(Anne Marshall belongs to AquaDestinyEmbrace!)
(I DO NOT own The Walking Dead, Code Lyoko or any kind of names or brands that appear in this story. I do own all OCs unless specifically named as they appear above this message.)
After a few hours the group had finally gotten settled into the CDC's underground. The blood tests were obviously not fun to get through whatsoever, and quite frankly it was a miracle that any of them could stand on their own two feet after the blood was taken since they all haven't eaten in a couple of days. They were about to begin having breakfast together, but even so it was very apparent that the people who definitely felt the worst was the ones who were afraid of the needles...
One by one the group began to head into the cafeteria to meet with Dr. Jenner, and several large tables were pushed into one large one so that everyone can sit together. Soon Verity walked in with Patrick helping her, and everyone could tell by the way she was squinting her eyes and the fact that she was stumbling she had a massive headache. The couple soon sat down at the table and Verity immediately laid her head down on the faux wood with a groan, causing Jenner to glance at her as he came to the table from another room.
"You okay?" Jenner inquired.
"Nope..." Verity quietly groaned as a reply.
A few of the others chuckled at Verity's reply, causing the black-haired girl to groan and slightly wave her hand to signal that she desperately needed everyone to shut the hell up for a while. Thankfully there was a cabinet nearby that Jenner went to which had a bottle of aspirin inside. The doctor grabbed the bottle and then went over to where Verity was sitting and he set the bottle down next to her hand. Verity looked up and saw the bottle and she smiled as the doctor went back to where he was originally sitting. Verity opened the bottle and took out two pills that she downed with a sip of water, much to her relief.
"Thanks, doc... I owe you one." Verity smiled.
Jenner softly smiled at the girl as he sat down and began to help himself to a glass of wine. There wasn't much left to drink at the CDC aside from water, soda and wine, and two of those options were getting more and more dull with every sip. In any event, the rest of the group arrived just a few moments later and everyone began to eat and drink together. Just twenty-four hours earlier the group was on the brink. They had no food, no gas, and there was God knows how many walkers outside. But now they were underground and all of their previous concerns seemed to no longer matter. They were alive, and thanks to Dr. Jenner they now had a chance to feel that way.
The group continued to eat and drink together for several more moments before Rick suddenly stood up to get everyone's attention.
"It seems to me that we haven't thanked our host properly." Rick stated to the group.
"He's more than just our host, Rick. We'd all be dead or in danger of dying at this moment if it wasn't for him." Robert stated with a smile.
Dr. Jenner smiled very modestly when he heard Robert say that. Almost all of the others in the group all raised their glasses of wine to toast the doctor, although all of the teens and both Carl and Sophia all held either sodas or glasses of water. They all felt very thankful nevertheless...
"Hear, hear, Rick!" Odd added with a smile.
"Here's to you doc! Booyah!" Daryl exclaimed before he began to down his glass of wine.
The group chuckled a bit at Daryl's statement and Patrick, Dylan and Jennifer all added their own booyahs to go with Daryl's. Rick expressed his gratitude to Jenner once more and then everyone resumed eating and drinking the contents of the table. Aelita made sure to dig into the microwaved cheeseburgers before they were all gone since cheeseburgers was her favorite kind of food, and Odd got a bit of a scolding from both Ulrich and Rebecca after he hungrily tried to swipe some bread slices from their plates. However, Shane wasn't touching his food at the moment as he had far too much on his mind to be hungry at the moment. They were there. They made it to the Center for Disease Control and even got inside despite all the odds that were against them... but what now? What comes next? At the very least Jenner still had some explaining to do...
"So when are you gonna tell us what the hell happened here, doc?" Shane suddenly and bluntly asked.
Everyone at the table immediately went quiet so they could listen to what Shane was questioning. All of them had either the same or very similar questions for Jenner but now wasn't the time to ask them. Shane seemed to think otherwise.
"All the other doctors that were supposed to be figuring out what happened... Where are they?" Shane asked once more.
"That's a good question..." Ulrich added in agreement with the former police officer.
"We're celebrating, guys. We don't need to do this now..." Rick politely tried to tell them.
Shane suddenly appeared to be annoyed. He figured he had the right to ask this question. After all, they risked so much just to get here. They needed to know why it was now only Jenner and one computer AI in there rather than an entire facility full of people... One guy, one computer. How did it come to this?
"Woah, wait a second..." Shane protested to his best friend. "This is why we're here, right? This was your move, Rick, and we were supposed to find all the answers... Instead, we find Jenner." he added.
The group took in Shane's words carefully before everyone looked directly towards Jenner as if they were wanting an explanation as well. Rick simply sighed with a bit of annoyance at his best friend before he likewise looked at Jenner. The CDC doctor himself set down his glass of wine and glanced over towards everyone else at the table as he began to explain why he was the sole scientist left at the facility.
"Well, when things got bad... a lot of people just left. Went off to be with their families... And when things got worse? when the military cordon got overrun...? The rest bolted after that..." Jenner explained to the group.
"Every last one of them?" Anne asked with surprise.
"No. Many couldn't face walking out the door. They... 'opted out'." Jenner reluctantly explained.
Much of the group quickly realized what Jenner was inferring to when he said what the other scientists did... Even Carl and Sophia seemed to guess what Jenner was saying and both they and the others at the table felt somewhat uncomfortable or a bit disturbed. All of the other scientists just abandoned the CDC or they just ended their own lives? Those poor people... That had to have been a very hopeless situation for Jenner. It couldn't have been easy for anyone to cope during times that bad...
"There was a rash of suicides... that was a bad time." Jenner sighed as he remembered how so many of his colleagues died.
"If all of the other doctors and scientists left or committed suicide then why did you remain here? You are the only one left at the CDC..." Aelita pointed out.
Jenner just gave a simple shrug when Aelita said that. Everyone else was either gone or they were blowing their brains out in their own rooms. He didn't see a need to join them. Besides... he made a promise to someone. He tried so hard to keep it... alas he was out of time.
"I just kept working, hoping to do some good..." Jenner reasoned, leaving out all of the personal details as to why exactly he kept working.
The table sat in silence for a few more moments and didn't touch what remained of their meals. Their appetites had suddenly faded away due to how dark the conversation had become... In any event, Patrick stood up from his seat since he was very tired and wanted to go take a nap for a while.
"You are SUCH a buzzkill, man..." Patrick joked.
Jenner and the group all shared a chuckle after hearing Patrick's joke. All of them continued to eat and drink and chat with each other as Patrick went to his and Verity's room, and everyone was very thankful that they were now safe and still alive. They continued doing this for around one more hour before most of them decided to head back to their bedrooms like how Patrick did. A few of the adults who went back to their rooms also made sure to grab a few of the wine bottles so they'd have something to drink later on...
After the group ate dinner together they began to head straight back towards the bedrooms in order to get some much-deserved rest. A full stomach and a comfortable bed was a mere fantasy only yesterday, so everyone was more than willing to enjoy these luxuries as much as they could for as long as possible.
The ones who decided to head back to their rooms were following Jenner down the hall that led to the residential areas of the facility. However, a few of the teens slipped away from the group after they saw an empty laundry cart down another hallway. Odd, Anne, Dylan and Rebecca all approached the laundry cart together and examined it as they all got a similar idea into their heads. This'll definitely kill some boredom...
"Are you guys thinking what I'm thinking?" Rebecca smirked mischievously to the others.
"Totally, 'Becca." Dylan grinned back at his girlfriend.
Both Odd and Anne climbed on inside of the cart as Dylan and Rebecca went to the back of it. The plan was for the two teens to push Odd and Anne as fast as they could down a hallway and then hop into the laundry cart with them to enjoy the ride. There was many ways this could end well, and there was also many ways this couldn't. Whatever the case it was apparent that these teens desperately needed to have some fun and have a good time after the events of the last few weeks. If they got one or more bumps or bruises or scratches because of it, it'd be totally worth it.
"Do you think this is going to end well, Dylan?" Anne asked since she was curious.
"Nope." Dylan flatly replied with a shrug.
"Do you think we're going to hurt ourselves, Anne?" Odd also inquired with a grin.
"Definitely..." Anne smirked back at her new friend.
Both Odd and Anne proceeded to hold on very tightly as Dylan and Rebecca began to push the cart as hard as they could. After it gained some speed and started to go down a small incline, the two teens climbed on into the cart with Anne and Odd and they likewise began holding on as hard as they could... This was definitely gonna be fun!
Further down the hall some of the group had left Jenner and the others and they were heading back to their bedrooms. Jenner had informed everyone that they could actually use some of the shower facilities in the CDC shower rooms, as long as they: "go easy on the hot water.", as Jenner somewhat-jokingly put it. The plan was that they'd all get some new clothes and clean towels from their bedrooms and then head straight towards the shower rooms.
Verity was excitedly walking with an equally-excited Jennifer and Yumi as they all held their clean towels and the fresh clothes from their bags. They couldn't remember the last time they had a shower so this was basically Christmas morning from their point of view. And thankfully Verity's headache was mostly gone by now thanks to those pills Jenner had given her earlier.
"A shower..." Verity said to herself as if she couldn't believe it.
"I know, it's almost unfathomable." Jennifer chuckled at her friend's near-disbelief.
"An actual shower..." Verity repeated to herself as if a shower was almost out of mythology.
"And you'll get to it very soon, Verity." Yumi assured with a snicker.
Verity almost squealed when she saw the doors to the men and women shower rooms down the hall. Just a short walk was all that remained between her and the long-desired feeling of cleanliness she has missed out on for weeks on end. She honestly felt like it was her birthday! Verity stopped for a moment in order to go and wake up Patrick in their room in order to let him know that there was showers available. Verity bid her goodbyes to Yumi and Jennifer before she approached her and Patrick's room and opened the door, quietly making her way inside.
The black-haired girl noticed her boyfriend was quietly sleeping on what appeared to be an extremely comfortable bed, causing her to smile. Verity went to sit on the edge of the bed and she gently began shaking Patrick's shoulder to wake him up.
"Patrick? Hey, baby, you need to wake up. We can take some hot showers for once." Verity smiled lovingly.
Patrick groggily began to stir and he slowly opened his eyes to see that his girlfriend was sitting next to him. Patrick slowly sat up and stretched with a yawn before Verity grabbed his shirt collar and gently pulled him in for a kiss, much to his surprise. However, the brown-haired boy quickly relaxed and he returned the kiss to his girlfriend before they broke it.
"Hot showers, huh?" Patrick asked with curiosity.
"Yeah, Jenner's leading the others to them right now. I figured I'd be kind enough to let you know that I'm going to be using one of them for a very long time." Verity jokingly replied.
Patrick and Verity chuckled at this before Verity suddenly placed her hand on Patrick's chest, making him lay back on the bed once more. Verity smirked at her boyfriend before she climbed up onto the bed and grabbed his wrists before pinning them to the mattress. Again, Patrick was surprised, but like before he quickly relaxed. Verity couldn't help but grin down at him as she hovered her face above his.
"Comfy?" Patrick curiously asked his girlfriend.
"You know I am... but..." Verity grinned and trailed off as she leaned her forehead down against his.
Verity gave her boyfriend another quick kiss on the lips and lovingly smiled down at him. He smiled back up at her with a similar expression of love, and his hands gently rubbed up and down Verity's back. Before his hands could grab her ass through her jeans, Verity climbed off the bed and giggled as she walked over to the bedroom door.
"... but we really should get ready, Patrick. You can feel me up once we're done with our showers." Verity smirked as she finished her statement.
Patrick pouted as he watched Verity gather up a new change of clothes, a towel and some shampoo before she winked at him and walked out of the room in order to wait for him outside. Patrick simply sighed and decided to get out of bed since he wanted to take a shower as well.
He loved that girl with all his heart, but good lord could she be one hell of a tease.
But he sure as hell loved that about her...
With a towel, a bottle of shampoo and a fresh pair of clothing in his arms Patrick walked out of his and Verity's bedroom and shut the door behind him by using his foot to pull the door. Verity was still there waiting for him, and soon both she and Patrick began walking down the hall together.
"I know Jenner said that we need to go easy on the hot water, but I'll probably end up washing my hair for hours on end." Verity stated with excitement.
"You're telling me... Someone might have to drag me out of there." Patrick agreed with a similar tone of excitement.
Verity glanced over at Patrick and a small mischievous smirk formed on her face. She set her clothes, towel and shampoo down onto the floor and she stopped Patrick dead in his tracks. Verity made him put all of his things down on the floor next to Verity's stuff before she put a hand on his chest and pushed him up against a wall, still smirking at him.
"Would that 'someone' be me, perhaps?" Verity flirted as she moved both of her hands up to her boyfriend's shoulders.
"Perhaps... Perhaps not. Maybe it'll be you, but maybe it might be Miranda or Kyra." Patrick teased with a smirk as he placed his hands on his girlfriend's waist.
"They wish it was them..." Verity joked with a giggle.
Patrick smirked at his girlfriend as she began to rub his shoulders, their faces slowly beginning to lean towards one another with the intent to meet in a loving but hungry kiss. However, the pair heard a distant banging noise in the distance that made them stop and look around to see whatever it was that was causing it.
"Do you hear that...?" Verity asked with a bit of confusion.
"Yeah, I did... What the hell is that?" Patrick blinked as he looked around.
Suddenly the two lovers saw what was causing the noise. A large laundry cart was speeding uncontrollably down the hall and straight towards them. Odd, Anne, Dylan and Rebecca were all inside the cart and all of them were either screaming or holding on for dear life as they had lost control of the cart. Patrick and Verity went wide eyed and froze with shock as they saw the cart was fast approaching them.
"WATCH OUT! GET OUT OF THE WAY!" Odd shouted to the two lovers as he held onto Rebecca as tightly as he could, much to her and Dylan's mutual annoyance.
"SAVE YOURSELVES, GUYS! RUNAWAY LAUNDRY CART!" Anne also shouted as she comically tried to wave them aside with one of her hands.
Patrick knew there was nowhere to run and that the cart would be upon them in seconds. He noticed that across from him and Verity there was Jeremie and Aelita's bedroom door, and more importantly he saw that the door was slightly ajar as if one of them accidentally forgot to close it behind them. Without any hesitation he grabbed Verity by her arm and he flung her straight towards that door, causing her to immediately push it open due to the momentum her boyfriend caused and to safely fall onto the carpeted floor inside the room. Patrick, meanwhile, didn't have time to follow her in. He braced himself and those in the cart screamed as they approached him at a very high speed.
Verity heard a loud banging noise come from the hallway she was pushed away from. She quickly stood up and brushed herself off before she quickly hurried back to the door and ran out into the hallway. Verity's eyes widened as she saw the laundry cart was flipped onto its side. Anne, Rebecca and Dylan were all on top of each other down the hall and they were all groaning in pain, whereas an unconscious Odd somehow was still inside of the laundry cart itself.
"Jesus Christ, guys! What the hell did you just do?! Why were you in a laundry cart?!" Verity gasped as she took in the scene in front of her.
The only replies that Verity received was a series of pained groans. Verity noticed Anne groggily get up from the floor and watched as the teen tried to stumble over to her in an effort to begin explaining what happened. But alas Anne just mumbled something incoherently for a moment before she stopped and comically fell backwards like a board, again landing on Rebecca and Dylan and causing the couple to once more groan with pain as Anne fell into unconsciousness.
However, Verity's concern was far more focused upon her boyfriend. She noticed that he was laying flat on the floor just a short distance behind the laundry cart. Patrick looked like he took the full brunt of the laundry cart and got flattened by it...
"PATRICK!" Verity gasped with horror before she hurried to see if her boyfriend was okay.
Verity crouched next to her boyfriend and cradled his head in her hands. She saw that he was definitely unconscious like how Odd and Anne were, and a small trail of blood was leaking out from the corner of his mouth. Patrick definitely got hit very hard by that laundry cart. Verity only took a few semesters of health class in Kadic Academy but from what she could tell Patrick didn't appear to have a concussion or anything that serious. He also looked like he simply bit his lip a bit too hard when he was hit by the cart, so that would probably explain the blood coming from his mouth. Hopefully he was going to be completely fine once he woke up...
The black-haired girl noticed that Dylan and Rebecca were both getting back up on their feet despite their new bumps and bruises. Rebecca walked over to Anne and she gently slapped her in the face in an effort to wake her up. This succeeded as Anne opened her eyes, groaned with pain, and was helped back up from the floor with a hand from Rebecca. Verity took off her denim jacket and laid it under Patrick's head so he could use it as a pillow, but then she balled up her fists and glared at the four conscious teens.
"You... You idiots! YOU IDIOTS!" Verity seethed as she cracked her neck, menacingly beginning to walk towards them.
Rebecca's, Anne's and Dylan's eyes all widened with sudden worry for their own safeties as they cautiously began to back away from the infuriated girl.
"I- It was an accident, Verity!" Rebecca tried to reason with her friend.
Verity didn't answer to Rebecca's statement and she continued to approach the four teens. Verity cracked her knuckles and gave a very threatening growl as the thought of kicking all of their asses one by one flowed through her head. Rebecca, Anne and Dylan had no idea what else to do other than scream and run for their lives as fast as they could in the other direction...
Unfortunately for them, Verity was soon hot on their tails...
The next morning the group had awoken with satisfaction of an incredible sleep. They were clean from their showers and last night was the first good night's sleep they had in God only knew how long. One by one the group made their way from their bedrooms and into the cafeteria, where they began to eat their breakfast and drink some very cheap-tasting coffee. The breakfast was likewise just a bunch of powdered foods from a nearby cabinet and some microwavable stuff that Jenner had stored in a freezer in the cafeteria, but thankfully everyone found all of it to be palatable at the very least.
T-Dog and Jennifer were busy making some powdered eggs for everyone at a pair of stoves as Verity and Patrick walked in. Patrick had a bit of gauze wrapped around his forehead and there was a noticeable bump that protruded on it, but otherwise he appeared to be fine. The pair drew the attention of everyone else since literally all of them heard the commotion that happened last night with the laundry cart. Odd even tried to hide in Rick, Lori and Carl's room for a time before Verity found him and he was forced once more to run for his life. Both Patrick and Verity said their good mornings to everyone and everyone said the same to them, and then the couple received their meals and sat down at a table with Kyra, Charles, Ulrich, Jeremie and Aelita.
After this was when four teens walked into the room. Rebecca, Dylan, Anne and Odd stumbled inside and all of them had their fair share of bumps and bruises, with some of them actually being caused by Verity after she caught them at various points throughout the night. The five learned their lesson of never ever riding a laundry cart ever again, and the five got their meals and they went to find somewhere to sit down as well.
"Good morning, everyone..." Odd quietly groaned as he felt his head pounding from the events of last night.
"Are you guys okay? The racket last night sounded very bad..." Aelita stated with a bit of concern.
"Yeah, no one should ever get on Verity's bad side." Charles grinned before he began eating from a bowl of soup.
The others all began to chuckle at Charles' statement. Even Verity and Patrick laughed a little bit. The four sore teens would've done the same but alas they were in far too much pain to even consider doing something like that. None of them had any hard feelings against Verity mind you, it's just that they were really sore. Thankfully the aspirin bottle that Jenner gave to Verity yesterday was still on the kitchen counter, so Dylan went to get it. He brought it to the other three suffering teens and all four of them each took two pills before they took their seats. Hopefully their headaches would disappear very soon...
The group continued to eat and drink after this for several moments, and by the smell that quickly filled the room they could tell the powdered eggs that T-Dog and Jennifer were making was almost done. They likely wouldn't be the best eggs they'd ever eat in their entire lives but they were still eggs, dammit! In any event, Carl had finished a mouthful of pancakes before he looked over at his exhausted-looking father. Rick was just one of the people in the room who had a bit too much to drink last night, so his head was pounding just as much as the four teens who got hurt by the laundry cart and beaten up by Verity.
"Are you hungover? Mom said you'd be..." Carl inquired as if he already was aware of the answer.
"Mom is right..." Rick tiredly grinned to his son.
The group chuckled once more at this and they continued to eat their breakfast. Finally, T-Dog and Jennifer walked from the stoves with frying pans in their hands. They walked over to the group and one by one they used wooden spoons to dispense portions of their eggs to whoever wanted some.
"Eggs! Powdered, but I do 'em good..." T-Dog stated as he plopped a bit of the eggs onto Yumi's plate.
"I made my eggs scrambled Texas-style, so all y'all just be warned that there's a shitload of jalapenos in these." Jennifer grinned to the group as she put some eggs on Chase's plate.
T-Dog put the last bit of eggs onto his own plate and he sat down to start eating. The first bite proved to himself that he was still a damn good cook... Jennifer got a kiss on the cheek from Chase as a thank you before he began eating, and she likewise put some eggs on her own plate before she sat down and started to eat them. It wasn't as good as the eggs that her grandfather used to make back in Texas, but she followed his teachings as best she could and it seemed like her boyfriend and everyone else who got some of her scrambled eggs really liked them.
Suddenly the group heard a loud thumping noise. They saw that Dylan's head had fallen directly onto the table and that the teen was now lightly snoring. Due to having to hide and run from Verity, he failed to get much sleep last night...
"Is he sleeping?" Ulrich asked the others.
"Sure looks like he is..." Rebecca replied as she gently and repeatedly poked her boyfriend's arm with a fork to try and wake him up once more.
"And he's snoring! Listen! It sounds exactly like how Anne used to snore back in the day..." Chase stated with a mouthful of scrambled eggs.
Anne's eyes widened for a moment before she looked at Chase and glared at him out of pure annoyance. Snore?! Her?! Anne Marshall doesn't snore and she never will! Her friend obviously must have had a stroke or developed a form of sudden amnesia, because she certainly never ever snored! The others in the group watched with interest as they could tell that Anne was going to try and defend herself from this accusation, although truth be told a lot of the others definitely heard some strange snore-like noises coming from her room last night...
"I. Don't. Snore." Anne growled, her eye twitching from sheer annoyance towards her old friend.
"Yes you do, Anne. Your snoring coupled with the racket that Verity and the others made kept me up until three in the morning! And I know I'm not the only one that was kept up last night either..." Chase retorted with a shrug before he continued eating his eggs.
Anne's eye twitched with annoyance once more before she looked over at the others in the room. Most of them just stared back at her but Kyra, Charles, Jeremie and Aelita all awkwardly and suspiciously averted their gazes so as to not get involved with this situation. It was no coincidence that Kyra and Charles' room and also Jeremie and Aelita's room were both on either side of Anne's room last night, and it was certainly not a coincidence that all four didn't get much sleep either... Anne just simply blinked and stood for a moment after witnessing the four looking away. After this, she quietly sat back down in her seat and resigned herself to the possibility that Chase may or may not have a point.
Another bout of Dylan's snoring broke the silence. Everyone in the room looked over at the sleeping teen and Rebecca couldn't help but bite her lip to avoid laughing, as she suddenly had an idea form in her head. Rebecca silently summoned Aelita to come over to her side of the table, and when Aelita arrived Rebecca simply placed an MP3 player and a pair of earbuds in her friend's hand. The others watched Rebecca whisper something into Aelita's ear that caused the pink-haired girl to smirk. After this, Aelita walked over to where Dylan was sleeping and she gently put the earbuds into her step-brother's ears before getting the MP3 player ready to go. Everyone else quickly caught on as to what was about to happen...
"This'll be good..." Glenn stated with a grin.
Chase, Anne and Rebecca all smirked and struggled to hold in their laughter as they watched Aelita turn on the MP3 player. Truth be told a lot of others in the room were trying not to laugh as well, but it got even more challenging once they heard Dylan's snoring suddenly become even louder than before.
Aelita found a really loud death metal song on the MP3 player and she grinned as she turned the volume up as high as it could go. Now was the time to strike... Aelita finally pressed the 'play' button and almost immediately Dylan woke up, screamed, and then fell backwards in his chair, causing everyone in the room to explode with laughter. Dylan managed to get himself off of the ground and he immediately pulled the earbuds out of his ears. Once he realized that there wasn't any danger and that he was pranked by his step-sister, he just sighed with a bit of annoyance and propped his chair back up.
"Very funny, sis..." Dylan said, rolling his eyes as he sat back down.
His pink-haired step-sister just sheepishly shrugged and went to sit back down next to Jeremie. Rebecca finally managed to stop laughing at what happened to her boyfriend and she leaned over to give him a really big kiss on his cheek to make up for the prank, causing him to smile a bit as his annoyance faded away. Everyone heard the sound of a door opening and closing and saw that Dr. Jenner had finally woken up and was walking into the cafeteria.
"Morning..." Jenner greeted to the group as he went to get himself come coffee.
"Hey, doc..." Shane greeted right back to the doctor.
A few of the others also greeted Jenner as he approached the coffee machine on the counter. Jenner hated this coffee since even before the end of the world, but alas this was all that was available for now. Jenner poured some of the coffee into a mug and then he went to get himself some cream and sugar. However, a few members of the group such as Shane, Andrea and Kyra still had questions that only Jenner could answer...
"Doc, I don't want to ask questions first thing in the morning..." Shane began to say as he set down his fork.
"But you will anyway..." Jenner finished for the former police officer with a tired smile as he started pouring cream into his coffee mug.
Everyone in the room also had their own questions, but all of them related to one specific topic. Shane, Andrea and Kyra needed to know the answer to something very important... Hell, all of them needed to know it. They needed to know everything they could about the outbreak... Did Jenner have a cure ready or not? Was there anyone else still out there who were working on one? Was the outbreak just going to keep going indefinitely? How do people die from the virus in the first place? Andrea just sighed and she stood up and she crossed her arms as she glanced directly over towards Dr. Jenner.
"We didn't come here for the eggs."
The group followed Dr. Jenner into the large circular main room of the Center of Disease Control facility. Vi brought up the lights for the group and Jenner himself walked over to a computer on the raised central platform, where he proceeded to begin typing upon the keyboard of the computer. One of the large monitors on the wall suddenly turned on due to the commands that Jenner typed into the keyboard.
"Give me playback of TS-19..." Jenner instructed.
"Playback of TS-19." Vi replied in confirmation.
Jenner paused and looked up at the large wall monitor as a simulation began to load on it. The group had no clue what they were about to see, but they all knew that it held massive importance. Jenner stared at the screen for several moments before he finally turned to look back at the others again.
"Few people ever got a chance to see this... Very few..." Jenner informed them.
The group remained silent as Jenner looked back up at the monitor. Another moment passed before the video fully loaded. A see-through 3-D human body suddenly showed up on the screen layer by layer, and once the body fully formed the brain and brain stem was specifically highlighted for the group's convenience.
"Is that a brain?" Carl curiously inquired to the doctor.
"An extraordinary one..." Jenner replied with a smile to the small child, although the smile quickly faded. "Not that it matters in the end..." he added with a sigh.
The group continued to look at the wall monitor and study the highlighted brain for another moment before Jenner decided to continue the simulation.
"Take us in for E.I.V." Jenner instructed his computer AI.
"Enhanced Internal View..." Vi replied in confirmation.
Everyone inside the room watched with fascination as the human body began to shift. The camera panned inwards and the body was turned on its side, giving a view towards the person's brain. Suddenly Jenner typed in some coding and caused the view to zoom in very drastically into the brain. The group saw hundreds upon hundreds of wire-like objects within, and nearly all of them had at least some form of small flashing lights occurring at various spots.
"Woah... what are those?" Odd gasped with pure awe at the sight on the monitor.
"It's a person's life..." Jenner simply said. "Experiences, memories... Somewhere in all that organic wiring, somewhere in all those ripples of light... is you. The thing that makes you unique and human." he explained.
Those lights... those were what make a human being? Absolutely incredible. Of course Jeremie and Aelita were already aware of this little feature in the human brain since... well, to be blunt, they were incredibly smart. Even by Jenner's standards they were each a super genius. But to actually see a video of those lights with their own eyes always made them awestruck...
"Those are synapses. Electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says, does or thinks from the moment of birth to the moment of death..." Jenner explained to the group.
"Death?" Rick asked incredulously.
"Wait, is that what this is? A vigil of some sort?" Miranda also questioned.
"Yes... Or, rather, the playback of the vigil..." Jenner reasoned as best he could.
Everyone in the group quickly caught on to what Dr. Jenner was saying. This wasn't a simulation... This wasn't a video made by computer animations or through video editing... The model of the human being up there on the monitor was a real person. A real person who died and was no longer with them...
"Wait... this person died? Who was it?" Ulrich inquired to the doctor.
"Test Subject 19." Jenner answered with a mournful tone. "Someone who was bitten and infected... and someone who volunteered to have us record the process..." he added.
Jenner looked back at his keyboard and he typed in one or two more codes before he looked back up at the wall monitor.
"Vi, scan forward to the first event..." Jenner instructed.
"Scanning to first event." Vi replied in confirmation.
The group watched as a timer on the TS-19 recording fast-forwarded to about two hours later. They noticed that the once-bright brain stem had a large and unsettling blackness growing from it. The electric synapses across the brain slowly started to dim as the blackness spread deeper and deeper into the brain itself. It was disturbing for all of them to watch, even for Jenner himself... this is what killed Test Subject 19. This is how the virus starts...
"It invades the brain like meningitis." Jenner informed the group. "The adrenal glands hemorrhage, the brain goes into shutdown... then the major organs..."
Everyone finally noticed that Test Subject 19's mouth was opening and closing almost as if they were struggling to breath. Test Subject 19 continued to do this for a few more moments as the blackness began to take complete control of their brain, and finally the body of Test Subject 19 went limp as the brain completely went dark.
"Then death..." Jenner sighed as he mournfully looked away from the monitor as if it was painful to see. "Everything you are or ever will be... gone..."
Aelita teared up a little bit as she studied how Test Subject 19 met their end. Test Subject 19 was just a simple reminder that countless people on the surface were gone now. All over the world there was people who died just like how Test Subject 19 did, and her heart shattered at the possibility that all of her classmates at Kadic Academy and even her own parents may be gone as well.
Suddenly a bout of sobbing was heard. Aelita and everyone else looked to see that Andrea had quietly began to sob to herself as thoughts of her sister and how she passed away flooded her mind. Test Subject 19 showed her exactly how Amy Harrison slipped away from her forever. It was purely devastating... Jenner watched Andrea cry to herself for a moment or two before Kyra walked over to him.
"She lost her sister two days ago..." Kyra explained with a tone of sadness.
Jenner couldn't help but pitting the sobbing blonde woman. He knew exactly how it felt to lose someone you care about... He wouldn't wish that kind of feeling upon his worst enemies.
"I lost somebody too, Andrea... I know how devastating it is..." Jenner said to try and comfort her.
Andrea sniffled and wiped away her tears before she looked back up at Jenner. She didn't say a single word but Jenner thought that his words may have helped her if only a little bit. Andrea looked back over at the monitor and wiped one final tear out of one of her eyes as Jenner went back to his keyboard.
Jenner looked back up at the wall monitor for a moment before he typed in another code on his keyboard. He still had more to show the group...
"Scan to the second event." Jenner instructed.
"Scanning to second event..." Vi replied in confirmation.
The group looked back up at the Test Subject 19 recording and watched it fast-forward to just over two hours after they died. The electric synapses were still gone, but something was happening to the brain stem now. There was something similar to the synapses beginning to form, but now it was... corrupted. There was simply no other way to best describe how these new synapses looked. What used to be a bright blue series of electric impulses all over the brain was now a menacing and dim-looking redness located only in the brain stem. Biologically this was nothing short of fascinating and truly unlike anything ever seen in a human before, but it was also certainly horrifying to any kind of scientist who dared to watch this recording. After all, this is exactly what has killed and reanimated countless human beings...
"The resurrection times vary wildly." Jenner informed everyone. "We had reports of it happening in as little as three minutes. The longest we heard of was eight hours... In the case of this patient it was two hours, one minute, seven seconds..." he carefully said.
The red corruption slowly expanded throughout the brain stem as if it was like a cancer. The corruption continued to gain strength inside of Test Subject 19's corpse and the corruption soon filled their entire brain stem to the brim. A couple of red electric synapses appeared to try and send signals to other parts of the brain as if it was desperate for more and more control over the body, but as the brain was functionally dead now there was simply no way for the signals to be sent back. Test Subject 19 was dead, and everyone knew it would only be a matter of time before they would see their corpse on the screen begin to move.
"It restarts the brain?" Lori asked the doctor without even looking from the monitor.
"No, just the brain stem. Basically it gets them up and moving..." Jenner replied.
"But the infected people are not alive at this point?" Aelita asked, as even with all of her intelligence the events happening in the video were still alien and very unfamiliar to her.
Jenner glanced over at the pink-haired teen for a moment before he gestured directly up towards Test Subject 19's body in the recording.
"You tell me..." Jenner requested to the very intelligent teenager.
Aelita went to stand next to Dr. Jenner and she looked back up at the monitor. Test Subject 19's brain stem was unlike anything she had ever seen in her life. Aelita was very familiar with human anatomy and she definitely knew far more than the average person when it comes to the subject of the human brain. But this was something that was far more than unusual to her. All Aelita was sure of was that human brains were not supposed to be doing this...
"The brain of Test Subject 19 is far from what it originally used to be..." Aelita stated to the doctor. "There is no activity whatsoever in their brain aside from the brain stem. It appears to be just... dark." she reasoned.
"Dark, lifeless, dead..." Jenner sighed. "The frontal lobe? The neocortex? The human parts of the brain? That doesn't come back at all. The you part is permanently gone..."
Jenner looked back up at the wall monitor and realized what part of the recording they were on. The others all looked at it as well, seeing that Test Subject 19's body was beginning to stir. This was the part where they were beginning to reanimate...
"Just a shell... Driven by mindless instinct..." Jenner sadly referenced the body as he watched it begin to stir on the recording.
Suddenly the group saw something metallic appear at the far end of the screen. Whatever the object was, the end of it was pointing directly at Test Subject 19's skull. Out of nowhere the group saw a bright flash of light which quickly faded away to reveal a long and thin tunnel that went straight through Test Subject 19's head. To their shock they realized that the metallic object was the barrel of a gun, and they realized that they had just witnessed Test Subject 19 be pacified by someone.
"Oh god..." Rebecca gasped as she saw the pacification happen.
Jenner appeared to cringe when he saw the walker that used to be Test Subject 19 get shot directly in the head. It was definitely painful for him to watch... but what mattered was that he informed the group. Now he could just shut off this video and never have to look at it again.
"Vi, power down the main screen, and the workstations." Jenner instructed.
"Powering down main screen, and workstations." Vi said in confirmation.
The group watched as the wall monitor and all of the computer workstations were suddenly shut off by Vi. They all knew how the virus infected a person and killed them, but there was still far too many questions for comfort. No one was more curious than the Lyoko Warriors were about the virus. They needed to know what it is, they needed to know how it forms and they absolutely needed to know where it could have come from. If Jenner had extensive knowledge of the situation then it could easily be the key to confirming if the outbreak was XANA's fault or not...
"Do you have any idea what exactly the virus is?" Jeremie inquired on behalf of the Lyoko Warriors.
"It could be microbial." Jenner replied. "But the virus could easily also be viral. It could also be parasitic... it could even be fungal or-"
"Or maybe the wrath of fucking God himself, perhaps?" Chase bluntly interjected before the doctor could finish what he was saying.
"Well, there is that..." Jenner dryly replied with a shrug since he was so stumped on what the virus actually was that it might as well have been caused by God himself.
The room soon fell into silence as everyone processed all of the things they had seen and heard about Test Subject 19. The Lyoko Warriors themselves were shocked that Jenner didn't know as much about the virus as they assumed. Now they may never know if this outbreak was truly XANA's creation. They all knew deep down in their hearts that it had to have been, but it was just very disappointing to not hear it for themselves.
"Somebody must know something..." Kyra reasoned to everyone in the room. "Somebody somewhere has to know what's happening..." she stated in a tone that seemed to be almost desperate.
"There is other facilities working on a cure out there, right?" Yumi asked in a similarly-desperate tone.
"There may be some people like me..." Jenner replied with a sigh.
The worries of everyone else in the room was almost immediately elevated by that answer. Jenner's reply wasn't convincing by any means, and the way he said it sounded like he himself didn't truly know. There had to be someone else out there working on a cure... there HAD to be! This virus couldn't keep going on forever! It just fucking couldn't!
"But you don't know? How could you not know?" Rick asked as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"Everything went down..." Jenner explained to the former cop. "Communications, directives... all of it. I've been in the dark for almost a month."
A month without any communications with the outside world...? For the group this meant one of two things. Either the communications equipment here at Zone Five of the Center for Disease Control had broken and Jenner was unable to fix it, or... there was no one from the rest of the CDC left to communicate with out on the surface. If that was the case then there was definitely never going to be a cure, at least for decades. If the entire CDC agency was gone then the entire country was doomed.
"It's not just here then, is it? There's nothing left anywhere? No cure, no government, no nothing? That's what you're trying to say to us, right?" Alexandr asked as his eyes went wide.
Jenner didn't reply to any of the questions that Alexandr raised. This silence from Doctor Jenner told the group all they needed to know... There was no hope for a cure. Anyone who was working on it aside from Jenner was either dead or missing, and human civilization as they knew it was lost to the walking dead.
It was a lot to take in for all members of the group... This hellish nightmare was going to just keep going for God only knew how long. There was nothing that anyone on earth could do about the outbreak, and that knowledge was eating them up from the inside.
"...We're so fucked." Charles muttered to himself before he sat down in a chair, as the shock caused his legs to suddenly feel a bit wobbly.
"I don't care if I'm too young... I'm totally getting drunk tonight after hearing all of that." Dylan sighed with a bunch of feelings of despair and disappointment.
Aelita tightly shut her eyes and she went to lean her hands upon one of the computer workstations, her knuckles turning white from how tightly she was gripping the metal frame. The realization that there would be no cure was devastating, but hearing that there was no one left who could work on it was a whole ordeal in itself. Billions of lives were probably going to be lost because of this...
Jeremie noticed his girlfriend's reactions to the earth-shattering news Jenner told them, and to let her know that he was there for her he went to gently pull her away from the workstation and into a hug. Aelita allowed this and she returned the hug to Jeremie as she rested her head in his chest. However, there was another thing in the room that definitely needed to be addressed by Jenner. A few moments earlier, Dale looked up at one of the walls and saw that there was a large clock on it with red numbers. Yet this was no ordinary clock. It was counting down... but why?
"Doctor Jenner, I know this has been taxing for you and I hate to ask one more question, but..." Dale trailed off before he pointed up to the strange clock. "That clock... It's counting down... What happens at zero?" he inquired.
Jenner paused for a moment when he heard that question. This was something he was hoping to avoid telling the group at least until the clock had nearly reached zero... They wouldn't understand why the clock was counting down. None of them would understand at all...
"The basement generators run out of fuel..." Jenner explained without going into any detail whatsoever.
Before Dale could ask any more questions, Jenner had already turned and walked off of the central platform and directly towards a flight of stairs that led to an office on the top of the room. He definitely looked like he was in a hurry as well...
"And then what?" Rick asked as his suspicions began to be raised.
"Hey, doc! We're talking to you!" Odd called out to the doctor.
Unfortunately Jenner continued to be silent and he went up the stairs while ignoring the entire group. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong... There was no legitimate reason for Jenner to just go quiet and leave them like that. Everyone looked at each other with expressions of worry and confusion as they tried to figure out why there would even need to be a clock counting down for the fuel count in the basement generators.
Jenner absolutely left something out when he told them about that...
Anne and everyone else watched Jenner go up the flight of stairs and up into his office, where he promptly shut the door and locked it behind him. Anne looked around at the ceiling and frowned as she remembered that there was at least one thing which could still help them figure out at least a little about what was going on.
"Vi, what happens when the power shuts off?" Anne asked.
"When the power shuts off, facility-wide decontamination will occur." Vi informed everyone in the room.
The group felt even more worried when they heard Vi's answer. What the hell could that have even meant...? 'Facility-wide decontamination'? Whatever it was, it was most certainly not a good thing. The majority of the group began to wait inside the main room of the facility as Jeremie, Aelita, Shane, Rick, T-Dog, Ulrich and Chase all hurried to find the nearest door that led down into the basement. They had to see for themselves how much fuel was left down there, and then they'd have to go and directly ask Dr. Jenner himself on what Vi had just told them.
Whatever was happening was certainly going to turn volatile quicker than they realized...