chapter six: the unknown
4853 words

Lin woke up the next morning with a jolt. Daryl had knocked one of the empty bottles of wine onto the floor and the resounding clank it made had her nearly jump out of her skin. Her hand went to her hip, where she usually kept her gun, but she touched an empty space, having taken it off and left it off.

"Sorry," He muttered, rifling through his bag for a second. She had no idea what he was looking for but she didn't really care. She sat up, stretching her sore neck and whining at the headache she had. "Little hangover, sunshine?"

Lin pointed an accusatory finger at him. "Don't you even start." She rubbed her eyes. "How are you not this hungover?"

"Practice," Daryl answered. He opened the door and looked out either way in the hall. "They've got breakfast cookin', come on." Lin stood very slowly to walk out. Yeah she'd been drunk. Yeah she'd been hungover. It was nothing new but it still hurt like a bitch.

They walked out to a quiet breakfast table, people just sitting together and enjoying a meal. Lin walked up to Lori, leaning down to hug her. Lori kissed her temple and then let her stand.

T-Dog was the one cooking. "Eggs," he greeted the newcomers with the menu. "Powdered, but I do 'em good." Glenn moaned out in utter pain. "I bet you can't tell. Protein helps the hangover."

Lin sat next to Dale, regarding his smile with one of hers. "Carbs help more but I will take some anyway," she said, reaching for plate for T-Dog to dish some eggs out onto. Jacqui crouched by the young Asian man, rubbing his shoulders as he complained about his hangover. It was probably his first time getting drunk which made it all the more funnier to witness. Lori slid a bottle of pain pills Lin's way and she took them graciously.

"So how did it go?" Dale asked. Lin looked his way, a fork-full of eggs in her hand. She caught his meaning and quickly chewed.

"It went fine, I'll have you know. He's not awful." Dale just smiled again and shook his head.

Shane was next from the lineup, already dressed and showered. He greeted Rick as he walked over to the coffee machine.

"Feel as bad as I do?" Rick asked his buddy.

"Worse."

T-Dog looked up from the counter to see three bloody scratches on Shane's neck. "The hell happened to you?" Shane didn't say anything and T-Dog thought he must not have understood what he meant. "Your neck?"

Lin found the scratches easy. They looked painful and fresh.

"I must have done it in my sleep." That was bullshit and Lin could smell it from miles away.

"Never seen you do that before," Rick noticed. Lin bit into her eggs probably just a bit too hard.

"Me neither. Not like me at all." And he looked right up at Lori, keeping his eyes there like no one could see him. Lin felt her blood boil. Jenner came out next, greeting everyone with a half-hearted 'morning.'

Andrea caught Dale's eye and nodded to him.

"Doctor, I don't mean to slam you with questions first thing-"

"But you will anyway," Jenner finished for him.

"We didn't come here for the eggs," Andrea stated. Jenner sighed, more to himself than anyone else and said that anyone who wanted to follow him was more than welcome to. Those than did stood up from the breakfast table to follow him out to the big room. Lin waited in the hall until Lori passed by her, catching her by the wrist.

"Are you okay?" Lin asked her sister. Lori scanned the hall for any stragglers, anybody who could hear her.

"Lin, I don't want to talk about this."

"I don't give a shit about Shane," she bit out, surprising Lori. "I just want to know if you are okay."

Lori couldn't put this on her sister. She couldn't admit the wrongs she'd done to her. This was her burden and hers alone. She nodded.

"I'm fine. Nothing happened."

She pulled her wrist from Lin's grip and continued down the hall. As ticked as Lin had been that Lori wasn't telling her the truth, she was glad she did because Shane came around the corner, lagging behind the rest of the group. Lin didn't want to see him because she knew if he got close enough she'd do something that she regretted. She followed after Lori, coming out into the great room as Jenner was speaking.

"Few people ever got a chance to see this. Very few."

There was a silhouette of a human head on the screen, accompanied by four other screens depicting the neural network of the head. The image cleared to show the person's brain.

"Is that a brain?" Carl asked.

Jenner leaned over to him to answer. "An extraordinary one." Then he straightened up. "Not that it matters in the end. Take us in for E.I.V." He asked of the computer. Lin walked around the rows of screens to Jenner's left side.

"Enhanced internal view," Vi repeated as the screen changed, zooming in on the body. Lin and the rest of the group watched with rapt interest. How he got such a detailed view of a living brain was fantastic. It went even further, depicting the nerves of the brain itself.

"What are those lights?" Shane asked. Lin clenched her fists at her sides.

"It's a person's life, experiences, memories. It's everything," Jenner explained. "Somewhere in all that organic wiring, all those ripples of light is you, the thing that makes you unique. And human."

"You don't make sense ever?" Daryl questioned.

Jenner walked the path up by the screen to point at it, like a teacher would to his students. "Those are synapses, electric impulses in the brain all carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says, does, or thinks from the moment of birth to the moment of death."

Rick stepped up because something didn't sit right in his stomach. "Death? That's what this is, a vigil?"

"Yes." Jenner didn't take his eyes off the screen. "Or rather the playback of the vigil."

"This person died?" Andrea asked. "Who?"

"Test subject 19. Someone who was bitten and infected and volunteered to have us record the process." Jenner didn't wait for anyone to say anything after and it was good that he didn't. Lin shuffled onto her other foot. She didn't get queasy at blood. She'd been a doctor. She'd held a brain in her hand, the corroded liver of an old man, but this? This wasn't something she wanted to watch. "Vi, scan forward to the first event." The computer relayed and the playback sped forward.

In the brain there was black matter, something that was worming its way through the person.

"What is that?" Glenn cried out in somewhat disgust. Jenner pointed up at the screen.

"It invades the brain like Meningitis. The adrenal glands hemorrhage. The brain goes into shutdown, then the major organs." The person on the screen was thrashing gasping out in pain. The black overtook the entire brain and the person went limp. Lin looked away, shutting her eyes. The thought of that happening to someone, happening to Jim right in front of their eyes had her sober very quick. "Then death. Everything you ever were or ever will be gone."

"Is that what happened to Jim?" Sophia, too young to know the hurt behind her words, asked her mom.

"Yes," Carol answered. She wouldn't sugarcoat that, not even for her baby. Lin couldn't hear the words exchanged between Andrea and Jenner over the thudding of her own heartbeat. Someone rubbed her elbow. Carol pulled her hand back but not without a painful smile sent her way. Lin just nodded once.

"Scan to the second event." The computer did. "The resurrection times vary wildly. 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."

Red flickers began deep in the brain, practically in the neck of the person. Lin in all her time studying had never seen anything like it.

"It restarts the brain?" Lori asked.

"No, just the brain stem. Basically, it gets them up and moving."

"But they're not alive?" Rick was still confused.

"You tell me," Jenner stated.

"It's nothing like before. Most of that brain is dark."

"Dark, lifeless, dead. The frontal lobe, the neocortex, the human part- that doesn't come back. The you part. Just a shell driven by mindless instinct."

The brain was then sliced in half by something, eliminating all movement, all activity. Lin knew was it was. She wasn't an idiot.

"God, what was that?" Carol exclaimed.

"He shot the patient in the head," Lin stated with utmost certainty. She wanted him to say it. "Didn't you?"

Jenner didn't answer her. "Vi, power down the main screen and the workstations." It sounded as if the whole building exhaled all at once, leaving the group in just the scrutinizing light of the overhead ring.

"Jenner, do you have any idea what this thing is?" Lin wanted to know if he did. Jenner looked away, down at the floor then back up.

"It could be microbial, viral, parasitic, fungal?" Jenner was just going down a list, Lin realized.

"Or the wrath of god?" Jacqui said, fearful like everyone else as the knowledge that the world really didn't know anything about this.

"There is that."

"Somebody must know something." Andrea tapped her hand on one of the work stations as she spoke. "Somebody somewhere."

Carol rubbed Sophia's back. "There are others, right? Other facilities?"

Jenner turned to Carol. "There may be some. People like me."

"But you don't know? How can you not know?" Rick was worried for his family, his group.

"Everything went down. Communications, directives, all of it. I've been in the dark for almost a month."

"So it's not just here. There's nothing left anywhere? Nothing?" Andrea was grieving and to hear that the entire world was decimated was not exactly the best kind of therapy. "That's what you're really saying, right?"

Rick stepped back when Jenner didn't speak. Lin lowered her face down into her hand. From her side, Daryl passed by her.

"Man, I'm gonna get shitfaced drunk again." He walked to the next station, leaning down onto it.

"Dr. Jenner, I know this had been taxing for you and I hate to ask one more question, but that clock," he pointed to the red monstrosity on the wall that they hadn't paid any mind to. "It's counting down. What happens at zero?"

Lin peered up at it just as it passed one hour.

"The basement generators, the run out of fuel." He said it as if it was nothing, turning and away and trying to leave the room.

"And then?" Rick prompted. That couldn't have been it. The whole facility had to run on those generators. But Jenner wouldn't answer. The group was scared, terrified even. "Vi, what happened when the power runs out?" Rick asked the computer himself.

"When the power runs out, facility-wide decontamination will occur."

Rick pointed to Glenn, Shane, T-Dog. And they all left the room, tearing off in search of a facility map. The rest of the group were completely at a loss, unable to figure out just what to do. Lin followed Daryl back to the room. He'd found another bottle of booze and had cracked it open just as she sat down. She put her face in her hands as he drank. Something wasn't right about Jenner. The time had been ticking down since they'd got there. Why did they never notice? Why wouldn't he tell them what was going to happen?

She looked up and the lights flickered off. Daryl froze. Lin stood, ducking her head out into the hall where the lights remained on.

"Why is the air off?" She asked Jenner as he walked through the hall. "And the lights in our room?"

"What's going on? Why's everything turned off?" Daryl shoved right up next to Lin, speaking his question as Jenner passed. The Doctor swiped the liquor bottle from Daryl's hand, keeping his walk steady.

"Energy use is being prioritized," Jenner said, bringing the rose wine up to drink.

"Air isn't a priority? And lights?" Dale stood in the doorway of his office.

"It's not up to me. Zone 5 is shutting itself down." Lin was afraid of what the meant. She'd stood in the doorway, watching the crew disappear down the hall. But then the lights in the hall cut out and she was left with no choice but to either follow or stay. She did neither.

"Hey!" Daryl yelled for the Doctor. "Hey, what the hell does that mean?" Daryl pushed ahead as Jenner continued to walk. It was some dramatic chase, looking for answers they wouldn't get. "Hey, man, I'm talking to you. What do you mean it's shuttin' itself down? How can a building do anythin'?"

"You'd be surprised," Jenner sassed.

Lori leaned over the rail at the running footsteps. "Rick?"

The sheriff rushed to stand in front of the man who just wouldn't stop moving. "Jenner, what's happening?" He demanded.

"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." The Doctor pointed at the clock which read a little over 31 minutes. He finally stopped in the big room. He held the almost empty bottle of booze back out towards Daryl who snatched it from the Doctor's hands.

"It was the French."

"What?" Andrea questioned.

"They were the last ones to hold out as far as I know." Jenner knew the whole time and hadn't told them. "While our people were bolting out the doors and committing suicide in the hallways, they stayed in the labs till the end. They thought they were close to a solution."

"What happened?"

"The same thing that's happening here. No power grid. Ran out of juice. The world runs on fossil fuel. I mean, how stupid is that?"

Lin opened cabinet after cabinet, searching for anything. She could barely see in the dark rooms but it was just enough. She reached into the shelves, pulling out bandages, sterile gauze, capped needles. This place was a gold mine. She couldn't just pass this up. She stacked each item and shoved it into her bag. She didn't know how much time she had left, just that she needed to do this.

Red lights kicked on, an alarm blaring so loud she had to cover her ears at first. She brought them down as the alarm continued. She needed to hurry. She stood, going for another cabinet in the corner.

"Everybody, y'all heard Rick. Get your stuff and let's go!" Shane yelled over the alarm. They had 30 minutes. 30 minutes to gather their things and get as far as possible.

Lin zipped her bag shut, pulling it over her shoulders; she pushed out the door, going for the end of the hall. Right as she did, something began to descend. It started to snuff the light, block the only way out of this area of the facility. Lin ran for it, getting there right as it slammed shut. She pounded her fist on the metal.

"Hey!" She yelled.

"Did you just lock us in?" Glen asked. "He just locked us in!" Jenner sat down at one of the workstations. Dale looked around and then took a headcount.

"Where's Lindsey?"

Lori thought she had been panicking when she lost Lindsey in a grocery store when they were little. She thought she had been panicked then. But that meant nothing to the way her heart stopped upon realizing her sister wasn't with them.

Jenner tapped a button and leaned into the screen. "We've hit the 30-minute window. I am recording."

Carl ran for Lori, who could only just hold him in her arms as the color bled from her face.

"You son of a bitch," Daryl lunged for Jenner, getting a hold on his white lab coat. "You locked us in here!" Shane held the man back and T-Dog put himself between them.

"Hey, Jenner, open that door now. We are missing one of our people, open that door."

"There's no point. Everything topside is locked down. The emergency exits are sealed."

"Well open the damn things," Dale commanded. He wasn't going to let Lin die alone.

Lin brought her hand to the door panel, tapping any combination she could think of but it just flashed right back in her face. She screamed in frustration, smacking her palms against the door.

"That's not something I control. The computers do. I told you once that front door closed, it wouldn't open again. You heard me say that."

Rick turned.

"Rick, we have to get her. We have to find her," Lori couldn't breathe.

"It's better this way," Jenner argued.

"What is? What happens in 28 minutes?" Jenner, like the coward he was, didn't answer. Shane kicked the back of his chair, making the Doctor jump to his feet.

"You know what this place is?" He roared. "We protected the public from very nasty stuff!" He got in Shane's face making him flinch. "Weaponized smallpox! Ebola strains that could wipe out half the country! Stuff you don't want getting out! Ever!" Jenner sat back down in the chair, recovering after his outburst. He straightened the collar of his jacket. "In the event of a catastrophic power failure, in a terrorist attack, for example, HIT's are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out."

"HITs?" Rick questioned the acronym.

"Vi, define." Jenner couldn't even say it himself.

"HITs, high impulse thermobaric fuel-air explosives consist of a two-stage aerosol ignition that produces a blast wave of significantly greater power and duration than any other known explosive except nuclear. The vacuum pressure effect ignites the oxygen between 5,000 and 6,000 degrees and is useful when the greatest loss of life and damage to structure is desired."

Rick reached for Lori, pulling Carl into his side. Carol held Sofia, covering her eyes as she began to cry. "Rick, she's going to die alone," Lori cried into him.

"It sets the air on fire," Jenner put it into simpler terms. "No pain. And end to sorrow, grief, regret."

Lin hit the door again. Daryl flung the bottle at the metal, the shatter echoing and the wine rolling down the surface.

"Open the damn door!"

Lin wasn't sure how long she'd been in there. There was no clock, she didn't have a watch. She pressed her forehead to it, sinking down to her knees. She was going to die in here, whether it was suffocation or starvation, she wouldn't know what would come first.

"Out of my way!" Shane wielded an axe he'd found stored in the case of emergencies. He brought it down on the door but it did close to nothing.

"Daryl!" The archer turned as T-Dog tossed him an axe too. The men tried to get the door open, to bust it down.

Lori sat with Carl in her arms, both of their tears falling down their cheeks.

"You should have left well enough alone," Jenner said, prodding the bear. "It would've been so much easier."

"Easier for who?" Lori shot back in his face. "My sister is missing!"

"All of you. You know what's out there, a short, brutal life and an agonizing death." He faced Andrea who sat with her arms around her knees. "Your sister, what was her name?"

"Amy."

"Amy," Jenner repeated. "You know what this does. You've seen it." Jenner brought his head up to face Rick who'd walked over. "Is that really what you want for your wife and son?"

Rick gritted his teeth together. "I don't want this." Shane huffed, having stopped fighting with the door.

"Can't make a dent." Daryl backed off from the door.

"Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher."

"Well your head ain't!" He brought the axe in a wide arc, aiming for the Doctor. Everyone in the vicinity of the archer, grabbed him, stopping him from killing Jenner right there. T-Dog pulled the axe from him.

"You do want this," Jenner was still trying to convince them. "Last night you said you knew it was just a matter of time before everybody you loved was dead." Rick froze. Jenner outed his drunk thoughts for everyone in the group to hear. Lori's eyes, if they weren't already wide enough, grew a tad bigger.

"What?" Shane stared his best friend down. "You really said that? After all your big talk?"

"I had to keep hope alive, didn't I?"

"There is no hope," Jenner stood by his statement. And he would even into death. "There never was."

"There's always hope. Maybe it won't be you, maybe not here, but somebody somewhere-"

"What part of 'everything is gone' do you not understand?" Andrea couldn't believe them.

"Listen to your friend. She gets it." If they didn't already want to take Jenner's head off that was just the icing on the cake. "This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event."

Lin wiped under her eyes. There wasn't any use for crying. It wasn't going to get her out of here but she was doing it anyway. The thought of never seeing the group again. Dale, Daryl, Carol, Rick, Carl, Lori. She stood and slammed her fist against the door, her knuckles splitting open.

"This isn't right," Carol was sobbing into her daughter's hair. "You can't just keep us here."

Jenner leaned forward, speaking to her as if she was a child. "One tiny moment, a millisecond. No pain."

"My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this." Carol stood, Dale taking Sophia under his arm. Shane was shaking in anger. The group he'd fought so hard to protect now sat here helpless.

"Wouldn't it be kinder, more compassionate to just hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run down?" Rick couldn't believe him. A shotgun cocked. Shane fought through the crowd and put the barrel of the gun under Jenner's chin.

"Open that door or I'm gonna blow your head off. Do you hear me?"

Rick needed to calm Shane down. "Brother, brother, this is not the way you do this. We will never get out of here."

"Shane, you listen to him." Lori knew that Shane listened to her.

"He dies, we all die." Shane began to yell, just a loud noise with no apparent vowel or consonant. He aimed the shotgun away from Jenner and took a shot. The computer that took the bullet burst, raining glass. Shane emptied the shotgun of its shells, firing into screens and into the lights. Rick grabbed the gun, wrestling it away from his partner. "Are you done now? Are you done?"

"Yeah, I guess we all are."

Lin had her back to the door, leaning on her pack of supplies. She was an idiot for going for them. They'd been running low since the quarry and she saw the chance to get more and she took it and look where it got her. She laughed once, at just the irony of it all. So eager to help others that it cost her her life.

"I think you're lying."

"What?" Jenner turned to Rick.

"You're lying about no hope. If that were true you'd have bolted with the rest or taken the easy way out. You didn't. You chose the hard path. Why?"

Jenner shook his head from side to side. "It doesn't matter."

"It does matter. It always matters. You stayed with others ran. Why?"

"Not because I wanted to." Jenner stood. "I made a promise," he pointed at the empty screen on the wall, where they'd all watching his patient die. "To her. My wife."

"Test subject 19 was your wife?"

"She begged me to keep going as long as I could." Jenner brought his hands up by his sides. Up at the door, Daryl kept trying to open it with the axe. "How could I say no? She was dying. It should've been me on that table. I wouldn't have mattered to anybody. She was a loss to the world. Hell, she ran this place. I just worked here. In our field, she was an Einstein. Me? I'm just Edwin Jenner. She could've done something about this. Not me."

"Your wife didn't have a choice. You do. That's- that's all we want, a choice, a chance."

"Let us keep trying as long as we can." Lori started. "Let me have my sister."

Jenner looked down somewhere on Rick's chest. "I told you topside's locked down. I can't open those." He walked over to one of the work stations. He put his badge up to a scanner and pressed a few buttons. The door sealing them in fell. 5 minutes remained on the clock.

Lin felt the door behind her shift. She jumped up to her feet as the door opened.

"Come on!" Daryl yelled to the group.

Lin ran out to the end of the hallway, retracing her steps back to the offices, back to their things. She ran for the room she shared with Daryl, swiping up their bags. One on each shoulder, over the bag she was already carrying. Noises rattled down the hallway, yelling.

"Lin!"

Lin darted out the door. "Lori!" Her sister was running down the hall, towards her. Lin landed right in her arms. Lori exhaled hard, her chest rising and falling quickly at the thought of losing her sister.

"We need to go," Lori grabbed Lin's hand and pulled, the both of them running out back to the lobby. Something exploded, something loud and close. It rocked the floor underneath the sisters, the both of them toppling down onto each other. Lin pushed herself up, pulling the bag up over her shoulder.

"Can you get all the stuff?" Lin asked. Lori looked at her in shock. "Everyone's things," she defined, shaking her shoulders. "Do you have enough time?"

Lori shook her head. "Jenner opened the doors at five minutes."

"Lori!" Rick called up for his wife. Lori took Lin's hand back in hers, moving with her down the hall, leaving everything behind. They took the stairs quick, Lori guiding Lin to the window that had been busted out. And under the cover of guns and one axe, they raced across the yard to get back with the group.

Rick opened the rv door, Carl, Lori and Lin following.

"Where Dale?" Lin asked.

"They're coming," Lori pointed to the open window where Dale and Andrea were climbing out. They made it across the yard and were just at the toll booth window. Rick kept checking his watch, counting the seconds. Dale and Andrea weren't going to make it. Rick honked the horn, yelling out the window for them to get down.

"Oh my god," Glenn muttered. Lin pulled Carl into her chest, huddling against the side of the rv. Everyone piled together, getting down to cover themselves from the blast. Dale pushed Andrea behind a sand bag, covering her body with his.

The air inside the CDC ignited and then it exploded. The blast was deafening as it was but then the building caved it on itself, slabs of concrete and supports all crumbling to the ground. It shook the rv making Lin shut her eyes and hold Carl tighter.

The noise died down and Glenn opened the rv for Dale and Andrea. Rick started the rv, driving them away from the site. The cars behind followed, making a u-turn on the road.

When things had somewhat settled down, Lin reached for Dale, hugging him tight. She began to cry, her shoulders shaking as she did.

"Lin, where were you?" Lori asked her. Lin pulled back from Dale, avoiding the worried expression he sent her way. She pulled one of the bags from her back, unzipping it and letting them see everything she had stashed inside. Antibiotics, gauze, bandages, the works. She'd found it all. Lori leaned in, huffing out a breath and she saw everything her sister had risked her life to get.

"I just want to help people. That's what I do." Glenn walked over too, seeing just how much stuff she'd gotten too.

"This could last for months." He pointed out in wonder. Lin just nodded.

"I did what I could. That door shut down right as I was leaving. I promise I didn't do that on purpose." Lori shook her head, kneeling down in front of her sister and just hugging her.

"Just never do it again," Lori mumbled into Lin's hair. Lin shut her eyes and held her older sister tighter. Rick drove the rv away from the fire, leading the caravan on the road again, towards the unknown.

an: hello lovely readers welcome back to my favorite thing to write and think about right now. daryl and lin are all i can think about which is a problem bc like i got to college every other day and i sit in class on my laptop and open the document for this fic and just stare at it when i should be paying attention. but anyways i've taken up the hobby of making memes for my characters (pls see below) and i want to make one for every chapter because i think its fun and a good form of character development. im approaching the season 3 mark soon and would like to know if i should have lin with lori when she gives birth or have her with t-dog and carol (meaning she'd miss it all and come back to just a baby) either way she'd gonna hurt and be sad but like should i make it somewhat mild or just go all out and have her miss it all?? this is basically just how should i torture her, somewhat mild pain or just full on agony?

cant tell which meme applies more so i just made both bc that's what i do (im leaning more towards the left one bc lin just loves daryl dude she just adores this messy man)