1 Prologue

October 15, 1998

My name is Robin Chantey. I am a Biochemist. This is my confession, and I hope my defence, should I stand before a jury.

When I was four, my father told me a story that gives me nightmares to this day. There once existed a tiny village between Telegraph Cove and Alert Bay you will no longer find on any modern Canadian map because it was wiped out in the 40's. I always imagined the boy who escaped into the bushes the day what remained of the village was scorched down to the ground to be a starving boy with my own face instead of my father's (it must be why the story frightened me so). That story became my passionate drive into viral diseases; why it holds everyone in the grip of fear when they strike.

Viruses are vile creatures, I have come to know. They come in without portraying their hidden agenda, as if they have none. They lie dormant, seemingly harmless, slowly sucking their hosts dry and when there is no nectar left, killing them. Truth is, they can't exist without them but once they have permissible entrance, they take over like the aliens from the 'War of the Worlds' and ride their own show. They are vile alright, reason why they are so fearful. So I studied them and deducted a way to combat these terrible aliens. But as I learnt more about them, I got a window into the souls of their human hosts. Really, the people who wage such fierce war against the two-faced aliens have no idea how alike they are to them, or maybe they do, but they cannot be bothered to care.

If I had known that what I am creating would make humans come out of their dormant shells and reveal their real monstrous nature, then I would have happily let them be conquered. How I wish I can turn back the clock…

His hand trembled. The grease in his palm made it difficult to get a grip on the pen and so it danced on the paper like a tormented roach. Tears and sweat slid between his eyes and fell on the sheet in splattered drops down the tip of his nose, making dark-blue blots on the white sheet with the words. His last words to the world before he became a fugitive – a villain – may be rendered illegible. He tried to suppress the quiver in his hand, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of the other.

Footsteps drew closer to the door of the lab. They were coming for him, he knew. When they do, they would jail him. If he survived prison, they would put a rope around his neck on a scheduled day the great District of Columbia decide would be his death day and watch him strangle to death. While his execution take place, WTTG would showcase his life story, how intelligent and promising he was and the world would wonder what changed him; CNN would relate how immigrants work to the fatality of their host nations; BBC would portray him as a terrorist. What he did was horrible, unspeakable even, but if they realised he had to do it… that he had no choice… would they understand? He dropped the pen on the paper. No one would care. No one would believe him over them. Defence was useless. He was going to hang for it, well, so be it. At least, they would never lay hands on what they want either. He had made sure of it.

The hot, orange ball that blew past him felt wonderful. It was a surprise, but not at all an unpleasant one. It would in no way rewrite his story, but at least, he would not go through the humiliation of dangling at the end of a rope. He closed his eyes and embraced the warmth eating his flesh, his lungs, his eyeballs; a short suffering that would create the transition he sought. The curtains were closing; he could almost hear them hustling softly behind the merry crackling. But the show wasn't over…