Dairy Entry: The noose is made

Edward stood in front of the massive security-glass window overlooking the lab's inner monitoring wing, watching technicians and bioanalysts float like specters in white coats behind layers of reinforced walls. They moved clinically, economically—but not serenely. There was a subtle edge of urgency to their movements now. As though they knew something had escaped from them.

Kyle was beside him, arms crossed, eyes trained on the screen in front of them. Video footage of the patient wing played back in an endless loop. Eli, belted in now, mumbling in his sleep. Another patient in another room staring at the wall with tears streaming down his face. In every room, the patients were awake now. And whispering.

"He grabbed your arm?" Kyle asked, frowning as he ran a hand through his hair.

"Yeah," Edward lied smoothly. "Just for a second. He was disoriented. Nothing more."

Kyle didn't look convinced. "He knew your name. How?"

Edward shrugged. "I've been around more of the infected than anyone. Some of them probably remember pieces. Could be pattern recognition, coincidence. Psychological."

Kyle looked at him. "Or it's not coincidence."

Edward didn't respond.

Kyle moved to another screen. "We're getting calls from field units. The same as before—only it's different now. Faster. Cleaner. Two separate rural hospitals have reported patients declared dead showing spontaneous neural activity twenty-four to forty-eight hours after cessation of vitals. One of them—" He tapped the screen and pulled up grainy footage of a body sitting up in a morgue drawer. "—stood up. Unassisted. No neurological damage. Just… conscious again."

Edward's pulse quickened.

"How long before the media finds out?" he asked.

Kyle's jaw tightened. "Too late. Local footage's already leaked. We've managed to suppress most of it, but it's only a matter of time before someone with reach gets ahold of it."

Edward rubbed his eyes, forcing tranquility into his limbs. The ache behind his sternum had increased—a background pulse, no longer pain so much as something agitated. He could feel the Shadow Man under his skin like a storm cloud seething behind glass.

They're waking faster now, the Shadow Man whispered. The signal is spreading. We can't stop it. Only outrun it.

Kyle turned away from the screens and spoke directly to Edward. "I need to know if anything physical happened to you during the time you had contact. Is there anything at all."

Edward shook his head, hiding the truth without difficulty. "Nothing. No visions. No contact other than him taking my wrist. I've been monitored more than anyone in this facility. You'd see something if I was infected, right?"

Kyle seemed unsure. "That's the problem—we still don't know what infection actually looks like. It's not bacterial. It's not viral. No white blood cell counts, no immune response. Just… behavior. Subtle changes. Sometimes dreams. Sometimes nothing."

"You think it's a psychological contagion?"

I think it's something we can't describe," Kyle complained. "And if it's spreading with no pathogen we can detect, then we're past containment. This is where people start searching for scapegoats. Rumors. Panic."

Edward half-smiled. "Then we'd best get ahead of it."

Kyle sighed. "You need to get some time off base. Not leave town, but just… breathe. You've been in this place too long.

"I'll return to the apartment" Edward said.

Kyle extended a hand, clamping it onto his shoulder. "Thanks for seeing Sam. She's been… different since you got here."

Edward nodded and began to move off.

But in the hallway, beneath the humming lights and with no one to witness, he stopped.

He backed into the wall and took a long, shallow breath. The world spun around him—not from dizziness, but from pressure. As if his very presence was distorting the space he traveled through.

You played that well, the Shadow Man said with something like amusement. Even I almost believed you.

Edward didn't answer.

He looked down at his wrist where Eli had grasped him. The mark was gone, the skin flawless. But beneath it, in the deepest part of himself, he could feel the vibration of that touch. As though something had been transferred. A note struck on the inside of a tuning fork. Resonance.

Edward pulled his jacket sleeve down, straightened his face in the nearest reflective panel, and departed.

Meanwhile, in CDC Containment Zone 6

A tech named Breya was monitoring the data feed from the Vermont lab when her screen began flashing red.

She frowned. "Another neural spike? That's the fifth in the last hour."

She typed the command to quarantine the feed—then hesitated.

The heart monitor on patient CVX-042 had flatlined three hours before.

But the brain scan was active.

Not just idle. Not a twitch. Thought.

And then—on her monitor—the EEG lines began pulsing in perfect sync. Not chaotic, but cadenced. Like music. Like speech.

Breya caught a shaking breath.

Then the camera in the containment room blinked.

Not flickered. Blinked.

And the patient's eyes—wide open—were staring straight into the lens.

Out in the city, Edward stepped into the night, oblivious to the fact that something behind him had begun transmitting. Not just thought. Not just pattern. But invitation.

The awakening had started.