Five was eternally grateful to finally return to her running duties. True, she had greatly enjoyed temporarily working for the food ration crew and sneaking off to help Sam, Jack and Eugene in the comms, but when she tested her legs and felt only minimal pain in her calf, she knew it was time to start missions once more.

Stretching out in her uniform on a chilly morning, Five glanced at the comms tower and adjusted her radio slightly. She could see Dr. Myers and Sam fidgeting with the equipment, and, as she caught the gaze of the radio operator, she shot him a thumbs up. He returned the gesture and flicked the radios on with a sharp crackle.

"Remind me how this goes, Sam?" Dr. Myers asked.

"Okay, first," Sam explained professionally. "Tell Justin Miles, Runner Eighteen, on the door, to raise the gates."

"Raise the gates!"

Five looked up at the lanky teenage runner and gatekeeper, his ginger hair sticking out in all directions as he saluted to Dr. Myers and began opening the gate leading out of Abel.

"Then ask if Runner Five is ready," Sam directed.

"Runner Five, ready?" Dr. Myers asked, and then stopped, her voice dropping uneasily. "What do I do if Runner Five's not ready?"

Sam glanced in Five's direction with a small smile. "Nah, Runner Five is always ready."

"So, gates are open…"

Five tensed her muscles, and that familiar sensation—the adrenaline ready to pump her systems, the blaring of the raising gates, she staccato of the sniper's gunshots—rang through her body.

She was always ready.

Sam continued speaking, and Five swore he was almost talking to her rather than to the doctor. "They're covering fire, and—"

"Runner Five, special mission for the hospital," Dr. Myers said to her finally. "Go!"

Five took off through the gates, hurtling toward the forest as her trusty snipers took out a few zombies here and there. She made her way to a familiar path, slowed to an easy jog, and caught her breath.

"All right, you two," Five said through her radio. "How far to the university?"

Sam and Dr. Myers jostled for the microphone for a few moments, making it pop loudly in Five's ear. She winced but listened patiently as the two gave her the exact directions Runner Seven had the night before. She was headed in the right direction.

"You've been doing excellent work here, Runner Five," Dr. Myers said approvingly. "Just excellent. With all the medical kit and supplies you've picked up, our medical center's no longer at breaking point. We're keeping up with low-grade infections and accidents." Ever since the doctor had taken such good care of her after her night of terror, Five had grown to like her and had completely forgiven her for her icy demeanor upon their first introduction. "So. It's time for us to start investigating the contents of that box from the hospital."

"The special, mystical box of mystery that Runner Five picked up on the way in here?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, that seven-year degree I got was in mystical mystery," the doctor chuckled. "You weren't one of the people who believed in those anti-zombie charms at the start of the outbreak, were you?

Sam scoffed, but stuttered as he spoke. "Obviously not! …And I never got a special protective tattoo either!"

Five had to stifle a giggle as Dr. Myers laughed in incredulity. "What?" she gasped. "Those tattoos people got on their b—"

"You will never see that bit of me to find out!" Sam interrupted. "Besides, do you see me having got bitten by a zombie? Maybe it worked?"

"Runner Five," Dr. Myers said, turning her attention to the runner, who was determinedly not picturing any sort of tattoo on any body parts of any specific radio operator at all. "I'm going to ask you to head towards the spire to the south. I badly need a confocal microscope and the university buildings are the place to look. You're likely to encounter a lot of shambling dead—I'm sorry. "

Sam sighed. "Should have made Runner Five get one of them tattoos on—"

Dr. Myers cut him off quickly. "Better just to run, Five."

Five rolled her eyes, continuing to jog. As she made her way down the dirt path that they had indicated, she began to see cracked concrete sidewalks and official-looking buildings.

"Listen, you two," she said to the duo. "Do you have those security cameras from the university hooked up to our system yet? I'm approaching the campus."

"Are they coming online?" Dr. Myers repeated.

"Yep," Sam replied. "Wow. Look at that. Janine knows her stuff. Security cameras all over the university on our little screen here. Wow, there's—"

"That's a lot of zombies," Dr. Myers said anxiously, and Five felt that familiar drop in her stomach whenever that dreaded phrase was uttered.

"Yeah. A lot. Why do they cluster like that?"

The two continued to comment on the hordes and their tendencies to form groups as Five crept closer to the outskirts of the campus. Not one building was damaged, nor was a single door caved in or window cracked. It looked simply as if its inhabitants had left, and the entire thing made Five uneasy. If she hadn't had Sam and Dr. Myers speaking in her ear, the utter silence of the place would have shot shivers down her spine.

To Five, her footsteps in the dirt sounded about ten times louder than they probably were. She came closer to the university on tiptoe, the pains in her calf only a small distraction. The main quad seemed to be surrounded by some sort of wire fence, and a huge hole was ripped out of the mesh in the middle like an open wound.

Those inside the now-useless fence were gone. Inside the compound, instead, stood—

"Look at that," Dr. Myers said quietly.

"Huh… what is that?"

"It looks like a makeshift lab," the doctor explained. Five listened quietly, approaching in trepidation. "In a tent in the middle of the university concourse. Where they would have been surrounded by fencing. Do you see the fencing?"

"I see where a big hole's been ripped in it," Sam replied grimly as Five stepped through the opening. "Pretty sure it wasn't Godzilla, so—"

"It looks like the zombies got in. They must have been trying to work right up to the end… You know, I think my girlfriend was working somewhere in here."

"What, Paula? She was working here? You never said—"

"Yeah." She paused, obviously wanting to change the subject. "Where's Runner Five?"

"There—there!" Sam chuckled quietly. "Got you on the first security camera coming into the university campus, Five."

"You're making good time, Runner Five, you're just getting to the lab now. What in the heck were they doing in that lab that was so important? If they were medical researchers from the university, the government would have tried to chopper them out."

"Did you hear anything at the time? Nose to the ground, ear to the… grapevine? Something?"

Five rifled through the lab, grabbing a number of medical supplies and scanning what looked like failed vaccines and lofty dreams for a solution. She crammed as much as she could carry into her pack, one ear on Dr. Myers and one on her surroundings, ready to sprint away at any sign of the undead.

"I was working nonstop emergency shifts at the start of the outbreak," the doctor explained. "At first trying to cure people, and then trying to sedate them, and then… ugh. Eventually we just started giving morphine overdoses to patients who arrived with the bite. It's not a bad way to go. Peaceful. Then ne got some live samples of their blood, but I was too tired to make any sense of what we saw. I did hear that some hospital out West had managed to stop a couple people from reanimating by putting them into an insulin coma. Of course, then they were in an insulin coma—"

"Holy moly, Runner Five!" Sam yelped into the microphone, causing Five to jump and drop the box of painkillers she held. "Runner Five? There are eight zombies heading for your position from all over the campus!"

Dr. Myers's voice fell, a mix of worry and wonder. "It's like they know Runner Five is there."

"Yeah, they've got extra tingly spider sense. Or hearing. One of those. We need you to grab what you can from that tent. Keep running, Five!"

The runner didn't need to be told twice. She swept up the dropped box of medicine and stuffed it in her pack, zipping it up hastily and going out the way she came. She already had her escape route planned, but… Abel's radio operator and doctor interrupted her escape immediately.

"Do you see that?" Sam asked suddenly. "On the floor—the case? What is that? Doc? Does that—Is that your name written on the case?" Sam slowed his speech as if he were reading something. "'Dr. Maxine Myers.' Some numbers. 'VS-72.'"

Dr. Myers gasped. "Oh… I think I know what they were doing! Runner Five, I know you're surrounded, but you have to loop around and try to pick up that case. It's important!"

Five growled in irritation; she was already at the very edge of campus. Turning around, she saw all eight of the zombies headed in her direction. Instead of looping around like the doctor had suggested, however, Five had other plans.

Grabbing a pickaxe she had found on the way over, Five headed straight back the way she came. Without stopping, she quickly thrust the axe into the heads of the first two zombies, jumping over their fallen bodies and heading back toward the center of campus.

The other six zombies had noticed the intruder and began shambling her way. Luckily, Five was about twelve steps ahead of them and was already back in the lab tent, shuffling around for the case.

"Where the hell is it?" she called urgently, turning around. One zombie was now in the fenced pen with her. "Tell me!"

"On the ground next to the second table!" Sam said, his voice rather high-pitched. "The gray one, with black writing! You're right next to it!"

Five's eye fell on the case, and she did not hesitate. She grabbed it and swung it viciously at the zombie closest to her, and its head flew off with a crack. Using the case as a shield, she navigated around the rest of the zombies and bolted off campus, losing them quickly in the forest.

"Five, are you all right?" Sam asked, his voice lined with panic.

"Fine! I'm fine," she panted, holding the case beside her as she ran back to Abel. "It's not… clean, though."

"What—what is that thing?" the radio operator demanded.

"Paula was working here," Dr. Myers said faintly. "I—we hadn't seen each other for days and I didn't know what they were working on for sure, but—"

"Wow. That's crazy. You think she left you a clue?"

"Paula had been talking about the possibility of it, but there was no time to synthesize, no time for trials—"

"Don't leave us hanging, Doc!" Sam whined. "What's in the box?"

Five ran back into her township, the case dripping zombie entrails in her bloodstained hands.

"If it's VS-72, it could be… it could be the start of a vaccine."