Changing To Adapt ➵ TWD

➵ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ᴇʟᴇᴠᴇɴ

Jenner, knowing there was no point arguing, quickly obliges to Andrea's constant questions, and leads them into the main room. It's just as Lucas remembers it, computers at every desk, screens blank to save power. Excluding the one Jenner has connected with the big screen. 

Lucas can't count the number of times he almost tripped over the power cords carefully velcroed together.

"Give me a playback of TS-19," Jenner orders.

Vi repeats his words.

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

I wonder why, Lucas cocks a brow, you're the only one here. His eyes find themselves firmly attached to the widescreen when it lights up, bathing them in the glow of a real human skeleton.

"This person died?" Andrea asks, twisting her necklace between her fingers. Amy's necklace. "Who?"

"Test subject nineteen. Someone who was bitten. They volunteered to have us record the process. Vi, scan forward to the first event."

The screen zooms back out. Instead of the joyful, little lights from earlier, darkness infects the brain. Black vines crawling up and devouring anything in its path.

The brain dies right in front of their eyes.

"That's what happens?" Lucas asks, sounding so very small in the big room. "To the infected?" He tenses when Jenner's eyes lock onto his, sharing a miserable, but mutual understanding.

Jenner looks away, nodding, "It invades the brain like meningitis. The brain goes into shutdown, then the vital organs. . . Then death."

With a suddenly dry mouth, Lucas swallows.

"Everything you ever were, or ever will be -"
 

He feels the blood seeping through his fingers.
 
 
"- gone."
 
 
"You can't fix this, Lucas. You know how- you know how this works."

Knuckles turning white around the edge of the table, Lucas stares at the dust on the surface, every fleck a piece of memory.

"Vi, scan to the second event."

"It restarts the brain?" Lori asks.

"No, just the brain stem. The parts that are human, that part that's you? Doesn't come back."
 
 

"No. I- I can't. I don't wanna lose you." An ugly sob tore through his throat.

But there's a gun in his hand. Kaine put it there.

"Please."

 
The burst of a bullet tears through the speakers, and lights up the room in a flash of white.

"God. What was that?" Carol gasps, covering her mouth.

"He shot his patient in the head. . . Didn't you?"
 
 
"Thank you."

Fingers slid over his on the trigger, and the chamber cracked.

 
Lucas jerks his hand away from the desk, eyes darting down to see it empty.

"Dude, you okay?" Glenn whispers.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine." Lucas kneads his fingers against the bridge of his nose and then over his eyes until he sees shapes behind his lids.

Dale points above them, "That clock- it's counting down. What happens at zero?"

Grateful for the distraction, he lifts his head and follows Dale's finger. It's something he should've noticed before, blinking at them in a neon red, the numbers counting down.