This is what you’ll find in here:

• A timeline of the events. I’ve done my best to be precise and truthful. I’m starting three weeks too late, so I’ll do best to reconstruct those weeks carefully.

• Our personal files. All of us. Our criminal files. Our psychological reports. You should know who we are.

• All the logistical information I’ve managed to recover from Warden Davis’s computer. The guard assignments, from the weeks leading up to the outbreak to the first days after the initial outbreak, when our guards were still here. I don’t know if any of them infected us, but I want to be as complete as possible. The last head count he did the day before the staff left. An email he sent to Jemma, Hope’s resident therapist, to tell her not to worry about the teens, that we’d be taken care of. Emails from Better Futures’s management.

• Everything the others will give me. Notes, drawings, memorials. Recordings of phone calls. We’ve all found different ways to cope.

Phone call between Riley and her best friend

RILEY: Hey. You still alive?

SAPPHIRE: Yeah. You?

RILEY: Yeah.

SAPPHIRE: Good. It sucks out here.

RILEY: It’s not much better inside either.

SAPPHIRE: Wouldn’t think so.

RILEY: God, I’m terrified.

SAPPHIRE: You? Scared? Hell must have frozen over.

RILEY: Oh, fuck you.

RILEY: Yes, I’m scared. I haven’t been this scared since… Well. That day.

SAPPHIRE: That day you decided it was enough and you had nothing left to live for, and I ended up sitting by your unconscious side at the hospital in full drag? That day?

RILEY: Yeah, that’s the one. I’m sure you looked royal.

SAPPHIRE: Honey, I always do.

SAPPHIRE: You better not be calling me because you’re sick now.

RILEY: I’m not. I promise.

RILEY: I just really wanted to hear your voice.

RILEY: Do you know what the absurd thing about this whole shit show is? I’m terrified because I don’t want to die. I’m still fucking afraid of living too, but I don’t want this plague to kill me.

SAPPHIRE: What scares you so much about living?

RILEY: For everything to hurt and nothing to get better.

RILEY: And don’t you dare tell me it gets better.

SAPPHIRE: I wouldn’t, because neither one of us can know that. But I do know that one day, this plague will be over. This pain will not last.

SAPPHIRE: Now, life may not get easier. The world will not suddenly be fair. All those things require work and struggle, and I know you’re tired.

SAPPHIRE: But one day, there’ll be other things than pain.

RILEY: Like?

SAPPHIRE: Like joy and love and people who care for you. Like peanut butter cups and drive-in movies and candlelight at midnight and the sound of wind rustling through the trees. Like friendship. You have me. I’ll always be here to listen to you when you’re hurting and to ride out the storm with you.

RILEY: Candlelight at midnight? I never pegged you for a romantic.