Day 0:

The USS Salvation, anchored in the Gulf of Oman is a hospital ship used to assist in the evacuation of injured soldiers and civilians during the War on Terror. Captain Marian Jackson is sitting in one of five lifeboats half a mile away from the hospital ship. They hear the F-15 jet before they see it, the roar of the engine as it approaches, then the sound of the explosion as the ship suddenly burst into flames. Bits and pieces of metal fly in every direction as the ship slowly begins to sink beneath the waves.

"Ma'am request to search for survivors?" one of the sailors inquires from the lifeboat next to her.

Marian remains silent. They had abandoned ship, locking innocent sailors below deck as the creatures that had once been human attacked. Locking the hatches to every room below deck had been the hardest order to give. When her Lieutenant had asked if she was certain that was the order, she couldn't reply instead she just nods. The way General Robert E. Lee had when he gave the order for Pickett's Charge, eyes wide and jaw tight.

"Denied. We don't know if any of those things survived" she shakes her head. She notices the look of resentment that the man sends her as he turns his attention back to the ship. Drew Pennington…she remembers that his twin brother was left aboard the ship when the United States Air Force dropped the napalm bomb on the hospital ship.

"Whatever happens, this disease cannot spread" Commander Hall at the United States base in Pakistan had commanded when Marian called for assistance.

"Sir, I have 400 sailors aboard this ship plus fifty civilians" she ignores the implied command.

"Get as many of your sailors out as you can. Lock the hatches below deck and abandon ship.".

"Sir" Marian had attempted to cut in.

"That is an order, Capitan."

"Aye aye, sir."

An hour later, the F-15 jet drops the napalm bomb on the ship. She followed the orders, her body tense. Sacrifices have to be made Hall had said.

Over 300 sailors and civilians both sick and recovered had been locked in the ship when it was bombed. If there were any survivors, the order had been to leave them behind. She closes her eyes willing the scene before her to disappear. But when she opens her steel gray eyes, she finds herself and the rest of the crew staring in shock at the scene before her, the smoke rises and the ship sinks creating a tragically beautiful contrast of fire and water.

"What now, Capitan?" one of the medical corporals asks. If Marian tried hard enough she would have remember the young woman's name. When she became Capitan of this ship, she did her best to remember the name of every sailor aboard. She begins to wonder if that had been her failure; making her shipmates into individual humans, learning about them, remembering them. Maybe if she didn't bother to learn their names or anything about them it would've been easier to make the order to lock the hatches.

"We are waiting for a pick up from another ship" she answers.

"What then?" a sailor from another boat asks.

"We meet with the Department of Defense and go from there."

She stands up in the lifeboat and looks at the sailors and remaining medic corporals staring wide eyed at the still burning wreckage floating on the surface. No civilians had been evacuated from the ship.

"Attention!" she yells.

The one hundred survivors turn and towards her; some have tear stains on their faces, others looked to be in shock, and a few are being bandaged up by a medical corporal. "The decision to sink the Salvation was made because whatever that disease is cannot be spread," she points at the sinking ship. There were looks of disbelief, betrayal, sympathy and even a few grim looks of understanding. "We will be picked up at 14:00 by the Coast Guard."