Promoted

I found out today that Smith has been promoted. I didn't ask anyone; I just received an email saying that she'd been moved to a different part of the facility to undertake a role with more responsibility, and that I'd be assigned to a new supervising researcher shortly.

I wonder if her "promotion" has anything to do with how she was behaving yesterday. I doubt anyone knows that she spoke to me, but she seemed upset and scared, and I don't know what to make of the things she told me. I don't want to believe that the scientists at the top of the facility have given up on holding back The Sick Land. But I can't think of any other way to interpret what I've seen. The research on this floor is focused on treating and manipulating the mal. Unless there's yet more to the facility that I haven't seen, that's everything. There's nothing else.

I don't know what to do. The world as we know it will end, maybe not in my lifetime, but soon. And the survivors, if there are any, will be monsters, people we've altered haphazardly, with our limited understanding of how the mal works. The human species will be extinct, and whatever's left in its place will be something new and frightening.

I don't know if I'm being melodramatic. There must be research here that I don't know about. I'm going to explore the rest of the floor, the parts I haven't seen. I need to find some evidence, any evidence, of research to stop the expansion. If I find it, I'll settle back in, get my head down, and make whatever contribution I can.

If I don't find it, I don't know what I'll do.