-Day and Nightmare-

Hailey woke up startled and with a rapidly beating heart as the alarm clock rang loudly in the morning. She slowly began to sob quietly, because she was too overwhelmed by recent night terrors. Her roommate, Sarah, who already woke up, came out of the bathroom with a concerned look.

Sarah asked, "Still getting them?", as she hugged her to comfort her.

"Sarah, I don't know how much I can take anymore", says Hailey as she bursts into more tears.

"Sweetie, you're still stressed out about your work; you can quit your job. I never should have persuaded you to keep working there."

"No, it's not that. It's this new case I received a week ago. I can't find an answer to it."

After Hailey calmed down, they went downstairs to get breakfast and started to get ready for work. When Hailey packed her documents in her bag, she noticed a file sticking out, the case file that haunts her even in her dreams. The file read 'Classified' on the front. She was not suppose to bring it home. She quickly tucked in the file before Sarah noticed it.

"I know this isn't tradtionally a breakfast, but I made stew. It's my mom's recipe, you'll love it", said Sarah.

"It's okay, I love food with liquid. By the way, about our date night... Do you mind if we just stay in this time?", Hailey asked shyly.

"Not at all. I'll rent a movie from the store. We can watch it with some popcorns. Nothing wrong with turning date night into a movie night", Sarah said with a smile.

"Thanks. Hey, I forgot to tell you, I received a call from your work last night. They thought I was you for a minute. They had a Code Yellow at your workplace. They also wanted you to report your surveilance duty? Sounds kind of serious, you should call them back right now."

"Right. Code Yellow. We get false containment breach sometimes. There's also this patient we're monitoring. It's nothing."

"Containment breach? Isn't Code Yellow for missing patients in hospitals?"

"Right... Missing patient. That's what I meant. Still haven't had my coffee yet. My brain must be still asleep."

After Hailey and Sarah both had their breakfast, they went to work. Since Hailey can't drive, Sarah always drops her off near her workplace. When Hailey arrived at work, she gave her two co-workers, Brad and Jenny, a cup of coffee each. The three share a single office only big enough to fit 3 desk. They began chatting about their normal day lives until Jenny noticed that Hailey took the case file with her.

"Honey, you know you aren't suppose to take that home. You can get into real trouble if the 'people upstairs' found out", said Jenny.

Hailey replied nervously, "I know... I've been so occupied with this case, I must have put it in my bag by accident. The security officer must have missed it at the entrance checkpoint"

"Well, you brought us coffee like you always do, so our lips are sealed", said Brad with a small laugh.

After they each finished their coffee and conversation, they all started to get to work. Hailey opened the case file and started going through all the things she might have missed. As a person who loves finding answers, this particular case was huge for her. After days of going through the preliminary files, she barely progressed in finding answers.

Her current documents regarding the case wasn't much of help to her. There were details missing and some data not fully provided. To get more documents, she needed to go to her boss. However getting more data was incredibly hard because there were many restrictions.

After getting frustrated multiple times, she decided to get more information about the case. She took some documents of her recent findings and prepared for a meeting. As soon as she went out of the door, she bumped into a group of people and dropped her documents. It was the 'people from upstairs' along with her boss, Deputy Director of CDC.

-Enigmatic Man-

Adams stared at Hailey, who hasn't realized who she bumped into, for a quite long while before he decided to help her pick up the papers. He didn't say anything; he just nonchalantly helped her like a gentleman. After she arranged all her papers in the file, she stood up and started to process the situation.

"Dr. Adams!", Hailey said in a surprise. "I was on my way to see you."

"Well, I'm glad we literally and figuratively bumped into each other. Why were you so urgent to see me?"

Hailey looked around and glanced at his associates. "It's best if we talk privately in the conference room, sir."

The conference room is a room with a big table in the middle with few chairs. It's the only room in the entire floor that isn't locked with a keycard. This is the room Hailey first came into when she was brought into the facility. There is something always unsettling about this room because of its unnecessarily huge size considering there are that many workers on the floor. The room isn't decorated and very stale in terms of interior design.

"Sir, I believe this disease is airborne. We still need more data and most importantly the patients' samples to confirm anything. It's important the public knows about this because -", said Hailey as Adams interrupted her mid sentence.

"Dr. Johnson, do you know why I chose you to lead the research." Adams stood up and started walking towards the table end that has coffee. "I know you are an orphan, so you probably don't have any family members close to you. I know you don't have many friends because you dedicated your whole life to science, so there is no way you had time to make any. You were also top of the class in every level of educations. What I'm saying is, you are a perfect intelligent scientist who keeps things quiet." He paused briefly as he took time to slowly stir his cup of coffee.

"Your roomate is a medical doctor, correct? It would be a shame if she loses her medical license. I have several friends in that field, you see. I think you are smart enough to see where this is going, so I'll only say this once. Dr. Johnson if you ever speak to me about releasing what you know to the public again, I assure you no hospitals will hire Sarah. Only place she can work will be in a strip club in the dirtiest town in this country", said Adams. He didn't look angry nor did he raise his voice.

Completely terrified of what she just heard, Hailey couldn't move or speak. This was worse than all of her night terrors combined. Despite being overwhelmed by fear, she managed to utter some words, "Sir... I just... think... that if this disease is airborne then we might be too late. All the civilians in Knox Country might already have it."

"If they already have it then it would already be on the news." When his coffee cup was empty, he stood up and headed for the door. "Dr. Johnson, remember, the entire citizens of Knox Country depend on you. If you disappoint them, you disappoint me. I think you know well enough that I'm a man who hates being disappointed."

As soon as Hailey heard the door shut, she buried her face in her arm on the table and started to shake uncontrollably as she was overwhelmed by fear and stress. The calm yet terrifying tone of Adams was so frightening, it was like talking to a psychopathic killer. A lot of things were going through her mind at once. She wanted to quit and run away, but like Adams said many people depend on her for this case.

-Audio Log #9: Unanswered Questions-

I'm currently examining patients' status reports. So far twenty civilians have been transported to this facility. A lot of them seem to have different symptoms. Most of them seem mild at the moment. My team was only authorized to interview them a few times, asking about symptoms and background history.

These are symptoms that some of the patients have. Patient 009 have numerous symptoms that say it's rhinovirus aka common cold. Patient 015 seems to have symptoms that matches first stage of HIV. Patient 018's only symptoms are runny nose and sneezing. However, what's intriguing about 018 is that, he couldn't focus on our questions and sometimes stare at inanimate objects for a long time. He's one of the latest transport so it's still too early to say anything. He could just be a weirdo, who knows.

We have nothing as of yet that confirms anything about this disease. Well... mainly because we don't have any samples from the patients yet. We don't even know what type of pathogen this is. Looking at the symptoms, it could be viral or bacterial.

Whatever the status quo, we need to keep an eye on our patients closely. So far none of them have died, but none of them have improved either. I just hope we have a breakthrough and this doesn't end up in a pandemic. If that happens I'll be ready with a big 'I told you so' for Adams.

I wonder how the government managed to transport all these patients to an unmarked science facility without raising suspicions. Furthermore how did they know it's a new disease; at first glance it looked like common cold to me. The public obviously doesn't know about it, because I didn't see anything about it on the news. Only a few people are working on this disease which raises more questions. I'm sure there's a good reason the government and Adams is trying their best to hide it.

Hailey out.