After this, Edwards disappeared.

Elizabeth sent him an IM. Several. Inviting him to talk, to go to the cafeteria, to get coffee. Anything to not lose the presence of the only other living being around.

The little dot proving that the message had been read turned green, but Edwards did not respond.

-XX-

It was fine. They all disappeared, anyway.

Elizabeth's parents, dead. Nawal, dead. Coulson and all her friends, gone. Mary, sailed away to Stockholm, to a twenty percent raise and kickass health insurance.

Karima, resigned one morning. Did not say goodbye to anybody. Just…gone. Vanished from existence.

"Abandonment issues," Dr Chettouf had said, in one of Elizabeth's sessions.

No shit, Sherlock.

Maybe people were not even real.

-XX-

Edwards and Elizabeth's job was not over though. There were still dozens of doors to barricade, and Elizabeth had been left alone to finish the class project. Two days of work, by herself. Hauling office furniture, nailing and hammering. Checking the map as she went. Looking at any apparent way in, circling the danger zones.

In Building Three they were pretty safe. Building Two, where Edwards worked, could be considered more dangerous. Building One looked good.

-XX-

Thirteen years ago.

A coastal town near the Atlantic Ocean. The sea was grey or green, never really blue. Local quarries had given a dark, almost black stone for a millennium; the old town was dark, the churches were dark, the ancient, Middle-Age fortress on the cliff was dark. It was one year before it all went to hell; people already talked of The Event, some even mentioned the word "zombies", but the peril was still faraway—a vague, far-fetched menace you banter about with your friends, before you go home to have a nice, cozy evening and forget about it.

Coulson was there with his team. Mission over, mission successful, now they just had to talk to the mayor about a tiny matter. The meeting was in three days, in-between the team could relax. Fish and ships.

Oysters. Beers. Swim in the ocean, for the bravest souls only: it was February and the water was freezing cold.

The team was more doom and gloom than the general populace about the zombie thing: they knew more. But still, some of the guys were still optimistic. Thinking science would solve the problem. The mayor himself, when they met him at last, was not worried at all. He thought the menace was exaggerated, that it would just go away on its own.

To be fair, science did solve the problem. It just took six years and almost five billion dead.

Coulson loved it all. He loved the town, he loved the sea. He loved those slow days where he did not have to think. The cries of the seagulls, walking on the huge pebble beach, watching the clouds. Talking shit with the guys, listening to the roar of the waves.

He looked at the houses, the ones up there on the cliff, with the sea view, and for the first time, he thought, maybe one day. Maybe he'd have a future. Maybe he would retire young, and just…live.

That same evening, he slept with Jesse, one of the best sharpshooters on the team. Jesse was openly bisexual and Coulson was lonely. Solitude goes with the territory when you're the efficient one, the one your superior officers count on, the one your team turns to. The one the brass sends when the mission is complex or bloody. With efficiency comes distance, to think, to analyze data.

You can joke with the men, but you cannot get too close.

That night he and Jesse got very close.

It was just sex. They did it twice again in the following year, then they stopped. There was a zombie apocalypse going on, things were busy. Coulson had realized he preferred women, Jesse that monogamy was not his life choice. Their relationship evolved to something like brothers in arms.

Or more. Another sort of bond, sealed by blood and horror.

Contrary to what Coulson may have thought, the mayor—the overly optimistic one he had met during the three days' vacation—took pretty smart decisions when shit hit the town. When zombies began to wander too close, the guy had all the inhabitants migrate to the eight-centuries-old stronghold on the top of the cliff, the one tourists loved, with its dark stone and ice cream parlor. There lay the old town, safe between the medieval stone walls, mostly still standing, complete with arrow slits and crenelles.

When they closed the gate, no zombie or human could come through.

Shipments of food passed through the gate. No one stepped into the old city without taking a contamination test right there at the entrance, guards watching. When they were out of money and in danger to starve, the mayor struck a deal with the local army and the biggest farmers, hosting everyone in exchange for food.

A lot of towns had tried something similar; a lot of them fell, but not this one. By some miracle, the plan worked, and they made it to the other side.

Coulson could not know that, at the time. He just looked at the sea and thought, one day.

-XX-

Now.

Three more days passed before Elizabeth decided to go back outside.

No, it was not folly, it was, on the opposite, a pretty rational thing to do. First, her nightmares were coming back. Nice, pretty little scenes from the past, from the camps and from—before. She needed the sky, she needed to breathe, or she would go nuts. But also, with the official list of system failures, she now knew which fences were functional and which zones were to avoid—in theory. The first thing you learn in survival 1.0 is that the map was not the territory, especially when it comes to undead creatures. So Elizabeth spent a full Saturday on the slopes, alone, in her pretty red coat, drawing her own map.

Manually checking each barrier, each gate. Comparing what the system said to the real state of the fences.

No surprise. This time, the system was not lying.

She prudently circled her old picnic zone, the one where she left the zombie with the glasses and the beige button-down shirt. There were four creatures inside now.

She watched them for a while, keeping her d.

There was another reality, another timeline where she had died there and her body lay half-eaten. Where she was there with them, her undead eyes looking at the moon at night and seeing nothing.

But she was not dead yet, and the afternoon was still hot. She walked away, chose the safest area and settled at the foot of a huge fern, with her backpack. Sitting on the grass, her back upon the solid wood.

Space open around her.

There was no grey here. Not under the huge blue sky. Fear and loss seemed like a distant memory, a figment of the night.

Ten months before extraction. She could do it.

"Hello, Ms. Moore."

Elizabeth jumped and almost dropped her thermos. Edwards was there, watching her, a soft smile on his lips.

"Hi," she said, a little stupidly. Mad, she was mad at him, remember? He had vanished for a week, leaving her alone in a house full of monsters.

(In a brain full of monsters.)

"May I sit down?"

She gestured toward the cover. "Please," she said coldly. "Sir."

"You are the master of polite sarcasm." Edwards sat on the edge of the cover. "You should teach classes. How to stick it to The Man with a smile and a nod."

"Duly noted. Coffee?"

"Thank you," he said, politely accepting the handed plastic cup.

Green grass, with patches of yellow. Edwards's bracelet, a touch of red to go with her coat. An impressionist dream. A Post-apocalyptic Monet.

Elizabeth closed her eyes. The fences were functioning. Not a zombie in sight. And Edwards was alive, if not the most reliable of allies.

She took a sip of coffee.

Silence.

"So, what are you going to do when we get out of here?" she asked.

Edwards set his cup down near the dandelions. Clover was thriving near Elizabeth's backpack. On her left, a bush of wild mint, she still had a ton at home though, for herbal tea, or sprinkled on ice cream.

"I cannot see myself ever getting out," Edwards answered after some reflection. "I know the chopper will come next July, but I cannot—visualize it. Being in a town, taking the subway. Crossing a busy street, having meetings with…colleagues. An apartment with noisy neighbours. I cannot…make myself believe it."

"Time has stopped," Elizabeth mused. "We've been here forever and we will stay here forever, or so it feels. But it is an illusion. In ten years, you will be in a bar and this—this part of our life—will be a quirky anecdote to suitably impress your friends."

"I am clinically depressed," Edwards stated.

Elizabeth looked at the sky, drinking a deep shot of blue. "I am sorry," she whispered. "This is not the best environment to get better."

"You think?" Edwards played with the dandelions' leaves, tearing them off one by one. He took a long, deep breath. "I—the work we've been doing here. What do you know? What is your clearance level?"

"Blue." Like her bracelet. Some admins had access to pretty important documents, and their clearance was way ahead of their caste. Not Elizabeth though. "But I know more than I am supposed to. I know we—we all know the Center failed."

All those scientists, all this money, and the Center did not find anything groundbreaking. At first, the teams were looking for a vaccine. When that didn't work, they focused on secondary projects. A cure, an explanation for The Event, a way to scramble the Call, anything.

When that failed too, or the results were deemed insufficient, they closed shop. Most labs had been transferred into town to the Emergency Research Office, in the fabled land of the capital where Coulson now dwelled. There had been some reshuffling of the brass but the Witch didn't change in any significant way.

Edwards was still playing with the leaves. "We could argue about the definition of failure. Lab 23? Ebrah's team? They got a version of the vaccine—low success rate, and it costs hell to produce, but—" He pinched the bridge of his nose as if a headache was looming. "It will work, it will—one day. Their collaboration with the Swedish looks promising… But. We, um. In our lab. My lab. We experimented on the creatures, as you know." A pause. "But also—on human beings. Live ones, I mean. Infected ones. Doomed, already."

"The lab B-13 experiments." Elizabeth said in a low voice. "Yes. I know."

The Center experimented on infected people. People, still human. Elizabeth knew, everyone knew, the world knew.

During the war, governments had scrambled, trying to learn more about the plague—the fate of humanity depended on it. See, the HC turning rate was a hundred percent. HC meant 'Human to Creature', a zombie had bitten you, and you did not get the shot of the Big Ass Antibiotics in the next forty seconds, or you got contaminated any other way, you became a zombie in two to four weeks. Again: a hundred percent. No wiggle room, doom was inescapable.

It looked like a hopeless fight. Morality and scientific ethics were thrown out the window. Why not experiment on people who were absolutely, 100% fucked? Why not try to save others this way? Contaminated Human Experiments, it was called.

But it was supposed to end with the war. And it did— Contaminated Human Experiments were illegal now.

Except.

Except, see, the Center. Those mountains, this paradisiac land, were legally a Lost Area. In the middle of the war, when panic was at its peak, when millions of people died each day, governments had to make hard choices. Men and resources were scarce, you couldn't save everyone. Lost Areas were territories the authorities had just…given up. No help was sent, no effort was made to reclaim the places. They were lost to the zombies.

And the clinch was, Lost Areas were not subject to governmental laws. So, contaminated people there? Experiment away.

Also, infected people were not officially people. Let's take a look at the Official Caste System, shall we? Edwards as a precious, precious scientist, level five, the highest level, with his coveted red bracelet. The red range, "save at all costs", with its four nuances of red. For military and government officials. Elizabeth was level three.

Contaminated people were level zero—stripped of all human rights.

Contaminated people with no human rights. In a Lost Area not subject to governmental law. Thus, Lab B-13.

Elizabeth shook her head. "You only wanted to help."

"I had a choice," Edwards whispered. "I could walk out, refuse the job. Yes, I wanted to help, I really did. But there was also… Reputation, ambition—the usual. But who cares, really. Because I did not help, we didn't. My lab—my team—the Center, we did not find anything important. So, if the end justifies the means…"

If the end justifies the means, what happens when no end has been reached?

"I am here too," Elizabeth said. "I did not know—not at first, not when I was transferred in. But I understood soon enough. I could have quit too. Except I didn't, because…"

"Our mission is too important," Mary had explained three years ago, in a whisper, when Elizabeth had understood what was going on and confronted her.

Mary, magenta bracelet. Working in the labs. The conversation had taken place in one of the upstairs breakrooms, with its green beanbags and jolly mental health posters. "If we find it, a cure, a vaccine," Mary had said, "even only a way of slowing the process, we save millions of people. Millions. So yes. Contaminated Human Experiments. The need of the many over the need of the few."

Coulson was there. Listening to the conversation, impassive. Drinking coffee, or maybe just holding his mug.

"Come on, you agree with me, Coulson, right?" Mary asked. "You were military. You know about sacrifice."

"No comment."

The conversation had continued without him. Mary was convincing and Elizabeth had decided not to quit. Maybe because the mission was too important. Maybe because the salary was so high. Maybe because it was safe (ha!). Because quitting was such a complicated process, and what would Elizabeth do otherwise?

These people, the contaminated ones. They were dead already, they just didn't know it. Right?

"Yes, well," Edwards said, in the now, in the mountains, under the bright blue sky. "You are guilty too. This is the price, don't you see? We are both damned, and we're stuck here in hell."

Oh no. No no no. Elizabeth stood up. "Fuck you. Fuck you, I don't intend to die here. Depress all you want, wallow in your guilt, I don't intend to drown with you," she said, before angrily putting her thermos back in her backpack.

Edwards laughed. "I knew you would react this way." "Fuck you," was all that Elizabeth could repeat. She was desperately working to keep everything at bay but now, now she had stepped in a big pool of fucking-Edwards-related grey and fuck that, fuck him, fuck everyone.

"I'm going home," she whispered. (Home. Ha!)

"I like it. Your reaction, I mean. You're much better at surviving."

"Fuck you!"

Elizabeth scrambled down the hill, hands trembling.

-XX-

In the evening, she stood in front of the mirror and had her Macbeth moment. Not obsessively washing her hands, no, too dramatic, too Shakespearian for her taste, just looking.

If the end justifies the means…

Stop. No, really, stop. None of this was new. This conversation with Edwards, no new information here.

Nothing new, come on, eat cake, watch a movie, go to bed.