⌜ chapter sixteen ⌟

"Go away." MJ says as she looks at Gabriel.

"We never did get to have that conversation." He says. "The reason I found you in the first place."

"You mean Jack?"

"I know you think that we all want the kid dead, but I don't." He tells her. "He's not like my brother. How can he be when he's been raised by the Winchesters?"

"I'm not interested, Gabriel. Just leave me alone." She stands up, groaning in pain, and he presses the tips of his index and middle fingers to her forehead. "I don't want your help!" She shoves him back.

"I fixed it. How about a little gratitude?"

She lifts her shirt and looks at her left side, the bruise is gone. She puts it back down as she shoves passed him. She no longer has a headache either. He sobered her up as well as healed her broken rib.

"MJ—" He grabs her arm, and she spins around, pulling the angel blade from her sheath and pressing it against his throat.

"Michael and Lucifer killed Sam and Adam. I couldn't do anything, and you wouldn't even try." Her voice is low, but her tone is sharp. "I would rather die than accept help from any of you winged pricks." She shoves him away from her again and turns around to leave.

She ends up in the rec room, and Jess sits on the couch next to her. She looks at MJ and sighs, the older girl looks like hell. She's pale and the blonde in her hair is growing out, revealing even more of the dark brown roots. She has tear stained cheeks underneath her caramel colored eyes. The two chains around her neck are twisted, making it look like a messy swirl of gold and silver. The ring on her left middle finger is crooked, and she's staring down at her mother's engagement ring that she usually wears on her right hand. She's holding it between her index finger and her thumb. With it is a picture of her and her two brothers, it was taken on the porch outside of Bobby's house.

"I saw Gabriel." MJ says, her voice raspy from crying. "Maybe...half an hour ago. He says he doesn't want to kill Jack. I believe him." She tells Jessica.

"That's good, right?" The younger blonde asks.

She shrugs. "It's just one less threat." She says. "I'd be willing to bet that Raphael will be less friendly if and when we come across him. Not to mention the demons. Not many of them like having Lucifer's son around."

"What are you going to do?"

"Protect him." She sighs. "Until I can't."

"You mean until you die." Jess says.

"Dean killed Zachariah. And then Sam grabbed Adam and jumped into the cage, taking Lucifer and Michael with them." She looks at her friend. "Whatever other angels we come across at any point in the future... Something tells me that they aren't gonna want to talk to me."

MJ gets up and starts out of the room as the lights flicker and then shut off. Jess walks up beside her, and they see the others poking their heads out of their own rooms. Jenner's making his way down the hall.

"Why is the air off?" Lori asks.

"And the lights in our room?" Carol adds.

"What's going on?" Daryl asks as he exits his own room. "Why's everything turning off?"

Jenner swipes the bottle of whiskey out of his hand as he passes him. "Energy use is being prioritized." He tells them.

"Air isn't a priority?" Dale asks. "And lights?"

"MJ?" Jack rushes over to her, and she holds her hand out. He takes it in his, and they all follow after Jenner, who's drinking from the bottle that he took from Daryl.

"It's not up to me. Zone Five is shutting itself down." Jenner says.

"Hey!" Daryl calls after him. "Hey, what the hell's that mean?" He keeps walking and they keep following after him. "Hey, man, I'm talking to you. What do you mean it's shutting itself down?" He questions. "How can a building do anything?"

"You'd be surprised."

They end up in the big room again and they hear footsteps beneath them. "Rick?" Lori leans over the railing as MJ, Jack, and Daryl follow after Jenner down the stairs, with the others close behind them.

"I'm gonna need you to tell me what the hell is going on." MJ says, and Jess takes notice of how quickly she went from scared and sad to protective of the people she's grown to care about. It's like she flipped a switch.

"Jenner, what's happening?" Rick demands.

"The system is dropping all non-essential uses of power." Jenner tells them. "It's designed to keep the computers running to the last possible second. That started as we approached the half-hour mark. Right on schedule." He motions to the clock.

31:28 and dropping.

He takes another drink as he stops walking, hesitating for a second, then he passes the bottle back to Daryl. He snatches it back, not at all interested in the contents anymore — they're all focused solely on Jenner.

"It was the French."

"What?" Andrea asks, confused.

"They were the last ones to hold out as far as I know." Jenner says. "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?" Jacqui asks.

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

"Let me tell you—"

"To hell with it, Shane." Rick stops him when he tries to go after Jenner. "I don't even care." Then he turns to his wife. "Lori, grab your things. Everybody, get your stuff. We're getting out of here now!"

"Jess, take Jack and grab our stuff." MJ says as she nudges the teenager toward their blonde friend.

Suddenly an alarm starts blaring and a red light flashes. "What's that?" Shane questions.

"What's that?" Carl looks up at his dad.

"MJ..." Jack looks to her.

"Thirty minutes to decontamination." Vi says as a timer pops up on the main screen.

"Doc, what's going on here?!" Daryl yells.

"Everybody, y'all heard Rick!" Shane says as he looks at them. "Get your stuff and let's go! Go now! Go!"

The door shuts and everyone looks over at it. "Did you just lock us in?" Glenn asks. "He just locked us in!"

Daryl runs at Jenner, and Rick yells at Shane to get him back. The doctor's talking into some camera on one of the computers.

"Hey, Jenner, open that door now." Rick says as he walks over to them.

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

"Well, open the damn things." Daryl says.

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

Rick and MJ look around at all of the scared faces of their group. MJ's gaze lands on Jack and she can see the terror in his eyes.

"It's better this way." Jenner says.

"What is?" MJ questions as she looks at the clock that's counting down. "What happens in twenty-eight minutes?"

He turns back to the computer, and the others make him look at them — MJ, Rick, Shane, and Daryl. He stands up as he faces them.

"You know what this place is?!" He snaps at them. "We protected the public from very nasty stuff!" He yells in Shane's face and then looks at MJ and Rick. "Weaponized smallpox! Ebola strains that could wipe out half the country! Stuff you don't want getting out! Ever!" He collects himself and then sits back in his chair, straightening out his jacket. "In the event of a catastrophic power failure — in a terrorist attack, for example — H.I.T.s are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out."

"H.I.T.s?" Rick questions.

"Vi, define."

"H.I.Ts — high-impulse thermobaric fuel-air explosives consist of a two-stage aerosol ignition that provides a blast wave of significantly greater power and duration than any other known explosive except nuclear. The vacuum-pressure effect ignites the oxygen at between five thousand and six thousand degrees and is useful when the greatest loss of life and damage to structure is desired." The computerized voice tells them.

"It sets the air on fire." Jenner says as Carol and Sophia both start crying. Rick hugs Lori and their son. Jack's holding onto Jess, who's trying not to cry as well. "No pain. An end to sorrow, grief... Regret... Everything."

—

Daryl, Glenn, and Shane are now trying to break through the door, but it's no use. Lori and Carol are sitting on the floor with the kids, both of which are crying. Jess has Jack in her arms as he cries. The others are watching the men pound on the door. MJ's looking at Jack, watching the fear take control of him. Jess sees the anger in her building as her fists clench and unclench — her jaw is shut so tight that it hurts.

"You should've left well-enough alone. It would've been so much easier." Jenner says as Dale moves closer to him.

"Easier for who?" Lori questions.

"All of you. You know what's out there." He says. "A short, brutal life and an agonizing death." He looks at Andrea. "Your​- Your sister — what was her name?"

"Amy."

"Amy." He repeats. "You know what this does. You've seen it." He looks at Rick. "Is that really what you want for your wife and son?"

He leans down, closer to his level. "I don't want this." He says, and Shane walks back over, telling​ him that the ax he was using can't even make a dent in the door.

"Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher." Jenner says as Daryl walks over to them.

"But your head ain't!" He yells as he goes to swing the ax in his hand at him. The other guys stop him, and Jenner stands up.

"You do want this." He says, looking at Rick as he speaks. "Last night, you said you knew it was just a matter of time before everybody you loved was dead."

"What?" Lori breathes out, and her husband looks at her.

"What? You really said that?" Shane questions. "After all your big talk?"

"I had to keep hope alive, didn't I?" Rick asks, talking to Lori.

"There is no hope." Jenner says. "There never was."

"I don't wanna die." Jack chokes out, passed his tears, and it's like something inside of MJ just snaps.

She pulls the angel blade off of her hip and ducks under Rick's arm in one fluid motion, making her way toward Jenner. She grabs him by his throat and points the blade at the men who come to try and pry her off of him. Her expression is hard, the anger in her eyes the most prominent thing about her.

She looks back at Jenner when she's confident they'll leave her alone. "You think it's bad out there? You've never seen what a pissed off Winchester is capable of. You wanna crawl into a hole and die, you go right ahead, but you don't get to take my family with you." Her voice is low, scary. "You heard my son. He doesn't want to die. Open the door or I will kick your ass six ways to Sunday and still have five minutes left on the clock." She says, and Rick looks at the timer — seven minutes and counting.

"You won't survive out there." Jenner says, his voice strained from the pressure that she's applying to his throat.

"Maybe you wouldn't. But you don't get to take our choice away." She leans forward so she's right in front of him.

"You'll lose them... All of them." He can see the grief under her anger. "Just like I lost my wife." He says, and her grip loosens. "You saw it happen. You all did."

"Test Subject 19 was your wife?" Lori asks.

"She begged me to keep going as long as I could." He's still looking at MJ. "How could I say no? She was dying." He says, and MJ lets go of him, pushing him back. "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."

"Edwin Jenner." MJ echoes. "Our murderer."

"That's not how I see it."

"What killer ever does?" She questions as she turns back to face him. "Look, I'm sorry about your wife, I am. I know how it feels, I lost my husband." She tells him. "And now I'm asking- begging you...not to kill the rest of us. You think it's hopeless, Rick thinks we'll all end up dead... I don't. I choose not to. Now open the Goddamn door!"

He sighs as he looks at her, then he walks over to the computer he was at before. "I told you, topside's locked down. I can't open those." He uses his employee card and then opens the door.

MJ looks at the clock. 4:31.

"Let's go." She gets Jack and Jessica to their feet. "Come on!" She calls to the others, and they all start running.

They grab their bags as quickly as they can, but Jacqui decides that she doesn't want to leave. She says that she doesn't want to end up like Jim and Amy. So they reluctantly leave her behind, and she stays with Jenner.

They make it to where they came in, but they can't get the doors to open. MJ's starting to panic and she paces back and forth.

"You have a grenade." Gabriel whispers from a few feet away from her. He's hidden so the others can't see him. "You got it the day you met these people. Remember?"

"In the tank." She mutters as she sets her backpack down on the floor in front of her.

"M?" Jack turns to look for her as she pulls the grenade out of the gray backpack.

She glances at Gabriel. "Hell hasn't frozen over yet, but you get the idea." She whispers to him quickly.

"Just get the hell out of here, kid." He tells her as she hears a gunshot. Shane shot the glass with his rifle.

"Rick." MJ slings her backpack over her shoulder and runs over to him. "Courtesy of the walker in the tank the day that Glenn saved us." She holds up the grenade.

"Look out!" Daryl yells as Rick takes it from her. MJ grabs Jack and Jess, quickly running back as the others move to hide.

"Now who's a dumbass?" She looks over at Glenn, and he covers his head when the grenade explodes. "We'd be dead now if the three of us hadn't gotten stuck in that tank."

"Okay, you win." Glenn says as they all get up. The explosion blew out one of the lower windows.

They all climb out and run for the vehicles that they left on the road before, taking out a few walkers on the way. They make it to the cars, but they don't start driving. Dale and Andrea come out after them, so they wait for them to catch up.

"We're running out of time." MJ says.

She and Jack ran to get into Daryl's truck with him. Jess is with Rick's family and Glenn in the RV. Carol and Sophia are in the car that they came in. Shane's in his Jeep. And T's in the other truck.

"Get down!" Daryl yells as Andrea and Dale duck behind a large pile of sand bags.

It's cramped as the three in Daryl's truck all hide. They hear the explosion, feel the pulse of the blast, and once it sounds like everything settles, they sit up and look at the C.D.C. The building was just about leveled in the explosion and it's completely engulfed in flames now.

Dale and Andrea run to the RV and quickly climb in. Daryl looks at MJ as she pulls Jack to her, the teenager's between them because she wouldn't get in before him. She hugs him as she looks over his head at Daryl.

One by one, the cars start up, and they leave the C.D.C. behind them.

⌜ author's note ⌟

book two is up. it's called...
Lose Yourself