Cassidy was awake before anyone else, deeming that because she hadn't gorged herself on alcohol by only consuming one and a half glasses of wine, compared to Edwin and their guests, whom she witnessed enjoying many bottles of wine during the previous night's festivities. She reluctantly pulled herself from her cot and rubbed the sleep from her eyes before standing and getting changed into a somewhat fresh change of clothes. Most of her clothes have been worn in rotation, as she and Edwin would only make use of the laundry facilities if the smell of their clothes began to be too much. Once dressed and pulled on her shoes, her brows furrowed when she noticed the frame of her family was positioned upright, not face down on the desk where she'd left it last. Looking around her office, nothing seemed out of place, so the brunette woman couldn't tell if someone had entered the room while she slept. With a final glance at the frame, she reached over and knocked it back down flat before finally throwing on her lab coat and leaving her office.
Her assumption of being the first one awake was correct when she reached the cafeteria and found the large room and kitchen empty, but the lights were still on from last night. She knew Edwin wouldn't be happy about the power having been wasted. Moving into the kitchen, she poured herself a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee, but as she turned around, she froze as she noticed T-Dog walking in.
"Morning Doc." He greeted her, a large grin on his face.
"Morning, Theodore." She returned the greeting, moving past him.
He shot her an odd look. While it was his birth name, the man had always asked that everyone call him T-Dog. "Did Jacqui tell you my name?" When she nodded, he just chuckled and shook his head. "Figures…" He mumbled, watching her sit down at the small table she shared with her colleague the previous night. "Mind if I cook up some grub for my group?"
"No." Cassidy's eyes flicked to him quickly as she sat down, noticing the folding sitting at the table. Her brows creased as she stared at it, knowing it hadn't been there last night. Picking it up, she noticed it was the blood results from the twelve survivors. The woman smiled, knowing that Edwin had left it there for her to look over. As she looked over the results and data, members of Rick's group slowly began to trickle in, many dealing with the symptoms of being hungover. None of them bothered when the female scientist didn't respond to their morning greetings but found it humorous how engrossed she became in her work that cereal turned soggy and coffee went cold.
Around the table sat Glenn, Dale, Lori, Carl and Andrea, eating up a mixture of cereal and powdered eggs that T-Dog had cooked up for them, while Rick had come stumbling in, with Carl laughing as he looked to his father, asking if the man was hungover, as Lori said he would be.
"Mum is right," Rick smirked, looking at his wife as she looked embarrassed that her son had parroted her words from earlier. He sat down with them, taking the seat at the end of the table.
Lori smiled, picking at a piece of jerky, which T-Dog had substituted for bacon. "Mum has that annoying habit."
"Eggs!" T-Dog called out, making his way out of the kitchen. "Powdered, but I do them good! Bet you can't tell." He grinned towards Carol, Sophia and Jacqui as the three women walked into the cafeteria, and his facial expression made the young girl and Dale laugh. Jacqui leaned over Glenn's shoulder, checking on the man as he groaned into his arms while T-Dog dished more eggs onto the plate in front of the Asian man. "Protein helps the hangover."
Rick held up a small medical container of painkillers that had been sitting on the table. "Where'd all this come from?"
"Jenner," Lori spoke as Rick handed her the painkillers, needing assistance with unscrewing the lid open. "He thought we could use it, some of us at least." She looked at Glenn, holding back a chuckle as he continued to groan.
"Don't ever, ever, ever let me drink again." Glenn moaned, not looking up as Jacqui rubbed at his back soothingly.
"Thank you," Rick spoke as he took the painkillers from Lori as she resealed the lid. He greeted his friend and partner, Shane, as the man walked in past him, the dark-haired man returning the greeting as he made his way over to a coffee station T-Dog had set up. "You feel as bad as I do?" Rick called out as he went to swallow back the pills with a sip of juice.
"Worse," Shane mumbled, just audible over the large room. As he turned around, T-Dog looked at him, noticing the scratches on his neck, which resembled claw marks.
T-Dog questioned him about it with his gaze shifting between Shane's face and neck. "What the hell happened to you? Your neck?"
Shane sat down at the opposite side of the table, avoiding T-Dog's eyes as he answered. "Must have done it in my sleep."
"Never seen you do that before," Rick spoke, eyeing his friend with concern.
"Me neither, not like me at all," Shane mumbled again, his eyes landing on Lori briefly as he took a sip from his coffee, the brunette sending him a glare that warned him away. An odd silence fell over the group after that as they continued to eat, only their resident redneck, Daryl, missing, as it was possible the man was sleeping off a hangover.
"Good morning." Edwin greeted the group as he entered the room with his coffee mug. He looked at his colleague, smiling as he noticed her reading through the report he'd left for her. The survivors greeted him back as he made his way to the coffee station, Andrea and Dale exchanging looks and nods.
"Doctor, I don't mean to slam you with questions first thing, and your colleague has been unresponsive," Dale spoke, looking at the scientist back.
Edwin frowned. "But you will anyway." He turned around with his fresh coffee in hand. "And as for Cassidy, you need to poke her." Edwin made his way to Cassidy, gently poking the woman in the ear and making her jump.
Cassidy looked up at him, eyes wide. "Edwin!" She scolded, bringing a hand up to her to touch the skin of her ear that he poked. "That is rather unprofessional!"
"They've been trying to get your attention." He grinned down at her as he took the other seat at the small table. "The report that fascinating?" She gave him a hard stare as she closed the file.
"Hardly." She stated. "There is no dissimilarity from our current data." Her blue eyes moved to the survivors as she ignored Edwin's chuckles. "Apologies, what were you inquiring about?"
Andrea's face was tight as she spoke. "We didn't come here for the eggs. We want answers." Cassidy looked to Edwin, the two scientists sharing non-verbal conversation through their eyes alone, putting the group of survivors on edge. This irritated Andrea further. "Do you even know anything?!" She barked at them, with Dale trying to shush her to calm her down.
"Why the hell ya yellin' for?" Daryl drawled as he walked in, rubbing the palm of one hand into his eyes as he glared at the blonde, her voice making his head ring.
Edwin sighed, looking down at his mug, having not even been able to take a sip before he was being pestered about the outbreak. With one look to his colleague, he nodded, the two of them standing as Cassidy picked up the report he'd left for her. "Follow me." Coffee in hand, Edwin led his colleague and the twelve survivors down to the operations room. As he reached his station, he placed his coffee down, and Cassidy placed the folder down beside the mug. "Give me a playback of TS-19." He ordered Vi, the automated voice parroting 'playback of TS-19'. Everyone watched as the large screen at the end of the room lit up, bringing up numerous images, some obviously of the human brain. "Few people ever got a chance to see this. Very few." Edwin told them as the survivors moved in closer.
"Is that a brain?" Carl asked, looking at the two scientists.
"An extraordinary one." Edwin smiled at the young boy.
"An amazingly grand one," Cassidy spoke up, staring at the screen fondly at the brain belonging to her former colleague and friend, Candace. Edwin looked at her, the man holding back tears blindingly at her words. "Vi, enhance to internal view." The survivors continued to watch on as the image zoomed in and rotated, coming to a close-up of the individual's skull as they lay on their back. The image zoomed into the brain stem, showcasing a colourful blue light display.
"What are those lights?" Shane asked, the man sitting down in a computer chair he'd wheeled away from a station.
"A person's life. Experiences, memories. It's everything. Somewhere in all those ripples of light is you." Edwin explained, walking around the front of the group as he gestured back and forth between them and the screen. "The thing that makes you unique and human."
"You don't make sense? Ever?" Daryl questioned, staring at the screen and scientist in confusion, his arms crossed and hands under his armpits.
"The lights are called biophotons," Cassidy answered, not looking away from the brain. "They are the neurons, electrical charges and chemicals that pass along synapses to communicate between different areas of the brain, spinal cord, and the body itself. This is how we know how to move…to act…speak and think." She finally turned to face them all, smiling, while everyone looked at her in astonishment, Edwin chuckled at his colleague's explanation.
"From the moment of birth and to death," Edwin added on, looking at his colleague, the pair sharing a look of understanding as her gaze moved to him.
"Death?" Rick spoke up, stepping closer to the scientists. "That's what this is? A vigil?"
"Yes…" Edwin spoke bitterly, he and Cassidy both looking back at the screen. "Or a playback of a vigil."
Andrea sucked in a breath. "This person died?" She stared up at the screen, watching the lights as they moved, thinking back to her little sister, Amy, who had only died in her arms two days before, in those earlier hours before the sun could even rise. "Who?"
Edwin swallowed thickly, unable to respond.
"Test subject 19," Cassidy answered, seeing the nervous bobble of Edwin's Adam's apple in the corner of her eye. "They were bitten and infected on day sixteen of the outbreak. September ninth. 10.17 am. They volunteered to have us record the process of infection and death via magnetic resonance imaging." Her mouth thinned as she spoke, feeling the familiar pain in her eyes as tears threatened to well. "Vi, scan forward to the first event." The screen jumped forward to hour thirty-two of the recording, where the brain stem had become dark and continued to spread to the brain.
"What is that?" Glenn asked.
"The infection invades the brain like meningitis. The adrenal glands haemorrhage, then the brain begins to shut down, followed by major organs." Cassidy answered. The screen showed the individual beginning to struggle as they died, the brain going completely dark. "Which results in death."
Edwin sighed, pulling out a chair and sitting down. "Everything you ever were and will be, gone." He mumbled, his hand playing with the rim of his coffee mug, its contents turning cold, but his desire for the caffeinated substance was long gone.
"Is that what happened to Jim?" Sophia asked her mother quietly, with Carol responding with a firm 'yes', hugging her daughter closer. Edwin glanced over to them as he heard the two women speak, but it was Andrea who stole his attention. The blonde's hand curled into a tight fist and pressed against her mouth as she struggled not to cry.
Lori noticed this. "She lost somebody two days ago. Her sister."
"I lost somebody too," Edwin whispered, leaning forward in his chair as he faced the distraught woman. "Cassidy, too." He spared a quick glance at his friend, seeing the slight tenseness in her shoulders. "We both know how devastating it is." Edwin looked back at Andrea, the woman giving a forced, reassuring smile. Leaning back, Edwin moved his gaze to the screen. "Vi, scan to the second event."Edwin continued speaking as the screen started to load, taking over for Cassidy. "The resurrection times vary wildly. We have reports of it happening in less than three minutes. The longest we heard of was hour hours. In the case of this patient, it was two hours…one minute…seven seconds…" A red spark appeared on the screen in the brain stem, slowly shooting out along the synapses, yet the brain itself remained dark.
"It restarts the brain?" Lori asked in astonishment. She and her group looked on in awe at what they were seeing.
"No, just the brain stem." Edwin clarified. "Basically, it gets them up and moving."
"But they're not alive," Rick interjected, coming to stand beside the scientist.
Edwin scoffed, gesturing to the screen as he looked at the man. "You tell me."
"It's nothing like before. Most of that brain is dark." Rick continued.
"Dark. Lifeless. Dead." Edwin turned to him once more, a serious look as he wanted the man to understand what the survivors were seeing from the CDC's view.
"The neocortex is inactive. It is thought to be responsible for the neuronal computations of attention, thought, perception and episodic memory." Cassidy added on, still staring at the screen, unaware that her choice of wording had no understanding on them except for Edwin. "The human part of them is gone." The human on the screen began to move as the resurrection process took hold. "I theorise that they are running on the most basic of instincts," she turned around, her face serious. "One of survival."
"What type of survival is eating people?" Shane barked, frowning at the woman whom he couldn't make sense of.
Daryl scoffed. "Everything's gotta eat to survive." He and the former cop exchanged a heated look, both still miffed over their encounter from the previous night, but their gaze was turned to Carol as she cursed aloud, having noticed something on the playback.
"He shot his patient in the head…" Andrea spoke, having known she'd seen the mussel of a gun. She looked to Edwin. "Didn't you?" Edwin didn't speak. He just glanced at Cassidy, who was now looking away from everyone.
"I did." She stated. The female scientists could hear the gasps and raffles of fabric as every member of the group turned to face her, all in shock at not only what she'd done but how easily she admitted to it. "Vi, power down the main screen and workstations." Cassidy glanced downwards, her breathing heavy as she remembered sitting with Candace in the woman's final moments and putting the gun to the head of the creature that awoke in her body. Whether or not Candace was dead, she still had to shoot a woman that she admired, a friend. She couldn't let Edwin do it. Not to the woman he loved. Not to his wife.
"You have no idea what it is, do you?" Andrea asked, feeling as if none of their questions had been answered.
Edwin glanced down at the workstation in front of him, his fingers drumming along the bench top, the guilt playing in his mind as to whether he could answer truthfully or not. "Could be microbial, viral, parasitic…fungal…" He kept listing it all off and even agreeing with Jacqui when she stated 'the wrath of god'. Cassidy glanced over to him, her gaze hard, when she noticed he wasn't saying what it really was. When he noticed her look, he only stared her down.
"Somebody must know something? Somebody…somewhere?!" Andrea barked, getting frustrated again.
"There are others, right? Other facilities?" Carol spoke up, joining in in demanding answers.
Cassidy sighed, her lips pursing. "We have no idea. With no power grid or internet, we haven't been able to communicate with any facilities here in the US or globally in forty-four days. La Biomédicine DDMI in France was the last we communicated with and the closest to finding a cure."
"Its world wide?" Andrea asked in shock. "There's nothing left anywhere? Nothing?"
"Yes," Cassidy answered.
Andrea scoffed, looking at the brunette in utter bewilderment. "Un-fucking-believeable…" She seethed, her gaze darting between Cassidy and Edwin.
"I would ask you to mind your language in front of the children," Cassidy stated, oblivious to the panic that was currently consuming the once-hopeful survivors, but it only made Andrea scoff again. Edwin looked at his colleague, his face solemn as he understood how the group felt at that moment. He and Cassidy had felt it weeks ago, and it had long since passed as they had come to accept it.
"Man, I'm gonna get shitfaced drunk…again…" Daryl groaned, rubbing the heels of his palms into his eyes and leaned against the back of a computer as his mind processed everything.
"Doctor Jenner…Doctor Frost…I know this has been taxing for you both, and I'd hate to ask one more question, but…" Dale finally spoke for the first time, having only watched and listened during the entire presentation. The older man had been moving slowly at the back of the group as he neared the countdown timer, gesturing at it. "That clock. It's counting down. What happens at zero?" Everyone turned their eyes to the red clock, watching as the number began to trickle down from one hour.
"Uh…" Edwin swallowed, hesitating to answer. "Basement generators run out of fuel."
"And then?" Rick asked, an air of urgency to his voice as he watched Edwin stand up from his chair, the scientist collecting his cold mug of coffee and walking off. "Vi! What happens when the power runs out." He yelled out to the room, but the AI didn't respond to him, as he wasn't a registered staff member, and his voice waves were unknown to the AI.
Cassidy rolled her jaw, watching her colleague leave the room. With a deep breath, she looked to Rick, explaining what it meant. "Facility-wide decontamination will occur."
Cassidy had left the survivors behind, unaware that they didn't have a clue of her meaning when she said 'facility-wide decontamination', but she needed to speak to Edwin to understand why the man was being so secretive with Rick's group and what his intentions were. Taking in the twelve survivors had dwindled what was felt of their power reserves, something both Edwin and Cassidy knew would happen, but neither had thought it would be used up so fast. Cassidy didn't knock before entering the office currently being used by Edwin, which formally belonged to the man's late wife, Candace. Her colleague was sitting at the large desk in the back of the room, in front of the windows that overlooked the operations room. There was a glass of scotch in hand as he looked at her.
"Edwin…" Cassidy breathed, her tone somewhat off from her usual neutral voice. "You didn't answer their questions? We know what it is and who caused it."
He placed the glass down on the desk, staring hard back at her. "What would you have me do? Why bother giving them answers when it will do nothing to help them."
The statement made Cassidy grimace. Shutting the door behind her and moving further into the room, she took a seat in one of the two chairs on the opposite side of his desk. Cassidy found logic in his answer, as knowing about the virus would, in truth, do nothing to aid the survivors. What they needed was a cure, which the scientists couldn't provide. "Will you deny them the right to depart?"
Edwin scoffed. "There's nothing out there for them or us. Only death."
"Whether that is true, it isn't our choice to make. They have the right to choose." She explained. "It's a basic human right."
Edwin scoffed again, this time with an overly dramatic eye-roll. "And we know humans. Broken, evil things at the core…there was never going to be anything else for us when the power ran out." He picked back up his glass and took a large gulp of its contents, making Cassidy realise the man was intoxicated again.
She glanced down at her hands in her lap, where she'd instinctively been picking at her cuticles again while they talked. "If that is your thoughts, why did you even bother staying here for the last two months."
"Candace—"
"Stop." Cassidy's head snapped up, and she raised a hand to silence him, which he didn't like. "I know what Candace wanted, I sat with her for thirty-two hours while the infection slowly killed her. She wanted us to keep trying because she had hope. And I still have hope—"
"Hope?" It was his turn to cut her off with a slam of his empty glass on the desk's surface. "Since when have you ever had hope? You have ever only thought in logic. You speak and act in logic."
"It doesn't mean I don't have faith!" She shrieked, her voice raised in such a tone that he'd never heard her use before. "It is my life. They're—" She gestured out to the window behind him, where the survivors were no longer hanging around, having returned to their rooms. "—lives you are messing with!" Her hand dropped as she breathed heavily. "You can't make the choices for others…" She looked at him soulfully, but he only continued to stare her down. In his mind, Edwin was correct, and he knew he was making the best decisions for everyone, even if they disagreed with him.
"If you're done, you're excused." Edwin picked up the bottle of scotch to refill his glass as he reached for the frame on his desk—the framed photo of his wife, Candace.
Cassidy frowned, watching him. She stood, moving towards the office's door, but stopped. "Why did you move the photo of my family in my office last night when I was asleep?" She glanced at him over her shoulder, the man pausing.
"I wanted you to see and remember them before the end."
With a nod, she left, shutting the door behind her and making her way back down to her office, passing the members of Rick's group on the way as they sat in the offices they'd claimed with their doors open. Shutting the door to her office behind her, Cassidy trailed her hands through her hair as she paced back and forth in the space between her desk and cot. Since the first time she heard the call from her brother Austin, she was afraid. But not for herself. She saw the need to survive in the faces of Rick's group, in the desperation for answers. Cassidy wanted them to live. With a purse of her lips, she approached her desk and picked up the photo of her family.
Sitting down on her cot, she stared at their faces. "I'm sorry I disappointed you all in the end," Cassidy mumbled, flipping the frame over and fiddling with the sliders at the back that held everything in place, opening up the back. There was the object she was looking for, where she'd hidden it months ago. Picking up the ID card in one hand as the other resealed the frame, Cassidy looked down at the piece of plastic, Candace's smiling face stared back up at her. "I disappointed you too, my friend." Flipping it over, her eyes traced over the four-digit code written in black permanent marker in her late friend's handwriting. Candace's backup plan. Cassidy had hoped that she'd never have to use it, that everything would move smoothly, yet Edwin's grief was consuming him and threatening the safety and lives of the survivors they had offered refuge to. Cassidy jumped when there was a loud knock at her office door, The young brunette quickly clenched her hand around the ID to obscure it as Lori opened the door and stepped in.
"Sorry to bother you, Dr. Frost," Lori spoke, worry evident on her face. Her eyes watched as Cassidy slowly moved her left hand to deliberately slide something into one of the front pockets of her jeans in an act to conceal whatever she was holding, but Lori chose not to question it. "The air conditioning has stopped." As Cassidy opened her mouth to explain, the situation became worse as the main lights shut off around them, only the small glow of the emergency lights emulating the room safety reasons. "What's happening?" Lori asked shakily, glancing out into the hallway behind her, where members of her group began to gather.
Cassidy stood, placing her family photo back on her desk, this time not letting it fall flat as she moved out into the hallway, where Dale and Andrea approached her, also questioning the scientist about what was going on with the facility.
"Why is the air off? And the lights in our room?" Carol asked, but it wasn't directed at Cassidy.
As she turned to look up the hall, Edwin had come walking down it, dressed in a suit and tie, his lab coat on as he made his way through the survivors. Even Daryl questioned what was going on as he stuck his head out of his room, the whisky bottle he'd taken from Dr. Caldwell's office in hand as he was making good on his statement to get drunk again. "Energy use is being prioritised," Edwin stated, taking the bottle from Daryl, which caused the redneck to glare at his back.
"Air isn't a priority? And lights?" Dale asked, staring at the man in bewilderment.
Edwin took a sip from the whisky bottle. "It's not up to me. Zone 5 is shutting itself down." He said as he passed Cassidy and Lori, sparing a glance at his colleague. Cassidy stepped in beside him, the pair walking in sync as they made their way towards the operations room.
"Hey!" Daryl yelled, following closely behind the two scientists as Lori, Jacqui, Andrea, Dale, Carol, and the children trudged along. "Hey, what the hell does that mean? Hey, man, I'm talking to you." Daryl continued to yell, trying to move in front of Edwin. "What do you mean it's shutting itself down? How can a building do anything?"
"This facility is fully automated," Cassidy answered, keeping her gaze ahead as they entered the operations room. Daryl shot her a look, finding himself even more confused by the woman's statement. At that moment, Rick, Shane, Glenn and T-Dog came rushing in, the four men having been inspecting the generators in the sub-basement.
"Jenner, what's happening?" Rick seethed, coming to stand before the virologist, but it didn't stop him, with Edwin and Cassidy merely walking around the cop.
"The system is dropping all the nonessential uses of power. It's designed to keep the computers running to the last possible second. That started as we approached the half-hour mark." Edwin spoke, pointing towards the clock as its numbers were down to thirty-one minutes and twenty-seven seconds. "Right on schedule." He took a large swig from the bottle before offering it back to Daryl, the redneck snatching it off him. "No power grid. Ran out of juice. The world runs on fossil fuels. I mean, how stupid is that?" Edwin explained brokenly in his intoxicated state, smiling as if it was some form of joke. Cassidy moved past him, stepping up to the workstations to look down at the group of survivors.
"Let me tell you…" Shane barked, making a reach for Edwin as the scientist followed his colleague. But Rick stopped Shane from doing something stupid.
"To hell with it, Shane. I don't even care." Rick said, pushing his friend away from the man and turning to face his wife. "Lori, grab our things. Everybody, get your stuff. We're getting out of here now!" As everybody started to move to follow the man's orders, an alarm started blaring.
"Thirty minutes to decontamination."
"Doc's, what's going on here?" Daryl cursed out, his gaze darting between the two scientists. Cassidy looked on as the group began to panic, not paying attention to Edwin as he fiddled with a console, causing a safety shutter to the elevators to close. Cassidy's eyes widened as she realised that Edwin had intended to do just as she feared, shutting everybody in to die.
"Did you just lock us in?" Glenn gasped, his eyes large as he stared at the now-blocked passageway. "He just locked us in!"
Edwin ignored them all, sitting at his console as he started the transmission video link. "We've hit the thirty-minute window. I am recording."
Daryl moved, racing at the male scientist. "You son of a bitch. You let us out of here!" Shane stood by as the redneck passed him, hearing Rick calling on his friend to act before Daryl could do anything. "You lying…" Both Shane and T-Dog moved quickly, grabbing Daryl from the front of his waist and shoving him back, making Cassidy jump back to avoid the man's wildly swinging arms.
"Do something!" T-Dog yelled to her, begging the woman. But she could only stand there.
"I don't have clearance…" She mumbled, her gaze dropping to her feet. Her hand moved to her pocket, grasping at the ID card still safely tucked inside the slim pocket of her jeans. Stepping away from everyone, Cassidy covered her ears, her hand pressing and unpressing, trying to block out the sounds of everyone panicking and yelling, her teeth clenched together. Her green eyes looked to the clock as she heard Edwin's raised voice, the man aggressively explaining the decontamination procedure. Twenty-eight minutes. Cassidy's hands dropped as she felt the rush of air behind her and a deafening silence overtake the room. She watched as most of the group succumbed to their fate, but Daryl and Shane were attempting to hit the shutters with axes.
"We can't make a dent!" Shane hissed, returning to the group.
Edwin looked at the man, a look of euphoria on his face like he'd reached a moment of clarity and understanding. "Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher."
"Well, your head ain't!" Daryl yelled, raising the axe in his hands, ready to strike, but Dale and Rick stopped him.
"You do want—" Edwin's voice was cut off by the sound of glass shattering, all twelve survivors freezing to watch as the male scientist fell out of his chair and landed unconsciously on the floor. Their gazes move to Cassidy, the woman standing behind the now empty chair with the remains of Daryl's empty whisky bottle. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish before finally dropping what was left on the bottle, turning to the console, pulling the ID from her pocket, and scanning it into the system.
Rick took a step towards her. "What are you—"
"Silence." She ordered, cutting him off as she began to access the administrative controls for the facility with the code Candace had left her. The group turned and watched as the shutter doors opened up, relief flooding into their systems. "Vi…power down Zone Five to emergency power only." She stood away from the console, facing Rick. "My colleague had no right to force your deaths. I will open the main level once you're ready to depart. Doing so now will cause a massive drop in the reserves."
Rick looked at her, fighting to hold back the smile on his face. "What…what did you do?" His group didn't hesitate to make use of the opportunity, bolting for the offices to collect their belongings. But Andrea stayed behind, still slumped on the floor as Dale tried talking to her in hushed whispers.
Cassidy held up the ID card to Rick. "The previous head of Zone Five left this for me in case Edwin began to be consumed by grief. I removed him from the database. He is no longer employed on the system."
Rick studied the ID, the face of a smiling, beautiful brunette staring back at him, but his eyes widened when he read the name. Dr. Candace Jenner. "His wife…" Rick looked to Edwin, who was still lying unconscious on the floor.
"Yes," Cassidy spoke before snapping the ID in half, destroying the chip inside and rendering it useless. "And test subject TS-19."
Rick looked back at Cassidy, understanding now why she'd been the one to explain the TS-19 video in place of Edwin and why she was the one who'd fired the gun. It all had been to spare her friend from suffering, but in doing so, it was she who was suffering for him. "Come with us." Rick didn't hesitate to ask. The woman had been ready to harm her only friend left to save a bunch of strangers, and the former cop didn't want her to reside to the same fate.
Cassidy shook her head, leaning back on the workstation. "There is nothing out there for me. My family is gone, and so is my work." She glanced down at Edwin's body. "All I have left is him."
"You stayed here and continued working because you didn't want to give up on humanity." He moved to lean on the space beside her. "If you choose to end it now, that's one less person to keep humanity going. And with a heart like yours, humanity is going to need someone like you."
Her brows furrowed as she thought about his words. "That is…logical." Her comment made Rick chuckle. Cassidy stood up from the workstation. "I will take you up on the offer. Have everyone wait by the elevator. Better to conserve power if it's only used once." Rick nodded, watching her leave towards her offices. There were twenty minutes left on the timer as Cassidy passed the group, each person rushing by her with their bags as she went to her office. Fortunately, she'd been living out of a duffel bag for the last two months, meaning most of her belongings were already packed. She gathered her items from the bathroom and the family photo from her desk. With a final look around her office, she took off her lab coat, unclasping her ID badge before throwing the material onto the cot.
"You coming too?" Glenn asked, spotting her coming out of her office. T-Dog stood beside him, the men carrying their belongings and food they had pilfered from the cafeteria. "Uhh…" He sighed when he noticed her gaze on the supplies they'd taken. "This—"
"Smart," Cassidy said, nodding to the two men, making Glenn chuckle. "And yes."
"Cool." Glenn beamed, moving ahead of her as T-Dog followed after the Asian man, throwing the woman a nod. She followed after them, where the group had gathered outside the elevator, all but Andrea and Dale. The blonde woman had wanted to stay behind, having given up after the loss of her sister, Amy. But Dale was being persistent, refusing to leave without her. Jacqui had also planned to stay, T-Dog fighting her on the choice, but it was hers and hers alone to make.
"We have fifteen minutes, I estimate that using the elevator and bringing back full power to the entrance will leave us with less than ten minutes of power," Cassidy explained, glancing over to Dale and Andrea as the group began to enter the elevator.
"Cassidy!" Edwin roared, making his way from the workstations towards the elevator, gripping the back of his head, throbbing from her assault. "What have you done?!" in his hand were the two broken pieces of his wife's ID card. He'd tried to gain access to the system to stop them, but Cassidy had locked him out of everything. Not even Vi would respond to him.
"What was necessary." She stated. Edwin rounded on her, ready to do something he was not even sure of, but Rick intervened, placing himself between the two scientists. Shane and Daryl had almost moved closer to the woman. Yet Cassidy hadn't flinched at all. She simply turned her back on him and entered the elevator. "Goodbye, Dr. Jenner." Edwin's jaw tensed. He yelled at her about how Candace wouldn't have stood for this and how Cassidy was making a mistake, but she knew better. Cassidy was doing what Candace had asked her to do. She'd given her friend her ID card and code before she passed because Candace knew her husband and feared what Edwin would do. Everyone watched the woman as she leaned against the elevator wall and blocked out Edwin's yelling, her eyes downcast at her feet as she held her duffel bag, yet her face showed no form of emotion.
"You alright?" Rick asked, leaning on the wall beside her.
"Yes." She said, not moving.
Rick nodded, looking out to the operations room, where Andrea was currently pleading with Dale to go, but the man wouldn't without her. Shane was lecturing his friend, telling Rick that they needed to go, and with a hard swallow, the former cop pressed the button, watching as the doors shut and the elevator began to move. It was an eerie silence in the minutes it took to reach the main lobby, Cassidy moving to the card reader to scan her ID card, having previously added more permissions to her role while she had removed Edwin from the system.
"Everyone prepared?" She asked the group. Rick nodded, taking her bag from her as the survivors moved to the doors, waiting for her to turn the power back on. With a swipe of the ID card, Cassidy ordered Vi to restore power to the lobby and cease the safety measures that kept the doors locked and metal shutters down. As the shutters began to roll up, the midday sun almost blinded them as they gazed outside. Shane and T-Dog pushed the doors open, bolting out with everyone following closely behind them. The men who held weapons, Rick, Shane and Daryl, took out any of the infected that stumbled too close to them as they raced back to the safety of their vehicles and far away from the CDC, wanting to put enough distance between them and the explosion that was the decontamination procedure. Daryl moved to his pickup truck, which had a motorbike secured in the bed, tossing his bag into the passenger side while Shane went to his Jeep. Carol went to her late husband's car with her daughter Sophia and T-Dog to his van. Cassidy followed Rick and his family, alongside Glenn, to an RV, but she hesitated outside, turning to face the building that had been her place of employment for five years and her home for the last two months.
"Cas!" Glenn yelled, standing at the RV's doorway and staring at the woman. "We need to go!" She turned to him, her face finally showing a grim expression as she followed him inside the vehicle, where he guided her to sit down at the small dining booth. Glenn left her there as he went to Rick, now sitting in the driver's seat as he fiddled with the keys, trying to slot them into the ignition.
"Wait!" Lori yelled, making her husband freeze. She pointed out ahead where Dale and Andrea were racing down the paced path towards them. "They're coming!" She beamed, overjoyed to see the old man and the blonde woman choosing to live. The pair were thrown forward as the air within the CDC caught fire, engulfing the interior of the building and turning it into a flaming inferno, making the large facility explode. In their vehicles, everyone braced themselves as the explosion shook the cars and RV, and debris and rubble were thrown onto the grounds surrounding where the remains of the building stood.
"You called me Cas," Cassidy mumbled, staring down at Glenn in confusion as the man lay on the floor of the RV, as the explosion had knocked him off his feet.
The young Asian man groaned as he sat up, looking up at Cassidy, noticing that she hadn't flinched from the event, nor was there a look of terror on her face from what they had just witnessed. "Yeah…I did…" He just shook his head as he stood, just as Dale and Andrea had managed to clamber into the RV.
"Let's get out of here," Rick groaned, turning the key and letting the RV rumble to life.
Glenn sighed, taking the seat opposite Cassidy. "Do we even have anywhere to go?"
"I suggest moving away from the city due to the high population that existed before the citizen was ordered to flee here. The number of infected would be well over five hundred thousand." Cassidy stated, shuffling over in the booth seat as Carl moved to sit beside her. "And as it is midday, our options and travel distance are limited if we desire to find somewhere safe before nightfall."
Rick nodded. "I know a place." He drove the van out, everyone's cars following behind him in a convoy. The one location that he knew would be safe ran through his mind. The Atlanta Nursing Home.
"How come you didn't move?" Carl asked Cassidy, staring up at her. The young boy was grinning up at her in fascination. She blinked down at him as Dale moved in to sit beside Glenn, looking out of breath while Andrea moved to the bedroom at the back of the RV, wanting to be alone.
"By calculating the size of the CDC building, I determined the range of distance the high-impulse thermobaric fuel-air explosives would travel. The RV was parked at a safe distance." Cassidy explained, glancing down at the boy who could only respond with a long-drawn-out 'cool', making her smile. Dale chuckled at the woman's explanation while Glenn and Lori sent her odd looks.
"Wait…" Glenn spoke up, waving his hand before him as he tried to work out how and when she could have done that. "When did you do that?"
Cassidy blinked a few times. "As I entered the RV."
"That was like…seconds before it blew up." He stared at her in astonishment. "How could anyone have possibly calculated that?" Dale chuckled again, finding humour in his young friend's reaction.
Cassidy looked at the windows, watching as the scenery of what was left of the Emory University grounds that housed the CDC passed the moving vehicle as Rick led them to the outskirts of Atlanta. "I was the head Biostatistician for Zone Five. Numbers and calculations were how I assisted my colleagues."