Chapter 14 - SOI 3851

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Sophie typically did what she wanted, how she wanted, when she wanted.

So, watching the others imprisoned and being reprimanded, then stripped of the means they found to protect themselves, it left a bitter taste in her mouth. In this world, a knife could be the difference between life and death, even in this protected little colony of Russell's. Until now and her own arrest, she did her best to remain neutral on the matter, or at least present herself as such.

One look at Doyle and she knew the game had been far over for him.

He's shackled. Contained in a cell on his own. The jails overflowing, he's the sole person that has his own, private, limited space. She's crammed into the cell next to him, along with several other women. At one point she wanted to take Doyle's hand as he continually paced, hoping to soothe away the tense grip that turned his knuckles white beyond his restraints, but she refrained. She just wished he'd look at her. Even once, after all these hours.

His anger with her over his forced sedation enough, she felt, for one night, but when it rolled over into the early morning, she couldn't understand why he didn't forgive her, why he wouldn't speak to her. Yes, she'd taken some supplies, but had every intention of returning what she could. Elisa even knew about it, but she didn't see her in any of the cells alongside her taking their same punishment. In her own isolation, she begins to wonder if the doctor finally betrayed them with Russell's reveal that he'd read Elisa's files.

What did that mean? What exactly did he know about her?

Then, she hopes that the doctor is okay, and begins to stress, that maybe Russell discovered more about what they'd been doing in the lab. How, she'd finally agreed to help Elisa with her research, for what was in her own blood and now, the districts were coming to take her away.

So, when Doyle's eyes finally met hers through the rusted bars, she couldn't help but crack a smile of relief, that maybe he'd talk to her now. However, when she noticed the anger still seething in the depths of green, she still couldn't understand why he was so mad at her.
With him within her reach, she grabbed his hand just as she imagined for hours through the bars between them.

She blurts out the confession in a whisper, "I've been helping Elisa with her research. I just thought you should know that I'm here, now, jailed next to you, probably because they found something in her lab about me...and I'm sorry about that...I'm sorry you got dragged into this, Doyle...I was just trying to help..."

"What kind of research?" His brow furrowed as he stared down at her, immediately taking his hand back. Confused, Doyle's clear memory of what happened with Sophie back at the CDC, before they arrived in Savannah, and her defiance there, her past, didn't match up with what she confessed to now.


Four Months Earlier — Atlanta, Georgia

The last survivors from District 1 arrived safely by helicopter thanks to Sergeant Doyle's friend, Sergeant Floyd Williams. Sophie, with the child Abby Grant in their company, all found rest in the secured underground, but not for long.

Atlanta is home to the territory of the capital district, District 4 and it's a district Elisa had every intention to avoid, with their former district sending off women faster to the capital than they could clear them from the virus.

She wanted no part in it, even though the district she wanted to research in Texas was under the direct supervision of District 4, as were all thriving districts under zombie America's capital.

The doctors that resided at the CDC—under the orders from District 4—briefed Elisa on all their developments in taking back the country from the dead. Elisa, forgetting her worries on the capital and their ruthless military, can't shake the hope that they were on the brink of finding solid ground against the virus and agreed to join their team for the time being.

Keeping Sophie's secret proved difficult.

With such brilliant minds around her that could utilize Sophie's natural immunity, Elisa battled with her morals and her life's purpose that clashed. With the bond they shared in surviving the fall of District 1--thanks to Doyle--Elisa conjured up the fresh memories of her budding friendship with Sophie to keep her normally uncontrollable mouth shut.

In truth, she didn't know how long it would last.

Especially now, with what Dr. Finch—the head researcher here at the CDC—revealed.

As Williams remained sleeping and refused to answer the call to join in the conference room, Elisa's heart soared in the hopes she had more time to collect to her research. Then, her hope plummeted with the arrival of Doyle and Sophie, who she last wanted to see in the called meeting. Their presence meant there could only be trouble and nothing of her own goals, or of moving forward would come of this.

"This video shows footage of an MRI scan taken almost twenty years ago of an adolescent, who we believe, underwent the first trials of the side-effects of the carrion virus. Military weaponry, that got us all here in the first place..." Dr. Finch, old, bitter, and reading flatter than the screen playing the video feed.

Elisa gulps, her eyes trained on Sophie in a look of knowing shadows. Sophie glares Elisa's way.

The older doctor with white hair speaks sternly, his transfixed blues on Sophie as he announces, "Notice the virus spreads, taking almost complete hold of this patient and at the two-hour mark, like we know it would for anyone else when the virus first spread. With this patient, it begins to erase. Retracting back down, leaving no scar tissue behind until the patient is back to perfect health."

Doyle doesn't catch on as he stares at the screen, watching the video with a furrowed brow and his shoulders pointed forward. He's miles from noticing the tension in the room or how it has anything to do with the civilian woman standing next to him, that he'd saved from District 1.

The elder continues, "If you notice the date on the bottom of the screen, this video was recorded in a lab nearly a decade before the virus spread across the globe."

Doyle's eyes land on the date, which is partially cut off since the image is distorted slightly on the screen from it being zoomed in. Other details like the patient's name, are cut from the picture.

He approaches the screen in sheer awe.

"What are you saying, Doc?" Doyle asks, "That this thing was around for that long before it hit us? How didn't it get out then?"

Sophie's arms are crossed tightly across her middle as she finds a point to focus on the floor. Elisa also transfixed on the screen, no longer takes to fidgeting with her glasses, but makes her own approach toward it with Doyle's line of questioning.

Elisa proclaims, "This thing was man-made? Is that what you're saying?"

The woman spins to look at the doctor and Doyle follows in action. When the older doctor doesn't answer but looks Sophie's way, Elisa continues her observations aloud.

Elisa steps in to point over the screen when the feed replays. Her finger traced over the growing red that meets a pulsating white, causing the red to cease in the spread. "Do you see that? Do you see how it stopped and then started to die off when the brain releases this chemical?"

She pointed this out as the red did in fact, start to diminish.

Doyle asks, "Who is this person? How were they able to fight it off and so quickly? Vaccine? A cure?" 

"Because of that chemical..." the doctor trails off, not seeing "chemical" clearly as the right word, "this virus was created at that moment. What you're watching is the birth of our destruction, the beginning of our end."

The doctor huffs out through his nose, before he continues in a gruffer tone, "Billions of people died, Sophie. You should have returned to the foundation. I would have taken better care of you than your father, or how they did in District 5. For his actions, I have no excuses for what he did here, but you could've stopped this. You could have helped. You still could help."

Dr. Finch waits, cleaning off his glasses with a small rectangle cloth he kept in his lab coat.

Ready to say he's got the wrong girl, Doyle looks back and forth between the two. Then, he focuses on the name in the old footage as Dr. Finch zooms it out. There isn't one.

All that reads is: SOI 3851

"What does SOI mean?" Doyle asks as Elisa remains dumbstruck staring at the replayed loop on the screen.

"Supernatural Of Interest. I'm sure if you asked Sophie about it, she'd be inclined to tell you at her own time. For now, I'm not here to answer these questions, but to ask her to save what's left of the world," Dr. Finch says to Doyle as he puts a pen back into the pocket of his lab coat.

"Sophie," Doyle shakes his head, her hidden past coming together with her desperate attempt to escape back in District 1, "What the fuck is he talking about? Is this true?!"

"Her real name isn't Sophie, or it wasn't back then. She's a product of District 5 when it was under a different foundation that fell, focusing on those with supernatural abilities. She was created under the name Three-Eight-Five-One," Dr. Finch outed her as the hot tears stream down Sophie's face.

"Created?" Doyle asks under harsh breaths and a sharp pain begins to form in his temples.

For a moment, the brimming flicker of optimism lit in Doyle when they started to explain the video. He thought, he came here to watch the success of a vaccine, a cure. Anything, that would give them better odds in this unsafe world. His sculpted arms crossed over his chest, almost mimicking Sophie's own stance.

His anxiety renewed, he's struggling to realize that there was a lost unicorn of messiahs to save them all. It didn't exist, it couldn't, this sounded like nonsense. So, when Dr. Finch claims that the lost unicorn was none other than Sophie, his emotions rolled over one another in clashing motions. Betrayal, an outcry above them all, that she kept this from him, from the world, when she could've saved millions, while he'd been out there risking his life to save so many and not save even more.

He'd spent his nights awake at her side out there in the wild, wondering what she ran from that day in District 1, he never got the answers, just dismissive lies. He'd stuck his neck out, offered for her to go first, over that fence in their escape from the virus-dripping teeth that she's immune to.  He'd risked his life more than once to get her out of there alive, he'd risked it all to see her safe in the insanity out there.

***

Sophie stood in the back of the room, watching the old footage and their reactions. Elisa's wide, deer-in-the-headlight stare offered no comfort either. Dr. Finch's judgment and Doyle's ignorance to what really was going on here crashed down whatever false sense of safety she conjured up with these people.

Memories suppressed, drawback to the surface of her father, of the medical centers of horrors. She needed to get out, run. Something, anything, other than stare at the harsh faces in front of her.

The shift of her foot intended just that, to bolt, when Doyle approached her. His hand grips her arm as it had so many other times to shield her from danger, but now it alarmed her that he'd be bringing her toward another promised trauma.

The small gap tenses between the man who should have been her least concern in the room but somehow, became the harshest critic of all. She shoves against him, trying to create some space, but he refuses to let her go.

His words are muddled, his face, blurred, but she can guess all he's demanding to hear and all that he's wanting her to sacrifice to save the world.

She'd heard it a thousand times...that she was created for just one purpose. And then, it always lead to another. The cycle never stopped. She'd give herself in and they'd find another way to weaponize her, all under the veil of the greater good.

She suddenly cries out, "You have no idea what you're talking about any of you! I've spent my life being a science project...no more! You can't save what's already lost and I will not die or put myself back on anyone's table to be used again for anyone's benefit but my own! These people are no good and out of anyone, Doyle, I thought you would understand that! You've killed for them, while I've bled out and died for them, over and over again!"

Her hair halos out with how quickly she turns, brushing against Doyle's chest in her escape when he releases her. When she does, Doyle is at a loss for words. As is, everyone else.

Over his shoulder, the sergeant exchanges a worried glance with Elisa. She's fidgeting, her hands a mess within her own and Doyle knows he's the one that will have to follow her.

"Hey, hey, hey...!" He gets to her, forcing her to stay put just beyond the doorway with his firm grip and trembling tone. He too, wants answers. Even after all he'd just learned, Doyle still felt in the dark, betrayed. After all he'd sacrificed for them, he at least expected some damn honesty.

His voice remains shaky as he tries to speak softly to her, "What else are you keeping from us? Why didn't you say anything sooner?! I asked you before what happened back in District 1, why you ran, why they were keeping you! You lied to me! I risked my life for you and you can't even tell me some sort of truth?"

Realizing he's holding her arm again in the same part he gripped so harshly earlier, he releases her.

At first, all she could do was stare down at his hand that left her. A hand that could bruise, a hand she knew like her own, could heal in a far different way.

"You have no idea..." Her gaze shifted over his shoulder for a moment to flicker between the scientist and Elisa down the hall, then she raises her voice loud enough so maybe they can hear, "I didn't want to tell you because I wanted to be normal...for once. I could escape a lab and never have to go back into one. I spent my entire life in a lab, Doyle. I was made in a petri dish...I'm the reason why this is out. They used me to make this...thing...this virus....and I don't know why. I wish I did. I just know that nothing good comes from working with them. I can't save anyone, Doyle. Not like they want me to."

When she finally looked up at him her eyes once again swam with tears, "I've been a number with no name. I've been trying to cope. If I fall back into that past, I won't survive. I didn't tell you, because I didn't have to, Doyle. What I am? It doesn't change anything. There is no hope."


It hurt, to reveal the parts of her she kept buried, more than the pain in her arm he'd inflicted.

Doyle's brow furrows deeply and he's renewed with a void of all his previous anger. Her emotional display, personal, raw, related to him on multiple of levels. His own tortured past, he'd also rather not have broadcasted.

He wasn't going to play this game.

He wasn't going to force her to do something she didn't want to do.

They were all damned anyway, she was right. A vaccine at this point, useless. A vaccine wouldn't protect them from a ravenous horde, from starvation, from exposure out in the elements...

Hands at his waist, head hung low, he finds it hard to look at Sophie. Again, over his shoulder, Doyle gives Elisa an impassible look of any apology, when he's guessing well that the doctor had taken the side of Dr Finch. They thought on the future, but Doyle worried about the present. He worried about Sophie.

Doyle refused to be part of, what had been done to him for so many years. After being an active soldier for almost the amount of time that tape of Sophie's has been in existence, Doyle had done many things against his will simply because he had obligated to do so under the flag. A flag, that apparently held the responsibility for the destruction of their species too. His own turmoil, left emotional scarring. A complex even, to be the martyr. Doyle wouldn't wish it upon anyone, especially Sophie, and though her experiences left her to be anything but the martyr, Doyle wouldn't hold that against her for growing in a way he'd tried to so many times over the course of his tumultuous life.

He voices out, "She said she doesn't want to do it. Leave her alone. Do not ask her again. Ever."


Doyle stood his ground as he turned to face Dr Finch and continued, "I think it's safe to say we've worn out our welcome here. Elisa? Are you staying here, going to District 8 like you've been talking about, or coming with us to that colony a few hours out? The chopper won't make it to Texas with the gas left in it and I think we should get our bearings before we settle into District life again."

The other woman he allied with, the doctor he'd shared a home district with, turned. Rigidly, as if to gather herself and didn't offer a single word but an apology before she cowered out of the room.

Down the hall Doyle hears Elisa leave from his good hearing side, his throat tightening with the presumption of the path she chose. It didn't take words, it took actions, and her actions told Doyle that her place was here, or in the likes of districts. Not with him, not with Sophie or Abby on some farming colony that wouldn't have the resources she needed for her work.

As the soldier stood in the path of Elisa's absence, all Sophie stared into the turned back of the soldier. He's supporting her, protecting her, as always. It took a lot to cause such an arch in her eyebrow, or such a dilation to her eyes that lit something anew deep within her abdomen that didn't quite have a name.

A new ease surfaced, pulling her closer to Doyle until she stood just behind him. As if he was her shield, defending her, sheltering her where even her father had failed, where everyone had failed.

Sophie prayed that this would be it. That they'd drop it and allow her to move on. There were others like her, before her, after her, she'd lived amongst them before the zombies got to them.


"The districts will be expecting her. Her name, her medical records, are all linked into the computers of the districts. District 4 has been informed of her arrival here, since the cameras scanned and matched her face when you all came here. You won't have long before they transport her there and then hopefully, to 8, if she's lucky. If you plan to escape, do so now. We're finished here," Dr. Finch says as he goes through her file, a file he slams closed on the future as the video still continues to loop on the images of the rare brain scan.

Present Day - Richmond Hill

Doyle opens his mouth to yell at her, to demand, just what the fuck was wrong with her, or if she'd lost her damn mind. She'd made such a huge scene at the Center for Disease Control with Dr. Finch, with Elisa, and gave a compelling argument as to why she didn't want to take part in it. Instead of words of scolding to fill the silence, a siren blares throughout Richmond Hill.

It immediately brought everyone to tense, to prepare for the infected to spill out into the room at any given moment. At orientation, they were told it could mean one of three things: the contagion broke out, marauders were trying to get in, or mother nature had reared her uglier side. All in

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