When breakfast wraps up, at Dale and Andrea's request, Jenner takes us all back to the control centre. He sets his coffee down by a panel and clicks a button.
"Give me playback of TS-19," he says.
"Playback of TS-19," Vi repeats.
A giant screen lights up before us, criss-crossed with blue lines and coding. After a second, four smaller images appear on the left side of the screen—all X-ray scans of a brain from the right, left, and overhead, plus a close-up of nerves within the brain. The largest section of the screen shows a front-facing X-ray of a human head and shoulders.
"Few people ever got a chance to see this. Very few," Jenner says.
"Is that a brain?" Carl asks.
"An extraordinary one," Jenner replies. "Not that it matters in the end." He speaks to the screen. "Take us in for E.I.V."
"Enhanced internal view," Vi reports.
The smaller brain scans minimize and the camera zooms in on the person as the angle changes to face them from the side. It zooms in on the brain, closer and closer until all we see is a web of blue nerves flashing with tons of tiny little lights—electrical impulses in the brain.
"What are those little lights?" Shane asks.
"It's a person's life—experiences, memories," Jenner answers. "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," Jenner explains. "Electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says, does, or thinks from the moment of birth to the moment of death."
"Death?" Rick asks. "That's what this is, a vigil?"
"Yes." Jenner stares up at the screen as if entranced, then blinks a bit. "Or rather the...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 says. His words are slow, careful, and calculated. "Vi, scan forward to the first event."
"Scanning to first event."
The video fast-forwards and when the brain appears next, the entire brain stem is infected, spreading upwards as it invades. My stomach flips.
"What is that?" Glenn asks in disbelief.
Jenner points to the screen like a professor giving the most macabre lecture of all time. "It invades the brain like meningitis. The adrenal glands hemorrhage, the brain goes into shutdown, then the major organs."
The body on-screen shudders, convulsing and shaking as the infection seems to spread more with every second. More and more of the light dies until, with a final shudder, the entire brain goes dark.
"Then death," Jenner murmurs. "Everything you were or ever will be...gone."
"Is that what happened to Jim?" Sophia asks softly.
"Yes," Carol murmurs, taking her daughter's hand and squeezing lightly.
I stare up at the screen, at that dead, dark brain, and think of my parents, my family, and swallow hard as emotion swells up in the back of my throat. I glance around the room. A single tear rolls down Jacqui's cheek. Andrea's face is flushed with held-back emotion as she sniffles and turns away.
"She lost somebody two days ago," Lori murmurs when Jenner notes Andrea's reaction. "Her sister."
"I lost somebody too. I know how devastating it is," Jenner says as he comes a little closer to her. She nods once and he turns back to the screen. "Scan to the second event."
YOU ARE READING
Daryl's Angel (10th Anniversary Edition)
Fanfiction"You know, I think everyone who's ever loved me is dead." "That makes two of us. Fuckin' cheers." When the dead rose, Hope Tremblay found herself trapped, woefully unprepared for the rapidly changing world before her, and worst of all, alone. Day by...
