A particularly nasty monkey is screeching that tonight schedules had changed, MCU patterns been reorganized, all is doomed, when Rose hears a soft tread on the hall carpet. She puts her back to the sound, and prepares to appear as if she’s being surprised in midstep.

“Oh, hi!” she says, turning around half a second prematurely to face the candy striper. The girl doesn’t act as if she notices anything off. “I was just coming to get you,” Rose says somewhat breathlessly. “Here. Let me get that for you.” She lifts the snack tray out of unresisting fingers. “There’s been a bit of a disaster in the dining room.” Rose grimaces. She is shooting for an oh-yuck-somebody-tossed-their-cookies, not an oh-God-dead-bodies look. “Find Linda, she’ll tell you what to do.” Surely there is at least one Linda on the premises.

“Linda?” the girl says, either confused or stupid.

“Brownish hair, cut so,” Rose suggests, shrugging a shoulder in the general direction of her ear. “You’ll find her.” Rose turns and steps into the corner where she can see both back toward the reception area and the door into the lockdown unit. She mimes being in a predicament with both hands holding the tray, tissue box tucked awkwardly beneath her arm. “Buzz me in?”

The girl slaps her card onto the reader. The door slides open.

“Thanks, Lily,” Rose says, reading the girl’s name tag. “Go on now.” Another smile, warm but dismissive.

Obediently, Lily leaves. Step one of the plan is complete. Rose’s window of opportunity is open.

Hoping these early successes bode well for the mission, Rose walks into the SECURE COMMUNITY. Hearing the door slide shut behind her, she is hit with a wave of panic. Again she is trapped among the living dead with no way out. Until that moment, she hadn’t understood how terrifying it would be. Her mind dulls, the lights waver, fog begins to form. For an awful moment she is afraid she will be sick. Or insane again. The tray of snacks trembles, a small quake rattling the juice boxes against each other.

Rose sets the tray down on a table at the end of the couch, taking time, letting the terror ebb. In her peripheral vision, she can see one nurse behind the desk, the other outside the high counter, leaning on it companionably. Presumably the night nurse come to relieve the day nurse. That, or maybe, since Rose poisoned Karen, they have taken to working in pairs.