December 17, 2028 - 2:12 a.m. The smell of antiseptic was sharp, clinging to my lungs, but it couldn't mask the other odor: death. It was everywhere in the ward. Rows of patients lay on metal cots, most barely breathing, the ventilators groaning like dying animals. I leaned against the cracked wall, trying to steady my trembling hands as the high school medical volunteers filed in. They were young-far too young to see the things they had already seen. Their eyes darted between the bodies, the IV drips, & me. One of them whispered, "Was COVID-19 really this bad?" I shook my head. "COVID-19 was a joke compared to this." Outside the rusted windows, the world was unrecognizable. Cities burned in the distance, governments had fallen, and the One World Currency and One World Religion we had all fought to resist had somehow become popular in the chaos... but even they were failing. Nothing could organize a dying planet. I gathered the volunteers closer. "You want to understand where this all began? You want to know why millions died?" My voice cracked, but I forced it steady. "Then listen carefully, because I saw it with my own eyes. I was there when it started-when the scientists in Siberia awakened something they should have left buried. And I was there when they ignored me, when I begged them to stop." ...I swallowed hard and began. "It was March 2027 when I planned a secret trip with a colleague to the permafrost labs in Yakutia. We had heard rumors-whispers that the thawed ice cores contained more than just climate data. What I found there..." My throat tightened. "I found death. I found their mistakes." I closed my eyes for a moment and saw it again: the subzero tunnels, the massive drill cores stacked like coffins, the orb-like vials of glowing viral suspensions they had extracted. I remembered the lead scientist's smug smile when I pointed out the broken negative-pressure seals in their containment wing. "We know what we're doing," he had said. They didn't. The volunteers leaned closer. I lowered my voice. "They were experimenting. Co-culturing ancient pathogens with modern influenza. Trying to create hybrid strains for... 'research.' I told them it was madness. I begged them to stop. Instead, they locked me away in a steel cell beneath the lab." The girl nearest me whispered, "How did you escape?" "I broke out," I said softly. "But by then, it was already too late. The virus was gone. Someone had already carried it out." I felt the weight of what came next press on my chest. "That virus became Perafrost X-a pathogen with a 60% adult mortality rate, nearly 100% fatal in children and the elderly, and a 21-day silent incubation. By the time symptoms showed, entire cities were already infected." The volunteers didn't move, didn't even breathe. I saw the fear in their eyes, the same fear I had felt when I realized the pandemic couldn't be stopped. "But," I said, forcing myself to straighten, "we found the cure. We built it here in iWorld Hospital when the world had already burned. We discovered the vaccines and drug therapies that could stop Perafrost X, even at its worst. And I owe that success to someone I deeply admired-my mentor, the one who refused to give up when everyone else had surrendered." I pointed to the cot at the far end of the ward. He was asleep, his chest rising steadily for the first time in weeks, his face peaceful for the first time in months. The volunteers followed my gaze. One whispered, "How did you do it? How did you find the cure?" I took a deep breath, remembering the blood, the betrayals, and the nights spent in underground labs with generators humming and gunfire echoing above us. "Let me tell you," I said. "But you'd better be ready, because this story... this is how close the world came to ending."
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