CJ was sleeping soundly when the hand suddenly coming down across his mouth woke him. His first instinct was to come up swinging, but then he opened his eyes and saw Monica standing over him. Shaking her hand loose he demanded, "What the hell do you want?"
"I couldn't sleep, I needed to talk to someone."
Gesturing around them he angrily whispered, "There's a whole goddamn room of people here why in hell did you have to wake me up?"
She leaned closer to him, her head nearly resting on his shoulder, in much the same fashion as Michael and Ana had the previous morning. "I thought maybe you of all people could tell me something that would make me feel better."
"Do I look like a fucking doctor? Some kind of shrink?" he fumed, still groggy and half asleep.
"No, I didn't mean it that way. I thought maybe you'd talked to your girlfriend, you know." The defensive whisper was so uncharacteristic of Monica that CJ could only look at her for a moment before responding.
"I've been here ever since I got back from the gym this morning, how the hell could I have talked to her?" CJ asked. A quick look of shock came over his face and disappeared almost instantly before he defensively blurted, "And she's not my girlfriend!"
Monica just looked at him, eyebrow raised as if to say, 'yea right.'
"Come on, let's go to the gym, we'll see if she's there, but I doubt it," CJ said, ignoring the look Monica had given. Reaching down beside the cot, he grabbed his shoes,
hurriedly lacing them up. "You coming," he asked as he grabbed his shirt from off the end of his cot and began walking towards the door, pulling it on as he went.
Monica scurried to grab her own shoes from the side of her cot. He was waiting at the door for her, and as she got close, quietly started to open it. Evans and Marshall stood watch outside, the former grabbing for his weapon as the door opened behind him.
"We want to go the gym," CJ said.
"Yea, I heard there was a swimming pool down there somewhere," Monica added,
walking out the door to stand beside him. Marshall quickly responded.
"Sure, I'll walk you down there, Evans, radio Briggs if you need any help before I get back." The other man merely yawned and waved them away in response.
They walked in silence down the hallway, Marshall relieved that CJ had made an appearance at last. He hadn't wanted to make up an excuse to enter the cafeteria to seek him out, but Briggs had been adamant that she speak with him tonight. They were almost to the door to her quarters before he called out to them to halt. Monica turned with a worried expression on her face, wondering if it had been a big mistake leaving the cafeteria. CJ, recognizing the door from the previous night just waited as Marshall knocked softly on the door. It swung open almost immediately. Briggs waved them into the room.
"It's about fucking time Marshall."
"Sorry, I didn't want to alert anyone by going in the cafeteria and hauling him out," he explained.
"Good thinking," she conceded, "Now take miss teenage fan club here to the gym, I'll bring CJ down when I make my rounds."
Monica spoke up at that. "I'm no fucking teenager, and I want to know what's going on." She fairly shook with her anger over being excluded.
Briggs looked at her, "And you will know when CJ fills you in, but right now I need to have Marshall waiting outside that gym like a good little soldier so nobody suspects that there's something going on, and that means I need you to show up on camera inside the gym somewhere. If you enter through the locker rooms, there's no cameras so they can't see if you and CJ get there together,the cameras in the hallway have been more or less disabled. If they see you going about your business, CJ coming in from the locker rooms later, and Marshall is outside the doors the whole time, then there is no reason for anybody to suspect anything. Understand?"
Monica wished she could come up with a good argument, but Briggs made avalid point,
if they were indeed being watched, they needed to make sure nothing looked out of the ordinary. "Okay, but I want to know everything," she said before turning to leave with Marshall.
As the door closed behind them, CJ turned to face Briggs. For a few fleeting seconds Monica's voice calling Briggs his girlfriend flashed through his mind.
"Have a seat," she sighed, flopping down to sit on the bed herself. Seeing nowhere else to sit but the floor, he joined her there.
"We're going to be making our run in two days," she began, "Well, the day after tomorrow anyway. We got word today that one of my team members is a plant, sent in to spy on us, so it's too dangerous for us to stay any longer. I've got two of my men monitoring command, two more prepping the helicopters, Marshall is going to try to watch out for you guys as best he can, he's going toapproachWalker, Evans and Randallabout gettingon board with us. Ramirez seems to have disappeared, I don't know if he got assigned somewhere else or if Frankenstein got his hands on him." She paused, and CJ took it as an opportunity to ask some questions of his own.
"Why would they put a plant on a search and rescue team?"
"They've been lying to us all from the start. Frankenstein and his minions are running the show."
"KN, you've already told me that," he interrupted.
"Yea, I know, just recapping it I guess." She yawned wearily, remembering everything Steele had told them, before continuing, "The spill was slightly more than we were originally lead to believe. The wind spreada supposedly non-airborne virus further than they could have imagined. But that's only what affected the New England area. Frankenstein's people were already at work trying to find an antivirus for those infected who hadn't died yet. That's where the so-called mutation came from, the one that makes those things seem like they should be signed up for the Olympic games. They started experimenting on live humans, and they got loose. This plague spreads like wildfire, one bite, one scratch from an infected is a death sentence, you become one of them."
"That doesn't explain why they would put a mole on a search and rescue team," he pushed.
"Frankenstein wanted to insure that he'd have a supply of non-contaminated people to continue his research for the supposed antivirus. There's no way the government would condone his use of soldiers, soldiers that would be needed to try to take back our country mind you, as guinea pigs. So he devised his plan of bringing back survivors, supposedly to a safe haven. But really, it's a house of horrors here. Tmmons agreed to overlook everything as long as Frankenstein left his soldiers alone. There were two moles placed on each team, if a team decided to bug out, they were to take control using extreme force if necessary."
"Extreme force?"
"Terminate them. It's an old strategy, terminate the leadership and the rest should crumble to pieces."
He was silent for a moment before asking, "So what's the plan then?"
"We get out of here. There are some safe spots scattered throughout the country yet, plus our naval ships at sea have been unaffected, no reports of the virus on board. Australia is clean, as soon as they got wind of the plague spreading they quarantined themselves from the outside world, planes, ships you name it, they refused them entry. New Zealand followed their lead, not quickly enough to keep the plague out entirely, but they've neutralized all threat of it there now. Hawaii has been able to keep themselves plague free too...there's more, but I won't waste time going into detail right now."
"How are we supposed to get out?"
"I told you, I've got some of my guys getting the helos prepped. Just make sure the others know that they need to be ready to go on a moments notice. We should really get going now, I have to make my rounds, make it look like I'm keeping with the program around here."
CJ nodded, still trying to assimilate all the information that she'd given him, while simultaneously asking himself what she was holding back. The two of them stood and headed towards the door, as he reached forward to open it Briggs laid a hand on his arm. He turned to look at her questioningly.
"Just one more thing before we go, make sure your people know to keep their distance from Davis, don't go anywhere with him unless one of my team members are with you," she said before releasing his arm.
He opened the door and together they made their way towards the gym, each lost in their own thoughts. She left him without a word at the door to the locker room, continuing on her way into the gym to supposedly check on Marshall. He watched her retreating back for a few seconds, silently berating himself for his own thoughts. Walking inside the room he went in search of Monica and the swimming pool.