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There is nothing so patient, in this world or any other, as a virus searching for a host.
Alpha-RC007 wanted to help.
What was going to happen the first time Alpha-RC007 decided the human immune system counted as an infection?
The Centers for Disease Control have issued a statement asking that people remain calm in the wake of the release of an unidentified pathogen from the Virginia-based lab of Dr. Alexander Kellis. “We do not, as yet, have any indication that this disease is harmful to humans,”
It was the people they had brought to the office with them that presented the truly alarming problem. Husbands and wives, parents and children, they sat next to their previously ill relatives with glazed eyes, taking shallow, painful-sounding breaths.
It lasted less than a month. Say July 7th, for lack of a precise date; say Columbus, Ohio, for lack of a precise location. July 7, 2014, Columbus: The end of the world begins.
“Still think we shouldn’t be too worried about a pandemic that just makes everybody well?”
It’s spreading. If it’s not already everywhere in the world, it will be soon.”
“The Kellis cure doesn’t play nicely with the other children,”
The ones that used the live version of the modified Marburg virus. They’re expressing the same symptoms as everyone else…but their families are starting to show signs of the Marburg variant. Somehow, interaction with the Kellis cure is teaching it how to spread. That, or it was already spreading on a subclinical level, and now the Kellis cure is waking it up.”
Effective immediately, all human clinical trials utilizing live strains of any genetically modified virus have been suspended. All records and patient lists for these trials must be submitted to the CDC office in Atlanta, Georgia, by noon EST on July 10th. Failure to comply may result in federal charges…
If there was any mercy in this—and there was no mercy to be seen, not then—it was that he died early enough to stay that way.
“Maybe this is as bad as it gets.”
It began nowhere. It began everywhere. It began without warning; it began with all the warning in the world. It could have been prevented a thousand times over. There was nothing that anyone could have done.
At 6:48 AM, Lauren’s body opened its eyes, and the virus looked out upon the world, and found that it was hungry. She would be found clawing at the door three hours later when the maids came to clean her room. The room did not get cleaned.
The Rising had begun.
Reports of unusually violent behavior are coming in from across the Midwest, leading some to speculate that the little brown bat, which has been known to migrate during warm weather, may have triggered a rabies epidemic of previously unseen scope…
“We’re living in a Romero movie!”
If there was one thing science had taught him, it was that safe was always better than sorry, and some things were never on the final exam.
They were being managed, and no one seemed to care, and so he kept on smiling and waited for the commercial break to end. There was no footage. There was always footage. Even when good taste and human decency said not to air it, there was footage. Humanity liked to slow down and look at the car crash by the side of the road, and it was the job of the news to give them all the wrecks that they could stomach. So where was the wreck? Where was the twisted metal and the sorrowful human-interest story? Why did they have nothing but words on a teleprompter and silence from the editing room?
There is no loyalty among viruses;
The Rising had come to Denver; the Rising had come home.
