(I'm going to explain what the research was, so tell me if I need to change it to fit the plot or something.)
"It's pretty easy once you get the hang of-" Jaylin cut off, staring blankly at the screen.
All across her laptop were pictures of infected people. There were blood splatters on walls, a victim having some sort of frenzied seizure, and humans with dead eyes and sickly pale skin. Each picture had a caption explaining what the images showed.
'The victim coughed up blood and vomit for three straight hours'
'After the victim experienced a few dramatic seizures, they could no longer walk to the other side of the room'
'A full transformation'
(Okay! Everything seems fine so far!)
Pollux leaned closer to her to see the computer screen.
"Oh… That's… There has to be more to it than that, right?"
His eyes scanned the images and their captions several times over.
"I've seen this stuff before… It's not new knowledge."
Jaylin nodded, her face a little going a little pale. "Yeah….yeah there's more. Sorry…I've just never seen some of this stuff before. It's a little… unnerving to say the least."
She closed out of the images, pulling up a new tab. It was a short sentence on an otherwise blank document.
"CDC. Atlanta, Georgia." Jaylin read out loud.
"I don't know much about zombies. Just that the brain has to be whole in order for them to function and be taken over. That's why zombies only die if you attack their head," Logan added.
"Yeah," Pollux muttered in response to Logan, "I've killed my fair share. Honestly, it makes things a whole lot harder…"
He shifted his gaze back towards the computer screen.
"What about the CDC?"
Jaylin furrowed her eyebrows, desperately trying to find something else connected to the document.
"There's… nothing else. That's it." She pulled up the document again, using a few decoding tools to see if there was a hidden message somewhere. "Just…CDC. Atlanta, Georgia."
He frowned. "I wanted to head there anyway. I guess that confirms my plans, but…"
Pollux folded his hands together.
"Guess this stuff is super secret, huh?"
"I don't know my geography, I live in the Northwest. How far is that from here?" Logan asked, peering over Jaylin's shoulder. "Are you one of those fake hackers from movies that just suddenly can pull up a million different programs and figure things out super quick? Cause the real hackin' stuff is a person writing codes on a piece of paper, figuring out if they would work or not."
I'm sorry just hackers from movies kinda annoy me and so my character is gonna be a piece of shit about it))
(Lol that's fine I have no idea what I'm doing)
Jaylin nodded to Pollux before turning to Logan. "Actually, I've designed and borrowed a bunch of programs that do most of the math and complicated stuff for me. If I had to do a hacking job that I hadn't done before, that would be a completely different story."
She turned back to the laptop, staring at the screen. "There has to be something I'm missing. All of this seems like pretty logical and public information."
"Well, then you have to ask yourself, 'why would they hide anything?' Or is this just a 'go to the CDC and you shall be saved' type deal? I'm not a fan either way. Not to mention that's at least eight hours by car, I think. That's really far."
Pollux leaned up against the wall.
Logan whispered under her breath, "Liesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss." She then raised her eyebrows at Jaylin's statement. "Why would info about a new disease be public? Most knowledge about it would probably belong to scientist and doctors and communicated over meetings, not online where anyone could see it. Have you even seen how people react to most diseases? It would be irresponsible to tell the public about all of the information about the disease other than symptoms."
"Depends. If this was published after everything went to hell, there's not really any harm to be done when the general public is already hysterical. Besides, the information likely would be lifesaving if only people knew what to do with it."
Pollux sighed.
"Something doesn't feel right. Do you think they maybe did some experiments they don't want to talk about?"
"Sounds possible to me." Logan shrugged. She pointed over her shoulder. "Anyway, Imma get some sleep. I've cleaned most of the rooms of blood, so don't be discouraged by one blood stain. A hospital mattress is better than no mattress."
"They're hiding something. I can feel it." Jaylin muttered, closing her laptop. She wasn't finding any answers there.
"Do you think they would have accidentally left some clues or something in this hospital?"
"I'm plenty comfortable right here, thanks," he muttered, thinking back to the bloodstains in the one room he had checked.
No way he was risking coming into contact with infected blood. Pollux pulled the hood back over his head and slouched against the wall.
"I mean maybe, but where do we start?" he asked.
Jaylin sighed, leaning her head back against the wall and staring up at the ceiling. "I have no idea. Someone who works here might be able to tell us something that can get us started."
“Pretty sure they’re all gone,” Pollux replied, “Logan seems to be the ruler of this place. We can always try snooping around. I kept an eye out for any papers or anything when we were in the lab, but I didn’t see anything there.”
"We can see if there are any more locked doors upstairs. Logan said that she cleaned out a bunch of the rooms, so any door that is open has probably been stripped of any helpful clues." Jaylin said, standing up and stuffing her laptop into her backpack.
“It’s still really early, isn’t it?” Pollux asked, “Is it a good idea to run around a hospital at like three in the morning?”
Jaylin set her backpack down on the floor, nodding to him. "Yeah…you're right. We should probably sleep while we can."
Pollux rested back against the wall and yawned. He felt sleepy, but was still having trouble actually getting there.
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