What separates man and Infected? The Infected were... they were ordinary men and women. Nothing special at all about them, no reason why they should have been more susceptible to the virus than those of us who did not contract it. Biologically, in fact, the Infected were the same as us. We have the same needs. Our drives... our fundamental impulses are the same. Could I even say the Infected lacked control? Humanity?

After all, we have been doomed by our own hands-- and by those of our neighbours-- to live short, bloody and ultimately pointless lives since the dawn of our species. Humanity... it's a fiction. An ideal to prop us up as something more than violent, vicious animals, ready to tear at one another for the smallest of reasons-- if we have any reasons at all.

It was the future that separated us from them. The knowledge that our actions had consequences. The hope that we could create something that could outlast us and be better than us. For ourselves, for our children, for their children... the future.

We have no future here, and look at us. We kill because it doesn't matter. Our consequences are laughable. Our community is fractured. We need... we need a future.

You see... I don't kill or behave like them, because I... I have a future.

[Pause]

A toast, although I have no drink. BILLY! TO OUR FUTURE.

[OOC: West is a melancholy drunk.]