The Virus Within: The Road Ahead (Book 1 - SERIES COMPLETED!)

Chapter 65

We descended the stairs and parted ways at the bottom. Beckoned by the thought of food, Nicky jogged out the door. I went into the other staircase and began heading to the roof to wait for her. The fresh scents in the stairwell revealed the identities of the two who had gone ahead of me, as well as what they had on their plates.

I bet most of the meat I'm smelling is on Daniel's plate. Good thing that guy's a zombie, 'cause he clearly doesn't understand what a properly balanced meal is. Not that I had any room to talk; if it wasn't for my sweet tooth bribing me into favoring fruit, most of my meals would also consist of meat. If I killed it and drank its blood, I might as well barbecue it.

When I got to the roof, Daniel's and Nina's plates were still mostly full, so they must have just arrived. I sat in my usual seat, relieved to see that Louise hadn't shown up yet, nor had I seen her all day. It was a promising start.

"How has your day gone?" Nina asked.

"Uneventful," I replied, "which is how I prefer it."

She nodded and nibbled on a piece of bread, letting a companionable silence fall. This seemed to be her new way of "visiting", opting for peace and quiet with an occasional comment or question, which was preferable to the constant chit-chat involved in a regular human conversation.

Below, Nicky exited the dining hall on her return trip. She kept most of her attention on her plate since something – possibly a bread roll – kept trying to make a getaway. It took her some time to make it up to the roof, and when she did, she paused, only now noticing our company.

"Since when do you beat us up here?" Nicky asked them. She walked to her usual chair and sat down. "Are we late?"

"Not as far as I know," I said, glancing down at the ground. "People are still trickling into the dining hall at a decent rate."

Nina replied, "We decided to finish early and take a break."

"I kicked her out of the lab before she burned herself out," Daniel clarified. "There's no need for her to work like someone is at death's door. The cure has worked in every experiment so far, so she wasn't making any important progress there. Nor was she making any headway on any of the other drugs, so leaving half an hour early for dinner wouldn't do any harm."

"Ah, come on," Nicky complained, balancing her plate on her knees. "I was waiting to see just how much like one of those fictional, corpse-like zombies she had to become before she noticed that she was overworking herself."

"I didn't feel like waiting that long," Daniel retorted mildly.

"She already looks more like a zombie than you or Trinity. She just lacks the red eyes. Or whatever color you call that creepy orange you're sporting."

"It's brown," Daniel grumbled.

"Remind me to bring you a color wheel one day so we can go over the rainbow. Trinity might not be able to see yellow, but I think you need an eye exam if you're calling that brown."

Daniel bestowed a level look upon the pest sitting beside me, who completely ignored him as she jammed her fork into a pile of mashed potatoes and scooped them into her mouth. Nina seemed a bit embarrassed that everyone but her had noticed the dark circles under her eyes and the other signs of overworking.

I gazed up at the clouds, wondering if there was some sort of rule that gave Nicky the liberty of checking where the edge of Daniel's patience was. Either way, the two of us were very good at finding that point. He was going to be thrilled whenever he realized that.

"And why were you working so hard the last few days?" Nicky asked Nina.

"I get caught up in my work fairly easily. After our success with the sanity serum and the cure, I was hoping for more breakthroughs."