⌜ chapter fifteen ⌟

Everyone's gathering in the cafeteria the next morning, and Carl looks at his father as he walks in. "Are you hungover?" The kid asks him. "Mom said you'd be."

"Mom is right." Rick tells him.

"Mom has that annoying habit." Lori says, and her husband nods once.

"Eggs." T says as he walks over with food on the hot pan. "Powered, but- but I do 'em good."

Glenn groans because he's hung over as well. Jacqui's trying to comfort him, but there's really nothing she can do after all that he drank the night before.

"Bet you can't tell." T continues. "Protein helps the hangover." He says, and Glenn groans again.

"Where'd all this come from?" Rick asks as he holds up a pill bottle.

"Jenner." Lori tells him. "He thought we could use it."

Glenn's still groaning. "Don't ever, ever, ever let me drink again." He says as Jack walks in.

"I think that should go for MJ too." The teenager says, and they all look at him.

"Where is she?" Rick asks as T asks Shane what happened to his neck. He has three scratches that look pretty fresh, but he didn't have them the last time anyone saw him.

"Stumbling around back there." Jack motions behind him. "Jess is with her, but I don't think she ever went to sleep last night."

"Does she need help?"

"No!" Jess calls from the hallway. Jack's getting more candy bars from where he got some yesterday at dinner.

Jenner walks into the room then, and Dale looks at him. "Doc, I don't mean to slam you with questions first thing—"

"But you will anyway." Jenner says.

"We didn't come here for the eggs." Andrea tells him.

"Eggs?" MJ asks. "Where? Can I have some?"

"Oh, jeez." Jess almost drops her, and Rick quickly stands up.

"The hell did you do after we talked last night?" He asks as he helps her to the table.

"I...found a bottle of whiskey." She tells him.

"And?"

"And I drank it."

"All of it?" He questions, and she nods.

"Why don't you guys sober her up some and then we'll talk." Jenner says, and they eat some more.

Daryl looks at MJ as she pokes at Jack, the teenager glances at her as he eats his candy bar. She wasn't this drunk when she left his room last night. He thought that she was going to bed.

"You have chocolate on your face. Why are you eating so much sugar for breakfast?" The dyed-blonde questions, and Jack smiles.

"I like nougat." He says through a mouthful.

"This is why I'm not supposed to be left unsupervised as a primary care-giver." She hiccups.

"She a lightweight or somethin'?" Daryl asks, and Jack just looks at him, not understanding what that is. "She get drunk easy?"

"Oh. No." Jack shakes his head. "MJ and Dean could drink a lot and then drive back to the motel after."

"Drink a lot of what?"

"That stuff you let me try last night."

"The wine?" No way he's talking about—

"The other one. Whiskey, I think."

"How much did she drink?" Lori asks as she gets up to get MJ some water.

"All of it." Jack says.

"I found the empty bottle by her cot." Jess says as she piles eggs onto her friend's plate.

"I'm not the only one who was drinking." MJ says defensively as she takes the water that Lori's offering to her.

"No, you're just the only one still drunk."

"Yeah, well, Gabriel tends to have that effect on me." She mutters, and Daryl looks back over at her as Jack nearly chokes on his food.

"When did you see Gabriel?" The teenager questions, and now everyone's watching them.

"When we went back to the department store for Merle." She looks at him and then immediately sees the fear on his face. "Hey, we're fine. Alright? Gabriel isn't gonna do anything." She whispers, but it's so quiet that the others still hear her. "And if any of his dickhead brothers show up, I can protect you."

"Not if you're drunk and can't even walk in a straight line, let alone by yourself."

"Okay, I had one minor lapse in judgment."

"What if one of them—"

"They won't."

"You don't know that." He stands up. "If Gabriel could find you, so can the others."

"Jack." She calls after him as he walks away from her. "Jack!" She sighs as she looks at her plate of food, no longer hungry. She shoves it away from her and leans back.

"Gabriel was the guy in the warehouse." T says, and she glances at him. "That dick that grabbed you by your throat. Who is he?"

MJ glances at Daryl and sighs. "Jack's uncle." She says. "And if you thought he was a dick, you don't want to meet his brothers."

She gets up and goes to find Jack. He's curled up on his cot, trying not to cry, when she walks over to him.

"They're not gonna hurt you, Jack. I won't let them." The blonde says as she leans over, despite the pain in her side. "Why do you think I always have the angel blade on me? It may be convenient for walkers, but it's meant to be protection for you. You're all I got left, I'm not letting anyone take you from me."

He rolls over and looks at her. "Do you think they still want me dead?" He asks. "I don't have my grace anymore. I can't hurt anyone now. I'm good."

"I know you're good." She tells him. "And I'm not gonna let anyone hurt you."

"I'm not like him. I'm not like my father. I don't want to be evil."

She wipes tears from his face. "Sweetie, you are the kindest person that I have ever met. I've been with you your whole life, and I've never seen anything evil in you. You chose Cas to be your dad. And you are good just like him."

There's a knock at the door, and they both look up to see Rick standing there. "Jenner has something to show us." He tells them, and MJ nods. "Are you guys alright?"

MJ looks at Jack, and he nods. "We're okay."

He gets up and the three of them join the others in the big room. Jenner walks over to a computer and hits a button. "Give me a playback of TS-19." He says to Vi.

"Playback of TS-19." The computerized voice says as it pulls something up on a large screen at the front of the room.

"Few people ever got the chance to see this." Jenner says as he turns to face the group that he saved last night. "Very few."

The outline of a human head shows up on the screen, and the inside of it is lit up. "Is that a brain?" Carl asks.

"An extraordinary one." He tells him. "Not that it matters in the end." He says as MJ and Jack walk up beside Daryl. "Take us in for E.I.V."

"Enhanced Internal View." Vi says, and the screen zooms in on the brain.

There are all kinds of lights dancing on the screen — bright blue shooting through different curved lines. Jack's mesmerized by the sight as he looks at the screen.

"What are those lights?" Shane asks.

"It's a person's life — experiences, memories." Jenner tells them. "It's everything. 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 asks.

"Those are synapses, electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says, does, and thinks, from the moment of birth to the moment of death."

"Death?" Rick questions. "That's what this is? A vigil?"

"Yes." Jenner turns slightly. "Or rather the playback of the vigil."

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

"Test Subject 19. Someone who was bitten and infected...and volunteered to have us record the process." He explains. "Vi, scan forward to the first event."

"Scanning to first event." The computer says and then it fast forwards.

There's suddenly blackness invading in on the blue in the lower center of the brain, and little reddish specs. It looks like it's coming in through the spine and working upward.

"What is that?" Glenn asks.

"It invades the brain like meningitis." Jenner tells them as the person in the recording is coughing and moving around. "The adrenal glands hemorrhage, the brain goes into shutdown, then the major organs." He explains and then the entire brain goes completely dark. There are no more bright blue lights or red specs. "Then death."

Jack grabs MJ's hand and her jaw tightens as she squeezes his. Andrea has tears in her eyes as she looks at the screen.

"Everything you ever were or ever will be...gone." Jenner finishes.

"Is that what happened to Jim?" Sophia asks her mom.

"Yes." Carol nods.

"That's what happened to Matty and Jenny." Jack says, his voice low, and Rick looks over at the teenage boy. Daryl sees MJ wipe a tear from her face, but she hasn't taken her gaze away from the screen. She can't.

Jenner turns and looks at Andrea as she starts crying and turns away. "She lost someone two days ago." Lori tells him. "Her sister."

"I lost somebody too. I know how devastating​ it is." Jenner says as he walks over to Andrea, then he looks back up at the screen. "Scan to the second event."

"Scanning to second event."

"The resurrection times vary widely." He continues. "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."

A red glow appears in the center of all the blackness from before. It sends little waves through the black lines, but none of the blue reappears. The rest of the brain is still dark.

"It restarts the brain?" Lori asks.

"No, just the brain stem." Jenner says as he glances at her. "Basically, it gets them up and moving."

"But they're not alive?" Rick asks as he walks forward.

"You tell me." The doctor motions to the screen in front of them.

"It's nothing like it was before. Most of that brain is dark." He says, still looking up at the video.

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

Something small appears at the top of the screen and then something goes through the head. It cuts all the way through the brain and then back out the other side. It made Jack jump, but MJ still hasn't moved.

"God. What was that?" Carol asks.

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

"Vi, power down the main screen and the workstations." Jenner says.

"Powering down main screen and workstations."

The screen goes black, and MJ looks down, wiping more tears from her cheeks. Jack looks at her and sighs, seeing the pain on her face.

"You have no idea what it is, do you?" Andrea asks as she looks at Jenner.

"I could be microbial, viral, parasitic, fungal." He says.

"Or the wrath of God?" Jacqui asks.

"There is that."

MJ scoffs. "God doesn't give a shit about any of us. Maybe he did once, but he stopped a long time ago." She says. "God's the left building. Now it's a damned free for all." She walks away from Jack and leaves the room.

Jessica and Jack look at each other. He shakes his head, telling her there's no point in going after her. She's lost all hope.

"Somebody must know something." Andrea says, gaining everyone's attention. "Somebody. Somewhere."

"There are others, right?" Carol asks. "Other facilities."

"There may be some." Jenner says. "People like me."

"But you don't know?" Rick questions. "How can you not know?"

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

"So it's just here." Andrea says. "There's nothing left anywhere? Nothing? That's what you're really saying, right?" She asks, but he doesn't say anything.

"Jesus." Jacqui mutters.

"Man, I'm gonna get shitfaced drunk...again." Daryl says as he leans against a desk.

"Dr. Jenner, I know this has been taxing for you, and I hate to ask one more question, but..." Dale starts. "That clock — it's counting down. What happens at zero?" It's the clock that MJ noticed last night. It's at just under an hour now.

"The basement generators — they run out of fuel." Jenner tells him.

"And then?" Rick asks, but Jenner doesn't answer, he just starts leaving the room. "Vi, what happens when the power runs out?"

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