VERT (Lexicon)
This page is a part of the Outbreak Lexicon. The information here is fan-created and should not be considered in-game canon. Please do not edit this page unless you are certain that the Lexicon has been completed.
I poked through the Malton Times offices a while back looking for anything interesting. Everything was wrecked, but I managed to salvage an only slightly biffed hard drive from a chopped-up computer and recover the data. All the culprits would have needed was a big magnet, but apparently they didn't have one on hand. The drive belonged to a reporter named Justin Ducant, and this document--some sort of diary entry or I'm not sure what, but obviously not a story--was dated a month or so before the outbreak.
VERT's a word you hear once in a while, if you're unlucky. As a reporter I know that this word coming up tends to be followed with would-be interviews clamming up or vanishing outright, with editors gently warning you away from the story, and sometimes eith even crepier stuff. Everyone in the business knows someone who knows someone who pushed a story a bit too far and just vanished, and a good few of those stories have something to do with VERT. Records generally claim they quit their job peaceably and moved out of the country.
Having heard all of this, you can understand why I was surprised when I saw the word VERT in a piece of paper on my friend Marshall Bradwell's desk. Now, normally I'd never poke through Marsh's stuff--it's just not good etiquette. But if he was getting involved with VERT, he could be in danger. Also, I'm a reporter, and nobody knows what VERT is. What do you want from me?
The paper didn't say much that was sensitive--doubtless if it had, he wouldn't have left it lying around on his desk. It was one of those notecards he keeps reminders for himself on, in Marsh's typical very clear handwriting and indecipherable shorthand.
SUN VERT cont call Tues, new MON poss corrup in malt morgue. poke. egs tp catfd TUES got nt plan from vert cont. wrtup fri (zmbie plag?) THURS ed sez concrt stor by mon, wrtup sat
This was all on a Thursday, by the way. I can only assume Marsh knows someone at VERT, and he thinks they're divulging information. Who knows what's really going on. I'm going to ask him to drop it later tomorrow--this could be bad for him, and for the Times too for that matter. But of course, if he won't drop it, I'll make him let me in on it. What else am I supposed to do? I can't let the guy scoop me...
Submitted to the First Royal Commission for the Investigation of the Malton Quarantine by Mortimer Albright
'STER-Talk-ModP! 13:59, 10 June 2006 (BST)
References: Cemetary Overcrowding, Marshall Bradwell, Zombie Plague
