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Chapter 2 - Prologue II: The Cure

Seven days before the first recorded human case, 1:51 pm. Westview, Clarkson International Lab

Back in his laboratory, Dr. Kael stood hunched over the steel table, latex gloves stretched tight across his trembling hands. The overhead lamp glared down, turning the small form of the dead rat into a harsh landscape of pale flesh and matted fur.

He carefully adjusted the retractor, exposing the abdominal cavity. The smell of antiseptic struggled and failed to mask the underlying sourness.

"Alright, little guy… let's see what went wrong."

His voice cracked in the emptiness of the lab.

The initial incisions were routine, muscle and peritoneum parting under the scalpel. But as he spread the cavity open, a frown furrowed deep into his brow.

Clusters of oddly knotted tissue clung to the intestines not tumors exactly, more like fleshy polyps threaded through with tiny dark veins. Worse still, faint gray strands stretched outward like microscopic roots, creeping along the mesentery.

"What the hell…"

He reached for the magnifier, heart beginning to drum painfully. Under the lens, he saw even finer filaments burrowing into the tissue, almost fungal. They twitched or was that just the trembling of his own hands?

Kael stepped back, stomach lurching. This wasn't consistent with any immune reaction. And it certainly wasn't from his cancer protocol those vectors didn't even target gut tissue. Whenever, he tried to cut a small vein pops a rancid smell of rat poison.

This wasn't consistent with any immune reaction. And it certainly wasn't from his cancer protocol those vectors didn't even target gut tissue.

His mind darted back to last week. The misplaced trays. The mild panic as they'd cross-checked barcodes. A nauseating possibility crawled up his spine.

No. That's impossible. We caught that — didn't we?

But when he turned to check the cage logs again, dread settled like cold lead in his gut. The recently deceased rat had been logged under his experimental therapy, but now he couldn't help but wonder if it had been misidentified. If somehow the vial switch had reached further than anyone thought.

Without further hesitation and sought of curiosity, he immediately walked outside to meet the researcher behind the ancient bacteria. Inside, the hallways were sleek and quiet, glass walls filtering morning light across white-tiled floors. Kael's shoes squeaked in abrupt, frantic staccatos as he hurried down the corridor, clutching his lab folder so tight his knuckles whitened.

He found Dr. Kim Sun Lee in one of the lower sterile labs, bent over a holo-scan table where luminous molecular strands drifted lazily in three dimensions. Sun Lee barely looked up, tapping a virtual node that unraveled into thousands of protein markers.

"Dr. Kael. Surprised to see you here on the off day. Has your immunotherapy run into complications?"

Kael swallowed, throat painfully dry.

"I… it's the latest subject. There were... mutations. Aggressive tissue invasions, cross-system infiltration. None of it aligns with my vector design. I keep tracing it back and there's only one gap the possibility of contamination from the Borealis vault samples. I need to know exactly, what kind of bacteria you pulled from that permafrost core."

Dr. Lee finally paused, fingertips hovering just above the hologram. His eyes met Kael's, dark and thoughtful, but behind them was an unsettling flatness, the look of someone who'd seen too many horrors on a cellular scale. Dr. Lee was known to be one of the geniuses when it comes to pathological engineering and culturing bacteria. Although he never one such prestige awards from his research, he was deemed to be one of the promising modern scientists in Eastern Asia. Albeit most of his projects were self-funded by himself as majority of his crowdfunding and requisition was rejected by the chief executive of Clarkson International lab, despite being one of the oldest and a senior tech from the institution.

"We know it's a genus unlike any modern analog," he said slowly. "Its surface proteins mimic both archaea and certain extremophile fungi. It demonstrated an alarming capacity for genomic uptake in vitro; we suspected horizontal transfer might be off the charts. We were just beginning to catalog receptor binding preferences. Why?"

Kael's mouth worked for a second before words came.

"Because I think it's not just infecting. I think it's rewriting. At speeds I've never seen. You don't have any full pathology studies yet? Any vertebrate hosts beyond your culture dishes?"

Dr. Lee's expression didn't change, but he drew back slightly, as though physically distancing himself from the possibilities Kael was sketching in real time.

"Not yet. We were months from mammalian trials. That's why we had your lab double-checking containment clearances."

Kael felt his vision narrow to a tunnel.

"We had a vial misplacement. Only caught by the barcode audit. I thought it was fine but now, some of my rats are dying getting sick and dying abruptly, I can't even classify. If this crossed over..."

Dr. Lee didn't look up immediately. He just flicked his wrist across the holo console, dismissing the protein map in a ripple of fading light.

"Dr. Kael, I assure you, the Borealis samples were inventoried down to the microgram. Every vial underwent triple-chain logging. When that tech mishandled trays last week, he was terminated on the spot. His entire workstation was sterilized and re-audited."

Kael clenched his jaw.

"I know your protocols. But this isn't just an accounting error. These tissue mutations, they're not random. They're organized. Almost parasitic but with signals that look like… like opportunistic grafting. I've never seen anything like it."

Dr. Lee finally lifted his gaze. It was cool, clinical, edged with mild irritation, the look of a man being pestered by theoretical risks when he had more tangible work to juggle.

"Kael, we both have bigger priorities. Borealis is running three live pathogen lines right now for different climate-adapted treatments. If we freeze operations every time someone fears contamination."

Kael's voice cracked, louder than he intended.

"I'm not someone, Kim! I've sequenced every iteration of my own damn therapy vectors for six years. I'd stake my career there's something foreign inside these subjects. Something that didn't come from my lab."

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Then, with an exasperated sigh that sounded almost theatrical, Dr. Lee leaned back, folding his arms.

"Fine. If it quiets your nerves, I'll have my micro team culture a sample from your dead rodent. But I'm not reallocating full-scale sequencing until we see conclusive anomalies. We are already spread thin — you realize we have vector-resistant cholera trials starting next week?"

Kael nodded quickly, gripping the file so tight it crumpled.

"Just take the sample. That's all I'm asking."

Dr. Sun Lee gestured to a passing tech in a crisp graphite lab coat.

"Log Dr. Kael's rodent cultures under an isolated label. Run histo-growth on selective plates. We'll see if your monster has legs, Ethan."

Kael forced a thin, grateful smile, though it didn't reach his eyes.

"Thank you, Dr Lee. Truly."

Once Kael had left, the lab door sliding shut with a soft pneumatic hiss, Dr. Kim Sun Lee stood in silence for a moment, arms still folded tight across his chest.

He let out a long, weary sigh.

"New hires…" he muttered under his breath. "God, forbid they learn to distinguish a barcode from their own ID badge. We wouldn't be down a perfectly serviceable cleaning tech if he'd actually kept his trays sorted."

He reached out to tap a new holo display, forcing his mind back to a tangled protein chain he'd been analyzing before Kael barged in. But after only a few seconds, his fingers stilled and scratched the back of his grey hair.

A faint scowl tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"Kael and his bloody headlines," he grumbled. "Discover the holy grail of oncology and suddenly you're a saint. If Borealis had just secured the right stage funding, this ancient strain project would've had the same spotlight. Maybe more."

But the thought only left a bitter taste on his tongue. With an impatient swipe, he closed the display entirely.

"Let him have his ghosts and panic attacks," he said quietly, almost to himself. "Some of us still have real frontiers to chase."

And with that, Dr. Kim Sun Lee turned back to his next sequence file — oblivious that Kael's "ghosts" were already clawing their way far beyond any cage, petri dish, or control protocol they'd ever devised.

Meanwhile, in her cramped mobile lab parked under the old cottonwoods of Westview Creek Sanctuary, Dr. Nividia Rios hunched over her microscope, sweat prickling at her brow despite the chilly dawn.

She had prepped smear after smear from the chicken's liver, lung, even a few stray muscle fibers but the view through her scope was unlike any bacterial colony she'd catalogued. Filaments twisted and branched in chaotic whorls, some segments translucent and bulbous, others studded with microscopic nodules.

It looked… organized. Too organized.

She pulled off her gloves with a frustrated snap and grabbed her phone, thumb scrolling to Ethan's contact. It rang only twice before he answered, his voice already tight.

"Niv? I was about to call you myself."

"Good. Saves me a breath," she muttered, massaging her temple. "Listen, I've been running smears on a farm hen a few days ago. It's not anthrax. Or fowl cholera. Or even anything in the usual zoonotic bacterial range. The stain profiles are completely wrong — some of these structures don't even hold dye like normal prokaryotes. It's like they're half-wax, half… something else."

Kael was silent on the other end for a moment. Then he exhaled shakily.

"I'm seeing similar anomalies in my lab rodents. Weird fibrous masses. Rapid systemic infiltration. It doesn't match any typical cancer metastasis either. I've got Borealis running cultures now."

Nividia leaned back in her narrow stool, eyes darting to the sample fridge as if the slides inside might burst free.

"Kael, if it's not a standard pathogen, and it's not your cancer vector—"

"Then it's something else. Something novel. Maybe from outside our typical transmission chains altogether."

Her heart gave a sharp, painful beat.

"Meaning we might be dealing with a multi-species vector. Jeb's livestock could be exposed. Hell, the raccoons or dears could already be carrying it beyond the valley."

Kael paused, frowning.

"Wait... back up. Who's Jeb?"

Nividia let out a short, dry laugh.

"Local goat farmer out near Westview Creek. I do routine checks for parasites and foot rot. He's usually more worried about coyotes… well in his current case, a raccoon than microbe horror stories. But he's the one who found the hen pecking aggressively her flock mate."

Nividia's breath crackled faintly over the line as she started washing her hands in the sink.

"Some of these structures are so irregular If only I could go back to Cantenbury to prep for an electron micrograph. Might be the only way to nail down morphology. They're not behaving like any bacteria I've catalogued."

Kael rubbed his forehead, trying to suppress the nauseous feeling from the thought of it.

"Christ… And you said this all started with that farmer. Jeb."

"Yeah. Presilla, I mean his hen was pecking a dead, to the point it pecked hard enough to its organs from hen that'd been mauled by a raccoon. Weird flock behavior, agitation, avoidance. You know the drill with scavenger spread."

Kael hesitated.

"Look… Niv, could you send me your test results? Your spectra, tissue samples, any test you conducted from it? Once Borealis finishes the cultures from my rodents, I want to do a direct overlay. See if we're chasing the same monster."

Nividia chucked tiredly pausing for a few moments before answering once more.

"Of course. I'll pull them as soon as I finish the next set. You'll owe me two bottles of whatever aged poison they stock at Big bulls Pub for this overtime."

Despite everything, Kael managed a dry huff.

"Deal. Just get them to me. And Niv... be careful. Gloves, respirator, the works. I don't like how fast this is moving."

"I know, Ethan," she said, her voice softer now. "You watch yourself too."

Kael ended the call and let the phone slip from his hand onto the lab counter. For a long moment, he just stood there, staring at the blinking cursor on his monitor.

He brought up the lab's chain-of-custody logs, eyes scanning down rows of sterile codes and timestamps. Every sample, every cage transfer, every euthanasia record. All accounted for. The incident days ago… the mislabeled trays; showed up only as a short internal investigation file. No mention of a breach. No flagged note of any missing live subject.

"Nothing out of place," he muttered under his breath. His voice sounded thin, like it didn't belong to him.

Still, unease twisted in his gut. He knew how easily records could miss a minor anomaly. A latch not quite secured, a timid new tech too scared to admit a mistake. Somewhere inside, samples were multiplying on warm agar, dividing and dividing each replication carrying forward whatever ancient blueprint they might have awakened.

 

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