Mercury looked down the long, empty hallway, chest heaving, then let out a short, breathless, slightly wild laugh.
"These weren't normal," she said, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. "Those things moved completely differently."
She was right. I didn't have an explanation for it yet but I was filing it. These infected were a different category. Something the books and the briefings and twenty years on the plain hadn't prepared me for.
"Room two hundred," I said. "That's what he said, yes?"
"Zero two zero," Mercury corrected, still catching her breath.
I looked at her.
"He said zero two zero," she repeated, with the confidence of someone who was certain.
I let it go. We moved down the long corridor, checking door numbers. Sunlight slashed across the floor in bright, dusty stripes. No zero two zero anywhere. The closest was zero zero two at the far end.
"I told you it was two hundred," I said.
"Jenn," Mercury called back. "What did he say?"
