Infection - Part I

Chapter 12.

Slowly, the three women made their way to the top of the steps, with Valerie keeping an eye around them to ensure no zombies were after them.

With the lights on and the beacon-like strobes from the fire alarm lights swirling around, the red hue painted the 3 women's faces. 

Monica let out a sigh of relief along with Lisa as they reached the top of the stairs. With Monica leaning against a wall, it gave Lisa a moment of rest as she looked Valerie's way, she was still scanning the stairs for a second more before joining the two women.

"Everything seems clear," Valerie spoke out. "Where is the telecommunications room?".

"It's not too far from here," Monica responded, however, she gritted her teeth as she retook hold of her injured shoulder. "But if you can give me a moment to just recover...".

Valerie nodded, looking at Lisa who stood up from leaving against the wooden wall.

"Alright..." Monica muttered seconds later as she propped herself up properly onto her feet, still leaning against the wall for support.

"Can I help you some more?" Lisa offered.

"No, no. I'll be fine..." Monica responded. "You've done more than enough... Thank you.". With that, Monica tried to lead the way. Her steps became that bit more firm, confident, the more she walked. 

A couple more meters and a bend later, they arrived in front of a closed, metal door. Reaching into her pocket, Monica retrieved her bloodied card which she used to scan into the card scanner, unlocking the door. Opening the door for herself and the two women who followed her, the door closed behind them all as they ventured deeper into the darkened room.

"We need to activate all the equipment... that might take a few minutes," Monica spoke out as she reached her work desk. Turning on the computer, she looked at Valerie before saying, "Can you get the big computer, please, Valerie?".

At first, she looked to which one she implied, but finally eyeing it seconds later, she made her way to it before powering it up.

"Alright... now all we do is wait..." Monica commented as she pulled out a chair for her to sit on. With a grunt and a groan of pain, she managed to get herself down onto the chair, releasing a sigh of relief in her doing so.

The projector showed the big computer turning on as a big, clue rectangle was shown on a wall, with a small, spinning circle in the middle showing that the program was loading up. A minute later, the blue was to be switched out with a black screen as a bunch of sentences appeared on the screen. It was all code.

"We'll just let it do its thing..." Monica kept both Valerie and Lisa up to date. "It should be ready in just a minute now...".

Lines and lines of code were rapidly shown by the system before a percentage sign appeared at the bottom of the screen, seconds later, numbers took their place beside it. Racing up to 100.

Once that loading was completed, the screen went dark again, as if the projector turned off, only for the blue screen to come back a second later, with the text, 'Welcome' reading across it. And then it requested a login.

Monica let out a sigh before gathering all the strength she had to stand up on her feet again. Slowly, with the help of both Valerie and Lisa, she made her way to the computer, where she inputted her credentials. Pressing enter, the screen loaded again before giving them access to the home page.

There lay several boxes, some empty, others containing text but they were darkened. "Fuck..." Monica let out.

"What is it?... What is all of this?" Lisa asked.