Using a syringe, Wayne carefully obtained a vial of Anna's blood for examination. He didn't talk as he didn't know what to say that would be in any way helpful.

"How long do I have?" Anna questioned, breaking the silence dragging on between them.

Wayne flinched slightly at the unexpected inquiry, but he quickly composed himself and told her, "It depends on the amount of original infection."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"When a zombie bites someone, the infection spreads out from the original injury," Wayne explained, taking refuge in the realm of scientific facts and logical data where personal loss wasn't part of the equation. "From our research so far, we've been able to determine the disease spreads in a number of phases. The first involves the actual infection, and it rapidly distributes itself throughout the body, precluding the possibility of extracting the injured area and preventing the next part of the process."

"So, cutting off a person's hand when they're bitten won't keep them from turning?" Anna questioned for clarification.

"R-Right," Wayne hesitantly confirmed, looking toward the white bandages wrapping her forearm.

"What's the second phase?" Anna prompted when the silence began to fill the space between them again.

"The, uh, second phase," Wayne continued, tearing his gaze from her injured arm. "It presents the symptoms of fever. During phase three, the fever is replaced with a numbing, cold feeling. The final phase occurs when the numbness spreads to all areas of the body. The first signs of accelerated tissue decay begin to appear, followed by the madness of unreasoning hunger."

"How does this apply to the speed of the infection?" Anna inquired.

"The initial infection is always the same," Wayne told her. "No matter how many bites, the disease spreads through the entire body in seconds. All of the infected tissue begins the transformation process, but the location of the original contagion, the bite, has a more concentrated dose of the toxin and will turn faster, evidenced by the pain and the changing of the skin color to a bloodless shade. However, if a person were bitten in more locations than one, it would spread out from each point and take less time before the entire body had been contaminated."

"Lucky me," Anna said with a weak smile. "Any other symptoms I can look forward to?"

"The exhaustion you're feeling right now is your body using all its energy to fight the infection," Wayne informed her. He paused, wondering how much he should reveal.

"I want to know," Anna insisted.

"The weakness will last until the final phase when the immune system shuts down entirely and the body can no longer transfer energy to it," Wayne said. He looked at some papers secured to a clipboard, idly flipping pages without really taking the time to read the information on it.

He broke off as his words formed an uncomfortable knot in his throat. He tried to shove aside the emotions and be dispassionate and scientific, but his usual mental methods failed him. A tear formed at the edge of his right eye. Anna reached out a hand and placed it over his.

"You, uh," Wayne fumbled for the right thing to say. "You can expect the discomfort of the injury to spread and intensify as time progresses. The pain level will continue to increase and cover more area until phase three when the fever begins to diminish. As the numbing cold begins to take over, you'll lose most of the feeling in your skin. Vomiting blood is usually the final stage before...before..."

Wayne's mouth continued to move, but the words refused to be spoken. As the tears broke free from his restraint, Anna slipped her arms around him, pulling his head against her chest and holding him there. When his words finally came out, they were in a hoarse whisper.

"I don't know what to do," he confided to her. "A viable cure might take months in the best case scenario. What am I going to do without you?"

"I wish I had the words to tell you," Anna answered, closing her eyes while she breathed the words upon his ear. "I wish I could comfort you somehow and tell you things will be alright. We both know what's going to happen. At some point, you're going to have to make a choice as to how long you're going to keep me around after I'm gone."

"What if I can find a cure?" Wayne asked as he sat up and brushed away the tears from his face. "What if I can bring you back? If I let you go too soon, I'd hate myself forever."

"I don't want you spending the rest of your life with the dead, trying to gain back what is already past," Anna stated, a firm edge to her voice. "Promise me, if you don't find a cure within a year, you'll let me go."

Wayne stared at her in horror.

"How can you ask that?" he demanded.

"My life may be ending, but I want you to still have one," Anna clarified. "Don't let this disease consume you too."

Wayne hung his head.

"Will you?" Anna asked.

"I don't know if I can," Wayne admitted.

"Will you, at least, consider it?" she pressed.

Wayne couldn't bring himself to answer and simply nodded while hating himself for even thinking about it. Two sides of his mind fought a war for dominance. Scientifically, he knew it was pointless and dangerous to keep a live zombie in the lab for a protracted period of time as it made the danger become commonplace, weakening his alertness and fear in response to its presence.

In all his previous experiments, he'd been able to separate the work from his feelings, ignoring the fact the zombies used to be people and seeing them as simply test subjects and specimens. This time was different. This time, it was Anna, and he found himself incapable of detaching his emotions.

Wayne knew what he should do, what he'd have to do when she turned. Even though he wanted to honor her wishes in this matter, a portion of his mind flatly refused. No matter how long it took to find a cure, even if he never found one, as long as a chance remained, he'd keep looking.