still wasn't quite the polite time to talk to her, so I opted for humor. Unfortunately, Glenn was my target.

The side of Glenn's face was flat against the smooth table, and his hat was shielding his eyes from the light. "How are you this morning, Glenn?" I asked while taking a bite of my eggs.

Glenn groaned as he sluggishly lifted his head to face me. His eyes were practically clamped shut in order to avoid the intrusive light. "Don't ever, ever, ever let me drink again."

"You can't be feeling that bad," I commented. "I went to a party college, and I saw guys drink way more than you, and somehow make it to exams the next day. Their grades probably sucked, but at least they made it to class."

He groaned again. "Not funny, Elise. I feel like I've been ran over by a dump truck. Probably look like it, too."

I shook my head as I waved a piece of crispy bacon in front of him, only to earn a harsh glare from him. "Nah. You'd be in worse shape if you were ran over. Trust me."

A small laugh escaped from Andrea, and Glenn jokingly commented that he despised us both. Daryl arrived, and he was eating his food while leaning against the granite counter. I caught his gaze, and smiled as a good morning acknowledgment. He nodded in response before the last person to arrive caught his attention: Shane.

Someone asked Shane what happened to him, and that was when I noticed the vertical scratch marks travelling down his neck. I took a drink of my juice as I studied the marks.

"I must have done it in my sleep," he responded, and I noticed him glance at Lori.

I switched my gaze to Lori as she uncomfortably pushed around the eggs on her plate.

"Never seen you do that before," Rick commented. He didn't notice Lori's sudden quiet behavior.

"Me neither," Shane answered as he finally sat down. "Not like me at all."

From what I observed when we were at the quarry, Shane kept his nails trimmed, and would not allow the free edge to grow even a centimeter. He probably thought the slightest nail length would affect his appearance as the alpha male. So, there was no way he could have left marks like that in his sleep. However, Lori's nails were a decent length. If she would let them grow out more, perhaps she could use her nails as weapons against walkers. Due to her nails and her bumbling behavior, she had to be the one to slash Shane's neck. I wondered how much alcohol was involved in whatever happened last night. Then again, I didn't think it was a factor with Lori and Shane, especially with their history before Rick arrived.

I didn't have to use interrogation in order to force Jenner to inform all of us about the outbreak. Dale and Andrea did that for me. After breakfast, Jenner led us back to Zone Five for a presentation. I took a seat at one of the long tables, and rested my chin on top of my hands. I was interested to see what Jenner had to share, but a part of me didn't want to know. I wasn't sure if I wanted to know what may have happened to Jones, Amy, and Jim on the scientific level.

With the help of Vi, Jenner provided MRI and computer footage of a person, and the brain. The computer information detailed heart rate, blood pressure, and other vital medical data. At Jenner's command, Vi zoomed in on the brain. After someone inquired about the "lights" flashing like Christmas lights across the brain, Jenner seemed to drift away a bit as he answered. "It's a person's life, experiences, memories. It's everything. Somewhere in all that organic wiring, all those ripples of light, is you: the thing that makes you unique. And human."

His poetic explanation of synapses was not answering the question, especially as they pertain to the outbreak. I was about to speak up, but Daryl beat me to it. "Do you ever make any sense?"

"Not if he's wanting to avoid more questions," I mumbled. Daryl, who was standing off to the side in front of me, heard me.

Jenner sighed as he correctly answered this time. "Those are synapses, electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says, does, or think from the moment of birth to the moment of death."

His mention of death led to more questioning, which Jenner probably wanted to avoid. Apparently, the person on the screen was Test Subject 19. Nineteen?

"Someone who was bitten and infected," Jenner continued, "and volunteered to have us record the process. Vi, scan forward to the first event."

I leaned forward as Vi did as she was instructed. Why was Jenner showing us the nineteenth subject? What happened to the first eighteen?

"It invades the brain like meningitis. The adrenal glands hemorrhage, the brain goes into shutdown, then the major organs. Then death. Everything you ever were or ever will be. . . gone."

The images of the person began to move viciously, a last attempt by the body to do something in order to remain alive. With the brain and organs completely shutting down, nothing could be done for the person. Abruptly, the person stopped moving, and all the vital information was a flat line. Most of the time, scientists were supposed to be emotional distant from their work. I understood how the outbreak would spark emotions into such experiments, but the way Jenner was speaking irked me. He had to have known the person who was on screen. Probably a coworker who didn't "opt out."

"Sound like a shitty way to die," Daryl commented.

"It is," I replied. "If it's just a single bite, like what happened to Jim, it's slow and painful, and not quick like some of the people I saw attacked when it first happened. I'm surprised Jim didn't speak up sooner."

When Jenner told Andrea he had lost someone as well, that strengthened my hunch about TS-19 being someone he knew.

As Vi scanned to the next part of the presentation, Jenner began to explain the resurrection. "The times vary widely. 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."

I stared at Jenner as his eyes remained locked onto the large screen. He went from calling the person a test subject to the lighter connotation of patient, and he detailed the time it took for resurrection to occur to the seconds. The person was more than a coworker. The person had to be family. Slowly, TS-19's head began to move as the brain stem lit back up in a vivid shade of red. Although it was only one of the colors used by the MRI machine, it made the resurrection appear malevolent, which was fitting for the walkers.

"It restarts the brain?" Lori asked in disbelief.

I shook my head as Jenner began to clarify. "No, just the brain stem. Basically, it gets them up and moving."

Rick and Jenner had a brief debate as to whether or not the resurrected dead were alive or not. Of course, Jenner confirmed through science they were not alive. The other vital functions of the brain were still dead. No synapses flashing across the brain. Before TS-19 had the chance to seize the doctor, or Jenner, in order to satisfy the insatiable hunger, a sudden line shot through TS-19's forehead and into the brain. TS-19's arms fell to the side, and the brain stem was no longer the vile shade of crimson.

"He shot his patient in the head," Andrea stated with a light hitch in her voice. She seemed to mentally travel back to the day she had to shoot Amy. "Didn't you?"

Jenner did not answer if it was him or not. He only ordered Vi to power down the computer area. He also never stated what could have caused the outbreak.

"It could be microbial, viral, parasitic, fungal."

"Or the wrath of God?" Jacqui added.

"There is that, too."

I could tell more questioning and debating were about to occur, so I stood up to get Jenner's attention. "Dr. Jenner, you said that was Test Subject Nineteen. What did you look for or do with Test Subjects One through Eighteen?"

Jenner shoved his hands into his lab coat pockets, and his expression told me he was not expecting that question. "Some of them weren't complete bodies to work with, mainly limbs from bite or the new dead. However, some of them were whole bodies, for the most part anyway. Nineteen was the first one to be bitten and studied throughout the entire process. While alive, until death, and through resurrection. There were a few other subjects and samples after Nineteen, but none of them provided as much information as Nineteen."

That meant TS-19 did not cause the blazing destruction in the lab. Dammit.

After hearing that Jenner had no idea what was causing people to transform into walkers after death, Daryl stated he was going to "get shit-faced drunk again." After seeing him last night, his definition of drunk was totally different from everyone else's.

As we were about to leave, Dale asked a question which was not related to Jenner's presentation. "I know this has been taxing for you, and I hate to ask one more question, but, that clock," He pointed to a large, digital clock on the far wall. The red numbers were counting down instead of showing the current time, whatever it was. "What happens at zero?"

"The basement generators, they run out of fuel," Jenner hastily answered.

"And then?" Rick inquired.

"Vi, what happens when the power runs out?"

Why did he always have the computer speak for him?

"When the power runs out, facility-wide decontamination will occur."

Glenn, Shane, and Rick decided to inspect the basement generators. I followed Daryl in the hallway as we made our way back to our rooms.

"I don't like this whole 'decontamination' thing," I commented.

"No one does," he said. We both leaned against the wall outside of his room. "What would the generators have to do with that?"

The longer we were at the CDC, the more questions I had, and I hated not having the answers, or being able to figure them out. "I don't know. In the labs I've worked in, decontamination happened when someone spilled chemicals or anything like that. It also happened if someone was going through evidence and came across an unknown substance. Lots of precaution after the anthrax scares. However, decontamination dealt with the cleanup after all of that."

"Whatever it is, it's probably what he's been hidin' from us."

"Yeah, and he's probably hiding even more information." I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. "After hearing everything Jenner had to say, my original plan about being a withdrawn asshole really had its benefits."

I opened my eyes to see Daryl studying me. "Suppose so," he said, waiting for what else I had to say.

"Yeah, I can still see the perks of it, but there's no going back now."

Daryl grunted as if that was his way of saying "that's good" or "whatever." "Well, since we ain't getting' any more answers from Jenner, I wonder what we're gonna do now."

"Not sure. It would be nice to stay here, but I don't think that's going to happen. I agree that Jenner is still hiding stuff from us. I think we should probably be prepared to leave if needed. I have a gut feeling that something bad is going to happen."

"You and me both."

"Perhaps we should have our stuff ready in case we need to leave in a hurry."

"Wouldn't be a bad idea," he agreed.

As I pushed myself off of the wall to walk down to my room, the overhead lights and air conditioning unexpectedly shut off. The hall lights along the floor were the only source of light, but they were still not as bright as they originally were. It was a horrible, ironic, "speak of the devil" type of moment.

"What the hell?" Daryl asked, confused at the sudden activity. After all, there was still some time left on the Zone Five countdown.

I loathed that my gut feeling was on to something, although I was still clueless as to what. "Shit."

I do think Daryl's definition of "drunk" is different from most. In that episode, he didn't act like the others who were clearly drunk, such as Rick and Glenn (drunk Glenn. . . lol!). Feedback is always appreciated! :) I hope everyone has a great week!