"What the hell does that mean?" Daryl asked, walking right behind him. Jenner, ignored his question.
"Hey, man, I'm talking to you What do you mean it's shutting itself down? How can a building do anything?"
"You'd be surprised." Jenner replied. Rick and the boy's ran through the door below the stairs.
Briony followed just behind her brother as they descended down the stairs.
"Jenner, what's happening?" Rick asked, standing in front of him. Jenner started to move forwards and Rick moved along with him.
The rest of the group followed behind.
"The system is dropping all non-essential uses of power. It's designed to keep the computers running to the last possible second." They all followed him to the middle of Section Five where TS-19 was held.
He stopped for a minute, everyone stood there silent waiting for him to do something. He turned and passed the bottle to Daryl, in return, Daryl snatched it out of his hand and stared at him.
"It was the French." Jenner started.
"What?" Andrea asked.
"They were the last to hold out as far as I know. While our people committed suicide, they stay in the labs to the end. They thought they were close to a solution." Jenner continued.
"What happened?" Jacqui asked.
"Same thing that happening here. No power grid. Ran out of juice. The world runs on fossil fuel. I mean, how stupid is that?" Jenner scrunched up his face and started to walk away.
"Let me tell you..." Shane raged, racing up the stairs to grab a hold of Jenner.
Rick grabbed Shane just in time.
"The hell with this Shane, I don't even care!" Rick turned and faced the group. "Lori, grab our things. Everybody. We're getting out of here now!"
Daryl grabbed a hold of Briony and they started to run. An alarm started blaring and everyone stopped and looked around.
Briony's heart was pulsing out of her chest. There was no way she wanted to die here.
"30 minutes to decontamination." Vi spoke.
"Doc, what going on here, damn it?" Someone shouted.
"Everybody y'all heard Rick, grab your stuff and let's go!" Shane ordered. T-Dog signaled for them all to follow him, they started to but the entrance to the door caught everyone's attention as its slid shut within seconds.
"Did he just lock us in?" Glenn asked. "He just locked us in!"
Daryl's breathing increased. "You son of a bitch!" Daryl started to run towards him.
It was all happening way too quickly for Briony to comprehend.
"Shane!" Rick shouted and pointed to Daryl who was about to attack Jenner. Shane ran over and grabbed Daryl as Daryl raised his hand, bottle in his grasp, about to smash Jenner over the head with it.
T-Dog rushed over to help as well, Briony moved closer, watching on to make sure she was there to help them out if anything went wrong.
"Ill kill you." Daryl shouted, Shane pushed him away.
"No, no, no, no. Don't do that." T-Dog panicked holding onto him. Using their strength they dragged him away from Jenner.
Briony looked over at Jenner who was straightening out his lab coat and composing himself. She glared as she looked upon him.
She proceeded over to her brother, Shane and T-Dog. "I can take it from here." They nodded, seeing her calm composure, they walked away towards Jenner.
"Jenner, open that door now!" Rick demanded, walking towards the man.
"There's no point, everything top side is locked down, the emergency exits are sealed." Jenner replied.
"Well, open the damn things!" Daryl shouted.
"That's not something I control. The computers do. I told you once that front door closed it wouldn't open again you heard me say that." Jenner explained. "It's better this way."
"Fuck sake." Briony mumbled, next to her brother.
"What is? What happens in 28 minutes?" Rick asked, but was ignored. "What happens in 28 minutes?" He shouted.
Jenner stood up. "Do you know what this place is? We protect the public from very nasty stuff!" He shouted, in front of Shane's face.
"Weaponised smallpox! Ebola to wipe out half of the country! Stuff you don't want getting out! Ever!"
Jenner sat down, straightened out his jacket and wiped his lips with his hand and sighed. "In the event of a catastrophic power failure and a terrorist attack, for example, HITs are deployed to prevent any organisms getting out."
"HITs?" Rick questioned.
"Vi, define." Jenner ordered.
"High- Impulsive Thermobaric fuel-air explosives consist of a two-stage aerosol ignition that produces a blast wave of significantly greater power than any other known explosives except nuclear." Vi defined.
Briony just looked up at her brother and ran over into his arms. He held her close. She could hear his heart thumping.
"The vacuum pressure ignites the oxygen 'between 5,000 and 6,000 degrees, and is useful when the greatest loss of life and damage is desired." Vi continued.
"It sets the air on fire." Jenner stated. Briony turned around, shocked. Her brothers arms wrapped around her. She didn't know what to think or feel. "No pain. An end to sorrow. Grief. Regret. Everything."
↠ ↠ ↠ ↠
With Jenner refusing to open the door, Daryl's rage grew. He had an empty bottle in his hand. He threw it against the door which was sealed shut. Only Jenner could open it. "Open the damn door!"
"Out my way!" Shane shouted, he sprinted up to the door with an axe in his hand then swung at the door, leaving nothing but a scratch.
T-Dog threw Daryl an axe, together they both started attempting to axe down the door. Briony didn't know what to do with herself. She wasn't going to help the boys, it was a waste of energy. She also didn't wanna mope around.
She tried to think of a way to get Jenner to change his mind.
"You should've left it. It would have been easier." Jenner started.
"Easier for who?" Lori asked, sobbing.
"All of you. You know what's out there. A short, brutal life and an agonising death. Your sister, what was her name?" Jenner asked Andrea.
"Amy." Andrea spoke in no more than a whisper.
"Amy." Jenner repeated. "You know what this does. You've seen it. Is that really what you want?"
"I don't want this!" Rick spat.
"I can't make a dent." Shane huffed out of breath.
"They can withstand a rocket launcher." Jenner informed Shane.
Daryl walked back down the stairs from the exit, axe in his hand. "Your head ain't." Daryl rushed over and went to swing the axe at Jenner. Of course, T-Dog was right in front of him, stopping him.
"Daryl! Daryl!" Shane shouted as he, Dale and T-Dog restrained him. "Just back up! Back up!" They all pushed him, he dropped the axe and walked around the computers, his eyes watching Jenner like a hawk.
Briony walked over to her brother. "This is bullshit." She sighed. Daryl said nothing. "We need Jenner alive to get out of here dickhead, stop moving like a maniac."
"Whatever." He chuckled. They were Dixon's. They had psychopath blood, moving like Maniacs is what they did.
"You do want this." Jenner continued. "Last night you said you knew it was just a matter of time before everyone you loved was dead."
"What, you really said that after your big talk?" Shane spat.
"I had to keep hope alive." Rick explained.
"There is no hope. There never was." Jenner continued.
"Oh, fuck you Jenner. You know nothing." Briony chuckled. "Just cah you've got your fancy little lab coat on, doesn't mean you know more than us about what's out there."
Jenner looked at the small girl and chuckled. He couldn't take her seriously, she looked like a baby in his eyes. The problem was, he didn't know enough about her so, he underestimated her.
That was dangerous.
"There's always hope. Maybe not here, but somebody, somewhere." Rick argued.
"What part of everything's gone do you not understand?" Andrea looked up at Rick. Briony sighed. She lost faith. It was a shame to see.
"What the fuck." Was all that escaped Briony's mouth. She was shocked.
"Listen to your friend. She gets it. This is what takes us down. This is, our extinction event." Jenner spoke.
"This isn't right! You can't just keep us here!" Carol sobbed, clinging onto her child for dear life.
"One tiny moment, a millisecond. No pain." Jenner replied.
"My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this!" Carol cried, she got up, grabbed her daughter and moved away from him.
"Wouldn't it be kinder? More compassionate to hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run down?" Jenner questioned.
A gun cocked behind Briony, she turned around. Shane stalked towards Jenner with his gun in his hand.
Rick pushed him. "Shane, no!"
"Out of my way, Rick!" Shane shouted back in his face, he shoved Rick out of the way, continuing towards Jenner. He put his gun right against his face.
"Open that door or I'm gonna blow your head off! Do you hear me?" Shane threatened him.
"Shane, stop." Briony shouted.
"Brother, you do this, this is not the way you do this. We'll never get out of here." Rick tried to talk to Shane, to get him to listen.
"Shane, you listen to him!" Lori advised.
"If he dies, we all die!"
"Aargh!" Shane screamed. He turned and fired his gun at a computer, cocked his gun again and continued to shoot several times before Rick grabbed the gun out of his hands.
Rick knocked him round the head with his elbow, Shane fell to the floor and Rick stepped over him, staring at him right in the face.
"Are you done now?" Rick questioned. "Are you done?"
"Yeah, I guess we all are." Shane replied. Rick backed off, turning to T-Dog, who was shaking his head, and passing him the gun.
Rick stood in the center, looking around the room at everyone individually. He stared right into Briony's eyes. She wasn't scared.
She could never be scared of any of these people present in that moment at any point in her life. She was stronger than that, she certainly wasn't scared of the man she'd seen as her second father.
"I think you're lying." Rick turned and spoke to Jenner, breathing heavily.
"What?" Jenner asked, shocked.
"You're lying. About no hope. If that were true, you would have bolted with the rest or take it the easy way out. You didn't. You chose the hard path. Why?" Rick questioned.
"It doesn't matter." Jenner responded.
"It does matter. It always matters." Rick walked closer to him, quickly wiped the sweat off his face, continuing to breath heavy. "You stayed when the others ran. Why?"
"Not because I wanted to. I made a promise. To her." Jenner stood up and pointed to the screen. "My wife."
"Test subject 19 was your wife?" Lori asked.
"She begged me to keep going as long as I could. How could I say no? She was dying. It should have been me on that table. It wouldn't of mattered anyway. She was a loss to the world." Jenner explained.
Daryl continued to swing away at the door with an axe. He wasn't the one for sob stories, he certainly didn't care for Jenner's story.
Jenner continued. "Hell, she ran this place. I just worked here."
Briony sighed and walked over to Daryl.
"Daryl, stop. Please." Briony begged her brother. He continued, not listening.
"I'm not going to die here!" He told her, continuing to attempt to smash the door down. Briony looked at her brother with sympathy and sighed.
The door suddenly slid open in front of them.
"Come on." Daryl shouted, dropping the axe to the ground. Briony ran downstairs, while others ran up, and grabbed a hold of Bandit.
"Let's go!" Glenn shouted.
"Come on, let's go!" Daryl shouted.
"Move it! Move it!"
Briony ran towards her brother who was waiting for her.
"Hey! We've got four minutes left! Come on!" Glenn shouted holding Carl, as she ran past him. She joined her brother and waited for the others to come.
"Let's go Jacqui!" T-Dog was trying move Jacqui along but she was resisting.
"I'm staying! I'm staying, sweetie." She announced. "I'm not ending up like Jim and Amy."
Briony stopped, shocked then sighed. "There's no time to argue. And no point, not if you want to get out. Just get out. Get out!"
"Bye Jacqui, I love you, man." Briony shouted before Daryl grabbed her and pushed her forwards to get a move on.
"Come on."