#:chris

Chris had spotted the stranger on one of his cameras covering Area 3, hunkering in a corner and looking petrified. The techno-wizard might have blamed a first-hand experience with Biterz, but -- there was nobody there. No strains nearby, or even Vandals attempting to hunt down an escaped victim. It was as if the guy was seeing something Chris couldn’t, which was very rare. If he wanted, Chris could zoom onto the hairs on somebody’s arm. Eventually, he had enough of watching the stranger mumbling to himself, flinching, and shaking; it was painful to watch. He was alone, possibly vulnerable, and Chris couldn’t just sit around in the comfort of the bunker.

“I...not a lot, but I know the effects of drugs when I see it,” Chris returned, his voice calm, despite the other biting out his words. “I had a friend who was a paramedic, and he taught me some basic signs.” Nathan had watched drug-addicts scratch out their own eyes, but he couldn’t handle the thought of a desolate humanity. A no-hope future. Matthew was the one who found him, suffocated and hung. “Here, don’t do that. You’re hurting yourself.” Chris reached out to stop the man from digging his fingers into his own arms, but he was abruptly stopped by the objection.

“No -- no, I’m not leaving.” Chris strongly explained, remaining crouched in front of the male. It was already dangerous enough out here without the hindrance of drugs. He couldn’t imagine walking away, or anyone else for that matter. What if this had been his son, Lucas? He would have hoped that somebody had the heart to stop and give him medical attention. A hypocritical thought, really. He’d been too distracted with his work to notice his son choking not ten feet away from him. “Try your best to answer, okay? Take your time. Do you know what you’ve taken? Did anybody give you some drugs?” The Vandals were known to drug people, luring them into false promise of euphoria, but ending up using them for their dirty games. Was this one of their failed attempts?

Darren had taken up an hour of his time, forcing the techno-wizard to watch an endless slideshow of progression in the infected; it was like watching an old Hammer Horror film about zombies as the faces of Berzerkerz flashed up on the computer screen. It’ll only take ten minutes, Darren promised, and then you can go back to playing with your cameras. But time flies when you’re having ‘fun’, and Chris realised with dejection, as he glanced at the time on the bottom of the computer, that he’d fallen into a trap; Darren had talked so much that he had managed to keep Chris for longer. That sneaky bastard. With a polite excuse of getting ready for bed, which he received an unconvinced look from Darren, the male managed to slip away with a sigh of relief; he was done with seeing the faces of, what were, people. To Darren, they were research, but to Chris, they were normal people who had been in the wrong place, at the wrong time. It could have been any of them, so Darren should be counting his lucky stars.

Who he hadn’t expected to find, curled up in his desk chair, was Lillian. In essence, he should have. She had begun what he had started by constantly checking the cameras for signs of somebody she knew; for her, it was the group she became separated from. For him, it was his wife and child. Chris wasn’t a fool; he had set up a monitoring service on his computer that told him when it was last turned on, what programme had been opened, and what the user had accessed. He had first clocked onto Lillian’s activity when he logged onto his computer and saw that his cameras had been accessed whilst he was sleeping. Despite being nicknamed ‘techno-wizard’, he certainly couldn’t control his computer through his dreams -- though that would be pretty cool. At first, he played it off as a glitch, but the more it happened, the more Chris became suspicious. None of the guys had a reason to check the cameras so frequently, which left a certain young missus.

And here was the culprit, fast asleep and looking awfully comfy in his big chair. Up on the screen was his cameras, confirming his suspicions -- and worry. He didn’t want her falling into the addiction of clinging onto false hope like he did. Maybe he should tell himself that regularly, but he was too far gone to stop now. Poking her cheek did the job, and he gave her a pitiful smile as she stuttered through an excuse, letting her say her words before dragging up a spare chair besides her. “Sweetheart, I know what you’ve been doin’, and it’s okay.” Reaching over, Chris took control of the computer and clicked onto a separate tab, bringing up what looked like a spreadsheet, “But you only needed to ask for help. You shouldn’t be staying up this late. Here, we’ll make a deal, okay? I’ll show you a neat trick, and you promise that you’ll be in bed before 10pm, every night.”