The silence lingered afterward.
Not uncomfortable.
Just heavy.
I leaned against the lab counter and studied the exhausted scientist.
He looked like a ghost haunting his own grave—a brilliant man trapped inside a mausoleum of dead research and fading hope.
And if I left him here, sooner or later, he would completely give up hope.
"You should come with me," I broke the silence.
Jenner blinked. "What?"
"My settlement." I shrugged.
"We've got food. We've got electricity. We've got doctors, a mechanic, families, kids..."
I paused for a moment. "We've got a future."
For several seconds, he simply stared at me.
The exhaustion in his eyes warred with something else, hope.
Finally, he shook his head.
"No."
I raised an eyebrow. "No?"
Jenner glanced at me.
"What would you need me for? You already have doctors. There's no probable cure to be found. What would I do there?" he said with a bitter tone underneath.
"You're a doctor." I said flatly
"Your usefulness outweighs any other survivor out there, so saying you have no value is pure nonsense. Plus..." I looked at Jenner, who now had his full attention on me. "...as long as you remain alive, the possibility of a cure may not be impossible. As long as you're alive, hope is not lost yet."
Jenner turned away from me, but I could see his shoulders trembling.
After a while, he turned to me.
His eyes were bright; the dimness they had was no longer present.
"Let's do a blood test," he said.
"A blood test?" I echoed.
"I broke all protocols bringing you here. At least let me be thorough."
I looked Jenner in the eyes.
The man looked determined.
"Very well," I relented, letting out a sigh.
Jenner brightened up.
"One condition," I added.
Jenner's brows furrowed.
I met his gaze evenly.
"You keep what you find to yourself."
Jenner studied me for a while longer, then slowly nodded. "Agreed."
Perfect.
then, Jenner went to get the tools he needed to draw blood.
A few minutes passed by, and he returned with a medical tray.
He sat me down in a lab chair, cleaned my arm with alcohol, applied a tourniquet, and inserted a needle into the median cubital vein.
He filled four vacuum tubes to get enough volume for multiple tests.
During the blood draw, Jenner remarked, "Your veins look remarkably healthy and elastic."
"Always been that way," I shrugged, fully knowing what he meant.
"Hmm," Jenner just hummed in response.
Then, he placed the blood tubes into a high-speed centrifuge to separate the liquid plasma from the solid blood cells.
It took ten minutes for the process to finish.
These ten minutes were awkward as all hell, as Jenner asked more about my settlement and why I came alone.
I answered what I could without going deep into it.
Then, Jenner fed one tube into an automated machine that counts red cells, white cells, and platelets.
Minutes later, the machine finished.
Jenner started checking the preliminary results.
At first, everything appeared normal.
Then, another sound echoed through the laboratory.
Beep.
A red warning flashed across the monitor.
Jenner froze.
I frowned. "What?"
His eyes narrowed. "That shouldn't happen."
He tapped several commands.
The machine beeped again.
Same error.
"What kind of error?"
Jenner didn't answer immediately, his fingers flying across the keyboard. "Calibration failure."
I blinked. "Meaning?"
His eyes remained locked on the screen. "Meaning the machine thinks the sample is impossible."
Well, that wasn't ideal.
Jenner manually overrode the warning.
The system protested.
He overrode it again and again.
Eventually, the software surrendered, and the analysis continued.
Several minutes later, the wall screens activated one after another.
Massive displays illuminated the somewhat dim laboratory.
Cellular structures appeared, blood chemistry, microscopic imagery.
Then, the simulation began.
A sample of contaminated necrotic tissue was introduced into the digital model.
I already knew what would happen; Jenner did too.
The necrotic agent spread.
Corruption advanced through healthy cells.
The familiar pattern of infection emerged.
Then, it stopped.
Jenner froze.
I leaned forward.
The corruption spread again.
Healthy tissue died, then healthy tissue returned.
The damaged cells rebuilt themselves.
Not completely, not instantly, but fast enough to matter.
The infection pushed, the cells pushed back.
Corruption, repair.
Corruption, repair.
Over and over—a biological stalemate.
The room fell silent.
The screens continued displaying impossible data.
I watched the battle occurring at the microscopic level.
My cells weren't winning; as a matter of fact, they were losing.
But they were slow.
Too slow.
The pathogen was advancing, but at a snail's pace.
I guess this is what ROB meant when he said I could fight off the infection for a while but not eradicate it, I thought to myself.
The silence was broken by Jenner first.
He let out a laugh—a small, shaky, disbelieving one.
Then another.
Then another.
Soon, he was pacing fast, his hands buried in his hair.
A manic expression was on his face.
"No, no, no, no, no…" His pace increased. "This is impossible."
To rule out a fluke, Jenner used a Rapid Polymerase Chain Reaction machine to amplify the viral DNA in my blood sample.
This measures the exact "viral load" (how much virus is in the body).
Fifteen minutes later, the machine confirms that while the latent Wildfire virus is present in my blood sample—proving that I am infected same as everyone else—the active replication rate is functionally close to zero, meaning my body is actively suppressing it.
Jenner turns around, his bloodshot eyes wide and his hands trembling.
He points a shaking finger at the massive wall monitors showing my blood cells aggressively resisting the virus.
He speaks in a rapid-fire, breathless whisper.
"This is not possible. You don't understand... this shouldn't be possible. The necrosis... it eats everything. It shuts down the organs. But your cells... they aren't just fighting. They are adapting. They are rebuilding almost as fast as the virus can corrupt."
My heart skipped a beat at the manic expression Jenner had right now.
I put on my best practiced, confused expression and said,
"Look, Doc, I don't know anything about science. All I know is I've never been sick a day in my life. Back in the service, if I got a deep cut or a bad sprain, it'd be healed up by the next morning while the other guys were out for a week. I just thought I had good genes."
Hearing me calling that "good genes" makes Jenner almost laugh with a mix of hysteria and awe.
He paces the floor, gripping his hair.
"Good genes?"
Jenner looked seconds away from throwing something at me.
Instead, he laughed.
The sound echoed across the laboratory.
This time, it wasn't grief.
It wasn't despair.
It wasn't resignation.
It was hope—raw and overwhelming.
For the first time since I met him, Edwin Jenner looked alive.
"Son, you have god-tier genes. This isn't just a strong immune system. This is an accelerated cellular recovery matrix. If a walker bites a normal person, they die of the infection within a day because their body can't fight the bacteria. But you... your body can fight the virus to almost a standstill!"
Jenner's eyes then widen.
Because I acted clueless, like someone who doesn't understand his own worth, Jenner immediately switches into protective mode.
He realizes this "clueless" ex-soldier is the most important human being alive on Earth.
Jenner stops pacing and looks me dead in the eye, completely forgetting his plan to die with the building.
"You cannot leave here. Do you understand me? If you go out there and get your head crushed by those things, humanity dies with you. I need to study you. We need to synthesize this."
This is the perfect opening for me to recruit him.
Then I say, "Well, Doc, I can't stay here."
His expression darkened immediately.
I continued before he could interrupt, "I have my settlement to look after. I've got people depending on me. Besides, this is the CDC." I shrugged. "It houses enough nasties to wipe out continents."
A flicker crossed his face.
Good.
"There's no way they built a facility like this without some kind of contingency plan in case of catastrophic power failure"
Not a lie, just not the entire truth.
"Meaning you can't stay here either, right? But I've got a secure base."
I began counting on my fingers.
"Food, power, medicine, defenses... and I can protect you."
Jenner opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again.
"If you want to keep studying my blood…" I pointed toward the exit. "…you're gonna have to pack up your bags and come with me."
The scientist stared, thinking, calculating, hope battling caution.
For nearly a minute, neither of us spoke.
Then, finally, Jenner broke the silence.
"Alright."
(To be continued...)