The video

Reese awoke to the blaring beeping of his phones alarm clock going off. He quickly turned it off, and as he did he noticed 6 missed text messages from the night before from Lloyd.

Lloyd was a friend of Reese's from high school, and they only tended to talk once every couple months. They had just talked a month before, so Reese was confused as to why Lloyd was texting him again so soon.

Opening the messages, he immediately noticed that a link to a video on MyTube had been sent to him, with the caption ' Watch this right now. ' Tapping the play button, the screen showed silent soldiers in dark combat gear and tactical masks slowly walking down a dimly lit corridor, the fluorescent lights above them shot out, and the little bit of light there was came from behind them somewhere. The leading soldier stopped at a closed door on the end of the hallway, raising his fist then made a variety of hand signals that Reese couldn't understand the meaning of. Two soldiers pushed past the camera, taking positions by both sides of the doors. With a loud bang, the soldier on the left of the door kicked it in and the rest of the soldiers quickly filed into the well lit room beyond. The camera showed what looked to be a research lab, the walls filled with cabinets and lined with counters where microscopes and other lab equipment rested upon. Their were easels with complicated scientific formulas drawn on them, and a circle of chairs in front of the easels, a few of them overturned like the lab workers were attending a meeting of some sort and left abruptly. Towards the back of the room, directly opposite the entrance were two dark windows with doors next to them.

The soldiers quickly cleared the room then headed for the dark windows in the back of the room. The leader flipped a switch by one of the doors, and one of the windows lit up, revealing an empty padded room with bloodstains on the walls, floor, and even the ceiling. He moved over to the other window and flipped another switch, the resulting light showing a black figure clothed in a hospital gown hunched over on the floor facing the corner. The leader pulled down his mask and said some words to the other soldiers, prompting the camera to turn around and start heading towards the door they entered through. The camera had just got to the door when it swiftly turned around, showing the leader of the soldiers on the ground with a bloody mouthed and white eyed black woman in a hospital gown with dried blood on her forearms on top of him, viciously trying to bite through the vest he was wearing.

The surrounding soldiers rushed to subdue the woman, pulling her off the man and pushing her to the ground face down while the owner of the camera moved forward and pulled the leader up off of the floor. He brushed himself off as his mouth rapidly moved, likely giving the other soldiers orders as he moved his hand up to cover a bleeding scratch on his cheek.

The video ends, and Reese begins to read the messages Lloyd had sent him.

"This videos been going wild on YouTube the last couple days, everyone's freaking out about it.

"Dude, did you see that chick? She looked hella messed up. "

" There's a lot of comments saying that the videos fake online, and a lot of people talking about it being another zombie scare thing, but that looked pretty real to me. "

" What do you think, real or fake man? "

" Dude are you going to answer back or not "

The last message was sent just a couple minutes before Reese had woken up. "That's trippy man," Reese texted back, then got up from the bed, releasing a low groan as his bones crackled and popped while he stretched. Almost immediately after he sent the message Lloyd replied," You didn't answer the question, do you think its real or fake? "

" I doubt its real, you really think they'd let the video be on MyTube was real? The government would've probably had it deleted already if it really was leaked out of the military. " " I don't know man, it seemed pretty real to me. That chick looked pretty wacked out to me. " " Still doesn't mean that its real, there's a lot of movies with that exact same kind of scene. "

After sending that last text, Reese started to get ready for the day. He changed out of his clothes from the night prior into another white tee and gray sweatpants, then went to the bathroom to use the restroom, wash his face, pick out his hair and brush his teeth. After making himself look presentable, he grabbed a glass pipe from atop a dresser in his room and smoked a bowl before going to make himself breakfast. After eating, he sat down in front of TV, and watched the news. There had been another bombing in Syria, this one destroying a hospital, killing over 200 civilians and injuring another 400, and politicians were thinking of making medical marijuana federally legal, but there was nothing about the video Lloyd had sent him.

After watching for a while, Reese turned off the TV and sat down at his desk to attempt to make some headway on his assignment, only pausing around 1 to eat a quick lunch before finally giving up in the afternoon on attempting to make progress. On a whim, he decided to watch the video again, noticing that the number of views for the video had reached over 10 million. Afterwards, he smoked a few more bowls then went to sleep.

Since Reese had started working from home this had been his daily schedule, waking up at the same time everyday, making little to no progress on his coding and then going to bed frustrated with his lack of progress. Aside from when he had to leave the house to get groceries or something similar, this was what he did everyday. His was a life filled with monotony.