"This changes everything." She said, suddenly massively relieved and motivated, the occurrences of the last day drifting to the back of her mind. "This changes everything!"
Ellie was sitting on the bed that Joel had been laying unconscious on not a day earlier. He had slowly been re-adapting to regular movement, limping around the base and gradually getting used to being back in his own skin. The injury he'd sustained had changed him – he was still Joel, but he seemed less… cold. It was almost as if he were welcoming of the new people, where a well-justified suspicion had conquered before. He'd already accepted Adam and Evelynn as friends, and politely greeted them when walking by, or conversing with them eagerly about the days before the crisis. He talked culture with Evelynn; music, pictures, movies, and subjects to that degree. With Adam, he discussed war stories, and traded evaluations of events both of them had been through leading up to this point. She was overjoyed he was alive, but she was inevitably jealous of the similarities that they shared with the two that she did not. She was young, and most of her time had been spent in a military safe zone – she had nowhere near the same amount of tales, close-scrapes or stories of selfless heroics.
Still, she had grown to like these people, as had Joel. They were a dysfunctional pair; the Healer and the Reaper, being overly happy together in a horror-filled world. When Evelynn had first asked to look for proof of her immunity, she'd reacted with excuses and hesitation, and locked up. Evelynn and Adam had both talked to her, and bored her shitless with 'how good it will be for humanity' and 'how we can save everyone.' Frankly, the only person she cared about saving was Joel, and she only gave in for his sake, not because of their chastising.
Regardless of that, she had sat bolt upright on the side of the bed with numerous patches and wires connected to her head while Evelynn buzzed about, scanning her with some weird machine that looked like a fancy spatula. It drew so much power that the lights went out and Adam had to quickly run to turn on the hydro-electric generator in the nearby cave. After the interruption, the scientist continued.
She had fluttered around Ellie's head for about twenty minutes before a set of black, grainy images had appeared on the computer monitor next to her. She saw a familiar shape – the front, side and top views of a skull – and something that baffled her completely; it looked like a mushy puddle of flesh, jammed right inside the hollow interior of the organic structure. She thought she'd seen it before, but it was always flying quickly out of its owner's cranium or splattered on a nearby wall.
"That's your brain, Ellie. I took a scan based on what Joel told me."
The slender, black haired woman turned and looked her over with those bright-blue eyes, swimming in intelligence.
"Have you ever seen it before?"
"Fuck no!" She replied, baffled and amazed at the same time by the technology before her. "How the hell did you guys get this stuff?"
"We did a couple of hits on a hospital together, back in the day." The burly, kind Scotsman said as he walked calmly over to the assessment. "The life-support and utensils we got from there, but I picked the rest up from universities and colleges over the years."
"That there equipment must'a been worth millions." Joel added, sitting on a chair on the far side of the operating room and eargly examining the LMG Adam had picked up from the bandits, almost an age ago now.
"Not far off, actually." Evelynn countered, the excitement evident in her voice as she transferred the image to a different monitor and annotated for the rest of them.
"This equipment may just save us, along with this remarkable young lady here." She ruffled Ellie's hair, and the sixteen year old couldn't supress a smile at the affectionate touch of the elder woman.
"Alright, Doc. What've you got for us?" Adam took residence in another seat, next to Joel. He leaned over, and whispered in the Scotsman's ear.
"Feels like Chemistry class all over again, huh?"
"Fuck, I hated chemistry." He replied with a jest.
Evelynn turned with a face of mocked shock, and then scoffed.
"That's Professor to you, Gunnery Sergeant." She turned back around, and rotated a chunky monitor to face them. "Plus, chemistry is wonderful, as we'll see here."
"Alright, shoot." Joel spoke, all ears. Adam had temporarily controlled his humour, and his face was a painting of curiosity.
Evelynn showed six grainy-black pictures on the monitor, with large blobs visible inside the frail outline of two different human skulls. She gestured towards them, and elaborated.
"Here we have exhibit A, Asymptomatic Carrier with synthetic immunosuppressant. To the right, exhibit B, the Immune subject. What do you notice?"
"This really is like chemistry class." Joel uttered, leaving Adam tittering in his seat.
"Children, behave." She turned to Ellie, and posed the question again.
"What do you notice, Ellie?"
She glanced over at the monitor, and compared the left three images with the three on the right. For the first time, she understood what people meant by 'we're all same on the inside', with the distinct differences in her and Evelynn's faces ignored by the X-ray scan she had performed. She saw their brains, sitting in their skulls, and was awe-inspired that such an unappealing lump of grey mush determined everything about a person's identity and uniqueness - everything they would say and do for their entire lives.
Upon closer inspection, Ellie did notice the differences that Evelynn was alluding to. The brain on the left – assuming it belonged to Evelynn – had peculiar and almost vivid-white anomalies around the lobes of the lump of flesh. Ellie had them too, but in Evelynn's images, they were in a different place every time, almost as if they were moving. Ellie's were smaller, and stationary.
"Those white blobs. They don't move in my pictures."
"Precisely." The scientist said, proud that someone had picked up on her ingenuity.
"What're we getting at, Evie?"
She paced up and down the room as she explained, her hiking boots making a soft footfall as she walked slowly on the concrete floor. Ellie couldn't get over the stereotypical manner with which the scientist delivered her thoughts, suddenly all seriousness and professionalism.
"The blobs, so adequately named, are precisely that; blobs of Cordyceps, of fungus, in the brain. Technically, both of us could be classed as Asymptomatic Carriers; however - there is one major difference. Look at the position of the blobs in the images."
The men examined closely, and saw what she wanted them to.
"The blobs don't move with Ellie." Adam issued, beginning to grasp what she was getting at, but also beginning to falter under the weight of all the medical terminology.
"Exactly my point. My chemical is an immunosuppressant – in Layman's terms, it drastically lowers the reaction rate of the carbon compounds in Cordyceps with the carbon compounds in the brain, exponentially increasing incubation time and temporarily countering turning of the subject. As a result, for a long period of time, the subject will experience nothing but minor symptoms, like the tiny rivulets of fungus around the iris. Ellie, however, is brilliantly unique – the fungus has already chemically bonded to the compounds in her brain tissue. It's fixed in, and taken hold, but it hasn't overridden the brain and killed the subject, like it has the overwhelming mass of the infected populous."
"So, it's just sitting there?" Joel inquired, trying to sift through Evelynn's complex sermon.
"Not only sitting there, but co-existing. The two are connected symbiotically, and as such, the subject experiences no symptoms. It's a biological miracle – people have built immunities to diseases in past through exposure, usually in the form of vaccines, but this is completely different. It's manifesting in her brain, her blood, her organs – but it's not using her as a host. It's almost like it's… helping her."
"Helping her?" Joel inquired again.
"Yes." She sat down, and chewed on the end of a blue ballpoint pen as millions of thoughts flitted through her head. The opportunity of creating a cure from her bloodstream and brain fluid was too important to pass up, and she knew that, but… she also knew what had to happen. She wasn't going to murder an innocent girl, especially not one who was a gutsy as she was. Ellie sullenly reminded Evelynn of herself at that age – hot-headed and expressive, but a genuine and beautiful person underneath the boisterousness. She glanced down at her tattoos; an exploit of her adventurous youth that probably ought to have been spent studying. She had warmed to Ellie, almost in a motherly sense, and that confused her; despite the unsure nature of her feelings, she wasn't going to let anything happen to the girl she'd come to care a surprisingly large amount for.
Joel had surprised her, initially. She had temporarily left the operating room to go and lie alone on the bed she shared with Adam, debating to go out after him and Ellie, when she'd heard movement from the lab. She walked in to find him sitting upright on the side of the bed, awake but delirious. She'd shot him up with painkillers and her inhibitor, then they talked over a meal, and she'd explained everything that'd happened. She included the information about his infection, and how he got it, but omitted how she transferred it to Adam; she imagined he could figure that one out for himself.
"I wonder…" She began. "You say the Fireflies tried to synthesise a cure from your brain fluid?"
"No," Joel interjected, "There weren't any plans to synthesise. They ain't exactly PC when it comes to operations. I picked up audio logs by their big-wig surgeon in charge, and all he alluded to were cuttin' up brains to see what'd happened."
"Brains, in the plural?"
"Yeah, similar, but none to the same degree as Ellie's."
"I see."
Evelynn cast her mind back and remembered her first day with the girl; she hadn't observed much, except very slight bruising and unusual faults in the skin of her right arm when she'd drawn up her sleeve to put on her pair of plastic gloves, and how hurriedly she'd yanked the sleeve back down afterwards. A photographic memory had served the scientist well in college, and it sure as hell worked now.
That may be what you're looking for.
"Do you have a bite?" She asked courteously, turning her ocean-blue eyes on the young girl.
"Wha… what do you mean?" Ellie responded, full of apprehension.
"It's fine. We're all infected anyway, remember? I'm just curious."
Without speaking, Ellie reluctantly pulled the reddish-brown sleeve of her hooded jacket up, revealing a ring of slightly marked skin, scarred where the teeth of an infected had sunk into her veins years ago. The ring of teeth marks was well healed, but was still visible.
"It was three weeks old when I met Joel."
Evelynn held Ellie's arm, and examined it curiously.
"The scarring tells me it was deep. How long did it take to heal over, completely?"
"Just under a month."
"Were you able to move the muscles normally, without pain?"
"Yeah. Damn well hurt to begin with, though."
Evelynn wore a satisfied expression, impressed with her own know-how as geniuses often are.
"Good, then I'm correct." She stood, and turned to the men. "It's helping her." She proclaimed.
"Evelynn," Adam began, moving over to her and wrapping his hands slowly around her waist. She grasped them warmly, and he rested his head gently against hers. "All this might make sense to a science major, but Joel and I… to say we're having a hard time comprehending is putting it lightly."
"Sorry, I just…" She looked up at him, and grinned. It was the most genuine smile he'd seen in years. "This… this is a scientific breakthrough, Adam. This is evolution, and I'm witnessing it happen! It's no different to adapting to the Black Death, or Tuberculosis. And you know the best part?"
She gestured towards Ellie's arm, highlighting it to him as an example.
"Deep tissue wounds take at least three months to heal, and a year to be useable without pain or tension in the muscles. Even then there are long-term effects! This was done and dusted in under a month, and she uses it just fine. It accelerated her healing! I don't know what else it could do, but… extend our lives? Cure other diseases, maybe?"
"Maybe." He said, calmly and quietly. "But it can wait for now, Evie. You've been at this for hours, and I seem to recall you haven't eaten."
She drew in close, their breath mingling together.
"Are you going to force me, Gunnery Sergeant?"
"If I have to, ma'am." A wide grin spread across his slim face.
Joel was too busy pouring over the pristine machine gun to pay much attention, but Ellie saw and spoke up.
"'Scuse me, Lovebirds. Are we gonna eat, or what?"
The two split apart quickly, still gingerly holding hands. Ellie hadn't spoken harshly; more with the tone of a joking friend than an annoyed onlooker. Joel had glanced upwards at her comment, and he smiled gently as the two stood hand in hand. It amused him in a strange way to see a physically mature man and woman flirting and reacting like confused teenagers, but it restored some faith in humanity for him, and it forced him to inadvertently reminisce about the days long gone. He had lived and loved in Adam's position, once; before Sarah, and before any of this. Despite the loss of his only daughter, he remained thankful of what he had been given and the chance he'd taken on Ellie that had ended up redeeming him from a life of under-the-board activities. No-one loved anymore in this cold world, save for him and Ellie. Now it seemed he'd finally found people outside the confines of Tommy's who actually possessed hearts.
"Right. Sorry." Adam said, laughing slightly. "Sometimes, we forget we've got visitors. It's been that long."
"I'll get the venison on the go." Evelynn said gently, kissing him lightly on the lips, lingering, and then taking her leave. The SAS veteran moved back over to the man he'd saved, and took the seat next to him.
Joel was still examining the gun, pulling the bolt and fiddling with the belt-fed drum magazine. Ellie moved over, and sat down next to him on the floor, leaning up against the chair and resting her head on his legs.
"She's quite the catch, huh?" He asked Adam casually, not looking up from the gun.
"Yeah, she is." He replied, staring thoughtfully at the wall in front of him. "She's got her issues, but we all do. She's the only one who took any interest in me for the last decade; everyone else I ran into or saved either died or moved off, going their own way."
"We both know what that's like." Joel affectionately placed his right hand on the top of Ellie's head.
"I know the dangers behind caring for someone in this world, but… when I saved her? I couldn't let her leave like everyone else. She's a genius, a prodigy in her field, but - she's a little… clumsy, as science types are. I wanted to stay and protect her."
"Same story with me and the young'un."
Ellie turned and looked at them with a face of mocked surprise.
"Hey, I am so not clumsy!"
All Joel did was chuckle gently, and ease himself out of the chair, groaning slightly at the dull pain in his abdomen. Adam followed suit, and the three left the operating room and moved through the hallway into Adam's contingency room.
"This is a helluva' lotta planning you got going here." Joel said, examining the trees up on the wall. "Didn't get much of a chance to look before, but damn."
"Yeah, you could say that." Adam replied, gently resting his hands on the desk lodged against the wall as Joel placed the cumbersome machine gun back in the rack.
He gazed at the faded picture of Joanna, and reminisced.
"It's so I'm ready, whenever I hear of bandit trouble nearby." He started. "I won't let people be treated like that, I-"
The recollection struck him like a bullet to the head; in the excitement of Joel waking up, and Evelynn's assessment of Ellie, he'd neglected to mention the sign plastered on the side of the power-plant, and the nightmarish and near invincible infected they'd encountered.
The red-ring burned into his mind like a beacon of fear.
"Adam?" Ellie asked, surprised by his sudden pause. "You what?"
"I… I'm hungry." He said, changing his tone, deciding now wasn't the time to bring it up. He needed to discuss the infected with Evelynn before anyone decided that going to the plant was a good idea. He didn't know whether that beast was the only one there.
"Who else is?" He smiled, hoping they'd bought his façade.
Ellie grinned, enticed by the thought of food. Evelynn had fuel for hours, just off of her own motivation, but the growing teen didn't share that trait of scientific supplement.
"Shit yes!" She replied, her stomach rumbling as it had been for hours.
A few minutes later, Evelynn emerged from a door that led to a room Ellie hadn't been in, her arms laden with four plates of deep-brown meat and colourful salad. It was the single most appetising thing she'd seen in weeks. She sat down in front of Joel with her plate, and dug into the well-cooked and steaming-hot goodness, as juices and grease filled her mouth. She talked with him constantly, almost giving herself indigestion; they talked about his wounds, their encounter with Krass, Tommy's place – she loved every moment, being surrounded by friends and good food. If she had ever wondered what the days before the infection were like, this experience granted her a fairly accurate idea.
Adam and Evelynn had sat with them briefly, but they had moved off to the other side of the room at Adam's request to discuss something together – Ellie didn't bother trying to decipher what – she wasn't in the least bit suspicious about the two. They were probably talking about gardening or science or something.
"So, kiddo. You been getting your fill of excitement while I've been sleeping?"
"Shit yes." She managed between mouthfuls. "These guys, though… they're different. I know how we agreed to be with new people, but… they're not like others, and they're sure as hell not bandits."
"No, I know." Joel replied, looking up from his food every now and again. He glanced over to the soldier and the scientist, his vision temporarily lingering on their conversation.
"They ain't the type to hurt people out of fun."
"I know. Did you hear what she was saying about me?"
"Yeah. If you don't mind me saying, seems a little too good to be true." He leaned back into his chair, and looked her straight in the eye. She'd forgotten how much she'd missed his gaze, until now.
"I don't understand much of that medical mumbo-jumbo, but… I'm willing to help 'em." He continued, his tone all business. "However," He interjected, "If it heads down the same route as the Fireflies, we bug out, same as before. Deal?"
Ellie was slightly wounded by his seemingly careless position to walk out on these two if they had to operate on her. She wanted to argue, to state how it would be better for everyone, even if it meant her own death… but she didn't. Part of her knew that she was the only reason the big guy fought anymore.
As she looked at him, she began to realise just how his injuries had taken their toll – it almost seemed as if he'd aged five years in the few days he'd been near-death. Grey streaks now dominated his hairline, and his face and more lines and creases than ever. Despite this, she had no doubt he would still protect her, with his life. She was just worried that his life was slightly more endangered than before. Yellow-green streaks extended out around the irises of his eyes.
"Deal." She replied, making the decision to stay with Joel if things went south.
Adam and Evelynn had finished their conversation, and moved back over to the four-person table they were seated at. Evelynn sat down, and Adam brought a map over, standing by the side of the table and leaning up against it. On inspection, she saw it was a map of the nearby area; the mountain that the mine was located in was identified, and so was another area around ten miles south. The map was badly worn, and obviously very old, covered in symbols and writing that showed secret paths and supply drops, houses, facilities and towns. She glanced at the highlighted area to the south, and saw the words "NUCLEAR POWER STATION" written in black ink.
The plant. She'd almost forgotten what'd happened that day.
Adam dictated and issued his plan, slipping into the role of a military commander.
"Sorry to interrupt everyone's dinner, but I remembered something a moment ago that it was unprofessional of me to let slip."
"Alright Sarge, shoot. What is it?" Joel inquired, turning in his chair to face the Scotsman.
"I made a small recon excursion to this power plant, here, yesterday." He gestured to the black circle in the lower part of the map.
"Ellie came with me. All seemed well until I scoped in on one of the cooling towers. A signal had been left there, for me."
"What did it say?" Joel inquired, presumably in the dark about their encounter.
"WATCHER, HELP US, SOUTH EAST. On the second cooling tower, to the right of that, was this symbol." Adam slammed a piece of paper down on the table, bearing the red-ring of Pyotr's hunter triad. Joel examined it for a moment, and then made the connection. The sniper who took down Ellie wore the same logo on his chest, as had Krass Dubrovnik, the man who had interrogated him. He wondered where he'd seen it recently, and then recalled the information; Adam had been tracking them for a while, with the tree on his wall following their every movement. He remembered what Evelynn had told him about their endeavour getting up here, how Adam had finished Dubrovnik, and how she believed the leader of this group was the man who murdered Adam's sister, all those years ago.
"Those bastards." He said.
"Exactly. Those bastards."
He moved around the room, exited briefly, and then returned with the gargantuan rifle in his hands.
"That isn't all, though." He placed the behemoth of a gun down on the table.
"Can you tell me what this rifle fires, Joel?"
He gently picked the gun up, carrying it as easily in his hands as Adam had the day before.
"I don't know for definite, but something damn big. Anti-personnel, maybe?"
"Bigger. Anti-materiel. 50 caliber."
"So what?"
He rested his hands on the edge of the table once more, and continued.
"There was… an infected, down there. Ellie should remember it."
She did, and she contributed to the conversation.
"It was fucking huge, Joel. Like, twice the size of a goddamn Bloater!"
He didn't say anything, only looking at Adam again, his face all work and no play.
The Scotsman continued.
"The behemoth that was there… was not natural. It had fungus forming on its arms like weapons. It looked… it looked fucking mutated. It took three shots with this rifle to take the thing down, where it usually tears through Bloaters and damn near anything else in one."
"And you want us to go in there with you, is that it?"
Joel had practically read Adam's mind.
"Yes." He admitted. "I'm sorry. I know you've just woken up, but we need all the help we can get. If this is linked to those red-ringed bastards… to Pyotr… then this is more than just about saving people. I… I need to do this, Joel."
He turned to Evelynn, and said:
"And I need everyone to come with me."