Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

At that point, the term "zombification" wasn\'t even in their heads yet because the words brain and skeletal auto-regeneration were being thrown around—in their words, the brain\'s ability to stay alive and "jump" the rest of its body like a car would so it would be able to function as normal again.

It\'s just that Jolene\'s bones moving on their own seemed to be not as focused as its own thing because let\'s be real here, 99.9% of the people that would witness this would focus on the brain and assume that everything was just the brain\'s doing.

And yeah, it\'s also true… in a sense.

\'What if her bone regenerating that way is just another separate thing caused by the treatment she received? Not just the root or actual cause in tandem with the actual thing that made these monsters?\'

But right now, we were being shown several X-rays that showed a timeline of how fast Jolene\'s skeletal system tried to repair itself but as it moved through its organs to reset itself to its right place, it solved its current issue but still caused problems everywhere else.

But yeah, getting these scans was a feat in itself because not even including when another personnel died from getting Jolene\'s blood in an open wound, Jolene\'s spine and calves literally snapped when they moved her to a stretcher. Her bones were still as brittle but they "recover" just as fast, relatively speaking, compared to bones\' usual healing rate.

She was like a character with a negative constitution modifier but her recovery was way~ off the fucking charts, but with several dependencies and conditions to be fulfilled so that she could survive the day.

It\'s just that these doctors opened her up after her bones "healed" in record time and tried to stitch her organs back up as they thought it would\'ve been a great help IF the rest of her organs started to heal themselves as well.

And to their dismay, it didn\'t.

This fucking hospital tried everything to delay announcing her death—despite already covering up the nurse and the EMTs death—because she technically wasn\'t but she technically wasn\'t alive either. However, everything just abruptly jumped to when the "senator" was looking like a few car crashes from what she looked like earlier.

"What— That\'s it?"

The Admiral replied solemnly, "From that instance, yes. Just watch the rest."

"Okay…"

With that said, the videos we were seeing right now was from a different lab and we could clearly see the Admiral and a few other officers from the other side of the window.

This time, Jolene was held tight by multiple ratchet straps and her bones were much, much stronger compared to the time it\'d break with the simplest touch. However, something was definitely off from the videos I was seeing—though the Admiral and everyone else seemed serious in showing me this—but I had to hit pause and look everybody in the eye.

"You\'re not punking me, right?"

"No."

Oscar asked, "What\'s wrong, kid?"

"Nothing. Just making sure."

If it was any other day, I would\'ve assumed it was an altered video made by a very early-on AI program but remembering the extra amount of muscles Jolene shouldn\'t be having, I just kept to myself and continued watching the video.

At that point, the Admiral from the video never looked so pained when seeing his ex-wife get experimented on, but I was more focused on the number of bones they were taking out of her body and the location they were taking it out from.

But yeah, I just watched them pull out a skull, a hipbone, a femur—basically a random assortment of bones from anything, everywhere, and all at once from the senator\'s whole body—not just its stomach—and it looked to me like a telltale sign of a Stitcher.

However, it looked to me like Jolene "absorbed" them into an on her body wherein a Stitcher would use its tongue to physically attach a new appendage to itself.

It was like one of those times when we saw a few deadheads congealed on each other but they were just functioning like regular deadheads, not like ammo or extra padding for the ragdoll—and in another case, "Jolene" ragdoll-ing still wasn\'t discussed yet.

The Admiral then turned to me, "Thoughts about this?"

I thought for a bit before I answered, "Do you know how anglerfish mate?"

He nodded approvingly, "My thoughts exactly."

Major Harper cut in, "What?"

"When a male anglerfish finds a mate, it basically attaches itself to the female, sharing DNA, blood, skin—fucking everything. Before long, the two literally become one and the same and it\'s just… Some type of way it could sustain itself given its way of using its bones as throwables."

"Are we still talking about the fish or—"

I answered the same time with the Admiral, "Both."

"Ah…"

"But in the case of the senator, whether she absorbs one into her body or a deadhead starts a parasitic relationship with her, it wasn\'t for a reproductive purpose. It\'s just their way to survive—that reminds me," I said as I turned to the Admiral, "You said to not feed her outside meat. What does that mean?"

The Admiral turned to the Major, "You told him about the key factor in mutations occurring, right?"

"I did."

He turned back to me, "Now, think—"

I finally had the realization as I cut him off, "Ah, fuck. I get it now. But hold on, why would you feed her anyway? She\'s dead, right?"

"..."

"Right?"

"Hmm…"

"It\'s… It\'s a yes or no question, Mr. Burke."

"Haa… Yes and no."