The Mpox Outbreak

The First Warning Sign

The night had begun to unravel.

By now, the club had transformed into a chaos of movement and sound. The bass was relentless—thick, chest-pounding waves that vibrated the very bones of the building. Lights strobed in erratic bursts, catching limbs mid-motion, freezing strangers into distorted silhouettes for a fraction of a second before plunging them back into dark movement. The air was heavier than before—slick with heat, and something else. Something sour.

Daniel stood near the edge of the dance floor, eyes unfocused, the warmth from Sarah’s kiss long gone from his lips. He was sweating—more than he should be—and not just from the press of the crowd. It was a clammy, unnatural kind of sweat. Cold in places. His shirt clung to him like wet gauze.

His head throbbed with a deep, rhythmic pulse, a pressure that built behind his eyes and drummed at the base of his skull. He blinked, trying to clear his vision. The people around him moved like ghosts now—blurred outlines that stretched and bent with every flash of light.

He stumbled toward the back of the club, toward a glowing sign that read GENTS in flickering red neon. His legs felt rubbery, disconnected from the rest of him. As he moved, his left arm brushed against his side—and he flinched. The pain had sharpened. A flash of heat, like a spark along a nerve.

He muttered something to Sarah about needing the bathroom. She didn’t hear him over the music, but she saw the look on his face—something distant, frayed—and let him go with a nod.

Daniel pushed through the heavy door of the restroom and was immediately struck by the change in air. It was cooler, stale with urine and bleach. One urinal overflowed gently, forming a thin stream that meandered across the cracked tiles like a lazy snake. The fluorescent light above the sinks buzzed and flickered in protest, casting the room in pale, jerky light.

He ignored the mirrors. He didn’t want to see himself.

He slipped into a stall and locked the door with trembling fingers. Sat on the closed toilet seat. Then rolled up his sleeve slowly, bracing himself.

The bite wasn’t just a bite anymore.

Where once there had been a small red bump, there was now a swollen blister, tight and semi-translucent, like the surface of a boiled egg about to split. A dusky ring of inflammation had formed around it—angry red fading into a sickly purple—and beneath that, the veins in his arm looked… wrong. Darker. Slightly raised. Like something beneath the surface was trying to climb out.

He swallowed hard and touched it.

The moment his fingertip pressed against the blister, a hot, sharp pain lanced upward—fast and surgical, slicing through his arm and shoulder into the base of his neck. He hissed, pulling back instinctively, his breath ragged. The pain lingered. Not fading, not ebbing, but pulsing steadily like a second heartbeat.

“What the hell…” he whispered, gripping the edge of the stall wall.

He’d had bad bites before. Malaria in his twenties. Dengue a few years later. A spider bite in Sierra Leone that had left a crater in his thigh. He knew what reactions looked like—he’d done the Google searches, lived the fevers, the swollen lymph nodes, the hospital stays.

This wasn’t that.
This was other.

He reached for his phone with a shaky hand, opened the flashlight. Shone it on the bite.

Under the harsh LED beam, the skin around the wound shimmered faintly, like oil on water. A slight distortion—something beneath, something moving? He blinked and looked again. Nothing. Or almost nothing. But the hairs on his arm stood up. Every primitive instinct screamed: get it out.

His vision blurred for a moment. He closed his eyes, steadying himself, breathing deep through his nose. A strange taste lingered in the back of his throat—metallic, coppery. Like pennies.

Suddenly, a knock. Someone outside. “Yo, man, you good in there?”

Daniel didn’t answer.

He didn’t trust his voice.

Instead, he wiped the sweat from his brow, lowered his sleeve, and unlocked the door with deliberate care. His reflection caught in the mirror—just for a second—as he walked past.

His pupils were too wide. His skin looked too pale under the sickly light. And for a flicker of a moment, he could have sworn he saw something move beneath the surface of his arm, like a ripple through shallow water.

He pushed the door open and stepped back into the noise, the lights, the heat.

But the club felt different now. Distant. Unfamiliar. As if he no longer quite belonged to the same world as everyone else.

As if something inside him had already started to change.

---

Denial Sets In

The club welcomed him back like a fever dream.

Music, bodies, heat—it all surged toward Daniel in a flood as he stepped out of the restroom and blinked into the haze of colored light. The rhythm had shifted again. Slower now. Heavier. Like a heartbeat deep in the earth. The bass rolled through the floor like distant thunder, and the walls seemed to pulse with every drop.

He moved like someone underwater, each step sluggish, detached. The flickering pain in his arm hadn’t faded—in fact, it felt like it had grown teeth. It gnawed at the nerves, a hot, dull chewing that made his fingers twitch slightly at his side. But he rolled down his sleeve, masking the blister, and forced his face into something resembling composure.

Sarah found him almost instantly.

She slipped through the crowd with feline grace, one arm already reaching for him. She looped it around his shoulders, her skin cool against his, her lips brushing the edge of his jaw.

“You okay?” she asked, leaning in close. “You’re sweating like crazy.”

Daniel forced a smile, teeth clenched behind it. “Just the heat,” he said. “This place is an oven.”

She studied him for a second longer, her brow slightly furrowed. He looked away before she could ask anything else.

But he knew—his body was betraying him.

A tremor passed through his thighs as he reached for the bar, one hand gripping the edge harder than necessary. His legs felt stiff, heavy. Muscles aching deep in their cores, not like fatigue, but something stranger. Warmer. Like they were slowly hardening into something that didn’t belong to him.

He blinked rapidly. The neon lights above the bar stretched and distorted in his peripheral vision. Shapes ghosted past the corners of his eyes, leaving behind trails of movement his brain couldn’t process.

Maybe I’m just exhausted.
Two weeks in the jungle. Not enough sleep. Shitty food. Too many cigarettes. Of course he was exhausted.

He motioned to the bartender. “Another Nile Special.”

The cold bottle was a godsend in his palm. He gripped it tighter than necessary, letting the condensation soak into his already-damp skin. He didn’t drink it right away. Just held it, grounding himself in its chill.

Sarah rubbed his back lightly, her touch tender. “You don’t look so good.”

Daniel took a swig, then another. The beer was sharp, carbonated, but it tasted strange—like the metal tang that had crept into his throat had altered the flavor of everything. He swallowed, ignoring it.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Just—” He paused, searching for a believable excuse. “Just jetlag, I guess. My system’s wrecked.”

She narrowed her eyes slightly. “You didn’t fly.”

He chuckled weakly. “Jungle lag, then.”

She let it go, but he saw the worry still nestled behind her smile.

His skin crawled. Not from guilt. From something else—a sensation that hadn’t stopped since he left the bathroom. It was as though thousands of tiny filaments had sprouted under his skin and were now shifting, adjusting, searching for space. His back itched, his neck prickled. He resisted the urge to scratch, to claw.

Instead, he leaned closer to Sarah, as if her presence might pin him to reality. Her perfume curled in the air—sweet, peppery, grounding. For a moment, he rested his forehead against her temple.

“You’re burning up,” she murmured. “Maybe we should go—get some air?”

“No,” he said too quickly. “No, I’m good. I just need to sit.”

Sarah nodded slowly, uncertainty still in her eyes.

He ordered another drink. Not because he wanted it. Because the act of holding it, of pretending things were normal, felt like resistance. Like armor. Like maybe if he kept doing the things ordinary people did—drink, flirt, joke—whatever this was would retreat.

He took another gulp. Smiled at Sarah. Let the music drown out the alarms going off inside him.

But deep in his gut, Daniel knew.

This wasn’t heatstroke.
This wasn’t exhaustion.

Something inside him had changed. And it wasn’t stopping.

---

The Ride Home

Kampala, Uganda – 2:07 a.m.

The night air hit him like a slap—but it brought no relief.

Daniel clung to the back of the boda-boda, the motorcycle taxi vibrating beneath him like a living thing. The driver—a wiry man in a faded Arsenal jersey—navigated the chaotic Kampala streets with the recklessness of someone who believed traffic laws were mere suggestions. They weaved between trucks and matatus, skirted market stalls still half-lit by flickering bulbs, and gunned through roundabouts with inches to spare.

Each gust of wind tore through Daniel’s soaked shirt, dragging sweat into cold streaks across his burning skin. His arms wrapped tighter around his own ribs—not for safety, but to still the constant ache that now throbbed through his muscles like an infected drumbeat. He pressed his cheek to the driver’s back, not out of trust, but because it took less effort than holding up his own head.

The lights of the city bled into smears. Red brake lights. Neon bar signs. Flashing indicators. All of them stretching and streaking through his field of vision like they were melting. His eyes were betraying him again—nothing would stay still.

His phone buzzed weakly in his pocket.

With trembling fingers, he pulled it out, the screen’s glow momentarily blinding.
A message from his editor.

Photos came out great. But you look like shit in the selfies. Rest up.

Daniel chuckled—a dry, ragged thing that barely escaped his throat. But the movement jarred his ribcage, and as the bike hit a pothole, the jolt sent a spasm of pain radiating through his chest and down his spine. He gasped. Almost dropped the phone. His hands were shaking.

Something was wrong.

So wrong.

They took a sharp corner near Makerere Hill, almost colliding with a dog darting across the road. The driver cursed, swerved, righted the bike, and kept going without a glance back. Daniel barely registered it. His mind was sliding sideways, as if his thoughts couldn’t grip anything solid.

The heat inside him had become unbearable. It wasn’t just fever. It was something alive. Something spreading.

By the time they reached his street, Daniel could barely swing his leg over the bike. The driver looked back at him, concern flickering in his eyes.

“You alright, boss?”

Daniel nodded, tossed him a crumpled note, and stumbled away without a word.

The walk to his building felt like crossing a desert. Each step dragged. His vision tunneled. The concrete stairwell spun slightly as he climbed it, gripping the railing like it might dissolve in his hand. He fumbled with the key for too long—then finally got the door open.

He didn’t turn on the lights.

The darkness was easier to manage.

The familiar shapes of his apartment emerged in gray outlines—bookshelves, the collapsed tripod, the cluttered coffee table still holding takeout containers from before he left for the jungle. His camera bag lay like a dead animal near the wall, straps tangled. He didn’t care.

He didn’t undress. Didn’t shower. Didn’t even take off his shoes.

He collapsed onto the bed face-down, his body hitting the mattress with a dull thud. His breath came in shallow, ragged pulls. The ceiling above him spun slowly, like water circling a drain.

His skin was on fire.

It felt as if something beneath the surface was stretching—multiplying.

He rolled onto his back with effort, wincing as his shirt brushed against his chest. He reached up, unbuttoned it with fumbling hands.

The first blister—the one on his arm—had swelled grotesquely. It was no longer a neat circle. The skin around it had taken on a purplish hue, and the veins nearest to it were now thick, branching, and visibly twitching under the skin.

But what truly made his breath catch was the new one.

Centered just below his collarbone, another blister had formed. Smaller, but unmistakable. A raised, translucent dome, surrounded by a faint gray ring that hadn’t been there an hour ago.

He stared at it. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.

There were two now.

His mind tried to reason: allergic reaction, heat rash, fungal infection. He’d seen worse things in the jungle, hadn’t he? Men with elephantiasis. Parasites burrowed into legs. Skin diseases that flaked like old paint. He’d taken photos of all of them.

But this wasn’t something he’d photographed.

This was something else.

The room began to blur. Not just from exhaustion, but from fever—the kind that unhooks thoughts from their anchors and lets them drift into strange, dark waters.

He lay there, staring at the cracked plaster on the ceiling, the sound of distant Kampala traffic muffled and unreal. His phone buzzed again somewhere nearby. He didn’t move. Couldn’t.

And beneath the fever, beneath the pain, there was something new.

A feeling of pressure, like a thousand things just beneath his skin were waiting. Shifting.

Growing.

---

Morning Brings No Relief

Kampala, Uganda – June 2024, 7:26 a.m.

The sun didn’t rise—it attacked.

Blades of light sliced through the threadbare curtains, turning the dusty air golden and hot. Daniel stirred beneath a tangled sheet, his body half-twisted, damp with sweat that had dried and soaked again through the night. Every muscle ached, not like fatigue, but like bruises blooming deep in his tissue. His mouth tasted of rust and ash, his lips cracked and peeling.

The bed was soaked.

Not just damp from sweat—soaked. His shirt clung to him like a second skin, stiff with salt. The sheets beneath him were stained with fever. The room smelled faintly of sour breath, unwashed skin, and something sharper—metallic, like blood.

He blinked up at the ceiling, his eyes crusted at the edges. For a moment, he didn’t remember where he was. Then the pain returned, like an old friend grabbing him by the spine. He groaned and rolled over, gasping as the motion stretched his chest—the blister had ruptured overnight.

He forced himself upright, legs trembling as he stumbled toward the bathroom, one arm pressed over his ribcage.

The mirror was waiting for him like a verdict.

Under the flickering fluorescent light, he stared.

And froze.

His face.

Tiny red bumps—dozens of them—had appeared across his cheeks, around his mouth, along the line of his jaw. Some were barely more than pinpricks, others already swelling with fluid, small and glassy like the beginnings of a rash that knew where it was going.

He leaned in, gripping the sink for balance. His pupils were dilated. His skin was pale, except where it was blotched. There were bags under his eyes so dark they looked painted on.

His stomach turned.

“No. No, no, no…”

He staggered back from the mirror, shaking his head. The word rash screamed in his mind. He yanked open the medicine cabinet, spilling its contents—ibuprofen, toothpaste, old antibiotics from Nairobi—onto the tiles.

He dropped to the floor, kneeling among the debris. His phone was on the counter. He reached for it, hands unsteady, and opened the browser.

The screen glowed too bright. He typed through a haze:

„rash + fever after Congo trip“

The search engine spun for half a second.

Then it delivered a truth he wasn’t ready to face.

“Early symptoms of mpox (monkeypox) include fever, fatigue, swollen lymph nodes, and a blistering rash. Infection is often zoonotic in origin and may begin with a single lesion at the point of entry…”

Daniel felt the ground tilt.

He clutched the phone tighter, rereading the same lines. The words lesion and blister and fever seemed to burn brighter than the rest.

He lowered the phone slowly. Looked down at his chest. The blister near his collarbone had burst. The skin around it was inflamed, weeping. And now, lower, near his ribs—

Another one.

It hadn’t been there last night. But now it glistened, angry and alive. The pattern was unmistakable. This wasn’t a rash. This was a progression.

His breath caught. Came in shallow, frantic gasps.

His mind went to the hunters in the jungle, the men smoking meat over open fires. The blood. The monkeys. The filth. The bugs. The boat.
The bite.

He curled onto the cold tile floor, pressing his forehead against it, trying to steady his breath. It didn’t help. Panic was taking over, tightening like a fist in his chest.

His body had become something else.
Something colonized.
Something incubating.

The sun pushed higher through the window, and the room brightened, indifferent.

Daniel lay still, drenched in sweat and dread, as the shadows of morning fled the corners. His eyes stared at the door, the mirror, the phone, but he didn’t move.

He knew—deep down—that this was no longer just about him.

Whatever he had caught wasn’t finished with him yet.
It was only beginning.

/

His fevered skin recoiled from the slightest touch of cotton. Even the air brushing across his arms left behind a trail of pain, as if he were being flayed molecule by molecule.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed—and the world lurched violently.

The room pitched to the left. The floor felt a meter too far down. His head throbbed in sync with his heartbeat, each pulse a spike behind his eyes. He grabbed the edge of the mattress and braced himself, panting.

“Just… dehydrated,” he whispered aloud, trying to anchor himself to something. But his tongue felt thick, foreign, like a piece of dry meat glued to the roof of his mouth.

He forced himself to stand.

The bathroom called to him like a confessional, and he staggered into it, his balance faltering. The hallway spun. His feet dragged, numb. Every step was a negotiation between body and will.

He flicked on the bathroom light—and met the eyes of a stranger.

The mirror showed someone hollowed out, chewed from the inside.

His sclera—the whites of his eyes—were laced with crimson veins, creating a web of inflamed, furious red. His irises looked sunken, his pupils dilated, his eyelids puffy and discolored. He looked like he’d been punched in both eyes.

His lips had split open in two places, raw and crusted. His skin was mottled with patches of yellowed sweat, grime, and dried blood. His once-dark stubble was patchy now—bald spots appearing where yesterday there had been hair. He hadn’t shaved properly. He didn’t remember trying.

And the rash—

God.

It had spread.

What had started as an angry bump on his wrist had now marched up his forearm in a grotesque constellation of raised pustules. Some were red and taut, others whitish and glassy, like they were filled with something—waiting. They pulsed slightly, in rhythm with his heartbeat.

The original blister had ruptured completely.

Where it had been was now a shallow crater, its yellow, ridged edges curling like melted wax. The center oozed clear fluid, and tiny red streaks radiated outward—capillaries inflamed or something worse. He leaned in and could see the skin moving, just slightly, like a twitch beneath the surface.

He touched it.

Pain shot up his arm like a live wire, sharp and electric, and he yelped. The room tilted again.

He collapsed to his knees.

His body was a battlefield now, but it wasn’t fighting—it was losing. Whatever had taken hold of him was thriving, expanding. There was no equilibrium. Only decay.

He stayed on the cold tiles, breath rasping in his throat. Tiny white specks danced in the corners of his vision.

And then, very slowly, another realization crept into his mind like a whisper behind a locked door:

This wasn’t the peak.
This was still just the beginning.

The Walk of Shame That Wasn’t

Kampala, Uganda – June 2024, Day 4, 10:12 a.m.

His phone buzzed on the nightstand, cutting through the muffled hum of the ceiling fan and the occasional honk from the street below. The sound felt intrusive, foreign—as if it didn’t belong in this new reality his body had become.

He blinked at the screen.
Sarah.

Last night was fun 😉 You left in a hurry—everything ok?

For a few long seconds, he just stared. The simple message felt like a relic from another life, like something dug out of the earth—familiar, but strange. His thumbs hovered over the keyboard, unmoving. Guilt bloomed in his gut, hot and immediate.

His mind stumbled back through fractured memories, jagged and fragmented like glass:

Sarah’s laugh echoing in the narrow stairwell of her apartment building.
The warm press of her fingers against his neck.
The subtle scent of coconut oil from her braids when she leaned in close.
The flicker of concern in her eyes as she touched his arm and whispered, “You’re burning up.”

She had even traced the edge of the rash, her fingers pausing when she felt the heat beneath the skin.

He remembered brushing it off.
“African sun,” he’d grinned.
And then he kissed her, harder than he meant to.
Trying to bury the fever.
Trying to forget the bite.

He could still feel her legs wrapped around his waist, the way she’d laughed when he almost tripped on her welcome mat. The shared glass of wine. Her bare feet curled beneath her on the couch. The night was a blur of warmth and movement and denial.

And now?

Now it was a countdown.

He inhaled sharply, feeling the weight of the phone in his hand like a loaded weapon. How do you tell someone that last night might have been a transmission vector?

He began typing:

„Hey, yeah—just not feeling great this morning…“

No. Delete.

„Had a bit of a fever last night. Might be malaria…“

Delete.

„You should get checked.“

Backspace. Backspace.

His hands trembled slightly as he typed the final version:

Caught a bug in the Congo. Need to sleep it off.

He stared at it. It looked harmless. Casual.
A lie wrapped in just enough truth to get by.

He hit send.

And then dropped the phone like it burned.

He pressed both palms to his face, trying to exhale the panic—but it stayed lodged in his chest, thick and immovable.

What if she has it now?
What if the virus had already slipped from his body to hers, passed invisibly between breath, sweat, skin, saliva?

What if her body became the next battlefield?

He stood up, pacing his room, his mind spiraling into calculations he couldn’t complete. No one knew. Not her, not his editor, not the NGO. He was the only one aware this had begun.

And now, maybe, not even the only host.

Outside, the city moved on as usual—motorbikes sputtered past, horns honked, vendors shouted, children laughed. Life pulsed forward.

Inside his apartment, Daniel Mbeki stood alone, staring at the closed door, a man slowly realizing he may have already let the virus walk out.

Not with a scream.
Not with a collapse.
But with a kiss.

---

The Pharmacy Gamble

Kampala, Uganda – June 2024, Day 5, 11:27 a.m.

Daniel stood across the street from the pharmacy, his hood pulled low, sweat glistening beneath the fabric despite the morning’s dry heat. His fever clung to him like a second skin—damp, suffocating, and relentless. He hadn’t eaten in over a day, and his body swayed with a nauseating rhythm that made the ground feel liquid beneath his feet.

He watched the entrance like it was a checkpoint, calculating.
Too busy, and someone might recognize him.
Too empty, and he’d be remembered.

His choices were narrowing. The thought of a public hospital made his chest tighten. They’d ask questions. They’d isolate him. And if this was what he feared it was—mpox—he’d be locked down before he could even warn anyone. Or worse: dismissed until it was too late.

A boda roared past, breaking his hesitation.

He crossed the road.

The inside of the pharmacy was a shock of white light and manufactured chill. The air conditioning blasted cold air across the linoleum floor, raising goosebumps along his arms and legs—despite the fact that he was burning up inside.

He blinked against the fluorescent glare. Shelves stacked with blister packs, infant formula, malaria nets, and jars of petroleum jelly lined the small space. A television mounted above the counter whispered a Luganda soap opera over cheap speakers.

The young man at the counter barely looked up.

“Malaria test?” the clerk asked automatically, already reaching beneath the counter for the rapid test kit. He was lean, maybe in his twenties, with earbuds dangling from one side of his neck and a chipped name tag that read Isaac.

Daniel nodded, then hesitated. “And… something for this,” he said, rolling up his sleeve.

The silence snapped into the room like a dropped plate.

Isaac froze mid-reach. His gaze fell on Daniel’s arm—and stayed there.

The rash had worsened since morning. The pustules had deepened in color, some darkening at the edges, others appearing blistered and tense, like they might rupture at the slightest provocation. A thin trickle of fluid had dried along the inside of his forearm. His skin looked inflamed, alien.

Isaac’s smile drained from his face. His shoulders pulled back, almost imperceptibly, but Daniel saw it. The instinctive recoil.

“That’s… that’s not malaria,” the clerk said flatly, his voice lowered.

In the corner of the pharmacy, a woman sitting on a plastic chair shifted. She had been breastfeeding a small child, her headscarf tilted slightly as she watched a WhatsApp video on her phone. Now she looked up, her eyes narrowing as they flicked from the clerk to Daniel’s exposed arm.

Panic scratched at the edges of Daniel’s voice.
“Allergic reaction,” he said quickly, too loudly. “Something from the jungle—plants. I brushed against them. Poison ivy, or whatever it’s called here.”

Isaac didn’t speak.

He moved mechanically, almost stiff with discomfort. He picked up a box of paracetamol from the shelf behind him. Then a small tube of hydrocortisone cream, its packaging dented from too many hands.

He didn’t scan them. He didn’t even ask for money.

He simply placed them in a small paper bag and slid it across the counter with the gentleness of someone disarming a bomb.

“Here,” he said. “On the house.”

Daniel’s breath caught.
He opened his mouth to protest, to explain, to thank him—he wasn’t even sure which—but the look on Isaac’s face froze him in place.

There was no kindness in the gesture.
Only fear.

A silent, desperate wish: Leave. Now. Before anyone else notices.

Behind him, the breastfeeding woman had shifted her child to her other breast and was now staring openly, the corners of her mouth drawn tight.

Daniel took the bag, nodded once, and turned.

He didn’t run. But he didn’t walk either.

By the time the glass door swung shut behind him, he could feel every gaze pinned to his back. The air outside was no cooler, but it tasted better than the sterile chill he’d left behind.

As he rounded the corner and ducked into an alley, he finally exhaled.

His arm throbbed beneath the fabric, the rash radiating heat.
He looked down at the paper bag in his hand. It felt like a consolation prize at a funeral.

Paracetamol.
Hydrocortisone.
False hope.

He shoved the bag into his pocket and kept moving.

Behind him, the pharmacy door quietly clicked shut. A bottle of sanitizer was placed on the counter. The staff began to wipe everything down.

And Daniel realized—he was no longer just sick.
He was starting to become feared.

---

The Birthday Party

Kampala, Uganda – June 2024, Day 5, Evening

He shouldn’t have gone.
Every nerve in his body told him to stay home. Lock the door. Hide the symptoms. Ride this out. But denial is seductive, and promises have weight.

Musa’s birthday. Thirty. A milestone.
He’d missed Musa’s last two birthdays—once in Kinshasa, once chasing leads near Lake Albert. This time, he couldn’t blow it off without questions. And maybe, if enough people saw him laughing, drinking, normal, it would chase away whatever was crawling under his skin.

He leaned back against the cracked vinyl seat of the Uber, knees pressed up against the broken AC vent. Kampala buzzed by in streaks of neon: roadside vendors lit by kerosene lamps, kids chasing each other barefoot through dust, and the occasional boda weaving between traffic like a ghost on two wheels.

His phone buzzed in his pocket.
A reminder: Hydrocortisone – apply every 6 hours.

He ignored it. Instead, he dry-swallowed two more paracetamol pills, gagging slightly as they stuck to the back of his throat. He washed them down with the warm, bitter dregs of yesterday’s Nile Special, still sitting half-finished in his backpack. The beer was flat and sour, but it cut the dry scratch in his throat just enough.

Fake it. Stay vertical. Smile. Drink. Leave.
That was the plan.

---

The house was already alive with sound when he arrived. Musa’s backyard pulsed with Afrobeat, fairy lights swaying above the crowd like tiny fireflies caught in a storm. Laughter spilled through the air, along with the delicious smoke of goat meat charring over a makeshift grill. Someone had turned an old oil drum into a smoker, and now a dozen guests stood around it, drinks in hand, glowing with sweat and celebration.

“Mbeki!”

Musa’s voice cut through the crowd, booming with genuine delight.

Daniel barely had time to brace before Musa—six feet tall, solid as a brick wall—engulfed him in a massive hug. The man’s signature gold chain swung forward, pressing against Daniel’s upper arm where the rash pulsed beneath the sleeve. Daniel winced, swallowing the hiss of pain.

“We thought you’d died in the bush!” Musa roared, grinning from ear to ear.

“Almost,” Daniel joked weakly. “Monkey nearly stole my lens.”

Laughter erupted. Someone slapped him on the back. A cold beer was shoved into his hand, droplets running down the glass like sweat.

“You clean up like shit, man,” another friend teased. “You look like you’re still sleeping in a tent.”

Daniel forced a laugh, tipping the bottle to his lips. It stung going down.

But the jokes felt good—normal. For the first time in days, he was surrounded by life, by people who didn’t look at him with suspicion or fear. The music thumped in his chest, drowning out the tightness in his lungs. The taste of grilled meat lingered on the wind. A group was dancing barefoot in the dirt. Sarah wasn’t here, thank God. He didn’t want to face that yet.

For an hour, he believed the lie.
He moved from group to group, smiling, sipping, deflecting questions about the trip. He even managed a short toast, raising his bottle in Musa’s honor. People laughed. Someone took a selfie with him. He was pulling it off.

But then the cold crept in.

It began in his fingertips—subtle, like a forgotten breeze. Then up his spine. He felt beads of sweat form behind his knees, and yet his teeth began to chatter softly behind his lips.

Someone bumped into him. “You alright, man? You look pale.”

“Just… just the breeze,” Daniel said quickly. “Too much sun today.”

But the goosebumps wouldn’t go away.

The heat of the party—the lights, the grill, the pulsing bodies—should’ve made him sweat. Instead, he shivered, curling his arms tighter around himself, the bottle now slippery in his hand. The laughter around him sounded suddenly distant, as if heard underwater.

His joints began to ache again, deep and dull, like the flu with sharp edges.
And then his stomach turned.

He stumbled toward the edge of the yard, weaving through dancing bodies and smoke. Someone tried to hand him a plate of meat—he waved it off. The lights began to smear at the corners of his vision, yellow halos blurring into the trees. His rash pulsed in time with his heartbeat, and he could swear it had spread again—he felt it tightening across his back, an invisible net.

“Daniel?”

He turned. A woman—he couldn’t even place her name—was watching him, concern tightening her features.

“You look… sick.”

He opened his mouth to reply.
Nothing came out.

He managed a nod, waved vaguely, and pushed through the side gate into the night. The party carried on behind him, drums rising with the cheers, oblivious.

---

In the shadows of Musa’s front garden, Daniel collapsed against the hood of a parked car, chest heaving.

The worst part wasn’t the fever, or the ache, or even the creeping terror of what was happening to his body.

The worst part was that he had just shared beer bottles, hugs, backslaps, and laughter with two dozen people.
He hadn’t shaken their trust.
He had touched them.

And the virus, if it was what he feared, had touched them too.

The First Domino Falls

Kampala – Day 5, Late Night

Consciousness came back like a broken film reel—disjointed images, muffled voices, fragments of pain stitched together by adrenaline and confusion.

Flash.
Two strong hands under his armpits, lifting.
“Help me! His legs are dead weight!” Musa’s voice, tight with panic, rang out over the muffled thump of music still playing outside. The clatter of people moving—chairs scraping, someone dropping a drink.

Flash.
A woman screaming.
Not just screaming—wailing.
“It’s cholera!”
Musa’s wife stood in the hallway, arms spread protectively in front of her child, her voice shrill and rising. “I told you he looked sick! You brought a disease into our house!”
Her words pierced the growing tension, landing like accusations hurled across a courtroom.

Flash.
A car door slamming. Amina barking directions to the Uber driver.
“Kyambogo. Top of the hill. Hurry!”
The man behind the wheel kept his distance, one hand gripping the wheel, the other covering his mouth with a handkerchief. His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror every few seconds, wide and shiny with fear. Sweat poured down his neck despite the cool night air.

But amid all the chaos and half-memories, one moment burned brightest.
One quiet, human moment.

Rajab, kneeling beside Daniel as he dry-heaved in the garden. The bile tasted metallic, and Daniel’s body shook like a power line in a storm. His forehead was slick, breath shallow and rapid. For a moment, he had curled into himself, a shaking, panting animal.

Rajab had waited until it passed.

Then, he did what friends do.
He pulled a half-crushed pack of Dunhills from his back pocket, tapped one free, and handed it over with a sympathetic smile.

“Here, man. For the spins. Trust me.”

Daniel took it with trembling fingers, not even thinking. He brought the cigarette to his lips, shielding it from the wind while Rajab struck a lighter. Their fingers touched—just for a second. Skin to skin. Sweat to sweat.

He inhaled, the smoke sharp and hot in his throat. And for a brief, surreal moment, it helped. Not physically—but it anchored him. Gave him something familiar to hold onto.

He handed the cigarette back without a word.

Rajab puffed, grinned.
“Still alive.”

And then he passed the cigarette to Deno, who took a long drag, laughed, and passed it to the girl sitting beside him on the garden steps. She hesitated, then shrugged. “Why not?” she said, exhaling a cloud of smoke into the warm night air.

The moment vanished into the soundscape of music, laughter, and meat sizzling over charcoal.

Hours later, that same cigarette butt would be tossed into the bonfire pit, still faintly glowing, its burnt filter marked with traces of four different people’s saliva.

And inside those microscopic traces, something else moved.

A virus.
Blind. Uncaring. Efficient.

It didn’t know names, intentions, or birthdays.
It just knew how to replicate.

---

The first domino had fallen.
Not with a dramatic crash, but with a flick of fingers over a cigarette.

And now, the line of dominoes stretched outward—from one garden party, to Kampala’s crowded streets, to boda drivers, teachers, nurses, strangers brushing hands in taxis and queues.

The outbreak had just gained momentum.

And Daniel Mbeki, shivering in the back seat of an Uber, his fever climbing past 39°C, had no idea he had just unleashed it.

---

Epilogue: Midnight Realizations

Kampala – Day 6, 3:00 AM

The world had shrunk to a single room, dimly lit by the cold glow of Daniel’s phone screen.

Outside, the city was asleep—mostly. A dog barked somewhere far off. A generator sputtered in the next building. But here, inside his apartment, the silence felt absolute, oppressive. As if even the air didn’t want to be near him.

He lay half-sprawled on the mattress, still in yesterday’s clothes, the bedsheets damp with sweat and streaked with the faint yellow of ruptured blisters. The window was open, but the breeze did nothing. His skin felt tight, feverish. His pulse was a frantic flutter in his neck.

The door had slammed shut hours ago—Amina’s final word. She hadn’t yelled. She hadn’t cried. Just that one command, flat and cold:
“Clinic. Tomorrow.”
Then she was gone.

And now, he was alone.

He unlocked his phone with shaking fingers. The brightness stabbed into his eyes, but he didn’t blink. He typed slowly, deliberately:

mpox early symptoms

The first few search results were clinical. Government sites. CDC fact sheets. Health organization PDFs. He ignored them. His thumb hovered over the images tab—and then he tapped it.

The first photo that loaded nearly stopped his heart.

A forearm—nearly identical to his.
Clusters of raised pustules, angry and raw.
Red halos around each one, spreading like ink on paper.

He dropped the phone onto the mattress. His breath came fast, shallow, like his lungs couldn’t decide whether to inhale or scream.

But curiosity—or guilt—forced him to pick it back up. He scrolled further, scanning symptom lists, every bullet point another spike in his chest:

• Fever over 38°C ✅
• Swollen lymph nodes ✅
• Blistering rash, especially at site of exposure ✅
• Fatigue, chills, nausea ✅✅✅

Then he reached the part that made his throat close.

Human-to-human transmission via…
• Direct skin contact
• Respiratory droplets
• Shared objects like utensils, bedding, cigarettes…

He didn’t need to read more.

Sarah.
They’d kissed. Touched. She had playfully trailed her fingers across the rash on his arm like it was a love mark. “You’re burning up,” she’d whispered.

Musa.
The bear hug. The shared bottle. His arm around Daniel’s shoulder.

Rajab.
The cigarette.
The laugh.
The moment of kindness.
Passed from mouth to mouth like a poisoned offering.

A new notification slid down from the top of the screen.

Instagram: @sarah.ka posted a new story.

His stomach dropped. Against his better judgment, he tapped.

The video opened with Sarah’s smiling face, her braids gleaming under club lights. “New bar alert!” she giggled. The camera panned—three friends, crowded close, clinking glasses. They laughed, leaned into one another, sipped from each other’s straws. Casual. Careless. Intimate.

The camera turned again—Sarah winked into the lens. She looked vibrant. Alive.

For now.

Daniel’s mouth went dry. His stomach lurched violently. He barely made it to the bathroom, collapsing to his knees as bile surged into his throat. The retching was violent, body-wracking. When it was over, he slumped against the wall, shaking, breathless.

His face in the mirror across from him looked hollow. Not just sick—haunted.

He had touched them. Coughed near them. Shared space, skin, breath, objects. In the warm glow of Kampala’s nightlife, in the careless intimacy of human contact, he had been a silent courier.

Not a victim.
A vector..

This wasn’t just a fever.
It was a fuse.
And it had already been lit.

—

Chapter 3: The Silent Spread

Entebbe International Airport, Uganda – Day 7 of Infection

Daniel Mbeki sat hunched at his kitchen table, lit only by a single naked bulb swaying gently from the ceiling. The power had flickered all night, each blackout stretching into unbearable silences broken only by the rhythmic whirr of the ceiling fan fighting for survival. A cockroach darted behind the sugar tin. He didn’t flinch.

In front of him: a stack of crumpled notes—420,000 shillings—sweaty, creased, and patched together from desperation. Amina had transferred 150,000 with the curt message, “Take care of yourself.” Musa had handed his cut over without a word, his smile forced. Even his landlord had begrudgingly accepted a vague promise of “double next month,” eyes darting nervously to Daniel’s gloved hands as they exchanged cash.

It was just enough for a one-way economy ticket to Paris.
No insurance. No return.

The Nile Special he drank was flat and lukewarm, bitter at the back of his throat. Two paracetamol tablets sat dissolving on his tongue as he gulped down the last mouthful. He grimaced and pressed a trembling hand to his temple. The fever had sunk deeper now—no longer just heat, but something molten threading through his bones.

Across his body, new blisters had bloomed overnight, clustered along his collarbone like diseased pearls. He had popped two in the shower earlier, watching with horror as yellowish fluid oozed out, thick and glistening like sap. The original wound on his wrist had crusted into a jagged black scab, its edges raw and weeping.

He tugged the cuffs of his hoodie over his hands and zipped it to his neck. The fabric scratched against the sores, but at least it hid them. His jeans stuck to his fevered skin. He shoved his passport into his backpack beside his camera and a mostly charged power bank, then grabbed the face mask he hadn’t worn in two years and pulled it tightly across his mouth.

Just before leaving, he glanced once at his reflection.

His eyes were bloodshot, sunken, his lips pale and cracked.
He looked like a man already halfway to rot.

---

The taxi ride to Entebbe took over an hour.

The driver kept the windows down. “AC’s busted,” he’d said, but Daniel suspected he’d simply smelled something off. There was a sourness in Daniel’s sweat now—a fungal, animal stench. His stomach churned as they passed roadside chapati stands and boys playing football barefoot in the dust. Life, still going on.

The airport glowed on the horizon like a beacon. The only place left to run.

---

Inside Entebbe International, the air was cool, sterile, and filled with quiet murmurs and the occasional echoing boarding call. Daniel merged with the crowd, moving slowly, deliberately. Every breath took effort. Every step sent jolts through his spine.

At the check-in counter, he kept his head low.

“Final destination?”
“Paris,” he croaked.
“Business or pleasure?”
He forced a smile beneath the mask. “Neither. Just… getting out.”

The agent barely looked up. Stamped. Handed over the boarding pass.
No one asked about the sweat on his brow.
No one noticed the stiff way he clutched his bag to his chest.
No one saw the red lesion creeping past his collar.

---

At the departure gate, he collapsed into a hard plastic chair and opened his phone.

A headline blinked at the top of the news feed:

Uganda Reports First Suspected Mpox Case – Patient Fled Clinic

No name. No photo.
But he knew it was him.

His fingers hovered over a message draft to Sarah. Then deleted it.
Same with Musa.
He started typing something to Amina: “Tell people not to share drinks. Watch for rash. I’m—”
He stopped. Backspaced.
Typed instead:
“Sorry.”
Hit send.

---

When they called boarding for Flight AF835 to Paris, Daniel rose on unsteady legs and joined the slow-moving line. The air smelled of perfume, recycled air, anticipation. A child cried softly two rows ahead.

No alarms went off.
No officials blocked the way.
No thermal cameras caught the fever radiating off his skin.

As he stepped onto the jet bridge, the cold metal floor hummed beneath his feet. The flight attendant smiled absently as she welcomed him aboard.
Daniel smiled back, eyes dull.

He passed down the aisle, brushing seatbacks, squeezing between passengers, hands briefly gripping luggage rails, his body brushing shoulders.

The virus came with him.
Quietly. Casually. Invisibly.
Like a whisper across a crowded room.

By the time the plane lifted off over Lake Victoria, the seed had already been planted.
And Europe was about to become the next garden.

---

The Taxi Ride of Denial

The sun was barely climbing over Kampala’s chaotic skyline when Daniel swung his leg over the boda-boda’s seat. The driver—a wiry man with a wide grin and a tooth missing in the front—eyed him up and down before chuckling.
„You look like shit, mzungu,“ he joked, revving the engine. The familiar roar of the motorbike filled Daniel’s ears as he wrapped his arms tightly around the driver’s waist.

His voice came out cracked and ragged.
„Just get me to Entebbe,“ Daniel croaked, every word scraping his raw throat like sandpaper.

The wind whipped fiercely against his fever-hot skin, biting at the exposed patches of his neck and hands where the hoodie couldn’t quite reach. The city rushed past them in a blur—matatu minibuses careening dangerously close, their speakers blasting Ugandan pop that mixed with the sharp calls of street vendors hawking everything from fresh mangoes to hot rolex omelets wrapped in chapati. The scent of burning charcoal and fried plantains mingled in the humid air.

But something else caught Daniel’s eye.
Bright red banners fluttered above stalls and on roadside billboards—“MPOX AWARENESS: Know the Signs. Protect Yourself.”

His stomach tightened. The words felt like a hammer knocking inside his chest.

His phone vibrated sharply in his pocket. Pulling it out with shaking hands, he saw Sarah’s name flashing on the screen. His heart sank.

The message was short and sharp:
„Rash won’t go away. Fever 39°C. Did you give me something??“

Daniel’s fingers hovered above the keyboard, his mind spinning. He typed: “see a doctor” — then immediately deleted it, panic choking his thoughts.

Instead, with a shaky breath, he sent:
„Probably just stress :)“

The lie tasted bitter—like bile rising up his throat. He stared out at the endless traffic jam ahead, the red taillights smeared like bleeding wounds in the early morning haze.

Deep down, he knew the truth was far worse. But denial was all he had left on this ride.

---

Airport Roulette

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead as Daniel stepped up to the Turkish Airlines check-in counter at Entebbe Airport. The polished floor reflected the hectic shuffle of passengers, their luggage wheels clicking like a staccato heartbeat in the sterile space.

The agent, a young woman with sharp eyes and a neat bun, greeted him with a practiced smile that wavered the moment Daniel’s hoodie sleeve slipped up, revealing the raw, angry rash crawling across his forearm and the swollen lump pulsing just below his wrist.

Her smile faltered.
„Sir, are you—“ she began, voice tight.

Daniel’s jaw clenched. Panic flared beneath his skin like wildfire.
„Eczema,“ he snapped before she could finish, slapping his passport down on the counter with more force than intended.
„Family history. Very common.“

His throat felt dry, his heart pounding in his ears. He wiped the cold sweat from his brow with a trembling hand. The air conditioning buzzed overhead, but it did little to cool the heat radiating from his body. His lymph nodes throbbed painfully beneath the skin at his neck and armpits—swollen, tender, and unmistakably wrong.

The agent’s eyes flicked to his forehead, damp and glistening, then back to the blotchy skin on his arm. For a terrifying moment, Daniel thought she might call security or medical staff.

But then—miracle of miracles—she tore the boarding pass from the printer, sliding it across the counter with a curt nod.
„Gate C12. Final call.“

Daniel swallowed hard, clutching the paper as if it were a lifeline. His chest tightened with a mixture of relief and dread.

He was on his way.
But the gamble had only just begun.

---

The Flight from Hell

Somewhere high above the shimmering blue expanse of the Mediterranean Sea, Daniel slipped quietly from his seat, ignoring the curious glances of fellow passengers. The cabin’s dim mood lighting cast long shadows as the plane hummed steadily toward its destination.

He ducked into the cramped airplane bathroom and locked the door behind him, the plastic latch clicking with a finality that felt like a fragile barrier against the world outside.

The harsh, fluorescent light flickered overhead, mercilessly illuminating the horror unfolding beneath his clothes.

Daniel peeled back the edge of his hoodie and tugged down the waistband of his pants, revealing his skin mottled and broken.
Lesions snaked up his thighs in irregular patterns—raised, angry, raw—like cursed Braille spelling out a message of pain. Around his waistband, pus-filled blisters glistened sickly yellow and green, some already crusting over, others fresh and threatening to burst.

But the worst was yet to come: a new cluster of crimson, swollen pustules was forming just beneath his left eye. The skin there was taut, stretched thin over the pain that pulsed beneath.

He swallowed dryly, grimacing as the pills stuck in his throat like tiny stones. His fevered reflection stared back—his pupils dilated, rimmed with red, wide and haunted.

A sharp rap on the door startled him, sending a jolt of panic through his body.

„Sir? We’re preparing for landing,“ a soft voice called from outside.

Daniel blinked, blinking away the haze of dizziness. He splashed cold water over his face from the tiny sink, the icy droplets stinging where broken skin had begun to ooze. The pain shot through him like electricity wherever the blisters had burst open, raw and hypersensitive.

His breath hitched. There was no going back now.

---

Paris: City of (False) Hope

Charles de Gaulle Airport was a harsh, sterile world—too bright, too cold, and too indifferent. The fluorescent lights above buzzed incessantly, reflecting off the gleaming floors and stark white walls. Daniel shuffled through customs, his steps heavy and uneven, the dampness of sweat soaking through his hoodie and clinging to his fevered skin.

The customs officer barely glanced at his worn Ugandan passport, distracted by a flirtatious smile exchanged with the blonde agent at the adjacent booth. Daniel’s presence felt almost invisible—or perhaps deliberately ignored. The chill in the air did nothing to cool the fire burning beneath his skin.

Outside, a battered Peugeot waited, its engine rumbling softly. Luc Moreau leaned against the hood, cigarette dangling lazily from his lips, smoke curling upward like a silent alarm. The French documentary filmmaker, Daniel’s mentor from their journalism school days, looked up just as Daniel emerged from the terminal.

His eyes widened in shock, and the cigarette froze halfway to his mouth.
„Putain de merde,“ Luc muttered under his breath, the words heavy with disbelief and dread.

Daniel barely managed a whisper.
„I need a hospital,“ he said, collapsing into the passenger seat with a harsh intake of breath, his body trembling.

Luc didn’t hesitate. He slammed his foot on the accelerator, tires screeching as the Peugeot tore onto the A1 highway, slicing through the early morning traffic.
„You need a fucking biosecurity lab,“ he growled, eyes fixed on the road ahead.

Daniel pressed his burning forehead to the cool glass window, the raindrops sliding down like silent tears tracing his misery. Outside, the sprawling city of Paris shimmered under the soft drizzle, elegant and oblivious to the invisible war raging inside this small car.

Somewhere over Africa, Musa’s body began to burn with fever.
Somewhere in Nairobi, Sarah’s fingers trembled as she frantically Googled, “pox-like rash + Paris flight UG407.”

And here, in a stolen car racing through the early Parisian morning, Patient Zero — Daniel — could only wonder who else he had already condemned today.

—

„

CHAPTER 4: „PATIENT ZERO IN PARIS

Hôpital Bichat-Claude Bernard, Paris – Day 10 of Infection

The sterile white walls of the isolation ward seemed to close in around the room, the fluorescent lights above buzzing relentlessly like a swarm of angry wasps trapped in a glass jar. Dr. Élodie Fournier, her dark hair pulled tight into a bun, adjusted the straps of her N95 mask, the elastic biting into her skin as she leaned over the hospital bed.

Daniel lay there, his once vibrant face now sallow and strained, sweat pouring from his brow despite the cold, clinical chill of the room. Lesions—dozens of them—carpeted his chest and arms like a grotesque topographical map, some open and oozing a dark, crusted fluid, others swollen and glistening with fresh infection. His fever had spiked to a terrifying 40.2°C, the heart monitor beside him beeping in a chaotic rhythm that made her stomach tighten.

„You flew here knowingly with mpox?“ Élodie’s voice was sharp, laced with frustration and disbelief as she spoke in clipped French-accented English.

Daniel’s cracked lips parted, words barely audible, „Thought you could… cure me.“

Behind the thick glass, Luc Moreau paced like a caged animal, fists clenched, his face pale but resolute. „He told me it was just malaria when I picked him up,“ he growled, eyes burning with a mix of anger and helplessness.

Élodie moved carefully, donning sterile gloves as she opened his mouth to examine the latest, most troubling symptom: clusters of blood-tinged blisters bleeding along his soft palate. The sight sent a chill down her spine.

„Mon Dieu,“ she whispered, her voice barely above a breath.

This wasn’t the classic Clade I strain of mpox she had studied in textbooks and seen in isolated outbreaks. The lesions were spreading faster, the symptoms far more severe and unusual—especially the hemorrhagic signs inside the mouth, a rarity that suggested a mutation or an entirely new variant.

Her mind raced. What did this mean for treatment? For contagion? For the world?

Luc’s pacing slowed, eyes fixed on Daniel’s fragile chest rising and falling under the relentless assault of the virus.

The isolation ward felt colder than ever—an eerie silence punctuated only by the relentless beeping of machines and the soft rustling of hospital gowns.

Outside the ward, the city of Paris continued unaware, but inside these walls, a silent and dangerous evolution was underway.

---

---

Mutation Event

---

The Superspreader Events

1. The Nightclub (Rex Club, Day 13)

The pounding bass was a physical force, vibrating through the concrete floor and into every nerve ending of the packed Rex Club. Strobe lights flickered erratically, casting fractured shadows on faces drenched in sweat and adrenaline. The air was thick with heat, bodies pressed so close that personal space was a forgotten concept.

Sasha, 23, danced with reckless abandon, the music coursing through her veins like electricity. Her leather jacket had been discarded hours ago, and her bare arms gleamed with a sheen of perspiration. The blister on her right shoulder, hidden beneath a thin tank top strap, had burst sometime during the night. Warm, sticky fluid mingled with sweat as her skin brushed against the bare chest of the stranger she’d locked eyes with near the bar.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, and moving with a slow, predatory confidence. His breath was hot against her ear as he leaned in, voice thick with drink and desire, “You’re so hot.”

Sasha smiled, caught in the moment. She didn’t notice the faint odor of antiseptic around his neck or the way his eyes darted nervously when the bass momentarily dropped. The stranger had no idea either—‘hot’ was a symptom neither of them understood yet, a fever burning at 39°C under his skin.

Around them, the crowd swayed and roared, hands raised, drinks spilling, lips brushing in stolen kisses. Sasha’s blistered skin, raw and vulnerable, made contact with countless hands and surfaces as she moved through the throng—clutching a neon cup, gripping the railing by the VIP booth, brushing past the crowded coat check.

In the bathroom mirror, a quick glance revealed a faint, spreading rash beginning to bloom across her collarbone, the edges tinged with angry red. But the music called louder than reason, drowning out any whisper of warning.

As dawn crept in through the club’s grime-streaked windows, Sasha stumbled out into the chilled morning air, the ache in her body masked by the fading high. The stranger—already nursing a sore throat and chills—was nowhere to be found.

Neither would know that the night’s heat had carried more than lust and music.

---

/

The Cover-Up

Ministry of Health – Day 16

The cramped conference room was heavy with tension, the stale air thickened by the sweat and anxiety of those gathered. Fluorescent lights flickered intermittently overhead, casting harsh shadows on the glossy wooden table littered with half-empty water bottles and printed reports. At the head of the table, Minister Kato wiped his damp brow with a folded handkerchief, his voice tight and defensive.

“We cannot cause panic,” he insisted, voice rising slightly. “The Olympics are in six months. We have an image to protect — not just nationally, but globally. If word spreads that mpox is circulating here, tourists will cancel. Investors will pull out. We cannot afford that.”

Élodie Fournier, fresh from the frontlines at Bichat Hospital and still wearing her hospital badge, slammed her fist on the table. The sharp knock echoed through the room, silencing murmurs. Her eyes blazed with frustration and urgency.

“People are getting infected at pharmacies—trying to buy allergy creams for what is mpox!” Her French-accented English cut through the room like a blade. “They don’t know what they have, and we’re actively allowing it to spread because of fear and bureaucracy!”

The room shifted uncomfortably. Officials exchanged furtive glances. The balance between public health and political optics teetered dangerously.

A tired voice from the back suggested, “What about a middle ground? Quietly quarantine the Bichat staff involved. Issue a vague advisory about ‘rash illnesses.’ No need to alarm the public with specifics. And… maybe hold off on airport temperature scanners. They tend to cause discrimination and panic.”

The minister nodded slowly, swallowing the bitter truth. “Agreed. Discretion is our ally.”

As debate continued about messaging and containment, a subtle chime interrupted the room’s fragile calm.

The minister’s assistant glanced at her phone, then passed it across the table. The screen glowed with an ominous subject line:

“URGENT: Confirmed D209N cases in London, Brussels, and Frankfurt. All traced to Paris.”

A collective intake of breath.

The room fell into a suffocating silence.

A single bead of sweat traced a slow line down the minister’s temple. His confident facade cracked, if only for a moment.

Élodie’s jaw clenched. “It’s already too late.”

Outside the building, the city bustled as if nothing was wrong. But inside those four walls, the stakes had never been higher — and the clock was mercilessly ticking.

---

Daniel’s Last Words

Bichat ICU – Day 20

The sterile hum of machines filled the dim ICU room, their beeps and whirs a constant reminder of fragile life hanging by a thread. The harsh white lights cast sharp reflections on the polished surfaces, while the faint scent of antiseptic lingered in the air. Daniel lay motionless, his body ravaged by the disease. Lesions, angry and swollen, had crept over his face, now even clouding his once-bright eyes, which fluttered weakly beneath swollen lids.

Luc, clad head-to-toe in protective gear, moved slowly into the room. His breath caught behind his mask at the sight of his old friend, reduced to a shadow of himself. The man who had once been full of energy and sharp wit now lay silent, hooked to tubes and wires that tracked every failing heartbeat.

Daniel’s eyes flickered open just as Luc approached. His voice was barely more than a hoarse whisper, strained and thin from oxygen starvation.

“I’m sorry…” Daniel rasped, each word a battle.

Luc bent forward, grasping Daniel’s hand through the gloves. His own hand trembled uncontrollably. “Sorry for what? Tell me. For lying? For infecting half my city?”

Daniel’s eyelids fluttered, struggling to focus. The machines suddenly burst into a high-pitched shriek—an alarm flashing red, urgent and unforgiving. Luc’s heart hammered, panic slicing through his grief.

“For… making it… airborne,” Daniel gasped, his voice breaking.

Luc’s face paled beneath his mask. Time seemed to slow. The beeping of the heart monitor accelerated, then flatlined.

Silence crashed down.

Luc’s scream ripped through the room, raw and desperate, swallowed quickly by the thick walls of isolation.

The man who had carried the world’s worst secret was gone—leaving behind a city on the brink, and a nightmare just beginning.

---

Epilogue: The New World

Day 30 – Global Headlines

The world woke to a new reality.

Front pages screamed in multiple languages, each echoing the same growing dread:

🇫🇷 Le Monde: “Mystérieuse ‘épidémie de varicelle’ dans les écoles parisiennes” — a mysterious chickenpox-like outbreak spreading through Parisian schools, baffling doctors and alarming parents.

🇩🇪 Bild: “Pocken-Alarm! Berliner Club nach ‘Hautkrankheit’ geschlossen” — pox alarm! A Berlin nightclub shut down after reports of a strange skin disease sent ripples through the nightlife scene.

🇬🇧 BBC: “UK detects 47 mpox cases with ‘unusual mutations’” — the virus was no longer just an isolated incident. It was evolving, spreading, and slipping past defenses once thought impenetrable.

---

At Orly Airport, beneath the hum of fluorescent lights and the drone of intercom announcements, a lone janitor moved methodically through the terminal’s restrooms. His gloves rustled as he wiped down counters, sinks, and stalls, unaware of the invisible menace lingering just beyond his reach.

Daniel’s presence three weeks ago was a forgotten fact in this bustling hub of travel. The janitor’s mop bucket sloshed quietly nearby.

He sprayed disinfectant and scrubbed the floor, then moved to the bathroom door handle—one of the last untouched surfaces.

His rag missed the doorknob.

Unseen to the naked eye, microscopic traces of the mutated virus clung stubbornly.

Minutes later, a toddler wandered in, her parents distracted by luggage. She reached out with sticky fingers, grasping the doorknob. Then, without hesitation, her small hand found its way to her mouth, thumb slipping between lips in innocent comfort.

The world shifted again.

A silent spark in the chaos—one child, one touch—igniting the next chapter of the outbreak.

CHAPTER 5: „THE LABORATORY OF LOST CAUSES“

Pasteur Institute, Paris – Day 25 of Outbreak

The BSL-4 lab reeked of bleach, overcooked stress, and the sterile despair of people running out of time. Overhead, the hum of negative-pressure air systems pulsed like an anxious heartbeat. Shadows from the biosafety cabinet lights fell harshly on tired faces.

Dr. Laurent Dubois hadn’t slept in 37 hours. His lab coat was rumpled, stained with old coffee and faint smudges of iodine. He leaned over the microscope, hand trembling as he sipped his third espresso—too bitter, too cold, but necessary. His eyes were red-rimmed, locked onto something that defied logic.

The sample—Patient Zero, Daniel Mbeki—was changing again. Not just mutating. Strategizing.

„Regardez ça,“ he said hoarsely, gesturing to the massive screen in the center of the room. The glowing monitor displayed genomic maps alive with shifting data: nucleotide substitutions blinking in real-time, like enemy troop movements on a battlefield.

His team crowded in. Even the senior researchers moved with hesitation, as if dreading what they’d see next.

• Strain Alpha-1:
Dominant in Daniel’s lung tissue. The ferret transmission trials had confirmed the worst—airborne contagion. It lingered in droplets for hours, spreading between cages with minimal airflow. The infection rate among the test animals had reached 100% within 36 hours.

• Strain Beta-3:
Recovered from cerebrospinal fluid. It bypassed the blood-brain barrier with terrifying efficiency. In murine models, it induced acute flaccid paralysis in 12% of subjects within three days. The lab mice dragged their hind legs behind them like discarded threads, still breathing, still blinking.

• Strain Gamma-X:
The true wildcard. A recombinant chimera, born from a co-infection with a rhinovirus. It masked itself beneath common cold symptoms—no fever, no rash, just a sniffle and fatigue. All rapid antigen tests failed to detect it. It passed undetected in six European cases until postmortem analyses revealed the horror beneath.

A junior virologist named Elise gasped and dropped her pipette. It clattered across the lab floor, rolling beneath the bench. No one scolded her. The silence that followed was heavy.

„It’s evolving faster than we can sequence it,“ she whispered.

Dubois didn’t look up. He was already calculating replication rates and mutation vectors, cross-referencing travel data from Johannesburg and Dakar. His lips moved silently.

In a corner, the AI assistant on the sequencing rig began a new alert: “New non-synonymous mutation detected at position 3412 – Strain Gamma-X.”

Outside, the Eiffel Tower still sparkled. Paris, oblivious, kept breathing.

Inside the lab, they knew: the virus was no longer just surviving. It was designing..“

---

The Wild Goose Chase

Day 26 – WHO Emergency Meeting (Geneva, Virtual)

The virtual meeting room flickered with tension. Thirty nations logged in, most in suits, some in scrubs. Behind each leader, walls of maps, dashboards, red blinking graphs. A planetary emergency disguised as a Zoom call.

Dr. Laurent Dubois‘ image appeared, fragmented by bandwidth and exhaustion. His face, pale under harsh fluorescent lab light, froze for a moment mid-sentence before catching up with the audio.

“We’re not dealing with one mpox strain anymore,” he said. “It’s diverging in real time, mapping its own evolution along every route of human travel.”

He tapped his console. The shared screen filled with a sprawling phylogenetic tree—more fungal than digital, a grotesque fractal of colored lines, loops, and offshoots. No two branches alike. No discernible pattern. Like a virus drawing its own escape plan.

A sharp voice cut through. The U.S. CDC representative, Dr. Karen Linwood, leaned into her camera. “Explain the Marseille cluster. It doesn’t add up.”

Dubois exhaled, then switched slides.

Twelve patient profiles appeared. Faces blurred, but the skin rashes weren’t. Circular lesions, pocked and raised, stretched across forearms, eyelids, lips. All visually identical. But the genomes behind them—completely unrecognizable from each other.

“Same symptoms,” Dubois said grimly, “completely different genetic sequences. The common factor? Each of these hosts was immunocompromised. The virus went rogue inside them.”

He zoomed in on one profile.

“This man here—café waiter, 31, Marseille. HIV-positive. No antiretrovirals. Gamma-X treated his body like a wet lab. Recombined with latent retroviruses, discarded genes, anything it could find. What came out wasn’t the virus we sent to labs last week.”

A German virologist unmuted and swore under his breath. “Are you saying we’ll need a dozen different vaccines?”

No one responded. Not right away.

One by one, faces on the screen stiffened. A Swedish delegate stared off-camera, whispering to someone just out of frame. The delegate from Kenya quietly typed notes. The South Korean rep shut his eyes.

The silence stretched.

Dubois didn’t fill it. He just let the next slide speak: a heat map of viral genome divergence over 72 hours. The colors moved like wildfire across continents.

One of the new branches pointed east—toward Mumbai.

Another arced south—Nairobi.

A third was untraceable. No host, no travel log, just a sequence flagged in sewage surveillance in Buenos Aires.

It was no longer a matter of where the virus would go. It was already there. In too many forms to count.

“This isn’t containment,” said Dubois finally. “It’s chase and scatter. The virus is writing new rules faster than we can translate them.”

No one argued.
There was nothing left to argue.

---

The Superspreader Petri Dish

Day 28 – Hôpital Saint-Antoine

The isolation ward on the sixth floor had taken on an eerie stillness, the kind that hangs in surgical suites before the first incision. Air purifiers hummed. Negative-pressure vents sighed. Every surface was scrubbed to antiseptic monotony. But inside Room 614, chaos was quietly blooming at the molecular level.

Dr. Élodie Fournier stood before the sealed glass door, adjusting her face shield. Her third PPE suit of the day clung to her skin like wet plastic wrap, fogging her goggles as she reviewed the case file again.

Patient 447. Female. 19. Known sex worker. Paris banlieue. Brought in with fever, fatigue, and unusual dermal lesions.

The girl was curled up on the cot, knees tucked to her chest like a child in punishment. Her name was Lila, and she hadn’t stopped shaking since admission. Beneath the isolation lights, her skin shimmered with lesions that seemed to shift color subtly as the light caught them—sickly greys, bruised violets, and a disturbing hint of cyan around the pustule rims.

Élodie stepped in, feeling the familiar crunch of boot covers on the disinfected floor. She kept her voice soft.

“Bonjour, Lila. I’m Dr. Fournier. I just need to take a look, alright?”

Lila nodded. Her breath rasped, dry and shallow. She pushed back her hospital gown with trembling fingers.

Élodie froze for half a second.

The pustules were… wrong.

They weren’t like the textbook mpox blisters—these had a faint blue tinge at the base, the color of shallow bruises or frostbite. Some were clustered along the spine, but others had formed along nerve lines in branching, feathery patterns. Almost beautiful, in a grotesque biological way—like ice crystals etched onto skin.

She carefully swabbed the edge of a lesion.

Initial diagnostics:

• PCR confirmed presence of Beta-3: the neuroinvasive substrain.
• DNA sequencing showed recombination with human herpesvirus-6—a hijacked viral hitchhiker now riding mpox’s replication cycle.
• All rapid antigen and lateral flow tests: negative. Gamma-X’s stealth mode still held.

Élodie scribbled notes with clinical detachment, but inside, dread was blooming.

“Lila,” she asked quietly, kneeling to eye level, “can you tell me who you’ve seen this week? Anyone you were in close contact with?”

Lila’s eyes fluttered. She looked embarrassed, but not ashamed. Her voice cracked from dehydration.

“I saw… a banker. From London. He comes every other Tuesday. Two tourists from Saudi Arabia. Brothers, I think. Oh, and… the football team.”

Élodie looked up sharply. “Which team?”

“The Ukrainian one. They’re in town for the qualifiers.”

A long silence followed. Élodie’s pen hovered over her clipboard but didn’t move.

“The Euro Cup qualifiers?” she asked, just to be sure.

Lila nodded slowly. “Yeah. They were staying at the Pullman by the river. They left this morning. Said something about practice at the stadium… Stade de France?”

A chill crawled up Élodie’s back, despite the stifling heat inside her suit. She didn’t answer. She stood up slowly, sealed the vial of swabbed fluid, and pressed the emergency code on her comm unit.

“Level 3 alert,” she said into the mic. “Potential superspreader event in motion. Patient 447 has had direct contact with international sports personnel—likely symptomatic during transmission window. Requesting immediate contact tracing.”

The channel crackled. “How many?”

“At least a dozen confirmed. High-profile. High-mobility.”

In the corner of the room, Lila began to cry.

Outside the hospital, traffic surged across Boulevard de l’Hôpital. Somewhere in the city, blue-and-yellow flags fluttered from balconies. Fans sang in the metro tunnels, drunk with pride and anticipation.
Kickoff at Stade de France was in 14 hours.
The stadium would hold 80,000 people.

And somewhere among them, the virus would cheer along..

---

The Mutation Accelerant

Day 30 – Underground Rave (La Station – Gare des Mines)

The entrance pulsed like a heartbeat. Beneath a graffiti-tagged railway arch, bodies in fishnets, leather, and LEDs snaked past security, their laughter swallowed by the thudding bass. Fog machines spat out chemical mist, mixing with sweat and vape smoke into a humid miasma that clung to skin and breath.

Inside, the warehouse was a cathedral of chaos. Concrete pillars shimmered with condensation. Laser beams strobed across half-naked dancers, illuminating glittered faces and dilated pupils. The air reeked of euphoria, ecstasy, and exhaled heat.

At the center of the crowd, a Japanese exchange student in neon platform boots screamed into the darkness, hair whipping as she danced. Her throat tickled—she thought it was the smoke. In truth, Gamma-X had bloomed overnight in her tonsils, and now every shout, every laugh, sprayed droplets into the pulsing air.

Behind the decks, an Italian DJ ripped off his shirt, sweat dripping from his tattooed torso onto the vinyl turntable. Two hours ago, he’d noticed the strange stiffness in his fingers. Beta-3 was already in his sweat glands—every handshake and chest bump leaving microscopic venom behind.

Near the bar, a French Marine kissed his boyfriend in the flickering dark, the burn scar from his 2004 smallpox vaccine still visible on his bicep. It offered no protection from Alpha-1, now replicating in his lungs. The marine coughed into his hand and wiped it on his jeans.

The bathrooms were barely lit—just a string of flickering purple LEDs. Two men leaned over a broken sink, laughing drunkenly. One offered a vape. The other took a deep drag, their fingers brushing. Both had tiny lesions inside their nostrils. Both exhaled.

Twenty minutes later, they were making out against a graffiti-tagged wall when their bodies reacted. Nausea. Chills. One collapsed; the other stared at his own hand, watching a pustule swell in real time.

By morning, they were at Hôpital Saint-Louis with symptoms that made seasoned nurses step back:

• Lesions glowing faintly under UV light
• Viral load detectable in breath, tears, and even urine
• A genetic profile that didn’t match any known sequence

Dubois’ team named it Omega-Z.

Under the microscope, Omega-Z’s behavior broke every containment model:

• Dual-receptor entry binding (targeting skin and nerve endings)
• Cytokine storm triggers after just 24 hours
• Mutagenic tendencies in co-infection environments

One of the researchers whispered, „It’s not a virus anymore. It’s a strategy.“

Back at the club, the next night’s lineup was already posted.
No one cancelled.
No one knew.
The speakers were already humming. The virus jumped between them, emerging 20 minutes later as a new hybrid strain—dubbed „Omega-Z“ by Dubois’ team when the couple arrived at ER with lesions that glowed under UV light.

---

The Breaking Point

Day 33 – Pasteur Institute Lockdown

The building was in full lockdown. Steel shutters had clamped over every window like a closing fist, sealing off the outside world. Inside, the Pasteur Institute no longer resembled a center for scientific progress—it had become a bunker, humming with panic beneath flickering emergency lights.

The corridors echoed with a mechanical voice:
„Containment breach in Sector B-2. All personnel initiate Protocol VERMILLION.“

In the heart of the subterranean BSL-4 wing, Dr. Laurent Dubois stood motionless in front of the central data array, his lab coat drenched in sweat, eyes fixed on the readout blinking in blood-red text.

He read the metrics out loud, as if saying them would make them less real:

• Airborne transmission efficiency: ↑ 300%
• Incubation period: 6 hours – 14 days (variance increasing)
• Vaccine escape mutations: Detected in 78% of sequenced cases

Each figure was worse than the last. Not a curve. Not a trend. A vertical spike into the abyss.

Across the room, the containment pod housing a neural tissue sample from Patient Zero gave a sudden, metallic groan. For a second, everything froze.

Then came the sound.
A wet pop, like a carcass splitting in sun.

The titanium-sealed chamber ruptured with a hiss, releasing a jet of hot, pressurized fluid. It splattered against the reinforced glass and began to foam—yellow, acidic, eating into the floor tiles with a corrosive hiss. An alarm screamed. Backup filtration systems activated, but too slowly.

Researchers screamed as biohazard suppressant sprayed from the ceiling vents in thick clouds—an automated defense system triggered by internal sensors. The foam covered everything: equipment, floor panels, boots. Visibility dropped to zero.

Dubois didn’t move. He stared at the screen. His hands were clenched white around the console, foam dripping from the sleeves of his suit. One of the interns—a boy named Theo, fresh from his virology rotation—had dropped to the floor in a fetal position. His voice was barely audible through the hiss of suppression gas.

“We’re not containing this…” he whispered, his breath fogging his face shield. “We’re documenting our own extinction.”

Someone retched into their respirator. Another tried to force open a decontamination chamber, only to find it locked down. Protocol VERMILLION was irreversible—no one in, no one out.

Élodie Fournier, now fully reassigned from the field to the institute’s internal outbreak response, burst into the room through a sealed airlock. Her visor was scratched, her gloves slick with antiviral gel. She shouted over the alarms.

“Gamma-X has crossed the placental barrier. We have neonatal fatalities in Rouen. Twins—born negative, died positive in 4 hours. We sequenced the amniotic fluid—it’s in utero now.”

Dubois didn’t respond. He was watching the 3D genomic model render the newest strain: Gamma-X.6b. It had lost its original mpox capsid completely. What replaced it looked like a hybrid—a rogue shell with mirrored symmetry, capable of folding and unfolding like origami. An immune system’s worst nightmare.

No antibodies bound to it in vitro. No known receptors blocked it. It was, for all intents and purposes, invisible.

The data streams on the wall shifted again.

• First confirmed reinfection in a previously recovered patient: Lyon
• Average time from exposure to full systemic involvement: 9.7 hours
• Viral shedding begins before symptom onset in 92% of cases

Someone somewhere was sobbing now. Maybe Theo. Maybe one of the senior researchers. It didn’t matter.

Dubois finally turned to Élodie.

“How long do we have before it hits critical mass?”

Élodie didn’t hesitate. “It already has. We’re behind it.”

Above them, Paris was still bustling—people in cafés, tourists taking photos under cloudy skies, fans chanting in metro tunnels. Life moved forward. Blind.

But underground, in the belly of France’s greatest scientific institution, the truth was no longer avoidable.

This was no longer a fight to contain the virus.

---

Epilogue: The Invisible Fire

Day 35 – Global Case Map

The world map on the WHO dashboard glowed like a fever. Borders didn’t matter anymore. Flags were irrelevant. The virus didn’t care for treaties, for language, for politics. It moved like wind, like gossip, like light—fast, unseen, and always ahead of the data.

The numbers were a lie, and everyone knew it.

🇪🇺 Europe: 14,892 confirmed cases
—But the real estimate hovered around 290,000+, hidden behind backlog, underreporting, and outdated PCR protocols. Clusters bloomed in tourist corridors, from Lisbon nightclubs to Vienna subway cars.

🌍 Africa: Data Unknown
—Surveillance systems in multiple nations had collapsed. Lab reagents ran dry. Power outages disabled sequencing centers. Reports from field doctors came in over scratchy radio waves, filled with words like “neurological,” “hemorrhagic,” “untraceable.”

🇺🇸 United States: First Gamma-X cluster detected in NYC bathhouses
—The stealth strain had seeded itself deep in the circulatory systems of Manhattan nightlife. Three cases had become thirty in 48 hours. Contact tracing failed before it began.

And yet, even now, flights still departed.
Even now, planes still crossed the Atlantic like nothing was wrong.

---

Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris – 22:17 local time

Gate A47 was deserted except for a dozen souls—travelers who looked like ghosts already. The usual cacophony of boarding calls had thinned to terse announcements, muffled behind masks and the distant echo of military boots pacing terminals.

Luc Moreau stood near the glass wall, staring at the tarmac with hollow eyes. His clothes were wrinkled, bloodstained at one cuff, his surgical scrubs long since swapped for a civilian jacket far too thin for a Canadian winter.

Strapped under his shirt, taped tight to his chest with surgical adhesive, was a single USB stick—Dubois’ final dataset.

It contained everything:
The real infection curves.
The recombinant genome sequences.
The failed vaccine trials.
The log of the containment breach.
And one chilling folder labeled “Gamma-X.7 – Montreal Forecast.”

The boarding gate buzzed. The last flight to Montreal. No first class. No security theatrics. Just a weary nod from a gloved agent and a thermal scanner that blinked green—for now.

Luc stepped onto the jetbridge.

As the plane taxied down the runway, he looked back. Out his tiny window, Paris shimmered in scattered light.

Then, like a curtain falling, the Eiffel Tower lights began to vanish.
Not all at once—sector by sector, like pixels winking out.

It wasn’t a power failure.
It was strategy.

A city going dark. Going underground.
Going into hiding.

Behind him, engines roared.
Beneath him, the continent exhaled in silence.

The virus wasn’t done.
But neither was the truth.
And Luc carried both.

Into the sky. Into the dark.

The Black Market Boom

Brussels – European Commission HQ

The atrium of the Berlaymont Building was quieter than usual, its glass walls filtering in cold gray light that did little to warm the marbled sterility of European power. Security guards now wore ballistic vests instead of suits, and motion sensors had been retrofitted to detect elevated body temperatures. Even the espresso machines in the lobby café had been removed—too many fingerprints.

Fatima van der Berg strode past the metal detectors without breaking pace, her heels clicking like metronomes of influence on the polished floors. Her €5,000 charcoal blazer, stitched in Antwerp, draped perfectly over a blouse cut low enough to distract but not enough to offend. In one hand, a slim leather dossier embossed with her firm’s initials: FVB Strategies. In the other, a disposable mask from a brand she would never personally use.

The EU Health Commissioner, Michel Dufresne, waited behind frosted glass doors in a temporary crisis suite. The air inside smelled faintly of antiseptic and tension. Six aides hovered around him, their laptops buzzing with alerts from virology centers, media leaks, and angry ministers from overburdened member states.

Fatima gave him a politician’s smile—warm, empty, precise—and handed over the dossier.

“My clients at PharmaGlobal Solutions,” she began, her Dutch accent ironed flat by years of boarding schools, “can deliver two hundred million vaccine doses by next month.”

Dufresne raised an eyebrow, not looking at her but at the data on the front page: shipping routes, cold-chain logistics, projected availability by region.

“There’s a catch,” he said.

Fatima leaned in, her voice silk over steel. “Of course. We’ll need an emergency waiver for the standard twelve-month safety trials. No red tape. Just green lights.”

She tapped a manicured nail on the bottom corner of the folder.
Page 17.
A paperclipped bank transfer slip—€8 million. Discreet. Offshore. Cayman Islands. Labeled only “Consulting honorarium.”

Dufresne finally looked up. His eyes were bagged, rimmed red with sleeplessness and fear—but he was still a politician. He weighed morality like tungsten on a scale.

“These vaccines,” he said slowly. “They’re American?”

Fatima smiled. Not coy—confident.

“Serbian. Developed by a private lab in Novi Sad. Reverse-engineered from discarded mpox samples leaked out of Montenegro last month. Fifty percent efficacy—on paper. In the real world? We market it as hope in a bottle. And hope,” she added with a wink, “doesn’t need to pass Phase III trials.”

Dufresne didn’t respond. Not immediately.

He turned away, looking out the reinforced window. Below, on Rue de la Loi, crowds were surging. Not protestors—customers.
Lines snaked around unlicensed pharmacies, where counterfeit vials labeled “MPOX-STOP™,” “GammaClean,” and “Saint Cure” were sold by men in hoodies and gloves. The latest rage was a nasal spray claiming to “digitally reprogram your immune cells.”

Meanwhile, truckloads of fake PPE were already being tracked by Europol. A convoy of MPOX-SHIELD™ masks had just crossed into Germany—filters made from painted toilet paper, stitched by child labor in Balkan warehouses. The spray-on “silver ions” were household glue mixed with perfume.

The commissioner exhaled. Slowly.

“How many doses can you guarantee by next Friday?” he asked.

Fatima didn’t hesitate. “Enough to calm the headlines.”

A pause. Then a quiet nod.

The aide beside Dufresne began typing up the provisional exemption request.

Behind them, televisions showed images of military bio-containment camps outside Milan. A crawl ticker read:
BREAKING: EU considers accelerated vaccine rollout amid growing cross-border panic.

Fatima retrieved her dossier and stood.

“I’ll need five security passes,” she said, “and access to the Luxembourg warehouse depot.”

“Done,” Dufresne replied.

She turned to leave.

“Fatima?” he called after her. “Does it work?”

She paused at the door.
“Define ‘work.’”
Then she was gone.

Outside, somewhere on the Autobahn, a refrigerated truck marked “Cold Gelato” hummed toward Berlin. Its cargo: 30,000 doses of watered-down serum with forged QR codes and booster labels printed on stolen Swiss government stock.

The virus had a new partner.

Capitalism.

The Body Brokers

Marseille Morgue – Day 45

The air inside the morgue was a stew of disinfectant, mildew, and something older—fermented grief, maybe. Refrigerated drawers hummed against cracked tile walls as Coroner Jean Lefèvre tugged the zipper closed on Body Bag #387. The corpse was bloated, blue-veined, and riddled with pustules that oozed something the textbooks hadn’t named yet.

He paused to wipe his gloved hands. His back ached. His soul ached more.

Outside, the city wheezed and boiled. The Mediterranean shimmered under a dirty sky, but no tourists wandered the port. Hospitals overflowed, garbage collection had ceased, and volunteers now ferried the dead in rented vans, sometimes delivering more than one body per bag.

Lefèvre had stopped logging names three days ago. They came too fast.
Too strange.

A muffled buzz came from beneath a pile of latex boxes. He reached for the burner phone—a scratched Android, always set to silent, always off-grid.

Text message received.
Sender: +971 █████████ (DUBAI)
Message:
Need 12 Gamma-X cadavers. No autopsies. 15k EUR per unit. Time-sensitive.

He stared at the screen. His finger hovered over the keypad.

Then he typed:
“20k. I’ll mark them as indigent cremations.”
Send.

The reply came within sixty seconds.
“Confirmed. Transfer in process. Usual route.”

Lefèvre slid the phone back into his coat. No further questions were necessary.

He knew what they wanted. Not forensics. Not justice. Raw biology.
Cadavers infected with Gamma-X, the stealth variant that evaded every known test, that twisted itself inside hosts like a parasitic origami.
No names. No paperwork.
No autopsies.

He knew the buyer: Aurora Helix Biotech, registered in Dubai’s “free zone,” listed as a “medical innovation hub.” Their real business? Biological speculation.
They were stockpiling mutations the way hedge funds hoarded water rights.

And Lefèvre… well, Lefèvre had a daughter.

Twelve years old, asthmatic, smart as a whip. New Zealand had shut its borders three weeks ago—but there were smugglers.
€50,000 for a seat on a fishing trawler sailing out of Madagascar, bound for Auckland.
The first payment was due tomorrow.

He walked down the corridor to Drawer 19, where the “cremation queue” lay—unclaimed bodies marked with yellow tape. No family. No records. Just flesh and paperwork waiting to disappear.

He chose twelve. Wrote “CREMATION ORDERED: INDIGENT” in bold across their files.
The crematorium wouldn’t notice—he controlled both the schedule and the logs.
In 36 hours, the twelve cadavers would be rerouted, packed in cooled containers, and listed as “biological medical waste” bound for a veterinary institute in Croatia.
That was the lie. The truth would land in a private lab in the Gulf.

He told himself it didn’t matter. They were already dead.

---

Meanwhile, in Marseille’s 13th arrondissement, where concrete towers leaned over crumbling streets, another kind of business flourished.

A pop-up clinic had taken over an abandoned Internet café. Its banner read:
“FREE BOOSTERS – GENEVA APPROVED – NO LINES”
People came in droves. Parents, nurses, bus drivers, delivery riders.

Inside, a man in scrubs with no medical license injected saline solution into arms for €500 a dose. Some walked out feeling safer. Others fainted later from the realization.

The labels on the vials looked official. “Geneva Health Coalition – Batch #A14-GX.”
But the barcode was lifted from a shampoo bottle.
The Geneva Health Coalition didn’t exist.

No one asked questions.
They were buying peace of mind, not protection.

Back at the morgue, Lefèvre locked up for the night and watched the sea from his tiny rooftop flat. His daughter’s photo sat on the windowsill, sun-bleached and curled at the edges.

His phone buzzed once more:
“Payment received. Container departs 02:15.”

He exhaled.

Another line crossed. Another ghost in the ledger.

Outside, sirens wailed down Rue Saint-Pierre.
A city drowning in the dead was learning how to make death profitable.

---

---

The Border Scam

Polish-Ukrainian Border – Day 50

The checkpoint stank of wet wool, diesel, and desperation.

Snow drifted sideways across the refugee lanes, forming pale dunes against overturned strollers and splintered crates. The cold here wasn’t just temperature—it had weight, like grief. Thousands of refugees huddled in line beneath tarpaulin tents and sagging signs that read:
„MANDATORY HEALTH CHECKPOINT – EU SAFE ZONE AHEAD.“

They came on foot from Lviv, Kyiv, Dnipro—men pushing wheelchairs, grandmothers cradling silent babies. Rumors said Poland had opened a corridor for medical asylum. No one mentioned the fine print.

At the front of the line, inside a prefab border booth, sat a man in a spotless UN-blue parka with a badge that read “HEALTH ATTACHÉ – Volkov, D.”
His real name: Dmitri Volkov, formerly of the Russian FSB, now CEO of MediSecure Solutions Ltd., a shell company incorporated in Malta with offices that didn’t exist and invoices that definitely did.

Dmitri’s breath fogged the interior glass as he slammed down rubber entry stamps like a bureaucratic metronome. Each stamp was a sentence, each transaction another notch in the fortune he was siphoning out of human misery.

“No entry without quarantine package!” he barked in Polish-accented English, his gloved finger stabbing toward a billboard hung crooked behind him.
€299 – EU-CERTIFIED PANDEMIC ENTRY KIT
“Cash or card.”

The „quarantine package“ came in a silver Mylar pouch with a holographic seal designed to look European but traced back to a print shop in Tirana.

Contents:

• A forged vaccine certificate—gamma-encoded, digitally useless, but visually convincing.
• A single white pill—placebo-grade aspirin, crushed, repressed, then glazed in sugar.
• A GPS ankle monitor—cheap Chinese plastic that stopped transmitting after 3 kilometers.

None of it worked.
All of it sold.

Dmitri’s men—bearded “paramedics” in knockoff biohazard suits—processed 7,000 people a day, raking in over €4 million weekly. Half the proceeds were wired through Luxembourg clearing houses and landed quietly in the personal retirement fund of a Brussels undersecretary.
In return, MediSecure was shortlisted for Category A EU pandemic logistics contracts.

It was all very modern.
All very civilized.

Across the yard, a floodlight buzzed and blinked out, plunging half the holding zone into shadow. Children whimpered. Someone screamed. Somewhere behind the tents, a generator backfired.

Near the gate, a coughing boy in threadbare shoes stood before a battered candy dispenser with a peeling UNICEF logo. A paper sign read:
“FREE LOLLIPOPS – Stay Brave!”
The boy smiled weakly, reached in, and took one.

It had been licked, handled, or sneezed on by 700 other children that day.
The virus had no borders. But it loved queues.

Volkov didn’t look up from his stamps. He was watching the digits tick upward on a laptop dashboard showing sales, pass-throughs, and estimated biometrics. The ankle trackers didn’t work, but the app showed simulated compliance data. Brussels never looked beyond the graphs.

At checkpoint exit lane 3, a woman in a wheelchair collapsed mid-clearance. The guards dragged her out of line and hosed down the spot with diluted bleach. Nobody paused. If you stopped moving, you stopped existing.

Above them, a surveillance drone hovered, capturing facial scans for health metadata that no one would ever review.

Dmitri leaned back, lit a filtered clove cigarette, and smiled.

“The market,” he said to no one, “always finds a way.”

---

The Revolt Begins

Place de la République – Day 65

The sky above Paris was a bruised shade of gray, choked with tear gas and smoke from burning barricades. The statue of Marianne, draped now in a soiled hospital sheet and tagged with spray paint—“NO CURE, NO PEACE”—stood watch over a revolution.

From the steps of the metro station surged a human tide. Doctors in tattered PPE, sleeves soaked with blood, carried cardboard signs shaped like biohazard symbols. Teachers marched grimly with laminated photos of their students—faces of children who had died coughing in underheated classrooms with broken hand sanitizer dispensers. Parents pushed strollers retrofitted with oxygen tanks, the tiny faces behind plastic shields already marked with telltale pox.

Then came the explosion.

A Molotov cocktail, lobbed by a medical student in a hoodie labeled „Société de Peste“, spun through the air in a flaming arc, crashing into a ViroShield executive limo parked behind police barricades. The car went up like a paper lantern, its polished chrome warping in the heat.

The crowd howled.

Above the chaos, Luc Moreau’s drone camera hovered like a silent witness, beaming footage live to millions of screens. His lens captured:

• Stacks of incinerated RFID ankle monitors dumped onto the steps of the Ministry of Health, the fire burning blue with melted circuitry.
• A field nurse, gaunt and sleepless, grabbing a black-market vaccine dealer by the throat and injecting him with a full dose of his own counterfeit serum. He convulsed and collapsed—dead in seconds.
• An art student spray-painting across the marble facade of the National Assembly in red letters:
  “THEY LET US DIE FOR MONEY”

Sirens screamed. Riot police moved forward in phalanx formation—batons up, tear gas canisters primed. But something broke. One gendarmes, barely twenty, hesitated as a boy no older than his cousin threw a rock at his boots.

His eyes flicked from the boy, to the burning stroller behind him, to the banner overhead that read:
“HOW MANY MORE?”

He ripped off his gas mask and hurled it into the flames.

The crowd erupted—half in disbelief, half in vengeance. Other officers faltered. One fell to his knees. Another began to cry.

In the chaos, a choir of infected children, masked and shivering, began to sing a fractured, hoarse version of La Marseillaise through portable speakers. The anthem echoed down Rue du Temple like a ghost.

And as the crowd surged forward, fire behind them and sirens wailing ahead, a new chant began to rise—not from any megaphone, but from a thousand cracked, defiant throats:

“We are the cure.”

---

Epilogue: The Rats Flee

Day 70 – Nice Côte d’Azur Airport

The runway shimmered under sodium floodlights, distorted by heat, jet exhaust, and distant flames on the horizon. Military helicopters circled like vultures above the smoking Mediterranean skyline. Inside the velvet-lined cabin of a private Dassault Falcon 10X, President Julien Renard loosened his tie with one hand and clutched a tumbler of vintage cognac with the other. His breathing was shallow—not from infection, but from the weight of final betrayal.

Outside, beneath the fuselage, a diplomatic attaché and two silent bodyguards loaded three matte-gray crates, each lined with lead and labeled as „UN Treaty Memoranda.“ Inside: solid gold bars, still warm from their rushed retrieval from the Banque de France vault, smuggled past riot checkpoints using forged Red Cross livery.

On the tarmac, engineers in hazmat suits argued beside pallets of sealed bio-containers. None were allowed aboard. Renard had made that clear.

Through the oval window, Renard saw a dark column of smoke rising from central Paris. At first, he thought it was another riot—but then the text came:

🔥 PASTEUR INSTITUTE ON FIRE. LAB TORCHED. DUBOIS PRESUMED DEAD. 🔥

His jaw tightened. They’d done it. The scientists had burned their life’s work rather than let his cabinet sell it to the highest bidder.

“Zurich has revoked our landing rights,” the pilot announced from the cockpit, voice flat but tense. “As has Stockholm. And Ottawa. And—” He hesitated. “New Zealand just declared all EU passports invalid for entry.”

Renard leaned back in his leather seat. He swirled the cognac, smirked, and said, “Try Moscow.”

The co-pilot muted the line. In the seat behind them, Renard’s media advisor vomited into a paper bag. She’d seen the satellite images—mass graves outside Lyon, drones herding fevered migrants into containment camps in Bavaria, the Geneva Health Authority dissolving under scandal.

As the Falcon’s wheels lifted off French soil, a transmission beamed silently from the Pasteur Institute’s underground servers, set on a dead-man switch by Dr. Élodie Fournier before the lab went up in flames. The files—unfiltered mutation logs, transmission maps, vaccine corruption leaks—routed through Nordic data havens and onto the dark web.

Meanwhile, deep beneath Marseille, a sewer rat—scarred, half-blind, hunched over a nest of rotting plastic and damp wires—twitched violently.

The rat had scavenged a chunk of flesh from a discarded biohazard bag left behind when the pop-up ICU flooded last week. It had fed on the leaking wound of a dead addict by the canal. Now its eyes glowed with a faint yellow sheen. Its gait was jerky. The pustules on its back pulsed as if breathing.

This was Gamma-X, no longer merely adapting—it was experimenting.

Within 48 hours, three feral cats would die after scratching that rat.
Within 72 hours, a street vendor’s 5-year-old daughter would cradle one of the kittens.
By Day 80, Omega-Zeta, the rodent-recombined strain, would jump to livestock in the Ardèche.
And the world would finally realize:
Renard had fled, but the real empire had stayed behind—microbial, merciless, and mutating.

CHAPTER 7: „THE GREAT FEAR“

Paris, France – Day 75 of the Outbreak

The Eiffel Tower, once the radiant beacon of the City of Light, stood in grim silence, its iconic silhouette swallowed by a choking darkness—no lights, no tourists, no hope. The boulevards were deserted, littered with the wreckage of a civilization collapsing. Abandoned cars clogged the narrow streets, their cracked windshields glinting like broken mirrors in the pale dawn. Shards of glass glittered beneath twisted metal street signs, remnants of looted shops and shattered dreams. The air was thick with a metallic tang—smoke from fires long extinguished, mingled with the scent of decay.

The virus, an invisible predator, had mutated into a nightmare no one could escape, but it was the invisible terror crawling through every heart that truly held Paris hostage: the Great Fear.

1. The Last Supermarket Raid

Carrefour Market, 10th Arrondissement – Dawn

A heavy fog clung to the streets as the first rays of sun strained weakly through a perpetually gray sky. Marie Leblanc’s grip on her son Julien’s small hand was iron-tight, her knuckles white with desperation. The little boy’s eyes darted nervously between the faces in the crowd—faces obscured by a patchwork of masks: threadbare scarves, torn bandanas, even flimsy plastic bags crudely tied with rubber bands.

The line stretched for blocks, a mass of humanity driven raw by hunger and fear. Mothers clutching children, gaunt old men shuffling forward, young men with wild eyes—everyone had one goal: survival.

As the automatic doors hissed open, the fragile order collapsed like dry paper. A surge of bodies crashed forward, and the market erupted into chaos.

A man in a wrinkled business suit, his face pale and sweating beneath a dirty surgical mask, shoved a frail elderly woman roughly to the ground, ignoring her cries. His hand clawed for the last cans of beans, ripping them from the shelf with savage desperation.

Nearby, a teenager with ink-stained arms smashed the glass of the liquor cabinet, not to drown his despair, but to hoard bottles of vodka—currency in the coming barter economy. He stuffed them into a battered backpack, eyes scanning for anyone daring to stop him.

A mother’s scream pierced the cacophony as her shopping cart was violently overturned by a burly man, sending cans and baby formula crashing to the floor. She scrambled desperately to save what she could, her baby wailing in a battered carrier strapped to her chest.

Marie, heart pounding, lunged through the melee and snatched a dusty bag of rice and a half-empty jar of peanut butter from the barren shelf. The weight of the items was a small victory, a lifeline in a world unraveling.

As she pushed her way out, the market manager’s office door swung open. She caught a glimpse of the man, eyes swollen red, his shoulders shaking as silent tears streaked down his grimy face. The safe behind him stood open, its contents—cash, valuables—emptied, vanished into the hands of thieves.

“They took everything,” he muttered brokenly, voice barely audible over the distant sirens and shouts outside. “Even the rat poison.”

The words hung heavy in the air—an ominous echo of a society teetering on the brink of collapse, where desperation made monsters of ordinary people and every day was a fight against the darkness closing in.

2. The Neighbor Who Disappeared

Apartment Building, Montmartre – Nightfall

Théo Moreau’s footsteps echoed faintly in the narrow hallway of the aging Montmartre apartment building. The air was thick with the scent of damp plaster and distant smoke from chimneys. It had been three days since he last saw Madame Laurent, his elderly neighbor—a gentle woman who had always brightened his days with jars of homemade cherry and apricot jam left quietly at his door.

Tonight, the usual warmth was gone. The hallway felt colder, heavier, as if the walls themselves held their breath. Théo paused outside her door, a faint flicker of unease knotting his stomach. He knocked softly, then pressed his ear against the wood. No coughs. No faint chatter of her favorite French soap opera on the old television. Just an unsettling silence.

His fingers trembled as he reached for the doorknob, finding it locked tight. He hesitated, a flicker of dread warning him to turn away. But the silence gnawed at him. Steeling himself, he slammed his shoulder against the door. The wood cracked, splintering under the impact, and it swung open with a sickening creak.

The stench hit him like a physical blow—an acrid, metallic odor mixed with decay. The dim light from the single flickering bulb revealed Madame Laurent sprawled motionless on her worn-out couch. Her skin, once rosy and soft, was mottled with purplish-blue lesions that glistened in the shadows like bruises of death. Her frail frame was curled in a silent surrender, the horror of the disease marked on her body in cruel detail.

Near her lay a half-packed suitcase, its zipper undone. On the small table beside it, train tickets to Nice were still visible—an unfulfilled escape plan, abandoned in the face of unstoppable illness.

Théo’s breath caught. His chest tightened, heart pounding like a war drum against his ribs. He wanted to scream, to call for help—but the empty city around him whispered a bitter truth: no one was coming anymore. The hospitals were overwhelmed, the authorities stretched thin. The world had retreated from people like Madame Laurent.

With shaking hands, Théo moved to the small kitchen pantry and quietly took the jars of jam—the last tokens of the neighbor who once brought sweetness into the darkness. Without looking back, he fled into the night, carrying a piece of humanity amidst the ruin.

3. The Checkpoint Shootings „THE HIGHWAY OF THE DAMNED“

(Checkpoint Massacre on Highway A6)

Lyon Outskirts – 2:47 AM

The acrid stench of burning rubber and gasoline clawed mercilessly at Captain Verrat’s throat, harsh and unforgiving like the city’s collapse itself. He adjusted the cracked NVGs over his bloodshot eyes, the cold glow from the night vision casting an eerie green tint across his grim, unshaven face. His arm bore the faded, hastily scrawled insignia of the „Sanitation Brigade,“ a name that once might have sounded clinical but now rang with the cold finality of death sentences.

From his vantage point atop the overpass, the scene below was apocalyptic—a serpentine stream of desperate humanity. The A6 highway stretched out like a wounded beast, headlights flickering and weaving through the dark like fireflies trapped in a cage. Cars packed bumper-to-bumper crawled forward, engines growling and overheating in the oppressive August humidity, their drivers clutching steering wheels as if their lives depended on it — because they did.

The line of refugees stretched back toward Paris, a city now lost to chaos and contagion. Every vehicle was a potential vessel of infection, every face hidden behind masks of desperation or sheer terror.

“Remember the rules!” Captain Verrat’s voice cracked the night, sharp and commanding, cutting through the low murmur of engines and distant screams. “No rashes. No cough. No entry. Southern towns are still clean!” His words were law here, unyielding and merciless.

The twelve men stationed with him—once ordinary citizens now armed enforcers—shifted uneasily under the weight of their orders. Their weapons, ranging from scavenged assault rifles to hastily modified shotguns, gleamed menacingly in the faint red glow of burning barrels scattered around the checkpoint.

Private Lacroix, his hands trembling slightly as he cradled a stolen FAMAS rifle, swallowed hard. The faint pulse of panic rippled beneath his voice. “And if they’re infected, Captain?”

Verrat exhaled a cloud of smoke into the humid night, the flame of his cigarette briefly illuminating the worn scars and tired lines etched deep into his face. “Then we burn the problem,” he said flatly, voice cold as steel.

Below, the first vehicle approached—a battered sedan with cracked windows and passengers pressing faces to the glass. A man coughed once, sharp and wet, a thin sheen of sweat glistening on his feverish forehead. The soldiers’ guns rose in unison. A burst of gunfire shattered the night. Glass exploded, screams pierced the air, and the car screeched to a halt, flames licking its undercarriage.

The smell of burnt flesh mingled with the gasoline smoke, creating a nauseating fog that hovered thick and choking over the highway. Some drivers tried to reverse, others abandoned their cars and fled into the darkness, only to be met by barking dogs and flashlights.

Verrat’s eyes narrowed behind his NVGs. He saw a woman clutching a rag over her mouth, a toddler in her arms, staggering forward desperately. The guards hesitated, the air thick with doubt, but Verrat’s hand was steady. “No exceptions,” he growled, raising his rifle.

A single shot echoed, muffled but final.

The highway became a killing ground—stretched between cities and sanity—where the infected and the frightened alike were hunted, purged, and discarded like refuse. Those left alive screamed curses into the night, a chorus of despair carried on the thick August air.

Behind him, the makeshift command post—a rusted shipping container covered in graffiti and hastily strung wires—hummed with the dull drone of radios and frantic whispers. The world was unraveling, and Captain Verrat’s brigade was the last cruel line drawn in the sand, a line painted in blood and fire on the Highway of the Damned.

---

The First Car: A Family of Five

The Peugeot 3008 crept forward under the dull glow of flickering floodlights mounted on the overpass. Inside, two children sat slumped in the back seat—exhausted, their small faces streaked with smudges of chocolate from long-guarded snacks. The faint glow of a half-eaten candy bar caught the light as the 6-year-old girl clutched it tightly, her eyelids heavy with fatigue and fear. Beside her, the 8-year-old boy rested his head against the window, staring vacantly into the darkness.

The father, a thin, pale man with sharp lines etched by worry and sleepless nights, leaned out of the cracked driver’s window. His voice was hoarse but steady, trembling with desperate hope. “We’re clean! My wife’s a nurse—she checked us all just this morning. No symptoms, no fever.”

Captain Verrat stepped forward, the cold beam of his flashlight cutting through the fog like a scalpel. It landed on the man’s left wrist, illuminating a small, sinister cluster of three blisters, their shiny surfaces pulsing with a sickly sheen. The light reflected off the fluid-filled pustules, betraying the father’s silent truth.

“Step out,” Verrat ordered, his voice void of hesitation.

The woman in the passenger seat screamed, raw and primal, the sound ripping through the night like a warning siren. The muzzle of a rifle pressed hard against her husband’s temple, the cold metal biting through the thin fabric of his skin.

BANG.

The crack of the gunshot echoed across the empty highway.

Inside the car, the children jerked awake. The boy’s eyes snapped open in horror as his father slumped forward, collapsing onto the steering wheel. The car horn blared relentlessly, a cacophonous wail that shattered the fragile silence of the night.

Verrat’s men moved with brutal efficiency, hauling the lifeless body from the driver’s seat. The mother’s screams turned to choking sobs as she was yanked from the vehicle, her arms flailing wildly as the guards ripped her children out behind her.

“Burn it,” Verrat growled.

Private Lacroix hesitated, his face contorted with conflicted anguish. “The kids—”

Verrat’s eyes narrowed, voice cutting through the night with merciless finality. “You see their arms? Clean. They can walk south.”

The mother’s hands clawed desperately at Lacroix’s vest, nails digging deep into the rough fabric. “You monsters! They’ll die on the road! They won’t survive the cold, the hunger!”

Her voice cracked, raw with despair and rage.

Without a word, Verrat lobbed a Molotov cocktail through the shattered driver’s side window. The glass exploded inward as flames licked greedily at the car’s interior. A sickening hiss of burning plastic and upholstery filled the air, thick smoke billowing in furious clouds.

The family was shoved toward the muddy ditch beside the highway, stumbling into the darkness. The 8-year-old boy paused, eyes wide and glistening, as he turned to glance back one last time—at his father’s blackened shoes, still protruding grotesquely from the fiery wreck.

Then, swallowed by the night, the boy vanished.

The mother sobbed brokenly as the flames consumed the Peugeot, its charred skeleton a grim monument on the “Highway of the Damned.”

---

The Businessman’s Bargain

A sleek black Mercedes S-Class screeched to a halt beneath the dim glow of the overpass. The tinted windows shimmered, hiding the luxury inside from the chaos outside. The driver’s door opened with a whisper; a silver-haired man stepped out, impeccably dressed in a tailored navy suit. His cold eyes flickered with desperation as he approached Captain Verrat’s command post.

The man rolled down his window just enough to slide out a crisp 500-euro note, the flicker of lamplight catching the edge of the bill. “No need for inspections, yes?” His voice was smooth but edged with fear, a brittle calm in the face of the brutal reality surrounding them.

Verrat’s lips curved into a slow, knowing smile. “Arm,” he said, nodding toward the man’s sleeve.

The CEO exhaled sharply, as if surrendering. He peeled back his cuff with trembling fingers, revealing a gruesome latticework of blistered, swollen lesions crisscrossing his pale forearm — raw, angry, and weeping. The marks were a twisted map of the infection, a cruel tattoo branding his fate.

“I have contacts in Geneva,” he whispered, his voice barely audible over the crackle of burning tires in the distance. “Vaccines. Real ones. I can get you supplies — for a price.”

Before the man could finish, the sharp crack of a gunshot echoed under the night sky. The CEO’s eyes widened in shock, a sudden, final disbelief freezing his features. He collapsed silently against the doorframe.

Verrat pocketed the blood-stained bill without a glance and flicked his lighter, the tiny flame casting flickering shadows over his grim face. With a fluid motion, he tossed a Molotov cocktail into the Mercedes. The glass shattered, and a roar of fire erupted, swallowing the vehicle in a searing blaze that painted the night orange.

“Geneva’s overrun, old man,” Verrat muttered under his breath, eyes cold as steel. “No more favors. No more deals.”

The flames crackled, consuming the last of the CEO’s ambition as the highway echoed with the distant wails of sirens and the relentless hum of desperate engines fleeing southward.

---

The Revelation

---

The moment the rusted latch snapped open, a fetid stench exploded from the truck’s cargo hold—a putrid, oily fog that seemed almost alive, curling and writhing in the harsh beam of the searchlight. The officers gagged, recoiling instinctively as the invisible miasma clawed at their throats and eyes. It was the unmistakable reek of death, sweat, and desperation, thick enough to taste.

Inside, the macabre tableau was revealed in flickering torchlight. Dozens of pig carcasses hung from iron hooks, their pale, bristled skin glistening with condensation. Each carcass swayed gently, as if disturbed by some invisible current. Their bellies had been crudely slit open, the incisions gaping like obscene mouths. But what spilled from within was not entrails, but something far more shocking.

Wedged deep in the thoracic cavity of one pig, a teenage boy lay curled in a fetal position, his knees drawn to his chest. His skinny arms clutched a battered teddy bear, its fur matted and stained. The boy’s face was pressed against the pig’s ribcage, eyes squeezed shut, as if he could block out the horror by sheer force of will. His breathing was shallow, almost imperceptible.

Nearby, an elderly woman was strapped inside another carcass, her frail frame lashed to the ribcage with fraying bungee cords. Her hair, silver and tangled, spilled across her face, but her eyes—milky and unfocused from cataracts—caught the light, reflecting it in ghostly halos. She did not cry out, only stared, her lips moving in silent prayer.

Between the swinging carcasses, more figures stood upright, their bodies slick and glistening. Refugees—men, women, children—had painted themselves head to toe in pig’s blood, the sticky crimson coating masking their scent from thermal scanners. The blood had dried in places, cracking like old paint, but fresh rivulets still ran down their arms and legs, pooling at their feet. Their faces were masks of exhaustion and terror, eyes wide and unblinking.

At the far end of the hold, a modified plastic cooler box sat wedged between crates. Inside, a newborn baby slept, swaddled in a threadbare blanket. An oxygen tube snaked from the infant’s nose to a battered scuba tank, its gauge trembling in the chill air. The baby’s tiny chest rose and fell with each labored breath, blissfully unaware of the nightmare around it.

Suddenly, the driver lunged from the shadows, his hand a blur as he pressed a rusted knife to Verrat’s throat. The blade bit into flesh, drawing a thin line of blood. His eyes were wild, darting from face to face.

“They paid five thousand euros each!” he screamed, voice cracking with panic. “Their papers are in the—”

A single gunshot shattered the chaos. Lacroix’s pistol flashed, the bullet punching up through the driver’s palate. The man collapsed wordlessly, his body crumpling at Verrat’s feet.

For a moment, the only sounds were the soft, shuddering sobs of the refugees, mingling with the slow drip of blood onto the cold metal floor.

The Unraveling

03:24 AM – Stampede

The girl’s knees struck the tarmac first. Her butcher’s apron—stiff with animal fat and dried blood—billowed around her as she folded like a marionette with cut strings. The theatrical pig’s blood sluiced off her in rusty rivulets, revealing mottled skin beneath. Her arms, crisscrossed with lesions the color of rotten plums, trembled as she tried to crawl. A security officer recoiled, shouting, “Contaminé!” as the lesions pulsed faintly, emitting a sweet-sick odor of necrotic tissue.

Chaos erupted.

Refugees surged from the truck’s belly like corpse moths exploding from a rotting stag—a frenzy of limbs and primal screams. A Congolese man in a tattered football jersey vaulted over the truck’s edge, only to meet a guard’s bayonet mid-leap. The steel blade erupted through his lower back in a spray of viscera, pinning him grotesquely upright. He hung there, gasping, fingers still clawing at the air toward the tree line.

Twenty meters away, a pregnant woman stumbled through the pandemonium, her swollen belly cradled in blood-smeared hands. When the contraction hit, she collapsed onto all fours, a guttural wail tearing from her throat. Black amniotic fluid burst across the tarmac, thick as crude oil and reeking of spoiled copper. It pooled around her knees, reflecting the flashing emergency lights in iridescent streaks.

The teenager with the teddy bear moved like a hunted animal—all desperate, zigzagging sprints. His gasoline-drenched shirt left a shimmering hydrocarbon trail in his wake. Verrat’s incendiary round caught him mid-stride. Flame engulfed his torso with a whump, transforming him into a shrieking human torch. The teddy bear, still clutched in his burning arms, melted into a smoldering tumor of synthetic fur and plastic eyes.

---

03:27 AM – The Choice

Lacroix’s Glock trembled in the sodium-lit haze, its laser sight painting a crimson dot between the cooler-box baby’s eyebrows. The infant stirred, its wrinkled face contorting as eyelids—translucent as moth wings—peeled open.

No sclera. No iris. Just twin voids of obsidian, swallowing the light.

The Omega-Z mutation.

Verrat’s barked “Don’t—” was drowned by the scream.

It began as a subsonic rumble—vibrating teeth, shaking loose bolts in the checkpoint barriers—before erupting into a glass-shattering wail. Windshields exploded in diamond bursts. A nearby medic clapped hands to bleeding ears. The cooler box vibrated violently, the baby’s tiny body arching off its makeshift mattress as the cry intensified into something predatory.

Lacroix’s finger whitened on the trigger. “It’s not human anymore!”

“Neither are we!” Verrat roared back, his own weapon now trained on Lacroix’s temple.

In the fractured silence between heartbeats, the child’s black eyes swiveled to meet Lacroix’s gaze. A drop of viscous fluid welled at the tear duct—ink-black and iridescent, like a dying star.

---

The Aftermath

The Aftermath

Dawn crept over the highway like a guilty witness. The rising sun painted the truck’s skeletal remains in hues of burnt umber and jaundiced yellow, its twisted frame still smoldering. Inside, 47 refugees had fused into a single mass—carbonized limbs interlaced in a final embrace, teeth grinning from shrunken skulls. A child’s melted sneaker protruded from the ash, its cartoon logo bubbling. The air reeked of pork and hair, a sickening barbecue that drew crows in ragged, circling mobs.

Six guards lay arranged in a perfect semicircle 30 meters from the checkpoint. Their regulation boots pointed skyward, throats slit ear-to-ear with surgical precision. One clutched a photo of his daughter in his rigor-stiffened hand, her smile speckled with his dried blood. Their suicides were methodical, devotional—as if the baby’s banshee wail had burrowed into their cerebellums and bloomed into a compulsion.

Beyond the barricades, the forest seethed. Beech trees trembled under the weight of something clattering through the canopy—a sound like scissors snipping bone. Thermal cameras showed only fleeting shadows: humanoid shapes moving with insectile jerks, their body heat registers flickering between 98.6°F and ambient. No one volunteered to investigate.

---

06:17 AM – The Composition

Verrat found Lacroix kneeling in a ditch, his uniform streaked with soot and brain matter. The private hummed a lullaby as he arranged his macabre mosaic:

• A guard’s severed hand, middle finger extended, served as the smile
• Two charcoal-encrusted eyeballs (still moist) formed the pupils
• The curve of a refugee’s ribcage, picked clean by rats, arched into the upturned cheeks

“Don’t you see?” Lacroix giggled, pressing a disembodied tongue into the mud to perfect the grin. His own tongue was split down the middle, snake-like. “It’s how they want to be remembered. Joyful.”

Verrat leveled his sidearm. “Report status, Private.”

Lacroix tilted his head, rainwater streaming from his nostrils. The downpour had begun minutes prior—warm and syrupy, stinging exposed skin.

“It’s in the rain now,” he whispered, lapping at the air. “Taste it. Metallic, right? Like sucking on a battery. They’re hatching.”

The first blisters erupted on Lacroix’s neck as he spoke—translucent vesicles pulsing with black fluid. Verrat fired. The round exited through a burst of Occipital bone, scattering neural matter that writhed like salted leeches before going still.

Too late.

Across the highway, infected raindrops hissed against the wreckage. The incinerated corpses began twitching.

Epilogue: The Road South

Noon on Highway A6, and the sun hung overhead like a merciless eye, baking the devastation below. The once-busy artery of southern France was now a corridor of ruin, silence broken only by the distant crackle of fire and the cawing of crows.

A legless veteran, his uniform shredded and caked with grime, dragged himself through the carnage. His hands, raw and bleeding, gripped the scorched tarmac as he pulled his body forward, inch by agonizing inch. He paused beside a BMW, its luxury now reduced to twisted metal and shattered glass. With trembling hands, he unscrewed the fuel cap and pressed his lips to the opening, sucking greedily at the bitter gasoline pooled inside. The liquid ran down his chin, mixing with blood and sweat, but he drank anyway—thirst and madness indistinguishable in his glassy eyes.

Nearby, crows gathered in a black, raucous parliament atop the remains of a checkpoint guard. The man’s body was sprawled across the road, his armband—once a symbol of authority—reduced to a smear of ash on his sleeve. The birds tore at his flesh, their beaks slick with gore, feathers gleaming oily in the noon light. One hopped away with a glinting badge in its beak, a macabre trophy from a fallen world.

In the distance, the Lyon skyline shimmered through the haze, towers and rooftops silhouetted against columns of smoke. The city was burning—hospitals overrun, sirens swallowed by the roar of flames and the screams of the infected. Helicopters circled like vultures, searching for safe ground that no longer existed.

Amid the wreckage, a small tableau remained untouched. A child’s shoe, scuffed and mud-stained, sat beside a melted teddy bear. The bear’s arms were still wrapped protectively around a half-eaten chocolate bar, its foil glinting in the sunlight. The chocolate had softened and oozed, staining the bear’s fur and the ground beneath—a silent testament to innocence lost, and to the memory of a child who had clung to sweetness in the heart of the storm.

And all along the road, the wind carried the faint, persistent chittering of something new, echoing through the emptiness, promising that the nightmare was far from over.

---

4. The Silent Streets

Rue de Rivoli – Day 80

Eighty days since the world had changed, and Rue de Rivoli—once the pulsing heart of Parisian commerce—had become a mausoleum. The grand facades of department stores and boutiques were pockmarked with bullet holes and graffiti, their windows shattered, spilling jagged glass like ice across the pavement. Abandoned mannequins, stripped of their finery, stood in mute, accusatory poses behind the ruins of display cases, their plastic limbs scattered and broken among the debris.

A lone cyclist appeared, weaving a nervous path between overturned delivery trucks and burned-out scooters. The wheels of his battered bicycle crunched over glass and discarded surgical masks. A battered gas mask, its filters stained and cracked, clung to his face—his breath fogging the visor with each exhale. He pedaled in silence, eyes darting from shadow to shadow, every muscle tensed for flight.

In a narrow alley, a stray dog—its ribs sharp beneath a matted coat—gnawed hungrily at something unidentifiable. The sound of tearing flesh echoed off the stone walls, but no one dared look too closely. The line between animal and survivor had blurred; hunger had made monsters of them all.

From somewhere above, the dry, hacking cough of a child rang out from an open apartment window. The sound was sharp, desperate—each fit echoing down the empty street like gunfire. Curtains fluttered in the stale breeze, but no face appeared. The city had learned to hide.

Those few souls who still braved the daylight moved like ghosts, hugging the shadows and crossing the street to avoid one another. Scarves and makeshift masks hid their faces, eyes fixed on the ground. Eye contact was a risk; a glance could be mistaken for a challenge, or worse, an invitation. Breathing itself was an act of defiance. Existing was dangerous—a daily wager against invisible death.

Somewhere in the distance, church bells tolled the hour, their chime hollow and unheeded. The city listened, and remained silent.ous.

5. The Radio Broadcast

National Emergency Frequency – Intermittent Transmission

Across the fractured city, radios crackled in darkened kitchens and candlelit basements, their battered speakers the last fragile threads tying survivors to the world outside. The National Emergency Frequency, once a lifeline, now sputtered with static and ghostly fragments of officialdom.

A shrill burst of white noise preceded each transmission, the signal wavering as if struggling to pierce a storm. Then, a voice—strained, metallic, and thick with exhaustion—emerged from the hiss:

“…avoid all physical contact…repeat, avoid all physical contact…”

The words echoed through empty rooms and hollowed hearts. On the streets, listeners froze, clinging to the instructions as if they were prayers.

“…food distribution points in…sector six, sector twelve…curfew remains in effect…”

The message faltered, the voice dissolving into a garbled mess of frequencies. Somewhere, a child pressed a radio to her ear, lips moving silently, hoping for her parents’ names, for reassurance that never came.

“…military quarantine in effect…no travel permitted beyond… perimeter…”

The broadcast stuttered, cut by the distant thump of artillery and the wail of sirens bleeding through the static. Each pause stretched the tension tighter, making every syllable a lifeline.

A final, trembling phrase slipped through, barely more than a whisper:

“…God help us all…”

Then, only static. The relentless, indifferent hiss of the void filled the silence, as if the world itself had exhaled and gone still. Radios flickered and died, leaving survivors with nothing but the echo of a voice, and the knowledge that they were, for now, truly alone.

6. The Last Message

Luc Moreau’s Final Documentary Footage – Day 85

The camera shook as Luc filmed from his balcony. Below, a body lay in the street, untouched for days.

„They’re saying it’s in the water now,“ he whispered. „Or the rats. Or the air. No one knows.“

A scream echoed from a nearby building. Luc didn’t flinch.

„If anyone finds this… we deserved better.“

The screen went black.

---

JULES MOREL: THE MAN WHO BURNED THE WORLD

1. The Prodigy (2016–2019)

At Sorbonne Université, Jules Morel was a legend in the making—equal parts savant and acid prophet. He dominated his MSc in Virology with a supernatural clarity that unnerved even his most seasoned professors. Unbeknownst to them, his secret weapon wasn’t long nights or perfect recall, but microdoses of LSD, carefully timed to unlock what he called “RNA’s hidden grammar.” He claimed to see folding helices in synesthetic bursts of ultraviolet and gold.

His thesis, Zoonotic Bridging in Arenaviruses: A Molecular Cartography, was a revelation. It mapped host-shift potentials with terrifying predictive power and won him the Pasteur Junior Medal. But his reputation soured during finals week: someone had dosed the department’s communal espresso machine with psilocybin. By the time Dr. Baudry hallucinated he was an Epstein-Barr virus, the secret was out. Jules didn’t deny it—he just smirked and said, “I thought you’d want to meet your research.” From then on, faculty avoided eye contact and whispered the word “unstable” like it was contagious.

---

2. The Crash (2020)

The news came in a terse email: Claire Morel, deceased. Suspected PPE failure. Kikwit, DRC. His twin. His mirror. Dead in a jungle clinic, eyes hemorrhaged, lungs frothing. She’d been treating Ebola patients as a Médecins Sans Frontières nurse, but the official story reeked of cover-up.

Jules flew to Kinshasa under the pretense of grief. What he uncovered was worse than corruption—it was apathy. Diluted bleach passed off as medical-grade disinfectant. Pallets stamped with EU aid logos, filled with lies. Claire had died wearing armor made of water.

Something fractured in him. He returned to Paris with her journal and a suitcase full of soil samples. He started injecting sub-anesthetic doses of ketamine, calling them “fever simulations.” He claimed it brought him closer to viral consciousness—“to think like a pathogen, to feel the hunger.”

---

3. The Descent (2021–2024)

Out of guilt or pity, his former thesis advisor pulled strings to get him a lab tech position at the Institut Pasteur. He worked quietly in the shadows of giants, but his routines were anything but normal.

Each night at 3:00 AM, Jules enacted his private rite:

• Step 1: Inject ketamine in the BSL-2 locker room, shivering as the cold metal met skin
• Step 2: Plug into Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” at full volume
• Step 3: Whisper to the ancient virus stocks in Vault #7, cradling the smallpox vials like relics—„You’re not monsters. You’re misunderstood clocks, ticking in reverse.“

Security logs noted erratic entries. Colleagues complained of humming behind containment doors, odd smells, and once, a blood-smeared poem on the breakroom fridge. His lab notebooks, later recovered from the charred remains of his apartment, were unsettling. Notes in the margins blurred the line between grief and genocide:

Day 114: Claire bled for a system that feeds on silence. If she died unheard, maybe the world should scream.

---

4. The Final High (Day 52)

By this point, Jules was chasing transcendence with an urgency that bordered on the apocalyptic. The ketamine dosage quadrupled. He stopped eating. His skin grew pale and translucent, veins webbing like mycelium. He claimed he could “see inside replication,” that mpox wasn’t just mutating—it was trying to communicate.

On Day 52, security footage captured his final sequence:

• 9:47 PM: Removes gloves, licks a petri dish laced with an Omega-Z culture. „Tastes like copper and lightning,“ he murmurs.
• 10:12 PM: Draws smiley faces on biohazard bags with permanent marker. Two eyes, a wide grin—then a dripping red X over each.
• 10:55 PM: Approaches Containment Room 4, presses his forehead to the glass, and whispers: “Claire says hi.” Then overrides the lockdown protocol.

Alarms blared. Airlocks hissed. Then silence.

---

5. The Aftermath

They never found his body—only a melted security keycard lodged in the incinerator chute and a torn piece of lab coat in the waste chute filter. A week later, his Twitter account, long dormant, posted a string of hexadecimal code paired with a photograph of an mpox culture dish shaped eerily like a human iris.

To this day, @KetamineVirologist still tweets at irregular intervals—always at night, always during full moons. Followers swear the codes correlate with emerging mpox variants cataloged weeks later by the WHO.

Some say Jules is dead. Others believe he became something else—a prophet, a plague, or both.ever found—just a melted keycard near the incinerator chute. Some claim his Twitter account (@KetamineVirologist) still posts encrypted mutation codes during full moons.

---

The Assistant Who Didn’t Care

Pasteur Institute, Paris – Day 11 of the Outbreak (Retrospective Log Entry)

Jules Morel, 24, was not built for procedure. Not anymore.

He moved through the BSL-3 suite like a sleepwalker in a chemical dream, his breath fogging the inside of his visor with each slow exhale. The heads-up display flickered with warning glyphs he’d long since learned to ignore. Pressure imbalance. Glove seal irregularity. Elevated heart rate. Psychotropic flag.

His pupils were blown wide, jet-black saucers reflecting the sterile light overhead. Somewhere deep in his hippocampus, ketamine was sawing reality into manageable slices. One part of his mind floated ten feet above his body, watching him like a god. Another whispered about spirals in the genetic code—spirals that meant something.

He fumbled with the rack of culture tubes on the steel bench, muttering a half-finished song lyric under his breath. His gloved hands, slick with micro-beads of condensation and sweat, trembled as he reached for Gamma-X Strain #447. The vial was marked with a red “X” and a yellow star. That was the sample harvested from the dead lycée teacher in Orléans—the one who’d bled from her tear ducts before biting through her own tongue.

“Putain, Jules!”
Dr. Isabelle Laurent’s voice flared in his earpiece like a gunshot.
“You didn’t decon your gloves!”

He flinched, half-dropping the tube, then caught it with a clumsy twist of his wrist.
“Relax, doc,” he said, grinning behind the fog. “It’s just sniffles.”

The tone in his voice was unbearable—bored, dismissive, stoned.
He popped the cap like it was a bottle of soda.

Inside, the viral suspension glittered faintly—an iridescent swirl in saline medium.
That shimmer wasn’t standard. It never had been. Omega-Z’s children glowed.

Isabelle’s response came in sharp and fast, the clipped bark of a woman with no time for disasters.

“Jules. Reseal that vial and step back from the station. Immediately.”

But he didn’t. He tilted the tube slightly, watching the liquid lap at the rim like mercury.
“I just wanna see how it breathes,” he whispered. “It’s alive, you know. It’s aware.”

Then it happened.

His fingers slipped.

A single drop—no larger than a pinhead—leapt from the rim as the vial jerked in his hand. It spun in slow motion, a bead of impossible consequence, and landed squarely on the exposed crescent of skin between his glove and wrist—where his suit’s tape seal had peeled back during his last clumsy adjustment.

For one long second, there was silence. Even the lab’s ventilation hum seemed to pause.

The droplet sat there, trembling like it knew it had won.

Jules blinked. Then smiled.

“Well, shit.”

Isabelle was already screaming through the comms.
“JULES—DECON! NOW! WRIST SEAL COMPROMISE—MEDIC SHUTDOWN—”
Her voice cut into a distorted feedback loop as the system began automatically isolating the chamber.

Jules stared at the spot on his wrist. The skin beneath the droplet began to redden, then darken, veins blooming outward in a fractal lace. He felt no pain—only a sudden rush of clarity. A brilliant light in the mind. Epiphany.

“This is what it wanted,” he said, not to anyone. “This was the design.”

Containment alarms roared to life. Red lights spiraled. Doors slammed into lockdown.

In the control booth, Isabelle pounded the emergency purge key, eyes locked on the monitor as her assistant—her student—stood calmly amid flashing strobes, smiling like he’d solved a riddle carved into the bones of God.

Then he began to laugh.

It started as a chuckle. Then a howl. Then full-bodied, shaking, euphoric laughter as his body shuddered and collapsed. He vomited blood and mucus onto the cleanroom floor. His nose began to bleed. The laughter didn’t stop. It echoed, distorted by the suit’s comm filter, until it sounded like a whole choir of him was laughing together.

Isabelle stood frozen. Not just in horror—but in realization.
The incubation period… it had shortened.

Gamma-X was no longer just contagious. It was immediate.

The last frame on the internal surveillance tape—now stored under classified lock in Geneva—shows Jules Morel on his knees, looking directly into the lab camera.

His mouth moving.

No audio. Just lips.

But experts agree: he was saying a name.

“Claire.”

---

The Moment It Happened

00:00:03 – Viral Penetration
The Omega-Z hybrid didn’t “infect.” It selected.

Jules Morel’s body was a beacon—pulse elevated, dopamine levels spiked from ketamine, sweat glands overactive, pores yawning open like gates. The virus, sensing heat, cortisol, and hormonal volatility, activated its engineered spike proteins: Variant-K4 glycoproteins laced with synthetic prion scaffolding. These weren’t natural. They were designed—perhaps by Jules himself, in a half-forgotten bender at 3am.

The droplet on his wrist shimmered. Then, with unsettling precision, it melted inward.

Capillaries flared. Epidermal nerve endings spasmed. Before his brain could register a sting, the Omega-Z load was already swimming upstream through his lymphatic highway.

00:00:22 – Neural Interface Begins
In the brainstem, Jules’ blood-brain barrier offered a token resistance. The virus bypassed it via his olfactory tract—leveraging ketamine-induced permeability to slip directly into his limbic system.

By second twenty-two, synaptic hijacking had begun.

00:00:47 – First Symptoms
Jules laughed softly. The colors inside the petri dish seemed to swirl like oil on fire—violet halos, orange latticework, something extra-dimensional blooming at the edge of perception.
He reached out to touch it and missed, giggling.

His hands began to tremble. On his neck, just below the mandible, veins flushed blue with bioluminescent hemotoxins—the virus was metabolizing his iron, converting it into signaling pigments.

He scratched absently. Didn’t feel it.

00:01:33 – Auditory Distortions
The room began to sing. To Jules, every machine emitted a note: the centrifuge a low A, the lights a faint G sharp. The vents whispered in D minor.

Inside his cerebellum, viral prions mimicked dopamine neurotransmitters, creating false signals. Reality recomposed itself.

Jules whispered:
“Claire’s voice… in the vents…”

00:02:05 – Vascular Bloom
Inside his chest, capillaries expanded to ten times normal diameter. Red blood cells ruptured. Oxygen levels fell. But instead of collapse, his body adapted. Temporarily. Spikes formed beneath the surface of his skin—protein filaments weaving through muscle fibers like scaffolding.

He was being rebuilt.

00:03:12 – Containment Failure
It happened without thought—pure reflex.

The nausea hit like a punch. Jules tore off his helmet, eyes bulging, throat convulsing. He bent over and vomited a frothy stream of blood, mucus, and bile directly onto the floor grates.

A faint pop echoed through the lab—his sinuses hemorrhaging.

Unseen to the naked eye, 5,000+ viral particles launched into the air in a shimmering aerosol plume. They drifted upward into the vent system—dancing on microcurrents like spores on a spring breeze.

The lab’s air system, designed for efficiency, not virologic sabotage, obediently recirculated them through all adjoining research bays, locker rooms, decon chambers, and the staff lounge.

Within seconds, Omega-Z had occupied 72% of Pasteur’s internal airflow.

00:04:09 – Viral Intelligence Spike
In the microscope lens—still open on Jules’ workstation—cells of Omega-Z began to arrange themselves into symmetrical formations. Not random. Geometric.

Like runes.

One cluster blinked in bioluminescent pulses, spaced in prime intervals.

One virologist later described the pattern as “a kind of Morse code, but for proteins.”

00:04:55 – The Alarm No One Heard
In the main lab control panel, the Type IV Biocontainment Breach light began flashing red.

Sensors screamed silently:

• External pressure drop
• Contaminant load above threshold
• Aerosolized unknown agent

But the lab stayed quiet. Jules had silenced the alert system six days earlier, in the middle of a hallucinated panic attack. He told the system to suppress all tones above 38 dB.

He called it the „Beeping Nightmare Override.“

No one noticed.

The breach continued.

And deeper inside the institute, in Storage Vault #7, a row of smallpox vials rattled softly in their cryo-sockets—as if they too were waking up.

---

The Spread

Pasteur Institute – Day 52, Hour 1: Internal Chronology of Transmission

---

Level 3 – Specimen Storage, 09:21 AM
Virologist Amélie Dufresne leaned over the barcode scanner, cataloging cerebrospinal fluid samples from dead field operatives in Mali. Her mask itched; the air felt unusually heavy, like standing in a room full of old books and low thunder. She sneezed—twice, quickly—into her FFP3 respirator.

No one noticed. No alarms sounded.

Seventeen minutes later, she dropped a cryotube.

Her gloves came off to check for glass.

At minute twenty, she examined her fingertips. They were flushed, then darkened. The skin along her index and middle finger began to split—first at the cuticles, then down the ridges like overripe fruit. Clear fluid wept from beneath her nails. She tried to call for help, but her tongue felt thick and hot, as if too large for her mouth.

Security footage shows her walking into the freezer bay, shutting the door behind her, and lying down next to the sealed Ebola samples.

She froze to death quietly while her blood congealed in bright spiral patterns beneath her skin.

---

Level 2 – Break Room, 09:26 AM
Alain, a janitor on contract from a private services firm, hummed the chorus to „Comme d’habitude“ as he jabbed buttons on the ancient microwave. His lunch—spinach lasagna in a foil tray—spun lazily inside, filling the room with the scent of garlic and chemical cheese.

The vents above him hissed.

He paused, sniffed. Something… sweet? Like rotting mango. Maybe bleach?

Three minutes later, he wiped sweat from his brow. By 09:35, he had vomited into the mop sink. He texted his supervisor:

„je me sens pas bien. nausée. fièvre.“

He collapsed outside the break room at 09:48 AM. His final autopsy noted complete pulmonary liquefaction within 90 minutes of exposure.

No one cleaned up his lunch.

---

Ground Floor – Main Lobby, 09:51 AM
Jules Morel emerged from the freight elevator like a man waking from anesthesia. His pressure suit hung open around his waist, trailing behind him like a molted skin. His white undershirt was soaked through with sweat, tinged gray at the collar. His nose bled thick black sludge, bubbling as he exhaled.

Security guards glanced up from their monitors. One started to rise, hand on his holster.

Too late.

Jules staggered forward, arms slack. His skin pulsed faintly under the fluorescent lights, veins glowing blue like circuit lines under flesh. He was smiling again—that same vacant grin, eyes unfocused, as if seeing something hovering just beyond the visible spectrum.

Through the revolving doors, the World Health Organization delegation arrived:

• Dr. Farid Bhatti (Biosecurity Advisor, Geneva HQ)
• Dr. Leila Toure (Field Epidemiologist, Dakar)
• Two junior officers from the European CDC

They were carrying documents, charts, and a diplomatic case meant to deliver emergency antiviral stocks for Omega-Z study.

Instead, they received Jules.

He collapsed at their feet.

Dr. Toure knelt to assist—against protocol. Jules seized her wrist. Blood from his palm soaked into her glove cuff before anyone noticed. She gasped. Her skin began to steam.

The receptionist hit the panic button. It was no longer connected to anything.

---

Meanwhile – Ventilation Grid Access, 10:04 AM
Rodents in the sub-basement scurried across the grates, some already infected. A pair of pigeons nesting on the rooftop HVAC vent flapped once, then went still. One fell to the street below with a soft thud, unnoticed by the gathering crowd of protesters demanding COVID amnesty and lab transparency.

No one inside the Pasteur Institute would leave alive.

---

The Fallout

07:32 AM – Military Lockdown
Soldiers welded the lab doors shut with 50 staff still inside. Screams echoed through the vents as Gamma-X met Omega-Z in human hosts, creating Strain Theta-9—a variant that digested lung tissue in 4 hours.

09:15 AM – Paris Metro Line 4
Jules collapsed onto a crowded train, his burst lesions smearing on handrails. The mutation spread faster underground—heat and humidity were its accelerants.

12:00 PM – Global News Blackout
Government screens showed pre-recorded press conferences while body bags piled up in the Seine.

---

Epilogue: The Last Experiment

Pasteur Institute Basement – Day 53

Dr. Laurent, now blinded by ocular hemorrhages, typed the final log entry with bone-exposed fingers:

*“Strain Theta-9 airborne stability: 18 hours. Mortality rate: 92%. Recommend immediate—“*

The self-destruct sequence erased her and the truth in a fireball visible from Belgium.

—

CHAPTER 8.2: „THE FAMILIES LEFT BEHIND“

Paris, 17th Arrondissement – Day 54 of the Outbreak

The rain fell in gray sheets over the empty playground where Sophie Laurent sat on a rusted swing, her daughter’s backpack clutched to her chest. Inside it: a half-eaten bag of Haribo gummies, a science textbook with „Property of Amélie Dufresne, Age 9“ scribbled in pink marker, and a single latex glove—the only thing Sophie had left of her wife.

1. The Phone Call That Ended the World

Three nights ago, Dr. Élodie Dufresne had called from the Pasteur Institute, her voice tinny through the hazmat suit’s comm system:

„Sophie… there’s been an accident. They’re locking us in.“

Sophie had pressed the phone to her ear so hard it left a bruise. „What do you mean? Where’s Amélie?“

A pause. Then the sound of someone screaming in the background—a sound like an animal caught in a trap.

„Her school… took the kids to the military quarantine at Stade de France. Sophie, listen—“

The line went dead.

The TV flickered with a government announcement: „Laboratory fire contained. No risk to public.“

Sophie threw her mug through the screen.

2. The Search

Paris – Days 55 to 57 of the Outbreak

Sophie didn’t sleep. She didn’t eat.
For 48 hours, she moved through a Paris that no longer belonged to anyone—only to the infected, the dying, and the guns.

The streets were empty, except for the wind and the drones. The sirens had stopped. So had the ambulances.

---

1. Stade de France – „No Parents“

The stadium gates loomed like a prison wall. Floodlights scorched the darkness. Machine gun nests crouched between concrete barriers.

Sophie shoved past the outer crowd—dozens of other parents with photos held up like passports, all screaming names—and made it to the front before a soldier blocked her with the barrel of a rifle. His face shield was smeared with blood, his eyes hollow with exhaustion.

“Zone Violet is sealed,” he barked. “No parents allowed. You breach that line, we shoot. That’s the protocol.”

She didn’t care. She screamed her daughter’s name—“AMÉLIE!”—until her throat tore.

Somewhere beyond the tunnel, under the floodlights, came the soft whimpering of children. A faint lullaby hummed by someone trying not to cry.

The soldier pressed the rifle harder against her shoulder and shoved her back into the mud. Her knees bled. She didn’t notice.

---

2. Pasteur Institute – Ground Zero

The crater still smoked.

Chunks of the building’s steel skeleton jutted into the sky like broken ribs. Melted lab equipment, scorched ID badges, shredded hazmat suits—all half-buried in blackened ash.

Sophie stepped over a twisted stretch of fence and into the rubble. The air stung with ammonia and charred plastic.

She found it near what had once been the Level 2 entrance: a small, half-melted bracelet, pink and yellow beads fused together by heat.
One bead was shaped like a dolphin.

It could have been Amélie’s.

Or any other little girl.

She dropped to her knees and screamed until the birds scattered from the ruins.

---

3. Hôpital Necker – No Light, No Children

The pediatric wing was barricaded from the inside. Sophie peered through the cracked window: the cribs had been stacked like sandbags against the doors. Sheets were taped to the glass with scrawled marker:

“NO ENTRY. OXYGEN CONTAMINATED. DO NOT WAKE THEM.”

She saw shapes moving—slow, jerking shadows, like marionettes underwater.

One turned toward her. A child, maybe. Or something that had been one. Its eyes glowed faintly. It didn’t blink.

She backed away.

---

4. Breadcrumbs

At every stop, Sophie left a note. Same handwriting. Same words. Torn from the same red spiral notebook Élodie used for recipes.

She wedged them into cracks in the barricades, taped them to poles, folded them into lunchboxes left behind.

“Amélie—if you can read this, RUN to the apartment. Mama left the red suitcase under your bed. The gun is in it. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t wait for me. I love you. Maman.”

She wrote twenty-seven of them. The last one she pinned to the Seine bridge railing, wrapped in plastic against the rain.

Then she walked home through a city no longer hers.

3. The Neighbor Who Knew

Paris – Day 57 of the Outbreak
17th Arrondissement, Rue de Saussure – Sophie’s Building

The stairwell smelled of bleach and copper. Someone had tried to clean the blood, but not well. The tiles still held the stain.

Sophie climbed without breathing, red suitcase slung across her shoulder like a coffin. Her hands shook. Her eyes felt like glass.

She didn’t notice the shadow until it spoke.

---

1. Apartment 3B – Madame Leclerc

Madame Leclerc had always been harmless. A retired postal worker. Gardened in her window box. Had cats. Laughed too loud at reality shows.

Now she stood on the landing in a nightgown, soaked with sweat, clutching a bundle of fabric to her chest.

It was a boy’s scout uniform—neatly pressed, too small now. On the collar: a name tag stitched in careful navy thread.

JACQUES.

Her eyes were cloudy. Too bright. Fevered.

“They took my Jacques too,” she whispered, stepping closer. Her lips were dry and cracked. She smelled like spoiled milk and iron. “They said the stadium… but I watched from the fire escape. The vans didn’t go north.”

Sophie froze. “Where did they go?”

Madame Leclerc fumbled with shaking hands, pulling something from the pocket of her gown. A folded Métro map—creased a hundred times over, damp with sweat and blood.

She pressed it into Sophie’s hand with surprising force. Sophie looked down.

A route was circled in jagged pen—blue ballpoint, looping like it had been drawn mid-seizure.

„Porte de Clignancourt.“

Next to it, scrawled in childlike capitals:

„NO STADIUM. NO SCHOOL. NO SAFE.“

Sophie blinked. Her vision tilted. The floor shifted under her feet.

---

2. A Market of Shadows

Clignancourt. The name landed like a gunshot in her gut.

It wasn’t just a flea market anymore. Not since the hospitals overflowed.
Not since the lockdown.
Not since children started disappearing from the triage queues.

Rumors had bloomed in the city’s underbelly like fungus: backroom clinics, shadow surgeons, wet ice. Kids with clean organs were currency now. Unmarked vans. Silent transactions.

Sophie tried to breathe, but it came in short, stuttering gasps. Her ears rang. She gripped the stair rail, hard enough to splinter her nails.

Then she dropped to her knees in front of the elevator and vomited.

It splashed across the floor tiles. Red.

She hadn’t eaten in two days.

---

3. Madame Leclerc’s Smile

The old woman didn’t move.

She just watched.

Still clutching Jacques’ uniform. Still smiling a little too wide. As if she had finally unburdened herself of a terrible weight.

“You’ll go, won’t you?” she said softly, voice breaking. “You’ll find them. You’ll bring them back.”

Sophie couldn’t answer. Couldn’t look at her.

But she stuffed the map into her jacket and stood.

And the elevator creaked open behind her like the mouth of something old and hungry.

4. The Choice

17th Arrondissement – Sophie’s Apartment – Nightfall, Day 57

The door creaked as it opened, warped from heat or impact or time. Sophie stepped into a place that used to be hers.

The apartment was dim. The power had finally gone, leaving only the pink glow of sunset bleeding through the lace curtains like a wound.
The silence inside was heavier than outside.

The hallway reeked of spoiled milk, sweat, and gun oil—a sickly cocktail of the domestic and the desperate. Somewhere in the walls, the radiator gurgled like it was drowning.

She walked past the overturned dining chairs, past the drawing on the fridge („Maman + Mamie + Me!„) scorched at the edges from a candle too close.

And into Amélie’s room.

---

1. Inventory of Hope and Violence

It was exactly as they had left it the week before the outbreak—frozen in time like the rest of the city.

The red suitcase sat beneath the bed, zipper half-undone, waiting.

Sophie knelt. Opened it.

Inside:

• A 9mm Glock, matte black, magazine loaded
• A bottle of iodine tablets, label peeling
• A folded Ziploc stuffed with €20,000 in hundreds
• A half-used inhaler
• Three tampons
• A strip of photographs from an old photobooth—Sophie and Élodie kissing, pulling faces, laughing like they didn’t know the world would ever end

She exhaled. Her breath fogged the mirror on the wall. Her hands hovered over the contents like she was afraid they’d burn her.

Then her eyes drifted.

---

2. The Other Option

On Amélie’s bed was the photo album. Wide open, face up like a question.

Page seventeen.

Amélie’s first birthday.

Élodie laughing with her head thrown back, caught mid-cackle.
Amélie with cake on her cheeks, in her hair, trying to feed it to the cat.
Sophie behind the camera, breathless with love.

She reached for it before she realized her hands were shaking.
Her fingers brushed the image—Élodie’s eyes, still alive, still full of fire.

The photo felt heavier than it should. Like it contained a universe.

---

3. The Decision

Outside, Paris howled.

Sirens screamed somewhere down by the river, rising like banshees.
Gunfire cracked once, twice.
And from the boulevard:

“BURN THE BODIES!”
More shouting. A scream cut short. A dog barked and didn’t stop.

Sophie stood in the middle of the room, holding two objects:

• A photo album that smelled faintly of baby powder and memory
• A pistol still warm from the apartment heat

One was love.

The other was the cost of it.

She closed the album slowly. Kissed the cover. Slid it gently into the suitcase.

Then picked up the gun.

---

5. The Last Light

Dawn found Sophie at the Clignancourt flea market, its stalls now makeshift morgue tables. A man in a stolen lab coat waved her over, grinning around a gold tooth.

„Kids fetch premium prices. Fresh ones especially.“

Sophie’s finger hovered over the trigger—until a familiar giggle cut through the fog.

Behind a tarp, Amélie sat cross-legged, playing cards with three other children. Alive. Uninfected.

„Mama! I knew you’d—“

Sophie shot the gold-toothed man mid-lunge, grabbed her daughter, and ran as the market erupted in gunfire behind them.

Epilogue: The New Rules

Under a highway overpass, Sophie taught Amélie the world’s new truths:

1. „Never take off the mask.“
2. „If you see blue veins, run.“
3. „Even nice people will kill you for a sip of water.“

As Amélie slept curled in her arms, Sophie watched the Pasteur Institute’s embers glow across the Seine.

Somewhere in the dark, a child who wasn’t hers screamed for a mother who wasn’t coming.

CHAPTER 9: „THE GREAT EXODUS“

Highway A10, France – Day 60 of the Outbreak

The road to Bordeaux had become a river of despair, a twenty-mile-long traffic jam of cars, bicycles, and stumbling pedestrians—all flowing south like blood from an open wound. The air smelled of burning rubber, feces, and the sweet-rot stench of bodies left in abandoned vehicles.

1. The Family in the Peugeot

Inside a stalled sedan, 4:32 AM

Mathieu Lacroix (no relation to the dead soldier) clutched his daughter’s feverish hand through the car window. Nine-year-old Lise had developed a single blister under her left eye six hours ago. Now her skin burned like a furnace.

„Papa, why are those men breaking into trucks?“ she whispered, pointing to a mob stripping a Walmart convoy ahead.

Mathieu didn’t answer. He was too busy watching the blue veins creeping up his own wrist.

His wife Claire rocked back and forth in the driver’s seat, reciting the Lord’s Prayer as she eyed the pistol in the glove compartment.

„Not yet,“ Mathieu murmured. „Not while she’s still—“

A gunshot echoed from three cars back. Then screaming. Then silence.

2. The Bicycle Brigade

Shoulder of the Highway, 6:15 AM

A peloton of Lycra-clad cyclists weaved between stalled cars, their gas masks giving them the look of dystopian Tour de France racers. At their lead, retired doctor Henri Bisset shouted warnings through a megaphone:

„Avoid bodily fluids! The virus survives in sweat for—“

A Molotov cocktail arced from an overpass, engulfing Cyclist #12 in flames. The others didn’t stop.

„They think we’re infected!“ panted a schoolteacher riding beside Henri.

„Aren’t we all?“ Henri replied, spitting black-tinged phlegm onto the asphalt.

3. The Walking Dead

Ditch Alongside Highway A10 – 8:00 AM

The ditch was a living grave.

Father Miguel had once administered last rites in the quiet candlelight of Barcelona’s Santa Maria del Pi. Now he dragged his rotting leg through a river of human waste, his cassock stiff with dried blood and the oily sheen of infected pus. The stench was biblical—a miasma of ruptured bowels, gangrene, and the sweet metallic tang of fresh hemorrhage.

He paused to vomit into the mud—black bile streaked with red—before wiping his mouth on a sleeve already crusted with the remains of the last dozen souls he’d tended. His fingers trembled as he opened his plague Bible, its pages swollen with humidity and stained by the fingerprints of the dying.

The Teenage Couple

He found them twisted together under the skeleton of a road sign, their bodies locked in a final embrace. The boy—maybe 17, his acne-scarred cheeks now blistered with lesions—had wrapped his arms around the girl so tightly that their rash patterns had merged where skin touched skin. A grotesce Rorschach blot of death.

The girl still breathed in shallow, wet gasps.

„Padre…“ She lifted a hand—her fingers had begun to fuse together with a thick, gelatinous discharge. „We didn’t… want to die alone.“

Miguel reached for his holy oil, but the boy’s eyes snapped open—the sclera entirely black, a documented late-stage mutation of the Theta-9 strain.

„She’s mine now,“ the boy gurgled through a throat full of ruptured tissue.

Miguel made the sign of the cross as the girl’s ribcage suddenly spasmed outward, her sternum cracking audibly as the virus triggered one final, violent muscle contraction. Her last breath left her not as a sigh, but as a wet shriek.

He closed their eyelids with trembling fingers and moved on.

The Suicide

Next was the elderly man in a ruined three-piece suit, his polished Oxford shoes incongruous against the mud. He had looped his Burberry tie around a broken tree branch and was trying to kick away the rock beneath his feet.

„Stop,“ Miguel rasped, grabbing his ankles.

The man laughed—a sound like bones rattling in a tin can. „You think God still watches this highway, priest?“

His neck was already studded with weeping craters, the lesions having eaten through his collar. With surprising strength, he kicked Miguel in the chest, sending the priest sprawling into the filth.

„I’ll see you in Hell,“ the man spat, and let go.

The branch held for three seconds before snapping under his weight. The man landed on his back, howling as the impact ruptured a dozen internal pustules. Miguel crawled to him, whispering absolution as the man drowned in his own liquefied lungs.

The Heart-Eater

Further down, a corpse lay splayed open like a butchered deer. Its chest cavity had been hacked apart with a blunt instrument—likely a tire iron—and the heart violently excised.

Miguel’s stomach turned as he spotted teeth marks on the rib cartilage.

Nearby, a woman crouched in the reeds, her mouth smeared crimson. She clutched the dripping organ in both hands, her eyes wild.

„It stops the fever,“ she whispered. „Just for an hour… but it stops it.“

Miguel made the sign of the cross. The woman lunged at him, her teeth bared—

—only to collapse mid-step, her body seizing violently as the stolen heart’s viral load hit her nervous system. She died with both hands still squeezing the muscle, as if trying to wring out the last drops of false hope.

The Child in the Pipe

The whimper came from a rusted drainage culvert half-submerged in the muck.

Inside, a boy no older than six huddled in ankle-deep sludge, his Spider-Man backpack still clinging to his shoulders. His left arm was mottled with early-stage lesions, but his eyes were clear.
„Maman said hide,“ he whispered in French. „But she didn’t come back.“

Miguel knew what he should do—what the new world’s mercy demanded. A pillow over the face. A quick blade across the throat. Spare him the slow rotting.

Instead, he reached into the pipe.

„Come, hijo. We’ll find—“

The boy screamed as Miguel’s fingers brushed his shoulder. Not from fear.

From the five black tendrils that had just burst from the priest’s rotting leg, lashing toward the child like rabid eels. The Theta-9 strain had been quietly rewriting Miguel’s nervous system for days—turning him into a vector.

The last thing Father Miguel ever saw was the boy’s face dissolving as the tendrils injected him with pure viral load.

The last thing he heard was his own voice, now harmonized with something else, whispering:

„This is how angels are made now.“

4. The Checkpoint Massacre

Approaching Poitiers, 11:50 AM

The „Clean Zone“ barricade gleamed with fresh razor wire. Behind it, National Guard troops in hastily modified hazmat gear (garbage bags + scuba masks) leveled machine guns.

„Show arms!“ barked the commander through a megaphone.

The crowd surged forward—thousands of uninfected desperate to prove their purity. The guards opened fire.

Mathieu watched from his car as:

• A mother held up her baby’s unmarked arms—both vaporized by .50 cal rounds
• A businessman lit himself on fire and ran at the barricade
• The guards retreated as their plastic suits melted into their blistering skin

By nightfall, the checkpoint was a smoldering pyre of corpses and abandoned tanks. The road south lay open.

5. The New Plague Saints

Moonlit Fields Near Poitiers – 2:00 AM

The highway exodus had bled into the countryside like a wound leaking pus. Those who fled the massacre at the checkpoint now stumbled through farmlands turned nightmare carnival, where the virus birthed prophets and the desperate made gods of monsters.

Mathieu’s dying Peugeot rolled to a stop beside a cornfield where the stalks moved against the wind. Not from breeze—from the hundreds of bodies crawling through the rows on hands and knees, their murmurs rising in a dissonant chant.

„Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus…“

---

I. THE BLEEDING MOTHER

At the field’s heart, a makeshift altar smoldered—a tractor trailer piled with burning furniture, its sides daubed in feces and menstrual blood.

Upon it stood Sister Evangeline, a former nun whose habit was now fused to her body by lesion secretions. Her arms stretched crucifixion-wide, pustules bursting rhythmically down her limbs like grotesque rosary beads.

„Drink, children!“ she shrieked, raking fingernails across her weeping chest wounds. A dozen followers scrambled to catch the black-tinged fluid in tin cups.

Mathieu watched in paralyzed horror as:

• A banker in a ruined suit lapped at his portion like communion wine, his teeth falling out as the liquid hit his gums
• A teenage girl smeared it over her unborn baby’s bulge, screaming „Be purified!“
• The fluid sizzled where it spilled on metal—Theta-9’s pH now rivaling battery acid

Claire grabbed his arm. „That’s not a nun. Look at its eyes.“

The thing on the altar turned. Where Evangeline’s eyes should’ve been, two fat white larvae pulsed in the sockets—botflies drawn by necrotic tissue.

„All are welcome in my choir,“ it gurgled through lungs visibly moving under skin.

---

II. THE FIRE PREACHERS

Beyond the cornfield, a circle of children danced around a screaming man tied to a telephone pole. Their leader—a boy no older than eight with blue veins mapping his face like stained glass—held a Zippo lighter aloft.

„Burn the sickness out!“ he chanted in a voice three octaves too deep for his frame.

Mathieu recognized the bound man—Dr. Lefèvre, the Lyon epidemiologist who’d appeared on TV calling for calm. Now his lips were sewn shut with fishing line, his nostrils packed with salt (an old folk remedy against demons).

The children took turns:

• A pig-tailed girl pressed the flame to Lefèvre’s eyelids until they popped
• A toddler in a diaper giggled as she skewered his foot with a railroad spike
• The leader boy plunged both hands into the doctor’s unzipped abdomen, emerging with glowing strands of bioluminescent gut tissue

„See?“ the boy crowed, draping the viral-luminescent intestines around his neck like Christmas lights. „The cure is inside the sick!“

The children cheered and began dissecting the still-breathing doctor for more „cures.“

---

III. THE QUIET ONES

At the forest’s edge, twenty figures in burlap masks formed a silent procession. Each carried:

• A wicker basket leaking dark fluid
• A lantern made from a human skull (spinal cord as wick)
• No visible lesions—just too-smooth skin suggesting something rewrote them entirely

Mathieu’s daughter Lise whimpered at the sight.

„Don’t look at them,“ Claire breathed, but it was too late.

The lead figure tilted its head 180 degrees like an owl, empty eyeholes locking onto Lise. From its basket came a wet chittering—inside, newborn rats with human infant faces squirmed over half-digested fingers.

„Come,“ it whispered without moving its stitched-shut mouth. „We have clean food.“

When Claire raised the pistol, the figures moved as one—not running, but gliding across the mud without footprints. The family fled as the baskets began to sing in their stolen voices.

---

IV. THE LAST CHOICE

Back at the car, Lise’s fever hit 42°C. Her left pupil swallowed the iris in a black tide.

Claire pressed the gun to their daughter’s temple as Mathieu ripped open his shirt—his own chest now ridged with subcutaneous tendrils thrashing like sea anemones.

„You promised,“ Claire sobbed. The gunshot was lost beneath:

• The Bleeding Mother’s hymns turning to death rattles as her ribcage bloomed outward in fungal filaments
• The Fire Preachers spontaneously combusting one by one
• The Quiet Ones’ basket-lanterns flaring green as the forest answered their call

By dawn, the fields stood empty but for the corn—now growing in perfect fractal spirals where blood had soaked the soil.