Interlude 2: A Body's Log (Part II)
[AUDIO – The crackle of an old recording is heard, followed by a faint background hum, like that of laboratory equipment. The voice is that of a young man, with an initially professional tone that deteriorates as the recording progresses.]
Technician [ID: 734-B, Pathology Section]: —Incident report, date… uh… [pause, a shaky sigh] … November 18, 2026.
Time: 02:47 AM.
Subject: Miller, J. Assigned to lab 4A.
Cause of death: septic shock, according to the initial report. Transfer was initiated for… for the standard autopsy.
… [Autopsy and neural exams log] …
The electroencephalograph monitor showed a flatline, confirming brain death.
But then… [a slight tremor is heard in the voice, a metallic sound, as if something fell]. We increased the impulse intensity, as we were instructed. And the subject's index finger… flexed. Not spasm. A slow, almost deliberate movement. We attributed it to an artifact, an equipment anomaly. We repeated the test. This time, the entire arm lifted. And the head… the head slowly turned.
[The technician's choked gasp is heard, followed by a tense silence.]
Technician: I was… paralyzed. I couldn't move. I couldn't scream. I just… I just stared at it. Its eyes. They opened. Empty. But… but they were looking at me. I swear it. The jaw moved, a dry click. And then… that sound. A moan. Not human. Like… like it was trying to breathe without air.
The body on the table began to writhe. The restraints… they weren't holding it. It sat up. Slowly. A crunching of bones. And that growl. Animal. There was no brain activity on the monitor. But it was… it was reanimated.
I tried… I tried to activate the alarm. My hand… it wouldn't respond. It's like… like my brain had disconnected. Paralysis. Pure fear.
And then, the intercom activated. Dr. Rivas's voice. Cold. Clear. "Technician 734-B. Confirm the incident. Stay calm. Do not report this to any other channel. I repeat, do not report this."
And then… Dr. Mercer's voice. "It's an artifact, technician. A system anomaly. Proceed with the containment and disposal of the subject according to Level 4 biological waste protocol. And forget what you saw."
[A choked sob is heard, a sound of something being dragged, followed by a dull thud and a distant growl.]
Technician: It's not an artifact. It's not… [his voice breaks, becoming a desperate whisper] … I can't… I can't… We're all…
[LOUD STATIC SOUND, FOLLOWED BY AN ABRUPT AUDIO CUT. END OF LOG.]
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The advanced virology lab at LyraGen had become the sanctuary of Dr. Kane's obsession.
The hours had blurred into a continuous and uninterrupted cycle of experimentation and analysis. There were piles of scrawled schematics and diagrams on whiteboards and in notebooks, neural maps and genetic sequences that intertwined in a desperate attempt to find the key.
The dark circles under Kane's eyes were intensely deep, a visible testament to the few hours of sleep he allowed himself. The idea that the TS-996 'waited' for death to activate had become rooted in his mind, a deeply terrifying hypothesis that he urgently needed to prove.
"Next subject, Lina," Kane said, his voice husky from the immense exhaustion, but his gaze remained fixed on the containment cage.
Lina, equally exhausted but with unbreakable loyalty to him, nodded her head, her look of concern for Kane evident in the gloom of the lab. She carefully prepared the next lab mouse, a genetically modified specimen to simulate human physiology with greater precision. She placed it on the restraint platform, connecting the microelectrodes with great delicacy to the animal's tiny skull.
"Encephalography and cerebral perfusion parameters ready, doctor," Lina reported. "Inducing clinical death in three, two, one…"
The automated syringe quickly injected a lethal dose of potassium chloride. The mouse's heart stopped in just a few seconds. The heart monitor emitted a long beep, and the line on the electroencephalograph completely flattened. Clinical death.
But Kane did not take his eyes off the electroencephalograph screen. His eyes narrowed; he was convinced that fatigue was playing tricks on him, but the pattern persisted there, tiny, yet undeniable.
"There it is," Kane murmured, pointing to a small but also persistent activity in a specific region of the brain.
It was a very low-frequency signal, almost completely imperceptible, that remained active even after all other brain functions had completely ceased.
"An anomalous delta wave pattern, Lina. It persists."
Lina leaned forward, her breath slightly fogging the observation booth's glass. "It's… like an echo. A residual signal. But there's no metabolic activity, no blood flow either. How is something like this possible?"
"That is the question we're asking ourselves," Kane replied, his voice tinged with a dark and palpable excitement. "We've induced clinical death in five subjects up to this point. In every single case, we've seen the same persistence. Certain regions of the brain 'persist' with this anomalous activity."
They repeated the experiment with many more subjects, varying the specific causes of clinical death: asphyxiation, barbiturate overdose, and induced hypothermia. The results were consistently the same in all cases.
Once the heart stopped beating and the brain shut down, a small section of the brainstem and parts of the cerebellum, which are responsible for the most primitive functions, showed this ghostly electrical activity.
Kane drew frantically on his whiteboard, connecting nodes and vehemently tracing arrows.
"It's as if the virus, or something the virus has deeply altered, used death as if it were a switch. Once the brain's main operating system shuts down, these regions, the most basic for survival, activate somehow. Not for consciousness, not for life as we know it, but for… something else."
"A kind of 'emergency mode'?" Lina suggested, her eyes fixed on the graphs. "But for what? What purpose would it serve to keep those regions active if the organism is completely dead?"
"For reanimation," Kane said, his voice barely a whisper, but it was charged with a certainty that was chilling. "For post-mortem reanimation. The TS-996 does not kill, Lina. What it does is prepare. It prepares the body for a second existence. An existence that does not require oxygen, nor does it require nutrients, only a primary impulse. Consciousness is gone, but the body, in its most basic and elemental form, is waiting for a new purpose, a new pilot."
The idea was as macabre as it was fascinating. Kane's obsession had transformed into a relentless search for the mechanisms of this 'second life.' He spent hours analyzing post-mortem functional magnetic resonance imaging, searching for the direct correlation between the presence of the TS-996 in those brain regions and the persistent activity.
"If the virus is in all of us, and death is the only catalyst…," Lina left the sentence hanging, as the implication was too terrifying to dare to pronounce. She looked up at Kane, her eyes wide with a silent horror, as she fully assimilated the total magnitude of the truth they had just discovered.
"Then, death is not the end," Kane completed, his eyes fixed on the diagram of a brain on the whiteboard. "It's just the beginning of the next phase. And at LyraGen they know it perfectly well. They have known it absolutely all along."
The dense darkness of the laboratory, the silence broken only by the constant hum of the equipment, and the omnipresent sight of Kane's scribbled diagrams created an atmosphere of intense concentration, but also of a somber and profoundly overwhelming truth.
The intellectual fascination of Dr. Kane had merged with a growing horror, but also with an unwavering determination to unravel the secret of LyraGen and the true purpose of the TS-996. Great cold-bloodedness was absolutely necessary to move forward with his investigation.
The anomalous activity in the primitive brain regions of the clinically dead subjects had become Kane's sole focus. His laboratory whiteboards were full of brainwave graphs, neural circuit diagrams, and also frantic annotations.
He had installed additional monitors, dedicated exclusively to showing the readings from the brainstem and the cerebellum, as if he expected that the pattern, if observed long enough, would finally reveal its darkest secret.
The bitter coffee was his only fuel, and sleep, a completely forgotten luxury.
"Lina, magnify the delta wave signal on subject number seven," Kane ordered, his voice a hoarse whisper. He was leaning over the screen, his eyes bloodshot, but with a feverish intensity. "I want to see the morphology of the wave. And also, the frequency spectrum."
Lina, with the same silent dedication, adjusted the parameters. The wave was noticeably magnified, revealing an intricate and repetitive structure.
"It's consistent, doctor. In all subjects, the same signature. A very low-frequency oscillation, but with peaks of activity that directly correlate with the impulses you applied."
"It's not just an echo, Lina," Kane corrected, tracing the pattern with his finger on the screen. "It's a signature. A codifiable brain pattern. Look at the consistency in amplitude and phase. It's too regular to be a simple random residual activity. It can be tracked as a post-mortem 'signature', a silent glyph of undeath."
Lina remained in complete silence; her eyes fixed on the screen.
"A signature… for what, doctor?"
"For coordination," Kane replied, his voice loaded with a new and terrifying theory. "The virus isn't just passive, Lina. It's not just a guest waiting. It's doing something. It's orchestrating."
He moved toward one of his whiteboards, grabbing a marker and drawing with a truly frantic speed.
"Think about this. The TS-996 adheres to multiple tissues, including neuronal tissue. We've seen it. And we've seen that, upon the cessation of higher brain activity, these primitive regions remain active. Not by chance. The virus, or the proteins it encodes, must be interacting with cellular mechanisms to maintain the total integrity of these neural pathways."
"Are you saying that the virus is… preserving those functions?" Lina asked, with incredulity tinging her voice.
"More than just preserving, Lina. It coordinates the preservation of certain functions," Kane emphasized the word strongly. "It's like a backup program. When the brain's main operating system shuts down, the TS-996 activates a secondary protocol. It maintains the basic functionality of the brainstem: primitive reflexes, rudimentary motor capacity. It's the basis for movement, for the response to external stimuli. It is the engine of what we saw in the woman's body."
The implication was completely chilling. The TS-996 was not a simple pathogen. It was an architect of death, or rather, of 'undeath.'
"But why? For what purpose?" Lina brought a hand to her mouth, her hand trembling slightly, as her eyes were fixed on Kane's schematics, trying to assimilate it all.
Kane looked at her, his voice low and somber, charged with a certainty that was more terrifying than any possible doubt.
"Why would a virus do this? What purpose does a dead body that can move have?"
He paused for an instant, and the final answer filled the laboratory's silence, heavier than the air.
"For propagation. A dead host that can move is a much more efficient vector than one that simply decomposes. The virus waits for death to activate, transforming the body into a vehicle. A vehicle that doesn't feel pain, doesn't need food, and only obeys a primary impulse."
Kane stopped, his gaze lost in the whiteboard, in the intricate diagrams that now looked like a map of human damnation. The obsession was no longer just about the virus, but about the deeper, more disturbing truth that was being revealed.
The TS-996 was not a mere accident of nature; it was a masterpiece of biological engineering. And that certainty, though terrifying, spurred him to keep going, to unravel every layer of its macabre design.
The silence of the laboratory, the constant hum of the equipment, and the image of that persistent brain signature were etched in his mind. Cold-bloodedness was his only companion in this search for the truth, and as he looked at the signature of 'undeath' on the screen, he understood that the virus was not just inside them but had rewritten the very definition of existence.
Death, he thought, was no longer stillness, but the awakening of a new and very terrifying purpose.
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[A/N: CHAPTER COMPLETED
Hello everyone.
I hope you enjoyed the chapter and that the separation from that interlude wasn't confusing.
Also, I'd like to apologize for the slight delay in this chapter, but I've been having problems with my computer.
Kane has already discovered everything we all know about the TWD virus, but there are also some scientific details that don't appear in the original universe, and I tried to make sense of them in this one. It also serves as a basis for presenting the variants and an evolution that I find logical.
An interesting fact is the name Miller.
You might have noticed that in one of Kane's dreams, he learned the name Miller, when he was never the one who analyzed his cases. Instead, he was the doctor in Interlude 2.
Why did this happen? Did the author forget it?
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Read my other novels
#The Walking Dead: Vision of the Future. (Chapter 72)
#Vinland Kingdom: Race Against Time (Chapter 72)
#The Walking Dead: Emily's Metamorphosis (Chapter 19)
You can find them on my profile.]